Alicia Juarrero - the philosopher who will change how you think about complexity
Alicia Juarrero is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Prince George’s Community College (Maryland) and the author of Dynamics in Action, a text that many consider to have laid the foundation for how we think about complexity in our society. So Alicia is a philosopher for this moment in human history.
Human beings are complex. The ways we interact are complex. Our institutions, our world are complex. So we need to understand complexity as the way to make sense of our world. One of the people who has done the most clear thinking on complexity and the world in complexity is Alicia Juarrero, Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Prince George’s Community College (MD).
Alicia is the author of Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System, one of the foundational texts exploring philosophical implications of complexity and chaos theories and ways they influence how we think about and design the world.
She has been the source of language for scientists, political leaders, technologists, businesspeople, citizens to use complexity to think more clearly about the world we live in and acting in it.
Alicia has not only laid the foundation for thinking about complexity, but shown us how it can be used for impact as the founder and president of VectorAnalytica, a technology company that specializes in large scale scientific data capture and real time analysis tools, a remarkable tool that brings to bear information communication technology, data systems, and data harmonization on problems like epidemiology.
She's a rare mix of theoretical and applied knowledge.
Her work has been widely recognized, cited, and admired. In 1992 Dr. Juarrero was appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the Advisory Board of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) where, from 1992-2000 she served as NEH’s Chair of Council Committee on State Programs.
Dr. Juarrero earned her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D degrees from the University of Miami (FL).
Complexity has been one of the most important concepts to my own making sense of the world and few people have been more affecting teachers of it for me than Alicia.