Systems and Dynamic Systems: The Search for Inclusive Merger

Abstract

As we enter the 21st century, developmental psychology still constitutes a field in search of ontological identity and uniformity [Witherington, 2007]. New commitments to variability in development – across instances of real-time action, across contexts, individuals, cultures, and historical epochs – have underscored the need for a metatheoretical framework that embraces the developmental process in all its dynamic complexity [e.g., Baltes, 1987; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Gottlieb, 1991; Lerner, 2006; Parent, Normandeau, & Larivee, 2000]. With their new edited volume, Human Development in the Twenty-First Century: Visionary Ideas from Systems Scientists, Fogel, King and Shanker [2008] have highlighted the important role a dynamic systems approach can play in fostering metatheoretical unity for developmental psychology. The dynamic systems approach is rooted in the centrality of relationship for understanding complex form, both in the real-time generation and maintenance of pattern and in the ontogenetic emergence and consolidation of pattern. In contrast to the more traditional, reductionist approach to understanding organization, which relies on a breaking down of systems in order to study their parts in isolation of one another, the dynamic systems approach emphasizes the need for studying the relationships that exist among parts rather than the parts themselves. It is only by studying the relationship among the parts of a system that we can begin to rebuild the system and view it in its organizational totality. The edited volume by Fogel et al. [2008] sets out to instantiate the importance of relationship through a diverse collection of essays designed to show how critical a relational focus is to understanding development at all levels of analysis.