This popular quote from Hamlet might be recast for the field of communication as “There are more things in science
than are dreamt of in our philosophies”. This article will review several new and strange ideas from complexity science
about how the natural world is organized and how we can go about researching it. These strange ideas, (e.g.,
deterministic, but unpredictable systems) resonate with many communication phenomena that our field has traditionally
had difficulty studying. By reviewing these areas, we hope to add a new, compelling and useful way to think
about science that goes beyond the current dominant philosophy of science employed in communication. Though
the concepts reviewed here are difficult and often appear at odds with the dominant paradigm; they are not. Instead,
this approach will facilitate research on problems of communication process and interaction that the dominant paradigm
has struggled to study. Specifically, this article explores the question of process research in communication by
reviewing three major paradigms of science and then delving more deeply into the most recent: complexity science.
The article provides a broad overview of many of the major ideas in complexity science and how these ideas can be
used to study many of the most difficult questions in communication science. It concludes with suggestions going
forward for incorporating complexity science into communication.