The Challenge of Complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin 1789761654, 9781789761658

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THE CHALLENGE OF COMPLEXITY ESSAYS BY EDGAR MORIN

Edgar Morin is one of the most prestigious figures in French, and indeed European, culture. Giovanni Reale, author of A History of Ancient Philosophy, Professor, Università San Raffaele, Milan, Italy

Edgar Morin has been urging for a shift towards complexity thinking for many decades. He has a unique capability to move between the natural and social sciences—without doing either of them any injustice—and is ideally placed to address the epistemological, ethical and practical problems of our times. What makes Morin unique amongst complexity theorists is the way in which he turns a critical eye on complexity theory itself, resisting a return to determinism, reduction and disjunction in some approaches to complexity. These essays will certainly stimulate the critical debate within complexity circles, but are also essential reading for anybody interested in our complex world and how to live in it. Paul Cilliers, University of Stellenbosch, author of Complexity and Postmodernism

Morin has opened the way to real thinking about human nature, not reducing it to one of its components, bio-physico-chemical, social, psychological, religious, or political. Understanding the interactions between these components without confusion is the challenge of the sciences of complexity. Henri Atlan, author of Enlightenment to Enlightenment: Intercritique of Science and Myth, Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem, Israel; EHESS, Paris

The biology of the 21st century is moving from the reductionist approach of molecular biology to the systems approach of the new science of systems biology. More than 40 years ago Edgar Morin had already articulated the paradigm of complexity that gives us the clues needed to address the conceptual changes in modern biology. Magali Roux-Rouquié—Senior scientist—CNRS (French National Research Center), Deputy Director USAR-CNRS

Morin is a representative thinker of humanity’s planetary age. In remedying the deficiency of Western classic analytic thinking, Morin’s complex thinking shows some affinities to the Chinese classic synthetic thinking, such as the emphasis on the union of the universal and the particular. Morin’s path indicates that the creation of the paradigm of complexity depends on the fusion of Western and Eastern thinking, each of which has its strength and weakness. Yi-zhuang Chen—Professor of Philosophy, Central-South University, People’s Republic of China

The Apollo of complexity, Edgar Morin is a solar presence, helping us to live and to hope. His work constitutes a major contribution to transdisciplinarity. Basarab Nicolescu—Theoretical physicist, CNRS, University of Paris 6; Professor, University Babes-Bolyai de Cluj, Rumania; President, CIRET (International Center for Research on Transdisciplinary, Studies). Author of Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity

Edgar Morin’s writing on film, its stars, and the human beings who engage with them, remains the richest treatment of these phenomena available. Magic, wonder, the poetic as well as the prosaic, are a feature of his work generally, which refuses reductiveness while maintaining rigor. An intellectual monument in France, his theory and commentary—passionate, ethically engaged and never leaving the life out of life—is at last beginning to have the impact it deserves in the English-speaking world. Lorraine Mortimer—Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology, La Trobe University, Melbourne

Morin reinvigorates general systems theory, and its close companion complexity theory, by giving their epistemological foundations some much needed attention. He has laid down a tantalizing challenge to think more complexly about everything from self to society and provides plenty of inspiration for doing so. Mary Jo Hatch, author of Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives, Professor Emeritus, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia, USA

Morin has been one of the key figures of French green thought for over four decades. Anti-authoritarian and humanistic, his complex thought shows the urgency favoring diversity, life, imagination and freedom in the co-evolution of nature and society. Kerry Whiteside, author of Divided Nature, French Contributions to Political Ecology. Professor of Government, Franklin and Marshall College

The life sciences of biology, evolution, sociology, and business organization —all would benefit from this refreshing and novel approach that looks at the world as we encounter it, not as it is filtered through the lenses of specialized and isolated scientific disciplines. Albert Low, author of The Origin of Human Nature, Teacher and Director, Montreal Zen Center

Edgar Morin’s life and his work are a profound meditation on the meaning of the unsettling time of transition humanity is currently experiencing. Through an extraordinary exploration of the human condition in a global age, Edgar Morin outlines the horizon of a new planetary humanism. With the help of complex thought, for Morin this means mastering ambivalent forces—forces which could also lead to a catastrophe—with a view to orienting them towards a great metamorphosis, one that is as deep as the one humanity experienced in the transition from prehistory to the first societies. Mauro Ceruti, Professor of Logic and the Philosophy of Science Director of the Doctoral School for Communication Studies Rector’s delegate to the “Laboratorio delle Idee” IULM University, Milan, Italy

Edgar Morin is a person with a deep understanding of the social and historical aspects of human life. This understanding is the source of his concern and reflections on epistemology and complex systems. It is also the reason that what he says in those domains deserves to be read carefully. Humberto Maturana Romesin, co-author of The Tree of Knowledge, Instituto de Formacion Matristica

Pioneer of transdisciplinarity, prophet of the Planetary Era, a man of deep wisdom and humanity, Edgar Morin is an essential guide for our times. His writings show us how to weave together otherwise isolated fields of knowledge and the corresponding fragmented aspects of our world. The method or “way” of complexity exemplified in these collected essays is a much needed antidote to the simplistic, reductive, and therefore destructive habits of mind that continue to characterize much academic and public discourse. Sean Kelly, Ph.D., California Institute of Integral Studies, author of Coming Home: The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era and of Becoming Gaia: On the Threshold of Planetary Initiation

What I like best in the work of Edgar Morin is the fundamental difference he makes between what is complex and what is just complicated. The real world is complex, meaning that antagonism and complementarity go hand in hand. Once I understood this, and other aspects of Morin’s paradigm of complexity, my research took a new turn. Peter Westbroek—Professor of Geophysiology, University of Leiden, The Netherlands

Edgar Morin is the archetypal thinker. Difficult to classify, he impresses the reader with his erudition, critical attitude, and trespassing of intellectual boundaries. In this wonderful book, long overdue in English, he invites us to appreciate, understand, and handle the complexity of the world by complexifying our ways of thinking. For Morin complexity (from complexus— inter-weaving) is not a technique but a generalized epistemology—a wonder about the heterogeneous constituents that make up the world and seeking ways of understanding them. With this brilliant book we now have a reliable guide to the thinking of one of the most insightful thinkers of our era. Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Cyprus and University of Warwick

THE CHALLENGE OF COMPLEXITY ESSAYS BY EDGAR MORIN Introduced by Alfonso Montuori Edited by Amy Heath-Carpentier

Preface, Encountering Morin, Introduction, Annotated Bibliography and Organization of this volume, copyright © Amy Heath-Carpentier, 2023. Introduction: Edgar Morin at 100; A Note to the Reader (in the Annotated Bibliography), copyright © Alfonso Montuori, 2023. Foreword, copyright © Edgar Morin, 2023. Copyright status of the Essays by Edgar Morin, and associated permissions to reproduce material, are detailed at the end of the essays and in the Acknowledgments. The right of Amy Heath-Carpentier to be identified as Editor and Organizer of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published in the Sussex Academic e-Library, 2021. SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS PO Box 139, Eastbourne BN24 9BP, UK Ebook editions distributed worldwide by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) 814 N. Franklin Street Chicago, IL 60610, USA ISBN 9781789761658 (Paperback) ISBN 9781782847618 (Pdf ) All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This e-book text has been prepared for electronic viewing. Some features, including tables and figures, might not display as in the print version, due to electronic conversion limitations and/or copyright strictures.

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Encountering Morin Annotated Bibliography of Chapters, including a Note to the Reader

Foreword by Edgar Morin The Dissolution of Complexity Blind Intelligence INTRODUCTION Edgar Morin at 100: A Biblio/Biographical Sketch A Brief Overview Beginning with Transdisciplinarity Autocritique Stars, Mass Culture, and the Sociology of the Present Opening Up: The Journals Complexity Complex Thought

Part I Complexity: Method 1 A New Way of Thinking The Three Theories Self-organization The Three Principles Conclusion

2 The Spirit of the Valley What Absconded from the Paradigm The School of Mourning The Impossible Impossible The Non-Method From Vicious Circle to Virtuous Cycle The En-cyclo-pedia To Relearn Learning

xvi xvii xxiv xxv

1 2 2

7 11 13 15 17 20 23 29

41 41 42 43 44 45 45 48 50 51 52 54 55

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“Caminante no hay camino” The Spiral Inspiration The Spirit of the Valley

56 57 58

3 Restricted Complexity, General Complexity 1. ‘Classical science’ rejected complexity based on three principles 2. The first breach leading to complexity: irreversibility 3. Interactions: Order/disorder/organization 4. Chaos 5. The emergence of complexity 6. Generalized complexity 7. System: “All systems should be viewed as complex” 8. The emergence of emergence 9. The complexity of organization 10. Self-eco-organization 11. The relationship between local and global 12. Heraclitus: “Life from death, death from life” 13. Non-trivial machines 14. To complexify the notion of chaos 15. The need for contextualization 16. The hologrammatic and dialogical principles 17. Some consequences for the sciences 18. Two scientific revolutions introduced complexity 19. The introduction of science into history 20. The link between science and philosophy 21. Second epistemological rupture with restricted complexity 22. The principle of ecology of action 23. Creating “Institutes of fundamental culture” 24. I conclude: Generalized complexity integrates restricted complexity 25. We should seize the possibilities of metamorphosis

61 61 62 63 63 64 65 66 66 67 67 69 69 70 70 71 72 72 73 74 75 75 76 77 78 78

4 On the Definition of Complexity

80

5 Epistemology—Complexity

86 86 86 86 87 88 88 89 89 92 94 95 96 96 97

From the simple to the complex What is not simple Less and less simple More and more complicated Biological complexity or self-organization Complexity and the organization of diversity The mysterious automated factory The natural automaton-generativity and disorder ‘Life from death, death from life’ A principle of development Complexity of complexity Levels of complexity The many roads leading to complexity Unequal complexity within one and the same system

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The problem of hypercomplexity The logic of complexity. Logical complexity The challenge to knowledge: uncertainty and ambiguity The logic of living things: a generative logic Dialectical logic Generative logic Arborescent logic. Symphonic logic

97 98 98 100 104 105 106

6 Organization and Complexity

109 110 111 113 115

Unitas multiplex Emergences The complexity of the notion of organization Basic complexity

7 From the Concept of System to the Paradigm of Complexity Introduction: Mastering the Concept of System The System Paradigm A. The Whole is Not a Catch-All B. The Macro-Concept C. The Psychophysical Nature of the System Paradigm D. The Paradigm of Complexity Systemized Theories Conclusions

116 116 117 117 120 123 125 127 127

8 Complex Thinking for a Complex World: About Reductionism,

130

Disjunction and Systemism

9 The Concept of a System 1. 2.

3

Beyond holism and reductionism: The relational circuit The whole is not all Scissions in the whole (the Immersed and the Emergent, the Repressed and the Expressed). The Insufficient Whole The Uncertain Whole Beyond formalism and realism: From Physis to understanding, from understanding to Physis; the subject/system and the object/system The Rootedness in Physis The System is a Mental Abstraction Phantom Concept and Pilot Concept The Subject/Object Transaction Observing and Observed System

10 RE: From Prefix to Paradigm Part I: From the RE of Physics to the RE of Biology Toward a Radical Conceptualization of RE The Meaning of RE in Physics Takes and Gives Life

138 138 140 140 140 141 142

142 143 144 144 145 147 147 147 148 148

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Part II: From Repetition to Recursion Part III: Poly-RE Conclusion: Complex RE

150 153 158

11 Beyond Determinism: The Dialogue of Order and Disorder

160 161 162 163 165

Uncle Thom’s Empty Cabin From the Simplicity of Determinism to the Complexity of Order On Disorder The Metaphysical/ontological Opposition and Methodological Problematics The Dialogue of Order and Disorder Scienza nuova A knowledge that should know of its own ignorance

12 Social Paradigms of Scientific Knowledge The Sociological Insertion of Describer and Description Personal Self-scrutiny From the Analysis of the Analyzer to the Inscription of the Description The Socio-Cultural Hinterland of Knowledge—From Bacon to Habermas The Sociology of Truth The Necessity and Insufficiency of the Sociology of Knowledge The Paradigmatic Gordian Knot Translator’s Notes

13 The Fourth Vision: On the Place of the Observer Discussion

14 Self and Autos Introduction Auto- (Geno-Pheno-) Organization Communicational-Computational Auto-organization Being for Self and Auto-centrism

15 Can We Conceive of a Science of Autonomy? Conclusions

167 167 170 173 173 173 174 175 176 177 180 186 189 195 197 197 199 200 201 205 210

16 What Could Be a Mind Able to Conceive a Brain Able to Produce a Mind?

213

The Extraordinary Problem The Great Schism Uniduality The New Monism The Idea of Subject Conclusions

213 214 216 218 219 220

17 The Emergence of Thought

222 222 224

The Prehistory of Thought Language and the Emergence of Thought

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The Use of Dual Thought The Seculariztion and Individualization of Thought The Modern Adventures of Thought Conclusion

226 227 228 229

18 For a Crisiology

231 231 232 235 236 237 237 238 238

Introduction The Anti-or-organizational Principle of Organization The Problem of Antagonism The Theoretical Complexity of Crises The Components of the Concept of Crisis 1) The idea of disruption 2) The increase of disorder and uncertainty 3) Freeze/unfreezing 4) Unfreezing/Refreezing: The Multiplication of Double-Binds 5) The Increase of Research Activities 6) Mythical and Imaginary Solutions 7) The Dialectic of All These Components Crisis and Transformation 1) Of Action 2) Change: Progression/Regression 3) Crisis Theory and Evolution Theory Toward a Crisiology?

19 Commandments of Complexity Part II Sociology of the Present 20 Chronicle of a Film For a New Cinéma-Vérité Editing Post-Chronique

21 The Multidimensional Method The Means of Investigation Phenomenographic Observation The Interview Groups and Praxis Subjectivity and Objectivity The Research Workers Development of the Inquiry

22 The Principles of ‘Contemporary Sociology’ The Phenomenon The Event or Happening Crisis Social Temporality Clinical Sociology

240 240 240 241 241 241 242 242 243 245

251 251 266 272 279 279 280 281 281 282 283 284 286 286 287 289 289 290

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The ‘Field of the Present’ Conclusion

Part III Social and Political Reflections 23 Hoping Against Hope Doubts about Development A New Approach

24 Our Common Home

291 291

295 295 295

A World in Disarray Living Together on Earth Civilizing the Earth A Multidimensional Way of Thinking

297 297 298 299 299

25 A Shared Crisis

301

26 The Anti-Totalitarian Revolution

302 302 306 308 309 311 314

What is Totalitarianism? The Breaking of the Vessels A Change of Direction The Revolution The Disintegration of Totalitarianism The End of the Soviet System

27 Realism and Utopia The Unknowable Real The End of the Future and the Return of Mythified Pasts Real-politik and ideal-politik Towards Complexity of Thought Towards an Anthropolitics

28 Future Ethics and Politics Ethics Against Politics Political Realism Towards an Ethics of Humankind

29 The Agents of Double Globalization Globalization is Note All-embracing The Insufficiencies of ‘Economism’ for the Economy To Regulate? To Decelerate? A New Approach Prospects and Aims for a Common Home The Earth in Danger The Die Has Not Been Cast Yet

30 European Civilization: Properties and Challenges From Europa to Europe The Cultural Whirlwind

316 316 317 318 320 321 325 326 326 326 328 329 331 332 334 334 335 336 338 338 343

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Of Humanity Reconciled, and Happiness on Earth The European Cultural Identity Europe and Global Challenges Conclusion: A New Crisis of European Civilization?

347 349 352 357

31 The VI International Catalonia Prize A Warning

361 364

32 Ecology: The Uses of Enchantment

366

33 Demythicising and Remythicising the Mediterranean

368

Preface

Editing Confronting Complexity has been pilgrimage, and many accompanied me during its seven-year journey to completion. Foremost, I am indebted to Edgar Morin for his collaboration bringing this volume to fruition as well as his vast intellectual legacy. Few modern intellectuals have traversed such vast terrain, and this volume presents both the diversity and the development of his thought. Particularly, Morin’s formulations of transdisciplinarity and the holographic principal provided methodological scaffolding as I developed my approach to my dissertation research. En profonde gratitude, Dr. Morin. Alfonso Montuori first introduced me to Morin during my doctoral coursework in Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Recognizing my desire to engage with Morin’s contributions more broadly and deeply after reading “The Spirit of the Valley” and “On Complexity,” both of which are included in this volume, Alfonso offered me the opportunity to edit this book. I developed Confronting Complexity in fits and starts while working fulltime, conducting research, dealing with health crisis, and managing the inevitable events life throws one along the way. Even though we gave one another a few grey hairs, I am grateful for his mentorship, enthusiasm, friendship, and particularly trust. My heartfelt appreciation goes to Heather Scott, a fellow graduate student at the California Institute of Integral Studies, who provided comradery and assistance early in the project hunting down permissions. My dissertation chair, Constance Jones, deftly pressed me to clarify how I envisioned translating Morin’s sociological methods to my dissertation research on gender, religion, and conflict in revolutionary Ireland. This volume embodies the gratitude of scholars from across the globe for Edgar Morin’s immense impact on contemporary social thought. My editorship benefits from their desire to see more of Morin’s work made available to an English-speaking audience. Our first editor, Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, lent his expertise on and deep appreciation for Morin’s intellectual legacy to the project. Sussex Academic Press’s Anthony Grahame guided a neophyte editor through the production process with patience and persistence. I am indebted to the original translators of the articles contained in this volume: Cohn Anderson, Roland Belanger, Frank Coppay, Carlos Gershenson, Sean Kelly, Thierry C. Pauchant, Frank Poletti, Pierre Saint-Amand, and Alfonso Montuori. Thanks to Liliana Santirso and Andrew Carpentier for their assistance refining and making some of the translations more accessible.Finally, to my family, especially Michael, Liam, and Muireann, whose enthusiasm for the complicated amalgamation of roles I inhabit means they sometimes endure my absence, I love you and thank you for cherishing me as a scholar as well as a partner and mom.

Acknowledgments

Preparation for publication of this volume began five years ago. A change of commissioning editor at the original US university publishing house, coupled with unresolved permission issues, resulted in a request in 2021 to Sussex Academic Press to take over the publication. As can be seen in the list below, a substantive effort has been made to engage with all rights holders, but given the lapsed time between original enquiries of some years back, and administrative/policy/ownership changes of rights holders, the Author of the essays herein, Edgar Morin; the Editor, Amy Heath-Carpentier; and the Publisher, Sussex Academic Press, herewith apologize for any omissions or errors in the permissions listings. Two particular issues stand out: (1) That of the original rights holder of the French language text, which was subsequently translated; and (2) Where an essay contains third party material that we have been unable to track down. While we recognize that fair dealing covers the latter issue, it is a question of courtesy to acknowledge. Every effort has been made to contact rights holders. We have not been successful on all occasions. We shall of course make any necessary adjustments at the earliest possible reprint, where required. We have made every effort to identify, locate and contact all rightsholders before publication. If we are notified of any omissions or mistakes, the Publisher will revise these at the earliest opportunity.

Part I Complexity: Method A New Way of Thinking This was originally published in English in: The UNESCO Courier English Edition, 49(2) (1996). pp. 10–14. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000102554 Reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0/igo/). The Spirit of the Valley Originally published in English in: Method: Toward a Study of Humankind: The Nature of Nature. Translated and Introduced by J.L. Roland Belanger. American University Studies Series V, Philosophy, Vol. 1. New York, USA Peter Lang 1992, pp. 3–19, 0820418781.

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Originally published in French in: La Méthode: La Nature de la nature, Edgar Morin, Editions du Seuil, 1977, Points, pp. 9–24, 2020046342. Copyright © Editions du Seuil. Courtesy of Editions du Seuil with permission. English translation, copyright © Edgar Morin and adapted by Amy Heath-Carpentier with permission. Restricted Complexity, General Complexity Originally published in English in: C. Gershenson, D. Aerts & B. Edmonds (eds.), Worldviews, Science, and Us: Philosophy and Complexity. Hackensack, NJ USA World Scientific Publishing Company 2007, pp. 5–25, 9789812707420. https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789812707420_0002 Originally presented in French as: Complexite Restreinte, Complexite Generale, at the Colloquium “Intelligence of complexity: epistemology and pragmatics” at Cerisy-LaSalle, France, June 26, 2005. English translation, copyright @ 2007 World Scientific Publishing. Adapted by Amy Heath-Carpentier with permission. On the Definition of Complexity Originally published in: United Nations University (ed.), The Science and Praxis of Complexity: Contributions to the Symposium Held at Montpellier, France, May 9–11, 1984. Tokyo, Japan, United Nations University, 1985, pp. 62–68, 9280805606. Originally presented in May 1984 at a symposium on complexity convened by the United Nations University. Copyright © 1985 by the United Nations University. Reproduced with the permission of the United Nations University. Epistemology—Complexity Originally published in: International Social Science Journal, XXVI, 4, UNESCO, 1974, pp. 555–582. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000011338 Copyright © UNESCO 1974. Republished with permission from John Wiley & Sons; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Organization and Complexity Originally published in: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 879, 1 (1999), pp. 115–121. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1999.tb10410.x Copyright © 1999 The New York Academy of Sciences. Reproduced with permission from John Wiley & Sons; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. From the Concept of a System to the Paradigm of Complexity Originally published in English in: Sean Kelly (tr.), Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 15, 4 (1992), pp. 371–385. https://doi.org/10.1016/1061-7361(92)90024-8 Originally presented in French as: “Le système, paradigme ou théorie?,” at the inaugural address to the Congrits de I’A.F.C.E.T., Versailles, November 21, 1977 and published in: Science Avec Conscience, Fayard, Paris, France 1982, pp. 172–189, 2213011516. Copyright © Libraire Artheme Fayard, 1982. Courtesy of Libraire

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Artheme Fayard with permission. English translation, copyright © 1992 by JAI Press, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. Reproduced with permission from Elsevier Science & Technology Journals; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Complex Thinking for a Complex World: About Reductionism, Disjunction and Systemism Originally published in: Systema: Connecting Matter, Life, Culture and Technology, 2, 1 2014, pp. 14–22. It was based on the keynote address presented to the European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR) in 2012, on the occasion of Edgar Morin receiving the Bertalanffy Prize in Complexity Thinking, awarded by the Bertalanffy Centre for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS). Reproduced with permission from Systema: Connecting Matter, Life, Culture and Technology and the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science. The Concept of a System Originally published in French in: La Méthode. La Nature de la nature, Edgar Morin, Editions du Seuil, Paris, France, 1977, Points, pp. 123–144, 2020046342. © Editions du Seuil, 1977, Points, 2014. English translation, copyright © 2022, Amy Heath-Carpentier. Translated with permission from Editions du Seuil. RE: From Prefix to Paradigm Originally published in English in: Frank Poletti and Sean Kelly (tr.), World Futures 61, 4 (2005), pp. 254–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/02604020590952583 Originally published in French in: La Méthode II: La Vie de la Vie, Edgar Morin, Editions du Seuil, Paris, France, 1980, pp. 276–288. Copyright © Editions du Seuil. Courtesy of Editions du Seuil with permission. English translation reproduced with permission from Taylor & Francis Group, Informa UK. Beyond Determinism Originally published in English in: Frank Coppay (tr.), SubStance, 12, 3, 40 (1983), pp. 22–35. Morin, Edgar. “Beyond determinism: The dialogue of order and disorder.” SubStance 40.3 (1983): 22–35. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3684252 Originally published in French in: Au-delà du déterminisme: la dialogue de l’ordre et due désordre, Le Débat: Histoire, politique, société, number 6 (November, 1980), Éditions Gallimard. Copyright © Edgar Morin. Courtesy of Edgar Morin with permission. English translation, copyright © 1983 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reproduced courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Press. Social Paradigms of Scientific Knowledge Originally published in: Frank Coppay (tr.), SubStance, 12, 2, 39 (1983), pp. 3–20. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i287865 Copyright © 1983 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.Reproduced courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Press.

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The Fourth Vision: On the Place of the Observer Originally published in: Pierre Saint-Amand (tr.), in P. Livingston (ed). Disorder and Order: Proceedings of the Stanford International Symposium, Anma Libri, Stanford, CA USA 1984, pp. 98–108, 091583801. Reproduced courtesy of P. Livingston. Self and Autos Originally published in English in: M. Zeleny (ed.). Autopoiesis: A Theory of Living Organization, Elsevier-North Holland, Amsterdam, Netherlands 1981, pp. 128–137, 0444003851. Originally published in French in: “Soi et autos” in Science Avec Conscience, Edgar Morin, Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris, France 1982, pp. 221–232, 2213011516. Copyright © Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1982. Courtesy of Librairie Arthème Fayard with permission. Reproduced with permission from Elsevier Science & Technology Journals; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Can We Conceive of a Science of Autonomy? Originally published in English in: Human Systems Management, 3, 3 (1982), pp. 201–206. Originally published in French in: “Peut-on concevoir une science de l’autonomie” in Science Avec Conscience, Edgar Morin, Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris, France 1982, pp. 190–202, 2213011516. Copyright © Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1982. Courtesy of Librairie Arthème Fayard with permission. English translation is available at IOS Press through https://doi.org/10.3233/HSM1982-3307 Copyright © 1982 IOS Press. Reproduced with permission from IOS Press. What Could Be a Mind Able to Conceive a Brain Able to Produce a Mind? Originally published in: J. E. Charon (ed.), The Real and the Imaginary. A New Approach to Physics, Paragon House Publishers, New York, NY, USA 1987, pp. 1–14, 0892260270. Reproduced with permission from Paragon House Publishers. The Emergence of Thought Originally published in: Diogenes, 39, 155, SAGE, 1991, pp. 135–146. https://doi.org/10.1177/039219219103915509 Reproduced with permission from SAGE. For a Crisiology Originally published in English in: Industrial & Environmental Crisis Quarterly, 7, SAGE, 1993, pp. 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/108602669300700102 Originally published in French in: Pour une crisologie, Communications, 25, 1976, pp. 149–163. https://doi.org/10.3406/comm.1976.1388 Copyright © Editions du Seuil. Courtesy of Editions du Seuil with permission. English translation reproduced with permission from SAGE.

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Commandments of Complexity? Originally published in French in: Science Avec Conscience, Edgar Morin, Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris, France 1982, pp. 308–313, 2213011516. Copyright © Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1982. Courtesy of Librairie Arthème Fayard with permission. English translation, copyright © 2022, Alfonso Montuori. Translated with permission from Librairie Arthème Fayard

Part II Sociology of the Present Chronicle of a Film Originally published in: Visual Communication, 11, 1, SAGE, 1985, pp. 4–29. Reproduced with permission from SAGE. The Multidimensional Method Originally published in English in: A. M. Sheridan-Smith (tr.). The Red and the White: Report from a French Village, Pantheon Books, New York, NY, USA 1970, pp. 254– 263, 0394442601. Originally published in French in: La Commune de France, Edgar Morin, Librairie Arthème Fayard 1967, 2013. © Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1967, 2013. Courtesy of Librairie Arthème Fayard with permission. English translation, copyright © 1970 by Penguin Random House LLC, used by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. The Principles of ‘Contemporary Sociology’ Originally published in English in: P. Green (tr.), Rumour in Orléans, Pantheon Books, New York, NY, USA 1971, pp. 265–276, 039446866X. Originally published in French in: La Rumeur D’Orleans, Edgar Morin, Editions du Seuil, Paris, France, 1969. Copyright © Editions du Seuil. Courtesy of Editions du Seuil with permission. English translation, copyright © 1971 by Random House Inc., used by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Part III Social and Political Reflections Hoping Against Hope Originally published in: The UNESCO Courier, English Edition, XLVIII, 3 (1995), p. 29. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000099759.locale=en. Reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0/igo/).

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Our Common Home Originally published in: The UNESCO Courier, English Edition, XLVIII, 11 (1995), pp. 8–10. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000101490.locale=en Reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0/igo/). A Shared Crisis Originally published in: The UNESCO Courier, English Edition, XLVI, 12 (1993), pp. 25–26. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000095776.locale=en Reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0/igo/). The Anti-Totalitarian Revolution Originally published in English in: Thesis Eleven, 30, 1 (1991), pp. 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F072551369103000102 An initial version of this text was published in French in: Libération, February 1990; and revised and expanded in: Un nouveau commencement, Morin, E. Bocchi G., and Ceruti, M., Editions du Seuil, 1991, Points, 2020124033. Copyright © Editions du Seuil. Courtesy of Editions du Seuil with permission. English translation reproduced with permission from SAGE. Realism and Utopia Originally published in English in: Cohn Anderson (tr.), Diogenes, 53, 1 (2006), pp. 135–144. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0392192106062460 An initial version of this text was published in French in: Pour une utopie réaliste, Rencontres de Chateauvallon autour d’Edgar Morin, Arléa, Paris, France 1996, pp. 259–262. Courtesy of Editions Arléa, with permission. The present revised version is from 2005 © Edgar Morin. English translation adapted by Edgar Morin and Amy Heath-Carpentier with permission from SAGE. Future Ethics and Politics Originally published in: Jérôme Bindé (ed.), The Future of Values: 21st Century Talks, Berghahn Books, New York, NY, USA 2004, pp. 241–244, 1571814426. Reproduced with permission by Berghahn Books. The Agents of Double Globalization Originally published in: World Futures, 53, 2 (1999), pp. 149–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/02604027.1999.9972736 Reproduced with permission from Taylor & Francis Group. European Civilization: Properties and Challenges Originally published in English in: M. Mozaffari (ed.) Globalization and Civilizations,

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Routledge, New York, New York, USA 2002, pp. 125–150, 9786610056712. Sections of this essay were originally published in French in: Penser l’Europe, Edgar Morin, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1987. Copyright © Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1987. Courtesy of Éditions Gallimard with permission. English translation reproduced with permission from Taylor & Francis UK. The IV International Catalonia Prize Originally published in: Catalònia, 39, (1994), pp. 33–39. https://raco.cat/index.php/Catalonia/article/view/104824 Reproduced with permission from the Departament de la Presidència, Generalitat de Catalunya. Ecology: The Uses of Enchantment Originally published in English in: The Yses of Enchantment, by Edgar Morin; Voxeurop_English. June 16, 2009. https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-uses-of-enchantment/ Originally published in French in: Le Monde [full source unknown] English translation reproduced with permission from Voxeurop. Demythicising and Remythicising the Mediterranean Originally published in French in: Quaderns de la Mediterrània, 4 (Special issue: Los mediterráneos. Visiones contrastadas), (2003). http://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/4/amorin.pdf Revised English translation, copyright © 2022, Amy Heath-Carpentier. Translated with permission from Quaderns de la Mediterrània and the European Institute of the Mediterranean.

Encountering Morin

Encountering the vast reservoir of Edgar Morin’s work for the first time can be overwhelming. With a career spanning decades, including significant contributions interlacing numerous fields, Morin can intimidate even the most erudite reader. Yet, Morin’s writing is conversational as well, drawing the reader into dialogue. Readers may wonder why they have not bump into him before. Perhaps it is the language barrier. Few Anglophone scholars, particularly in the social sciences, read French. Therefore, Morin may also be the victim of a phenomenon he so acutely analyzes in the academy: the compartmentalization of knowledge into discrete disciplines with little interpenetration. Regardless of cause, it is clearly an oversight to have so few of this core essays available in English, which diminishes scholarship and practice on many theoretical and foundational issues. Therefore, among those familiar with Morin’s writing, a desire arose for a collection of his essays in English, and, thus, this collection was born. Almost seven years ago, when I first encountered Morin in my Ph.D. program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, I was unsure of how to approach his impressive body of work. I found the easiest way to begin was by reading essays on topics in which I had some foundational knowledge and strong interest, which were, for me, the latter two sections of this collection: Sociology of the Present and Social and Political Reflections. I found Morin’s warmth, humor, and genuineness radiating from the pages. Having gained some experience reading Morin, I then bridged to the essays on complexity. Therefore, I grouped the essays in this book according to themes. I encourage readers to begin with Morin’s Foreword followed by Alfonso Montuori’s Introduction titled Edgar Morin at 100: A Biblio/Biographic Sketch. Then, jump into a chapter that catches your eye. The experience of reading Morin is akin to gazing upon a spider’s web. Selecting the intersection between two threads leads you to another and, quite suddenly, you are captivated. A note to the reader. When I have built on previous translations of the original works, this is noted in the chapter heading to the essay. Authored endnotes to elaborate or explain are indicated by my initials: AHC.

Annotated Bibliography of Chapters With a Note to the Reader by Alfonso Montuori

The essays in this volume were written between the 1970s and the 2010s. They give the reader an idea of the range of Edgar Morin’s contributions, interests, and research topics, as well as how they are ultimately all connected. Some of the essays are brief and written for a more popular audience, whereas others are decidedly more technical. The thread that connects all of them is Morin’s development of “complex thought.” This is Morin’s effort to approach issues and engage in inquiry in ways that do not sacrifice complexity for the sake of simplicity, and acknowledge interconnectedness, context, uncertainty, and the role of the inquirer. It’s important to point out that what Morin is presenting here is not what is generally known as “complexity theory,” of which the Santa Fe Institute is a key representative. Morin does draw extensively on the natural sciences, as well as precursors of current complexity theorists, such as Warren Weaver, Ross Ashby, John Von Neumann, and Heinz Von Foerster. Nevertheless, his effort is fundamentally epistemological, and the theme of epistemological reflection appears in all the essays in one form or other. The relationship of Morin’s complex thought to current “complexity theory” is addressed explicitly in the essay “Restricted Complexity, General Complexity.” Particularly in some of the early essays from the 1970s, readers will find Morin stating that there is no research on complexity. Besides the fact that this was true at the time, the reader should also keep in mind that Morin is always referring to what he refers to as “general complexity,” and not “restricted complexity.” Morin is known mostly for his books rather than his academic articles. Particularly because of the diversity of Morin’s interests and the complexity of his argument, the book form has allowed him the opportunity to develop his arguments more fully. Nevertheless, readers will find much that is vital and current in the articles contained in this volume. Readers who are completely unfamiliar with Morin’s work on complexity, or would like a gradual review of the key concepts, might consider the following reading order: Chapters 2, 1, 5, 4, 6, 19, 3, 13, 7, 8, and 9. Although Morin did not begin to explicitly articulate some of his thinking on complexity until the early 70s, most notably in Le paradigme perdu: La nature humaine [Paradigm lost: Human nature], one can find it throughout his work, dating back to his first major book, L’Homme et la mort [Humanity and death], published in 1951. Below are currently available English-language books by Edgar Morin. I have indicated the chapters in this volume where you can find an excerpt.

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(1970). The Red and the White. Report from a French Village. New York: Pantheon Books. SEE CHAPTER 23: THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL METHOD (1971). Rumor in Orleans. New York: Blond. SEE CHAPTER 24: THE PRINCIPLES OF ‘CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY’ (1992). Method: Towards a Study of Humankind. The Nature of Nature. New York: Peter Lang. SEE CHAPTER 2: THE SPIRIT OF THE VALLEY (1999). Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the new Millennium. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. (2001). Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future. Paris: UNESCO. (2005a). The Stars. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (2005b). The Cinema, or the Imaginary Man. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (2008). California Journal. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. (2008). On Complexity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. (2009). Vidal and his Family: From Salonica to Paris. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Hessel, S., & Morin, E. (2012). The Path to Hope. New York: Other Press. ALFONSO MONTUORI San Francisco, November 2021

Part 1

Complexity: Method

Throughout Part I, Morin wrestles with how to evolve European epistemological frameworks, such as the Cartesian method, to address the multifaceted and interconnected social, political, economic, and ecological crises of the mid-twentieth century to present. Morin addresses the major challenges of the twentieth century to the narrative at the heart of European civilization: determinism (the universe is ruled and ordered through an abstract collection of natural laws, which humanity strives to extract from nature and will eventually master, thus explaining away the inconvenience and, indeed, terror of chance, uncertainty, disorder, and chaos). A New Way of Thinking Morin, E. (1996). A new way of thinking. The UNESCO courier English edition, 49(2), 10–14. In the wake of the bankruptcy of determinism, the failure of reductionism and abstraction to explain complex biological and social systems, and the mounting pressures of globalization, humankind must embrace a new approach to making meaning. Morin sets the stage for this new way of thinking by bringing into dialogue four existing theories: information theory, cybernetics, systems theory, and self-organization. Then, he integrates what he terms three principles: the dialogical principle, the principle of organizational recursion, and the hologrammatic principle into a new, dynamic mode of complex thinking. The Spirit of the Valley Morin, E. (1992). The Spirit of the Valley. Method: Toward a Study of Humankind: The nature of nature. American University Studies (Series V, Philosophy, Vol. 1).

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The Spirit of the Valley is the introduction to Morin’s multivolume work: Method. Herein, Morin calls our attention to how the study of the human experience is divided, both conceptually and, in the academy, disciplinarily. The divisions between individual, society, and species neglect the relationship between these three. Morin states “The fundamental problem, therefore, is to re-establish and question what has disappeared in the dissociation: this very relation” (96). The Sciences and the Humanities are disassociated, and each field of inquiry and each inquirer remain isolated from one another, incapable of self-inquiry. Restricted Complexity, General Complexity Morin, E. (2007). Restricted complexity, general complexity. In C. Gershenson, D. Aerts & B. Edmonds (eds.), Worldviews, Science, and Us: Philosophy and complexity (5–25). World Scientific Publishing Company. Morin’s contribution to this edited volume delineates the emergence and evolution of the recognition of complexity within Western intellectual and scientific history. He distinguishes between two conceptions of complexity—restricted and general. Initially, only highly intricate and interrelated systems were deemed complex, and the broader implications of complexity, particularly epistemological and methodological ones, were ignored. Thus, complexity was restricted to a small number of special cases. General complexity, as defined by Morin, is applicable to any system, the whole and its constituent parts. Further, general complexity actively challenges how we construct and disseminate knowledge both theoretically and in practice, which he details in-depth. On the Definition of Complexity Morin, E. (1985). On the definition of complexity. In E. A. Aida (ed.), The Science and Praxis of Complexity (62–68). United Nations University. In 1984, the United Nations University invited Morin to address a conference on complexity. He begins by stating that definitions and discussions of complexity are elusive and marginal, except for the spaces between the fields of engineering and science where, in 1984, new knowledge in cybernetics and systems theory were brewing. Morin addresses a few common misunderstandings about complexity, including that complexity focuses on completeness, which is an impossibility. Rather, his program for complexity calls attention to that which is discarded through the reductionist thinking and methods that dominate scientific investigation. The break that allowed complexity, manifest as disorder and uncertainty, to emerge originated from within philosophy, Gödem’s theorem of incompleteness, and scientific inquiry, specifically in the laws of thermodynamics, astrophysics, and quantum physics. Disorder and uncertainty could not be reconciled with reductionist, deterministic, and simplistic thought, and thus these realities necessitate a shift to complex thinking. He positions complex thinking as a corrective. Complex thought, as a paradigm, is honest in that it embraces uncertainty and incompleteness, rather than promoting a veneer of certainty and wholeness. Epistemology Morin, E. (1974). “Epistemology—complexity.” International Social Science Journal (UNESCO), XXVI (4), 555–582. Herein, Morin develops further and more deeply the epistemological challenges of

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complexity with an emphasis on the similarities and differences between social and biological systems. Morin highlights the role of self-organization, levels and diversity, change within systems, and hyper-complexity within complex systems. Finally, Morin explores to negotiate the uncertainty and ambiguity that accompany complexity and how the field of logic negotiates the challenges of complexity. Organization and Complexity Morin, E. (1999). Organization and complexity. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 879(1), 115–121. Morin encourages us to consider the organizing force that binds elements of a whole in relationship with one another, whether that whole is a galaxy, a cell, a human being, or a society. Drawing on a thread initiated by Wilhelm Dilthey and picked up by Blaise Pascal, he draws our attention to complex and interdependent web of relationships between a whole and its constituent parts. The circuit develops in the interrelationships between elements, the system (i.e. the “complex unit of an interrelated whole”), and its organization (i.e. how the elements and whole are structured). Morin terms this coexistence of unity and multiplicity: unitas multiplex. Further, Morin highlights that organizations bear within themselves the roots of their own denigration as well as the potential for emergences arising the interaction of the individuals within whole. From the Concept of a System to the Paradigm of Complexity Morin, E. (1992). From the concept of system to the paradigm of complexity. Journal of Social and Evolutionary systems, 15(4), 371–385. Morin deliberates on our need for a global theory of complexity to contrast with the holism of General Systems Theory. Holism negates the individual parts in striving for an all-encompassing unity. Instead, he proposes complexity as the heart of systems. By employing a recursive method of investigating two related objects or concepts, both their individualities and their interrelationships can be discerned. Morin advocates that we balance theory and practice in how we negotiate complexity as a new model of rationality. Complexity Thinking for a Complex World: About Reductionism, Disjunction and Systemism Morin, E. (2014). Complex thinking for a complex world—About reductionism, disjunction and systemism. Systema, 2(1), 14–22. In this article, Morin provides a thorough and detailed explanation of his thinking on complexity and systems, tying together several of the other pieces in this section. Systems are complex physically and logically, and we have discovered that the fundamental elements studied by science are, in fact, systems in and of themselves, with the dialectic dichotomies inherent in systems, such as: organization/disintegration and autonomous/dependent. He investigates the tripartite existence of humans: as a spatial object, as an individual, and as a member of society. Traditionally, individuals are only units within a social system, but complexity reveals that the connections between and among individuals are as critical as the individuals as units alone. The holographic principle explains how the whole is present in the unit and the unit in the whole, even within human systems. Human ontology is much more complex than originally conceived.

