Galanter's complexist manifesto

I recently came across an article by the generative artist, writer and academic Philip Galanter: an admittedly manifesto-like piece in which he proposes what he calls "Complexism - a new science-friendly paradigm for the arts and humanities".

Galanter discusses modernism and postmodernism in the context of complexity theory from science. He sees post-modernism as offering a corrective to some of the unfortunate aspects of modernism, but now post-modernism has fallen has fallen victim to its own problems. Galanter's Complexism is intended to reconcile the two via the theory and practice of complex systems, and he presents the following table:

Modernism	Postmodernism	Complexism
Progress	Circulation	Emergence and Co-evolution
Fixed	Random	Chaotic
The Author	The Text	The Generative Process
Authority	Contention	Feedback
Truth	No Truth	Incomplete truth known to be not fully provable
Pro Formalism	Anti Formalism	Form as public process not privilege
Hierarchy	Collapse	Connectionist networks

There is a lot to be unpacked here. Galanter expands on the table in the 20 pages of the article, which is online at http://philipgalanter.com/downloads/complexism_chapter.pdf. He has also started a blog in which he intends to further develop these ideas, at http://www.philipgalanter.com/complexism/index.html.

I am certainly pleased to see work like this proceeding beyond the now sterile debate of modernism versus postmodernism, and especially work that deals seriously with some of the extraordinary advances in scientific thinking of the last half-century or more.