RUDN Journal of Philosophy (Mar 2012)
Paradigmatical Heuristics of Complexity in Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
The article deals with those possibilities and perspectives which are opened by complexity in solving problems of human cultures and society. Complexity is metaphorically defined as the spirit of contemporaneity. Historically it is opposed to simplicity characteristic of modernity. As a methodological approach complexity legitimizes combining completely different things, small and large in particular. It plunges any subject-matter into practically unlimited contextuality. Complexity reveals the measure of differences and uncertainty in any reality analyzed. It is a kind of soft reductionism.