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The Concept of a System Morin, E. (1977). The Concept of System. In La Methode: La Nature de la nature (123–130; 138–144). Editions du Seuil. Morin negotiates the limitations of the Aristotelian and Cartesian models that have dominated Western intellectual discourse. He searches for a “systemic concept which expresses at once unity, multiplicity, totality, diversity, organization, and complexity” to establish a new paradigm that breaks away from reductionism and holism (257). He negotiates realism and formalism, and the relationship between conception of a system as created in the mind of the observer and the physis of the system itself. (Physis is Greek philosophical term for nature as well as a goddess of origins/order in the Greek pantheon). He defines various levels or elements within systems and how they interact. In the systems approach, the observer reemerges from being cloaked in the methods of classical science, and the object regains its fullness of being. RE: From Prefix to Paradigm Morin, E. (2005c). Re: From prefix to paradigm. World Futures, 61(4), 254–267. https://dio.org/10.1080/02604020590952583. This article is a translated chapter from a large study of the philosophy of ecology and biology. It looks at the vast array of reiterative processes in nature and culture and argues that continuous recursion is the core activity that sustains living processes at all levels. Therefore, the prefix “re,” which is central to the concepts of repetition, renewal, reinforcement, regeneration, reorganization, recursion, and religion, is a radical concept that should be considered at the paradigmatic level. The author shows that by working “revolutions into its revolutions” the process of RE complexly unifies and intermixes the past and future in order to generate the creative pulse of evolution” (272). Beyond Determinism Morin, E. (1983). Beyond determinism: The dialogue of order and disorder. SubStance, (12)40, 22–35. https://dio.org/10.2307/3684252 Responding to a published debate between Piaget and Chomsky, Morin observes how the two missed one another’s points throughout, responding and extending their dialogue. Universal determinism is the dominant epistemological framework both in science and beyond. He then goes on to describe how determinism oversimplifies complexity. He investigates the concepts of order and disorder, particularly the ontological problems that are raised by them, and he raises the alarm about “authoritarian simplifications” that limit our comprehension of these and other concepts. Social Paradigms of Scientific Knowledge Morin, E. (1983). Social paradigms of scientific knowledge. SubStance, (12) 39, 3–20. https://dio.org/10.2307/3684484 Morin considers the implications of acknowledging the investigator/observer as one who stands in relationship with the subject of research. This is in contrast to traditional scientific methods where the researcher/observer is considered outside of the system/subject of investigation, an objective source. He asks what methods can be used to observe and reflect on how the researcher’s positionality impacts his research. Then, Morin presents the history of the interaction between the ideologies of historical periods and the scientific research generated by the scientists at that time. He reveals

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that the great scientists, researchers, and innovators in the history of science have negotiated these boundaries. The Fourth Vision: On the Place of the Observer Morin, E. (1984). The fourth vision: on the place of the observer. In P. Livingston (ed.), Disorder and Order. Proceedings of the Stanford International Symposium, September 14–16, 1981. Morin urges us to leave behind the aim of scientific inquiry since Newton: certainty. Striving for certainty results in reducing and simplifying phenomenon. He outlines a path for moving forward in research while negotiating uncertainty. Morin centralizes the ability of the observer to recognize her own position in her construction of knowledge, what he calls The Fourth Vision. He states: “the purpose of knowledge is not to discover the secret of the world or the master equation, but is to establish a dialogue with the world” (358). Self and Autos Morin, E. (1981). Self and autos. In M. Zeleny (ed.), Autopoiesis: A Theory of Living Organization (128–137). Springer. Morin contributed this chapter to a collection of essays on the concept of autopoiesis, a term meaning self-creation and renewal. The collection was edited by the economist Milan Zeleny (1942–present). Morin argues that autopoiesis and autoorganization must be included in a larger theory of autos. Morin introduces this term, autos, as “the mysterious ability of a being, a system, a living machine, to draw from within itself the source of its particular autonomy of organization and behavior while (in order to fulfill this task) relying on energizing, organizational, and informational nourishment extracted or received from the environment” (364). It helps make a way toward understanding how a being can be autonomous and ecodependent simulanously. Can We Conceive of a Science of Autonomy? Morin, E. (1982). Can we conceive of a science of autonomy? Human systems management, (3)3, 201–206. https://dio.org/ 10.3233/HSM-1982-3307 Morin applies his critique of determinism to social and political science and seeks a way beyond the dichotomy between the scientific/theoretical view of society and the experience of society itself. He devises a path forward for the social sciences, particularly sociology, which holds the autonomous individual as a physical, biological, psychic, and social entity. He expands the definitions of autonomy, individuality, the subject, and freedom. What Could Be a Mind Able to Conceive a Brain Able to Produce a Mind? Morin, E. (1987). What could be a mind able to conceive a brain able to produce a mind? In J. E. Charon (ed.), The Real and the Imaginary: A new approach to physics (1–14). Paragon House. Brain and mind—Morin investigates the legacies and potentialities behind the mind and the brain. For example, the mind is a creative, free philosophical concept while the mind is a biological reality that is subject to the deterministic scientific investigation. This disjunction does not serve. He charts a path forward for both.

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The Emergence of Thought Morin, E. (1991). Emergence of thought, Diogenes, (39)155. 135–146. https://dio.org/10.1177/039219219103915509 “If we consider human thought as the, so far, ultimate, if not supreme, stage in the evolution of life on Earth, we must also try to understand the evolutionary conditions that allowed it to emerge, and that leads us to look again at living organization” (407). For a Crisiology Morin, E. (1993). For a crisiology. Industrial & Environmental Crisis Quarterly, (7)1, 5–22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26162559. Morin turns his attention to the idea of crisis, which he says has haunted the twentieth century. He begins with its roots in the term krisis, a decision point, to our current understanding of the term as a lack of the ability to decide. Decision is out of humanity’s control. He goes on to explain that one needs a systemic, cybernetic and bio-negentropic theory of society to begin to theorize about crises in human systems, and he explores both. Commandments of Complexity Morin, E. (1982). Commandments of complexity? In Science avec conscience. Fayard. Morin centralizes and defines key elements of the paradigms of simplification and complexity.

Part II Sociology of the Present Chronicle of a Film Morin, E. (1985). Chronicle of a film. Visual Communication, (11)1, 4–29. Morin details the genesis and production of a documentary film Chronicle of a Summer, on which he collaborated on with the filmmaker Jean Rouch. Released in 1961, it embodied the cinéma vérité, detailing the everyday lives of regular Parisians. The Multidimensional Method Morin, E. (1970). Appendix: The Multidimensional Method. The Red and the White. Report from a French village (254–263). Pantheon Books. The appendix to Morin’s book The Red and the White: Report from a French village. Morin describes how the Délégation Générale à la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (DGRST), a body within the French Prime Minister’s administration, initiated a sociological research project in the town of Plozévet in Brittany. Morin used the pseudonym Plodémet for Plozévet. DGRST enlisted Morin to undertake research how modernization and tradition were intersecting in this rural, fishing port. In this appendix, he delineates his methodology for undertaking the research. The Principles of ‘Contemporary Sociology’ Morin, E. (1971). Principles of Contemporary Sociology. Rumor in Orleans (265– 276). Blond. “As a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales (School for Advance Studies in the Social Sciences, a highly-presigious graduate school of social science in

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Paris), Morin promoted a research methodology he termed sociologie du présent (contemporary sociology). In May 1969, Morin applied his method to the investigation of an anti-Semitic rumour, which alleged that Jewish dress-shop owners in Orléans, France were abducing and trafficking women. In the appendix of the book in which he documented that research, Rumor in Orléans, Morin describes sociologie du present.

Part III Social and Political Reflections Hoping Against Hope Morin, E. (1995). Hoping against hope. The UNESCO courier English edition, (XLVIII), 3, 29. Morin applies complexity to the field of development, challenging the underlying premise of development—progress. He highlights the disastrous impact of the narrative of progress in the so-called developed world on humans, cultures, and environmental systems, individuals and communities. For too long, development operated in a bubble of false assumptions, neglecting the interrelationships between economics and culture, political, and social systems. To heal and revive, Morin encourages a solidarity among humans across the world focused on the earth as our shared motherland. Our Common Home Morin, E. (1995) Our common home. The UNESCO courier English edition, (XLVIII)11, 8–10. Despite the intentions when organizations such as UNESCO were formed, crises abound throughout the world. In this light, Morin encourages us to “relinquish the Promethean dream of becoming masters of the universe and aspire instead to living together on earth” (538). He encourages us to move forward together by acknowledging our cultural, ethnic, and national roots AND our shared identity as earthlings. In this shared identity and diversity, he centralizes democracy and solidarity to create a generative marketplace of ideas. A Shared Crisis Morin, E. (1993). A shared crisis. The UNESCO courier English edition, (XLVI) 12, 25–26. Morin calls on us to recognize the need for solidarity and unity in the face of the global environmental crisis, caused by paradigms of progress and development. We must rethinking the roots of progress. The Anti-Totalitarian Revolution Morin, E. (1991). The anti-totalitarian revolution. Thesis Eleven, 30(1), 1–16. In 1991, Morin reflected back on the political revolutions that took place across the USSR, Poland, Hungry, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia and Romania. He defines these revolutions as anti-totalitarian and considers the historical and political genesis and ramifications of these changes as they were happening.

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Realism and Utopia Morin, E. (2006). Realism and utopia. Diogenes, 53(1), 135–144. The tension between utopian vision and realism within two major movements of the twentieth century, Nazism and Communism, are investigated in this piece. Morin states “What is alarming is when a utopia asserts itself as real, historically determined, and the irrefutable, scientific outcome of the laws of History” (570). He begins with the origins of the nation-state. Future Ethics and Politics Morin, E. “Future ethics and politics.” (2004). In Jérôme Bindé (ed.), The Future of Values: 21st Century Talks (241–244). Berghahn. “The relationship between ethics and politics, which should be a complementary one, is often antagonistic. The policy-making of states and governments tends at best to subordinate ethical considerations to practical concerns of Realpolitik and power politics, and at worst to stifle them altogether. However, it is not just a matter of politics tending to exclude ethical concerns. Ethics can also oppose political realism in a variety of ways” (587). The Agents of Double Globalization Morin, E. (1999). The agents of double globalization. World Futures, 53(2), 149– 163, https://dio.org/10.1080/02604027.1999.9972736. Morin begins this essays:“There is both a globalization driven by developments in science, technology, the economy, and the capitalist system, and a globalization of humanism keynoted by the idea of human rights, principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, and the idea of democracy and solidarity. Yet the contemporary world is not a global system but an ever-changing turmoil. It is necessary to envisage alternative forms of organization, such as a worldwide confederacy. Such aspirations must take into consideration the notion of the Earth as our common homeland. New ideas are needed to avoid the grave dangers of an unsustainable and inhuman development. In this regard an emphasis on the second, humanistic aspect of globalization becomes imperative” (592). European Civilization: Properties and Challenges Morin, E. (2002). European civilization: properties and challenges. In M. Mozaffari (ed.), Globalization and Civilizations (125–150). Routledge. This edited volume examines the relevancy of the concept of “civilization” in the twenty-first century and interrogates notions of a fundamental conflict between the Islamic and Western worlds. The IV International Catalonia Prize Morin, E. (1994). The VI International Catalonia Prize. Catalònia, (39), 33–39. In 1994, Morin was awarded the International Catalonia Prize by the Catalan Institute of Mediterranean Studies with then President Jordi Pujol of Catalonia and King Juan Carlos I of Spain. In his acceptance speech, he chronicles his deep familial and personal ties to the Mediterranean. Then, Morin asserts that the fall of Barcelona in 1939 to Franco’s Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War was an omen of the destruction of multi-religious and ethnic Mediterranean city centers: Thessaloniki, Istanbul, Beirut, and more. He warns of increasing antagonisms within multi-ethnic

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and multi-religious societies and notes “All over the world, rival hatred have a common enemy: concord, reconciliation, compassion, forgiveness,” and asks whether the wealth of diversity surrounding the Mediterranean, which results in such vibrant cultural fecundity, can be sustained and revived. He dreams of vibrant cultures, healthy land and sea, a sustainable economic life, and a “rich mythologizing” of the Mediterranean to enrapture and propel partnership across the deep divides that exist within and between the Mediterranean states. Ecology: The Uses of Enchantment Morin, E. (2009). ECOLOGY: The uses of enchantment. Le Monde, June 16, 2009. Morin wrestles with how the environmental crisis impacts European politics, resulting in either a socialist politics striped of the centrality of the environmental crisis or an environmental politics that neglects justice and equality. Instead an interconnected political ecology acknowledges the interweaving of ecological and environmental crises with generative economic and social reforms.

Demythicising and Remythicising the Mediterranean Morin, E. (2003).Demythicising and Remythicising the Mediterranean. Quaderns de la Mediterrània, 4 (Special issue: Los mediterráneos. Visiones contrastadas).http://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/4/amorin.pdf. Morin muses on the history and identity of the Mediterranean, and he advocates for a reinvigoration of a mythic sense of the Mediterranean. This mythic identity would act as a unifying force across the diversity of cultures that surround it. Finally, this identification with the Mediterranean calls on all to commit to preserve the ocean.

THE CHALLENGE OF COMPLEXITY

Foreword by Edgar Morin Translation by Alfonso Montuori

DEAR READER, I have devoted my whole work to exploring human complexity and at the same time to exploring the notion of complexity itself. Knowledge about humanity is dispersed in all the sciences and disciplines, including literature and science, and no education, primary, secondary or at the university level teaches us about our fundamental identity: what it means to be human. I have devoted myself to this enterprise starting with my first work on what it means to be human, “L’homme et la mort” (“Humanity and death”), and I have not ceased to pursue the nature of humanity, notably in Le “Paradigme Perdu” (“Paradigm Lost”) all the way up to “l’Humanité de l’humanité,” (“The Humanity of Humanity,” Volume 5 of Method ). I naturally couldn’t treat humans as closed systems: human beings also have a biological nature and depend on a living ecosystem (which in turn depends on the human being), and our physical nature is constituted by physio-chemical processes. It was therefore necessary to develop a method to reconnect all the elements of knowledge scattered in a conception of the human that could not be other than complex, because it had to demonstrate that a human being is not only spiritual, cultural, social, but also biological and physical. I was able to elaborate on this method during my research on the human. I started with systems theory, developing it and conceptualizing that any system, no matter what kind, is complex in its relation to its parts and whole, and in the emergence produced by its organization. I have drawn on the first uses of the notion of complexity in the work of Ashby, and then with Von Neumann and Von Foerster I found precious signs that provided me with the basis with which I could determine the conditions and means of complex knowledge and then complex thought (thought being what organizes and reflects on knowledge). On numerous occassions I have been able to use and test my method (which does not provide a program determined a priori, but an aid for cognitive strategies) in studies and articles on current events, ranging from the student revolt, which started in California and in 1968 spread all over the world, to globalization with all its effects on the planet. There seems to be increasing recognition of the complexity of our physical, biological, and human universe. But to say, “it’s complex” is to confess the difficulty we have in describing, in explaining, it is to express one’s confusion in front of an object that has too many diverse features, too much multiplicity and is too internally indistinct, with too many external connections. According to the dictionary, the synonyms of complex include “arduous, difficult, embarrassing, inextricable, tangled, intertwined, interlaced, indecipherable, obscure,

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difficult.” The word complexity refers to the entanglement of the object in question and the speaker’s embarrassment, because of an inability to determine, clarify, define, and finally an impossibility of action. The banal usage of the term means “it’s not simple, it’s not clear, it’s not black and white, we can’t trust appearance, there are some doubts, we don’t know what’s going on.” Complexity is a term that so full it’s empty. As it gets used more and more, it becomes more and more empty. We are facing a challenge of complexity. This challenge can be found in all knowledge, whether everyday life, politics, philosophy, and in a particularly pointed way, in scientific knowledge.

The Dissolution of Complexity The inability to recognize, to address, and to think complexity is the result of the domi nant cognitive system in our civilization. This system validates all perception and all description on the basis of clarity and distinction. It inculcates a form of knowing, originating in the sciences and technologies of the 19th century, that has expanded to include our social, political, and human activities. Everywhere it abstracts, meaning that it takes an object out of its context and out of the whole, rejects the connections and communications with its environment, inserting it in the compartment of a discipline whose borders arbitrarily break the systemicity (the relation of the parts to the whole) and multidimensionality of phenomena. It leads to mathematical abstraction which itself creates a break with the concrete, rejecting all that cannot be calculated and formalized. It separates and compartmentalizes knowledge, making it increasingly hard to place them in context. It pushes us to reduce knowledge of complex systems to the elements that constitute them, and, as Piaget says, “ . . . to consider simple that which appeared to us that way by its dissociation from the complex.” In this way, by isolating or fragmenting its objects, this form of knowing tends to emaciate the world. By reducing our knowledge of wholes to the sum of their parts, it weakens our ability to reconstitute knowledge. More generally, it atrophies our capacity to connect (information, facts, knowledge, ideas), in favor only of our capacity to separate. But knowledge can only be pertinent if it situates its object in its context, preferably in the global system it is a part of, only if it creates an ongoing process that separates and reconnects, analyses and synthesizes, abstracts and reinserts in its context. Without a doubt, all knowledge involves simplification to a greater or lesser degree, in the sense that it discards as insignificant, contingent, or superficial a certain number of the aspects of the phenomenon in question. But we are educated for over-simplification, rejecting everything that doesn’t fit into the scheme of reduction, disjunction, and decontextualization.

Blind Intelligence Blind intelligence has invaded all technical, political and social sectors. Economics, the most mathematically advanced social science became the most socially and humanly underdeveloped when it separated the social, historical, political,

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ecological, and psychological conditions from economic activities. Maurice Allais rightly states that “in economics, everything depends on everything, everything acts on everything.” Von Hayek wrote that “nobody can be a great economist and be just an economist.” He even adds that an economist who is just an economist can become harmful and a real danger. That’s why economists are increasingly unable to make even short-term predictions. Classical economic science was a discipline created as a closed system. Only a minority of “open” economists from Perroux to Passet, worked on breaking out of this closed system. Morgenstern shows that the notion of GNP blindly registers as positive growth system malfunctions, such as increases in traffic jams, and therefore in fuel consumption, pollution, and health costs. There is an antinomian connection between the marvels of the works that have emerged from technical rationality, like great bridges, tunnels, dams, supersonic aircraft, and spaceships, and the blindness concerning the human, social, and cultural cost of these works. The absence of contextualization leads to a closed rationality, or rationalization. Abstract and unidimensional rationalization triumphs on our planet. In Africa so-called rational agriculture has developed great monocultures with high yields, but it has destroyed subsistence agriculture, a whole network of social relations, and condemned entire populations to shanty towns or migration. Engineers planned the Aswan dam with great efficiency to produce electricity and regulate the flow of the Nile, but the dam also blocked a part of the lemon trees that fertilized the lower valley and of the fish that nourished the local residents. In this case, as in so many others, grandiose technological programs conceived in isolation ignored the human, cultural and social context. My collaborators Claude Fischler and Bernard Paillard, for instance, studied the development of the Fos complex which was created without awareness of ecological conditions and economic uncertainties. In medicine, stunning progress has been made and continues to be made in the elimination or reduction of epidemics, the growth of vaccines, organ transplants, the prodigious success of transplant surgery, the first steps of predictive medicine, but medical hyperspecialization has decidedly noxious effects: organs are treated independently of each other, and independently of the body as a whole. What cures one organ can in turn often cause harm to other ones, and, as a result of the same decontextualization, drugs cause what are known as iatrogenic diseases. The body itself is viewed as a closed system that only benefits from chemical treatment. The body is split from the mind and spirit which in turn are treated by psychiatry or psychology largely independently of the body, of the social, cultural, and family context. The general practitioner (GP) can reconnect the organs to the body, the body to the mind, and the latter to the contexts of family and culture. The GP used to play this role in days gone by, when the patient was known personally as well as psychologically and as the member of a family, and the doctor could follow all his patients. In today’s cities, the GP is not the conductor who knows the individual parts of all the instruments in the orchestra, but a lower-level practitioner who directs clients often barely known to specialists for a variety of tests. There is undoubtedly a reaction against this sort of approach. We have seen for instance the emergence of psycho-neuro-immunology, which takes into account not only how physical conditions affect the mind, but how the mind affects the body, and the rise of group therapy and family therapy. But we have not yet reached the point of exploring our problems in their full bio-psycho-social character. We have not created the institutions or the ways of thinking that would allow us to make these connections.

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An intelligence that is fragmented, compartmentalized, mechanistic, disjunctive, and reductionistic, breaks up the complexity of the world into disconnected fragments, splits up problems, separates what is connected, and unidimensionalizes what is multi-dimensional. It is an intelligence that is at once short- and far-sighted, colorblind, and monocular. More often than not it ends up blind. It precludes the possibility of understanding and reflection, as well as any corrective judgment or long-term perspective. The more problems become multidimensional, the more there is an incapacity to conceive their multidimensionality. The more problems become planetary, the more they remain unthought. The more the crisis progresses, the greater our incapacity to conceive of the crisis. Incapable of envisioning the planetary context and complexity, blind intelligence makes us unconscious and irresponsible. It believes in the pertinence and the trustworthiness of its planning activities, which often ignore the conditions, the constraints and possibilities, of the context for action. Consequently, as with natural catastrophes, there are human catastrophes with innumerable victims and consequences that cannot be accounted for let alone predicted. Simplifying thought submits to the hegemony of disjunction, reduction, and calculation. It can only conceive of simple objects that obey general laws. It produces knowledge that is anonymous, blind to its own context and complexity, ignoring the singular, the concrete, existence, the subject, affect, suffering, joy, desires, goals, spirit, and consciousness. It considers the cosmos, life, human beings, and society as trivial deterministic machines, of which we could predict every output if we only knew every input. It always chooses as true the simplest answer, by virtue not of Ockham’s Razor, but with a chainsaw that strips away all complexity in principle. But, as Musil asks in “A Man Without Qualities,” to what extent should the importance of a psychological fact be proportional to its simplicity? The application of simplifying thought to human phenomena leads to the crudest ideas. As Wittgenstein remarked in his “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” “the explanation of the practices of these (so-called) primitives is much cruder than the practices themselves . . . Frazer’s account of the magical and religious notions of men is unsatisfactory: it makes these notions appear as mistakes.” And in fact, the aberrant simplification of this kind of thinking inevitably leads to the consideration that all belief, all myth, all doctrine of non-western civilizations is a web of mistakes and superstitions. It is only in the last decades, with the decline of Europe and the rich crisis of European rationalization that there is no longer this reduction to error of anything that does not enter into our simplifying system of intelligibility. At the same time, disjunctive intelligence is terribly efficient. By throwing complexity into its trash-cans, and retaining only the quantifiable and algorithmic, by isolating its objects and subjecting them to its experiments, it allowed and developed manipulation, out of which emerged its innumerable technical victories, as well as its ignorance of the perverse effects of those victories. Simplification becomes directly correlated with manipulation, itself correlated with the idea, or rather the myth, of the conquest of nature and the mastery of humans over the Universe. It is what Heidegger called a principle of enframing. As Michel Serres has said, quantification leads to mastery, to which we should add, mistaking an abstraction for reality, as well as a rejection of everything that does not fit into the project of mastery.

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There is a “paradigm” of disjunction and reduction, within which there is a principle of selection/rejection. This paradigm is present yet invisible in the minds of those who have received its imprint. It demands that we dissolve complexity by bringing it back to its basic elements, dissolve what cannot be formalized to reduce what is real to its mathematical skeleton. It requires us to separate object from environment, order from disorder, disciplines within the sciences, and science from philosophy. The process selects all that is order, quantity, measure. Rejection eliminates being, existence, the individual, the singular. This paradigm regulates all forms of knowledge, and it has dominated in scientific, technological, and political knowledge. Despite the formidable scientific revolutions of the 20th century, and the internal autonomies which, like an aging Empire, it had to grant certain provinces, multiple but scattered, it survives hiding underground and dominates the majority of minds. In fact, the incredible development of the physical sciences and their technical applications (use of nuclear energy, conquest of space) was tied to an incredible inability to consider human realities in their complexity, an inability to nurture mutual understanding at the heart of humanity, and to respond to human problems such as war, famine, or poverty. The development of the physical sciences is connected to the development of the moral under-development of the techno-scientific spirit. It is in this way that “time is out of joint.” A loose way of interpreting this Shakespearian formula is to say, this is the age of disjunction, and we don’t know how to connect. Science is, nevertheless, complex in its nature, because it involves both consensus about its values and internal conflict of theories. It walks on four distinct legs that oppose each other in a complementary fashion, namely rationalism, empiricism, imagination, and verification. It is these two dialogics, complex and mutually interfering, that have fostered its formidable progress including the most recent progress which will undermine and eventually end the domination of disjunction and reduction. It appears that simplification has beaten complexity, in the same way that Rome beat Greece, but we know that in the end the Greek spirit was victorious over its barbaric victor. The science of the 19th century’s march to unite and simplify has run aground: in its obsessive search for the elementary part and the Universal Law, it has encountered, in its last advances, and without being able to reabsorb it, the complexity it eliminated in its beginnings. The method we have elaborated over the process of a long journey is an aid to the strategy of thinking and not a methodology, or a program to be applied. It contains its own paradox: whoever thinks along the method of complexity thinks by themself, and does likewise for others. Method concerns our way of thinking in all domains of knowledge. It requires a new conceptual foundation, and leads to complex thought. Complex thought will bear the mark of disorder and disintegration, relativizing order and disorder, centralizing the concept of organization, and developing a profound reorganization of the principles that determine intelligibility. Such an enterprise elicits formidable resistance: everywhere minds have been shaped to eliminate ambiguity, to be satisfied by simple truths, to practice Manichean oppositions of good against evil, including at the highest levels of academic life. As Tocqueville wrote, “An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.” Such an enterprise also leads to enormous misunderstandings. Even though in Method I: The Nature of Nature, I insisted on the idea that the treatment of complexity

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reveals and emphasizes the uncertainty inherent in all knowledge, and despite the fact that I have indicated that complex thought holds the awareness of the limited nature of all thought, simplifying minds attribute to it the characteristics of a Hegelian total system. Complex thought cannot, nor does it want to be a universal system of intelligibility because it has to be dialogical, open, and contain incertitude at its core, utilizing the notion of system to understand organization. There are also poor conceptions of complexity that rest on the very same principles they wished to leave behind. Certain researchers of complex systems are in search of the “laws of complexity,” ignoring that the notion of law holds only for a simplified universe . . . As Hayek states, “the search for Laws is not a marker of scientific procedure, but only a characteristic proper to theories concerning simple phenomena.” The issue, therefore, is not to search for laws or a new system, but to integrate a method that allows for complex knowing. The reform of method cannot be separated from a reform in thought, which in turn cannot be separated from a reform in education. EDGAR MORIN Paris 2016

INTRODUCTION Edgar Morin at 100 A Biblio/Biographical Sketch It is not certainty or assurance but need that has driven me to undertake this work, day after day, for years. I have felt myself possessed, by the same evident necessity of trans-substantiation as that by which the spider secretes its thread and weaves its web. I have felt myself plugged into the planetary patrimony, animated by the religion of that which bonds, the rejection of that which rejects, and infinite solidarity; what the Tao calls the Spirit of the Valley which “receives all the waters that flow into it.” (Morin this volume, p. 59) Every human being, even the most anonymous, is a veritable cosmos. Not only because the swarm of interactions in her brain is larger than all the interactions among stellar bodies in the cosmos, but also because she harbours within herself a fabulous and unknown world. Morin (2008: p. 93) The reform in thinking is a key anthropological and historical problem. This implies a mental revolution of considerably greater proportions than the Copernican revolution. Never before in the history of humanity have the responsibilities of thinking weighed so crushingly on us. (Morin & Kern, 1999, p. 132) We need a kind of thinking that relinks that which is disjointed and compartmentalized, that respects diversity as it recognizes unity, and that tries to discern interdependencies. We need a radical thinking (which gets to the root of problems), a multidimensional thinking, and an organizational or systemic thinking. (Morin & Kern, 1999, p. 130) . . . our thinking is ruled by a profound and hidden paradigm without our being aware of it. We believe we see what is real; but we see in reality only what this paradigm allows us to see, and we obscure what it requires us not to see. (Morin 2008, p. 86) The course of the human adventure is unpredictable: this should incite us to prepare our minds to expect the unexpected and confront it. Every person who takes on educational responsibilities must be ready to go to the forward posts of uncertainty of our times. (Morin, 2001, p. 3) We should learn to navigate on a sea of uncertainties, sailing in and around islands of certainty. (Morin, 2001, p. 3)

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I know more and more that the only worthwhile knowledge is that which feeds on uncertainty and that the only living thought is that which maintains itself at the temperature of its own destruction. (Morin this volume, p. 59) The word method may have several meanings. First of all, there is the Cartesian meaning of method as “rightly conducting reason and seeking truth in the sciences.” It is precisely this meaning of the word method that I subscribe to, and extend further: to rightly use our reason not only in the sciences but in all matters concerning knowledge, including knowledge of knowledge, and in all matters concerning our relations with the outside world, with life, with society, with ourselves. (Morin 1990, pp. 256–57, translation by AM)

Edgar Morin is a thinker for our times. In a rapidly changing, interconnected world, full of uncertainty, facing what he has called “a crisis of the future,” Morin’s work provides a guide for the complexity of the challenges before us. How can we make sense of this new world, in the throes of a transformation, a world that seems to hover perilously close to the abyss? Morin is fond of quoting the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: No sabemos lo que nos pasa y eso es precisamente lo que nos pasa. We don’t know what is happening to us, and that is exactly what is happening. And yet there seems to be an overwhelming desire for certainty. Wherever we turn we see the return of fundamentalisms, absolutisms, and the anxious, at times delirious search to have the feeling of certainty that neuroscience suggests is even more important to us than actually understanding what is going on (Burton, 2008). In many countries, the level of public discourse has become so polarized and profoundly disturbing precisely because in this cauldron of change, punctuated by the horrors of terrorism, pandemics, racism, bombings, wars, poverty, injustice, and hopelessness, so many voices seem to speak with absolute certainty and such unwillingness to listen to other perspectives. It is so tempting to fall back on simple solutions, on scapegoating, on the certainty of solutions whether technological or political. It is so easy to ignore the global and local complexities and reduce multidimensional, systemic problems to one single answer. And it is so frightening to admit we don’t really know what’s going on. In the face of complexity, the great temptation is to simplify to the point of simplification, to seek simplistic interpretations, and simplistic solutions. But simplification abstracts and isolates. It hides the relational nature of systems, their interactions and interdependencies with their environments, with other systems, with time, with the observer (Morin, 1981). And in an interconnected, interdependent world that is rapidly changing, that is at the heart of the problem. A new world cannot be created with the same way of thinking of the world that is dying. Stephen Toulmin’s book Cosmopolis explores the vision that emerged in 17th century Europe and became dominant for the next 300 years (Toulmin, 1992). This vision led to great scientific advances and tremendous changes, but it was also deeply flawed. It was a vision of what Toulmin called Cosmopolis. It emerged after a prolonged period of war and chaos in Europe. In an effort to confront this unbearable disorder, it was a vision in which Descartes reigned, and where context was eliminated and simplification was stressed, where phenomena were abstracted from their environments in the hope of eliminating exogenous factors and asserting clear and distinct ideas. This world saw, as Toulmin put it, a shift from the particular to the universal, the local to the general, the timely to the timeless, and an obsession with order and certainty.

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The paradigm of simplicity puts order in the universe and chases out disorder. Order is reduced to one law, one principle. Simplicity can see either the one or the many, but it can’t see that the One is perhaps at the same time Many. The principle of simplicity either separates that which is linked (disjunction), or unifies that which is diverse (reduction) (2008, p. 39)

For Morin, this simplification has become a mutilation. As a guiding concept it is misguiding us. He begins the first volume of Method (Morin, 2008b) by situating his exploration of complexity in the context of our solar system and the sun. Right away he establishes what will be a key neologism that captures an essential dimension of his work and thought: Chaosmos. Not the well-ordered Cosmos of 17th century Europe, the Newtonian order of the well-oiled Machine, a world where King Order reigns, but also not the decaying or chaotic or completely disordered universe of Clausius and Boltzmann. Hence the Joycean Chaosmos, the antagonistic, concurrent, and complementary interactions between order and disorder. This term captures some of the dialogic complexity of Morin’s vision. It is also a warning that we are not dealing with something that is finished, but an ongoing process. The subtitle of the first section of Method is Order, Disorder, Organization. In the sub-section entitled The New World: Chaosmos, Chaos, Cosmos, Physis, Morin reminds us that if classical science didn’t know what to do with chaos, and as a result rejected it, in the new world chaos is dynamic and what he calls “genesic,” a neologism which we might also translate with reference to the terms genesis and generative. Cosmogenesis happens in and through the dialogue between disorder, order, and organization. Chaosmos reflects an understanding of the world that recognizes the interplay of order and disorder, in the complexity of their relationship. It reflects the need to develop a way to make sense of a world that is not completely orderly. Not the ideal of order of Cosmopolis, but the reality of Chaosmopolis, if you will. Morin invites us to use a way of knowing that does not start with the fundamental premise of order, viewing all disorder as epiphenomenal, as a sign of human ignorance that will eventually be resolved as a deeper order is revealed, or as something to be rejected in favor of pristine order. It is also an introduction to what Morin calls the dialogic, rather than the dialectic: the interaction between two terms that does not necessarily lead to a transcendent synthesis. The world of Cosmopolis was driven by order and simplification, as well rigid dualisms, in the process seeking in vain to eliminate complexity and disorder. The dream of Cosmopolis did not lead to a well-ordered society, or eliminate the threat of war. It could be argued that it died in the 20th century, which culminated in the death of 60 million in World War II. Today more than ever a way is needed to approach the complexity of life and world, so radically interconnected, surprising, uncertain, emergent, dangerous, and unwilling to be boxed in and ordered around. Morin (2004c) already warned that (T)he mind must remain ever vigilant in its permanent struggle against simplification. The risks of simplification are amplified in periods of collective hysteria, of crisis and war. We find ourselves in such a period, and therefore there is an increased need for both complex thinking and a complex ethics. (p. 223)

What is needed is not simplification, but an ability to address the great complexity of our condition. Morin shows the paradigm of simplicity still dominates the Western mind. Because it is disjunctive and reductive, this dominant paradigm cannot account

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for interdependencies, for systemic phenomena, for disorder, for uncertainty and for the multidimensional nature of the problems facing us which reflect the realities of life and of human beings themselves. Intelligence that is fragmented, compartmentalized, mechanistic, disjunctive, and reductionistic breaks the complexity of the world into disjointed pieces, splits up problems, separates that which is linked together, and renders unidimensional the multidimensional . . . The more problems are multidimensional, the less chance there is to grasp the crisis. The more problems become planetary, the more unthinkable they become. Incapable of seeing the planetary context in all its complexity, blind intelligence fosters unconsciousness and irresponsibility. It has become the bearer of death. (Morin & Kern, 1999, p. 1) If the paradigm of simplification relies on disjunction and reduction, the paradigm of complexity relies on distinction and conjunction—‘to distinguish without disjoining, to associate without identifying or reducing.’ Complex thinking seeks to account for experience in a unified manner and, accordingly, conjoin concepts by overcoming disciplinary isolation. Complex thinking, however, does not lead to know-it all thinking. To take complexity seriously means that one realizes the irreducible ambiguity and uncertainty of the world, which present inquirers with the ongoing need to complexify their thinking. (Morin, 2008, p. 6).

Morin’s call is beginning to be heeded, as we shall see. As an example, noted organization and leadership scholar Haridimos Tsoukas has critiqued scientific rationality in management thinking, convincingly arguing that the world described in the literature and the theories it develops do not reflect the complexity of lived organizational experience (Tsoukas, 2017). What is needed, Tsoukas argues, is theory that complexifies rather than simplifies. Morin’s Complex Thought is far from being some kind of a hyper-rational, ultrascientific, unfeeling panacea. For Morin (Morin, 2008d), knowing and thinking are not about reaching an absolute, certain truth, but about a dialogue with uncertainty, because “we are condemned to uncertain thought, a thought riddled with holes, a thought that has no foundation of absolute certainty” (p. 46). The term Complex Thought may be deceptive in the sense that it can give the impression Morin is speaking strictly about thinking, divorced from feeling, but as the quotations above indicate, for Morin there’s not one without the other, and tellingly, the concluding section of the second volume of Method, La vie de la vie, or The life of life, concludes with a moving paean to love. Complex Thought is not required to purify itself of “subjectivity” and affect, on the contrary (Morin, 2004b): We now know that every rational act of the mind is accompanied by affect. Though it can immobilize reason, only affect is capable of mobilizing it. (p.152) Reason and passion can and should correct each other. We can simultaneously reason with our passions and impassion our reason. (p.153) In this way the idea of wisdom is complexified: it is not a question of eliminating affect, but rather of integrating it. We know that passion can blind us, but also that it can illuminate reason if the latter is allowed to illuminate it in return. (p.152)

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Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and the knowledge we lost in information, asked T.S. Eliot. Rather than presenting solutions, in his effort to articulate Complex Thought and the beginnings of a Method, Morin is inviting the cultivation of wisdom that is so necessary to confront the challenges we are facing. Accumulation of more knowledge is not enough. If the scientific revolution brought us an explosion of new and almost miraculous knowledge, what is needed now is a thorough reflection on humanity’s relationship with knowledge, on the knowledge of knowledge, and on the role of the knower. Confronted with a plurality of perspectives on issues, Morin stresses the need to engage these different views, all the while reflecting on our own view. As the noted Italian family therapist Mara Selvini Palazzoli writes (Selvini Palazzoli, 1990): Since, in the relationship between observing and observed system, the observer is as much part of the observed system as the observed system is part of the intellect and culture of the observing system, Morin finds that the observer observes himself while he observes the system. (p. 128)

Morin offers an approach to knowledge—and to life—that recognizes complexity and uncertainty, and views them not as enemies to be eliminated but as realities to be engaged, as well as sources of creativity and change. There is no deterministic vision of the future, no certain path laid out for us, but rather a path laid out in walking, a path to be created together.

A Brief Overview The creative intellect is that which is ready to abandon classifications known from the past and to acknowledge in its strongest form the proposition that life, including one’s individual life, is pregnant with unheard of possibilities and may be the vehicle for transformations without precedent. When such a possibility is accepted, the coercive power of all known systems of classification and the predictive value of regularities based on a history of repetitions are set aside in favor of an openness to the forces of life that are pressing for novel expression both in one’s individual existence and through it as a vehicle for the creation of an unforeseeable future. (Barron, 1995, p. 63) Creative individuals are those who have learned to prefer irregularities and apparent disorder and to trust themselves to make a new order, simply because in their own experience they have been confronted with interpersonal situations that made prediction on the basis of repetition extremely difficult, but which by dint of effort and through the grace of unusual aptitude for accurate perception proved finally resolvable. (Barron, 1995, p. 64)

Edgar Morin was born in Paris in 1921. A profoundly Mediterranean yet thoroughly planetary thinker with no fixed disciplinary abode, Morin’s contributions span a number of fields and cover a dizzying number of topics. His contributions are to be found in such diverse fields as sociology, media studies, visual anthropology, philosophy, qualitative research methods, politics, systems theory, ecology, aesthetics, and education. Recently, and with increasing frequency, his contribution is being felt in the natural sciences, particularly in biology and the development of systems biology,

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but also in other fields (Auffray et al., 2003; Malaina, 2015; Roux-Rouquié, 2000, 2002). Because of this unusual diversity of interests in an age of hyper-specialization, Morin cannot be easily categorized. He can also, as a result, easily be misunderstood and trivialized, a fate that is all too common for inter- and trans-disciplinary scholars1 (Maruyama, 2004). A review of Morin’s intellectual journey helps us to better understand the man and his mission. This contextualization itself requires some context of its own. Morin’s work, was, until quite recently, not well known in the English-speaking world. This can give the impression to English-speakers that he is therefore also not well-known in his own country or anywhere else, since the assumption is often that whatever is significant must be translated for English-language consumption. In fact, Morin is quite a celebrity in France and very well known in Latin countries (and in other parts of the world, as we shall see) where he is viewed as one of the major thinkers our time. The prestigious newspaper Le Monde devoted a special stand-alone supplement to his work, and he is arguably one of the few remaining public intellectuals, regularly appearing on television and other media to address important current events. He is consistently featured on the cover of magazines, including a special issue of the magazine Sciences Humaines devoted to entirely to his work. The 21st century has seen the emergence of several institutions devoted to Morin’s thought, such as the Edgar Morin center for the study of complexity at the University of Messina in Sicily, the Multiversidad Mundo Real Edgar Morin, a university in Mexico based on the principles of Morin’s work, a research center at Ricardo Palma University in Lima, Peru, and the renaming of the CETSAH, or Centre d’Études Transdisciplinaires, Sociologie, Anthropologie, Histoire, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the prestigious French National Research Center, as the Centre Edgar-Morin. Morin’s 100th birthday was celebrated in 2021 with the publication of several books of essays in his honor, in French, Italian, and Spanish, and an extensive media presence in France, Italy, and Latin America . In his home country of France, he received the highest honor of the Grand Croix de la Legion D’Honneur from President Macron. 2021 also saw the publication of an autobiographical work, Les souvenirs viennent à ma rencontre (Morin, 2021), or Memories are coming to meet me, preceded by a volume published in 2020 in which Morin outlines lessons learned from the pandemic, and a volume reflecting on life lessons at age 100 (Morin, 2020a, 2020b). As of this writing, Morin’s work has been translated in 28 languages in 42 countries. He has been most influential in Southern Europe, Latin America, and Frenchspeaking Africa, as well as more recently in China and Japan. Numerous books have been written about him in France, Spain, Italy, Canada, and England, as well as in Latin America and French-speaking Africa (Anselmo, 2005, 2006; Banywesize, 2007; Bianchi, 2001; Celeste, 2009; Ciurana, 1997; De Siena, 2001; Fages, 1980; Fortin, 2002, 2008; Gembillo, 2008b; Gembillo & Anselmo, 2013; Kakangu, 2007; Kofman, 1996; Manghi, 2009). Morin was recently the subject of a second major biography (Lemieux, 2009) as well as a documentary about his life on French national television by Jeanne Mascolo (Edgar Morin, a planetary thinker) and several other documentaries including one on his work on cinema. An Emeritus Director of Research at the CNRS, Morin has received honorary doctorates (appropriately in subjects ranging from political science to psychology and sociology) from universities including Messina, Geneva, Milan, Bergamo, Thessaloniki, La Paz, Odense, Perugia, Cosenza, Palermo,

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Nuevo Leon, Université de Laval à Québec, Brussels, Barcelona, Guadalajara, Valencia, Vera Cruz, Santiago, the Catholic University of Porto Alegre, the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Candido Mendes University (Rio De Janeiro), and he holds an itinerant UNESCO chair in Complex Thought. At 100, Morin is without a doubt more broadly accepted than ever before, and indeed viewed in many ways as prescient about the topics he has addressed and their relevance for contemporary times.2 Morin’s books cover a rich variety of topics in such a wide range of disciplines that even in this introduction I will have to discuss only a selection of the 60 or so books he has published, in order to give an idea of the scope of his work. Over the years Morin has categorized his work in different ways. In the boxed set of Method, published in 2008, we find the following categorization: Method, which comprises the six volumes of Method and comes in at approximately 2,500 pages, with the first volume, The Nature of Nature, published in 1977 and the final volume, Ethics, published in 2004; Complexus covers numerous more theoretical works on complexity focusing on systems theory, cybernetics, information theory, sociology and the philosophy of science; Pedagogy addresses Morin’s work on education, inspired by requests from both the French government and UNESCO; Fundamental Anthropology covers his work on death, cinema, and Le Paradigme Perdu (Morin, 1979), which was a precursor to Method, an effort to explore how the study of human nature integrates science and the humanities, as well as the three volumes on the “unity of man,” organized with Italian cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Morin & Piattelli-Palmarini, 1978); Our Times explores current events over a period of 50 years, including ecology, popular culture, cinema and the Hollywood star system, the contested nature and history of Europe, the Soviet Union, the student revolts of 1968, his reflections on the Israeli–Palestinian crisis, and the experience of Jews in Europe; Politics, with both his early effort to articulate the relationship between human nature and politics and his later work on creating a “politics of civilization,” a term that was picked up by President Sarkozy in a way that Morin immediately and publicly declared illegitimate; Lived Experience consists of eight volumes of journals and first-person accounts and reflections, starting in the 1950s and covering among other things his experience in California in the late 1960s (Morin, 2008a), the fall of the USSR, a trip to China, and the death of his wife, Edwige (Morin, 2009a); Transcriptions of Talks concludes with several interviews and assorted presentations. In the process of reviewing some of these volumes, we can begin to see Morin’s “path laid down in walking,” and begin to recognize the threads that tie much of his work together.3

Beginning with Transdisciplinarity Edgar Morin’s first book was L’An Zero de l’Allemagne [Germany Year Zero]. It was published in 1946, after the end of World War II when Morin, then in his midtwenties, was in Germany with the French Army. Germany Year Zero was his effort to document the devastation of one of Europe’s most sophisticated and cultured countries, the home of Goethe, Beethoven, Kant, and other towering figures of Western civilization. It was an attempt to understand how such a country could have been overtaken by the horror of the Nazi era. Central to the book is Morin’s unwillingness to reduce Germany and Germans to “sales boches” (filthy Germans), and to

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assess the horror of the situation in a broad context and with an unusual depth of feeling. Here we already find a cornerstone of what Morin, the Jewish resistance fighter who lived in mortal danger during the war years, would later call Complex Thought, a refusal to reduce and thereby mutilate. Complex Thought, as Morin was later to articulate it, seeks to avoid the dangers of reduction, disjunction and polarization. Morin did not want to reduce Germany and its people to the actions of the Nazis, which in the immediate aftermath of the war was all too easily done. This refusal to reduce, and to take a Manichean, simplistic view (views that are driven by fear, anger, and other emotions, but often masquerade as coldly rational) is a central element of Morin’s thought. The term reductionism is used with increasing frequency these days. For Morin, the source of his concern about reductionism emerges not only from his scientific inquiry, but is embedded in the existential reality of daily life. It manifests in the unwillingness to be a reductionist in his view of human beings and in the ethical stance of not reducing anybody to their worst characteristic or action. Morin’s next work, published in 1951, was L’Homme et la Mort [Humanity and Death] (Morin, 1970a). Here we find, in typically Morinian fashion, a sustained meditation on death that is deeply personal as well as planetary (drawing extensively, for example, on the world’s customs and religions), both holographic and multidimensional, to use terms Morin would later employ. Personal, because Morin lost his mother at an early age, an event that affected him profoundly. The loss of his mother haunts Morin’s work in too many ways to address in this brief sketch.4 Morin’s work is planetary in scope because he explores death cross-culturally in the great religions and spiritual traditions, throughout human history, anthropologically, sociologically, psychologically, and in the natural sciences, finding that the plurality of interpretive frameworks shed light, each in a different way, on this most profound event. Morin’s work has always had a holographic, multidimensional quality: the part and the whole are always interconnected, and one finds the part in the whole and the whole in the part. The subject is approached from a variety of dimensions, from the biological to the cultural to the psychological and mythological, each illuminating it in different ways. Morin’s book on death brings together two themes that recur throughout his work. The motivation for inquiry emerges from personal experience, most dramatically of course with the death of his mother, certainly not through abstract speculation or disciplinary agendas. Another key element in this work is transdisciplinarity. Morin’s inquiry is never limited by disciplinary boundaries. It draws on a whole range of what he was later to call pertinent knowledge (Morin, 2001b). In other words, he is not driven by problem solving in the context of the agenda of a specific discipline.5 Rather, he is motivated by his own experience, in this case mainly the loss of his mother, more specifically by the need to make sense of lived experience, his own and that of every other human being inevitably facing loss, and by the complexity of the topic he is addressing. The research is led by the demands of the topic itself and moves across disciplines to draw on knowledge that is pertinent as it emerges from the inquiry, not guided (and limited) by disciplinary boundaries. This is central to what makes Morin’s vision of transdisciplinarity so important and so timely: it is not an attempt to create abstract, totalizing, theoretical frameworks, or to further the agenda of a discipline. It is grounded in the need to find knowledge that is pertinent for the human quest to understand and make sense of lived experience, and of the “big questions,” which are

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increasingly left out of academic discourse, precisely because they are too complex and inevitably span a variety of disciplines. Lived experience, in this view, simply cannot satisfactorily be reduced to the perspective of one discipline. Morin’s transdisciplinary approach crosses and integrates a plurality of disciplines. A key dimension of transdisciplinarity is understanding the way that knowledge is constructed in various disciplines and approaches (Montuori, 2005a). Morin’s work is radical in an etymological sense because it traces the roots of knowledge, digging deep to find the underlying assumptions that form the foundations for the differing perspectives. His transdisciplinarity explicitly surfaces the assumptions of the many different disciplines it addresses. While it does not demand the complete in-depth specialization a discipline-based researcher might have, transdisciplinary research does demand a more philosophical or meta-paradigmatic position that steps back to observe how different paradigms and theoretical perspectives shape the construction of knowledge, exploring the roots of the disciplines and the way subjects have been interpreted and constructed, often in a multiplicity of ways. The point is for researchers to become aware of their own assumptions concerning the process of inquiry, as well as uncovering the assumptions of the various perspectives that inform their topic, so that they may draw on specialized knowledge wisely. Morin’s approach has always been both planetary and personal. We later find wonderful examples of this “holographic” method in his account of his experience at the Salk Institute in late 1960s California, available in English as California Journal (Morin, 2008a), as is Vidal and His Family (Morin, 2009b), both books published by Sussex Academic Press. The latter is at once a biography of Morin’s father, whose name was Vidal, a history of his family, of Sephardic Jews, and of Europe, interweaving personal letters and macro-history, family anecdotes, and the larger culture. The political, cultural, and religious context of Jewish migrations provide the reader with a rich picture of the 20th century. In Pour Sortir du Ventieme Siecle [Leaving the 20th Century Behind ] (Morin, 2004b), Morin addresses key political issues through a combination of theoretical and historical reflection on the state of the world grounded with extensive examples and reflections from his own experience.

