A verge is the brink of progress, or the start of transition to something different. It’s the point just before something starts to happen. In nature, it is a place where different ecosystems intersect, a place where abundant diversity and interaction yields energetic evolutionary potential. Join a session where many scholarly disciplines converge, and discover what complexity science principles suggest for our changing lives.
Complexity science and its applications have never been more important. Biologists and earth scientists tell us that in the last few decades, humans have changed the world’s ecosystems more profoundly and rapidly than in any other period of human history. Technological advances have revolutionized virtually every field of human endeavor. Innovations in communications that only recently seemed like science fiction have destabilized and transformed individual lives and global markets. Interactions among social, economic, political and scientific forces have never produced faster or more unpredictable results. At a time when seismic social and scientific changes overwhelm our institutions and outpace our education, the principles of complexity science offer invaluable insights and a path to understanding and actions that matter.
The 2005 Plexus Annual Summit, offered in collaboration with the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University, will bring together internationally known experts from the natural and social sciences to share ideas, reflect on current knowledge of complex systems, and explore the pressing human goals most likely to benefit from the combined efforts of thinkers and scholars from diverse disciplines. When physicists, biologists and neuroscientists exchange knowledge with psychologists, economists and organizational scholars, surprising ideas are the only predictable expectation.
As Larry Liebovitch, professor at the FAU’s Center for Complex Systems explains, new tools, concepts and methods have emerged over the last 20 years that enable people to work with complexity in fields ranging from molecular biology to organizational management. Professor Liebovitch points out initiatives such as the National Institutes of Health Roadmap and the National Science Foundation Crosscutting Programs emphasize the transdisciplinary, multilevel approaches that are crucial to the future of science, technology and society.
