This paper uses some recent ideas in biology as starting point to explore analogous concepts and tendencies in semiotics and biology, leading to reflections on interdisciplinarity itself within the framework of theories of chaos and complexity. It sees affinities between the biological concept of species and the semiotic category of discipline. It finds many suggestive parallels with semiotics from the recently emerging synthesis of evolution and development, built around the discovery of ‘homeobox’ genes which are present in many very different (...) lineages, opening up possibilities for ‘deep’ homologies between species, and providing a powerful model for semiotic homology. (shrink)

In January 2007, media outlets across Australia reported the local court decision _Police v Rose_. Mr Rose pleaded guilty and the presiding magistrate recorded no conviction. This event sparked a ‘butterfly effect’ that culminated in legislative amendments changing the make-up of the body responsible for oversight of judges in New South Wales. Key players failed to observe the doctrine of the separation of powers; while others called for its observation. None of this would have been foreseeable to Mr Rose or (...) the two transit officers on the night he was detained. This paper uses complexity theory and digital media analysis to locate flashpoints around which critical incidents occur; and what the unexpected flow-on effects reveal about the host society. (shrink)

This article uses an autobiography as an object of research, to both illustrate some principles of chaos theory in analytic practice, and give those ideas a personal and social context, thereby producing a unique but explanation-rich history of chaos theory and recent intellectual history of transdisciplinarity and social research in the West. The ideas from Chaos Theory it uses and illustrates include: three-body analysis (Poincaré); fractals (Mandelbrot); fuzzy logic (Zadeh); and the butterfly effect (Lorenz).