The Complexicon: Transforming Complexity into Understanding

John Warfield's "Complexicon" is a seven-level flow chart with captions for each box in the flow-chart. There are thirteen flow chart boxes in the drawing, intended to represent the field of Systems Science and its tools for dealing with complexity.  Each box in the Complexicon flow chart contains a set of Numbers. Each number represents a slide show lecture available to the viewer from  Warfield's "Complexicon Table" in the online file named: "Managing the Unmanageable PowerPoint Presentations.” 

The flow chart and the numbered slide shows when used together in a class room or lecture can  be used to provide a one page overview of Warfield's research on complexity. The Complexicon is workable as an outline for a course on Systems Science or even for an entire curriculum.

This seven-level flow chart (a PowerPoint presentation) was first published in 2003 as Figure 4 in an article titled Systems Movement Autobiographical Retrospectives: Discovering Systems Science. Three years later a simpler version of the Figure, with the title “Organizing the Complexicon: Transforming Complexity into Understanding” was published as figure A3-4 in Warfield's 2006 book An Introduction to Systems Science. There are two versions of the seven-level chart. One version (MTU1000 ComplexiconwithoutText), having only simple captions in each of the flow chart boxes, was printed in the 2006 book. Secondly there is this one-page figure (MTU1001ComplexiconwithText) which contains not only captions for each box in the flow-chart, but also inside each box there are several small-font Numbers which refer to relevant PowerPoint presentations from Warfield's collection of slides which can be used in class room or lecture to illustrate the topics in the flow chart. This more complex figure that John has called the "Complexicon," with a total of 53 small-font numbers added, was printed in the 2003 journal article mentioned above. Warfield created this seven level flow chart figure in 2003 with the idea that it be used in combination with his WordPerfect table titled Managing the Unmanageable PowerPoint Presentations. The two items, flow chart and table, if used together serve as a snapshot view of the entirety of Warfield's complexity research, and also as an excellent outline for an entire curriculum or lecture course on systems science. In September 2007 Warfield updated his PowerPoint Slide collection and donated digitized copies to Fenwick Library. Both versions of Warfield's Seven-Level Structure (MTU1000 and MTU1001) are in Warfield Special Collection, as PowerPoint slides on a compact disk in Box 96, Folder 4. On the compact disk, the figures have MTU numbers preceding their names. They are in files MTU1001ComplexiconWithText and MTU1000 ComplexiconWithoutText.

 

 

Additional Info

  • Category: Complexity, Display and Graphical Representations, Systems Science, Teaching Materials
  • Size: 1
  • Type: Sound recording
  • Description: 3x5 inch spiral-bound memo book
  • Series Number: Lecture No. 6
Read 120 times Last modified on Tuesday, 23 January 2018 04:07

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