A brilliant transdisciplinary study, Terranovas book invites us to explore the history of modernism in relation to systems thinking. Charting mutations of ideas in aesthetics, science, and politics, it shows how notions of complexity developed before the digital age, at the confluence of art and biology. * Cristina Albu, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, Department of Art and Art History, University of Missouri, USA * Invaluably tracing the origins of philosophical organicism in interwoven communities of art, science, design, and socialist politics in the early 20th century, Terranova excavates a germinal educational model for our own ecologically fragile moment. * Christine Filippone, Professor of Art History, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, USA * A historical account that is also forward-looking, this book is a timely reintroduction to and redeployment of a modernist worldview that favors progressive-minded complexity over the refinements of reductionism. * Dawna Schuld, Associate Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art History, Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts, Texas A&M University, USA *
