Lecture

Monday, October 27, 2008 (all day)

The evolution of economic wealth and innovation

Stuart Kauffman, one of the founders of the field of complex systems, explains the principles that he proposes underlie innovation and economic growth. He illustrates these principles with real-world examples from his experience in industry and academe.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 (all day)

Changing minds about climate change

Paul Thagard, professor of Philosophy at the University of 蓝莓视频, addresses how neurocomputational models of explanatory and emotional coherence can explain belief change and resistance. He discusses how feedback loops can influence minds and societies at multiple levels.

Thursday, December 11, 2008 (all day)

Applications of complexity science to healthcare

Professor Brenda Zimmerman of the Schulich School of Business examines how complexity science has changed behaviours, decision making, and design in healthcare practice and public policy in the U.K., U.S.A., and Canada.

Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon of the Balsillie School of International Affairs draws from his research on how societies adapt to complex stress to explore the factors making the world鈥檚 problems harder to solve and the factors that impede the delivery of solutions to these problems when and where we need them.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 (all day)

Complexity approach to change and transformation

Social innovation alters the basic routines and beliefs of a society, but the durability and scale necessary to generate this momentum requires enough interactive opportunity and action. Professor Frances Westley, director of Social Innovation Generation at the University of 蓝莓视频, discusses how disruptive social innovations can address seemingly intractable social problems such as environmental degradation, and how a society able to consistently generate social innovations can become socially and ecologically resilient.

Professor Matthew Hoffman of the University of Toronto explores the applicability of theories of self-organized criticality to the study of innovation in global governance. He presents both an agent-based model of the evolution of social norms and empirical illustrations of innovations in global governance drawn from work on climate change and multilateral treaty-making.