This article traces the development of complexity research which underwent its formative development in the physical sciences from the start of the 20th century, and later exerted an effect on the social sciences as well. Over the last 50 years, in fact, the complexity paradigm has generated a quiet revolution in both the physical and social sciences. The appeal of the approach is that it liberates philosophy and social science from the prison house of a constraining scientific past based on linear determinism, reductionism, and methodological individualism. In addition, it presents a view of science that supports the social sciences claims that history and culture are important. One consequence of these developments is that it permits a reformulation the traditional dilemmas around the individual and the collective, around nature and nurture, around the one and the many. In this paper my purpose is to elaborate the normative possibilities of complexity theory for learning theory and teacher education.