Relational developmental systems paradigm

From this paper by Bjorgaard in the recently released Integral Review, which seems akin to my notion of hier(an)archical synplexity.

"While there has been continued refinement of methods and theories particular to stage traditions, there has been a paradigm shift within the broader field of developmental psychology that few stage models have grappled with [...] a paradigm shift termed the Relational Developmental Systems Paradigm. This paradigm is characterized only very briefly and partially here. It is predicated upon a process-relational philosophical perspective thought to transcend Cartesian dualism, atomism, and positivist reductionism. It rejects 'all splits between components of the ecology of human development (e.g., between nature- and nurture-based variables, between continuity and discontinuity, and between stability and instability)' (p. xviii.). It replaces these dichotomies with holistic syntheses using an integration of three relational moments of analysis: the identity of opposites, the opposites of identity, and the syntheses of wholes' (p. xviii), which can have a profound impact on the methodology and interpretation of research traditions – in part by processually integrating dichotomies that the field of developmental psychology has struggled with at large. It emphasizes that 'all levels of organization with the ecology of human development are integrated or fused' (p. xviii), that basic units of analysis are individual-context relations and co-actions of these, and that organisms are 'inherently active, self-creating, self-organizing, and self-regulating nonlinear complex adaptive systems,' which develop through embodied activities (p. xviii). Development is inherently context-sensitive, plastic, subject-specific, and stochastic (probabilistic or random) (p. 3). [...] Furthermore, human development – the subject of developmental science – is now thought to be predominantly nonergodic. Ergodicity describes mathematical and statistical qualities of systems that must apply for standard statistical analyses to be accurate: 'In developmental research, almost all functions of natural development and intervention processes are nonergodic. Therefore, standard statistical analysis of aggregate-level data is bound to result in descriptions of developmental structures that fail to describe the individual'" (89- 91).