President Donald Trump “oversees” Operation Epic Fury at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida. March 1, 2026.
Image credit: White House photo by Daniel Torok
COMPLEX — ADAPTIVE — NO CENTRAL CONTROL
In our introduction to the Human Sciences as an Area of Knowledge, we asked “What could be more complex and daunting than our attempts to study human existence and behavior?” We acknowledged that the human sciences are hypercomplex and they—rather than physics and chemistry— could be referred to as “the hard sciences.”
The Human Sciences encompass Psychology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Economics, Global Politics, Geography, and Environmental Systems and Societies. All of these IB subject domains have a distinct flavor, but there is considerable overlap. A family resemblance is that they all necessitate a diligent, systems thinking approach.
Systems thinking is also essential for understanding the interconnectedness, and inherent messiness, of global events as they play out in front of us. Time and scale are critical factors. Human endeavor is fraught with unintended consequences—so often only revealed with the hindsight of historical perspectives.
“So, what is a system? A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.”
Rotifer feeding. Each species has a fixed number of about a thousand cells. 25% are nerve cells!
MENU OF CLASS ACTIVITIES
Hypercomplex and interconnected
Consilience of Knowledge
Demographic time bomb—a case study
SYSTEMS THINKING RESOURCES FOR TOK TEACHERS
Breaking the 4th wall
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Santa Fe
GENTLY ANTICIPATING FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN TOK
Breaking the 4th wall