Knowledge evolution punctuates the previous equilibrium of society and requires us to develop adaptive solutions. One new rule is that as the discovery of new knowledge grows more difficult, more complex organizational and institutional arrangements have to be adopted. Knowledge growth is accelerating because not only are there more creative individuals and organizations developing radical innovations, but also innovative regions are facilitating both of these trends. The discussion of four social regions and the kinds of selves produced help explain partisan divides and integrate the social psychological literature. The growth in knowledge produces two kinds of social changes: In the nature of the social structure and the kinds of institutional problems that have to be solved. The discussion of changes in the stratification system, in the choice of organizational form, and in the spread of inter-organizational networks with tight connections (heterogeneous social capital) allows us to update Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. The new adaptive problems include growing inefficiencies in labor, product, and public markets and the failure of many existing programs. The proposed solutions are the creation of coordinated systemic networks in each of these areas, which integrates the comparative institutional literature, neoclassical economics, and political science.

This book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution. Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene, the present geological epoch shaped by humankind. Covering topics ranging from evolution of writing to the profound transformations wrought by modern science, The Evolution of Knowledge offers an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge and a bold, innovative approach to the history and philosophy of science.

This book addresses the gap in the existing literature on the governance of transdisciplinary research partnerships in transformational sustainability research by exploring the governance of knowledge co-production in coupled socio-ecological system dynamics. Multiple social and ecological crises raise new cross-sectoral research questions that call for an evolution in contemporary science in the direction of society-wide knowledge co-production on sustainability transformations of interdependent social and ecological systems. This book proposes a new approach to this based on enabling capacities for collaboration among scientific researchers and societal actors with diverse values, perspectives, and research interests. By drawing upon the thriving literature on the conditions for community and multistakeholder-driven collective action, the analysis sheds new light on the governance arrangements for organizing so-called transdisciplinary research partnerships for sustainability. This book identifies robust conditions that lead to effective collaborative research with societal actors and digs deeper into capacity building for partnership research through fostering social learning on sustainability values among research partners and organizing training and knowledge exchange at institutions of higher education. The book proposes solutions for addressing collective action challenges in transdisciplinary partnerships in an accessible and broadly interdisciplinary manner to a large audience of sustainability scholars and practitioners. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of sustainable development, social ecological transitions, and science policy, while also being a useful resource for engineers, QSE managers, and policymakers.

Annotation Researchers, business people and policy makers have recognized the importance of addressing technological, economic and social impacts in conjunction. For example, the rise and fall of the dot-com hype depended on the strength of the business model, on the technological capabilities avalable to firms and on the readiness of the society and economy, at large, to sustain a new breed of business activity. Social and Economic Transformation in the Digital Era addresses this challenge by assembling the latest thinking of leading researchers and policy makers in key subject areas of the information society and presents innovative business models, case studies, normative theories and social explanations.

This book is dualistic in its nature: it seeks to combine two approaches to the analysis and assessment of societal development prospects and to strengthen the capacity of each. The book describes the strategic development of regional economies as well as worldwide trends. The theory and methodology of strategy should extend much further and deeper than what is obvious to everyone. Strategy is aimed at the effective movement of the object of strategizing to the reality that does not exist and will only begin to form within a certain period of time, which is determined by long-term prospects. One approach has at its core managing the information and technological development of society—its social and economic transformation—through developing and implementing a particular strategy with a concept or doctrine of the planned guidelines as its first stage. Strategizing the information-technological transformation of society is proved to be most effective when it covers long-term development periods, which will lead to significant and even fundamental changes in the values and priorities of socio-economic development. Another approach described in this volume, which is implemented in conjunction with strategizing, is connected to the conceptual understanding of long-term development. The concept of noonomy represents a complex theory of transformation based on technological change and the resulting shifts in social organization. It demonstrates not only trends but also qualitative social shifts to which these transformations lead. In this way, the approach put forward in the theory of noonomy makes it possible to anticipate and evaluate distant horizons of social development and to grasp the transitions from one stage to the next. Employing the concept of noonomy in the processes of strategy is a prognostic phase, immediately preceding the processes of strategy and creating a reference point for them. This book represents the unique strategy concepts (V. L. Kvint) and noonomy (S. D. Bodrunov) have been brought together. The idea of uniting the authors’ views on the problems of civilizational development has a common scientific platform: the definition of long-term goals and the choice of economic and strategic tools to achieve them. This book summarizes the authors’ main approaches to the issues at hand to facilitate the applied problem set by the authors, which is to demonstrate the productivity of synthesizing these approaches to the study of societal development patterns for subsequent use in their theoretical and practical implementation.

