Last update:
08-Sep-2020

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, there has been a growing opposition to reductionism, driven by individual disciplines which however have given solutions to many practical problems of our times. Opposition grew along with a quest for unity of culture and the adoption of a complexity-based method. The movement was nurtured by Morin, Nicolescu and de Freitas who, in 1994, wrote and signed the Charter of transdisciplinarity. Complexity is therefore seen as an indispensable tool for the effective, harmonious, appropriate, timely and long lasting advancement of science. The old debate about basic and practical science has lost some of its appeal. Nephrology, born in the 1950s, is now charged with meeting the needs of more than 10% of the world population. It holds all the characteristics of a discipline born in the fertile world of complexity and continuously expanding into the boundaries of other disciplines. It is characterised by a unique exponential growth of generated information and by the capability of matching the challenges of big data algorithms and omics platforms. Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) –a complex disease– is now amenable to cure.

Key words: CKD, Complexity, DKD, Nephrology, Omic techniques, Transdisciplinarity.