Book excerpt: This book asks: What are the most suitable “mapping strategies” for detecting patterns of global dynamics? It adopts a spatial perspective when trying to understand “Global Dynamics” – and sets out to revolutionise the concept of space as such. Spatial views – on levels of increasing abstraction, reflection and self-organisation – are developed along eight case studies including air emissions, environmental radioactivity, deforestation, energy from biomass, land use change, food supply, water quality and cooperative interdisciplinary learning for global change. This book’s conceptual innovation consists in performing a transformation from “space & time” into “functional state space & evolutionary time” in order to better recognise the structural patterns of long-term global dynamics. A transdisciplinary readership in academia – including geography, philosophy, economics, global change and future research – that is interested in enlarging scientific concepts beyond classical borders – would be most welcome!