Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy

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How researchers see this paper

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Decision‐making under uncertainty in child protection: Creating a just and learning culture (2018, background): “…be both understood and measured, the role of variables we have not yet identified that contribute to the outcome, and the intervention of randomness, that is, variables that are completely outside the system but that can affect the system behaviour we are attempting to predict (Mitchell, 2009 p.88)”
Implications of Complexity for Research on Learning Progressions (2015, background): “These interactions lead to emergent behaviors, a general feature of complex systems, in which “more than a single cause or a few dominant causes are responsible for the behavior we wish to explain” (Mitchell, 2009, p. 41).”
Big Data, epistemology and causality: Knowledge in and knowledge out in EXPOsOMICS (2016, background): “See Mitchell (2009) for a summary of complexity in differ- ent contexts, including economy and policy-making.”
“Explain” in scientific discourse (2013, background): “Laws of nature are a paradigmatic case, but I also include contingent empirical generalizations (such as Mitchell’s ‘pragmatic laws’ (Mitchell 1997, 2009)), and necessary logical and mathematical principles (such as first order predicate logic) in this category.”