Autocritique Morin’s early work on death shows his willingness to grapple with profound existential issues so often obliterated in the frequently all too sterile and fragmented discourse of social science and philosophy. Morin’s work does not come from an attempt to escape life for an ivory tower, or to control it through intricate theoretical frameworks and maps, but from an effort to immerse himself in it more deeply, to provide the sciences with ways to account more adequately for the lived complexity of life, and indeed to assist the reader in that process of immersion. Morin characterizes his later work on complex thought as an attempt to develop a method that does not “mutilate,” that does not fragment and abstract, that does not do violence to life, that is not unidimensional, anemic, antiseptic, homogenized, pars pro toto. This transdisciplinary approach could already be seen emerging in the journal Arguments that Morin led along with Roland Barthes, Kostas Axelos, and others from 1956 to 1962. The unusually broad range of topics addressed in the journal reflected a focus on issues rather than disciplinary agendas, and a willingness to range far and wide.

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After the Second World War, the influence of the Left and of the Communist party in European thought was enormous. There were very clear boundaries with which to assess what was considered to be outside the party line. Morin’s independent thought was clearly too open and increasingly heretical. In Autocritique (Morin, 2004a), published in 1959, Morin documents his expulsion from the party in 1951 for writing an “inappropriate” critical article. Morin’s Autocritique is a remarkable document from an “engaged” intellectual grappling with the complexities of political life. An exercise in honesty and self-reflection, it provides us with rare visibility into the life and thought of a man in the thick of the events that were shaping European and indeed planetary culture at that time, such as Stalin’s rise to power and the repression in the Eastern block countries. Drake (2002) writes that Morin was “one of the few PCF (French Communist Party) intellectuals who refused to blindly follow the Party line” (p. 70). Exploring phenomena that are now referred to as self-deception, cognitive dissonance, groupthink, and closed-minded thinking and behavior in himself and in “the party,” we find another theme that was to run through all of Morin’s future work. In his 7 Complex Lessons in Education for the Future (Morin, 2001), a document he wrote at the request of UNESCO, the first lesson is about self-deception and combating “error and illusion.” How is it that we let ourselves literally become possessed by ideas, by the party, by our “faith,” by our “cause,” by what we believe to be “science?” Autocritique marks an important turning point for Morin. While we normally assume that we have ideas, it became clear to Morin that ideas can also have us: they can literally possess us. Human beings can be possessed by ideologies and belief systems, whether on the Left or the Right, whether in science or religion. Henceforth, Morin’s effort would be to develop a form of thinking—and of being in the world— that is always self-reflective and self-critical, always open and creative, always eager to challenge the fundamental assumptions underlying a system of thought, and always alert for the ways in which, covertly or overtly, our thinking has a hard core that cannot be questioned or challenged. Knowledge always also requires the knowledge of knowledge, the ongoing investigation and interrogation of how we construct knowledge. And indeed, Knowledge of Knowledge is the title of the third volume of Morin’s Method (Morin, 1986). The participation of the observer in every observation, the role of self-reflection and self-inquiry in inquiry, the dangers of reduction and disjunction, and the often hidden motives of the quest for certainty will be central and recurring themes in all of Morin’s epistemology of complexity. The epistemological position integrating the inquirer in every inquiry is central to Morin’s work. It can be found in his philosophy of science and is a cornerstone for his ethics, developed in the sixth and final volume of Method. For Morin this means constant vigilance, self-examination, self-criticism, what he refers to as an ongoing effort of “psychic culture,” in order to avoid phenomena such as self-deception, projection, and groupthink. Morin’s experiences with the Communist party sensitized him to the many ways human beings can become victims of errors and illusions, “wanting to believe,” and above all, perhaps, driven by an illusion of certainty and a desire to categorize and bring order to a complex, uncertain world. For Morin, Homo Sapiens Sapiens is really Homo Sapiens Demens, and there is a rich complexity in this “uniduality.” Homo is clearly not only sapiens, or wise, let alone doubly wise. Homo is also demens, or irrational, prone to wild excess, feverish imagination, and unconstrained passion and emotion. But demens should not be

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viewed as exclusively “diabolic” or “demented” but rather as also contributing in a dialogic fashion to our imagination and inspiration, manifesting in great art and the development of new perspectives, ecstasy and passion as well as in desperate hallucinations. Above all, we see here an ongoing cybernetic process of navigation and calibration between Sapiens and Demens, rather than a static black and white choice between good and bad. The imagination and the imaginary play a central part in Morin’s understanding of the human, as we shall see. While rejecting the Communist party, Morin acknowledges the importance of Hegel and Marx in his thinking in a delightful volume called Mes Philosophes, or My Philosophers (Morin, 2011b). Concepts such as the dialectic, totality, “generic man,” and praxis were all to find their way into Morin’s work but transformed and complexified. They provided the initial impetus for reflection and transformation: The dialectic, for instance, was in Morin’s work transformed into the dialogic, which does not lead to an inevitable synthesis. The concept of totality—such a vital one to engage for someone with Morin’s omnivorous tendencies—was made to dialogue with Adorno’s statement that totality is untruth.

Stars, Mass Culture, and the Sociology of the Present At the same time that Morin was writing about death and engaging in a very public political “self-critique” regarding his participation in the Communist party, and the way that this applied holographically to the larger issues of the role of ideologies and totalitarianism in the context of a larger planetary culture, he was also beginning to write a series of books on what might be initially thought of as “lighter fare.” In the mid- to late 1950s and early 1960s, Morin wrote groundbreaking works about cinema, the Hollywood star system, and popular culture.6 Morin’s innovative work in this area has been recognized as crucially important—both prescient and still vitally relevant in a discussion that has often drowned in vapid and sensationalist scholarship as well as thuggish Marxism. Lorraine Mortimer pointedly reminds us of how sociologist Pierre Bourdieu attacked Morin’s study of mass culture because mass culture was “an instrument of alienation at the service of capitalism to divert the proletariat from its revolutionary mission” (Mortimer, 2001, p. 78). As Mortimer writes in the introduction to Cinema, or the Imaginary Man (Morin, 2005b), Morin’s book was a breath of fresh air when most of the discourse on cinema was highly critical of “bourgeois” entertainment, viewing it as opium for the masses that promoted capitalist values. In fact, in her 2006 review, Martha Blassnig finds that In 1956, with The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man, Morin introduced a more complex approach to an understanding of the cinema and its audiences than has been dealt with before or since, which makes this work, among others, so contemporary and relevant. Drawing on the work of a variety of thinkers from various fields such as sociology, philosophy and psychology, Morin reintroduces the imaginary as a fundamental human condition, exemplified in the process of cinema perception. (p. 163)

Writing in the late 1950s in Stars, Morin (2005a) introduceda completely countercultural idea that the cult of celebrity has a strong religious component. Research conducted 50 years later in the United Kingdom and the United States

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suggests celebrity worship can indeed play a role similar to that of religion and is the source of new “myths” and mythical figures in today’s society (Giles, 2000; Maltby et al., 2006). Morin was one of the first academics to take popular culture seriously. His psychodynamically influenced discussion of interiority, subjectivity, dreams, myth, his use of the concepts of projection and introjection, and his focus on creativity and the imagination acknowledged the importance of understanding popular cultural phenomena that clearly had, and continue to have, an enormous impact on people’s lives. Among other things, Morin studied the seemingly trivial fan letters written to movie stars in popular magazines, identifying the mechanisms of projection and identification in the adulation of “stars.” Again we see Morin moving from the macro role of popular culture to the micro, the specific examples of individual gestures of fans towards their idols. This reflects a guiding principle of Morin’s work, found in Pascal’s statement that it is impossible to understand the whole without understanding the part, and impossible to understand the part without understanding the whole. In Method, Morin would later use this as an entry point to critique both reductionism and holism. But why this sudden detour into cinema? Morin’s research is motivated by his own life experiences. After the death of his mother, the young Morin became an obsessive moviegoer and developed a fascination for the magical experience of cinema. As he explained, they allowed him to temporarily inhabit and dream of a different world, escape his pain, and immerse himself in a world of imagination through a ritualistic process not unlike the experiences of our distant ancestors, glimpsing art illuminated by flickering lights in dark caves. It is commonplace to say that one’s research is really a reflection of one’s life. But in Morin’s case this is particularly evident, and he has been very clear about this in any number of works, perhaps most clearly in Mes Demons, or My D(a)emons, in which he recounts his intellectual journey and influences (Morin, 1994b). As I have suggested, this personal dimension, this integration of the inquirer into the inquiry, is central to his transdisciplinary approach, which is a quest for meaning derived from personal experience, and clearly from that of millions of other movie-goers. In 1961, filmmaker Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin made the documentary Chronicle of a Summer. Set in Paris in the aftermath of the Algerian war and before the explosion of riots that played such a role in the 1960s, culminating in the events of Paris 1968, this documentary holds the distinction of being recognized as the first example of cinema verité. At the heart of it lies a simple question, asked of Parisians going about their business around town: “Are you happy?” From that seemingly causal entry point, Roland Barthes wrote that what the documentary ends up doing is engaging humanity itself. Chronicle of a Summer had a profound influence on French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, and it has become a classic of documentary making and visual anthropology. Chronicle of a Summer breaks down the barrier between the camera and the subject. It is a precursor to a far more participatory approach to inquiry and documentaries, as well as the more recent excesses of (largely manufactured) “reality television.” Particularly important is the self-reflective dimension, which includes interviewers and interviewees being filmed observing footage of the interviews, creating a self-reflective loop (Ungar, 2003). This innovative approach shows Morin’s lifelong concern for intersubjectivity and self-reflection that was later to be articulated extensively in his works of “sociology of the present” and culminating in complex thought (Morin,

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1994b, 1994c, 2007a). Writing in The New Yorker on February 21, 2013, Richard Brody’s review of the newly issued DVD described Chronicle as “one of the greatest, most audacious, most original documentaries ever made, one that poses—and, what’s more, responds to—questions of cinematic form and moral engagement that underlie the very genre, the very idea of nonfiction films.” Morin’s L’esprit du temps, written in 1960-61 and published in 1962 was widely read and is now a classic volume on popular culture and what has come to be known as the “culture industry.” With discussions of topics ranging from revolvers to happy endings (in cinema), leisure culture and youth culture, happiness and sexuality, Morin was once again breaking new ground in his discussion of “mass culture,” always in the larger context of social change and planetary culture. In 1965, the next step in Morin’s political reflections was published, Introduction à une politique de l’homme. Arguments politiques [Introduction to a politics of humanity. Political perspectives] (Morin, 1999a). Morin explored the nature of human nature in the political context, critiquing Marx, Freud, and other thinkers and currents of thought, including a trenchant critique of the notion of “development,” while developing his notion of a planetary politics and planetary culture, which he was to elaborate in later works. Essential here was Morin’s excavation of the underlying assumptions of the various approaches to understanding and framing human nature, which he was to return to in the work that became the predecessor to his magnum opus, Method, Le Paradigme Perdu (Morin, 1979). Morin’s next two works followed somewhat naturally from his cinema verité documentary. They focused on innovative, participatory approaches to social research, what he called a “sociology of the present,” using a “multidimensional method.” Both of these works were fortunately translated into English. The Red and the White (Morin, 1970), a study of modernization in the Breton village of Plozevet, utilized Morin’s “phenomenographic” approach (an overview of which is included in this volume), at a time when most if not all sociological research was quantitative. Morin and his research team actively participated in the life of the village, and collected data in a variety of ways, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, by living in the village and keeping diaries about their experience as researchers. These diaries have recently been published in their entirety (Morin, 2001a). The Red and the White shows Morin’s desire to capture the full complexity and richness of this village, and the realization that traditional quantitative sociological methods were simply unable to do so. They simply did not address the lived experience of human beings undergoing a major social change. In his review of Morin’s The Red and the White (Morin, 1970b) in the American Journal of Sociology, William Christian (Christian, 1971) also highlighted what we have called Morin’s “holographic” approach, writing that “Morin largely succeeds in his impossible aim to write both about the village and about France. Indeed, he is writing both about the village and modern Western society in general” (p. 168). Rumor in Orleans (Morin, 1971) is the fascinating and disturbing account of a rumor that broke out in May 1969 about an alleged white slave trade conducted by Jews in the city of Orleans, which led to panic and attacks on stores owned by Jews. Morin’s research managed to unravel the web of stories, trace them to their original source, and actually put the rumor to rest. Again, we see Morin at the leading edge of thought with what would be called “action research” today. Morin broke down the assumption that research should be quantitative, and should place the researcher

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as “the expert” “objectively” studying his “subject.” His research was also an intervention, and an example of “clinical sociology.” For Morin, this approach to research was also a critique of universalism, the search for laws and grand theories, and a valorization of what he called “the event,” the unique, the unrepeatable, the destabilizing moment, and crisis as an opportunity for inquiry, a subject he was later to explore in his work on “crisiology,” included in this volume (Morin, 1993). In the methodological appendix of the book, also reprinted in this volume, Morin (Morin, 1970b) wrote: Our method seeks to envelop the phenomenon (observation), to recognize the forces within it (praxis), to provoke it at strategic points (intervention), to penetrate it by individual contact (interview), to question action, speech, and things. Each of these methods poses the fundamental methodological problem: the relationship between the research worker and the subject. It is not merely a subject–object relationship. The “object” of the inquiry is both object and subject, and one cannot escape the intersubjective character of relations between men. We believe the optimal relationship requires, on the one hand, detachment and objectivity in relation to the object as object, and on the other, participation and sympathy in relation to the object as subject. As this object and subject are one, our approach must be a dual one. (p. 259)

From his work on popular culture to cinema verité to his research approach, we find Morin challenging assumptions about high and low culture, about the objectivity and distance of the researcher and the camera. It is also a critique of expertism that instead favors immersion and participation in the everyday and draws on the knowledge of non-specialized participants. This is part of Morin’s larger thrust to bring the discourse of social science in much closer relationship to the lived realities of human experience, the contingencies, the seeming trivialities of everyday experience, the emotions, subjectivities, the actual events and the uniqueness of life in all its manifestations while at the same time uncovering the epistemological dimension, addressing how we make sense of the world, how we construct our knowledge.

Opening Up: The Journals In the early 1960s Morin began publishing selected journals. These were very personal reflections and explorations that chronicled his experiences from the very mundane to the dramatic, from the profound philosophical and psychological reflections of Le Vif du Sujet from 1962 to 1963 (Morin, 1982), to the account of his voyage to China in the 1990s (Morin, 1992b), to the death of his beloved wife Edwige in 2007 (Morin, 2009a). These documents show the author grappling with issues in the moment and with his own responses to the crises he was facing: intellectual, political, and personal. The California Journal, available in English (Morin, 2008a), is an account of Morin’s year-long experience in California in 1969. For most of the time Morin was at the Salk Institute in San Diego in the company of Jonas Salk, François Jacob, Jacob Bronowski, and Anthony Wilden, among others. Morin immersed himself in biology, cybernetics and system theories, all of which were to play an integral part in Method, and he reflected on the dramatic social changes he was witnessing. This Californian

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experience was documented in the extended meditation that was to become California Journal. The Californian sojourn was particularly transformative for Morin, both personally and intellectually. Many of his closest colleagues and collaborators have considered Morin’s journals to be some of his deepest and most significant contributions. The author’s voice, already so vivid in his scholarly works, becomes even more alive in these pages, as we go behind the scenes during the writing of a book, during a television appearance, house-hunting in Paris, or at a conference. Ironically, some of Morin’s journals have been attacked by critics who have found them lacking the “seriousness” one should find in an intellectual. Academia is still very suspicious of “subjectivity,” which essentially amounts to the everyday experience of life, and particularly of the subjectivity of academics themselves. One can deconstruct the self and celebrate the end of man, but the academic man himself remains at a safe distance, one’s personal life is not addressed, and someone or something somewhere is cashing checks for the authors whose death has been proclaimed. One’s subjectivity, one’s domestic life needs to be neatly compartmentalized and strictly separated from one’s life as a scholar. While it is acceptable to engage in phenomenological research of lived experience—somebody else’s, of course—it has mostly been feminist scholars who have stressed the importance of fully integrating the knower in all her vulnerabilities. Morin insists on reminding us that life is not confined to one or two disciplines, and his life involves, among others, movies, his late wife’s asthma attacks, pets, conferences, friendships, political upheavals, publishers, the vagaries of travel, the loss of friends and loved ones, and the occasional overindulgence at dinner. A philosophy of life cannot exclude these moments from its purview. The pretense of objectivity unsullied by the context and contingency of life and the life of the subject has never been something Morin aspired to. In fact, he has been actively working on dismantling it. He has also been aware that an academic persona has all too often acted as a cover for the immature emotionality and selfdeception of some academics. Morin breaks away forcefully from the reductive image of the intellectual as a disembodied intellect and opens himself up to us in his work and in his actions, for scrutiny, exploration, and appreciation, showing himself to us in the full range of his life experiences and vulnerabilities. As Maturana and Varela remind us, everything that is said is said by somebody (Maturana & Varela, 1987). In traditional academic discourse and inquiry, the focus was on the elimination of that “somebody” in search of the “God’s eye view from nowhere.” As we read Morin, he shows us who the “somebody” is, and provides us with an example of “embodied” inquiry and personal reflection. With Morin, the “somebody” is not hidden. The inquirer is not artificially excised from the inquiry, but is rather integrated in the inquiry. The personal exploration of his journals have, at times, led us deeply into Morin’s psyche in ways that would be inconceivable for most traditional social scientists, for whom vulnerability is not generally considered a virtue. After the death of his wife Edwige, following a period of mourning Morin wrote a long and extremely revealing book about their relationship, a last love letter that included personal notes, drawings they made for each other, and revealed an intimacy, self-disclosure and emotion one is not accustomed to seeing in academics, even in more autobiographical works, particularly from a man who at this point was in his eighties and considered a leading public intellectual (Morin, 2009a).7

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Most social scientists, particularly those who express themselves only in the confines of a professional journal, are mostly not trained to give voice to the whole of their life and experience. It has generally not part of the education of social scientists to understand themselves, to be able to explore their own personal involvement in the research, to document that process and reflect on it, to explore the extent to which the “subjective” and the “objective” co-create each other, let alone deeply question the underlying assumption of their own work. Autobiography and self-reflection are often an awkward endeavor in social science. They are often looked upon with suspicion mixed with grudging admiration. In his journals, Morin, inspired by Montaigne, is modeling a process of self-inquiry that is also always holographic because it always occurs within a planetary context—and one might paraphrase Morin by saying that he lives in a planetary culture, and the planetary culture lives inside him. Social science has been comfortable with the context of justification, but not the context of discovery. Social scientists present themselves by proposing a position, backed up with empirical data and/or a theoretical framework. Readers are usually not privy to the actual process of inquiry itself, to the ups and downs of the research, the blind alleys, the mistakes, the insights, dialogues, and the creative process, unless we read popular (auto)biographies. In such works as Journal d’un Livre (Morin, 1994a), the journal Morin kept while writing Pour Sortir du XX Siècle (Morin, 1984), and earlier in Le Vif du Sujet (Morin, 1982), we find insights into the creative process, and the life of a thinker, struggling to fight off the tendency for dispersion, to do, read, experience too much, to lose direction and focus in the process. And yet the results of this dispersion, while at times painful for the author, may also contribute to making Morin such an original thinker, through his ability to later integrate a broad range of experiences, theoretical perspectives, and insights. Along with the deeply personal, Morin has also immersed himself in the profoundly public, through his closely followed public pronouncements on a variety of issues, whether his impassioned rejection of the Algerian war (Le Sueur, 2003), the events of 1968 in Paris, through his articles in newspapers and his book with Castoriadis and Lefort on May of ’68 (Morin et al., 1968), his advocacy for Turkey’s entry into the European Union, or his writings on the Israel-Palestine question (Morin, 2006) and his leading role in French environmentalism. His critique of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians led to several court cases triggered by lurid accusations of antisemitism, and an eventual exoneration. In 2006, this led to the publication of Le Monde Moderne et la Question Juive, or The Modern World and the Jewish Question, in which, among other things, he stresses the importance of differentiating between antisemitism and critiques of the Israeli government’s policies toward Palestinians (Morin, 2006b). Morin is very much a public intellectual, involved in television debates, publishing regular op-ed articles in France’s leading newspapers, dialoguing with one of France’s leading ecologists (Morin & Hulot, 2007), and he is a member of the French president’s prestigious committee on ecology. A few weeks after the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, Morin was invited to discuss France’s environmental policy with him. The week before François Hollande was voted into government saw the publication of a book of dialogues between Morin and Hollande (Hollande & Morin, 2012). Morin is without question a public intellectual. In 2012 he co-authored, with the late Stéphane Hessel, what is sometimes called the new little red book of the indiñados and the European Occupy movement, The Path to Hope (Hessel & Morin, 2012). Hessel, a nonagenarian at the time, was the author of the best-selling Indignez vous! (Hessel,

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2011), said to have been one of the sparks that lit the Arab Spring. Most recently Morin has dialogued with Islamic philosopher Tariq Ramadan about their views of the world, published in two volumes, and with artist and writer Patrick Singaïny about the Paris attack of January 11, 2015 (Morin & Ramadan, 2014, 2017; Morin & Singaîny, 2015).

Complexity At first glance, complexity is a fabric (complexus: that which is woven together) of heterogeneous constituents that are inseparably associated: complexity poses the paradox of the one and the many. Next, complexity is in fact the fabric of events, actions, interactions, retroactions, determinations, and chance that constitute our phenomenal world (Morin, 2008, p. 5). Morin’s vital involvement in intellectual life has also occurred through a series of major conferences and dialogues with scientists, artists, and philosophers. Most notable perhaps is the conference documented in the three-volume L’Unité de L’homme [Human Unity] (Morin & Piattelli Palmarini, 1978), a multidisciplinary dialogue among primatologists, biologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, cyberneticists, sociologists, and a variety of other natural and social scientists. Participants included systems sociologist Walter Buckley, neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux, ethologist Ireneus Eibl-Eibesfesdt, cyberneticist Heinz Von Foerster, Nobel Prizewinning biologists François Jacob, Jacques Monod, and Salvador E. Luria, neuroscientist Paul MacLean, biologist Humberto Maturana, social psychologist Serge Moscovici, semioticist Thomas Sebeok, and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber. The ensuing three volumes of articles and discussions were organized as follows: Volume 1 (The Primate and the Human), Volume 2 (The Human Brain), and Volume 3 (Towards a Fundamental Anthropology). This extremely rich series of dialogues, orchestrated by Morin and the Italian cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, represents an important step toward Morin’s transdisciplinary approach. Transdisciplinarity goes beyond interdisciplinarity, which involves using the methods of one discipline to inform another, by drawing on multiple disciplines while actually challenging the disciplinary organization of knowledge, and the reductive/disjunctive way of thinking that make up what Morin was to call the “paradigm of simplicity.” Several of Morin’s books find him in dialogues with social and natural scientists, from astrophysicists to biologists to sociologists and philosophers.8 Le Paradigme Perdu [Paradigm Lost], published in 1973, represents the first step toward the integration of this transdisciplinary perspective that was later to culminate in the multi-volume Method. For Morin, bridging the split between the natural and social sciences became essential after his California sojourn and the Human Unity conference. His multidimensional approach to human nature—and to inquiry in general—could not abide the human/nature split. In the social sciences, there was either the quantitative approach found in sociology (what Sorokin called “quantophrenia”), generally anemic attempts to copy the method of physics, or the more philosophically inclined tendency to reject anything remotely associated with the natural sciences as reductive, as “scientism” or “biologism.” In natural science, the almost complete absence of reflection on the role of the inquirer created massive blind

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spots science itself was unable to address in its most rigid configuration. As Dortier (Dortier, 2006) points out, Le Paradigme Perdu was written before the emergence of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, but deserves to be read not just out of respect and historical interest for a book that was ahead of its time, but because Morin outlined an important agenda and a way of thinking about the issues that is still extremely fruitful. And this is in many ways Morin’s central contribution—to point out that there are problems, such as the human/nature or two culture split, that must be approached with a radically different way of thinking, a way of thinking that, as Morin states, is not disjunctive (either/or), but connects, without the Hegelian assumption that the dialectic will always lead to a new synthesis. First in Le Paradigme Perdu, then in the massive Method (Morin, 1985, 1986, 1991, 1992a, 2003, 2004a), Morin tackles this task by literally circulating knowledge between the disciplines and opening up a new way of approaching inquiry and knowledge. Morin has called his approach “en-cyclo-pedic” (Morin, 1992a), but he points out that this is not in the sense of providing the final word on a catalog of topics, presenting a “totalizing” picture of the world as it “really” is. He uses the term in the sense of reconnecting that which has been disconnected, and as with so much of his work we also find multiple plays on words here because there is also a reference to the virtuous cycles and recursivity of cybernetic thinking and the notion of a path laid down in walking. Around the time Le Paradigme Perdu was being written and until quite recently, thinkers like Lyotard, Habermas, and others were highly critical of the integration of the natural and social sciences and against systems theoretical approaches in particular (Lyotard, 1984). Lechte’s summary of Lyotard’s position is typical of the way systems theoretical approaches were summarily dealt with in the last decades of the 20th century in the philosophical discourse (Lechte, 1994): For the systems theorist, human beings are part of a homogeneous, stable, theoretically knowable, and therefore, predictable system. Knowledge is the means of controlling the system. Even if perfect knowledge does not yet exist, the equation: the greater the knowledge the greater the power over the system is, for the systems theorist, irrefutable. (p. 248)

Morin saw the enormous potential of these new approaches while recognizing their limitations and misuses, refusing to be limited by ideological boundaries. In the process, he developed his own complex interpretation of systems theory, information theory, and cybernetics designed to connect the various dimensions of human inquiry, separated as they were in their own worlds and disciplines, refusing to communicate with each other. Morin is the heir of the original mission of von Bertalanffy’s General System Theory, of the Macy conferences, of Arthur Koestler’s Alpbach symposium, in the sense that he has pursued the goal of connecting knowledge scattered in various disciplines, and providing a way of talking and thinking and organizing knowledge, a method (Bateson, 2004; Heims, 1993; Koestler & Smythies, 1972). Method begins his approach to complexity with an extensive discussion of the relationship between order and disorder, the key role of emergence, unpredictability, and uncertainty, and the importance of the prefix re-, as in reorganization, rethinking, and so on, suggesting ongoing process and change (Morin, 2005c). In the United States, the very fact that he did not fit neatly into one camp and could himself not be reduced to some simple category (systems theorist, structuralist, postmodernist, poststructuralist) has led to a few misinformed assessments of his work. This is also

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because only a very small number of his books have been translated into English, giving a very partial view of a multidimensional body of work. The six-volume Method is Morin’s magnum opus. Method integrates the rich and diverse elements of Morin’s journey and provides the reader with an alternative to the traditional assumptions and methods of inquiry of our time. Morin’s method outlines steps towards a way of approaching inquiry that does not reduce or separate and does justice to the complexity of life and experience. In his sociopolitical works, such as his prescient studies of the USSR and his work on totalitarianism, on the nature and concept of Europe, his “manifesto for the 21st century,” Homeland Earth (Morin & Kern, 1999), and La Voie (The Way) (Morin, 2011a), Morin applied this method to the planetary crisis in what he calls this “planetary Iron Age.” We sense that we are approaching a considerable revolution (so considerable that perhaps it will not take place) in the great paradigm of Western science. What affects a paradigm, that is, the vault key of a whole system of thought, affects the ontology, the methodology, the epistemology, the logic, and by consequence, the practices, the society, and the politics? The ontology of the West was founded on closed entities such as substance, identity, (linear) causality, subject, object. These entities do not communicate amongst themselves. Oppositions provoke repulsions or canceling of a concept by another (e.g., subject/object). “Reality” could be grasped by clear and distinct ideas. In this sense, scientific methodology was reductionist and quantitative. The logic of the West was a homeostatic logic and destined to maintain the equilibrium of the discourse by banning contradiction and deviation. Imagination, illumination, and creation, without which the progress of science would not have been possible, only entered science on the sly. They could not be logically identified, and were always epistemologically condemnable. They are spoken of in the biographies of great scientists, but never in manuals and treatises . . . it is obviously the whole structure of the system of thought that is finding itself thoroughly shaken and transformed. (Morin, 2008, pp. 34–35)

Morin’s quest for Method draws on systems theory, cybernetics and information theory, but his efforts predate the rise of what is now popularly known as complexity theory (Fisher, 2009; Johnson, 2002; Waldrop, 1993). The first volume of Method was published in 1977, and Morin’s interest and application of some of the precursors to these key ideas goes back to his first major work, L’Homme et la Mort, and his early reading of Hegel (Morin, 1994b, 2012). While there is some obvious overlap with complexity theorists, Morin’s work is a broader philosophical and specifically epistemological effort to, in his words (Morin, 2007), develop a “reform of thought.” In an essay in this volume, Morin refers to mathematical approaches to complexity that draw on classical epistemology as “restricted complexity.” This is contrasted with “general complexity,” which requires a fundamental rethinking of what we consider knowledge and how we think. We should therefore not think of Morin’s approach as an attempt to use “complexity theory,” as it is known in the United States, and particularly of the Santa Fe Institute variety, to address issues in the sciences or philosophy, even if we can find some conceptual parallels, not the least of which are the critique of reductionism and disciplinary fragmentation (Alhadeff-Jones, 2008; Taylor, 2003; Urry, 2005; Waldrop, 1992; Wells, 2013). As the quotation above indicates, Morin is fundamentally critiquing the foundations of scientific and philosophical inquiry. He critiques what he calls a paradigm of

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simplicity, which draws on Descartes’s focus on simplification and clear and simple ideas. One way to illustrate this effort is through his critique of disciplinarity. Disciplinarity reflects a way of thinking, and also a way of organizing knowledge in the form of ever-greater specialization in disciplines that are generally closed to each other. Morin (Morin, 2008d) writes that: “The deep cause of error is not error of fact (false perception), or error of logic (incoherence), but rather the way we organize our knowledge into a system of ideas (theories, ideologies)” (p. 2). We can see that economic issues cannot be separated from social, human and cultural issues. So long as the link between economic and non-economic factors was concealed, everything that could not be quantified was neglected. Intellectually satisfying economic models were constructed, but they were not capable of taking account of reality. We have so far not taken account of the destructive effects of technical and economic development on our cultural heritage and on nature. These destructive effects explain why fundamentalism is gaining many devotees and finding leaders among intellectuals who possess the tools of modern knowledge but have been disappointed by it. (Morin this volume, p. 295)

Until the recent emergence of behavioral economics, economists made pronouncements about a society’s economy without reference to ethics, to consumer psychology, to sociological and cultural factors. Concepts like development were articulated drawing mostly on quantitative indicators such as GDP and GNP. Even within a discipline such as psychology, we find that personality psychologists and social psychologists, for instance, mostly do not communicate, and if they do, it is mostly to dismiss each other’s views. In fact, we can see in the history of thought how many of the main movements have defined themselves in opposition to each other (Collins, 1998). Science originally defined itself in opposition to religion, of course, and underlying the oppositional movements in the history of ideas we have large dualisms in the form of C.P. Snow’s two cultures, as well as realism/idealism, spiritual/material, nature/nurture, and subjective/objective, for instance. In the tradition of such writers as Bachelard, Bateson, and others (Bachelard, 2002; Bateson, 2002; Capra, 1996; Taylor, 2003), Morin’s work is a sustained epistemological reflection on the implications of the scientific and cultural revolution of the 20th century for our organization of, and relationship with, knowledge. Morin (Morin & Kern, 1999) writes: The reductionist approach, which consists in relying on a single series of factors to regulate the totality of problems associated with the multiform crisis we are currently in the middle of, is less a solution than the problem itself. . . . Intelligence that is fragmented, compartmentalized, mechanistic, disjunctive, and reductionistic breaks the complexity of the world into disjointed pieces, splits up problems, separates that which is linked together, and renders unidimensional the multidimensional . . . The more problems are multidimensional, the less chance there is to grasp the crisis. The more problems become planetary, the more unthinkable they become. Incapable of seeing the planetary context in all its complexity, blind intelligence fosters unconsciousness and irresponsibility. It has become the bearer of death. (p. 1)

Morin is critical of the great fragmentation in organized knowledge, with specialists in a huge number of disciplines and sub-disciplines each working on their problems

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in splendid isolation. The notion of transdisciplinarity therefore emerges as an attempt to not only connect the various forms of knowledge pertinent to a specific problem, but also to propose a different way of thinking (Morin, 2008e). One of the patterns that connects Morin’s considerable contributions in such varied fields as biology and cinema, sociology and ecology, is the quest for a generative way of approaching the subject matter that accounts for its complexity, for that which is woven together, accounts for patterns, relationships, interactions, disorder, and noise. It is not a method in the sense of a new research method. What Morin calls method, is understood in the broadest sense of the word, as a “way” or “path laid down in walking.” Selvini Palazzoli (1990) writes: “As Edgar Morin has put it so shrewdly, ‘the method emerges from the research.’ Originally, he points out, the word method meant path; it is only in traveling that the right method appears” (p. xiv). How do we engage in inquiry? How do we think about the world, and more specifically, how do we approach research? Above all, how do we organize knowledge? How can we live and think in a pluralistic universe, with complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity? Morin reminds us that even our best efforts to integrate knowledge do not escape incompleteness, partiality, error, and illusion. Morin challenges us therefore to integrate also this uncertainty and incompleteness in our knowing and being, and invites us to retain an ongoing critical self-reflection, cultivating a spirit of openness to learning from other traditions and perspectives, as well consider the embodiment of knowledge in the moment, with its inevitable uncertainties, dilemmas, and opportunities. Iain Chambers (1993), who has written extensively on the subject of cultural complexity, writes: The idea of both lived and intellectual complexity, of Edgar Morin’s ‘la pensée complexe’, introduces us to a social ecology of being and knowledge. Here both thought and everyday activities move in the realm of uncertainty. Linear argument and certainty break down as we find ourselves orbiting in a perpetual paradox around the wheel of being: we bestow sense, yet we can never be certain in our proclamations. The idea of cultural complexity, most sharply on display in the arabesque patterns of the modern metropolis—and that includes Lagos as well as London, Beijing, and Buenos Aires—weakens earlier schemata and paradigms; it destabilizes and decenters previous theories and sociologies. Here the narrow arrow of linear progress is replaced by the open spiral of hybrid cultures, contaminations, and what Edward Said recently referred to as ‘atonal ensembles’. The city suggests creative disorder, an instructive confusion, an interpolating space in which the imagination carries you in every direction, even towards the previously unthought. (p. 189)

The key elements of the organization of knowledge in the West go far back in history, and the work of Aristotle and Descartes is central (Gembillo, 2008a). Aristotle developed a “logic,” providing us with the laws of identity and the excluded middle. In his Discourse on Method, Descartes (Descartes, 1954) explored the basic laws of thinking and fashioned them into the foundations for inquiry. Descartes spoke of a “method,” and of “rules for the direction of the mind.” In other words, Descartes was proposing an orientation for how to think, a focus on reduction, simplification, and clarity. What Descartes proposed as rules for the direction of mind has, coupled with Aristotle’s logic, become the foundation for “good thinking,” now institutionalized in the organization of universities. There we find the same increasing specialization in

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departments, disciplines and sub-disciplines, literally a splitting up into the smallest possible parts, and the creation of strong boundaries based on three axioms of classical logic (Nicolescu, 2002). Morin’s effort arguably involves a revision of these age-old foundations that integrates them into a broader “method” based on complexity. Morin’s Complex Thought critiques what has been thought of as “good” thinking and takes us to the heart of the what for him is the problem, namely reduction, disjunction, and abstraction: inquiry and thinking that decontextualizes, simplifies, and functions on a logic of either/or. How are we to address this? Morin articulates an alternative that emphasizes complexity, from the Latin complexus, or that which is woven together. That which is woven together cannot be torn apart without losing the overall pattern, without losing the connection, the interrelationships, the interactions, the emergent properties. One of the recurring quotations we find in Morin’s work is from Pascal (Pascal et al., 1905) articulating the relationship between parts and wholes: All that exists then is both cause and effect, dependent and supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though imperceptible bond, which unites things most distant and most different. I consider it impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, or to know the whole without knowing the parts. (p. 25)

Morin develops this in an extensive discussion of the relationship of part and whole, including a critique of holism as well as reductionism, which reflects his effort to go beyond such polarizations in the history of thought (Morin, 2008d).9 In fact, Complex Thought informs a reframing of such conceptual dualisms as unity and diversity, order and disorder, the one and the many. Morin draws extensively on systems theory, but this is not part of an effort to “map” the environment, something many systems theorists have attempted to do and have also been critiqued for doing. Morin is interested in a crucial aspect of the original mission of system and cybernetic theories, namely the development of a transversal approach that can provide a way to think across disciplinary specializations, and in the process connect rather than separate (Bateson, 2004; Heims, 1991). One area where Morin’s work is of great interest is in the articulation of the relationship between the individual and society, particularly the role of culture, and the relationship between culture and the individual. Morin seeks to articulate the nature of interactions and the circularity and recursive nature of processes. He focuses for instance on the way individuals are in society and society is also in individuals, and the way human beings create culture that in turn creates human beings. These complex, circular processes provide an alternative to the tendency of reductive and disjunctive thought to focus on either individual (methodological individualism) or social/cultural (methodological holism). For Morin, the issue is addressing the problems of thinking, and this is where his work and specifically his articulation of Complex Thought, begins to show some parallels with efforts by developmental psychologists who have researched post-formal or ways of thinking that reflect higher developmental stages.10 Koplowitz (as cited in Kegan, 1982, p. 32) argues strongly for the relationship between general system theory and post-formal thought, and he writes that “formal operational thought is dualistic. It draws sharp distinctions between the knower and the known, between one object (or variable) and another, and between pairs of opposites (e.g., good and bad).”

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Elsewhere he writes that, “In post-formal operational thought, the knower is seen as unified with the known, various objects (and variables) are seen as part of a continuum, and opposites are seen as poles of one concept” (ibid.). In Method, we see Morin applies complex thought to fundamental problems in nature, biology, cognition, sociology, and ethics, drawing from, while also critiquing, systems theory information theory, and cybernetics. Starting with the first volume published 1977, The Nature of Nature, we find, among many other topics, extensive discussions of recurring themes in Morin’s work, such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the relationship of order and disorder, culminating in Morin’s tetragram of order/disorder/interactions/organization; the development of Angyal’s (Angyal, 1941) notion of unitas multiplex in terms of the relationship between part and whole, as well as unity and diversity; the systems dictum that the whole is more than the sum of the parts, complexified to recognize that the whole can also be less than the sum of the parts; an articulation of the notion of autonomy, particularly in relationship to dependence, normally viewed as opposite, recontextualized, and recomplexified by Morin to show their interrelationship; an effort to ground the notion of the subject in the logic of the living, which Morin considers his most original (and perhaps least recognized) contribution, discussed eloquently in Italian sociologist Sergio Manghi’s monograph on Morin (Manghi, 2009); the importance of contextualization, adding the prefix -eco to self-organization, leading to the term self-eco-organization and an increased awareness of the role of the environment (Morin, 2008d); and as always, the continuous epistemological reflection that integrates the observer and the context, and recognizes the incompleteness of any perspective and any system of categories. Morin has made a sustained and important contribution to the reform of education, initially in 1997 at the invitation of the French Minister of Education, Claude Allègre. Morin responded with several books including the proceedings of a conference with participants such as Henri Atlan, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Louis Le Moigne, Joël De Rosnay, and many others (Morin, 1999). Morin’s proposals, summarized in 7 Complex Lessons in Education for the Future, are, not surprisingly, quite radical (Morin, 2001). If their immediate implementation seems unlikely, they certainly provide a vital blueprint for the future, and are already beginning to have an influence in curriculum theory and development (Alhadeff-Jones, 2009, 2010; Bocchi & Ceruti, 2004; Gembillo et al., 2008; Montuori, 2010; Morin et al., 2003; Rosetto Ajello, 2003).

