The Unified Theory of Meaning Emergence Mike Taylor RN, MHA, CDE Author Unaffiliated Nursing Theorist
[email protected] Member of the Board – Plexus Institute Specialist in Complexity and Health Lead designer – The Commons Project, a web based climate change intervention My nursing theory book, “Nursing, Complexity and the Science of Compassion”, is currently under consideration by Springer Publishing 1 Introduction Nursing science and theory is unique among the scientific disciplines with its emphasis on the human-environment relationship since the time of Florence Nightingale. An excellent review article in the Jan-Mar 2019 issue of Advances in Nursing Science, explores the range of nursing thought and theory from metaparadigms and grand theories to middle range theories and identifies a common theme. A Unitary Transformative Person-Environment-Health process is both the knowledge and the art of nursing. This type of conceptual framework is both compatible with and informed by complexity science and this theory restates the Human-Environment in a complexity science framework. This theory makes a two-fold contribution to the science of nursing and health, the first is in the consolidation and restatement of already successful applications of complexity theory to demonstrate commonalities in adaptive principles in all systems through a unified definition of process. Having a unified theoretical platform allows the application of the common process to extend current understanding and potentially open whole new areas for exploration and intervention. Secondly, the theory makes a significant contribution in tying together the mathematical and conceptual frameworks of complexity when most of the literature on complexity in health separate them (Krakauer, J., 2017).