Genealogies of Scientific Construal: 9 Complexity and Chaos: Nonlinear Worlds

Focus: Emergent systems, feedback loops, and the relational structuring of potential.

Throughline: Possibility is shaped by nonlinear interactions; outcomes arise from relational dynamics rather than deterministic law alone.

The late 20th century introduced a profound reconstrual of scientific possibility through complexity theory and chaos science. Systems—ecological, social, and physical—were recognised as nonlinear, relationally coupled, and sensitive to initial conditions. Potential is no longer strictly predictable, nor fully determined by overarching laws; it emerges through interactions, feedback loops, and relational constraints.

In these frameworks, small perturbations can generate disproportionately large outcomes, highlighting the contingency and generativity of relational fields. Emergent structures—patterns, attractors, and dynamic equilibria—illustrate that the possible is not reducible to simple deterministic laws, but arises from the networked relations within the system itself. Observation, modelling, and conceptual framing interact with the system, making construal an active, co-determining process.

Modulatory voices:

• Lorenz: sensitivity to initial conditions; chaos as a relational phenomenon.

• Prigogine: dissipative structures and emergent order.

• Holland: complex adaptive systems as fields of relational possibility.

Complexity and chaos highlight a crucial ontological shift: possibility is contingent, emergent, and relationally constrained. The horizon of potential is co-determined by the system’s internal dynamics and its external interactions, demonstrating that understanding, predicting, or guiding outcomes requires attention to relational patterns rather than isolated elements. Construal here is participatory, dynamic, and historically situated: the field of possibility itself is a living, evolving network.