Complex Thought Yan and Arlin (1999) write that [I]n Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, equilibration is the goal of development. Formal reasoning is considered the final equilibrium. The major characteristic of formal reasoning is the ability to engage in abstract logical thinking, which includes the features of hypotheticodeductive reasoning, thinking in terms of propositions, and making logical inferences. Generally speaking, formal reasoning operates on well-defined problems that can be presented by closed systems. For well-defined problems, all the information necessary to produce a solution is given or can be derived from what is given. In this case it is possible to produce one or a few solutions and creativity is not required in the process. (p. 550)

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Piaget (1970) himself stated that formal operational thinking constitutes the “essence of the logic of educated adults, as well as the basis of the elementary forms of scientific thought” (p. 6). It is therefore interesting to note that one of Morin’s central criticisms of the paradigm of simplicity is that it assumes a world made up of closed systems (Morin, 2008d). In Method, Morin articulates the importance of the notion of open system. He spends several hundred pages outlining the quite dramatic implications of a concept that is all-too often taken as a foundation of systems thinking, but surprisingly undertheorized. Morin also points to the problematic nature of discussing open and closed systems as opposites when in fact the relationship is more complex. Every open system is also, to some extent closed, and the role of the inquirer in making the choice of treating a system as either open or closed. The complexity of open systems leads him to questions about the crucial nature of any system’s relationship with its environment, the nature of autonomy, the opposition between reductionism and holism, the possibility of emergence, and self-organization, or as Morin revisions it, self-eco-organization (Morin, 2008d). Yan and Arlin point out that formal reasoning does not work well with problems that are not well defined, and we should add that it is also deeply problematic working with contingency and the unexpected. Uncertainty and disorder are central to Morin’s world, and indeed as we have seen, he uses the term chaosmos to great effect, articulated in his tetrad of Order/Disorder/Interaction/Organization. If the paradigm that is now crumbling was based on the assumptions of order and certainty, with disorder as the enemy (Toulmin, 1992), Morin is certainly not promoting a world of chaos and nihilism. On the contrary, his focus is on acknowledging the existence of disorder, and illuminating its generative role. We learn from Morin to see the key, dominant concepts of order and certainty that have guided and informed thinking, and throughout his work Morin spends considerable time exploring these concepts in great depth to come out the other side with more complex concepts that do not reject uncertainty and disorder, but acknowledge and incorporate them as part of an ongoing dialogic. Many have long believed—and perhaps many still do—that the deficiency in the human and social sciences lay in their inability to rid themselves of the apparent complexity of human phenomena, and be elevated to the dignity of natural sciences, the sciences which established simple laws, simple principles, and obeyed the rule of determinism. Today we can see that biological and physical sciences are characterized by the crisis of simple explanations. As a result, what appeared to be non-scientific residues of the human sciences—uncertainty, disorder, contradiction, plurality, complication, and so on—are now a part of the fundamental problems of scientific knowledge. (Morin, 1985, p. 49, my translation)

Morin’s introduction to the 2008 French boxed-set of his Method is titled “Mission Impossible.” Morin starts with the assumption that there is no way to completely escape error, uncertainty, and illusion, and that any effort such as his, is hopeless. For Morin, “We are condemned to uncertain thought, a thought riddled with holes, a thought that has no foundation of absolute certainty” (p. 46). Yet we have to think, and we have to live, and despite the impossible nature of his mission, Morin has, like the characters in the classic television show Mission Impossible, proceeded. And the mission then becomes, to some extent, how to learn to live despite, and with,

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uncertainty, and also how to turn uncertainty into an opportunity for creativity. There is therefore the continuous stress on the incompleteness of every point of view, which leads to continuous self-scrutiny, and the integration of the observer in the observation. Morin is critical of totalizing approaches, painfully aware of the dangers of absolutism, of the illusion of knowledge. At the same time, he is also critical of the partial nature of much thinking and many approaches, while recognizing the inevitably limited nature of his own attempt to be en-cyclo-pedic. The term encyclopedia must no longer be taken in the cumulative and stupid meaning where it has lost all value. It must be taken in its original sense of enkyklios paideia, learning that puts in circulation knowledge; it is a matter of en-cyclo-pedism, in other words, of learning to articulate points of view of knowledge which are separate in an active cycle […]. The en-cyclo-pedism we are advocating aims at articulating what is fundamentally separate and that should be fundamentally connected. (Morin this volume, p. 54)

Morin therefore places great emphasis on the continuous need for self-awareness, for an awareness of the pitfalls of hubris, self-deception, projection, and other processes in the inquirer. Morin warns about the dangers of idealization, or the idea that the real can be captured in an idea, which is more real than the real; of rationalization, or the desire to enclose reality in the order and coherence of a system, without letting anything exist outside the system; and of normalization, or removing all unknowns, mysteries, anything which cannot be explained. The participation of the observer in every observation, the role of self-reflection and self-inquiry in inquiry, the dangers of reduction and disjunction, and the often hidden motives of the quest for certainty will be central and recurring themes in all of Morin’s work. Morin’s effort to remain constantly vigilant and self-critical, in tandem with the often-repeated dictum from Adorno, “totality is untruth,” reminds us of the importance for any effort to confront the current crises to be wary of totalization, of idealization, normalization, rationalization, and self-deception. It is a reminder of the ways in which human beings use, misuse, and mutilate knowledge for their own purposes, often unconsciously, and at the same time the way in which inquiry can become a practice of ongoing self-examination and a way to embrace uncertainty and contingency in thinking and living. It is also a reminder that thought is not an abstract category that can be separated from our psyche (from our emotions, needs, and desires) and from our environment (the sociology of knowledge, the planetary era). Morin is a “complex” thinker not only in terms of his life’s work, the development of Complex Thought, but also as an embodiment of complexity himself, with his diverse background, his critical and creative use of sources, his development of a radical and radically integrative approach to inquiry, and its application to politics, environmental issues, the arts, ethics, and biology, among others. Morin reminds us that every form of knowledge, every theory, is a construction that draws on some sources and not others, a result of choices that in turn are shaped by historical circumstances and contingencies as well as the personal preferences of the theorists. This process of construction gives us an indication of the limitations of any view, no matter how capacious and integrative it is, but also points to the openness of the creative process that is involved in any such construction—the ongoing dance of constraints and possibilities that marks all paths of inquiry (Ceruti, 1994). In the process, Morin

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illuminates the creativity of being and knowing, and invites us to participate in the creative process that is existence. ALFONSO MONTUORI San Francisco November 2021 Notes 1

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In the US, criticism of Morin’s work has often taken wildly contradictory forms. In a generous mood, one assumes this is because critics are basing their assessments on extremely limited readings of Morin’s work, since hardly any of Morin’s work has been available in English until recently. In some of the more ill-informed and at times positively bizarre references, Morin has variously been portrayed as the epitome of the French postmodern mood, as an anti-ecological anything-goes relativist for whom the Universe is nothing but disconnected atoms, but also as a scientific modernist writing before, and therefore not informed by, postmodern thought. This despite the fact that the first volume of Method was published in 1977, and the last one, Ethics, in 2004. Volume 7 was unexpectedly published in 2021 by the University of Messina’s Edgar Morin Center for the Philosophy of Complexity, but written in the 1980’s. This criticism is embarrassingly ethnocentric considering that many of the key texts of what was later to be called “postmodernism” in the U.S. were, of course, published in France, in French, in the Sixties, and Morin was very well aware of them and their authors. Morin has also been portrayed as a rather romantic psychoanalytically oriented cinema scholar focused on subjectivity and imagination at the expense political critique, and elsewhere as a reductionistic politically oriented systems theorist with no sensitivity for art, interiority and intersubjectivity. The transdisciplinary, expansive nature of Morin’s work is one of the things that makes him such an exciting and important thinker. It can, unfortunately, also be the source of much confusion and misunderstanding by authors too eager to classify and less eager to understand, and of criticism that embodies precisely the kind of decontextualized, simplistic thinking Morin warns against. At the same time, we should remember that despite these impressive achievements and honors, Morin was for a long time an “outsider” in France. He also never identified with the popular French postmodern vogue so popular in the United States, and he was often quite critical of it. Morin was therefore not part of the “postmodern” movement in vogue in the U.S. In his work one does not find reference to how just about everything can be reduced to the role of language, text, or structures. In fact, as all these ideas were taking wing across the Atlantic, and some French and American scholars were celebrating the death of the subject, or even making the subject disappear completely, Morin was engaging in the wildly countercultural but arguably pathbreaking task of grounding the self in its precognitive, biological origin. For a useful introduction to Morin in English, the reader is referred to Myron Kofman’s Edgar Morin: From Big Brother to Fraternity, in the Pluto Press Modern European Thinkers series (Kofman, 1996). Kofman is particularly good on the historical context and Morin’s experience with Hegelian-Marxism. Given the relatively limited space here, and the vast range of Morin’s experience, I will refer to Kofman’s work for a discussion of this fascinating period and its influence on Morin’s thought. Morin’s Homeland Earth (Morin & Kern, 1999) offers an accessible introduction to his sociopolitical and moral thought intended for a popular readership. On Complexity provides key introductory essays to Morin’s work on complex thought and the notion of the subject (Morin, 2008d). A thoughtful discussion of the role Morin’s mother’s death played in his life can be found in Heinz Weinmann’s introduction to the collection of Morin essays entitled La Complexitè Humaine (Morin, 1994b), in many of Morin’s autobiographical works, and most recently

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the publication of a novel the young Morin wrote inspired by his loss, L’isle de Luna (Morin, 2017). Typically, academic research is oriented by of a lot of factors such as funding and differentiation from other disciplines that have nothing to do with what might be best for the inquiry itself (Wilshire, 1990). The two books on cinema have been published in the United States by the University of Minnesota, the work on Stars being a reissue (Morin, 2005a, 2005b). While Morin has always been very open to religion and spiritual experience, he has also retained a considerable degree of skepticism about mysticism and spirituality. Reading his journals (the two volumes of his collected journals run over 2,000 pages), one reads about experiences with altered states and moments of possession as well as transcendence, but they have not been addressed explicitly in his more scholarly work to any great extent. In an appendix to his California Journal, Morin discusses his reticence to write about what he describes as his “happiness” in California, attributing it to a Middle Eastern superstition about publicly discussing one’s well-being, but one suspects that given the French intellectual climate, in which his journals were already viewed askance by some more traditional academics, Morin was perhaps concerned that an explicit discussion of his own personal experiences, or moving into what might be called a more transpersonal direction might further marginalize him. Nevertheless, throughout Morin’s massive oeuvre there are the constant, recurring themes of wisdom, in the form of complex thought, and compassion, explicitly addressed as love, particularly in Volume 2 of Method. Readers with a transpersonal orientation may find that Morin’s work resonates quite strongly with many of the world’s great wisdom traditions. In a recent book-length interview Morin was unusually candid about his views, discussing, among other things, his interest in ayahuasca (Morin, 2008c). To give an idea of the breadth of Morin’s interlocutors, he is featured prominently in books on the implications of the work of Ilya Prigogine (Spire, 1999), in a volume on complexity theory along with Francisco Varela, Brian Goodwin, Stuart Kauffman and Prigogine, among others (Benkirane, 2006), debates with René Thom and Michel Serres (Morin, 1983), in a dialogue on memory and responsibility with the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (de Saint Cheron, 2000), in dialogue with astrophysicists Michel Cassé (Cassé & Morin, 2003) and Hubert Reeves (Morin & Le Moigne, 1999), and ecologist Michel Hulot (Morin & Hulot, 2007. I mention his scientific dialogues in particular because of the perception in the United States that French intellectual “impostors” have misappropriated and misrepresented science (Sokal & Bricmont, 1998). In Morin’s case, this is certainly not the case. In fact, we find that he actually contributes to the articulation of the implications of the new sciences for scientists themselves (Roux-Rouquié, 2002; Westbroek, 2004). The proceedings of the prestigious Colloque de Cerisy, a yearly symposium focused on the work of a single thinker, includes Henri Atlan, Cornelius Castoriadis, Gianluca Bocchi, Sergio Manghi, Mauro Ceruti, and Isabelle Stengers, among others, give further indication of Morin’s breadth and influence (Bougnoux et al., 1990). The interested reader is referred to Brian Fay’s illuminating work on the philosophy of social science (Fay, 1996) in which, inspired by Robert Kegan’s work (Kegan, 1982, 1998), he outlines a series of polarizations in the history of ideas such as atomism versus holism). Morin himself has not addressed these similarities and has not, as far as I am aware, ever discussed post-formal thought.

References Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2008). Three generations of complexity theories: Nuances and ambiguities. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), 66–82. Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2009). Revisiting educational research through Morin’s paradigm of complexity. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 6(1), 61–70.

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Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2010). Challenging the limits of critique in education through Morin’s paradigm of complexity. Studies in philosophy and education, 29(5), 477–490. Angyal, A. (1941). Foundations for a science of personality. Viking. Anselmo, A. (2005). Edgar Morin e gli scienziati contemporanei [Edgar Morin and contemporary scientists]. Rubbettino. Anselmo, A. (2006). Edgar Morin: Dalla sociologia all’epistemologia. [Edgar Morin: From sociology to epistemology.]. Guida. Auffray, C., Imbeaud, S., Roux-Rouquié, M., & Hood, L. (2003). Self-organized living systems: conjunction of a stable organization with chaotic fluctuations in biological space– time. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 361(1807), 1125–1139. Bachelard, G. (2002). The formation of the scientific spirit. Clinamen Press. Banywesize, E. M. (2007). Le complexe : contribution a l’avenement de ‘l’organisaction’ chez Edgar Morin. Harmattan. Bateson, G. (2002). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. Hampton Press. Bateson, M. C. (2004). Our own metaphor: A personal account of a conference on the effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation. Hampton Press. Bianchi, F. (2001). Le fil des idées. Une éco-biographie intellectuelle d’Edgar Morin. [The thread of ideas. An intellectual eco-biography of Edgar Morin. Bocchi, G., & Ceruti, M. (2004). Educazione e globalizzazione [Education and globalization]. Raffaello Cortina. Burton, R. A. (2008). On being certain: Believing you’re right even when you’re not. St. Martin’s Press. Capra, F. (1996). The web of life. Anchor. Celeste, G. (2009). Edgar Morin: cultura e natura nella teoria della complessita. Il prato. Ceruti, M. (1994). Constraints and possibilities. The evolution of knowledge and knowledge of evolution (A. Montuori, Trans.). Gordon & Breach. Christian, W. (1971). Review of The red and the white. American Journal of Sociology, 77(1), 167–169. Ciurana, E. R. (1997). Edgar Morin. Introduccion al pensiamento complejo. Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Cientifico. Universidad Valladolid. Collins, R. (1998). The sociology of philosophies: A global history of intellectual change. Belknap Harvard. De Siena, S. (2001). La sfida globale di Edgar Morin. BESA. Descartes, R. (1954). Philosophical writings. Open University Press. Dortier, J.-F. (2006). Edgar Morin. Le paradigme perdu: La nature humaine. [Edgar Morin. The lost paradigm: Human nature.]. In M. Fournier (ed.), La bibliotheque idéale des sciences humaines. [The ideal library of the human sciences.]. Éditions Sciences Humaines. Fages, J. B. (1980). Comprendre Edgar Morin. [Understanding Edgar Morin]. Privat. Fay, B. (1996). Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science. Blackwell Publishers. Fisher, L. (2009). The perfect swarm: The science of complexity in everyday life. Basic Books. Fortin, R. (2002). Comprendre la complexite. introduction a la methode d’Edgar Morin [Understanding complexity. Introduction to Edgar Morin’s Method]. L’Harmattan. Fortin, R. (2008). Penser avec Edgar Morin. PUF. Gembillo, G. (2008a). Le polilogiche della complessità. Metamorfosi della Ragione da Aristotele a Morin. [The polylogics of complexity. Metamorphosis of Reason from Aristotle to Morin.]. Le Lettere. Gembillo, G. (2008b). Le polilogiche della complessità. Metamorfosi della Ragione da Aristotele a Morin. [The polylogics of complexity. Metamorphosis of reason from Artistotle to Morin.]. Le Lettere. Gembillo, G., & Anselmo, A. (2013). Filosofia della complessità. Le lettere.

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Gembillo, G., Anselmo, A., & Giordano, G. (2008). Complessità e formazione. SICENEA; ENEA. Giles, D. (2000). Illusions of immortality: A psychology of fame and celebrity. Palgrave Macmillan. Heims, S. J. (1991). The cybernetics group. MIT Press. Heims, S. J. (1993). Constructing a social science for postwar America: The cybernetics group, 1946– 1953. MIT Press. Hessel, S. (2011). Time for outrage: Indignez-Vous! Twelve. http://books.google.com/books?id=zpjr5UkJCmUC Hessel, S., & Morin, E. (2012). The path to hope. Other Press. Hollande, F., & Morin, E. (2012). Dialogue sur la politique, la gauche et la crise [Dialogue on politics, the left, and the crisis]. Editions de l’Aube. Johnson, S. (2002). Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software. Simon and Schuster. Kakangu, M. M. (2007). Vocabulaire de la complexité: post-scriptum à La méthode d’Edgar Morin. Editions L’Harmattan. Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self. Harvard University Press. Kegan, R. (1998). In over our heads: The mental demands of modern life. Harvard University Press. Koestler, A., & Smythies, J. R. (eds.). (1972). Beyond reductionism. New perspectives in the life sciences. Proceedings of the Alpbach Symposium, 1968. Macmillan. Kofman, M. (1996). Edgar Morin. From Big Brother to fraternity. Pluto Press. Le Sueur, J. D. (2003). Decolonizing “French Universalism”: Reconsidering the impact of the Algerian war on French intellectuals. In J. D. Le Sueur (ed.), The decolonization reader (pp. 103–118). Routledge. Lemieux, E. (2009). Edgar Morin l’indiscipliné. Seuil. Malaina, A. (2015). Two complexities: The need to link complex thinking and complex adaptive systems science. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 17(1), 1G. Maltby, J., Day, L., McCutcheon, L. E., Houran, J., & Ashe, D. (2006). Extreme celebrity worship, fantasy proneness and dissociation: Developing the measurement and understanding of celebrity worship within a clinical personality context. Personality and Individual Differences, 40(2), 273–283. Manghi, S. (2009). Il soggetto ecologico di Edgar Morin: verso una società-mondo. [Edgar Morin’s ecological subject: towards a world-society.]. Erickson. Maruyama, M. (2004). Peripheral Vision Polyocular Vision or Subunderstanding? Organization Studies, 25(3), 467–480. Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1987). The tree of knowledge. New Science Library. Montuori, A. (2010). Research and the research degree: Transdisciplinarity and Creative Inquiry. In M. Maldonato & R. Pietrobon (eds.), Research on scientific research. A transdisciplinary study (pp. 110–135). Sussex Academic Press. Morin, E. (1970a). L’homme et la mort. Éditions du Seuil. Morin, E. (1970b). The red and the white. Report from a French village. Pantheon Books. Morin, E. (1979). Le paradigme perdu (Paradigm lost). Seuil (Original publication date, 1973). Morin, E. (1981). La méthode. 1. La nature de la nature [Method. 1. The nature of nature]. Seuil. Morin, E. (1982). Le vif du sujet Seuil (Original publication date 1969). Morin, E. (1984). Pour sortir du XXe siècle. Seuil. Morin, E. (1990). Messie, mais non. In D. Bougnoux, J.-L. Le Moigne, & S. Proulx (eds.), Arguments pour une méthode (Autour d’Edgar Morin). [Dialogues towards a method (Regarding Edgar Morin)] (pp. 247–253). Seuil. Morin, E. (1992a). Method: Towards a study of humankind. The nature of nature. Peter Lang. Morin, E. (1992b). Viaggio in Cina [Voyage to China]. Moretti & Vitali. Morin, E. (1993). For a crisiology. Industrial & Environmental Crisis Quarterly, 7, 5–22. Morin, E. (1994a). Journal d’un livre / juillet 1980–aout 1981 [Diary of a book/July 1980–August 1981). Interéditions.

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Morin, E. (1994b). Mes demons [My d(a)emons]. Stock. Morin, E. (Ed.). (1999). Relier les connaissances: le défi du XXIe siècle: Paris, du 16 au 24 mars 1998: Journées thématiques. Seuil. Morin, E. (2001). Seven complex lessons in education for the future. UNESCO. Morin, E. (2004a). Autocritique [Self-criticism.]. Seuil (Original publication date, 1959). Morin, E. (2004b). Ethique. Seuil. Morin, E. (2004c). La Méthode, tome 6. Ethique [Method, volume 6. Ethics]. Seuil. Morin, E. (2005c). Re: From prefix to paradigm. World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 61, 254-267. Morin, E. (2006). Le monde moderne et la question juive [The Modern world and the Jewish question]. Seuil. Morin, E. (2007). Restricted complexity, general complexity. In C. Gershenson, D. Aerts, & B. Edmonds (eds.), Worldviews, science, and us: Philosophy and complexity. World Scientific Publishing Company. Morin, E. (2008a). California journal [Journal de Californie]. Sussex Academic. Morin, E. (2008b). La méthode: Coffret en 2 volumes. [Method: Boxed set in two volumes.]. Seuil. Morin, E. (2008c). Mon chemin. Entretiens avec Djénane Kareh Tager. Fayard. Morin, E. (2008d). On complexity. Hampton Press. Morin, E. (2008e). The reform of thought, transdisciplinarity, and the reform of the university. In B. Nicolescu (ed.), Transdisciplinarity. Theory and practice (pp. 23–32). Hampton Press. Morin, E. (2009a). Edwige, l’inseparable. Fayard. Morin, E. (2009b). Vidal and his family [Vidal et les siens]. Sussex Academic. Morin, E. (2011a). La Voie: Pour l’avenir de l’humanité. Fayard. Morin, E. (2011b). Mes philosophes. [My philosophers.]. Germina. Morin, E. (2012). Mes philosophes. Germina. Morin, E. (2017). L’isle de Luna [The island of Luna]. Actes Sud. Morin, E. (2020a). Changeons de voie. Les leçons du coronavirus. [A change of path. The lessons of the coronavirus.]. Denoël. Morin, E. (2020b). Leçons d’un siècle de vie. Éditions Denoël Morin, E. (2021). Les souvenirs viennent à ma rencontre. Fayard. Morin, E., Ciurana, E. R., & Motta, R. (2003). Éduquer pour l’ère planétaire [Educating for the planetary era]. Balland. Morin, E., & Kern, B. (1999). Homeland Earth: A manifesto for the new millennium. Hampton Press. Morin, E., Lefort, C., & Castoriadis, C. (1968). Mai 1968: la brèche: premières réflexions sur les événements [May 1968: The breach: First reflections on the events]. Fayard. Morin, E., & Piattelli Palmarini, M. (eds.). (1978). L’unité de l’homme [Human unity] (Vol. 1–3). Seuil. Morin, E., & Ramadan, T. (2014). Au péril des idées. Presses du Châtelet. Morin, E., & Ramadan, T. (2017). L’urgence et l’essentiel [The urgent and the essential]. Don Quichotte. Morin, E., & Singaîny, P. (2015). Avant, pendant, après le 11 janvier. Pour une nouvelle écriture collective de notre roman national. [Before, during, and after January 11. For a collective rewriting of our national story.]. Éditions de l’Aube. Nicolescu, B. (2002). Manifesto of transdisciplinarity. SUNY Press. Pascal, B., Molinier, A., & Paul, C. K. (1905). The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal. G. Bell and Sons. http://books.google.com/books? Rosetto Ajello, A. (2003). Il rigore e la scommessa. Riflessioni sociopedagogiche sul pensiero di Edgar Morin [Rigor and wager. Sociopedagogical reflections on Edgar Morin’s thought]. Sciascia. Roux-Rouquié, M. (2000). Systemic modeling of biological functions. Application to the development of the GENINTER software dedicated to the compilation of interrelationships

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between genes and/or gene products. In H. Greppin (ed.), Advanced Studies in Plant Biology: Integrating plant systems (pp. 1–24). Roux-Rouquié, M. (2002, April ). Le concept de Vie chez Edgar Morin. Une biologie pur le XXIe siècle. [Morin’s concept of life. A biology for the 21st century.] 3° Conférence d’Epistémologie et de Philosophie, Viseu, Portugal. http://www.mcxapc.org/docs/ateliers/rouquie.htm Sokal, A. D., & Bricmont, J. (1998). Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals’ abuse of science. Picador USA. Taylor, M. (2003). The Moment of Complexity: Emerging network culture. University of Chicago Press. Toulmin, S. (1992). Cosmopolis. The hidden agenda of modernity. University of Chicago Press. Tsoukas, H. (2017). Don’t Simplify, Complexify: From Disjunctive to Conjunctive Theorizing in Organization and Management Studies. Journal of Management Studies, 54(2), 132–153. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12219 Urry, J. (2005). The complexity turn. Theory, culture, & society, 22(1), 1–14. Waldrop, M. M. (1992). Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. Simon & Schuster. Waldrop, M. M. (1993). Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. Simon and Schuster. Wells, J. (2013). Complexity and Sustainability. Routledge. Wilshire, B. (1990). The Moral Collapse of the University: Professionalism, purity, and alienation. SUNY Press.

PART

I

Complexity Method

A New Way of Thinking 1996—The UNESCO courier, a journal of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Complexity represents a shift away from the simplifying, reductionist approach that has traditionally shaped scientific enquiry. Until the mid-twentieth century, most sciences based their method on specialization and abstraction, i.e. reducing knowledge of a whole to knowledge of its constituent parts (as though the organization of a whole did not generate new properties in relation to those of its separate parts). Their key concept was determinism, in other words the denial of random factors and new factors and the application of the mechanical logic of artificial machines to the problems of living beings and social life. Knowledge must make use of abstraction, but it must also be constructed by reference to context and hence must mobilize what the enquirer knows about the world. Individual facts can only be fully understood by those who maintain and cultivate their general intelligence and mobilize their overall knowledge. Admittedly, it is impossible to know everything about the world or to grasp its many and varied transformations. But no matter how difficult this may be, an attempt must be made to understand the key problems of the world, for otherwise we would be cognitive idiots. This is particularly true today because the context of all political, economic, anthropological and ecological knowledge has become global. As a result of globalization, everything must be situated in the planetary context. Knowledge of the world as such is necessary both for intellectual satisfaction and for life itself. Every citizen faces the problem of gaining access to information about the world, and then of piecing it together and organizing it. To do this, a new form of thinking is needed. In the first place, the kind of thinking that separates must be supplemented with a kind of thinking that makes connections. Complexus means “that which is woven together”. Complex thought is a kind of thought that unites distinction with conjunction. Secondly, it is necessary to come to grips with uncertainty. The dogma of universal determinism has collapsed. The universe is not subject to the absolute sovereignty of order; it is the outcome of a “dialogical” relationship (a relationship that is both antagonistic, concurrent and complementary) between order, disorder and organization. Complexity thus connects (contextualizes and globalizes) and also comes to grips with the challenge of uncertainty. How does it do this?

The Three Theories One approach to complexity is provided by three theories information theory, cybernetics and systems theory. These theories, which are closely related and indeed inseparable, emerged in the early 1940s and have had a far-reaching cross-fertilizing effect on one another.

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Information theory gives access to a universe where there are both order (redundancy) and disorder (noise) and derives something new from it, i.e. information itself, which then becomes the organizing (programming) instrument of a cybernetic machine. For example, information that gives the name of the victor of a battle resolves an uncertainty. Information that announces the sudden death of a tyrant introduces an unexpected new element into a situation. Cybernetics is a theory of self-controlling machines. The idea of feedback, introduced by the U.S. mathematician Norbert Wiener, breaks with the idea of linear causality and introduces that of the causal loop. The cause acts on the effect and the effect on the cause, as in a heating system where a thermostat controls the operation of a boiler. This regulatory mechanism makes the system autonomous, in this case ensuring that an apartment has thermic autonomy from the colder temperature outside. The feed-back loop may act as an amplifying mechanism, e.g. in a situation where an armed conflict reaches a critical stage. The violence of one adversary triggers off a violent reaction which in turn triggers off another, even more violent reaction. Very many instances of this sort of inflationary or stabilizing feedback can be found in economic, social, political or psychological phenomena. Systems theory provides the basis of a way of thinking about organization. The first lesson of systems analysis is that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”. This means that properties emerge from the organization of a whole and may have a retroactive effect on the parts. For instance, water is an emergent property of the hydrogen and oxygen of which it is composed. The whole is also less than the sum of its parts, since the parts may have properties that are inhibited by the organization of the whole.

Self-organization In addition to these three theories are a number of conceptual developments related to the idea of self-organization. Four names that must be mentioned in this context are those of John von Neumann, Heinz von Foerster, Henri Atlan and Ilya Prigogine. In his theory of automata, von Neumann considered the difference between artificial automata and “living machines”. He pointed to the paradox whereby the components of artificial machines, although very well designed and engineered, deteriorate as soon as the machine starts to operate. Living machines, on the other hand, are made of extremely unreliable components, such as proteins, which are constantly subject to deterioration. However, these machines have the unusual property of being able to develop and reproduce themselves; they regenerate themselves through replacing damaged molecules by new molecules, and dead cells by new cells. An artificial machine cannot repair itself, whereas a living machine constantly regenerates when its cells die. It is, as Heraclitus put it, “life from death and death from life”. Von Foerster’s contribution is his discovery of the principle of “order from noise”. If a box containing a haphazardly arranged collection of cubes, each magnetized on two faces, is shaken, the cubes spontaneously form themselves into a coherent whole. A principle of order (magnetization) plus disordered energy have created an ordered organization. In this way, order is created from disorder. Henri Atlan has developed the theory of “random organization”. At the birth of the universe there was an order/disorder/organization dialogic triggered off by calorific

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turbulence (disorder), in which, under certain conditions (random encounters) organizing principles made possible the creation of nuclei, atoms, galaxies and stars. This dialogic recurred when life emerged via encounters between macro-molecules within a kind of self-productive loop which eventually became a living self-organization. The dialogic between order, disorder and organization exists in a wide variety of forms, and via countless feedback processes is constantly in action in the physical, biological and human worlds. Prigogine introduced the idea of self-organization from disorder in a different way. In so-called Rayleigh-Bénard convection cells, coherent structures are formed and maintained between two temperature levels when a thin layer of silicone oil is carefully heated. In order to be sustainable, these structures need supplies of energy which they consume and dissipate. Living beings have sufficient autonomy to draw energy from their environment and even extract information from it and absorb its organization. I have called this process auto-eco-organization. The study of complex phenomena can thus be seen as a building with several floors. The ground floor consists of the three theories (information, cybernetics and systems) and contains the tools needed to develop a theory of organization. On the second floor are the ideas of von Neumann, von Foerster, Atlan and Prigogine on selforganization. I have added some other features to the building, notably the dialogical principle, the recursion principle and the hologrammatic principle.

The Three Principles The dialogical principle brings together two antagonistic principles or notions which on the face of things should repel one another but are in fact indissociable and essential for understanding a single reality. The physicist Niels Bohr believed that physical particles should be regarded as both corpuscles and waves. Blaise Pascal said that the “the opposite of a truth is not an error but a contrary truth.” Bohr put this in the following terms: “The opposite of a trivial truth is a stupid error, but the opposite of a profound truth is always another profound truth”. The problem is that of combining antagonistic notions in order to envisage the organizational and creative processes in the complex world of human life and history. The principle of organizational recursion goes further than the feedback principle; it goes beyond the idea of regulation to that of self-production and selforganization. It is a generating loop in which products and effects themselves produce and cause what produces them. Thus we, as individuals, are the products of an ageold system of reproduction, but this system can reproduce itself only if we ourselves become its producers by procreating. Individual human beings produce society in and through their interactions, but society, as an emerging whole, produces the humanity of individuals by conferring language and culture on them. The “hologrammatic” principle highlights the apparent paradox of certain systems where not only is the part present in the whole, but the whole is present in the part: the totality of the genetic heritage is present in each individual cell. In the same way, the individual is part of society but society is present in every individual, through his or her language, culture and standards.

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Conclusion Thinking in terms of complexity is clearly not a mode of thought that replaces certainty with uncertainty, separation with inseparability, and logic with all kinds of special exceptions. On the contrary, it involves a constant toing and froing between certainty and uncertainty, between the elementary and the global, between the separable and the inseparable. The aim is not to abandon the principles of classical science order, separability and logic but to absorb them into a broader and richer scheme of things. The aim is not to set a vacuous all-purpose holism against systematic reductionism, but to attach the concreteness of the parts to the totality. Linkage must be made between the principles of order and disorder, separation and connection, autonomy and dependence, which are at one and the same time complementary, concurrent and antagonistic. In short, complex thought is not the opposite of simplifying thought; it incorporates simplifying thought. As Hegel might have put it, it unites simplicity and complexity and ultimately reveals its own simplicity. In fact, the paradigm of complexity can be described just as simply as that of simplicity. Whereas the latter requires us to dissociate and reduce, the paradigm of complexity requires us to connect as well as to distinguish. Complex thought is essentially thought which incorporates uncertainty and is capable of conceiving organization. It is capable of linking, contextualizing and globalizing but can at the same time acknowledge what is singular and concrete. Reproduced from the UNESCO Courier, February 1996, at https://en.unesco.org/courier/secrets-complexity. Accessed: December 20, 2017.

The Spirit of the Valley1 1977—From La Méthode: La nature de la nature Translation by Roland Belanger with revisions by Amy Heath-Carpentier Awake, they sleep. Heraclitus To reach the point you don’t know, you must take the road you don’t know. San Juan de la Cruz The concept of science is neither absolute nor eternal. Jacob Bronowski Personally, I think that there is at least one problem . . . that interests all persons who think: the problem of understanding the world, ourselves, and our knowledge inasmuch as it is part of the world. Karl Popper

What Absconded from the Paradigm I am more and more convinced that the problems whose urgency binds us to the present require us to break away from them in order to consider them in their depth. I am more and more convinced that the principles of our knowledge hide that which is indispensable for us to know. I am more and more convinced that the relationship between,

science

politics

ideology when it is not invisible, continues to be poorly dealt with, because two of the terms have been swallowed up by the third, which has now become dominant. I am more and more convinced that the concepts that we use to conceive our society—all of society—are mutilated and lead to actions that are inevitably mutilating. I am more and more convinced that anthropo-social science needs to establish links with the natural sciences and that this articulation requires a reorganization of the very structure of knowledge. But the encyclopedic breadth and the unfathomably radical nature of these problems inhibit and discourage us, and so the very recognition of their importance

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contributes to divert us from them. As far as I am concerned, I needed exceptional circumstances and conditions2 in order to proceed from conviction to action, that is to say, to work. The first crystallization of my thought can be found in The Lost Paradigm (1973). This premature branch of Method, though nascent, tries hard to reformulate the concept of what is human, that is to say, a human science or anthropology. Sapir long ago highlighted that “it was absurd to say that the concept of man is at one time individual, at another social” (and I would add: at still another biological). “That is like saying that matter obeys alternately the laws of chemistry and those of atomic physics.” (Sapir, 1927 in Sapir, 1971, p. 36).3 The dissociation of the three terms individual/society/species breaks their permanent and simultaneous relation. The fundamental problem, therefore, is to re-establish and question what has disappeared in the dissociation: this very relation. It is, then, urgently necessary not only to rearticulate individual with society (a task that at times has been undertaken, but at the expense of flattening one of the two notions to benefit the other), but also to effect the articulation reputed impossible (worse, “outmoded”) between the biological and the anthropo-social spheres. That is what I attempted in The Lost Paradigm. I was obviously not seeking to reduce the anthropological to the biological, nor trying to bring the “synthesis” of knowledge up to date. I wanted to show that the empirical soldering that could be performed since 1960, via the ethology of superior primates and the prehistory of hominids, between Animal and Human, Nature and Culture, necessitated conceiving humans as a ternary concept:

Individual

society

species in which one term cannot be reduced or subordinated to another. That, to my eyes, called for a complex principle of explanation and a theory of self-organization. Such a perspective poses new problems, still more fundamental and more radical from which there is no escape: —What does the radical “self ” of self-organization mean? —What is organization? —What is complexity? The first question reopens the whole issue of living organization; the second and third open a chain of questions. They have drawn me along unknown paths. Organization is an original concept if one thinks of its physical nature. It then introduces a radical physical dimension in living organization and in anthropo-social organization that both can and must be considered as developments transforming physical organization. At the same time, the link between physics and biology can no longer be limited to chemistry, nor even to thermodynamics. It must be organizational. From now on, it is necessary not only to articulate the anthropo-social sphere, but it is also necessary to integrate them with the physical sphere:

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physics Æbiology Æanthropo-sociology

But, in order to achieve such a double articulation, it would be necessary to combine knowledge and abilities that are beyond our capacity. It is, then, too much to ask. And yet, it would also not be enough, since it would not be a matter of conceiving physical reality as primary stuff, an objective basis for all explanation. We have known for more than half a century that neither micro-physical observation nor macro-physical observation can be detached from their observer. The greatest progress in contemporary science has been achieved by reintegrating the observer into the observation. Which is logically necessary: every concept refers not only to the object that is conceived but also to the conceiving subject. We return to the truth that the philosopher-bishop set forth two centuries ago: “non-thought bodies.” don’t exist.4 Now, the observer who observes, the mind that thinks and conceives, are inextricable from a culture, consequently from a society here and now. All knowledge, even the most physical, undergoes a sociological determination. There is in all science, even the most physical, an anthropo-social dimension. By that very fact, anthropo-social reality projects itself and inscribes itself at the very heart of physical science. All this is evident. But it is evidence that remains isolated, surrounded by a sanitary cordon. No science has wanted to address the most objective category of knowledge: the knowledge of the knowing subject. No natural science has wanted to know its cultural origin. No physical science has wanted to recognize its human nature. The deep gap between the sciences of nature and the human sciences masks both the physical reality of the latter and the social reality of the former. We run smack into the omnipotence of a principle of disjunction: the human sciences are condemned to extra-physical inconsistency and the natural sciences are condemned to the unawareness of their social reality. As Von Foerster says very aptly: “The existence of sciences called social indicates the refusal to allow other sciences to be social” (Von Foerster, 1974, p.28). (I would add: and to allow social sciences to be physical). Now, all anthropo-social reality is based somehow (how?) on physical science, but all physical science is based somehow (how?) on anthropo-social reality. That given, we discover that the mutual implication among these terms loops itself in a circular relationship which we must elucidate:

physics Æbiology Æanthropo-sociology

But, at the same time, we see that the elucidation of such a relation runs into a triple impossibility:

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1. The circuit

physicsbiologyanthropo-sociology

invades the entire field of knowledge and requires an impossible, encyclopedic amount of input. 2. The constitution of a relation where there had been disjunction poses a problem that is doubly unfathomable: the problem of the origin and the nature of the principle that enjoins us to isolate and separate in order to know added to the possibility of another principle capable of linking what has been isolated and separated. 3. The circular character of the relation

physicsanthropo-sociology

takes the shape of a vicious circle, that is to say of a logical absurdity, since physical knowledge depends on anthropo-sociological knowledge, which depends on physical knowledge, and so on, infinitely. We now have not a launching pad but an infernal cycle. Therefore, after this first lap around the track, we run into a triple wall: the wall of encyclopedic knowledge, the wall of epistemology, and the wall of logical thought. In these terms, the mission I believed I had assigned myself is impossible. I must give it up.

The School of Mourning It is precisely this renunciation that the University teaches us. The school of Research is a school of Mourning. Upon every neophyte embarking on research there is imposed a major renunciation of knowledge. We convince her that the era of the Picos de la Mirandola is three centuries back, and that it is henceforth impossible to build one’s vision both of humanity and of the world. We prove to him that the growth in information and the heterogenization of knowledge simply cannot be stored and manipulated by the human brain. We assure him that this is not to be deplored but rather, in fact, it should be welcomed: He must, then, devote all his intelligence to increasing specific, determined areas of knowledge. We integrate him in a specialized team, and it is “specialized” and not “team” which is underscored. Henceforth a specialist, the researcher sees himself offered the exclusive possession of a fragment of a puzzle the global vision of which necessarily escapes each and everyone. He has now become a true scientific researcher driven by this one ideal: knowledge is produced not to be articulated and thought, but to be invested and utilized in an anonymous way.

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Fundamental questions are returned as general questions, namely vague, abstract, non-operational. The original question that science snatched from religion and philosophy to take it upon itself, the question which justifies its ambition as science—“What is humanity, what is the world, what is humanity in the world?”—science today sends that question back to philosophy, still incompetent in its eyes because of speculative drunkenness; science sends it back to religion, still illusory in its eyes because of inveterate mythomania. Science abandons every fundamental question to non-scholars, who are a priori disqualified. It only tolerates that, at the age of retirement, its grand dignitaries take some meditative pose, which the young assistants in their white lab coats and bent over their test tubes, will ridicule. It is not possible to integrate the human sciences with the sciences of nature. It is not possible to have one’s knowledge communicate with one’s life. Such is the main lesson passed-down from the College de France to the “colleges” of France. Is Mourning necessary? The Institution affirms it, proclaims it. It is thanks to the method that isolates, separates, disjoints, reduces to units, and measures that science has discovered the cell, the molecule, the particle, the galaxies, the quasars, the pulsars, gravity, electro-magnetism, and quantum energy; that it has learned to interpret stones, sediments, fossils, bones, and unknown scripts, including the script inscribed on DNA. However, the structures of this knowledge are dissociated one from the other. Physics and biology communicate today only through a few isthmuses. Physics no longer even manages to communicate with itself: the queen of sciences is dissociated between micro-physics, macro-physics, and our meso-scale still apparently subject to classical physics. The anthropological continent has drifted off, becoming an Australia. In its breast, the triad constituting the concept of the human

individual

society

species is itself totally disjointed, as we have seen (Morin, 1973) and will see again. The human being has come apart: there remains over here a tooling-hand, over there a talkingtongue, and elsewhere sex organs splashing on a bit of brain. The idea of the human is all the more dispensable because it is pitiful: the human being depicted by the human sciences is a supra-physical and supra-biological specter. Like humanity, the world is dislocated among the sciences, crumbling among the disciplines, pulverized into bits of information. Today we cannot avoid the question: must the necessary analytical decomposition be paid for by the decomposition of beings and things in a generalized atomization? Must the necessary isolating of the object be paid for by disjunction and incommunicability between what is separated? Must functional specialization be paid for by an absurd fragmentation? Must knowledge be dislocated into a thousand stupid facts? Now, what does this question mean, if not that science has to lose its veneration for science and that science has to question science? Yet another issue that, apparently,

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adds to the enormity of the problems that force us to give up. But it is precisely this issue that prevents us from giving up on our problem. How, in fact, can we surrender to the ukase of a science in which we have just discovered a gigantic blind spot? Rather, should we think that this science suffers from insufficiency and mutilation? But then, what is science? Here, we must realize that this question does not have a scientific answer: science does not know itself scientifically and has no means of knowing itself scientifically. There is a scientific method to consider and control the objects of science. But there is no scientific method to consider science as an object of science and still less the scientific as subject of this object. There are epistemological tribunals which, a posteriori and from the outside, pretend to judge and to gauge scientific theories. There are philosophical tribunals where science is condemned by default. But there is no science of science. One can even say that all scientific methodology, entirely given to the expulsion of the subject and of reflexivity, maintains this self-occultation. “Science without conscience is nothing but ruination of the soul,” said Rabelais. The conscience that is missing here is not moral conscience, it is conscience period, that is to say the aptitude to conceive itself. Hence these unbelievable deficiencies: how is it that science remains incapable of seeing itself as social praxis? How is it incapable, not only of controlling, but of conceiving its power of manipulation and its manipulation by power? How is it that scientists are incapable of conceiving the connection between “disinterested” research and the search for and of interest? Why are they so totally incapable of examining in scientific terms the link between knowledge and power? Henceforth, if we want to be logical with our plan, we must necessarily tackle the problem of the science of science.

