Explore Skills in Analyzing Complexity
In this course, Explore Skills in Analyzing Complexity we will be looking at complexity in the broadest sense and how it relates to us. This course will help you understand the complete breakdown of complexity.
About this Course
The first course of the specialization Explore Skills in Analyzing Complexity will teach you what unifying patterns lie at the core of all complex problems. It advances your knowledge of your own field by teaching you to look at it in new ways.
ANALYZING COMPLEXITY is constructed in the following way:
- Week I. “What is Complexity?” – What is at the core of all complex problems
- Week II. “Complex Physical Systems” – What complex problems all have in common in the inanimate world
- Week III. “Complex Adaptive Systems” – What complex problems all have in common in nature
- Week IV. “Complex Cultural Systems” – What complex problems all have in common in human society
- Week V. “Complexity, Fragility, and Breakdown” – Why complex problems arise
- Week VI. “Complexity in the Anthropocene” – What complex problems face us today
Syllabus
WEEK 1
2 hours to complete
What is complexity?
Welcome to the first course of our specialization Explore Skills in Analyzing Complexity! From there we will zoom in to different aspects of this universal and all-encompassing concept.
5 videos (Total 32 min), 8 readings, 2 quizzes
WEEK 2
2 hours to complete
Complex Physical Systems
In this module, Explore Skills in Analyzing Complexity we’ll look at how complexity operates in the inanimate universe, the corresponding links between physics, chemistry, and geology, and how they reflect the ground rules of all forms of complexity.
5 videos (Total 32 min), 9 readings, 2 quizzes
WEEK 3
2 hours to complete
Complex Adaptive Systems
In this module, Explore Skills in Analyzing Complexity we’ll explore the ratcheting up of complexity inside adaptive systems, and the impact adaptation has on the rules of the game for constantly evolving complex systems.
6 videos (Total 37 min), 11 readings, 2 quizzes
WEEK 4
2 hours to complete
Complex Cultural Systems
In this module, we’ll look at an even more powerful adaptive system – culture. We’ll survey what is at the root of this new form of complexity and how this impacts our thinking about how human society, the most complex system of which we are aware, functions, and evolves.
6 videos (Total 41 min), 11 readings, 2 quizzes
WEEK 5
2 hours to complete
Explore Skills in Analyzing Complexity: Complexity, Fragility, and Breakdown
In this module, we’ll look at the decline of complexity. So far we’ve focused on how complex systems sustain or increase themselves. In order to truly understand every angle of all complex systems – physical, biological, and cultural – we need to understand how and when they collapse, and what all those breakdowns have in common.
7 videos (Total 50 min), 13 readings, 2 quizzes
WEEK 6
3 hours to complete
Complexity in the Anthropocene
Now that we’ve explored the different kinds of complex systems and have some idea of the risks and dangers involved, this module will look at how these concerns impact us in the present Anthropocene epoch, where humanity faces many threats of decline and collapse amid the most complex system that we know of in the visible universe.
6 videos (Total 40 min), 9 readings, 3 quizzes
Originally posted 2022-03-02 00:39:45.
