Abstract
This essay argues that the lack of integration among the academic disciplines is the main limiting factor in universities’ capacities to provide comprehensive solutions in civic life. Civic reconstruction, then, first and foremost requires a unifying theoretical framework for all academic disciplines. Not a future aspiration but already emerging among a sizable community of scholars and scientists across the world, the evolution/complexity paradigm is that unifying theoretical framework. Grounded in complex systems and evolutionary theory and philosophical pragmatism and embedded in surrounding communities, the evolution/complexity paradigm links academic disciplines to civic life, ensures that the fundamental concerns of civic life inform research, scholarship, and teaching, and maximizes the two-way benefits between the university and its surrounding community.