The Impossible Impossible The mission becomes more and more impossible. But abdication has itself become even more impossible. Can one be satisfied with conceiving the individual only by excluding society, society only by excluding the species, the human only by excluding life, life only by excluding physis, physics only by excluding life? Can one accept that local progress in precision is accompanied by imprecision in the global forms and articulations? Can one accept that measure, foresight and manipulation make meaning recede? Can one accept that information is transformed into noise, that a downpour of micro-elucidations is transformed into generalized obscurity? Can one accept that key questions be relegated to dungeons? Can one accept that knowledge is founded on the exclusion of the knower, that thought is founded on the exclusion of the thinker, that the subject is excluded from the construction of the object? That science is totally unconscious of its social context and determination? Can we consider as normal and evident that scientific knowledge has no subject and that its object is dislocated among the sciences, crumbled among the disciplines? Can we accept such a night spreading over knowledge?5 Can we continue to throw these questions into the trash? Can I know that asking them, attempting to answer them, is inconceivable, ridiculous, even insane? But it is even more inconceivable, ridiculous, and insane to throw them out.

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The Non-Method Let us understand each other: I am looking here neither for general knowledge nor for a theory of everything. We must, on the contrary and on principle, refuse general knowledge. It always conceals the difficulties of knowledge, that is to say the resistance that the real opposes to the ideal. It is always abstract, poor, “ideological,” always simplifying. Likewise, a theory of everything, in order to avoid the disjunction between the separate branches of knowledge, obeys an asphyxiating over-simplification, hanging the entire universe onto a single global formula. Actually, the poverty of all unitarian attempts, of all global answers, confirms the scientific discipline in its resignation to mourning. The choice, then, is not between a particular, precise, limited knowledge and the general abstract idea. It is between Mourning and the search for a method that might articulate what is separate and link what is disjointed. It is certainly a matter here of a method, in the Cartesian sense, which would permit “rightly conducting reason and seeking truth in the sciences.” But Descartes could, in his first discourse, at the same time exercise doubt, exorcise doubt, establish preliminary certitudes and have Method spring up like Minerva armed from head to toe. The Cartesian doubt was sure of itself. Our doubt doubts itself. It discovers the impossibility of starting from scratch, since the logical, linguistic, cultural conditions of thought are inescapably present in our a priori judgments. And this doubt, which cannot be absolute, can no longer be absolutely resolved. This “French knight” set out at too fast a pace. Today, we can set out only in uncertainty, including uncertainty regarding our doubt. Today we should methodically doubt the very principle of the Cartesian method, the disjunction of objects among themselves, of notions among themselves (clear and distinct ideas), the absolute disjunction of object and subject. Today, our historical need is to find a method that detects rather than hides links, articulations, solidarities, implications, imbrications, interdependencies, complexities. We must start by extinguishing false clarity. Setting out not from the clear and distinct, but from the obscure and uncertain; no longer from assured knowledge but from the critique of assurance. We can set out only in ignorance, uncertainty and confusion. But it is a matter of achieving a new consciousness of ignorance, uncertainty and confusion. We have become aware, not of human ignorance in general, but of the ignorance that is crouching, buried deep, almost in nuclear fashion, at the heart of our knowledge reputed to be the most certain, scientific knowledge. We know from now on that this knowledge is poorly known and poorly knowing, fragmented, and ignorant of its own unknown as well as of its known. Uncertainty becomes a viaticum. Doubting our doubt gives doubt a new dimension, the dimension of reflexivity. The doubt by which the subject questions the conditions of emergence of its own thought from now on constitutes a potentially relativist, relational, and self-knowing thought. Finally, the acceptance of confusion can become a means of resisting mutilating simplification. Certainly, as we set out we are without a method. But at least we can use an antimethod, where ignorance, uncertainty, and confusion become virtues. We can trust these discards of classical science all the more now that they have become the pioneers of the new sciences. The upsurge of the non-simplifiable, the uncertain, the confused, by which the crisis of science in the twentieth century manifests itself, is at the same time inseparable from the new developments of this

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science. What seems like regression from the point of view of disjunction, simplification, reduction, and certainty (thermodynamic disorder, micro-physical uncertainty, the random character of genetic mutations), is on the contrary inseparable from progression into unknown lands. More fundamentally, disjunction and simplification are already dead at the very base of physical reality. The subatomic particle has surged up irremediably, in confusion, uncertainty, and disorder. Whatever the future developments of micro-physics may be, we will never return to the element that is at once simple, isolatable, and indivisible. Of course, confusion and uncertainty are not and will not be considered here as the ultimate words of knowledge: they are the pioneering signs of complexity. Science evolves. Whitehead already noted fifty years ago that science “changes even more than theology.” (Whitehead, 1926, in Whitehead, 1932, p. 233) To repeat Bronowski’s formula, the concept of science is neither absolute nor eternal. And yet at the heart of the scientific institution reigns the most anti-scientific of illusions: holding as absolute and eternal the characteristics of science that are the most dependent on the techno-bureaucratic organization of society. Therefore, no matter how marginal it may be, my attempt does not loom like a meteorite from another sky. It comes from the convulsions of our own scientific soil. It is born from the crisis of science, and it feeds on its revolutionizing progress. In any case, it is because official certainty has become uncertain that official intimidation can let itself be intimidated in turn. For sure, my effort will give rise at first to misunderstanding. The word science includes a fossilized meaning, admittedly, and the new meaning has not yet disengaged itself. This effort will seem laughable and insane because the disjunction has not yet been contested in its principle. But it will be able to become conceivable, reasonable, and necessary in the light of a new principle that it will perhaps have contributed to institute, precisely because it will not have been afraid to appear laughable and insane.

From Vicious Circle to Virtuous Cycle I have indicated the major impossibilities that condemn my undertaking: —The logical impossibility (vicious circle), —The impossibility of encyclopedic knowledge, —The all-powerful presence of the law of disjunction and the absence of a law for the organization of knowledge. These impossibilities are interwoven, and their conjunction results in this enormous absurdity: a vicious circle of encyclopedic amplitude, which has neither a principle nor a method of organization. Let us take the circular relationship:

physics Æbiology Æanthropo-sociology

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This circular relationship signifies first of all that a human science is postulating a science of nature that in turn postulates a human science. Now, logically this relationship of mutual dependence returns each of these propositions back alternatively to each other in an infernal cycle where neither can take shape. This circular relationship signifies also that anthropo-social reality depends on physical reality, and physical reality depends on anthropo-social reality all at the same time. Taken literally, these two propositions are antinomous and cancel each other out. Finally, in considering the double circular proposition (anthropo-social reality depends on anthropo-social reality) from a different angle, we observe that an uncertainty will remain no matter what happens to the very nature of reality, which loses all primary ontological foundation, and this uncertainty leads to the impossibility of a truly objective knowledge. We understand then that the ties between antinomous propositions in mutual dependence stand denounced as vicious, both in their principle and in their consequences (the loss of the base of objectivity). Therefore, we have always broken the vicious circle either by isolating the propositions or by choosing one of the terms as a simple principle to which we must refer the others. Therefore, in what concerns the relationship between physics, biology, and anthropology, each of these terms was isolated, and the only link conceivable was the reduction of biology to physics, of anthropology to biology. The knowledge that binds a mind and an object is therefore referred to the physical object (empiricism) or to the human mind (idealism) or to social reality (sociologism). Thus, the relationship between subject and object is dissociated, science making off with the object, philosophy with the subject. This very fact means that breaking the circularity, eliminating the antinomies, is precisely to fall back under the empire of the law of disjunction/simplification from which we want to escape. On the other hand, preserving the circularity is to refuse to reduce a complex datum to a mutilating principle; it is to refuse the hypostasis of a master concept (Matter, Mind, Energy, Information, Class Struggle, etc.). It is to refuse linear discourse with points of departure and arrival. It is to refuse abstract simplification. Breaking the circularity seems to reestablish the possibility of an absolutely objective knowledge. But that is illusory. Preserving circularity is, on the contrary, to respect the objective conditions of human knowledge, which always, somewhere, includes logical paradox and uncertainty. Preserving circularity, by maintaining the association of the two propositions, both independently recognized as true but which negate each other as soon as they come into contact, is to open the possibility of conceiving these truths as the two faces of one complex truth. It is to unveil the principal reality, which is the relation of interdependence, between notions which disjunction isolates or opposes. It is, therefore, to open the door to searching for this relation. Preserving circularity is, perhaps, by that very fact, to open the possibility of knowledge reflecting on itself: in fact, the circularity of

physics ÅÆanthropo-sociology and the circularity

object ÅÆsubject

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must bring the physicist to reflect on the cultural and social characteristics of her science, to reflect on her own mind, and to lead her to question herself. As the Cartesian cogito indicates, the subject arises in and by the reflexive movement of 6 thought on thought. To conceive circularity is to open up the possibility of a method. Through the processes and exchanges of having the terms interact, this method would produce a complex knowledge containing its own reflexivity. In this way, we see our hope rise up from the very things that caused the despair of simplifying thought: paradox, antinomy, and vicious circles. We glimpse the possibility of transforming vicious circles into virtuous cycles, becoming reflexive and generative of complex thought. Here we see this idea that will guide our departure; it is not necessary to break our circularities. On the contrary, we must take care not to detach ourselves from them. The circle will be our wheel; our path will be a spiral.

The En-cyclo-pedia All at once, the insurmountable problem of encyclopedism is transformed, since the terms of the problem have changed. The term encyclopedia must no longer be taken in the cumulative and stupid alphabetical meaning where it has lost all value. It must be taken in its original meaning of egkuklios paidea—training that circulates knowledge. It is, in fact, a matter of en-cyclo-peding, that is to say, of learning to articulate the disjointed points of view of knowledge into an active cycle. This en-cyclo-pedism does not pretend to encompass all knowledge. That would be to fall back into the cumulative idea as well as to head into the totalitarian mania of the great unitarian systems that enclose the real in a great corset of order and coherence (and evidently let it burst out). I know the meaning of Adorno’s statement: “Totality is non-truth.” Every system that aims at enclosing the world in its logic is an insane rationalization. The en-cyclo-pedism required here aims at articulating what is fundamentally disjoined and should be fundamentally joined. Our effort, then, will not be directed at the totality of knowledge in each sphere, but on crucial knowledge, strategic points, knots of communication, organizational articulation between disjointed spheres. In this sense, the idea of organization, as it develops, is going to constitute something like the “bough of Salzburg”7 around which key scientific concepts will be able to cluster and crystallize. The theoretical bet I am making in this work is that knowledge of what organization is could be transformed into an organizing principle of knowledge itself that can articulate the disjointed and complexify the simplified. The scientific risks I run are evident. These are not so much errors of information, since I have appealed to the critical collaboration of researchers competent in domains that were foreign to me just seven years ago. They are rather fundamental errors in detecting the crucial and strategic problems. The umbrella of scientificity that covers me does not immunize me. My path, like all paths, is threatened by error, and, moreover, I am going to cover terrain where I will be exposed. But, above all, my path will risk ceaselessly straying between esotericism and popularization, philosophism and scientism. Therefore, I am not escaping the encyclopedic difficulty, but this difficulty ceases to be stated in terms of accumulation, in terms of a system, in terms of totality. It is

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stated in terms of organization and of articulation at the heart of an active circular process or cycle.

To Relearn Learning Everything holds together: the transformations of a vicious circle into a productive circuit, the impossible encyclopedia into circling movement, are inseparable from the constitution of an organizing principle of knowledge that associates the description of the object with the description of the description (and the deciphering of the decipherer) and which gives as much force to articulation and integration as to distinction and opposition. (Because we must not seek to suppress the distinctions and oppositions, but rather, to overthrow the dictatorship of disjunctive and stifling simplifications.) By that very fact, we will be able to approach the problem of the first principles of opposition, distinction, relation, association in discourses, theories, thoughts: namely, the problem of paradigms. Revolutions of thought are always the fruit of a generalized shock, of a whirling movement that goes from the phenomenal experience to paradigms that organize this experience. Thus, shifting from the Ptolemaic paradigm to the Copernican paradigm– which, by means of an earth/sun permutation, changed the world by pushing the Earth from the center to the periphery, from sovereign to satellite—required countless shifts between observations disrupting the ancient system of explanation, theoretical efforts to amend the explanatory system, and the idea of changing the very principle of explanation. At the end of this process, the initially scandalous and insane idea became normal and evident, since the impossible found its solution according to a new law and in a new system of organization of the phenomenal data. The articulation

physis — anthropo-sociology

and the articulation

object — subject

which question a paradigm much more fundamental than the Copernican law, work simultaneously on the terrain of phenomenal data, theoretical ideas, and the fundamental laws of reasoning. The battle will be fought on all fronts, but the master position is the one that regulates the logic of reasoning. In science, and especially in politics, ideas, which are often more stubborn than facts, resist the outpouring of data and proof. Facts can actually shatter when they come up against ideas, as long as nothing exists that can re-organize experience differently. In every moment of our experience—while eating, walking, loving or thinking—all that we do is simultaneously biological, psychological, and social. Nevertheless, anthropology has been able, for the last half-century, to pedantically proclaim the absolute disjunction between the human (biological) and human (social)

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realms. More profoundly still, classical science has been able, to this very day and contrary to all evidence, to be assured that it was of no consequence whatsoever and of no cognitive significance whatsoever that every physical body or object is actually conceived by the human mind. It is not a matter here of contesting “objective” knowledge. Its good deeds have been and remain inestimable since the absolute primacy granted the concordance of observations and experience remains the decisive means of eliminating the arbitrary and the judgment of authority. It is not a matter of preserving that objectivity absolutely, but of integrating it into a more ample and reflective knowledge, giving it a third eye capable of detecting its own blind spots. Our thought must lay siege to the unthought that commands and controls it. We use our structure of thought to think. It will also be necessary to use our thought to rethink our structure of thought. Our thought must return to its source in a questioning and critical loop. Otherwise, the dead structure will continue to secrete petrifying thoughts. I have discovered how useless it is to argue only against error. The latter is reborn ceaselessly from laws of thought which themselves are situated beyond critical awareness. I have understood how useless it was to prove things only at the level of phenomena. The message is soon reabsorbed by mechanisms of forgetfulness that stem from the self-defense of the threatened system of ideas. I have understood that it was hopeless to only refute. Only a new foundation can make the old crumble. This is why I think the crucial problem is the organizing principle of knowledge and, what is vital today is not only to learn, not only to relearn, not only to unlearn, but to reorganize our mental system to relearn learning.

“Caminante, no hay camino” That which teaches us to learn how to learn, that is method. I am not bringing the method. I am starting out on the search for the method. I am not starting out with a method. I am starting out fully aware of my refusal to simplify. Simplification is the disjunction between entities that are separate and closed, the reduction to a simple element, the expulsion of what does not enter into the linear scheme. I am starting out with the will not to give in to these fundamental modes of thought which simplify: —To idealize (to believe that reality can be reabsorbed in the idea, that the intelligible alone is real); —To rationalize (to want to enclose reality in the order and coherence of a system, to forbid it from overflowing outside the system, to need to justify the existence of the world by conferring on it a patent of rationality); —To normalize (that is to say to eliminate the strange, the irreducible, the mysterious). I am starting out also in need of a principle of knowledge that not only respects but recognizes the non-idealizable, the non-rationalizable, the non-normal, the enormous. We need a principle of knowledge that not only respects, but reveals the mystery of things. At the beginning, the word method signified advancing along a path. Here we must resign to advance without a path, to trailblaze. As Machado said: Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Method can be formed only during research. It can

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be disengaged and formulated only afterwards, at the moment when the term once again becomes the point of departure, this time endowed with method. Nietzsche realized that: “Methods come at the end.” (The Antichrist). A return to the beginning is not a vicious circle, if the voyage, as the word trip is used today, means an experience from which we come back changed. Then, perhaps, we will have been able to learn by learning. The circle will have been able to transform itself into a spiral where the return to the beginning is precisely what distances us from the beginning. That is clearly what novels about initiation, from Wilhelm Meister to Siddharta, have told us.

The Spiral Inspiration The reader is, I hope, starting perhaps to sense the following: Though this work does not put any limit on its perspective, though it does not exclude any dimension of reality, though it has the most extreme ambition, it cannot because of its very ambition be conceived as an encyclopedia, in the sense that this means a balance sheet of knowledge. But it can be conceived as an encyclopedia in the sense that the term, returning to its origin, signifies a circling of knowledge. It cannot in any way be conceived as a general unified theory whose diverse aspects in the different domains are logically deduced from the master principle. The break with simplification makes me reject in its very principle every unitary theory, every totalizing synthesis, every rationalizing/ ordering system. This, already stated, must unfortunately be repeated because minds which live under the empire of the principle of simplification see only the alternative between fragmented research on the one hand, and the general idea on the other. It is this type of alternative we have to rid ourselves of, and it is not simple; otherwise, there would have been, a long time ago, an answer to this problem within the framework of this law of simplification. It is not a question, finally, of improvising a new science, launched on the market ready made to replace the obsolete science. If I have spoken elsewhere (Morin, 1973) of scienza nuova, I am referring to the perspective, the horizon: it cannot be the point of departure. If there is a new science, antagonistic to the old science, it is bound to it by a common trunk, it doesn’t come from somewhere else, it will be able to be differentiated only by metamorphosis and revolution. The book is a slowly advancing spiral.8 It is starting out from inquiring and questioning. It is pursued through a series of linked conceptual and theoretical reorganizations which, attaining at last the epistemological and paradigmatic level, arrive at the idea of a method that must allow an advance of thought and action capable of reassembling what was mutilated, integrating what was disjointed, and thinking what was hidden. The concept of method here is opposed to the conception called “methodological,” where method is reduced to technical recipes. Like the Cartesian method, it must be inspired by a fundamental principle or paradigm. But the difference here is precisely one of paradigm. It is no longer a matter of obeying a principle of order (excluding disorder), of clarity (excluding obscurity), of distinction (excluding adherences, participations and communications), of disjunction (excluding subject, antinomy, complexity), that is to say a principle which ties science to logical simplification. On the contrary, starting from a principle of complexity, it is a matter of linking what was disjointed.

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“To start a revolution everywhere” Sainte-Beuve used to say of the Cartesian method. That is because Descartes had formulated the grand paradigm that was going to dominate the West: the disjunction of subject and object, of spirit and matter, the opposition of man and nature. If, starting from a paradigm of complexity, a new method can be born, be embodied, advance, and progress, then it would, perhaps, be able “‘to start a revolution everywhere,” even in the notion of revolution that has become flat, conformist and reactionary.

The Spirit of the Valley This book takes off from the crisis of our century, and it is to this crisis that it returns. The radicalness of the crisis of society, the radicalness of the crisis of humanity pushed me to look at the root level of theory. I know that humanity needs a political theory. I also know that this political theory needs to rest on anthropo-sociology. That anthropo-sociology needs to be articulated on a science of nature, and this articulation requires an interlinked reorganization of the structure of knowledge. I had to plunge into this fundamental problem by turning away from the solicitation of the present. But the present is this very crisis that reaches me, disperses me, and goes right through me. The proper object-subject of this book returns unceasingly to my work to undermine it. The noises of the world, armaments, conflicts, ephemeral and destructive liberations, and lasting and hard oppressions come through the walls and strike at my heart. I am working in the midst of these olive trees, of these vines, in these hills, near the ocean, while a new midnight advances on the world; its order crushes; its violence inspires respect, terror and admiration to those around me, who, because of my silence, think I am one of them. I turn aside from the call of those for whom I must testify, and, at the same time, I give in to the invitation of a bottle of wine, a friendly smile, a loving face . . . Why speak of me? Is it not decent, normal, serious that, when dealing with science, knowledge, thought, the author be effaced behind his work, and evaporate in a discourse that must become impersonal? We have to know, on the contrary, that it is there that comedy triumphs. The subject who disappears from his discourse in fact takes over the Control Tower. By pretending to give way to the Copernican sun, he reconstitutes a Ptolemaic system whose center is his spirit. Now, my effort to find method tends precisely to tear me away from this absolute self-centeredness by which the subject, while disappearing on tip-toe, is identified with sovereign Objectivity. It is not anonymous Science that is expressed by my lips. I am not talking from the height of a throne of Assurance. On the contrary, my conviction secretes an infinite uncertainty. I know that to believe oneself to be possessing or possessed by the Truth is already to be intoxicated, it is to hide oneself from one’s weaknesses and deficiencies. In the kingdom of the intellect, it is the unconscious that believes itself to be fully conscious. I know that no indubitable sign will confirm or disconfirm my work. My marginality proves nothing, not even to myself. The precursor, as Canguilhem says, is the one of whom we know only afterwards came before. In anomie and deviance, the avant-garde is mixed with all the low forms of delirium . . . The judgment of others will not be any more decisive. If my conception is fruitful, it can be as despised or misunderstood as applauded or recognized. The solitude to which I constrain myself

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is the lot of the pioneer, but also of those who stray. I have lost contact with those who have not undertaken the same voyage, and I do not yet see my companions who exist, no doubt, and who also do not see me . . . Finally, I am working as if at an absolute, doing a relative and uncertain work . . . But I know more and more that the only worthwhile knowledge is that which feeds on uncertainty and that the only living thought is that which maintains itself at the temperature of its own destruction. It is not certainty or assurance but need that has driven me to undertake this work, day after day, for years. I have felt myself possessed by the same evident necessity of trans-substantiation as that by which the spider secretes its thread and weaves its web. I have felt myself plugged into the planetary patrimony, animated by the religion of that which bonds, the rejection of that which rejects, and infinite solidarity; what the Tao calls the Spirit of the Valley which “receives all the waters that flow into it.”

Notes 1 2 3

4

5

6

Excerpted from Morin’s Method: Toward a Study of Humankind; The Nature of Nature. Belanger, Roland, trans. American University Studies (Series V, Philosophy, Vol. 1). I have already stated them (Morin, 1973, pp. 1–14). All indication between parentheses of an author’s name followed by a date, refers to the work listed in the bibliography at the end of this volume, in alphabetical order, with mention of the date of the edition to which the note refers. The original edition is indicated only when it is necessary to underline the innovative or historical character of the ideas included in the work cited. “The mind, not attentive to itself, imagines and thinks that it can conceive effectively existing bodies non-thought or out of mind, although at the same time they are grasped and exist in him.” (Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Section 23). I go further. Can one so easily disjoint one’s science from one’s life? Can one consider himself at one time (scientifically) as a determined object and at another time (existentially, ethically) as a sovereign subject? Can one skip several times per day from the objective religion founded on determinism to a humanistic religion of the Self, of conscience, of responsibility; then, if necessary, to official Religion where the World finds a creator and man, a father and savior? Can one be satisfied with passing from “serious” science to some miserable philosophical rationalizations, then to political hysteria, and from there to a private pulsional life? In so far as the method of Descartes is disjunctive, thus far the irrefutable evidence of the cogito constitutes the transformation of the apparently vicious circle into productive circularity. The “vicious” circle is the

product

producer

where thought turns in circles by reflecting itself ad infinitum. Now, in fact, reclosing the circle, instead of locking thought up in a vacuum, causes the self-reference to rise up clearly, that is to say, the being-subject or Ego

&HP *
And by that very fact the cogito is transformed into irrefutable affirmation of existence:

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* BN 7

8

“At the salt mines of Hallein near Salzburg the miners throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the abandoned workings. Two or three months later, through the effect of waters saturated with salt which soak the bough and then let it dry as they recede, the miners find it covered with a shiny deposit of crystals.”—Stendhal, On Love, 1822—AHC All references to “this book” refer to Morin, E. Method: Toward a Study of Humankind; The Nature of Nature. Belanger, Roland, trans. American University Studies (Series V, Philosophy, Vol. 1), from which this is excerpted.—AHC

References Berkeley, G. (1969). Principles of human knowledge. London, 1770. French translation, Principes de la connaissance humaine. Paris: Aubier. Morin, E. (1973). Le paradigme perdu. (Paradigm Lost). Paris: Le Seuil. Sapir, E. (1927). Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture, and personality. Ed. David Mandelbraun. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nietzsche, F. (2016). The Antichrist. Friederich Nietzsche. Whitehead. A.N. (1926). Science and the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Restricted Complexity, General Complexity1 2007—Originally published as a chapter in Worldviews, Science, and Us: Philosophy and Complexity, edited by C. Gershenson, D. Aerts & B. Edmonds. Translation by Carlos Gershenson with revisions by Amy Heath-Carpentier

Before Gaston Bachelard evoked the ideal of complexity in contemporary science in 1934, neither science nor philosophy showed a particular interest in complexity as such. The contribution of great philosophers is a contribution to our understanding of the complexity of our universe, even if this contribution took the form of a reductionist system, obscuring rather than revealing this complexity. But at the same time, the classical science of the last four centuries, wanting to detach itself from philosophy, deliberately avoided or rejected the idea of complexity. Rejection or fear of an ideal of thought that we must now try to understand.

1. ‘Classical science’ rejected complexity based on three principles Classical science rejected complexity based upon three fundamental, explanatory principles: 1. The principle of universal, scientific determinism, illustrated by Laplace’s daemon, who, by virtue of his intelligence and extremely developed senses, was capable not only of knowing all past events, but also of predicting all future events. 2. The principle of reduction, which claims that we can know any whole solely by knowing the nature of its basic constituent parts. 3. The principle of disjunction, which posits the isolation and separation of questions from one another, leading to the separation of disciplines, which then in turn become closed off from each other. These principles led to extremely brilliant, significant, and positive developments within scientific knowledge. However, these developments ceased when they became reified within science and more important than what they contributed. This scientific conception absolutely rejects the notion of “complexity.” On the one hand, complexity usually implies confusion and uncertainty. The expression “it is complex” expresses a difficulty in providing a definition or explanation of a phenomenon. On the other hand, since classical science requires that truth be expressed by simple laws and concepts, complexity must relate only to appearances

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that are superficial or illusory. Phenomena appear to arise in a confused and dubious manner, but the mission of science is to seek out, behind the appearances, the hidden order inherent in the universe. Certainly, Western science is not alone in the search for the “true” reality behind appearances. In Hinduism, the world is veiled appearances, Maya. In Buddhism, Samsara, the world of phenomena, is not the ultimate reality. True reality, both in Hinduism and Buddhism, is inexpressible and, at times, unknowable. Conversely, in classical science, there is always the impeccable and implacable order of nature behind appearances. As a result, complexity is invisible in the way disciplinary fragmentation divided reality. In fact, the first meaning of the word complexity derives from the Latin complexus, which means what is woven together. The primary trait, not of the discipline in itself, but by which the discipline is conceived as distinctive, within its own silo, naturally collapses complexity. For all these reasons, complexity has been invisible or deemed illusory and has been deliberately shunned.

2. The first breach leading to complexity: Irreversibility Complexity was addressed first within the scientific community during the nineteenth century. In fact, it was recognized there prior to being recognized on its own merits. Complexity appeared with the second law of thermodynamics, which demonstrates that energy degrades into heat over time. This principle of entropy is within linear time. Until then physical laws were in principle reversible. Even in the conception of life, species were fixed and did not require time. The important point here is not only the emergence of linear time and irreversibility, but also the appearance of disorder, since heat is conceived as the agitation of molecules. The disordered movement of each molecule is unpredictable except on a statistical scale where distribution laws can be determined effectively. The law of the irreversible growth of entropy sparked multiple theories and, beyond the study of closed systems, a first reflection about the universe, where the second law leads the universe toward dispersion, uniformity, and finally toward death. Previously rejected, this notion of the death of the universe appeared recently in cosmology with the discovery of dark energy. Dark energy could lead to the dispersion of galaxies and may predict that the universe tends to a generalized dispersion. As the poet Eliot said: “the universe will end not with a bang but a whimper” . . . The acceptance of disorder, dispersion and disintegration dealt a fatal blow to the perfect, ordered, and determinist vision of the universe put forth by traditional science. Many strategies will be required to succeed in altering the dominant paradigm and to understand that the principle of dispersion, which began at the birth of the universe with this incredible conflagration improperly named “the Big Bang,” because this, in turn, is linked with a contrary principle of bonding and organization, which manifests in the creation of nuclei, atoms, galaxies, stars, molecules, and life.

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3. Interactions: Order/disorder/organization How is it that the phenomena of order and disorder are related? This is what I tried to explain in the first volume of La Méthode (Method). We need to associate the antagonistic principles of order and disorder and to associate them in such a way that another principle emerges: organization. Here is, in fact, a complex vision, which was rejected for a very long time, because it was inconceivable that disorder could be compatible with order and that organization could be related to disorder at all, being so diametrically opposed to it. Concurrently with the ideas of the universe, the conception of the relentless order of life was also altered. Lamarck introduced the idea of evolution. Darwin proposed variation and competition as the engines of evolution. Even in certain cases where post-Darwinism weakened the radical character of the conflict, it has contributed yet another nemesis of order: chance. I even would say excessive chance. Within NeoDarwinism, scholars avoided designating the new forms of living organization such as wings a “creation” or “invention”. Scholars were very afraid of the word “invention” and of the word “creation” so they devised “chance” instead. One can understand the fear of creation because science rejects creationism, that is, the idea that God is the creator of living forms. However, the rejection of creationism masked the creativity expressed in the history of life and humanity. From the philosophical point of view, it was only a short while ago that Bergson first and Castoriadis later—in a rather different way—centered their theories on creation. In addition, at the beginning of the twentieth century, microphysics introduced a fundamental uncertainty in the universe of particles that ceased to obey the conceptions of space and time characteristic of our so called macro-physical universe. How can these two universes that are also one and the same, but at different scales, be compatible? Today, it is possible to claim that we could pass from the microphysical universe to our own since between them a certain number of quantum elements are connected due to a process called decoherence. However, there still remains this formidable logical and conceptual hiatus between the two physics. Finally, on a grand mega-physical scale, Einstein’s theory reveals that space and time are interrelated, with the result that our lived and perceived reality becomes only meso-physical, situated between micro and mega-physical reality.

4. Chaos All this affected the dogmas of classical science. And yet, in reality, although they became increasingly mummified, they remain. However, a certain number of foreign terms began to appear. For example, the term “catastrophe” was suggested by René Thom to try to understand discontinuous changes of form. Then came Mandelbrot’s fractals. And then the physical theories of chaos that, to complicate matters further, became generalized. Today we believe that the solar system—that same solar system that seems to obey an impeccable, measurable, and precise order—when considered in terms of its evolution over millions of years—is a chaotic system comprising a dynamic instability that modifies, for example, Earth’s rotation or orbit around the Sun. A chaotic process may obey deterministic initial states, but these states cannot be known completely, and the interactions generated within this process can alter any

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prediction. Negligible variations have considerable consequences over vast periods of time. In this physics, the word chaos has a strictly limited meaning related to apparent disorder and unpredictability. Determinism is saved in principle, but it is worthless, since one cannot know the initial states completely. In fact, we are, since the original explosion and forevermore, plunged in a chaotic universe.

5. The emergence of complexity Nevertheless, complexity remains unknown in physics, biology and the human sciences. It is certainly the case that, after more than half a century, the word complexity broke through, but in a domain that also remained impermeable both to the human and social sciences, and to the natural sciences as well. In the forties and fifties, the idea of complexity was at the heart of a sort of spiral nebula of mathematicians and engineers connected with what we know call Information Theory, Cybernetics, and General System Theory which emerged more or less at the same time. Within this nebula, complexity appears with Warren Weaver and Ross Ashby to help to define the degree of variability in a given system. The word appeared, but did not gain momentum, since the new thinking remained mostly confined to these communities. The contributions of Von Neumann and Von Foerster remain largely ignored within the preserve of distinct, disciplinary sciences. It is also the case that Chaitin’s definition of randomness as algorithmic incompressibility becomes applicable to complexity. Consequently, the terms chance, disorder and complexity tend to overlap and can sometimes be confused. There were cracks, but still no breach. An opening came at the Santa Fe Institute (1984) where the term “complex systems” was essential to defining dynamical systems with a vast quantity of interactions and feedback within which occur processes that are very difficult to predict and control and where classical scientific concepts become useless. The dogmas or paradigms of classical science began to be disputed. The notion of emergence appeared. In “Chance and Necessity,” Jacques Monod undertook a major study of emergence defined as the qualities and properties that appear once the organization of a living system is established, qualities that evidently did not exist when the parts existed in isolation. Emergence reappears, increasingly, here and there, but as a simple statement without being really being questioned, even though it is a conceptual supernova. We now arrive at the type of complexity I call “restricted.” The word complexity is introduced in “complex systems theory.” In addition, here and there the idea of “sciences of complexity” was introduced, encompassing the ideas of fractals and chaos theory. Restricted complexity spread rather recently, and, after a decade in France, many barriers have been overcome. Why? Because, whenever the ideas of chaos, fractals, disorder, and uncertainty appeared, the theoretical vacuum became increasingly evident, and it became necessary to apply complexity to them all. Only, this understanding of complexity is restricted to complex systems, because empirically they involve a multiplicity of interrelated processes, interdependent and retroactively associated. In fact, complexity is never questioned nor contemplated epistemologically.

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The epistemological division between restricted and generalized complexity appears because I think that any system, whatever it might be, is (or can be understood as) complex by its very nature. Restricted complexity has made potentially important advances in formalization, and in the possibilities of modeling, which themselves favor interdisciplinary potentialities. But we remain within the epistemology of classical science. When we search for the “laws of complexity,” we still attach complexity as a kind of boxcar behind the real locomotive, the one that produces the laws. A hybrid was formed between the principles of traditional science and the advances towards which it was moving. In fact, in the process, we avoid the fundamental problems of complexity, which are epistemological, cognitive, and paradigmatic. To an extent, we recognize complexity, but only by decomplexifying it. In this way, the breach is opened, but we try to plaster it over: the paradigm of classical science remains, only fissured.

6. Generalized complexity But what, then, is “generalized” complexity? To grasp it requires, I repeat, an epistemological rethinking, bearing on the organization of knowledge itself. And it is a paradigmatic problem in the sense that I have defined “paradigm.”2 Since a paradigm of simplification controls classical science by imposing the principles of reduction and disjunction on knowledge, there should be a paradigm of complexity, imposing the principles of distinction and conjunction. In opposition to reduction, complexity requires that we to try to comprehend the relations between the whole and the parts. Knowledge of the parts is not enough, and knowledge of the whole as a whole is not enough, if one ignores its parts. Rather, one is compelled to loop back and forth to garner the knowledge of both the whole and its parts. The principle of reduction is substituted by a principle that conceptualizes the whole/parts relationship. The principle of disjunction, of separation (between objects, between disciplines, between theories, between the subject and the object of knowledge), should be substituted with another principle that maintains distinction, but seeks to establish relationship. The principle of generalized determinism should be replaced by a principle that conceives of the relationship between order, disorder, and organization. Accepting, of course, that order does not mean only laws, but also stabilities, regularities, organizing cycles and that disorder is more than dispersion and disintegration. Disorder can also be blockage, collisions, irregularities. Returning to Weaver’s words from his 1948 text to which we often refer: the XIXth century was the century of disorganized complexity and the XXth century must be that of organized complexity.3 When he said “disorganized complexity,” he was thinking of the irruption of the second law of thermodynamics and its consequences. Organized complexity means to our eyes that systems are themselves complex, because their organization supposes, comprises, or produces complexity. Consequently, a major issue we have to face is the inseparable relationship (shown in La Méthode 1)4 between disorganized complexity and organized complexity. Now, let us examine three notions that are present, but, in my opinion, not articulated explicitly, in restricted complexity: system, emergence, and organization.

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7. System: “All systems should be viewed as complex” What is a system? It is a relationship between parts, which can be very different from each other and which constitute a whole that is simultaneously organized, organizing, and organizer. We are all familiar with the dictum that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, because all of the qualities or properties of the parts are insufficient to explain or understand the whole. New qualities or properties appear due to the organization of these parts in a whole: they are emergent. But there is also an element of subtraction that I want to highlight. The whole is not only more than the sum of its parts, but it is also less than the sum of its parts. Why? Because a certain number of qualities and properties present in the parts can be inhibited by the organization of the whole. Even when each of our cells contains the total of our genetic inheritance, only a small part of that heritage is active, and the rest is inhibited. In the relationship between an individual and her society, the liberties (even those extreme liberties that are considered delinquent or criminal) inherent to each individual may be inhibited by the police, laws, and social order. Consequently, as Pascal said, we should conceive a circular relationship: one cannot know the parts without knowing the whole, but one cannot know the whole without knowing the parts. The principle of organization, therefore, becomes critical, since it is through organization of the parts in a whole that emergent qualities appear and inhibited qualities disappear.5

8. The emergence of emergence What is critical to understanding emergence is that it cannot be deduced from the qualities of the parts and is therefore irreducible. It appears only in the organization of the whole. This complexity is present in any system, starting with the water molecule, which has qualities or properties that isolated hydrogen or oxygen do not possess, and they in turn have qualities that the water molecule does not have. There is a recent issue of Science et Avenir6 devoted to emergence. Instead of linking emergence and organization, speculation focuses on whether emergence might be a hidden, intrinsic force in nature. From the discovery of the structure of the genetic inheritance in DNA, it appeared that life consisted of physicochemical properties present in the material world and clearly not a “life” ingredient or élan vital in the Bergsonian sense. Instead, there was only the physicochemical matter that, with a certain degree of organizing complexity, produced qualities in the living organism of which self-reproduction, self-repairing, as well as a certain number of cognitive or informational aptitudes, are just a few examples. From that moment, vitalism and reductionism had to be rejected, and emergence acquired cardinal importance, because a certain type of organizing complexity produces qualities specific to self-organization. The human spirit or mind (mens, mente) is emergent. It is the brain-culture link that produces, as emergences, psychic and mental qualities with all that this involves such as language, consciousness, etc. Reductionists are unable to conceive of the reality of the spirit and want to explain

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everything in terms of neurons. Spiritualists, incapable of conceiving of the emergence of the spirit starting from the brain-culture relationship, turn the brain into, at most, a kind of television.

9. The complexity of organization Emergence is fundamental, but it redirects us to the problem of organization, and it is organization that gives consistency to our universe. Why is there organization in the universe? We cannot answer this question, but we can examine the nature of organization. If we already think that there are problems of irreducibility, of non-deductibility, and of complex relations between parts and whole and if we think, moreover, that a system is a unit composed of different parts, and then we must bond unity and plurality or, at least, diversity. We realize that we must arrive at a logical complexity, because we must link concepts which are normally diametrically opposed, like unity and diversity. Even chance and necessity, and disorder and order, must be combined to understand the genesis of physical organization, such as the plausible assumption that the carbon atom, which is necessary for the creation of life, was constituted in a star prior to the existence of our sun, by the simultaneous meeting—absolute coincidence—of three helium nuclei. In stars where there are billions of interactions and meetings, chance made these nuclei meet, but when this chance event occurred, it was necessary that a carbon atom was created. We are obliged to link order, disorder and organization, which we traditionally consider opposed in accordance with the understanding that unfortunately has been instilled in us since childhood. Then, we comprehend what I have called self-ecoorganization, i.e. living organization.

10. Self-eco-organization By the end of the 50’s, the word self-organization emerged and was used by mathematicians, engineers, cyberneticists, and neurologists. Three important conferences were held on the topic of “self-organizing systems,” but, paradoxically, biology did not embrace the concept. It was a marginal biologist, Henri Atlan, who adopted this idea in the 70’s in great intellectual isolation within his institution. Finally, the word emerged in the 80’s and 90’s in Santa Fe as a new idea, even though it had existed already for nearly half a century. However, it is still not a mainstream concept in biology. I define self-eco-organization as living organization, according to the idea that selforganization depends on its environment to draw energy and information. Indeed, as the process which constitutes an organization works to maintain itself, it loses energy as a result of its work. It must, therefore, draw energy from its environment. Moreover, it must seek sustenance and defend itself against threats. It must, therefore, possess some minimal cognitive capacities. Consequently, we arrive at what I logically call the autonomy/dependence complex. For a living being to be autonomous, it must depend on its environment for matter and energy as well as knowledge and information. The more autonomy develops, the more multiple dependencies develop. The more my computer allows

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me to have autonomous thought, the more it will depend on electricity, networks, and sociological and material constraints. We arrive then at a new complexity for the living organization: autonomy cannot be understood separate from its broader ecology. Moreover, we must see a self-generating and self-producing process; that is to say, a recursive loop that challenges us to break our classical ideas of

product cause

producer effect

In a self-generating, self-producing, autopoietic or self-organizing process, the products are necessary for their own production. We are the products of a process of reproduction, but this process can continue only if we, as individuals, couple to continue the process. Society is the product of interactions between human individuals, but society is constituted by its emergences, its culture, its language, which feeds back to the individuals and so produces them as humans and supplies them with language and culture. We are products and producers. Causes produce effects that are necessary for their own causation. Norbert Wiener articulated the notion of a loop in the idea of feedback, whether negative or positive, but finally mainly negative. Then, it was generalized without anyone really reflecting on its epistemological consequences. Even in the most banal example, such as a thermal system with a boiler that heats a building, we have this idea of inseparability of cause and effect. Thanks to the thermostat, when a temperature of 20º C is reached, the heat stops; when the temperature dips below a given minimum, the heat restarts. It is a circular system. The effect itself intervenes in the cause, which allows the thermal autonomy of the whole compared to a cold environment. In other words, the feedback is a process that complexifies causality, but the consequences of this have not been address at an epistemological level. Feedback is already a complex concept, even in non-living systems. Negative feedback makes it possible to cancel the deviations that form unceasingly, like a fall in temperature compared to a standard. Positive feedback develops when a regulated system ceases to cancel the deviations. Then, these deviations are amplified and accelerated in a fashion in a kind of generalized disintegration, as is often the case in our physical world. Yet as we have seen that, following an idea advanced more than fifty years ago by Magoroh Maruyama, positive feedback, i.e. increasing deviation, allows for transformation in human history. All of the great transformational processes started with deviations, such as the monotheist deviation in a polytheist world, and the religious deviation of the message of Jesus within the Jewish world. Then, a deviation within deviation, Paul transforms the deviation within the Roman Empire, and yet another deviation, the message of Mohammed is driven out of Mecca and takes refuge in Medina. The birth of capitalism is itself a deviation in a feudal world. The birth of modern science is a deviant process within the XVIIth century. Socialism is a deviant idea in the XIXth century. In other words, all the processes start by deviations that, when they are not suffocated or exterminated, are then able to initiate chain transformations

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11. The relationship between local and global In logical complexity, we encounter the relationship between the local and the global. Some believe they can encompass the two truths of the global and of the local with axioms like: “think globally and act locally.” In reality, I believe that we are obliged to think locally and globally in this planetary age and to try to act at the same time locally and globally. It is also the case that complex, local truths can become global errors. For example, if our immune system vigorously rejected a heart transplant as if it were a dirty foreigner, this localized truth would become a global error because our organism would die. Conversely, global truths can lead to local errors. The need to fight against terrorism leads to interventions, which favor the development of increased terrorism . . . as in Iraq.

12. Heraclitus: “Life from death, death from life” This union of logically complex notions suggests a relationship between life and death. I often quote Heraclitus’ illuminating phrase from the VIth century B.C., “life from death, death from life,” which we only recently started to understand, from the moment when our organism degrades its energy to reconstitute its molecules, our cells also degrade and we produce new ones. We live by the death of our cells, and this process of permanent regeneration, almost of permanent rejuvenation, is the process of life. Therefore, we can confirm Enrich Bichat’s correct statement that “life is the ensemble of the functions that fight against death,” with this strange complement that presents us with a logical complexity: “integrating death to better fight against death”. What we know about this process is extremely interesting. Current research reveals that cells that die are not only older cells. In fact, apparently healthy cells receiving different messages from neighboring cells “decide,” at a given moment, to commit suicide. They commit suicide, and phagocytes devour their remains. The organism determines which cells must die before they reach senescence. The death of cells and their postmortem liquidation are included in the living organization. There is a phenomenon of self-destruction, of apoptosis, which is a term appropriated from biology where it describes the process of timed cell death such as the dying and falling leaves in autumn. On the one hand, when the level of cellular death is insufficient following different accidents and perturbations, there are a certain number of diseases that are deadly over time, like osteoporosis, various types of sclerosis, and certain cancers, in which cells refuse to die, become immortal, forming tumors, and then going for a stroll in the form of metastases. This action could be interpreted as a revolt of cells against their individual demise that leads to death for the whole organism. On the other hand, an excess of cellular death causes AIDS, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s disease. You see the extent to which this relationship between life and death is complex: it is necessary for cells to die, but not too much! One lives between two catastrophes: the excess or insufficiency of mortality. Once again, we face the fundamental, epistemological problem of generalized complexity.

