The Complex Processes Research Group strives to advance
cross-disciplinary research into complex processes.
Advances in mathematics, the natural sciences and
cultural and social theory together with problems and
opportunities generated by globalization, including
the global ecological crisis, have demonstrated the
inadequacy of traditional reductionist ways of understanding
the world.
Each
in its own way has revealed the world to consist of
dynamic, complex processes; in each case the central
problem is how to study and comprehend such processes.
The group undertakes research on process philosophy
and its developments and applications, on the wide
range of ideas which are now converging in the general
theory of complexity and complex systems, and on cultural,
social and economic theories concordant with these
ideas.
In this way the group attempts to link research on
process philosophy and complexity theory with theoretical
physics, chemistry and biology, neurophysiology, psychology,
human ecology and global political economy, and research
on cultures, institutions and organizations and their
transformations and pathologies, particularly those
engendered by the impact of globalization.
In the light
of such research the group also reviews and attempts
to reformulates the basic concepts defining social
and political ideals and goals of the global community
and the standards of economic performance and human
welfare.
To provide the means to formulate policy within
this global system, the group promotes research into
new approaches to policy formation such as "retrospective
path analysis" and, in accordance with this,
strives to create new visions of the future.
The group draws together people from a broad range
of disciplines both within the Swinburne University
along with academics and postgraduate students from
other universities. During semester, the group holds
fortnightly research seminars.
In previous years it
has examined topics such as the emergence of consciousness,
the mathematics of complexity, ecology and human ecology,
the nature of emergence, the dynamics of culture and
globalization and complexity in international politics.
In 2000 members of the group also produced a special
edition of the journal Democracy and Nature devoted
to complexity and systems theory.
Members of the group participated in the organization
of the Third Australasian Conference on Process
Thought . The papers for this have been published
in the 2002 edition of on-line journal Concrescence, a
journal in which members of the group regularly publish
their research.
Members of the group have also set up a new on-line
journal: Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural
and Social Philosophy which we expect to be launched
this year.
