Putting a New Spin on Groups: The Science of Chaos, Second Edition continues to challenge orthodoxy and static ideas about small group dynamics. A primary goal is to offer an alternative model of group development that addresses three factors:
*The model integrates old ideas from previous models of group development with new concepts from chaos theory and the work of Arthur Young.
*The book emphasizes the importance of conflict in group development and recognizes that group growth--while progressive--is neither linear or unidimensional.
*Particular attention is focused on how groups change, evolve, and mature.
In addition, this book highlights certain group phenomena that have been given only cursory attention in many group textbooks, including women in authority, group metaphors, regressive groups, and the transpersonal potential of small groups.
This book has been revised in response to feedback from reviewers and colleagues and includes new ideas, applications of chaos theory in social sciences, and thinking about group behavior. It is an intellectually challenging read with just the right amount of world application.
Biography
McClure, Bud A.
"Bud McClure has written a very curious book. In some ways, what he produced is a compendium-in-brief or a wide world of information. He writes of chaos theory, including a run past 'a three-stage model of science.' He recounts theories of physics and arrives at 'the mathematics of dynamics which forms one of the cornerstones of chaos and self-organizational theories.' He takes us through Dynamics, principally nonlinear dynamics, and attractors, and strange attractors; chaos terminology, including dissipative structures, the Butterfly effect, fractals, bifurcation, Slime Mold, Phase-Locking or Entrainment, and the Beluzov-Zhabotinski Reaction. Along the way, we pass at least one theory of evolution (Arthur Young's), and toruses, and Koch's snowflake. And that's only the first 15 pages! Make no mistake, this is fascinating stuff."
—Dr. Sue Henry
Professor Emerita, University of Denver