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13. Non-trivial machines Living beings are certainly machines; but, unlike artificial machines that are crude and deterministic (where one can anticipate the output when one knows the input), living beings are non-trivial machines (von Foerster) where one expects innovation. We are machines. This truth was already espoused in La Mettrie’s L’hommemachine. We are physical machines, thermal machines. We function optimally at a temperature of 37º C. But we are complex machines. Von Neumann established the difference between living machines and artificial machines produced by technology. While being extremely reliable, the components of the technical machines degrade and wear from the very start of their operation. Whereas the living machine is comprised mainly by components that are far from reliable, such as degrading proteins, we thoroughly understand that it is the lack of reliability of these proteins makes it possible to reconstitute them constantly. The living machine is able to be regenerated and repaired. It also moves towards death, but only after a process of growth. The key to this difference lies in the living machine’s capacity of self-repair and self-regeneration. The term regeneration is of vital importance in this case. The innovations that emerge in the evolution of life either by environmental changes or by the irruption of multiple, unforeseen events such as the appearance of the skeleton in vertebrates or wings in insects, birds, or bats, are characteristic of nontrivial machines. That is to say, non-trivial machines innovate in response to challenges that would be otherwise insurmountable. All the important figures of human history—whether intellectual, religious, messianic, or political—were non-trivial machines. We can argue that the whole of human history, which began ten thousand years ago, is a non-trivial history, a history made of unforeseen and unexpected events, of destructions and creations. The history of life that preceded human history is a nontrivial history, and the history of the universe, in which the birth of life and then of humankind are included, is a non-trivial history. We are obliged to detrivialize knowledge and our worldview.

14. To complexify the notion of chaos We have seen how the notion of system brings us to the complexities of organizations, which leads us to logical complexities. Now, let us examine chaos, which encompasses disorder and unpredictibility, as it appears it chaos theory. The beating wings of a butterfly in Melbourne can cause, through a succession of linked events, a hurricane in Jamaica, for example. Actually, I believe the word chaos must be considered in its deepest sense, its Greek sense. We know that, in the Greek worldview, chaos is at the origin of the cosmos. Chaos is not pure disorder. Rather, it encompasses the lack of distinction between the potential of order, disorder, and organization from which a cosmos, that is, an ordered universe, is born. The Greeks saw a bit too much order in the cosmos. True, the cosmos is effectively ordered because the immediate spectacle, the impeccable order of the sky that we see each night in the stars, is always in the same place. If the planets are mobile, then they also return to the same place with impeccable order.

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However, we know today, with the broadened conceptions of cosmic time, that all this order is at once temporary and partial in a universe of movement, collision, and transformation. Chaos and cosmos are associated, and I sometimes use the word chaosmos because there is a circular relationship between them. It is necessary to take the word chaos in a much deeper and more intense sense than that of physical chaos theory.

15. The need for contextualization Let us take again the term complexus, meaning “what is woven together.” It is a very important word, which indicates that the fracturing of knowledge prevents us from linking and contextualizing. The approach to knowledge characteristic of disciplinary science isolates objects, both one from another and from their environments. We can assert that the principle of scientific experimentation allows us to take a physical body in nature, isolate it in an artificial and controlled laboratory environment, and then study its reactions to any perturbations and variations which we apply. Indeed, this approach allows us to discover some of its qualities and properties, but this principle of decontextualization was ill-fated, as soon as it was applied to living beings. Jane Goodall’s observation of a tribe of chimpanzees carried out in their natural environment from 1960 on attests to the supremacy of observation in a natural environment over experimentation in a laboratory.7 Tremendous patience was necessary for Jane to perceive that chimpanzees had different personalities with rather complex relations of friendship and rivalry. She discovered a whole psychology and sociology of chimpanzees that was invisible to studies performed in a laboratory or in a cage. In ethology, the idea of knowing the living in their environment became paramount. Let us repeat it: the autonomy of the living needs to be known in its environment. Now that we are becoming aware of the degradations that our technical and economic advancements are inflicting on the biosphere, we realize our vital link with this very biosphere that we believe to have reduced to the rank of a manipulable object. If we degrade it, we degrade ourselves, and if we destroy it, we destroy ourselves. The need for contextualization is extremely important. I would even say that it is a principle of knowledge: Anyone who translates something into a foreign language will seek an unknown word in the dictionary; but if the word is polysemous, one doesn’t immediately know which translation is correct. We will then seek the meaning of the word in the sense of the sentence and in light of the global sense of the text. Through this exercising of moving from text to word, then from text to context, and finally from context to word, a sense emerges. In other words, immersion in the text and in the context is an evident cognitive necessity. Take, for example, economics, the most advanced social science from a mathematical point of view, which is isolated from human, social, historical, and sociological contexts. It can only make weak predictions because the economy does not function in isolation. Its forecasts must be revised continually, which reveals the limitations of a science that may be advanced, but is too inward looking. More generally, mutual contextualization is lacking in all of the social sciences. Often, I have quoted the case of the Aswan dam because it is revealing and significant:

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it was built in Nasser’s Egypt to regulate the course of a capricious river, the Nile, and to produce electric power for a country in need. However, after some time, what happened? This dam retained some of the silt that fertilized the Nile valley, which caused the farming population to abandon the fields and overpopulate large cities like Cairo. Also, it retained part of the fish that fed the people who lived around the Nile, and, today, the accumulation of silt weakens the dam and causes new technical problems. This does not mean that the dam should not have been built, but if decisions are made solely on a techno-economic basis, they are likely to have disastrous consequences. It is like the deviation of rivers in Siberia ordered by the Soviet government where the negative consequences were greater than the positive ones. It is therefore necessary to recognize the inseparability of the separable and the historical and social levels ias have been recognized alrady at the microphysical level. According to quantum physics and confirmed by Aspect’s experiments, two microphysical entities are immediately connected, although they may be separated by space and time. We can conclude therefore that everything that is separated is at the same time inseparable.

16. The hologrammatic and dialogical principles We must also submit to the hologrammatic principle, which states that not only is the part contained in the whole, but the whole is also contained in the part. Just as all of our genetic inheritance is found in each cell of our organism, society with its culture is contained in the spirit of an individual. We return again to the logical core of complexity which, as we will see, is dialogical: separability–inseparability, whole–parts, effect–cause, product–producer, life–death, homo sapiens–homo demens, etc. The principle of the excluded middle reaches its limit. This principle states that “A cannot be A and not A,” whereas it can be one and the other. For example, Spinoza is Jewish and non-Jewish; he is neither Jewish, nor non-Jewish. Here the dialogic is not the response to these paradoxes, but the means of facing them by considering the complementarity of antagonisms and the productive, sometimes vital, interaction of complementary antagonisms.

17. Some consequences for the sciences This generates some consequences for the sciences. First, classical science is complex even when it produces simplifying knowledge. Why? Because science is a quadruped that walks on the following four legs: the leg of empiricism comprised of data, experimentation or observation; the leg of rationality, comprised of logically constituted theories; the leg of verification, always necessary; and the leg of imagination, because great theories are the products of a powerful creative imaginations. Science is complex, produced by a quadruped movement that prevents it from solidifying. Objective knowledge, which is the ideal in classical science, required the elimination of subjectivity, i.e. the emotional part inherent to each observer, to each scientist.

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But it also included the elimination of the subject, i.e. the being who conceives and knows. However, any knowledge, including objective knowledge, is simultaneously a cerebral translation of data from the external world and a mental reconstruction, based on certain organizing potentials of the spirit. Certainly, the idea of pure objectivity is utopian. Scientific objectivity is produced by beings who are subjects within given historical conditions and are following the rules of the scientific game. Kant’s great contribution was to show that the object of knowledge is co-constructed by our spirit. He showed us that it is necessary to be familiar with knowledge, to know its possibilities and limits. The knowledge of knowledge is a requirement of complex thinking. As Husserl indicated in the 1930’s, especially in his lecture on the crisis of European science, the sciences developed extremely sophisticated means to know external objects, but no means to know themselves. There is no science of science. Even the science of science would be insufficient if it did not include epistemological problems. Science is a tumultuous building site. Science is a process that cannot be anticipated, because we can never know what we will find, since the main trait of discovery is its unexpectedness. Today, this uncontrolled process has led to the development of a great potential for destruction and manipulation, which necessitates a double awareness in science: self-awareness and ethical awareness. I also believe that it will be increasingly necessary to pursue scientific knowledge that integrates the knowledge of the human spirit with the knowledge of the object that captivates the human spirit while recognizing the inseparability between object and subject.

18. Two scientific revolutions introduced complexity Previously, I explained how the concept of complexity emerged marginally among mathematicians and engineers. In fact, the XXth century witnessed two scientific revolutions, which introduced complexity without recognizing it explicitly. After thermodynamics in the XIXth century, the first revolution was in microphysics and astrophysics, which introduced indeterminism and risk where determinism once reigned and which elaborated suitable methods to deal with the uncertainties it discovered. The second revolution gathers the disciplines and restores between them a common fabric. It began in the second half of the century. In the 60’s, Earth sciences conceived of the Earth as a complex physical system, which made it possible to articulate geology with seismology, vulcanology, meteorology, ecology, etc. At the same time, ecology developed as a scientific discipline, bringing together data and information from different physical and biological branches of science in the conception of ecosystems. It became possible to understand how an ecosystem degrades, develops, or maintains homeostasis. From the 1970’s on, ecological concepts extended to the whole biosphere, introducing knowledge from the social sciences to the sciences. Although ecology, at the biosphere level, cannot make rigorous predictions, it can provide us with vital hypotheses, concerning, for example, global warming, which is increasingly becoming evident with the melting of glaciers in the Antarctic and the Arctic. Ecology, cosmology, and Earth sciences became poly-disciplinary sciences, even transdisciplinary. Sooner or later, this shift will reach biology, which will establish the idea of self-organization. Eventually, this shift will alter the social sciences,8 although they are proving extremely resistant.

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Finally, the observer who is eliminated by the search for objectivity was introduced into certain sciences, such as microphysics, where the observer disrupts whatever she observes. In the case of cosmology, even if we do not adhere to what Brandon Carter calls the Anthropic Principle, which considers the place of humans in the universe, we are obliged to consider that this universe, among its perhaps negligible possibilities, holds the possibility of human life, perhaps only on this planet Earth, but perhaps also elsewhere. The common fabric between the human and the living universe can be restored, requiring a complex way of thinking capable simultaneously of distinguishing the human from the natural world while at the same time integrating them.

19. The introduction of science into history In addition, there is the problem of the introduction of the sciences into human history. As we know, there are two ways to understand the history of the sciences: the internalist conception and the externalist conception. The internalist conception analyzes the development of the sciences in isolation, exclusively in terms of their internal logic and their own discoveries. The externalist mode accounts for the historical and social developments that determine scientific developments. I think we must attempt to link both, and this is appropriate for other developments apart from those within the sciences. Some researchers wanted to understand the perversion of the Soviet Union in terms of internal factors, such as the shortcomings of Marxist doctrine or Lenin’s limitations. Others wanted to blame it on external elements such as the siege and hostility of the capitalist powers toward the Soviet Union or on pre-existing elements such as the backwardness of Tsarist Russia. However, the true cognitive challenge is to link these two aspects in a dialogical fashion. If we continue to adopt the viewpoint of the modern Western history of science, we observe how—from its marginal and quasi-deviant birth in the XVIIth century— it developed in the XVIIIth, emerged in universities in the XIXth and into states and companies in the XXth, and became a central and driving force within human history in the form of techno-science. It produces not only all the major elements for a renewed knowledge of the world and beneficial effects for humanity, but also formidable and uncontrolled powers that threaten it. I don’t know if I am right or wrong in borrowing an expression from Vico, but we must arrive at a “scienza nuova.” Most astutely, Vico inscribed the historical perspective at the very heart of scienza nuova. It is necessary to broaden the idea of scienza nuova by introducing the interaction between the simple and the complex, by conceiving of a science that does not suppress disciplines, but connects them, and consequently makes them fertile, a science that can simultaneously distinguish and connect and in which transdisciplinarity is inseparable from complexity. Just as the compartmentalization of disciplines disintegrates the natural fabric of complexity, a transdisciplinary vision is capable of restoring it.

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20. The link between science and philosophy The link between science and philosophy was broken. As recently as the XVIIth century, the great scientists were also great philosophers. Certainly, they did not distinguish between science and philosophy. When Pascal was having his experiences in Puy de Dôme, he did not think about the problem of the wager. In the times of Pascal, Gassendi, and Leibniz, this division did not exist. However, over time this division became a formidable chasm. This chasm of ignorance separates the scientific culture from the culture of the humanities. But the trend has started to reverse. The most advanced sciences are arriving at fundamental philosophical problems: Why has a universe emerged out of nothing? How was this universe born from a vacuum that, at the same time, was not a vacuum? What is reality? Is the essence of the universe veiled or totally knowable? The problem of life rises at a level of complexity that exceeds biology: the singular conditions of its origin and how its creative powers emerge. Bergson was mistaken in thinking that there was an élan vital, but he was right when speaking about creative evolution. He could even have spoken about evolutionary creativity. Today, we can foresee the possibility of creating life. From the moment when we believe that life is a process developed exclusively from physico-chemical matter under certain conditions—in underwater thermal vents or elsewhere—we can conceive of creating the physical, chemical, and thermodynamic conditions that give birth to organisms gifted with the qualities of life. We can also foresee the possibility of modifying human biology. Therefore, we must meditate on life, as we have never before, and we must also meditate on our relationship with the biosphere. All the most advanced sciences arrive at fundamental philosophical problems that they thought were eliminated. They not only find them again, but they renew them. If we define philosophy as the will and capacity of reflection, then it is necessary to introduce reflection into the sciences, without eliminating the relative autonomy of neither philosophy nor science. Finally and especially, any knowledge, including scientific knowledge, must include epistemological reflection on its own foundations, principles, and limits. Even today, many entertain the illusion that complexity is a philosophical and not a scientific problem. In one sense, this is true, yet in another, it is false. It is true when we examine it from the point of view of an isolated and fragmented object. The fact that you isolate and break the object into pieces makes the complexity disappear: it is therefore not a scientific problem from the point of view of a closed discipline and a decontextualized object. As soon as you start to connect these isolated objects, you come face to face with the problem of complexity.

21. Second epistemological rupture with restricted complexity It is here that a second epistemological rupture with restricted complexity appears. Restricted complexity is essentially interested in dynamic systems known as complex systems. That is to say, it constitutes its own scientific field. But generalized complexity not only concerns all fields, but also relates to our knowledge as human beings, individuals, persons, and citizens. Since we have been domesticated by our education, which taught us to separate rather than to connect,

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our aptitude for connecting is underdeveloped, and our aptitude for separating is overdeveloped. I repeat: knowing is, at the same time, separating and connecting, analyzing and synthesizing. They are inseparable, and the atrophy of our capacity to connect in a planetary, complex way, recognizing the interdependence of everything and everyone, becomes increasingly grave. The International Ethical, Political and Scientific Collegium formulated a declaration of interdependence which it hopes the United Nations will adopt. We must conceive of interdependence in all fields, including the complex relationship between the parts and the whole. We need to be able to face the uncertainties of life when nothing prepares us for them. We need to develop ways for humans to understand each other, although nobody teaches us how. We need to face complexity, including complexity in and for action, while opposing the principle of caution and the principle of risk. Pericles expressed the union of the two antagonistic principles when he stated in a speech to the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war: “We Athenians are capable of combining prudence and audacity, whereas the others are either timid or rash”. It is the combination which we need. It is also the case that today we are required to be quite innovative in our precautions. We must undertake deep reforms in all of our ways of knowing and thinking.

22. The principle of ecology of action The principle of ecology of action is, in my opinion, central. When an action enters a given environment, it escapes from the will and intention of its creator. It engages in interactions and multiple feedbacks and, consequently, diverted off course, and sometimes even directed away. The ecology of action has a universal value, including for the development of the sciences, whose destructive nuclear consequences were absolutely unexpected. Consider that when Fermi elucidated the structure of the nucleus of the atom in the 1930’s, it was a purely speculative discovery, and he had by no means thought that this would lead to the construction of an atomic bomb. However, a few years later, Fermi went to the United States to contribute to the development of a bomb that would be used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When Watson and Crick determined the structure of the genetic inheritance in DNA, they thought that it was a great achievement of knowledge without any practical consequences. Hardly ten years after their discovery, scientists proposed genetic manipulation to the biology community. The ecology of action has a universal value. We can draw plenty of examples from recent French history: the dissolution of Parliament by President Jacques Chirac to achieve a governmental majority led unexpectedly to a socialist majority. A referendum called to win general support led to its rejection. Gorbachev attempted a reform to save the Soviet Union, but it contributed to its disintegration. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was intended to suppress the exploitation of human beings by their fellow human beings, and to create a new society, founded on the principles of community and liberty. However, this revolution not only caused immense bloodshed, destruction, and repression by a police system, but, after seventy years, it led to the opposite of its stated goals, to a capitalism even more fierce and savage than that of the tsarist times and with a return of religion! Everything that this revolution wanted to destroy was resurrected. How can we not think about the ecology of action!

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23. Creating “Institutes of fundamental culture” The reform of the human spirit seems to me absolutely necessary. It is because I understood that the reform of thought, a fundamental work that I undertook in La Méthode, was a necessity, that I accepted the proposal of a French Minister of Education when he asked me to study how to reform of the content of secondary education. I tried to introduce my ideas of reform of thought into an educational project. I saw its total failure, although it did not really fail, it was simply not applied! That caused me to reflect even more. I wrote a book called La Tête bien faite (A Made Mind) and then, as an initiative of UNESCO, I wrote another book called Les Sept Savoirs Nécessaires à l’éducation du futur (Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future).8 As a consequence of a university which will be created following these principles in Mexico, I had the more modest, but maybe more urgent idea of creating Instituts du culture fondamentale (Institutes of Fundamental Culture), which could be hosted by a university or operate independently, which would be open to everyone, i.e. students who are not yet in university, or are in university, or have left the university, citizens, trade union members, entrepreneurs, everybody. Why the term “fundamental culture”? Because that is what is missing. In fact, it is the most vital subject to be taught and the most important instrument with which to face life. However, it is ignored by education. (1) Knowledge as a source of error or illusion; nowhere are we taught the traps of knowledge that arise because all knowledge is translated and reconstructed. (2) Rationality, as if it were an obvious thing, whereas we know that rationality has its perversions, its infantile or senile diseases. (3) Science. What is science? What are its frontiers, its limits, its possibilities, its rules? There is abundant literature about this, but, for example, the scientists who are recruited at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have never consulted it. Most of the time, they do not know anything about the polemic between Niels Bohr and Einstein, the works of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn, etc. (4) What is complexity? And also:  

 



Instruction on “human identity and the human condition,” which is not found anywhere. Instruction on this planetary age, not only today’s globalization, but including the background starting from the conquest of the Americas, the colonization of the world, its current phase, and its future prospects. Instruction on human understanding. Instruction on how to approach uncertainties in all fields: sciences, everyday life, history (we have lost the certainty of progress, and the future is completely uncertain and obscure). Instruction on the major problems facing civilization.

That is for me the fundamental education that can help to reform the spirit, of thought, of knowledge, of action, of life.

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24. I conclude: Generalized complexity integrates restricted complexity Unfortunately, restricted complexity rejects generalized complexity, which appears to the former as pure chatter, pure philosophy. It rejects it because restricted complexity did not go through the epistemological and paradigmatic revolutions that complexity requires. This will come to pass, without a doubt. But in the meantime, we observe that the many issues pertaining to complexity have invaded all of our horizons, and I repeat “many issues,” because it is as mistake to think that we will find in complexity a single method that can be applied automatically to any individual or planetary problem. Complexity includes certain principles that help the autonomous spirit to achieve knowledge. Whereas a program destroys the autonomy of the seeker, complexity stimulates an autonomous, responsible strategy. Once we are aware that the ecology of action can pervert the best intentions we recast our decisions as bets, which incite us to develop an adequate strategy to control the action as much as we can. In other words, in all fields, I would say “help yourself and complexity will help you,” which has nothing to do with the mechanical application of a program or a rule. It is a profound reconstruction of our mental functioning, of all of our being. These now marginal, deviant ideas are beginning to establish a trend, or rather trends, since there are several paths towards complexity, that are this point still in the minority. These ideas, these deviations, can be developed and become cultural, political, and social forces. The prospects of a globalized future are extremely alarming: our spaceship is propelled by four engines without any control—science, technology, economy, and the search for profit—all of this is chaotic since the techno-civilizational unification of the planet, under the auspices of the Western powers, causes singular cultural resistances and cultural and religious prejudices. The planet is in crisis with all the diverse potentialities that such a crisis offers: regressive and destructive or stimulating and fertile, such as invention, creation, innovation.

25. We should seize the possibilities of metamorphosis We should consider the possibility of metamorphosis because we have completely astonishing examples of it from the past. The evolution in certain parts of the world where there had been demographic concentrations in the Middle East, in the Indus basin, in China, in Mexico, or in Peru from pre-historic societies of hundreds of inhabitants, without cities, state, agriculture, army, or social classes, to enormous historical societies with cities, agriculture, army, civilization, religion, philosophy, works of art . . . they constituted a sociological metamorphosis. Perhaps we are gravitating towards a meta-historical metamorphosis suitable for the birth of a global society. I would say that complexity does not only present us with perplexing uncertainty, but it also allows us to see the probable and improbable, because improbably events have occurred in the past and could again in the future. We are in an epoch of doubtful and uncertain combat.

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This brings to mind the Pacific War. After the Japanese occupied the Pacific Islands and began to threaten California, there was a gigantic naval battle over 200 kilometers along the Midway Islands between the Japanese and American fleets, which engaged numerous battleships, aircraft carriers, submarines, and planes. A global vision was impossible for either side to imagine: there were Japanese ships sunk, American ships sunk, planes that did not find the enemy fleet . . . In short, total confusion, with the battle divided into several segments. At a given moment, the Japanese admiral, realizing his losses in battleships and planes, thought that they were defeated and called for retreat. The Americans, who had lost almost as much, were not the first to think that they were defeated so, after the Japanese retreat, they were victorious. Well, the outcome of what will happen now, we cannot yet conceive! But we can always hope, and act in congruence with this hope. Doesn’t the wisdom of complexity lie in exploring the range of possibilities without restricting it to what is formally probable? Doesn’t it invite us to reform, even to revolutionize thought, society, education, our lives?

Notes 1 Originally presented at the Colloquium “Intelligence de la complexité: épistémologie et pragmatique,” Cerisy-La Salle, France, June 26th, 2005 and published as “Restricted complexity, general complexity,” In C. Gershenson, D. Aerts & B. Edmonds (eds.), Worldviews, science, and us: Philosophy and complexity. Copyright 2007, World Scientific Publishing Company. 2 Cf (1990). La Méthode. 4. Les idées. (Method. 4. Ideas). Paris: Le Seuil. pp. 211–238. 3 Weaver, W. (1948). Science and Complexity. American Scientist, 36, 536–544. 4 I develop the idea that organization consists of complexity in La Méthode 1, La nature de la nature, [Method. 1. The nature of nature]. pp.94–151, Paris: Le Seuil, 1977. 5 Science and Future, a popular French magazine (Translator’s note). 6 See Morin, E. (1973). Le Paradigme perdu. (Paradigm lost). Paris: Seuil. pp. 51–54. 7 Cf (2014) La Méthode. 5. Humanité de l’humanité. (Method. 5. Humanity). Paris: Le Seuil. 8 Morin, E. (2001). Seven complex lessons in education for the future. Paris: UNESCO.

On the Definition of Complexity1 1985—In May 1984, Morin spoke at a symposium on complexity convened by The United Nations University (UNU). Afterward, UNU Press issued a collection of essays, including this one by Morin.

My introduction comprises some extremely fragmented and abstract thoughts related to the difficulty of approaching and defining the problem of complexity. The first difficulty stems from the fact that the problem of complexity is still considered to be of marginal importance in scientific and epistemological thought as well as in philosophical thought. When you examine the major discussions on epistemology by Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Hanson, Holton, etc., there is talk of rationality of scientificity, of non-scientificity, but no mention of complexity. Thus, these philosophers’ faithful French disciplines noted that complexity was not in their masters’ treatises and concluded that it did not exist. From the epistemological point of view, there is; however, one notable exception, Gaston Bachelard, who believed that complexity was a fundamental problem, because he felt that there is nothing simple about nature, only that which is simplified. But this key idea was not further developed by Bachelard, and it remained unexplored. Curiously, complexity only appeared in a marginal line between engineering and science, in the theory of systems, and in cybernetics. The first important text on complexity was written by Warren Weaver, who wrote that the nineteenth century, the century of disorganized complexity (he was obviously thinking of the second principle of thermodynamics), was about to bow out to the twentieth century, which was to be the century of organized complexity. Well, in all modesty, perhaps we should leave that for the twenty-first century. And since complexity was only dealt with marginally or by marginal authors, such as myself, it has necessarily given rise to fundamental misunderstandings. The first misunderstanding occurs when complexity is viewed as a panacea, an answer, instead of as a challenge, an incentive to thought; here, complexity is believed to be an effective substitute for simplification, which, like simplification, will enable programming and clarification. Or else, complexity is thought of as the antithesis of order and clarity and consequently appears to be an obstinate or depraved search for total darkness. Whereas, I stress, the problem of complexity is first and foremost that of the effort required to face the unavoidable challenge to our minds posed by reality. The second misunderstanding is to confuse complexity with completeness. We say, yes, obviously, scientific thought eliminates the non-quantifiable and only selects data that correspond to its intelligibility. But all thought is necessarily incomplete, and total exhaustive knowledge is a mockery of an ideal. The problem of complexity is not one of completeness, but rather of incompleteness of knowledge. In a sense, complex thought tries to take account of what is discarded and excluded in the mutilating type of thoughts that I call simplifiers, and thus, it combats not incompleteness, but mutilation. For example, if we think of the

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fact that we are physical, biological, social, cultural, psychic, and spiritual beings, complexity is obviously that which attempts to link or identify these aspects by highlighting the differences between them, whereas simplified thought either separates these different aspects or unifies them through a mutilating reduction. Thus, in that sense, the manifest goal of complexity is to become aware of the links that are broken by these separations between disciplines between cognitive categories and between types of knowledge. In fact, aspiring to complexity means aiming at multi-dimensionality. It does not imply giving all the information on an observed phenomenon, but respecting its diverse dimensions; thus, as I have just said, we must not forget that man is a bio-socio-cultural being, and that social phenomena are economic, cultural. psychological, etc. Nonetheless, the core of complex thought, while aspiring to multidimensionality, does contain an element of incompleteness and uncertainty. Indeed, it can only be formulated once a radical break is made with the idea of perfect knowledge. Once it is acknowledged that understanding is the translation of variables received by our senses into a cerebral and spiritual language, once we realize that there are realities in the plural, as von Foerster says, and not in the singular, once we accept the limitations of the human mind or brain as well as the limitations that our hic et nunc culture imposes on us, only then will we know that complex thought must include an element of uncertainty and incompleteness. Complexity is the opposite of completeness, not its promise, as the misguided believe. Moreover, and I shall come back to this later, complex thought integrates the processes of simplifying thought, which are disjunctive and analytic. By no means does it claim to provide the absolute and irrefutable truth: on the contrary, it seeks to establish a less mutilating dialogue with reality. Furthermore, the problem of complexity has not arisen arbitrarily, or from vicious, tormented minds: it has been put forward by the inevitable multiple advances of modern scientific knowledge. Very briefly, once the idea of the world as a trivial mechanical puppet obeying the sovereign order of the laws of nature, in which chance and disorder are mere illusions that will be dissipated through greater understanding, is abandoned, once the second principle of thermodynamics, which is a principle of disorder, agitation, collision, and dispersion, is generally accepted, it follows that disorder appears in the universe and complexity is first seen as a problem of the irreducibility of disorder. But complexity does not boil down to being merely a problem of disorder; it reappeared at the beginning of the century in quantum physics, as the principle of uncertainty. And you are no doubt aware of the debate which raged at the beginning of the century between classical physicists, who thought that we were witnessing a terrible regression of knowledge because there was a regression of generalized and absolute determinism. Thus, a second source of complexity appears when knowledge has to negotiate and deal with uncertainty. A third source of complexity is to be found in the emergence of an indelible contradiction. I believe that a decisive epistemological step forward was taken when Niels Bohr declared that the wave and the corpuscle would have to be associated if the particle was to be understood in physics, in spite of the logical contradiction the association of these two concepts gave rise to. In the same way, the contradiction spread to the cosmos, when astrophysicists noted the expansion of the universe and isotropic radiation, which seemed to be the fallout of an early fossil explosion, and came to this completely contradictory, absurd, and yet logical idea of time stemming from nontime, of space coming from non-space, of matter rising from a void.

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Logic itself was affected by complexity, when logical proof was shaken by uncertainty in the complex formalized systems: these are the consequences of Gödel’s major theorem of incompleteness. Finally, the problem of complexity cropped up in organization, once it was accepted through the theory of systems and cybernetics that organized wholes cannot be reduced to the parts they are comprised of but have emerging properties, which themselves retroact on the component parts. As I have said elsewhere,2 the whole is both more and less than the sum of its parts. The question of complexity arises from various areas: disorder, chance, uncertainty, contradiction, and organization. This is where the crucial problem lies: where does complexity fit in? On the empirical level, with phenomena? On the theoretical level? With logic? With reality? With thought? I would like to outline what, in my opinion, is the crux of the problem of complexity, and, incidentally, of simplification. But before that, let me repeat what Atlan said several times, and what different speakers here have also said: complexity must not be confused with complication or the intertwining of myriads of inter-retroactions, even if we do feel that the very complexity of living organisms, for example, implies an incredible complication. Personally, I would put complexity at a level that is apparently logical, but in fact paradigmatic. Let me first clarify the definitions. Since the word paradigm is very widely used, I shall say that for me paradigm is the type of relations instituted between different categories or key concepts and governs the discourse, thought, and theory falling under the paradigm. The paradigm’s mode of action is an apparently logical mode, since it uses disjunction or conjunction, for example. Thus, there are three sorts of possible paradigms when considering the relations between the two key concepts of nature and humanity: there is the paradigm of inclusion, whereby humanity is included in nature, as   

the classical writers and authors did (human nature); or there is the paradigm of disjunction, which can include only culture or humanity, by opposing and rejecting that which is natural and vice versa; or again, there is the paradigm of distinction, conjunction, and inclusion, which I shall call complexity, because it associates all three notions that would seem to exclude each other.

A major paradigm requires an understanding of very many fields, and corresponds to what Foucault called “épistémè.” This is what happens to the paradigm of simplification, which is a principle of disjunction and/or reduction between cognitive categories. The paradigm of simplification orders disjunction in all distinct but possibly linked areas. This is how the disjunction between order and disorder, between mind and matter, between man and nature, between subject and object, between the observer and the observed, between the one and the multiple operates. It also provides order to the first reduction, from the complex to the simple, from the whole to its parts. The disjunction and reduction lead to the rejection of the non-quantifiable, which finally leads to discarding the beings and existents. Logically, simplification gives an absolute value to Aristotelian logic, where contradiction always means “error”; in this sense, from the paradigmatic point of view, Aristotelian logic controls thought whereas thought does not control logic. The paradigm of simplification gives us a simple view of the world, subject to determinism and functioning in this way forever after.

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If we could imagine a paradigm of complexity, it would be a paradigm uniting distinction, which is necessary to grasp objects or phenomena, with conjunction, which is necessary to establish links and interrelations. It would not reduce the complex to the simple, but would integrate the simple within the complex. A paradigm of complexity would be a paradigm where thought would not be controlled by logic, but logic would be controlled by thought. More specifically, it would be a dialogical principle. The word dialogical itself establishes then limitations and possibilities of knowledge. Why limitations? Dialogical means it is impossible to reach a sole principle, or a master word, whatever it is; there will always be something irreducible to a simple principle, be it chance, uncertainty, contradiction, or organization. But at the same time, dialogics, while it contains an intrinsic limitation, also includes the possibility of bringing concepts into play among themselves. These concepts may be complementary, competitive, and antagonistic in what I call the tetagram of

order - disorder - interactions - organization

This means that a phenomenon cannot be reduced to only one of these phenomena, and, that to understand it, these four notions must be allowed to interact with the interplay varying according to the actual phenomena under observation. In other words, the principle of dialogics is to have complementary interplay between notions, which, in absolute terms, would clash and reject each other. Now, I would like to touch briefly on the myth of simplicity, which has prevailed in science. It was believed that scientific knowledge was a phenomenon, simply because it was inspired by an ideal of simplification, whereby behind the world of complex, thwarted, arbitrary illusions, there are some simple laws that science seeks out and reveals. But science could neither have existed nor progressed without being complex in its processes, production, and evolution. As Popper has shown, scientific knowledge is possible, and progress is achieved only because there is this confrontation of conflicting theories and postulates within a medium where there is a consensus on the rules of the empirico-logical game to determine the truth and the errors of these theories. In other words, scientific knowledge presupposes a dialogic between a community component consensus on the rules of the game and the value of knowledge, and a society component in the sense of “gesellschaft.” that is rivalry, competition, and conflict between scientists. It is because there is this dialogical mix between common ground and rivalry that science exists. Moreover, scientific concepts include not only the themata (Holton), the postulates (Popper), and the hard core (Lakatos), but in fact science walks on four independent legs that all belong to the same animal: rationalism, empiricism, imagination, verification; there is complementarity as well as antagonism between empirical and rationalist thought just as there is complementarity and antagonism between imagination and verification. And it is because there is this permanent conflictuality at the same time as this permanent complementarity between rationalism, empiricism, imagination, and verification that there is dynamism in science. Therefore, science functions and progresses in a dialogical, that is, complex manner, even when it is inspired by simplicity. Incidentally, this is the expression of a scientific ideology at a given moment in the history of science, and I would even say it is a very short moment for

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it begins in the seventeenth century and ends perhaps at a time when the twentieth century is in its throes of agony. Now, let us consider this myth of invisible simplicity hidden behind the complex appearance. An examination of this idea, cherished by so many scientists, leads to the realization that it is a metaphysical obsession: the idea that another world exists behind ours, another world of pure, universal laws, compared to which, the world of phenomena in which we live is inevitably debased. We have the impression that we are finally experiencing a vision of the world of the “maya,” as the Hindu philosophers call it, the world of fleeting appearances, and that behind it, there is the world of pure and sovereign order. This is either the world of numbers (and the belief in the reality of numbers is a subconscious neo-pythagorism), or the world of “models” (a subconscious neo-platonism). Personally, I believe that one day we will realize that this myth of another world free of the slag of our world is similar to a very old and great philosophical dream. Be that as it may, I shall conclude with the level of reality at which this concept of complexity is to be found. To imagine it, I think one has to talk of “interest,” and my concept of interest is very different from the meaning given to it by Habermas. There is what can be termed as the interest or need for useful simplifications, where we require clarity to isolate objects, and in that context, this is obviously a microphone, that is a table, this is a room, and so on. In that sense, our universe appears to be extremely simple, decomposable, analyzable. In other words, every time we need to remove all ambiguity from the environment, our view of the universe becomes simple; each time we need to cut it up into segments and manipulate it, our view of the universe becomes simple. But if your interest is the phenomenal world, the world in which we live, existentially, politically, socially, and anthropologically, there is no doubt that this world is one of complexity, where everything is interaction, inter-retroaction, and interrelation, and it is then that we are forced to see it in a complex way if we do not want to seriously mutilate reality. And if our interest lies in reviewing fundamental problems of knowledge and understanding, then we find complexity paradigmatic and logical, where there is no pure principle, no unique law, no formula unifying the universe, just the conjunction of logically contradictory principles and a growing obscurity towards the unthinkable, inconceivable, and unsayable, especially when we tackle the problem of the origin of the cosmos and of the foundation of matter. To conclude, I would say that reality is neither simple nor complex. It is something else. It is enormous, outside any standards, unheard of, it is incredible, it presents many faces depending on our questions. The thought process developed through simplification, that is disjunction, reduction, selection, quantification, formalization, etc., uses more and more manipulatory methods to comprehend it. But at the same time, it gives precedence to the logico-mathematical aspect of the universe, its “order,” and it believes that it has discovered the truth—the mind’s way of adapting to objects in the logico-mathematical order of the universe. This view reassures its followers, because it gives the impression that the world is totally thinkable, that is, totally digestible by the mind. If, for example, one wants to think of it in the light of complexity, then, on the one hand, one is very much concerned by the phenomena themselves, and on the other hand, one is much more prepared to consider the fundamental contradictions in the thought and mystery of the world. At the same time; however, knowledge is no longer identified with manipulation. Complex knowledge is no longer studied mainly for the sake of manipulation, but to think, meditate,

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beginning with beings, with things, with the world. And I would even go so far as to say that the need for contemplation is thus revived. You will remember that “theoria” means to contemplate. Should we not, in our techno-bureaucratized society, stimulate the aim of learning to enhance understanding? Complexity is feared because it obliges us to come to terms with uncertainty and contradiction. Facing contradiction and uncertainty resembles remarkably the struggle between Jacob and the angel, in SaintSulpice Church in Paris, where we cannot tell whether Jacob and the angel are fighting to the death or are locked in embrace. If you question reality with simplifying thought, it is extremely simple. If you question it with complexifying thought, reality will be complex. Apparently, it always obeys thought. This really means that there is always a deeper meaning that goes unnoticed, in other words, that there is more to reality than the human mind is aware of.

Notes 1 2

Copyright 1985 by the United Nations University. Reproduced with permission of the United Nations University. ECf (1977). La Méthode 1, La nature de la nature, [Method. 1. The nature of nature], Paris: Seuil, pp. 105–115.

Epistemology—Complexity1 1974—International social science journal “La vie est un peu plus compliquée qu’on ne dit, et même les circonstances. II y a une nécessité pressante à montrer cette complexité.” Marcel Proust (Le temps retrouvé)

From the simple to the complex What is not simple Complexity is a concept of which the first definition can only be negative: complexity is what is not simple. A simple object is an object which can be conceived as an indivisible elementary unit. A simple concept is one whereby such an object can be conceived clearly and distinctly, as an entity which can be isolated from its surroundings. A simple explanation is one whereby a composite phenomenon can be reduced to its elementary units and the whole can be conceived as the sum of the characteristics of the units. In simple causality cause and effect can be isolated and the effect of the cause can be predicted in a strictly determinist manner. Simplicity precludes what is complicated, uncertain, ambiguous, contradictory. And the theory that corresponds to simple phenomena is a simple theory. However, a simple theory may be applied to complicated, ambiguous and uncertain phenomena. In this case a process of simplification takes place. The problem of complexity is that of phenomena which cannot be reduced to the simple thought patterns of the observer. In other words, complexity will first manifest itself, for this observer, in the form of obscurity, doubts, ambiguity, or even paradox or contradiction. Of course all knowledge involves a simplifying process in that it abstracts, i.e. eliminates a number of empirical properties of the phenomenon as non-significant, irrelevant, contingent. However, it must not oversimplify, that is, exclude as epiphenomenal everything which does not fit into a simplifying pattern. Here we come to the problem: it is always possible to banish the complex to the periphery, retaining only what can be simplified, and decide that only what can be simplified comes within the purview of science. To do so is, however, becoming less and less easy in all the sciences—except, strange to say, in the human sciences, which have the most complex subject-matter of all, but at the same time, and for this very reason, feel at a loss in the face of such complexity. Less and less simple Up to the end of the nineteenth century the pioneering science was physics, which was based on the simple pattern of general laws, strictly determinist in character, and elementary units which could be quantified, isolated and identified without ambiguity. However, first with thermodynamics, then, in the course of the twentieth century, with the development of microphysics and relativist macrophysics, even physics lost its simplicity. In microphysics it is the basic phenomena with which it is concerned which become uncertain, ambiguous or even contradictory: their individual behaviour eludes determinism, their nature is conceivable now as a wave now as a corpuscle, and today

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it is even a moot question whether the concept of an elementary particle has any meaning. In macrophysics the categories of time and space are no longer clear and distinct but run into one another. We discover that the physical universe is complex in its infinitesimal structure as in its cosmic vastness. This being the case we do not see why biological phenomena should be any less complex than physical phenomena. However, it would be an over-simplification to reduce biological complexity to physical complexity. Biological phenomena have a complexity all their own. The manifold advances of genetic biology, ethology, ecology, lead us to discover complexity where formerly we saw either simple phenomena or the intervention of some ‘vital principle’, supraphysical or metaphysical, but itself inexorably simple like all the principles of idealism. Molecular biology, by demonstrating that biological phenomena are all physico-chemical phenomena, has not brought about a reduction from the complex to the simple: quite the contrary, since in order to describe these phenomena it has had to have recourse to organizational concepts unknown in the strictly physico-chemical field, such as information, code, message, inhibition, repression, hierarchy, etc. In other words, the specific complexity of life is of an organizational character. This we shall see in due course. However, two remarks can be made at the outset: first, the simple is not the physical substratum to which a biological complexity can be reduced; the simple is just one aspect (that of traditional physics), a state, a moment, a transition between several complexities. Second, the human phenomenon is not the sole and exclusive bearer of complexity in a simple natural universe. If it is the bearer of the greatest complexity which we can conceive as yet, it is rather as the bearer of a very high degree of complexity, or even ‘hypercomplexity’, by comparison with a biological universe itself complex. As the borderline between the biological and the human is not a question of complexity, everything said here about biological complexity will apply a fortiori to the human. Our approach to the problem therefore will be in no sense reductionist: on the contrary, being exploratory in character, far from simplifying it will only make more complex. Our intention then is to try and elucidate the fundamental characteristics of biological complexity. This is a subject which has been very little explored as yet but which von Neumann has opened up magnificently with his ‘Theory of self-reproducing automata’. More and more complicated Biological complexity appears first as a quantitative phenomenon. A cell is made up of millions of molecules. A living organism such as the human organism is made up of thousands of millions of cells. The extraordinary thing is that this quantitative phenomenon is also qualitatively complex. The architecture of these thousands of millions of constituents does not follow a simple orderly pattern as does the accretion of crystals, nor is it disorderly and subject to simple statistical rules as are the molecules of a gas. The relationships between the constituents which go to make up a living being are not of juxtaposition or supraposition, but of interaction and interference. Now the number of possible interactions between these thousands of millions of constituents goes beyond the bounds of ‘astronomical’ figures. As Ashby noted in 1964, everything that is material stops at 10100, but everything that is combinative (combinations, relations, properties, types, patterns, constraints, etc.) goes a great deal further. So here we are in the realm of the incommensurable. No doubt this is not yet biological complexity proper, but we already have the premises of that complexity in the

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increasingly complicated pattern of interrelations, interactions and interferences and the obfuscation of causative processes resulting from and manifest in reciprocal causality and feedback effects. Is this biological complexity proper? No, not yet, for cybernetics is already at a level of complex causality, with feedback effects and the machine programmed to correct the effects produced by external agents. It might then be thought that biological complexity resides in the greater number and complexity of interrelations as compared with those of machines, that is, that the phenomenon of life is complex owing to the higher degree of complication and confusion. In this case complexity would be no more than an extreme complication, simply placing us in the situation of kittens faced with a tangled skein of wool, which could be untangled and pulled out in a single strand with adequate implements, time and patience. The limitations on our knowledge would be quantitative in nature, and would not be due to the quality of the living thing, which would remain a mere deterministic machine. However, it would be too simple to reduce complexity to complication.

