Narrating Complexity

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Part I

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-2

      PDF

   2. Introduction and Overview: Who, What, Why

      • Richard Walsh, Susan Stepney

      Pages 3-9

   3. Narrative Theory for Complexity Scientists

      • Richard Walsh

      Pages 11-25

   4. Complex Systems for Narrative Theorists

      • Susan Stepney

      Pages 27-36

3. Part II

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 37-38

      PDF

   2. When Robots Tell Each Other Stories: The Emergence of Artificial Fiction

      • Alan F. T. Winfield

      Pages 39-47

   3. Sense and Wonder: Complexity and the Limits of Narrative Understanding

      • Richard Walsh

      Pages 49-60

   4. Discussion and Comment (Sense and Wonder)

      • Adam Lively, Richard Walsh

      Pages 61-63

   5. A Simple Story of a Complex Mind?

      • Merja Polvinen

      Pages 65-79

   6. Discussion and Comment (A Simple Story of a Complex Mind?)

      • Marco Bernini, Susan Stepney, Merja Polvinen

      Pages 81-83

   7. Closure, Observation and Coupling: On Narrative and Autopoiesis

      • Adam Lively

      Pages 85-100

   8. Looking at Narrative as a Complex System: The Proteus Principle

      • Federico Pianzola

      Pages 101-122

   9. Narrative Experiences of History and Complex Systems

      • Romana Turina

      Pages 123-141

   10. Three-Way Dialogue (Closure, Proteus, History)

       • Adam Lively, Federico Pianzola, Romana Turina

       Pages 143-148

   11. (Gardening) Gardening: A Relational Framework for Complex Thinking About Complex Systems

       • Leo Caves, Ana Teixeira de Melo

       Pages 149-196

   12. Discussion and Comment (Gardening Gardening)

       • Leo Caves, Ana Teixeira de Melo, Richard Walsh

       Pages 197-199

   13. The Software Garden

       • Julian F. Miller

       Pages 201-212

   14. Emergent Causality in Complex Films and Complex Systems

       • Maria Poulaki

       Pages 213-231

   15. Narrative and Cognitive Modelling: Insights from Beckett Exploring Mind’s Complexity

       • Marco Bernini

       Pages 233-251Open Access

This book stages a dialogue between international researchers from the broad fields of complexity science and narrative studies. It presents an edited collection of chapters on aspects of how narrative theory from the humanities may be exploited to understand, explain, describe, and communicate aspects of complex systems, such as their emergent properties, feedbacks, and downwards causation; and how ideas from complexity science can inform narrative theory, and help explain, understand, and construct new, more complex models of narrative as a cognitive faculty and as a pervasive cultural form in new and old media.

The book is suitable for academics, practitioners, and professionals, and postgraduates in complex systems, narrative theory, literary and film studies, new media and game studies, and science communication.

• Complex systems
• Computer simulation
• Digital media
• Ecology
• Film studies
• Narrative
• Robotics
• Science communication

• Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, York, UK

  Richard Walsh

• Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

  Susan Stepney

Richard Walsh is a member of the Dept. of English and Related Literature in the University of York. He teaches modules in American literature and in theories of story, covering fiction and non-fiction, the earliest years of cinema, and graphic novels, as well as narratives in digital and interactive media. Susan Stepney is a professor of Computer Science in the University of York. Her main area of interest is non-standard computation, in particular bioinspired algorithms, complex adaptive systems, emergent properties, and nanite assemblers.

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