Fundamental Principles of Complex Dynamic Systems as Windows Into Interrogating Racism and Its Systems

• In Event: Dismantling Racial Injustice: Contributions of the Science of Learning and Development

Abstract

Complex and dynamic systems pertinent to human learning and development are marked by the concepts of embodiment (the human being as a physical, psychological, and sociocultural entity), holism (all of the facets of embodiment are integrated), mutually-influential relations (all variables associated with human learning and development are reciprocally related; and individuals influence the context that is influencing them, as represented by individual-context relations), and specificity (no two people have the same developmental history of individual- context relations across their lives). As a consequence of these features of the dynamic, open, and living system that is a human, complex human systems are self- organizing, possess agency, and are marked by relative plasticity (by the potential
for meaningful change) across the life span. Therefore, reductionist claims that genes are the prime mover of human development, and that some racial groups, ethnicities, or genders have genes that make them less adaptive, capable, or even (in the most pernicious instances of genetic reductionism) human than others, are rejected as counterfactual by concepts and associated empirical evidence associated with complex and dynamic human systems.

Authors

• Richard Lerner, Tufts University

• Ezekiel J. Dixon-Roman, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Odis Johnson, Johns Hopkins University