Biological complexity or self-organization Complexity and the organization of diversity What is here asserted applies not only to living phenomena, but to all organized phenomena, even if they are not biological. In other words, the sphere of complexity is that of organized diversity, of the organization of diversity. The sphere of complexity does not a priori include either a simple, irreducible unit or an unorganized population of units (such as molecules of a gas) or a disorganized diversity (such as a cart of rubbish). If we remain within the ‘medium range’ of physical phenomena2 (that is, if we exclude the field of microphysics and that of macrophysics, which is moreover a simplification in method), complexity begins as soon as there is some system, that is, interrelations between various elements in a unit which becomes a complex unit (one and manifold). Systemic complexity is manifest in particular in the fact that the whole possesses qualities and properties which are not to be found in the parts in isolation and, conversely, that the parts possess qualities and properties which disappear as a result of the organizational constraints of the system. Systemic complexity increases on the one hand with the increase in the number and diversity of the component parts, on the other with the increased flexibility and complication of the interrelations (interactions, feedback effects, interferences, etc.) and the decrease in their determinism (at least from the standpoint of an observer). Another order of complexity is reached when the system is ‘open’, that is, when its existence and the maintenance of its diversity are inseparable from interrelations with the environment, interrelations whereby the system draws on the outside world for material/energy and, at a higher level of complexity, elicits information. Here we have a truly complex and ambiguous relation between the open system and the environment, vis-à-vis which it is at the same time autonomous and dependent. Yet another order of complexity is reached with cybernetic systems, whose organization cannot be understood without recourse to the concepts of data, programme, control, etc.

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A living system, for its part, possesses and combines to an exceptional degree systemic complexity, the complexity of the ‘open’ system and cybernetic complexity. It might be supposed that, having said this, we have adequately described the complexity of living things, and that it would suffice to bring in systems theory and cybernetics. Our aim here, on the contrary, is to demonstrate that the complexity peculiar to living things, while it comprehends these orders of complexity, is of another order, another quality, and answers to a different organizing principle. The mysterious automated factory The cell, which is the basic unit of living things, has of course often been compared to an extremely sophisticated automatically controlled factory. A cell does indeed carry out a multiplicity of processing operations in accordance with what seems to be a detailed programme (the instructions of the ‘genetic code’). However, this comparison, or assimilation, leaves out of account the peculiar characteristics of a factory on the one hand and of living matter on the other, and also, in either case, their living complexity. For a factory makes sense only within the framework of the society which built it and within which it operates, which takes us back to the technology, economic structure, division of labour and social stratification of that society. Furthermore, however highly automated a factory may be, it is controlled by human beings, who are themselves actors on the social stage. In other words, a factory cannot be understood unless the social complexity of industrial society is brought into the picture, and this is the product of a very long evolution at the origin of which is to be found . . . the original living cell. In other words, the cybernetic complexity of a factory is only one aspect, and not the most complex, of the living social complexity which produced it and, through environmental influences, determines how it should operate. On the other hand, a cell, in the case of unicellular beings, while it obviously depends on the ecosystem outside to which it belongs and on which it draws for its complexity, bases that complexity on its own generating system, that is its self-organization. Although it is as sophisticated as any automated factory and even more so, it operates without directors, engineers, cleaners that is without living beings more complex than itself to produce and control it. It is obviously not produced by a pre-existing external economic and social system. It is as though the molecules were at the same time programmers, workmen, machines, producers and consumers. The ‘programme’ evidently does not proceed from some more complex external reality. It comes from another cell, by self-reproduction and so on. The comparison with an automated factory, therefore, like any cybernetic comparison, ignores the very kernel of biological complexity, which is selforganization. The strictly cybernetic view leaves out of account the external complexity of the artificial automaton (the automated factory) and the internal complexity of the natural automaton (the living being), which is self-organizing. On the contrary, the problem is to grasp the internal complexity peculiar to the natural automaton, at the same time taking into account the complexity of the relationship-which this internal complexity (i.e. once again, capacity for self-organization) alone makes possible—between the living being and what is outside it (the ecosystem).3 The natural automaton-generativity and disorder Here von Neumann introduces us to what constitutes the fundamental difference between even the most highly perfected artificial automaton (computer, automated

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factory) and the most rudimentary natural automaton, the unicellular being, and thereby takes us to the heart of biological complexity. This difference is apparent in three interdependent aspects. First, an artificial machine is made up of extremely reliable components, that is of parts which are calibrated, checked and perfectly adjusted to each other and consist of the toughest materials and those the least likely to become deformed having regard to the work to be effected. However, the reliability of the machine as a whole is extremely low; in other words it stops and goes out of order as soon as any single one of its parts is damaged. The more numerous and interdependent are its parts, the less reliable it is. Living beings, on the other hand, are made up of very unreliable parts: the molecules of a cell, the cells of an organism, are continually deteriorating and their life span is very short (for instance, 99 per cent of the molecules in a human being are destroyed in the course of a year). However, the whole is much more reliable than its component parts and its reliability is no whit diminished as the number of those parts and the interrelations between them increase. As a whole it is much more reliable than any natural machine. The whole can function despite the definitive deterioration of certain parts, despite accidents affecting different parts. Equifinality is nothing other than this aptitude of living beings that enables them to achieve their ends (carry out their ‘programmes’) by roundabout ways in spite of deficiencies, accidents or obstacles, whereas a machine, once it is deprived of one of its parts or one of its supplies, deteriorates, stops or yields faulty products. Hence the question, asked by von Neumann: how can an extremely reliable automaton be made up of extremely unreliable component parts?4 The question can be taken a step further: is the low reliability of the component parts not so much detrimental as essential to the high reliability of living beings? Secondly, the problem of reliability can be stated in more general terms of order and disorder. The wear and tear, distortion and deterioration, affecting the different parts of a machine are prejudicial to order in that machine and they may be regarded as elements or factors in disorder. If the machine is a cybernetic machine that has a programme or processes data, this disorder may be regarded as ‘noise’. Any chance disturbance which occurs in the communication of data, thereby distorting the message, which becomes faulty, is called ‘noise’. ‘Noise’ is therefore disorder, which by disorganizing the message becomes a source of error. Disorder, ‘noise’ and error are in this context reflected concepts. Now not only is an artificial machine very quickly affected by disorder, ‘noise’ and error (owing to its low reliability), but it cannot tolerate them. The most that it can do is to diagnose the error and stop immediately so as to arrest the otherwise inevitable spread of the disorder (positive feedback). The functioning of a living system, on the contrary, is always consistent with some disorder, ‘noise’ and error within certain limits. In this connexion the deterioration of the molecules and cells of organisms, which, as we have seen, is constant, affords a continuous source of disorder. Furthermore, the cells of an organism are autonomous to some extent: whereas in a machine the component parts have to be fitted together in an extremely precise, hard-and-fast fashion. The manner in which cells and organs fit together is extremely casual and involves, therefore, a certain amount of uncertainty and chance. In an organism the presence of germs or toxic elements, as also the uncontrolled proliferation of cells, are, within limits of course, normal phenomena. For example, in so far as cancer is concerned, “malignant cells constantly come into existence and are eliminated by the immunological defences as

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soon as they appear” (Lwoff, 1972). Moreover, on considering both natural ecosystems and higher societies (those of ants as well as those of mammals and of course human beings), one notes not only a very large number of random movements in the behaviour of individuals, but incessant conflicts between individuals and group or class antagonisms. One realizes that, in the realm of living things, relations between parts or subsystems, and between individuals or groups, are not characterized by a perfect fit or strict complementarity: rivalry, competition, antagonism, and conflict occur, and these are the sources of disturbances and disorder. Such relations are impossible as yet in an artificial machine. Now this is indeed a sign of complexity because the more highly a living system is evolved, the more complex it is, the more it will comprise of disorder, ‘noise’ and error. The most complex systems we know, the human brain and human society, are those which function with the largest proportion of uncertainties, disorder and ‘noise’. Once again complexity is apparent as ambiguity and paradox, in this case in the relation between order and disorder. Again one cannot help taking the paradox still further and asking oneself whether living beings do not function not only despite disorder but also with disorder. The complexity of living things is then seen as that of an organizing principle which bases itself specifically on disorder (whether due to deterioration, conflict or antagonism), in order to develop its qualities surpassing those of any machine. Thirdly, the problem can now be stated in radical terms. Every organized physical system is unremittingly subject to the working of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, namely increasing entropy within the system, manifest in the increase in disorder at the expense of order, of homogeneity at the expense of heterogeneity (the diversity of the component parts), in short, of disorganization at the expense of organization. In this sense even the most highly perfected artificial machine is always degenerative, and since it is as a whole very unreliable it degenerates rapidly. It starts to deteriorate as soon as it has been constructed, whether or not it is in operation. One cannot arrest this deterioration except from the outside, by repairing or changing the worn parts. In other words, the regenerating force is outside the machine. Moreover, it is not only the machine which is subject to deterioration, but also the information (the programme) that controls and runs it: in accordance with Shannon’s theorem, that the quantity of information received by a receiver cannot more than equal the quantity of information transmitted by a transmitter, information itself is degenerative, subject to the various types of ‘noise’ which lead to errors and finally distort the message. A living machine, on the contrary, is not degenerative—at least on a temporary basis. The reason is immediately apparent. It is because it is capable of renewing its molecular and cellular components when they deteriorate. Certain species can even regenerate whole organs. Of course a living individual degenerates in the end: it ages and dies; entropy prevails under the statistical effect of the accumulation of ‘errors’ occurring in the transmission of the genetic message5 (validating in this respect Shannon’s theorem on the deterioration of information). However, this is offset by the generative capacity of living beings, obviously unknown as yet in artificial automatons. A natural automaton is a self-reproducing automaton that is it is capable of generating another natural automaton. It is capable of reproducing and multiplying the living complex organization. And this generativity is also apparent in regard to the ontogenesis of individuals: starting from an egg, they accomplish a generative cycle which

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leads them to maturity. All this, while not in contradiction with the second law, is not foreseen by it. As has often been said, living self-organization plays much the same part as Maxwell’s demon, using its informative power to sort and select the moving molecules in such a way as to restore heterogeneity while paying its toll to entropy (Brillouin). One must go still further and take generativity in the widest sense, as including the generation of information itself. Biological evolution may be regarded as the ramification of self-organization from what was for the plant and animal kingdoms a single unicellular stem, that is to say, the development of many different forms of complexity of their generative system. These forms are developed by means of favourable genetic mutations, which enrich the hereditary stock by adding to its complexity. So there is an essential link between generativity and biological complexity: biological complexity results in generativity and generativity results in complexity. Von Neumann, once again, had realized that the qualitatively new principle which was evidenced by the natural automaton as compared with the artificial automaton or with any strict physico-chemical system was to be found in generativity. ‘Life from death, death from life’ Here we come to the heart of the paradox. The reliability, the non-degenerativity and the generativity of living systems depend in a way on the unreliability and degenerativity of their component parts. The success of life depends on its very mortality. Disorder, ‘noise’ and error are lethal to living things in different respects, at different levels and after different passages of time, but they are also an integral part of their non-degenerative self-organization as well as stimulating the manifold development of their generative system. The constant deterioration of the molecular and cellular components is the weakness which gives living beings the advantage over machines. It is the source of the constant renewal of life. It does not only mean that the order of living things feeds on disorder. It also means that the organization of living things is essentially a system of permanent reorganization (Atlan). The crux of biological complexity is the indissoluble bond between continuous decay and auto-poiesis, between life and mortality. Whereas the simple ‘solution’ of machines is to delay the fatal course of entropy by the high reliability of their component parts, the complex ‘solution’ of living things is to accentuate and amplify disorder in order to find therein the means of renewing the order they evince. Generativity functions with disorder, tolerating it, using it and combating it in a relationship which is antagonistic, competitive and complementary at the same time. Permanent reorganization and auto-poiesis constitute categories applicable to the whole biological order and, a fortiori, to the human sociological order. A cell is in a permanent state of selfproduction through the death of its molecules. An organism is in a permanent state of self-production through the death of its cells (which . . . etc.). A society is in a permanent state of self-production through the death of its individual members (which . . . etc.). It continually reorganizes itself through disorders, antagonisms and conflicts, which undermine its existence and at the same time maintain its vitality. In all cases, therefore, the process of disorganization/degeneration plays a part in the process of reorganization/regeneration. Disorganization becomes one of the fundamental characteristics of the functioning of the system, that is of its organization. The factors of disorganization play a part in organization in much the same way as

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the disorganizing tactics of the other side in a football match are an indispensable element in the tactics of a team, which becomes capable of the most highly refined combinatory constructions, working within the framework of binding rules (as are the instructions of the genetic code) in such a way as to evolve a flexible strategy as suggested by the vicissitudes of the match. This indeed is the basis of von Foerster’s ‘order from noise’ principle (von Foerster, 1960), which will be generalized to apply to all creation, all development, all evolution. This principle differs from the mechanical ‘order from order’ principle, the purely invariant principle of traditional physics, and also from the ‘order from disorder’ principle of statistics, according to which when one is dealing with large numbers or populations, disorderly or random movements of units obey laws of order, following average or general trends, though without any generativity. The von Foerster principle is complementary/antagonistic of the ‘disorder from order’ principle, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It implies a principle of selection/organization which in the case of living things has an informational character capable of developing a process which absorbs the lowest forms of order and thereby converts a corresponding degree of disorder into a system of a higher order (Gunther, p. 341). What we have here,”according to Gunther, is a synthesis of the ideas “order from order’ and “order from disorder,” i.e. “order from (order+disorder)” (ibid.). It seems to me that he forgets that for this synthesis to come about yet another principle has to be brought in, that of “disorder from order.” The ‘order from noise’ principle can be understood as having two different but complementary meanings. The first is that of non-degenerativity, where, as we have seen, the continuing processes of self-reorganization/auto-poiesis require ‘noise’ in order to maintain the order of living things. The second is that of generativity in the creative sense of the word, as it is evidenced in all evolution, whether biological or, in the case of man, sociological. Take for instance biological evolution, which operates through mutations. What is a mutation? No matter what prodigious obscurities surround it, it is plain that we have here a phenomenon involving disorganization of the hereditary message as a result of ‘noise’ interfering with the reproduction of the matrix message and giving rise to ‘errors’ in regard to it. However, it is through this ‘noise’ and these ‘errors’ that the message is reorganized into another message which may, where things work out well, be richer and more complex than the former message. So it is the encounter between ‘noise’ and a principle of self-organization which leads to the constitution of a more complex higher order. Thus it is clear that the idea of self-reorganization concerns not only the continuing phenomena of non-degenerative self-conservation and generative self-reproduction but also the phenomena of transformation, development and complexification of generativity. We can now understand the expression negentropy as applied rightly to living things. Negentropy in no way eliminates entropy. On the contrary, as with any energy consumption phenomenon or heat combustion phenomenon, the one leads to the other and enhances it. Of course living things combat entropy by supplying themselves with energy and information from outside, from the environment, and by casting out into the environment as waste the deteriorated residual materials which they cannot assimilate. However, at the same time life is reorganized, as a result of entropy exercising its lethal, disorganizing effect within. Without entropy there can be no negentropy. Thus we do not have here a simple Manichaean opposition between two

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antagonistic principles, as is too often supposed. On the contrary, we have a complex relation, complementary, competitive and antagonistic at the same time. This essential quality of biological complexity was adumbrated in exemplary fashion by Heraclitus: ‘Life from death and death from life.’ Hegel too came very near the concept of negentropy with his ‘magic force (Zauberkraft) causing the Negative to return to Being’. A principle of development As we have just seen, self-organization, that is, biological complexity, involves a morphogenetic aptitude, that is, an aptitude for creating new forms and structures, which themselves, when they lead to an increase in complexity, constitute developments of self-organization. Not only do these developments make the internal organization of living systems more complex (constitution of multicellular organisms themselves involving more and more complex processes of functioning with the appearance of homoiothermic systems, nervous systems, etc.), but they also affect relations with the environment (the ecosystem), particularly in regard to behaviour. The more complex behaviour becomes, the more flexibility there is in regard to adaptation to the environment. Behaviour becomes amenable to modification in response to external changes—in particular, unforeseen contingencies, disturbances and events—and also becomes capable of modifying the immediate environment, arranging it and adapting it to the living system. Flexibility in regard to the adaptation of behaviour is evinced in the development of heuristic, inventive and variable strategies to replace rigidly programmed behaviour. The development of strategies of course implies the internal development of selforganizational systems capable of organizing behaviour. These systems come to deal in a more and more complex way with unforeseen contingencies, disorder and ‘noise’ coming from the outside, when they are acting on or communicating with the outside world. In other words, as self-organization becomes more complex, it becomes increasingly capable of organizing the environment and introducing into natural behaviour the very complexity of its internal organization. Behaviour then becomes capable of dealing in autonomous fashion not only with the deterministic effects of the environment, but also with its unforeseen contingencies, disorder and chance occurrences. The sphere of behaviour tends to become almost as complex as that of internal organization, sometimes more so. In this way morphogenetic possibilities that were first strictly confined to genetic mutation are carried over to behaviour, action and artefacts and become creativity. The development of heuristic abilities with a capacity of envisaging several possible strategies, namely giving rise to the possibility of choice, heralds the birth of freedoms. Freedom and creativity are ideas that until now seemed to come down as a gift from the metaphysical firmament to guide the mechanical behaviour of the organism. However, as we have seen, creativity has roots which go back a very long way, seeing that the origin of life, and every favourable genetic mutation, are creative acts in the morphogenetic sense of the term. Freedom, too, has roots that go deep: originally, no doubt, it arises out of what we call microphysical indeterminacy, and its basis is in all probability the complex whole in which a self-organizing being combines this microphysical uncertainty, the tendency towards entropy and disorder and the deterministic order applicable to the ‘medium range’ of physical phenomena. Later on we shall see

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that a being of this kind is possessed of a flexible logical principle enabling it to escape the binary all-or-nothing principle. The important thing to note here is that freedom is a development of the ability of a self-organizing being to use uncertainty and chance occurrences in a way which is itself aleatory and uncertain but conduces to autonomy. Freedom therefore appears as a consequence of complexification and not its ground. It results from the development of highly combinatory systems capable of evolving strategies, systems which simultaneously generate a wealth of internal potentialities and also possibilities for choice in action. Consequently freedom not only raises the possibilities implicit in the ‘order from noise’ principle to a higher level but extends them to behaviour. All these properties—adaptability, creativity, freedom—tend to foster each other’s development, and take on another aspect with the advent of Homo sapiens and the emergence of human societies. From then on, creativity can be brought to bear on artefacts, for use or decoration, while freedoms can be institutionalized and begin to constitute an element in the self-organization of human societies. Thus all these properties of the human spirit can be not of course reduced but traced back originally to the generative characteristics of biological self- organization. No claim is made here to ‘explain’ human creativity and freedom: our purpose is to clarify the necessary conditions for their appearance. One thing has already been established: inventiveness, creativity and freedom are no longer excluded from the province of science; they are no longer ascribed to a deus ex machina, be it chance or what you will. Self-organization and complexity have no doubt always been concerned, always will be concerned, with the contingent. The latter enters into all creation, but the mysterious kernel of life, of creation, of freedom, is to be found in the encounter between the organizational principle and the aleatory event, disorder, ‘noise’. And always development will have an aleatory character. It is for this reason that advances in complexity are marginal phenomena, statistically in the minority, and in this sense ‘improbable’. Failures greatly outnumber successes and progress is always uncertain. Complexity of complexity The notion of complexity does not lend itself readily to conceptualization. On the one hand, because it is barely emergent; on the other hand, because it cannot but be complex. However, biological complexity can already be recognized as a basic concept of an organizational order characterized by self-organization. It relates to a form of organization combining, in a peculiar manner, the uncertainty of principles of microphysics and the deterministic principles of the ‘medium range’ of physical phenomena and its negentropy properties are inseparable from the production of entropy. The theory of biological complexity is therefore inseparable from a theory of the physical universe, but it constitutes an original development which calls for an original theory. We are only at the preliminary stage. (In the present paper no attempt has been made to consider the meaning of the recurrent prefix ‘self’ in self-organization from the standpoint of complexity. This will be considered in another paper, which is now being prepared.)

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Levels of complexity The many roads leading to complexity From bacteria to multicellular organisms, from worms to mammals, from lemuroidea to Homo sapiens, there is complexification, and it can be assumed that any increase in self-organizing ability is an increase in complexity. However, it would be crude, and in any case not complex, to try to classify living beings according to a scale of complexity, and, worse still, to contemplate measuring degrees of complexity, even approximately. There are two main reasons for this. One is that there are many roads to complexity. The other is that living systems combine in varying ways, zones of high complexity and zones of low complexity: some complexity traits have developed in societies of ants, bees and termites and not in human societies, and of course there are others which are evident only in human societies. In the first place then it is essential to bear in mind the diverse nature of complexity. There are several roads to complexity, both for organisms and for societies. For instance, there is the ‘centric’ road, in which the organism develops a central system of control such as the central nervous system in vertebrates and especially mammals (development of the brain) or in which the society develops a central controlling authority (chief, ruling class, State). There is also the ‘acentric’ road, in which the selforganization of the organism is effected through the connexions of a polycentric ganglionic circuit or in which the self-organization of the society, as with ants (Chauvin), is effected without any social controlling authority (the queen’s function is merely reproductive and she has no authority), through intercommunication between individuals with an extremely lapidary genetic ‘programme’.6 In so far as the development of the complexity of multicellular organisms is concerned, it seems to be recognized that this must have been effected through increasing differentiation and specialization of the cells, then of the organs, and through the development of a hierarchical organization. However, this twofold assertion must be strongly qualified. In point of fact the development of specialization goes hand in hand with the development of polyvalence, and a plurality of functions and aptitudes in organs such as the liver, the mouth (which is used in eating, drinking, breathing, speaking, kissing) and especially the brain itself, of which the cells are not very much differentiated and vast areas, in the cerebral cortex of man, are not specialized. There is even reason to think, as we shall see, that specialization is more and more corrected and limited by polyvalence once a very high degree of complexity is reached. As for the hierarchical aspect, two different types of phenomena are too often confused under the term ‘hierarchy’. The first is that of a structure of systemic levels superimposed on one another in which the general properties that emerge at one level become the basic elements of the next level and so on. In this sense of the term hierarchy is the most conducive to new qualities and properties emerging. The second type of phenomenon, which corresponds to the ordinary sense of the term, amounts to a rigid stratification in which each level exercises a strict control over the level beneath it, whose potentialities for emergence it inhibits or represses, with a supreme centralizing authority at the top. In the extreme case these two types of organization, both referred to as hierarchical, and both of which have played their part in the variable and uncertain process of complexification, are opposed to one another; the former enables new qualities to burgeon at each level and is compatible with flexible control

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no less than with acentric or polycentric self-organization, while the latter, once certain limits have been passed, tends to restrict complexity through the rigid nature of its constraints whereas, from a certain level of complexity on, further progress demands that these constraints should be loosened. It may be assumed that the complexification of organisms and societies of mammals up to the primates took place as a result of many complex and variable combinations of antagonistic tendencies: the tendency to develop a centralizing system, to develop hierarchy in the repressive sense of the term, to develop differentiation and specialization; and the contrary tendency, resulting in the development of polycentrism and a low level of specialization—specifically in the most complex organ, the brain—and also in proliferation of ‘noise’, that is, random connexions between neurons. Unequal complexity within one and the same system As indicated above, complexity is not uniformly distributed in organisms. In the first place it varies according to the occasion: in moments of strictly mechanical action less complexity is involved than in moments of transformation, decision, creation. It also varies from one component to another: those components or parts of the organism that are responsible for control and decision-making are obviously more complex than the others. More generally, living systems are characterized by a varying combination of components and states, some more complex but also more fragile, others less complex and more resistant in a sense, but also less flexible and therefore uninventive. They have a twofold potentiality, for an increase in complexity and for a decrease in complexity, the increase and the decrease occurring sometimes in alternation, sometimes simultaneously (in critical situations). At such times systems react either by a tendency to regress to the least complex states and solutions or by increased attention to heuristic strategies and the invention of new solutions, or by all this at once. There is certainly a limit to the increase in complexity within a system. Once that limit has been reached there is too much ‘disorder’ and ‘noise’ and the system can no longer be integrated. A system cannot dispense with constraints, which are due as much to the physico-chemical properties of its components as to the form of organization itself. But what is the limit of complexity? Putting the question the other way round, what are the as yet untapped possibilities of complexity? This is the problem which man poses today on this planet. The problem of hypercomplexity The advent of Homo sapiens raises the problem of hypercomplexity, that is of a self-organizing system in which there is a progressive development of organizational and creative abilities coupled with a gradual reduction of constraints, hierarchies and centralization. The problem arises inasmuch as the human brain has hypercomplex characteristics, as we have endeavoured to suggest elsewhere (Morin, 1973). Of course it is hard to draw a clear boundary between complexity and hypercomplexity, more especially as the brain is consubstantial with the organism, which is less complex than itself, moreover, the brain need not exemplify only hypercomplex states but also, simultaneously, states which are merely complex. Although it is thus impossible to detach or isolate a hypercomplex system, one can at least attempt to obtain a picture of hyper-

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complexity by taking as a basis certain features of the organization and functioning of the human brain. In this respect, hypercomplexity is characterized by a low level of differentiation between units (neurons) and the existence of regions not having specific functions; by a weak hierarchical relationship between cerebral subsystems; by polycentrism (while the brain as a whole is a centre for decision-making, there is no point in the brain which decides); by manifold interrelations and interferences between the individual components and the subsystems; by manifold strong interreactions with the environment; and by the considerable importance of random connexions, that is, of ‘disorder’ and ‘noise’. Now it is just such a system which enables heuristic strategies to prevail over a rigid programme and ushers in creative ability and all the wealth of imagination. All these features are already emerging in complexity, but they become preponderant in a system which by diminishing its constraints develops a structure that is qualitatively irreducible to those that went before. As against the superiority of hypercomplexity one must put the danger of being overwhelmed by ‘noise’, which then becomes the source of failures, errors and unbridled fantasy. All these problems I have attempted to consider in Le Paradigme Perdu: la Nature Humaine, so I am leaving them aside here. Our present concern is rather with the problem with which contemporary human society is faced. The history of human societies can be viewed as constituting at once a hesitation, an oscillation, a division and a conflict between solutions involving a low level of complexity and solutions involving hypercomplexity. This tension, complementary, competitive and antagonistic at the same time, might be represented as follows: )*4503*$"-
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The logic of complexity. Logical complexity The challenge to knowledge: uncertainty and ambiguity As seen by an observer complexity always takes the form of uncertainty. One is no longer confronted with a specific object, governed by simple laws, about which one

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can make accurate predictions. This uncertainty in regard to measurement, calculation and prediction is due, as we have seen, to: the incommensurability and interlocking nature of the individual components and the interactions between them; the irregularly aleatory and irregularly determined character of the self-organizing system from the observer’s standpoint; the fact that a capacity for self-organization is capable of evolving, that is of showing innovatory characteristics, to a greater extent the more complex it is. Now what is new first appears as deviant or erroneous before manifesting itself as a tendency, schismogenesis or morphogenesis. So, according as the complexity of a system increases, our ability to make precise and yet pertinent propositions concerning its behaviour decreases down to a threshold beyond which precision and pertinence become almost incompatible characteristics (Zadeh, 1973). These difficulties can no doubt be overcome to some extent, that is, we can apply ourselves to the study of constants, which takes us back to simple knowledge; we can apply ourselves to statistical calculations based on large numbers, which give us a poor knowledge, a defective one too as soon as there is any change in the system; we can use the ad hoc method of the black box, which brackets everything that happens within the system, dealing only with what can be grasped in the least uncertain manner, the inputs and the outputs. However, even then there is some uncertainty and unpredictability. As Norbert Wiener said, a complex action is one in which the combination of inputs required to obtain an output on the world may itself entail a large number of other combinations (Wiener, 1972, p. 58). All these roundabout means, which are useful but inadequate, tend to conceal the essential, that is self-organization, biological complexity, in other words the reality of living beings. Now, if we wish to enter this realm we find ourselves faced not only with uncertainties in regard to quantity, problems of calculation, but also conceptual, theoretical and logical uncertainties. Everything that constitutes the wealth and complexity of self-organization presents itself to our understanding in the form of uncertain, imprecise and ambiguous concepts (complementarity/competition/antagonism), and even contradictory ones. This is the case for instance with the correlatives order/disorder, entropy/negentropy, generativity/degenerativity. It is also the case with the most elementary notion of all, namely life. As I have shown elsewhere (Morin, 1973), we cannot regard a living system as an object detached from the environment, and the relations between an open system and the ecosystem are ambiguous—and become more so with the development of complexity because an increase in autonomy results in increased dependence on the ecosystem. And after all, what is life? Is it metabolizing (‘enjoying’), that is selforganizational exchange with the environment? Is it reproducing oneself, that is perpetuating a constant throughout time? Of course, it is both, jointly and severally. Life manifests itself as a dialogical system, generative (DNA, an almost constant hereditary stock) and phenomenal (proteins which are unstable and changing, but ensure the adaptive relationship with the outside world). Now this is in fact an ambiguous system whose nature and purpose it is not possible to axiomatize. The problem, which arises even with bacteria, confronts us all the more forcefully, and in a much more ambiguous fashion, in man. The human system is made up of a relationship between three correlative terms: individual, society and species. The distinction between these three terms is vague, for one of them is always included in the other and they cannot really be isolated.

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Moreover it would be impossible to determine which of the three was the ‘centre’, the ‘truth’, the ‘ultimate end’. Is the individual in the ‘service’ of the species? Or of society? Is society in the ‘service’ of the individual? Or of the species? Is the species in the ‘service’ of the individual? Or of society? Only a philosophical choice enables us to give pre-eminence to one of these terms. In point of fact we see that they are at the same time complementary, competitive, antagonistic. We also see that while they are imbricated one in the other they are not actually integrated one in the other, that there is the gulf of death between the individual and the species, the gulf of individual egoism between the individual and society. Yet we feel that these gulfs, these ‘contradictions’ and the ensuing disorder are all a part of human complexity. The observer can of course reduce uncertainty and ambiguity once he devotes himself to the detailed study of a small sector, limited in space and time, that is, once he forgets the system as a whole, which then becomes a vague environment. However, what can be readily elucidated and freed of ambiguity becomes of quite secondary interest because the essential has been eliminated, that is, self-organizational complexity. Biological complexity therefore is a real challenge to knowledge. Indeed a whole type of scientific knowledge that had proved fruitful in regard to the simple—or, in regard to the complex, had been able to indulge in heuristic simplification—is now rendered inadequate (it is for this reason that we continue to run away from complexity and prefer to exorcise it). However, as Niels Bohr saw in connexion with microphysical complexity, the apparent regression of knowledge made possible a further decisive advance, the elaboration of new techniques and methods and the abandonment of a whole outworn cast of thought. Similarly today, the consequences of biological complexity for knowledge are twofold: first, it calls for recognition of the fact that a type of knowledge that had been believed to be boundless is limited; second, it spurs us on to a more complex knowledge. On the one hand, as has been said earlier, biological complexity stimulates us to work out a theory of self-organization, of complexity greater than that of cybernetics and systems theory. On the other hand, it obliges us to submit our logic to a sort of fractionation process, whereby it can be reassayed and enriched. The logic of living things: A generative logic Complexity, according to von Neumann, raises a question of principle of a logical character. But this principle, is it one that would merely bid us use our own logic in a complex fashion, operating on its frontiers where imprecision and ambiguity appear? Or are we called on to lay down the principle not of logical complexity, but of a logic of complexity, that is, resort to a new logic? And is it possible to imagine ‘another’ logic? At all events it seems that our logic enables us to apprehend the principles of complexity, at least in a crude, uncertain and ambiguous manner, but it also seems that this crude, uncertain and ambiguous manner is the half-light that reveals the shadowy zone between our Aristotelian logic, based on the principle of identity and the excluded middle, leading us to the Cartesian principle of clear and distinct ideas, and the obscure nucleus of self-organizational logic where everything seems to us to be mixed up in what is inexpressible and contradictory. Then again, there is more than a zone of obscurity, a vacuum, between the processes of the two logics. Our logic is based on syllogism, deduction, induction; it is tautological, or at least homoeostatic,

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that is, it always rests on the confirmation (deduction) or generalization (induction) of its premises. Organizational logic, for its part, advances by trial and error, by leaps, which lead to new developments, and even new organizational structures. The logic which controls our propositions might be said to be highly suitable for machines, highly suitable for the ‘medium range’ of physical phenomena, between microphysics and macrophysics, suitable for many properties of living things, but unsuitable for what is essential in self-organization and complexity. The logic of complexity is ill at ease in the rigid frameworks and principles of our logic. It is characterized, as Elsasser puts it, by ‘the absence of pervasive rigid categories’ (categories distributed in uniform fashion throughout the system). In its most essential moments it escapes the binary logic of all or nothing. It was von Neumann too who saw that the logic of self-reproducing automata must lead to much less rigid theories than the all or nothing of past and present formal logic (von Neumann, 1951). Now it is precisely where the logic of living things escapes all-or-nothing or yes/no logic that we come upon uncertainty and ambiguity. Here the verifactory/computational force of our logic becomes a weakness. As Nietzsche said: ‘the fact that we are unable to state and deny the same thing simultaneously in no way expresses a necessity but merely an inability’. And Simondon is making the same point when he writes: ‘The principle of the excluded middle and the principle of identity distinguish an impoverished being, split between the environment and the individual’ (Simondon, 1964, p. 17). This being the case, we are faced with the problem, or rather the inevitability, of a logic which does not of course negate our logic within the sphere in which it is operational, but which sublates it, in the Hegelian sense, that is retains it while integrating it in a richer logic. It was Hegel, moreover, who in these terms formulated the opposition between understanding (Verstand ), which corresponds to traditional logic, and reason (Vernunft), which operates on the wider register of what he called dialectic. This problem has been brought out into the open again—by Elsasser, after he had corrected his ‘vitalism’, by von Neumann (logic of probability) and by Gottard Gunther (pluralist logic). In my view this logic must be at once probabilistic, flexible, dialogical, dialectical, pluralist and generative. A logic of probability. As von Neumann put it, if the automaton is not to be at the mercy of a failure, the axioms cannot be formulated in a rigorous manner. Not: if A and B occur, then D must follow. But: if A and B occur, C must follow with a certain specified probability, D with another specified probability and so on (von Neumann, 1966, p. 58). This logic of probability would make it possible to integrate equifinality phenomena (where a system may take a number of different routes to arrive at the same result) and phenomena where the same causes can produce different effects in similar systems. At the same time, it would enable us to deal with ‘noise’ and error. In von Neumann’s words, in machines everything is based on the perfection of determinist operations and there is no theoretical processing of error (which is diagnosed and eliminated); whereas the logic of natural automata is a logic of probability that manipulates the defect of a component part as an essential integrating part of the automaton’s operations. In all these respects, the logic of probability governing natural automata is a highly combinatory logic, which therefore attains at least a certain level of the combinatory complexity of living things. A flexible logic. The logic of probability suggested by von Neumann is at the same time a flexible logic. In the passages just quoted he calls for a ‘non-rigid’ concep-

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tion, ‘non-rigorous’ axioms, and suggests that we beware of the ‘perfection’ of determinist operations. Again we have Elsasser’s idea of a non-rigid, non-pervasive categorization. Flexibility then appears as having two aspects: the first is to be seen in the ‘probability’ approach, which allows for several possible combinations, and the second lies in the flexibility of the logical and organizational operation itself. We have seen that life certainly ‘computes’, and this computation may coincide at certain times and in certain of its aspects with our univocal arithmetic and the binary all-or-nothing law. However, we have also seen that in regard to its richer aspects it proceeds according to equivocal computing, and that imprecisely. Now here we have to suppose that the imprecision is not merely in our understanding: self-organizational logic deals with and manipulates imprecise objects, ‘fuzzy sets’, and it deals with them in an uncertain and oscillatory manner. ‘Fuzzy sets’ are classes of objects in which the transition between belonging and not belonging is gradual rather than abrupt. This is the case with living things, the transition between them and the ecosystem being imprecise. It is also the case with objects that undergo change in the self-organizational thatprocess and transform the operations that transform them. The logic of complexity can therefore be conceived as a logic that, in certain of its operations, works on what is fuzzy and in what is itself an imprecise manner. This characteristic seems alien to our logic, but in point of fact it forms a part of our reasoning. Zadeh rightly stresses that the logic which underlies human reasoning does not reside in the traditional two-valued logic, but it is on the contrary a logic characterized by fuzzy truths, fuzzy connecting links, fuzzy rules of inference (Zadeh, 1973). In my view, Zadeh makes a mistake when he reduces our logic to this exclusively fuzzy logic. Actually, it is a combination of two logics, as we shall see. He also makes a mistake when he confines this fuzzy operation exclusively to human reasoning. Human reasoning, at its particular level and with its particular elements, also proceeds on an empirical basis by using the logic of self-organization. And this logic, like human logic, is a dialogical system, which is fuzzy in part but cannot be reduced to the fuzzy. Human thought, like the logic of living things, is what links the precise to the imprecise. We cannot use language flexibly and heuristically except by associating imprecise, polysemous, elastic concepts with precise, univocal, inelastic concepts. As Saussure observed as long ago as 1915: ‘there are images which cannot be dispensed with’ (Saussure, 1915, ‘Introduction’, Note I). Both human thought and the logic of living things arrive at precision by means that are imprecise, that is, by escaping from the binarity which would stop them in their tracks. It is a ‘make do and mend’ logic. (Indeed the whole history of life can be regarded as a gigantic piece of make do and mend.) The incorporation of the ‘fuzzy’7 seen from this angle appears as a felicitous and necessary complement to von Neumann’s logic of probability. However, use has been made in passing of two terms which evoke something else again: one is ‘oscillatory’ and the other, in the quotation from Saussure above, ‘image’. They introduce us to the concepts of oscillatory and analogical processes respectively. In the former case we may wonder whether what we conceive as complementarity/competition/antagonism—and which does not represent either/or alternatives but ambiguous aspects of one and the same reality—does not constitute the oscillatory, uncertain and varied facets of a single self-organizational principle.

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Complementarity and antagonism would be like the two poles of the organizational principle which would oscillate between them during the continuous ebb and flow of reorganizational operations. Ambivalence would then be the effect on our logic of these inherent oscillations. This would enable us to connect self-organization with physical phenomena of an oscillatory nature, whose importance, not least in cellular organization, we are coming to realize more and more. I have no desire to enter a new field at this point. However, in view of the relationship between the oscillatory and the undulatory, between the undulatory and the continuous, we may well ask whether our traditional logic, which is so well adapted to digital computation, did not reject the analogical aspect of thought because it could not be integrated in its systematics. Now, as Saussure recalled, thought cannot dispense with images, that is, analogy. As has been noted, cybernetics has in fact rehabilitated analogical thought. However, what has been lacking is the consideration that the logic of living things uses quasi-analogical processes (phenomenal evidence of this is to be found in the mimetism of certain animals). This would enable us to conceive the processing of the fuzzy, at organizational level, by means of oscillatory/analogical processes of whose nature I personally have not as yet the faintest idea. A dia-logic. Let us revert to the example of human reasoning, of which traditional logic is only one aspect. As the human brain is a biological system, it seems reasonable to suppose that it functions with an even greater degree of complexity than that of complex biological systems. However, reasoning by means of language is only one aspect, one function of the brain, and it has not perhaps yet developed all its potential—for complexity—indeed I am convinced it has not. However, even now human reasoning is only partially consonant with digital logic—as is demonstrated by the inadequacies of digital computers. It also works with the fuzzy and uses analogical processes. It is a dialogical process in the sense that it would seem to be the result of the symbiosis of two types of logic, one digital, the other not only using analogy as does an analogue computer, but also analogical, it being understood that analogic remains obscure and mysterious for us, since we have concentrated all our scientific efforts on digital logic and take Aristotelian logic as our basis. Now it seems already to be established that natural automata are organizations implying both digital and analogous processes. The genes would seem to be ‘digital’ and, in enzymes, the controlling functions would seem to be ‘analogous’. May we not go further and assume that, beyond the analogous, there are other processes of an analogical character, which would then have to be elucidated? This is an open question, but it introduces us to a dialogic (a term used by von Foerster). Dialogic might be regarded as the bicephalous logic resulting from the encounter of two types of logic; it would be the symbiotic combination of these two types of logic, a combination that would be found expressed in simultaneously complementary, competing and antagonistic terms. I do not know whether we can regard the combination of the probabilistic order of microphysics and the deterministic order of the medium range of physics in this light. However, it can be imagined that the appearance of living things, the parent ancestral cell, was due to the encounter (pre-symbiosis) of macromolecular systems of proteins on the one hand and RNA and DNA on the other. In that case, this symbiosis, having become a cell, is thenceforth governed by the dialogical combination of an unstable, metamorphic, metabolic logic, that of the proteinic phenomenal system, and a constant, self-preserving, selfperpetuating logic, that of the generative system (DNA). The emergence of

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self-organization, in a highly charged thermo-dynamic maelstrom, would then usher in this dialogic, which would thereafter control the functioning of all the operations of the living being. This is why, as we saw earlier, it is not possible to pick out one logical principle of life, that of ‘living’ in the sense of metabolizing, exchanging, ‘enjoying’, eating, or that of surviving, in the sense of reproducing and perpetuating oneself. This is why life eludes all rationalization. And this, in part, is why life, from the standpoint of our logic, is absurd. Now the symbiotic ability of life—once again a case of make do and mend—is extraordinary. It is believed today that mitochondria were originally ‘enemy’ parasites which were absorbed and from then on, having become co-operative, even carried out vital functions, both metabolic and genetic ones. It is also thought that genes were brought by viruses, which were introduced into the DNA by transduction, and there again the enemy became co-operative and the foreign message was integrated into the genetic message, possibly enriching it in a decisive way. Our organisms, moreover, are alive with one-time parasites that became symbiotic and thenceforth took over vital functions, such as the bacteria in the intestines. Within an ecosystem symbiosis may be conceived of as mutual parasitism, producing an organizing effect to the advantage of both species. In certain cases even, plants that exist purely for the benefit of the parasitic insects that prey on their flowers, use dissemination, that is, the side effects of such parasitism, to reproduce and multiply. In its original character, therefore, as in many of its organizational features, the logic of complexity can be conceived of as a dialogic producing a symbiosis between two types of logic, a symbiosis, which is itself complex because not only does it not nullify the competing and antagonistic features, but it also integrates them and uses them for vital purposes. In this sense, it is understandable that complexity demands ‘rivalrous adaptability’ (Burger, 1967). Dialectical logic In many respects ‘dialogic’ irresistibly recalls the Hegelian dialectic, which itself claimed to be a new form of logic. However, before going any further, we must note the inadequacy of the Hegelian dialectic: 1. Its starting-point is monist, and it does not therefore give due weight to the element of encounter; in other words, the haphazard element involved in the development of the dialectic. It thereby eliminates chance and becomes a quasinecessary movement which, although intended to transcend mechanistic determinism, actually takes us back to it. 2. It sees ‘sublation’ as a mainstream, general phenomenon, ignoring the fact that it is in the first place something aberrant and marginal. 3. It tends to regard ‘contradiction’ as a moment in sublation, to a third term, which is synthesis; it does not therefore see that ‘contradiction’ plays a part in the structure or organization of stable phenomena. The Hegelian dialectic is inadequate, and even where it is adequate there is a danger of its becoming a new form of simplification or an excuse for unbridled fantasy. However, it did already point to the need for a new logic, the following elements of which it supplies: a) the idea that the contradictory is to be found in all phenomena; b) the idea that contradiction plays a generative part;

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c) the idea that sublation (transformation in the direction of more complexity) is brought about by a negation of negation; d) the idea of a logic that is not binary but ternary. In fact we have seen that the logic of complexity implies, to a certain definite extent, the union of logically contradictory terms (order/disorder, etc.). In a wider sense, life is an enantiomorphous system (enantiosis: opposition, contrariness), which in a way reconciles this contrariness and produces unity. It is this property that was extolled so long ago by Heraclitus, the greatest dialectician of the Western world: ‘What is contrary is useful and the most beautiful harmony is produced by warring elements.’ Life is at the same time stress and the reconciling of contradictions. It is in this sense that we must understand three assertions of which the truth is at the same time evident and unfathomable: ‘Life is always stretched to its own limits’ (Simondon); ‘Life is always on the brink of disaster’ (Salk); ‘Organisms live at the temperature of their own destruction’ (Trincher). We are back with Heraclitus once more: ‘Life from death, death from life.’ It is in this sense too that life borders on the absurd. The highest reason, whether or no it is dialectical, does not dissipate what cannot be rationalized, does not exorcise it, but contains it in itself. The enantiomorphous dialectic of organization existed in embryo form in Hegel’s philosophy, but Hegel, obsessed by ‘becoming’, had not faced up to the problem. On the other hand, although, as has already been said, he ignored the essential part played in ‘becoming’ by chance and the element of encounter, he did bring out the positive character of negativity arising from the negation of negation. The term ‘negentropy’, so often deemed unfortunate by those of a positivist turn of mind, seems to me to be particularly felicitous: if entropy is the ‘negation’ of complex order, negentropy, which needs entropy to build a still more complex order, is the negation of that negation; it is that incessant becoming working within the other incessant becoming (entropy) and, like a magic force (Zauber-kraft), causing the (disintegrating) negative to return to (living) being. Generative logic Von Neumann’s logic of probability is not degenerative; it is even potentially generative (owing to its combinatory potentialities). Dialogic is generative, in and by its symbiotic character, and Hegel’s dialectic is also generative with its ternary principle and its in-built negativity (excessively, immoderately so). We need a new generative logic that will not only integrate all these characteristics but take us a stage further by making due allowance for random elements, disorder and ‘noise’. Now, in so far as generativity is concerned, in the mutational, morphogenetic and creative sense of the term, it was Gottard Gunther who brought out the innovatory significance of the ‘order from noise’ principle. In this case there is actually a further conversion of disorder into order, what was ‘noise’ in a generative system being transmuted into a constitutive part of that system. This transmutation brings about a disorganization/reorganization of the message/system which changes the structure of the pre-existing order: the conversion of disorder (in the system), of ‘noise’ (in the message) into order/message changes the self-organization of the system, which is complexified. From the systemic stand-point it is the transition to a metasystem; from the paradigmatic standpoint it is a change in the paradigm; from the logical standpoint, it is a ‘transjunction’ that modifies the distribution of the system of values. Whereas

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‘order from disorder’ (statistics) concerns only the distribution of individuals, ‘order from noise’, in this sense, governs the distribution of values. Truth and error are transposed. For this reason a mutation, an ‘error’ in the reproduction of a genetic message seen in relation to that message, ceases to be an error and becomes a ‘truth’ of the new system. But of course there is no ‘truth’ unless the new system is viable. Otherwise the error remains an error. In this way we get the possibility of a ‘theoretical’ treatment of error to which von Neumann referred. What he is speaking of is not just a capability for getting round or correcting errors, but in cases of mutation/generation the possibility of transmuting them. And here the problem of error becomes part and parcel of the great Heraclitean enigma: ‘Life from death and death from life.’ For self-organizing systems would be potentially undying if they were not fatally, statistically subject to the inevitable accumulation of errors since there is no communication system in the physical order which is free of ‘noise’. It is therefore because sooner or later they cannot escape errors that they die. However, just as negentropy manages to work on mortal disorder, transforming it into order, similarly it manages to treat error in such a way as to make of it a new truth-very seldom no doubt, but in a decisive fashion. Thus the notions of truth and error shift and change. They remain logical concepts, but cease to be unchangeable ontological essences. They become bio-degradable, but also bio-transformable.8 Arborescent logic. Symphonic logic The logic of living things cannot, according to Gunther, be a two-valued logic, but is necessarily an n-valued logic. Even if this is true, it is again only one aspect of the logic of complexity, which is at the same time probabilistic, dialogical, dialectical, generative. The term ‘generative’ covers the lot provided that generativity is conceived of not as a linear phenomenon but as an arborescent phenomenon. The logic of life is arborescent, and it is because it is arborescent that evolution has a non-linear, arborescent character, as Darwin discovered. The image of the tree is a good one, but it is still too static. We must realize that a logical connexion is ‘a choral symphony with organ’. We must understand what the poet understood: logic is the realm of the unexpected and not that of what is foreseen, which is tautological. Many people cannot imagine that logic should imagine. Many cannot conceive that logic should create. Many still cannot understand that logic should astonish—and that it must astonish us when we consider the whole amazing system, suffused with logic through and through.9 However, we have here a problem which is untouched upon as yet. Can we pass from the relativization of our Aristotelian logic to the formulation of a broader logic? Or are we forever tied to Aristotelian logic? In which case the logic of complexity will forever elude our attempts to reduce it to reason. In other words, it will remain a-logical. At all events the concept of logic seems to be losing its character of an absolute norm, either remaining stunted and relative, or opening out onto the ambiguous, the contradictory, the aberrant, the creative. Notes 1 2

Copyright 1974 by the International Social Science Journal (UNESCO). Reproduced with the permission of the International Social Science Journal. By ‘medium range’ we mean the sum of physical phenomena to which the laws of traditional physics apply.

