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Concepts equip the mind with thought, provide our theories with ideas, and assign variables for testing our hypotheses. Much of contemporary research deals with narrowly circumscribed concepts, termed simple concepts herein, which are the grist for much empirical inquiry in the field. In contrast to simple concepts, which exhibit a kind of unity, complex concepts are structures of simple concepts, and in certain instances unveil meaning going beyond simple concepts or their aggregation. When expressed in hylomorphic structures, complex concepts achieve unique ontological status and serve particular explanatory capabilities. We develop the philosophical foundation for hylomorphic structures and show how they are rooted in dispositions, dispositional causality, and various mind–body trade-offs. Examples are provided for this emerging perspective on “Big concepts” or “Big Ideas.”

My contribution deals with the link between Wagner’s entangled political economy and Carl Menger’s economic thought. It is mainly based on what Wagner himself has called “neo-Mengerianism”: a new approach that considers economics as a discipline focused on the network-based interrelations among phenomena (based on human decisions) and political economy as embedded in a social framework no longer neutral from a political point of view.

Maturana and Varela (1980, p. 78f) provided the following definition of autopoiesis: “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.” This definition shows that for Maturana and Varela, autopoietic systems are systems that define, maintain, and reproduce themselves. The notion of machine that they employ in the definition might seem a bit misleading because we tend to think of machines as mechanistic and nonliving, but Maturana and Varela (e.g., 1987) in later publications have preferred to speak of autopoietic organizations.

The work approaches the concept of family from a legal perspective, starting from the idea of interest, which leads to the deployment of subjectivity and concrete ethical development, thus allowing to visualize the alluded concept. Once the particularities of the family interest are established, filiation is constituted, from the point of view of civil society, in a specific group that faces diversity, having as a reference the principle of force, moral elements, or the same ethic. According to the above, in the family, the political formation of the individual is presented, its right and recognition with which an ethical relationship is established. However, the cultural ties thus created are the foundation of any family business, understood as the life project, to such a degree that everyone fulfills a function within the group and seeks to contribute creatively to the solution of economic, social, and political problems. It is concluded that the family can be an organic space of motivation that develops a whole experience, liberates experimentation, seeks empowerment, improves participation and involvement, allows collaborative work, and encourages creativity.

Roger Koppl (2009, p. 1) argues that “Austrian economics is a school of thought within the broader complexity movement in economics.” Is he correct? Although there are many who have argued for some overlapping between the two, I shall argue that this is probably an overly strong statement. The main reason is that there are substantial elements and strands within Austrian economics that do not fit in with any of the multiple varieties of complexity theory, even though there are some that clearly do.

“It is now becoming widely recognised that many of the central unresolved problems in economics turn on questions of knowledge” (Loasby, 1986, p. 41). Nearly twenty years after that was written, it may be appropriate to take a (necessarily selective) look at ideas about human knowledge and to suggest some implications for the practice of economists. The ideas with which we shall begin long predate the observation that I have just recalled; and the delay in recognising their implications indicates how the growth of knowledge is dependent on the formation of appropriate linkages – which of course are not recognised as appropriate until they have been formed. Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall and Friedrich Hayek were all confronted with the uncertain basis of knowledge before they began their study of economics; and what their responses have in common is not only a theoretical focus on the process by which people develop what we call “knowledge” but also a reliance on similar kinds of process, which result in the formation of connections within particular domains. Each author recognises the impossibility of demonstrating that any such process can deliver proven truth; instead each envisages sequences of trial and error within particular contexts, leading to the preservation of what seems to work – until it no longer does, when a new sequence of trial and error begins. In other words, they all offer evolutionary theories, Marshall and Hayek explicitly so, while Smith, directly and indirectly, had a major influence on the development of Darwin’s ideas.