Final thoughts
History has shown that paradigms shift very slowly.
There is tremendous inertia around established ways of
doing things and scientists are (correctly) cautious about
new ideas. The main thrust for embracing complexity
will come from graduate students who are increasingly
exposed to these ideas in their outside coursework and
who have time and energy to do the tremendous work to
learn a new paradigm. These graduate students will increasingly
work with teams from a broad array of disciplines
that are already knowledgeable about complexity.
Breakthrough articles will most likely not be published
in communication journals, but will find an initial audience
in areas that have already shifted to complexity.
This is because the ideas will be too different for reviewers
in our field to embrace. However, the interdisciplinary
moments created by working with scholars from
other fields, producing basic scientific discovery of the
processes underlying human communication, and publishing
those breakthroughs in broader-based journals will
draw more credibility to our small field. Perhaps Hoffman