Developing an Interdisciplinary Vocabulary of Complexity and Plasticity Using a Case-Study of Plant-Based Diet Adoption

Abstract

Complexity and plasticity are increasingly popular concepts used to make sense of dynamics in the physical and social worlds. These concepts are relevant to a broad spectrum of disciplines, even disciplines where they are not explicitly used. In this article, we further conceptual understanding of plasticity and complexity from different disciplinary perspectives. We also consider how these concepts relate to one another. To do so, we first review how plasticity and complexity manifest at different scales and across our four disciplines: neuroscience, physics, cultural theory and public health. Next, we activate our interdisciplinary perspectives to understand how complexity and plasticity help us understand plant-based diet adoption, a case study that resonates with our different disciplines. We explore plasticity at different scales (neural, individual, network, societal) and how they may cascade. We then synthesise these perspectives to understand how plasticity and complexity may help us understand social change. Most of our disciplinary and interdisciplinary interrogations find that plasticity is an important property of complex systems. Ultimately, this article further contributes to developing interdisciplinary vocabularies of both plasticity and complexity and aims to offer conceptual tools for understanding complex social-physical phenomena.