Synthetic Thinking in (sports) Science: the Self- Organization of the Scientific Language

We present a phenomenological model outline of self-organization in the scientific conceptual space with emphasis of the position of sport sciences. The obtained model has a rugged structure of basins of attraction and the learning dynamics is defined as a hopping of the learning system within the confined general basin of attraction. The paper examines how changes in the conceptual space change the structure and the dynamics of exploratory behaviour of learners. When concepts of higher explanatory generality are absent the system becomes fragmented in mutually weakly connected or disconnected basins of attraction which corresponds largely to the current state in science and humanities education. On the contrary, when such concepts are present, the height of the barriers significantly lowers and the system reconfigures itself into a landscape of connected basins of attraction offering a unification of apparently distant areas of knowledge. The general explanatory concepts play the role of ‘catalysts’ which lower the transition barriers between conceptual spaces of scientific fields. We further discuss how general explanatory concepts from the nonlinear dynamical systems theory and statistical physics can become tenets of a new educational program and teacher profile.