Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education

by Mark Mason (editor)

A collection of scholarly essays, Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education provides an accessible theoretical introduction to the topic of complexity theory while considering its broader implications for educational change.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Mark Mason's previous non-fiction includes The Importance of Being Trivial, Walk the Lines, The Bluffer's Guide To Football and The Bluffer's Guide To Bond. He is also the author of three novels, and has written for most British national newspapers (though never about anything too heavy), and magazines from The Spectator to Four Four Two. He lives in Sussex with his partner and son.

Reviews

[Manuel Barrera]

It seems educators--at least post-modernist pretenders--make very poor chaos or complexity theorists. Aside from Mason's own contributions, which approached but never really found cohesion, this book, unfortunately of several others in a series was unsatisfying often reiterating the same mantra about how things a "greater than the sum" of their parts. It appears that this group of educators are mesmerized with the concept of complexity theory and try to fit it into the writings and conceptions of such authors as Dewey and thee Gestaltists. I could not see, among the too many words, much innovation of thought or philosophy. The basis of complexity theory lies in chaos theory--a mathematical study of the order within complex data systems like historical economic records and other very large "data sets"--that may help to explain (or at least describe) such things as genetic mutation, quantum mechanics and other seemingly disordered patterns in nature and human behavior. Interestingly, one of the more obvious candidates for examining complexity theory in education is the notion of human intelligence, or rather, individual unpredictable development of human intelligence. Current theories like IQ and "multiple intelligences" would be ideal study that might uncover patterns in the chaos of individual intellectual development that might inform such theories as cognitive, behavioral, or abnormal behavior theories, not to mention instructional and curriculum theories emanating from current beliefs in "how people learn" (cf. Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, 2000). Conceptually, "things" are NOT greater than their parts for any meaningful theory that does not descend into religion (a plausible theory of life if it weren't for all the, you know, acrimony surrounding it). A car racer works "magic" on the race track based on manipulating an engine with pistons, fuel, carburetors, and physical skills. The sum of those juxtapositions are exactly equal to those parts even if "we" have yet fully to learn to explain them. So, too, is the concept of "mind", which is the (exponential, logarithmic, statistical, and bio-electric) sum of the biological human nervous system at its apex--the "brain". Or, as A. C. Clark once said (more or less) "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from 'magic'" . Such an observation doesn't make phenomena magical, it makes them yet to be fully comprehensible.
My thinking on this issue is that complexity theory--like chaos theory has been in mathematics--requires grounding much like Hegel's metaphysical logic required grounding in Feuerbach's materialist theses to arrive at such conceptions as dialectical materialism. Complexity theory may have something to offer in the field of education. It just won't come from the religious idolatry of this book series.