COMPLEMENTARY PAIRS
CP STANDS FOR COMPLEMENTARY PAIRS, ALSO CALLED ‘SQUIGGLES’ - (WHAT THE SQUIGGLE SENSE SENSES)
If you see things like yin and yang, organism and environment, nature and nurture, mind and body, friend and enemy, living and dying, creation and annihilation as mutually related and inextricably connected, you are using your squiggle sense. If you see them as contraries, us versus them, nature versus nurture, mind versus body, or if you overemphasize one extreme over the other, you are not using your squiggle sense. Integration~segregation, local~global, individual~collective, part~whole, competition~cooperation, creation~annihilation, convergence~divergence, dwell~escape, states~tendencies, symmetry~dynamics, form~function and so forth are some of the complementary pairs that constitute the base set of complementary pairs of coordination dynamics. Note the squiggle is not a bridge: it doesn’t stand for glue holding complementary aspects together or mediating between them. It is a way to write and think about complementary aspects in a way that emphasizes their relational and dynamic character. The squiggle exposes a basic truth: both complementary aspects and their dynamics are required for an exhaustive account of phenomena.
TCN ENDORSEMENTS
"I have to share that this is maybe my favourite book ever! ;-)
I put off reading it because I was a bit worried about whether it would have mathematical arguments beyond my capacity, but you’ve written in such an easy and engaging way that it’s like having a conversation with you in my living-room. Thanks so much for this book - all sorts of thoughts are spinning around in my brain as a result!"
—Dr. Karen Shue
"The Complementary Nature is a genuinely fascinating, provocative, and unique book. It rises to the challenge of describing how either/or thinking obscures the in-between dynamic realities that constitute life itself and in turn how these realities rest on complementary rather than oppositional pairs.
In the process, it breaks new ground and opens fresh terrain for future research by illuminating ways in which the science of coordination dynamics—from the study of brains to the study of behavior—offers new paths for understanding the nature of human nature."
—Dr. Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, author of The Primacy of Movement
"To date, Bohr's generalized complementarity principle has been no more than an epistemological stance with little to say to the scientist expressing a normal interest in predicting natural phenomena. In their book, Kelso and Engstrøm show how the principle can advance scientific prediction and, in turn, how science—especially the science of coordination—can develop the principle. Scientists and philosophers alike will find much to ponder and debate in the pages of this book, a book that I'm sure Niels Bohr would have found deeply satisfying."
—M. T. Turvey, Trustees' Distinguished Professor, University of Connecticut, and Senior Research Scientist, Haskins Laboratories
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