Sandra Mitchell
Unsimple Truths
Science, Complexity, and Policy

The world is complex, but acknowledging its complexity requires an
appreciation for the many roles context plays in shaping natural
phenomena. In Unsimple Truths, Sandra Mitchell argues that the
long-standing scientific and philosophical deference to reductive
explanations founded on simple universal laws, linear causal models, and
predict-and-act strategies fails to accommodate the kinds of knowledge
that many contemporary sciences are providing about the world. She
advocates, instead, for a new understanding that represents the rich,
variegated, interdependent fabric of many levels and kinds of
explanation that are integrated with one another to ground effective
prediction and action.

Mitchell draws from diverse fields including psychiatry, social insect
biology, and studies of climate change to defend “integrative
pluralism”—a theory of scientific practices that makes sense of how many
natural and social sciences represent the multi-level, multi-component,
dynamic structures they study. She explains how we must, in light of the
now-acknowledged complexity and contingency of biological and social
systems, revise how we conceptualize the world, how we investigate the
world, and how we act in the world. Ultimately Unsimple Truths argues
that the very idea of what should count as legitimate science itself
should change.

For more information, see:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=8205034

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