A Complexity Approach To Co-Creating An Innovative Environment

The distinguishing characteristic of complex co-evolving systems is their ability to create new order. In human systems this may take the form of new ways of working or relating, new ideas for products, procedures, artefacts, or even the creation of a different culture or a new organizational form. This article will explore the creation of new order using the principles of complexity and the concepts of creativity and innovation. It will argue that innovation can be facilitated by an enabling environment based on the logic of complexity and describe how one organization (the Humberside Training and Enterprise Council) co-created an innovative environment and changed its culture, ways of working, thinking, and relating.     

Discrete Process Model for Quantum Systems of Matter and Mind

Attempts to create a coherent scientific picture of the world as a whole on the basis of quantum physics has sped up at the turn of the millennium. There particularly seem to be expectations that the development of a new kind of quantum mechanics could make it possible to describe both matter and consciousness in one frame of reference (“dual aspect approach”). These ideas are often results of brilliant intuitive visions but as yet not able to produce testable hypotheses. Maybe “wave mechanics” is not very suitable in the study of consciousness from the quantum mechanical point of view. The aim of this article is to show how both the matter and the mind systems can be described with one coherent mathematical model if we assume both space and time to be discrete.     

Self-Affection and Pure Intuition in Kant

Are the pure intuitions of space and time, for Kant, dependent upon the understanding's activity? This paper defends the recently popular Self-Affection Thesis (SAT): namely, that the pure intuitions require an activity of self-affection—an influence of the understanding on the inner sense. Two systematic objections to this thesis have been raised: The Independence objection claims that SAT undermines the independence of sensibility; the Compatibility objection claims that certain features of space and time are incompatible with being the products of the understanding's activity. I show that the resources to rebut these objections can be found in Kant's account of causal influence.     

Philosophy in the Act: The Socio-Political Relevance of Mamardašvili’s Philosophizing

Although topics in social and political philosophy might not be the first to associate with Mamarda?vili, it is argued in this paper that key concepts in his thought, viz. the concepts of form, thought, and culture come together, in the 1980s in particular, in a notion of civil society that goes deeper than that of many of his contemporaries. The relevance of his philosophy at this point is intensified by the specific nature of Soviet philosophical culture, but, it is argued, extends well beyond that, fully justifying his honorary title of “Georgian Socrates”.     

Social Identity and Spatial Behaviour: The Relationship between National Category Salience, the Sense of Home, and Labour Mobility across National Boundaries

This study explores the impact of manipulating the salience of national categories upon the willingness of highly identifying Scots to take up either short-term or long-term jobs in Scotland as compared to England. The results support the hypotheses (a) that high-identifying Scots increase preference for intra- over extranational locations when national categories are salient, (b) that this effect is fully mediated by "fitting in"—that is, the sense of being "at home" in Scottish as compared to English locations, and (c) that these relationships only hold for long-term as opposed to short-term jobs. We discuss these results in terms of the impact of identity definitions upon spatialised action and the economic/political importance of this relationship.     

Transit Space: No Place is Nowhere

This article deals with representations of one specific city, Århus, Denmark, especially its central district. The analysis is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Skåde Bakker and Fedet, two well-off neighborhoods. The overall purpose of the project is to study perceptions of space and the interaction of cultural, social, and spatial organizations, as seen from the point of view of people living in Skåde Bakker and Fedet. The focus is on the city dwellers’ representations of the central district of Århus with specific reference to the concept of transit space. When applied to various Århusian locations, this might highlight unforeseen meanings and paradoxes.