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Prof Paul Cilliers of the Department of Philosophy
at Stellenbosch University has made history as the first academic in
the social sciences and humanities to be awarded the prestigious Harry
Oppenheimer Fellowship.
Candidates from all disciplines compete annually for this award, which is granted only to top scholars in South Africa.
The fellowship was initiated by the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust in 2001
and has a monetary value of up to US $125 000. Prof Cilliers intends to
use these funds to conduct further research in his field in
collaboration with colleagues in Europe.
Prof Cilliers, an internationally respected scholar, received the
fellowship for 2006 in recognition of his outstanding achievements in
developing a general understanding of complex systems. His book
Complexity and Postmodernism is widely regarded as one of the central
texts on complexity in the social sciences.
Through his work, Prof Cilliers showed the fundamental relationships
between a number of contemporary philosophical positions, specifically
post-structuralism, and insights gained in the past two decades from
mathematical and computational modelling of complexity. This allowed
him to make the findings of complexity science applicable to problems
in the social sciences and humanities and to develop a critical
position on the limits of different kinds of models of complex systems.
"The fact that the importance of philosophical reflection is recognised
in this way is extremely encouraging for all of us working towards a
more humane understanding of the world. It also recognises the
importance of a number of moral values that cannot be reduced to
instrumental thinking and mere calculation. Complexity thinking helps
us to develop more inclusive strategies, using insights from both the
natural and the human sciences, without dissolving the difference
between them,” says Prof Cilliers.
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