Transforming socio-economics with a new epistemology

This paper argues that a new scientific framework (Science II) has been slowly emerging, rivaling the Descartes–Newtonian perspective (Science I) dominant for several hundred years. The Science II framework places a great deal of emphasis on evolution, dynamism, chance and/or pattern recognition. As both cause and effect of the new perspective, scholars in the physical, biological and social sciences are increasingly addressing common problems, borrowing insights from and interacting with each other. The epistemology of Science II has enormous potential for understanding problems of fundamental interest to socioeconomists. The paper focuses on five useful concepts in the framework of Science II: self-organizing processes, complex networks, power-law distributions, the general binding problem and multi-level analysis.