Exploring the Complexities of Human Action
Catherine Raeff
Published:
2020
Online ISBN:
9780190050467
Print ISBN:
9780190050436
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Exploring the Complexities of Human Action
Catherine Raeff
Front Matter
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Raeff Catherine
Pages
xi–xx
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Published:
July 2020
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Catherine, Raeff, 'Introduction: Some Complexities', Exploring the Complexities of Human Action (
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Human beings are complex creatures who live complex lives amidst complex circ*mstances in all corners of a complex world. To begin thinking about some human complexities, let us consider the word complex, and what it means with regard to human functioning. According to my trusty Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, complex refers to “a whole made up of complicated or interrelated parts,” as well as to “a complex substance . . . in which the constituents are more intimately associated than in a simple mixture.” These definitions seem quite apt for human functioning, which can be understood in terms of varied parts, from thinking, remembering, and knowing, to feeling and constructing self/identity, to interacting with others, to cultural and neurological processes, to development. These parts are just the tip of the iceberg, and they do not seem to be simply mixed together. But how can we get at and understand how they are more intimately associated? As an adjective, complex means that a phenomenon is “hard to separate, analyze, or solve.” Synonyms (again, from Webster’s) for complex include “complicated, intricate, involved, knotty” with the “shared meaning element: having confusingly interrelated parts.” Human affairs can be quite intricate and knotty. Certainly, human functioning is hard to analyze, and some of the problems that plague humanity are hard to solve. And aspects of human functioning are also utterly intertwined and hard to separate. Complexity in the sense of hard to analyze is evident in the dynamics, variability, individuality, and development of what people do as they go about their lives in all corners of the world. We are all human beings who act in some common ways, yet we also lead individual lives and act in culturally particular ways. It can sometimes be overwhelmingly confusing to make sense of it all.
Subject
Social Psychology
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
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