Reading this chapter, I was able to put all the readings about emergence, complexity, evolutionary and adaptive discourses. I had been struggling for some clarity for a while.
A few months ago I wrote this article trying to lay out for myself the variety of different discourse. I had been criticised by peers when trying to converse about complexity and design, my peers finding it difficult to find consistency in the dialogue. I don't think it was necessarily my fault... it's just that the discourse suffers from a lack of criticality generally when it comes to what certain terms mean. evolution and emergence both have a variety of connotations and semiotic 'baggage' which accompanies them. THis makes critical discourse very difficult to engage in.
This article by Bachman allocates these discourses into four categories: wicked, messy, ordered and natural. ALthough this doesn't clear the discourse, it allows an alternative way of looking at the variety of materials which regard complexity and the built environment.
...Although I am sure that Christopher Alexander would take offence with being categorised as messy: it does make the dialogues of complexity a little easier to navigate.
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