Much thanks to Orion Maxted and team at the Imaginary Institute, The Centre Leo Apostel, University of Brussels, for the chance to present on our book, The Atlas of Social Complexity.

 

CLICKHERE to read more about the Institute

CLICK HERE for the PDF of our PowerPoint.

 

Here is a quick summary of our session, which focused on the last chapter of the Atlas of Social Complexity, CH32 THE UNFINISHED SPACE:

 

The Imaginary Institute calls for a radical rethinking of how we create the conditions for new ideas – how we build spaces that invite the unknown, where knowledge is not a monument but an ever-expanding terrain. In this session, we turn to the final chapter of Brian Castellani and Lasse Gerrits' The Atlas of Social Complexity, The Unfinished Space, which emerged from 41 interviews with scientists, artists, and practitioners across politics, law, physics, sociology, and beyond. Their collective concern? How do we ensure that the study of social complexity remains disruptive, refusing ossification, always on the edge of new discoveries? The answers align with the ethos of the Imaginary Institute: unfinished spaces, where knowledge remains open-ended; the art of incompleteness, embracing uncertainty; unease and discomfort, resisting closure; rhizomes, networks without hierarchy; permeability and pores, keeping disciplines porous; the terrain not yet grasped, always pushing beyond; organizing emergence, cultivating generative collaborations; becoming transdisciplinary, transcending intellectual silos; and becoming educated, shaping how we learn complexity. Our goal of this seminar is to explore these themes with the group to share our various experiences around creating the conditions for the manifestation of urgent new ideas, to envision beyond the present and bring forth what does not yet exist.