Problem Solving About Complex Systems: Differences Between Experts and Novices

Abstract

This paper reports on a study of problem solving differences between scientific experts in the field of complex systems and novice undergraduate students. Significant differences were found both at the conceptual level and at the level of basic epistemological and ontological presuppositions and beliefs. It is suggested that helping students understand and use complex systems knowledge will require helping students construct a richer conceptual ecology which embraces both non-reductive and decentralized thinking, multiple causality, non-linearity, randomness, and so on. It is hoped that this research might contribute to efforts that are exploring ways for students to acquire a powerful conceptual toolkit based on emerging scientific and social science research into the dynamics of complex systems. How does the immune system respond to constantly changing bacterial and viral invaders? How do birds achieve their flocking formations? Why do we have highly skewed wealth distribution patterns? How do galaxies form? Despite the diversity of these questions, each has been the focus of research at the frontiers of science, and each involves phenomena that may be regarded as complex systems. central concepts of complex systems, including new ways of doing science involving computer explorations and computational modeling, have been found to apply in many different areas. Yaneer Bar-Yam has written, The study of the dynamics of complex systems creates a host of new interdisciplinary fields. It not only breaks down barriers between physics, chemistry and biology, but also between these disciplines and the so-called soft sciences of psychology, sociology, economics, and anthropology (Bar-Yam, 1997). Thus the concepts related to complex systems may function as unifying cross- disciplinary scientific themes which are essential to understanding emerging interdisciplinary perspectives in the natural and social sciences. Unfortunately, considerable research has documented the difficulties that students have learning scientific ideas from the past 300 years (e.g., Newtonian physics, Darwinian evolution). Helping students to learn emerging scientific knowledge and the unifying cross-disciplinary themes related to complexity and complex systems will no doubt prove even more challenging.