Making Sense of Complexity: Bringing Complex Concepts down to Earth

In this talk, I present my pragmatic-historical framework for clarifying the meanings of abstract scientific concepts. Then, I show how I apply this framework to the history of the behavioral sciences while paying special attention to scientific episodes relevant to complex systems science. More speculatively, I discuss my current attempts to adapt this methodology to solve problems relevant to the Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement and Indigenous biobanking. 

Kelle Dhein is a historian and philosopher of science, an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School of Complex Adaptive Systems, a enrolled member of the Diné tribe, and a consulting bioethicist for the Native Biodata Consortium.