FUNDAMENTALS OF RELATIONAL COMPLEXITY THEORY

Abstract

“Relational Complexity” is emerging as a new science that can explain the origin of both the living and non-living world. Its basic tenants are quite simple, but controversial due to prior limits on scientific thinking, particularly the mechanistic world view. In this new view, both living systems and mechanisms emerge as special cases of the general, relational complexity. The basic relationship is between existent and potential aspects of nature, which is an information relation crossing the subject-object boundary. The theory is compatible with both Western and Eastern thought and offers a means to integrate these quintessentially opposite world views. It can also provide a solid theoretical foundation for structure-function epistemology in ecology that is not predicated on, or thus limited by, mechanistic assumptions.