Accessible books and videos for non-scientists on complexity and chaos:
Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell
Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick
Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life by Steven H. Strogatz
Nature’s Due: Healing our Fragmented Culture, by Brian Goodwin
The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems by
Some more scientific books (but still quite readable):
How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity by Brian Goodwin
At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity by Stuart Kauffman
Phase Transitions by Ricard Solé
The Origins of Order: Self-organisation and Selection in Evolution by Stuart Kauffman (Kauffman has written other books on complexity too if you google him)
Books on Play, Improvisation and Staying in the Flow:
Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown
The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living by Pat Kane
What the Body Wants: From the Creators of Interplay by Cynthia Winton Henry with Phil Porter
Having It All, Body, Mind, Heart & Spirit Together Again at Last by Phil Porter
Tao: The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts
Books on Intuition and Thinking
The Intuitive Heart: Accessing Inner Guidance To Raise Our Consciousness Baseline, booklet by Rollin McCraty and Doc Childre
Focusing: How to Gain Direct Access to the Body’s Knowledge by Eugene Gendlin
Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer
A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink
Intuition: Its Powers and Perils by David Myers
Goethean Observation, Phenomenology and the Art of Direct Perception
The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science by Henry Bortoft
The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
Goethe’s Science of Living Form: The Artistic Stages by Nigel Hoffmann
Thinking Like a Plant by Craig Holdredge
A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink (not strictly phenomenological, but has a lot to do with the art to direct perception in my opinion)
Books Applying these Disciplines to Business and the World
Holonomics: Business Where People and Planet Matter, by Simon Robinson and Maria Moraes Robinson
Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley
Engaging Emergence by Peggy Holman
Emergence by Steven Johnson
Borrowed Knowledge: Chaos Theory and the Challenge of Learning Across Disciplines by Stephen Kellert
Nature’s Due: Healing our Fragmented Culture, by Brian Goodwin
Theory U: The Social Technology of Presencing by C. Otto Scharmer
Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Orgnaisations and Society by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers
Links to external websites:
The Nature Institute
For courses and information on Goethean Science (a phenomenological discipline to help you see the wholeness of complex living systems).
www.natureinstitute.org
Complexity Explorer
A website with excellent online courses about complex systems science. This website is offered by the Sta Fe Institute in the United States, a leading research institution for the study of complex systems.
www.complexityexplorer.org
Online course: University of Michigan – Model Thinking
A great course taught by Scott Page of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. Scott takes us through the kinds of models that are used to help us understand complex dynamics and makes the case that people who think with models consistently outperform those who don’t.
www.coursera.org/learn/model-thinking
Online course: University of Groningen – Decision Making in a Complex and Uncertain World
This course outlines some of the theory of complex systems science and goes on to speak about applications of this in the world and how this knowledge can inform our decision making. This course does not always represent my own views on the topic, but I found it very good.
www.futurelearn.com/courses/complexity-and-uncertainty/
Podcast: Human Current
A podcast exploring how understanding complex systems can help us make sense of the world, especially our human systems.
http://www.human-current.com/
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