Structural Integrity, Flexibility, and Timing: Introduction to a Special Issue on Resilience.

Abstract

This introduction to a special issue of Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology and Life Sciences on the topic of resilience discusses the contributing articles in terms of their flexibility in methods, models, scale, and contexts combined with their integrity in shared theoretical understanding and generative knowledge. The ubiquity of resilience is discussed, a feature of potentially any living or non-living system and substance. This breadth calls for a flexible set of models and methods, along with the quest for integrative theory to make resilience science more resilient. Since resilience involves the ability of a substance or system to persist, to repair or recover, and to evolve, any common theory would consider structural integrity (the ability to hold together), flexibility (the ability to adjust and return), time and timing. Nonlinear dynamical systems theory is proposed as the only scientific perspective capable of building this sort of common knowledge of a ubiquitous process involving these specific features. The synopsis of each article's contribution to the issue includes an analysis of the flexibility the article adds in terms of models, methods, scale, and applied context, along with the theoretical integrity produced with respect to these common features of resilient processes: flexibility, integrity, time, and timing.