Reductionism - the breaking down of complex phenomena into as many parts as possible to make them fully understandable - is everywhere. To some extent the whole enterprise of modern formal schooling is based on the promise of reductionism, as we break life down into subjects, concepts, facts, etc to be digestible by our young people. It has also enabled unbelievable scientific and technological progress. So who could possibly argue with this? And yet, reductionism has become like the hammer that sees everything as a nail. One of its problems is that is renders everything into a mechanistic functioning of parts and nothing more. Our inability to perceive, understand and value complex and systemic patterns and relationships is maybe something that we need to engage with in our education systems.
Dr. Roland Kupers is an advisor on Complexity, Resilience and Energy Transition, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, as well as an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is a global advisor on mitigating methane emissions from fossil fuels for UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory.
A theoretical physicist by training, Roland spent a decade each at AT&T and at Shell in various senior executive functions, including Group head for Sustainable Development and Vice President Global LNG. He has a long running interest in complexity theory and its impacts.
He has published widely, including in HBR, on Project Syndicate, A Climate Policy Revolution: What the Science of Complexity Reveals about Saving the Planet (Harvard UP 2020) and co-authored Complexity and the Art of Public Policy: Solving Society’s Problems from the Bottom Up (Princeton 2014), The Essence of scenarios (Amsterdam 2014), and Turbulence: A corporate framing of resilience (Amsterdam 2014).
In 2010 Roland was a co-author of a report commissioned by the German Government on a New Growth Path for Europe, applying a complexity lens to climate economics. He has been an advisor to the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Resources Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Roland is a Dutch national; his travels have made him fluent in five languages.
Useful Links:
Complexity Module for the IB Diploma: https://www.rolandkupers.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/An-IB-complexity-module-for-the-Diploma-Programme-24.10.17.pdf
UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, 2022 Report: https://www.rolandkupers.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IMEO2022.pdf