A fundamentally new approach to the history of science and technology This book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution. Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene—this new geological epoch shaped by humankind. Renn reframes the history of science and technology within a much broader history of knowledge, analyzing key episodes such as the evolution of writing, the emergence of science in the ancient world, the Scientific Revolution of early modernity, the globalization of knowledge, industrialization, and the profound transformations wrought by modern science. He investigates the evolution of knowledge using an array of disciplines and methods, from cognitive science and experimental psychology to earth science and evolutionary biology. The result is an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge—and a bold new approach to the history and philosophy of science. Written by one of today's preeminent historians of science, The Evolution of Knowledge features discussions of historiographical themes, a glossary of key terms, and practical insights on global issues ranging from climate change to digital capitalism. This incisive book also serves as an invaluable introduction to the history of knowledge.

In this provocative and broad-ranging work, the authors argue that the ways in which knowledge - scientific, social and cultural - is produced are undergoing fundamental changes at the end of the twentieth century. They claim that these changes mark a distinct shift into a new mode of knowledge production which is replacing or reforming established institutions, disciplines, practices and policies. Identifying features of the new mode of knowledge production - reflexivity, transdisciplinarity, heterogeneity - the authors show how these features connect with the changing role of knowledge in social relations. While the knowledge produced by research and development in science and technology is accorded central concern, the

This book presents some of the most trenchant critical analyses of the widespread claims for the recent emergence of a knowledge economy and the attendant need for greater lifelong learning. The book contains two sections: first, general critiques of the limits of current notions of a knowledge economy and required adult learning, in terms of historical comparisons, socio-political construction and current empirical evidence; secondly, specific challenges to presumed relations between work requirements and learning through case studies in diverse current workplaces that document richer learning processes than knowledge economy advocates intimate. Many of the leading authors in the field are represented. There are no other books to date that both critically assess the limits of the notion of the knowledge economy and examine closely the relation of workplace restructuring to lifelong learning beyond the confines of formal higher education and related educational policies. This reader provides a distinctive overview for future studies of relations between work and learning in contemporary societies beyond caricatures of the knowledge economy. The book should be of interest to students following undergraduate or postgraduate courses in most social sciences and education, business and labour studies departments, as well as to policy makers and the general public concerned about economic change and lifelong learning issues. D. W. Livingstone is Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and Work and Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. David Guile is Professor of Education and Work at the Institute of Education, University of London.

This open access book provides a theoretical framework and case studies on decision science for regional sustainability by integrating the natural and social sciences. The cases discussed include solution-oriented transdisciplinary studies on the environment, disasters, health, governance and human cooperation. Based on these case studies and comprehensive reviews of relevant works, including lessons learned from past failures for predictable surprises and successes in adaptive co-management, the book provides the reader with new perspectives on how we can co-design collaborative projects with various conflicts of interest and how we can transform our society for a sustainable future. The book makes a valuable contribution to the global research initiative Future Earth, promoting transdisciplinary studies to bridge the gap between science and society in knowledge generation processes and supporting efforts to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Compared to other publications on transdisciplinary studies, this book is unique in that evolutionary biology is used as an integrator for various areas related to human decision-making, and approaches social changes as processes of adaptive learning and evolution. Given its scope, the book is highly recommended to all readers seeking an integrated overview of human decision-making in the context of social transformation.

Based on a comprehensive review of human and societal evolution the book develops an approach to conscious, self-guided evolution. In the course of the evolutionary journey of our species, there have been three seminal events. The first happened some seven million yeas ago, when our humanoid ancestors entered on the evolutionary scene. Their journey toward the second crucial event lasted over six million years when - as the greatest event of our evolutionary history - homo sapiens sapiens, started the revolutionary process of cultural evolution. Today, we have arrived at the threshold of the third major event, `the revolution of conscious evolution,' when it becomes our responsibility to enter into the evolutionary design space and guide the evolutionary journey of our species. The book tells the story of the first six million years of the journey in just enough detail to understand how evolution had worked in times when it was primarily biological, driven by natural selection. With the human revolution some fifty thousand years ago, with the emergence of self-reflective consciousness, the evolutionary process transformed from biological into cultural. From this point on, the book follows the journey with detailed attention, in order to learn how cultural evolution works. The book is organized in three parts. Part One commences with an exposition of a brief history of the evolutionary idea through time with a focus on a review of the science of general evolution and specifically social and societal evolution. Next, the book unfolds the `evolutionary story' of our species from the time when the first humanoids entered the evolutionary scene to our current era. Part Two develops a systems view of evolution, explores the ways and means of how evolution works, characterizes evolutionary consciousness and develops the idea of conscious evolution. Part Three builds upon the knowledge developed in the first two parts and sets forth the key conditions of conscious, self-guided evolution, elaborating the core condition, which is the acquisition of evolutionary competence through evolutionary learning. The focus of this part is on an approach to the design of evolutionary guidance systems that our families, neighborhoods, communities, organizations, social and societal systems can use to design the future they aspire to attain. The work is set aside from other statements in three important ways. It provides: (1) a comprehensive review of how evolution has worked with a focus on socio-cultural evolution, (2) an explanation of evolutionary consciousness and the conditions of engaging in conscious evolution, and (3) most significantly, it develops a detailed approach and a methodology to the design of evolutionary guidance systems.