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The more highly evolved a living being is the more autonomous it will be, the more it will draw on its living ecosystem for energy, information and organization. But for this very reason it will also depend more on its ecosystem. A living being is thus at the same time autonomous and dependent and the more autonomous it becomes, the more dependent it becomes. Therefore it is self-organizing without being self-sufficient. This ambiguity, which rules out any idea of a closed entity in so far as living beings are concerned, the latter being ‘open systems’, brings us up against another aspect of biological complexity, the complexity of the ecosystemic relationship. For him the question was not purely academic: He also wondered how one might build up such an automaton, that is, an artificial being, which would then have a fundamental advantage peculiar to living beings. The creation of an artificial being that would have the characteristics of a living being is not an impossibility to be dismissed. What distinguishes a living being from a machine is not the artificial character of the machine but the insufficient complexity of our technological know-how. There are, of course, species in which death is probably ‘programmed’ in advance, that is built into the self-organization. But here too the death of individuals would inevitably have occurred in any case as a result of the accumulation of errors. An ant-hill, of which the organization has been remarkably described by Remy Chauvin, provides an example of very great over-all coherence, in spite—and because—of very great disorder in the individual behaviour of the ants. There is good reason to think that the very high level of ‘noise’ in such a society is not unrelated to the extreme complexification of certain ant-hills, which practise stock-farming and agriculture and even cultivate drugs. Imprecision, so long the object of anathema in mathematics and science, is now seen as a vehicle of progress, with the theory of fuzzy sets and the need for ‘imprecise concepts’ being recognized by cyberneticists such as Abraham Moles. Of course what is involved here is the truth and error that are internal to a system and that become relative and capable of transmuting from one to the other. The problem is quite different in regard to the environment. An error of judgement or perception concerning a cunning or delusive predator or an enemy taken as a friend remains an error; a factual truth (for example, that Napoleon existed) remains a truth. To us a logical connexion is a choral symphony with organ, a work so difficult and inspired that the conductor must call on all his resources in order to control the performers. Logic is the realm of the unexpected. Thinking logically means being continually astonished (Osip Mendelstam).

References Ashby. (1964). Introductory remarks at panel discussion. In Mesarovic (ed.), Views on General Systems Theory (pp. 165–169). New York: John Wiley, Inc. Atlan, H. (1972). L’organisation biologique et la théorie de l’information. Paris: Hermann. Auger, P. (1966). L’ homme microscopique, p. 164–71. Paris: Flammarion. Bachelard, G. (1966). Le nouvel espoir scientifique (9th ed.). Paris: PUF. Brillouin, L. (1962). Science and Information Theory (2nd ed.). New York: Courier Corporation. Burger. (1967). Agonemmetry (adaptability through rivalry). General Systems, No. XII, p. 211. Chauvin, R. (1969). Le monde des fourmis. Paris: Pion. Elsasser, W. M. (1966). Atom and organism. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 89(1), 131–150. Von Foerster, H. (1960). On self-organizing systems and their environment. In: Yovits and Cameron (eds.), Self-organizing systems. New York: Pergamon. Gunther, G. (1962). Cybernetical ontology and transjunctional operations. In: Yovits, Jacobi and Goldsteiner (eds.), Self-organizing Systems. Washington, D.C.: Spartan Books. Jacob, F. (1970). La logique du vivant. Paris: Gallimard. Lwoff, A. (1969). L’ordre biologique. Paris: Laffont. Lwoff, A. (1972). Réflexions sur le cancer (Courrier du CNRS, 4).

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Maturana, H.; Varela, F. (1972). Autopoietic systems. Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Santiago, Chile. (Mimeo.) Monod, J. (1970). Le hasard et la nécessité. Paris: Le Seuil. Morin, E. (1972). L’evénement-sphynx. Communications, 18 (1), 173–192. Morin, E. (1973). Le paradigme perdu: La nature humaine. Paris, Le Seuil. Von Neumann, J. (1951). The general and logical theory of automata. In: Jeffress (ed.), Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior (pp. 1–31). New York: Wiley. Von Neumann, J. (1966). Theory of Self-reproducing Automata. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press Salk, J. (1972). Man unfolding. New York: Harper. De Saussure, F. (1915). Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Schrödinger, E. (1947). What is Life? New York: Macmillan. Serres, M. (1972). Hermes 2: l’interférence. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Shannon, C., & Weaver, W. (1949). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press. Trincher, L. S. (1965). Biology and information: Elements of biological thermodynamics. New York: Consultants Bureau. Wiener, N. (1950). The Human use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and society. Boston: Da Capo Press. Zadeh, L. A. (1973). Outline of a new approach to the analysis of complex systems and decision processes. IEEE Transactions on systems, Man, and Cybernetics, (1), 28–44.

Organization and Complexity1 1999—Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, a leading, multidisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal available in over 80 countries

The universe, in its diversity, has atoms; molecules; stars; galaxies; and—at least on one small planet—living organisms, humans, and societies. These entities, which are different from each other and not reducible to each other, have in common the fact that each is made up of organized elements that form a whole. What we perceive as the world around us are these wholes. The significance of the general notion of organization is not immediately evident. It is not in a search for a common minimum that we need to concentrate our efforts. It is in the manner of perceiving, conceiving, and thinking about the objects of our world in an organized way. To reach a generic, rather than general, concept, it is the idea of organization that we have to delve into. What is organization? Organization binds elements (particles, atoms, molecules, cells, individuals, etc.) in relationships that thus become components of a whole according to a primary definition, organization is a structure of relations between components to produce a whole with qualities unknown to these components outside the structure. Hence, organization connects parts to each other and parts to the whole. This gives rise to the complex character of the relation between the parts and the whole. Dilthey2 stated: “A whole cannot be understood except by understanding its constituent parts, which cannot be understood except by understanding the whole.” Two centuries earlier, Pascal3 referred to this circular relation, “I consider it impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, or to know the whole without knowing the parts.” There is a close relation between the concepts of organization, interrelation, and system.4 These three terms, although inseparable, can be distinguished from each other. The concept of interrelation refers to the types and forms of links between elements and between the elements and the whole. The concept of system refers to the complex unit of an interrelated whole, to its characteristics and properties. The concept of organization refers to the structuring of the parts within, with and through a whole. The two notions, organization and system, are linked by that of interrelation: the whole interrelation, if it has stability or regularity, acquires an organized character and produces a system. There is a circular reciprocity between these three terms. When the notion of system disperses the quality of being and existing (to say “living systems” tends to take the emphasis away from living beings and their existential dimension), the notion of organization refers to something concrete. In any case, we need a concept in three, three concepts in one, a macro-concept, each constituting a definable aspect of the same world, but that we subject to the hegemony of the idea of organization. Organization is a notion that is dependent and at the same time independent of its constituents. The relative autonomy of the ideal of organization is illustrated by

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isomers, compounds with the same chemical formula and molecular weight but with different properties only because the atoms are arranged differently in the molecule. We know that differences between atoms are the result of differences in the number and structure of three types of particles and that the diversity of living species depends on differences in the number and structure of four basic elements that form the letters of a “code.” We immediately see the importance of organization if it changes the qualities and character of systems or entities consisting of similar, but differently structured elements. Organization gives the entity autonomy and stability, at least within certain limits. Autonomy is derived from stability, and stability proceeds from autonomy. It is therefore not a mere exercise of the mind to distinguish an organized entity in relation to its environment. Organizational stability is ensured in a fixed way by the chemical bonds in molecules, but in the stars, stability/autonomy is guaranteed by an antagonistic complementarity between implosive and explosive processes. As we shall see, the maintenance of autonomy/stability is a primordial problem for living beings, who preserve it by continuous regulation and reorganization.

Unitas multiplex The relatively autonomous and relatively stable entity that organization produces, maintains, and preserves, is a complex unit, simultaneously one and multiple: unitas multiplex. This holds for the atom, the star, the living being, and the social unit. The idea of multiple units embodies two mutually exclusive notions. The concept of unit renders homogeneous and breaks up multiplicity; the concept of multiplicity divides unity into compartments and breaks it up. Hence the organized entity is one and homogeneous from the point of view of the whole, and different and heterogeneous from the point of view of the constituents. What we have to understand are the complex characteristics of the unitas multiplex: it is a global, nonelementary entity, because it consists of different parts. It is a nonhomogeneous but hegemonic unit because the organized whole dominates the distinct elements and holds them in its power. It is a nonprimitive but original unit: it has its own irreducible properties. It is an individual unit, quite indivisible: it can be decomposed into separate elements, but this changes its existence. Organization contains the seeds of its own disorganization. Maintenance of the complex unit presupposes the existence of dissociative forces. Binding forces contain or presuppose forces of repulsion. The parts that undergo organizational constraints bear the virtuality of their acquisition of autonomy in relation to the whole; this happens when the constraints relax or break down, destroying the organization, as occurs in cells that evade the constraints of the organism and proliferate in a disordered manner as a malignant cancer. Finally, the whole organized entity tends to a condition of disorder, according to the second principle of thermodynamics. Everything that is composed tends to decompose. However, in the more complex organizations, selforganization maintains homeostasis by means of negative feedback (elimination of deviations that threaten the stability of internal complexity) and uses the mortal effect of the forces of disintegration to regenerate itself. A living organism ceaselessly degrades its energy; this degradation would be irreversible if its autonomy did not permit it to draw on energy from outside to produce new molecules and young cells

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to replace those that decompose. Hence anti-organization is not just antagonistic, but necessary to organization. Moreover, the organizational constraints of the whole cause division in the great living and social polyorganizations, between the universe of the parts and the universe of the whole. None of Marc Antony’s cells (50–100 billion in number), none of his organs, knew that he declared love to Cleopatra, and Marc Antony knew nothing about the life and functioning of his cells: there was mutual ignorance at the heart of indissoluble unity. Thus the idea of unitas multiplex acquires density of meaning when we understand that we cannot reduce the whole to its parts or the parts to the whole, or the one to the multiple or the multiple to the one, but that we have to try to conceive the notions of whole and parts, one and different, organization and anti-organization, together, in a way that is simultaneously complementary and antagonistic.

Emergences All organizations produce something beyond their components, considered in an isolated or juxtaposed way: (a) the organization itself; (b) the global unit constituting the whole; (c) the new qualities and properties emerging from the organization and global unit. These can be called “emergences”. As indicated by von Foerster, the rule of composition of elements that interact in organization is super-additive (super-additive composition rule, see von Foerster,5 pp. 866–867). It is now important to extrapolate the qualities or new properties that emerge with organization at global level. They are qualities or properties of an innovative character with respect to the qualities or properties of the components taken separately or structured differently in another type of system. Thus the atom has original properties, such as stability with respect to the particles that compose it, and it imparts this quality of stability by feedback to the labile particles that it unites. With regard to molecules, “the new species bears no relation to the primitive constituents: its properties are not the sum of theirs, and it behaves differently in all circumstances. Though the mass (the total quantity of matter) remains the same, its quality or essence is completely new” (see Auger,6 pp. 130–131). The mixture of two gases, ammonia and hydrochloric acid, produces solid ammonium chloride. The apparently banal but in fact complex example of water shows that its liquid character (at normal temperatures) is not due to the properties of the atoms but to the molecules of water, bound together in a flexible way. The association of an atom of carbon in a molecular chain brings about stability, an essential quality for life. As far as life is concerned, “clearly the properties of an organism are more than the sum of the properties of its constituents,”7 and clearly the living cell has emerging properties unknown to macromolecules outside biological organization: it feeds, metabolizes, and reproduces. These emerging properties, the group of which is what we call life, affect the whole because it is a whole and affects the parts by feedback because they are parts. From the cell to the organism, from the genome to the gene pool, complex organizing units with emerging qualities constitute themselves. Finally, the implicit or explicit postulate of human sociology is that society cannot

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be regarded as the sum of all the individuals that compose it, but as an entity with specific qualities. It is quite extraordinary that apparently elementary notions, such as matter, life, sense, and humanity, are really emerging qualities of complex organizations. Matter only has consistency at the level of the atomic system. Physical materiality is not the first quality but emerges in and through organization. Life emerges from living organization, AND living organization does not emerge from a vital principle. The sense that linguists look for in the depths of language is the emergence of discourse, which appears in the unfolding of global units and has feedback on the basic units that made them emerge. The human being is an emergence of a hypercomplex brain system in an evolved primate. To define man in opposition to nature means defining him exclusively on the basis of his emerging qualities. The surprise is that the emerging qualities of a basic system, the atom, become the basic elements of the molecules, the emerging qualities of which become the primary elements for cell organization, and cells become the basic elements of multi-cellular organisms, and so forth. Emerging qualities have feedback on the parts and give them qualities that they could not have if they were isolated from the organizing whole. Thus, the neutron acquires the qualities of duration in the nucleus, electrons acquire the quality of individuality in the atom under the organizational effect of Pauli’s exclusion principle. The cell creates the conditions for the full development of molecular qualities not seen in the isolated state. In human society, culture enables individuals to develop their aptitudes for language, crafts, and art; their richest individual qualities emerge within the social system. Thus we see systems in which macro-emergences have feedback on their parts, creating micro-emergences. The whole is not only more than the sum of the parts, but the part of the whole is more than the part by virtue of the whole. The idea of emergence contains the closely linked ideas of quality, product (the emergence is produced by the organization of the system), globality (because it is indissoluble from the global unit), and innovation (because it is a new quality with respect to previous qualities of the elements). Quality, product, globality, and innovation are therefore the notions that need to be connected to understand emergences. An emergence has something relative (with respect to the organization that produced it and on which it depends) and something absolute (in its innovation); it must be considered from these two apparently antagonistic points of view. The emergence is a new quality that arises once the system is constituted and therefore has the property of event. The emergence presents itself as irrefutable phenomenon. It is empirically irreducible because it cannot be reduced to the qualities of the organized elements. It is not logically deducible because it cannot be deduced from the sum of the qualities of the organized elements. The new properties that arise at cell level are not deducible from their molecules. Hydrogen is irreducible and nondeducible to its constituents, crystals to their constituents, living organisms to their constituents, intelligence to its constituents, awareness to the constituents of the brain. Even when it can be predicted from the conditions in which it arises, the emergence constitutes a logical leap and opens the gap in our minds through which the irreducible can penetrate. The emergence forces us to revise the notion of qualitative leap. How do we classify emergence? Sometimes it seems to be an epiphenomena, product or resultant, at other times the main phenomenon constitutes the originality of the organized entity. For example, if we consider our awareness, it is the global

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product of brain interactions and interferences, inseparable from the interactions and interferences of a culture on an individual. It is possible to conceive it as an epiphenomena, a flash like a will-o’-the-wisp, incapable of modifying programmed behavior (genes, urges, society, etc.). Awareness can also rightly be viewed as a superstructure, resulting from deep organization that manifests in a superficial and fragile way, like all that is secondary and dependent. Such a description, however, does not consider that this fragile epiphenomena is at the same time the most extraordinary global quality arising from the brain: self-reflection, through which “the I emerges from the brain.” This description also ignores the feedback of awareness on ideas, behavior, and being, and the revolution it causes (awareness of death). Finally, this description ignores the completely new and sometimes decisive dimension that the self-critical attitude of awareness can bring to personality. The feedback of awareness may be variably uncertain and cause modifications of variable degree. Awareness manifests as a pure epiphenomena, a superstructure, a global quality, capable or incapable of feedback, depending on the moment, conditions, individuals, the problems faced, and the urges aroused. However, more than anything it is the supreme and richest product of the human intellect, and its value is related to its fragility, like all that is best and most precious to us: love, understanding, the primary virtues. The soul and the spirit are complex virtues, phenomena of wholeness, emergences; and this is why they cannot survive death, which is the disintegration of the whole and dispersal of the parts. Thus the concept of emergence is not reduced by those of superstructure, epiphenomena, or globality, but entertains necessary relations, oscillating and uncertain, with them. Its very irreducibility and this undefined and dialectic relationship make it a complex notion.

The complexity of the notion of organization With the idea of system and organization, things are no longer things; and objects, enriched by complexity, are no longer merely objects. Organized objects not only obey an external universal order, they produce, in their structure and specific configurations in space and time, their own organizational order. They often arise with the collaboration of disorder and have to struggle not only against external, but also against internal disorder. Organization binds, forms, transforms, produces, maintains, orders, and renders autonomous. It cannot be reduced to structure. Structure only means rules of invariance and transformation in a system. Organization means structure, relation to wholeness, specific characters, relations between the whole and the parts, unity–multiplicity, and emergences. The idea of structure mutilates the idea of organization, strips the idea of system, enucleates the idea of complexity. The more complex the organization, the more the idea of structure becomes inadequate. Hence, it is in anthroposocial hypercomplexity that this small region of organizational truth presumes to erect itself a throne. In biology, the current dominant concept makes genes govern organization, whereas genes are an institution in self-organization. There is a primordial epistemological interest in the notion of organization. Organization opposes separability (that breaks up the complex unit) and reducibility (which suffocates the microlevels); hence organization itself cannot be reduced to

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“holism,” which suffocates the microlevels of the constituent parts. In its complex nature, it is a key linking concept: it institutes multiple unity, establishing inseparable complementarity between the idea of unity and the idea of diversity or multiplicity, which originally repelled and excluded each other; it establishes a circular relation between the parts and the whole, the whole and the parts, hence the need for circular understanding from the whole to the parts and vice versa. The whole is more and less than the sum of the parts: this pseudoarithmetic formula suggests that the whole produces qualities unknown to the isolated parts, namely emergences, and at the same time establishes constraints that suffocate qualities and render virtual certain possibilities of the parts. Hence the whole is not necessarily superior to its parts if, for example, like a totalitarian empire and the nations it dominates, it inhibits the qualities of the parts that were richer than those of the whole, or if the richer emergences belonged to the parts, as for example awareness, which emerges in individuals but not in society. Extending this idea to the cosmos, it really seems that “some small parts of the universe have a greater reflective power than the whole” (see Gunther,8 p. 383). We have also noted the importance of the idea of emergence from the logical point of view. The idea of organization invokes the concrete quality, not only of an object, but in the case of organizations perennially self-producing and self-organizing, of a being. As we have said, only things that are organized can be known as beings, and the idea of organization is therefore of ontological importance. The organized being, and especially the self-organizer, is a “dasein,” “to be there,” hic et nunc, depending on an aleatory environment and subject to time the transformer; thus we come to the idea of existence, which is the condition of living beings in a universe where there is risk, danger, and probability. Hence the organization is rooted in physis (the physical world), but at the same time it draws from the observer-inventor who isolates it relatively in a tangle of organizing–disorganizing feedback mechanisms and a web of systems one within the other (see Méthode 1,9 pp. 139–141). The idea of organization, like that of system, is physical for the feet and mental for the head. It is understandable that science, based on the reducible, the simple and the elementary, reacted against complexity of organization. It is understandable why the concept of organization was ignored and that of system avoided and neglected. Very few specialists have introduced complexity into the definition of system. The main issue is that the notion of organization induces us to use a number of “connection keys,” which will be increasingly necessary as we load organization with complexity. On the one hand, we can predict a break with linear thought and a need to use feedback and self-production cycles, like the need for circular understanding to establish the relation between the whole and the parts. On the other hand, we are induced to tackle logical complexities in the identity of the multiple unit, the product– producer, and the nondeductible condition of the emergence. All this leads us towards dialogic, a principle of knowledge that conceives the complementarity of antagonisms, such as in the relation organization–disorganization. The complex notion of organization allows a great advance in understanding, but this advance opens onto a great cosmic mystery: why does organization, and not just disorder or order, appear in our universe?

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Basic complexity Organization is a complex basic concept of universal importance. The increase in organizational complexity manifests itself through an increase in the number and internal variety of the constituents and through a process of complication of internal structures. Beyond a certain threshold, when the physico-chemical organization of a complex of macromolecules, for example, can no longer take on more variety, then a more complex organization that becomes self-organizing emerges and makes new qualities emerge: the qualities of life. We will be able to consider the specific characters of the different types of selforganization when we have clarified the connection keys, especially recurring cycles and dialogic.10 Notes 1 Original copyright 1999 by the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Reproduced with the permission of the Annals. Morin, E. (1999). Organization and complexity. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 879(1), 115–121. 2 Dilthey, W. (1947). Le monde de l’esprit. Paris: Aubier. 3 Pascal, B. (1897). Les pensées. Paris: L. Brunschvicg. 4 In some cases, the idea of network seems more pertinent than that of system, in the sense that a system tends to have well-defined borders, whereas a network has limits that vary. Both, however, are interconnections of elements of an organized nature. As well, a network can become a system by closing on itself (Internet) or by acquiring an organizing center (the railways). For me, the primordial and common character is organization. 5 Von Foerster, H. (1962). Communication Amongst Automata. Am. J. Psychiatry 118, 866–867. 6 Auger, P. (1966). L’Homme Microscopique. Paris: Flammarion. 7 Jacob, F. (1965). Leçon inaugurale faite le vendredi 7 mai. Paris: College de France. 8 Gunther, G. (1962). Cybernetical ontology and transjunctional operations. In Selforganizing systems. Yovits, Jacobi & Goldstein, Eds. Washington, D.C.: Spartan Books. 9 Morin, E. (1977). La Méthode 1, La nature de la nature, [Method. 1. The nature of nature]. Paris: Le Seuil (coll. Points). 10 Some passages have been modified from the section entitled “Organisation” of Méthode 1 (pp. 94–151: pp. 104, 105 multiple unity; pp. 106–108 emergence). To complete the examination of the notion of organization, the reader is referred to the following passages, not used here: particularly pp. 112–114: “the whole is less than the sum of the parts,” pp. 115–123; “organization of the difference, complementarity and antagonism,” pp. 123– 144. The concept of system, particularly pp. 126–129: “All is not all,” pp. 129–136; organization in organization, pp. 138–144; beyond formalism and realism, pp. 150–151.

From the Concept of System to the Paradigm of Complexity1 1992—Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems Translation by Sean Kelly

Abstract This essay is an overview of the author’s ongoing reflections on the need for a new paradigm of complexity capable of informing all theories, whatever their field of application or the phenomena in question. Beginning with a critique of General System Theory and the principle of holism with which it is associated, the author suggests that contemporary advances in our knowledge of organization call for a radical reformation in our organization of knowledge. This reformation involves the mobilization of recursive thinking, which is to say a manner of thinking capable of establishing a dynamic and generative feedback loop between terms or concepts (such as whole and part, order and disorder, observer and observed, system and ecosystem, etc.) that remain both complementary and antagonistic. The paradigm of complexity thus stands as a bold challenge to the fragmentary and reductionistic spirit that continues to dominate the scientific enterprise.

Introduction: Mastering the Concept of System In contrast with the idea of a general theory of systems (or even a theory specific to systems), I wish, in the following pages, to propose the idea of a system paradigm capable of informing all theories, whatever their field of application or the phenomena in question. The first thing we must do is master the concept of system. Though system theory revealed the generality of systems, it did not uncover their “genericity.” Although everything from molecules to stars, from cells to societies, is now regarded in terms of systems (in contrast with the previous century’s notions of “matter” and “vital substance”), this generality is not, by itself, sufficient to determine the epistemological significance of the notion of system in all its conceptual complexity. As the concept of system now stands, though it is embedded in a general theory (“general system theory”), it does not constitute a paradigmatic principle; rather, the principle invoked is that of holism; which seeks explanation at the level of the totality, in opposition to the reductionist paradigm that seeks explanation at the level of elementary components. As I shall demonstrate, however, this “holism” arises from the same simplifying principle as the reductionism to which it is opposed (that is, a simplification of, and reduction to, the whole). I have already indicated (Morin, 1977, p. 101) how system theory has failed to lay its own foundation by elucidating the concept of system. The system paradigm remains larval, atrophied, and inchoate; system theory thus suffers

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from a fundamental defect: it tends to fall repeatedly into the reductive, simplificatory, mutilating, and manipulative ruts from which it was supposed to have freed itself (and us along with it). In order to make sense of the concept of system, we must postulate a new, nonholistic principle of knowledge. This will be possible, however, only if we conceive of systems not only in general, but in generic or generative terms—that is, in terms of a paradigm (a paradigm being defined here as the set of fundamental relations of association and/or opposition among a restricted number of master notions-relations that command or control all thoughts, discourses, and theories). The concept of system has always played a fundamental role in defining every set of relations among component parts that form a whole. The concept only becomes revolutionary, however, when, instead of completing the definition of things, bodies, and objects, it replaces the former definition of the thing or the object as something constituted of form and substance that is decomposable into primary elements, as something that can be neatly isolated in a neutral space, and as something subject solely to the external laws of “nature.” From that moment on, the concept of system necessarily breaks with the classical ontology of the object. (As we shall see, the object conceived of by classical science is a mere cutaway drawing, an appearance, a construct—something both simplified and one-dimensional that mutilates and abstracts from a complex reality that is rooted both in physical as well as in psychocultural organization.) We are aware of the universal scope of the shift from the notion of object to the notion of system; however, what we have yet to grasp is the radical nature of this shift and the truly novel point of view it brings with it.

The System Paradigm A. The Whole is Not a Catch-All Holism is a partial, one—dimensional, and simplifying vision of the whole. It reduces all other system-related ideas to the idea of totality; whereas, it should be a question of confluence. Holism thus arises from the paradigm of simplification (or reduction of the complex to a master-concept or master-category). Pascal had already given expression to the new paradigm introduced by the idea of system: “I consider it as impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole as to know the whole without knowing the individual parts” (Pascal, 1966 [1662], p. 93, Brunschvicg ed., #72). According to the logic of simplification, such a proposition leads to that impasse which Gregory Bateson called a double-bind: the two injunctions (to know the parts through the whole; to know the whole through the parts) seem bound to cancel each other out in a vicious circle without entrance or exit.

Whole

PartT

Rather, one must extract from Pascal’s formula a higher kind of understanding founded on the constructive circularity of the explanation of the whole through the parts and of the parts through the whole—that is to say, an understanding wherein

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these two explanations complement each other by virtue of the very motion that joins them, without canceling out all of their competitive and antagonistic characteristics. This active loop is what constitutes the description and the explanation. At the same time, the maintenance of a certain opposition and of a certain free play between the two explanatory processes—which according to the logic of simplification are mutually exclusive—is not vicious, but fruitful.2 Moreover, the search for explanation in the retroactive motion of each of these processes with respect to the other one constitutes a first introduction of complexity at the level of the paradigm (for, as we shall see, we would be mistaken to acknowledge complexity at the phenomenal level, while overlooking it at the level of the explanatory principle; rather, precisely at the level of principle is where complexity must be revealed). By the same token, we should conceive of systems not only in terms of global unity (which is purely and simply to substitute a simple macro-unity for the simple elementary unity of reductionism), but in terms of a unitas multiplex; here again, antagonistic terms are necessarily coupled. The whole is effectively a macro-unity, but the parts are not fused or confused therein; they have a double identity, one which continues to belong to each of them individually (and is thus irreducible to the whole), and one which is held in common (constituting, so to speak, their citizenship in the system). More than that, the examples of atomic, biological, and social systems show us that a system is not only a composition of unity out of diversity, but also a composition of internal diversity out of unity (e.g., the Pauli exclusion principle which creates diversification of electron shells around the nucleus; biological morphogenetic processes in which an undifferentiated egg develops into an organism composed of extremely diversified cells and organs; and societies which not only give a common cultural identity to diverse individuals, but also, by means of this culture, permit the development of differences). Once again, one must invoke a way of thinking that flows in a circle (see Figure 20) between two mutually-exclusive explanatory principles: on the one hand, the unifying way of thinking becomes increasingly homogenizing and loses diversity; on the other hand, the differentiating way of thinking becomes a mere catalogue and loses unity.

One

Many

Figure 20

Again, this is not a question of “calculating the correct dose” or of “equilibrating” these two explanatory processes; rather, one must integrate them in an active loop which allows us to grasp what is shown in Figure 21.

diversity organizes unity which organizes

Figure 21

To take the problem of maintaining the relations between the whole and the parts, or the one and the many, as central is not enough; we must also see the complex character of these relations, which I will formulate here somewhat schematically (for further development, see Morin, 1977, pp. 105–128). To wit:

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The whole is greater than the sum of the parts (a principle which is widely acknowledged and intuitively recognized at all macroscopic levels), since a macro-unity arises at the level of the whole, along with emergent phenomena, i.e., new qualities or properties. The whole is less than the sum of the parts, since some of the qualities or properties of the parts are inhibited or suppressed altogether under the influence of the constraints resulting from the organization of the whole. The whole is greater than the whole, since the whole as a whole affects the parts retroactively, while the parts in turn retroactively affect the whole (in other words, the whole is more than a global entity—it has a dynamic organization).

Within this framework is where such key concepts as being, existence, and life should be understood as global emergent qualities; such concepts are not primary (or radical or essential) qualities, but real instances of emergence. Indeed, being and existence are emergent from all processes containing feed-back loops (Morin, 1977, esp. pp. 210–216). Life is a cluster of emergent qualities resulting from the process of interaction and organization between the parts and the whole, a cluster which itself retroactively affects the parts, the interactions, and the partial and global processes that produced it. All of which yields the following complex explanatory principle: the phenomenal must not be reduced to the generative, nor the “superstructure” to the “infrastructure.” Rather, explanation should seek to understand the kind of process whose products or end-results bring about a return to the initial state. Such as process may be called recursive (see Figure 22, below): 



The parts are at once less and greater than the parts. The most remarkable emergent phenomena within a highly complex system, such as human society, occur not only at the level of the whole (society), but also at the level of the individuals (even especially at that level—witness the fact that self-consciousness only emerges in individuals). In this sense: The parts are sometimes greater than the whole. As Stafford Beer (1960, p. 16) has noted: “[T]he most profitable control system for the parts does not exclude the bankruptcy of the whole.” “Progress” does not necessarily consist in the construction of larger and larger wholes; on the contrary, it may lie in the freedom and independence of small components. The richness of the universe is not found in its dissipative totality, but in the small reflexive entities—the deviant and peripheral units—which have self-assembled within it, as Günther (1962) and Spencer Brown (1972) have observed. This idea is echoed in Pascal’s dictum: “But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this” (Pascal, 1966 [1662], p. 95, Brunschvicg ed., #347).

HFOFSBUJWF

QIFOPNFOBM Figure 22

JOGSBTUSVDUVSF

TVQFSTUSVDUVSF

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Part 1 Complexity Method The whole is less than the whole. Within every whole there are penumbras and mutual incomprehensions—indeed schisms and rifts—between the repressed and the expressed, the submerged and the emergent, the generative and the phenomenal. There are black holes at the heart of every biological totality; especially every anthropo-social totality. The isolated individual is not the only one who has no knowledge or awareness of the social totality; this social totality is also ignorant and unconscious of the dreams, aspirations, thoughts, loves, and hates of the individuals; and the billions of cells constituting these individuals are themselves ignorant of these same dreams, aspirations, thoughts, loves, hates, and so on. If one places this conception of black holes, penumbras, schisms, and mutual incomprehensions at the very heart of the system paradigm, then this paradigm opens out spontaneously onto the modern theories of the individual unconscious (Freud) and the social unconscious (Marx). The whole is insufficient, which follows from the preceding. The whole contains uncertainty. We shall see below that one cannot with any certainty isolate or circumscribe a single system from among the systems of systems of systems with which it is interlocked and in which it is nested. This uncertainty is also due to the fact that, in the living world, we have to do with poly totalities whose every term can be conceived of both as part and as whole. Thus, with regard to Homo, which of the following is the system: the society, the species, or the individual? The whole contains conflict. I have already tried to show (Morin, 1977, pp. 118– 122, 217–224) that every system contains forces that are antagonistic to its own perpetuation. These antagonisms are either virtualized/neutralized, constantly controlled/repressed (through regulation and negative feedback), or made use of and incorporated. In stars, the conjunction of contrary processes—one tending toward implosion, the other toward explosion— creates a spontaneous self-organizing, auto-regulation. Living organization can only be understood as a function of a continual process of disorganization which degrades molecules and cells uninterruptedly as they are being reproduced. At the level of human societies, Montesquieu’s idea that social conflicts caused the decline of the Roman Empire, but also its grandeur, must be understood systemically—as well as, of course, Marx’s idea linking the class structure of society with class conflict.

Also, we must found the idea of system on a non-totalitarian and non-hierarchical concept of the whole, and, more particularly, on a complex concept of the unitas multiplex as a means of access to polytotalities. This preliminary paradigm is, in fact, of capital social and political importance. The paradigm of holistic simplification leads to a neo-totalitarian functionalism and accommodates itself easily to all the modem forms of totalitarianism. In any event, it leads to the manipulation of the individual units in the name of the whole. In contrast, the logic of the paradigm of complexity not only aims at “truer” knowledge, it stimulates the search for a complex praxis and politics. (I shall return to this point below.) B. The Macro-Concept The system problematic cannot be resolved by the whole–parts relation, and

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the holist paradigm overlooks two terms of capital importance: interactions and organization. Whole–parts relations must necessarily be mediated by the middle term of interactions. This term is all the more important given the fact that most systems are composed, not of “parts” or “components,” but of actions among complex units, which are themselves composed of interactions. It has been justly remarked that it is not the cells, but the actions taking place among the cells, that constitute an organism. Now, the set of these interactions constitutes the organization of the system. Organization is the concept that gives constructive coherence, order, regulation, structure, etc., to the interactions. In fact, the notion of system comprises three different concepts:   

system (which expresses the complex unity and phenomenal character of the whole, as well as the complex of relations between the whole and the parts); interaction (which expresses the set of interwoven relations, actions, and reactions which collectively create a system); and organization (which expresses the constitutive character of these interactions as forming, maintaining, protecting, regulating, governing, and regenerating the system-in short, the thing that gives the idea of system its conceptual backbone).

These three terms are indissoluble; each one implies the other two, and the absence of anyone seriously mutilates the macroconcept of system. The idea of system without the notion of organization is just as defective as the notion of organization without the idea of system. We are dealing with a macroconcept. We must recognize that our consciousness has been shaped by the paradigm of simplification and that the concepts we have at our disposal are atomistic rather than molar, chemical rather than organismic, isolated and static rather than coproductive, recursive, and interdependent. The idea of organization first emerged in the sciences under the name of structure. But structure is an atrophied concept that refers more to the idea of order (invariant laws) than to that of organization. The “structuralist” vision arises from simplification (it tends to reduce the phenomenality of the system to the structure which generates it; and it fails to take into account the recursive influence of emergent phenomena and the whole on the organization itself). In most natural physical systems, and in all biological systems, organization is active-what one might call organizaction. That is, it includes the supply, storage, distribution, and control of energy, as well as its expenditure and dissipation through work.

System

Organization

Interactions In a manner of speaking, organizaction produces both entropy (that is, the degradation of the system and of itself) and negentropy (the regeneration of the system

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and of itself). Therefore, we obviously must conceive of the relation between entropy and negentropy in a complex manner—not as two terms in Manichaean opposition, but rather as bound inseparably one to the other (Morin, 1977, pp. 291–296). But, above all, we must conceive of organization as (a) the continual reorganization of a system tending toward disorganization; and (b) as continual self-reorganization—that is to say, not just organization, but auto-re-organization. As far as the organization of living things is concerned, there is yet another polarity: on the one hand, with respect to generativity (the genetic organization containing the putative program of the “genotype”), and on the other hand, with respect to phenomenality (the organization of the activities and behaviors of the “phenotype”). In other words, this is a question of auto(genopheno)-re-organization. To complete the picture, we must add that such an organization involves an exchange with the environment, which itself furnishes organization (in the form of plant and animal nutriments) and potential organization (in the form of information). This environment itself constitutes a macro-organization in the form of an ecosystem (the conjunction of the organizational level of the biocenosis within that of the biotope). Biological organization is at once a closed form of organization (preservation of integrity and autonomy) and an open form of organization (exchanges with the environment or ecosystem): therefore, it is an auto-ecoorganization. Thus, from the least complex living thing (unicellular organism) up to and including the level of human societies, all organization is at the least an: auto(geno-pheno)-eco-re-organization. We see, therefore, that the problem of organization cannot be reduced to a few structural rules. Right from the start, the concept of biological—and a fortiori social— organization is a super-macro-concept, which itself belongs to the macro-concept system/interactions/organization. Organization is a higher paradigmatic concept. The paradigm of classical science held explanation to consist in reduction to a principle of order (laws, invariances, averages, etc.). Here, this is not a question of replacing order with organization, but of combining them—that is to say, of introducing the principle of system organization as an irreducible explanatory principle. In so doing, the concept of disorder is necessarily introduced as well. Organization creates order (by creating its own systemic determinism), but it also creates disorder. On the one hand, systemic determinism can be flexible, containing zones of randomness, free play, and freedom; while on the other hand, as we have said, the work associated with organization produces disorder (entropy increase). In all instances of organization, the presence and continual production of disorder (degradation, degeneration) are inseparable from organization itself. In this respect, therefore, the paradigm of organization also entails a reformation in the way we think. From now on, explanation must no longer banish disorder or obscure organization; rather, it must always recognize the complexity of the relation shown in Figure 24. Thus, the new paradigm entails uncertainties and antagonisms by bringing together terms that are mutually interconnected. But the new scientific spirit inaugurated by Bohr consists in making progress in knowledge not by eliminating uncertainty and contradiction, but by recognizing them—that is to say, by bringing into the open the penumbra contained in all knowledge-that is, by making progress in ignorance! I use the word “progress” advisedly, because ignorance which is recognized, recorded, and, so to speak, deepened, is qualitatively different from ignorance which remains ignorant of itself.

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organization Figure 24

disorder

order

Finally, we must break with the mutilating form of understanding which cannot conceive of system or organization except by eliminating the idea of being or existence. Elsewhere, I have tried to show that the idea of self-organization is productive of being and existence (Morin, 1977, pp. 211–215). This is of capital importance and is opposed to two types of thinking: one which can function only by obscuring concrete beings and existents (condemning itself to see only their skeletons, and in so doing condemning them to manipulations of every description); and the other one which can function only by revealing and focusing on the reality of existing beings (which is obviously of the utmost importance when dealing with living things in general, and with human beings in particular). Thus, we see that a new knowledge of organization is capable of creating a new organization of knowledge. The old reductionist and atomistic paradigm, in which order was the only explanatory principle, is replaced by a new paradigm consisting of interrelations (which are necessarily associative in nature) among the notions shown in Figure 25. Instead of the old, solitary master-word, we now have a macroconcept which not only is molar in nature, but also contains circular relations between its terms-in other words, a macro-concept that is recursive. C. The Psychophysical Nature of the System Paradigm The paradigm of simplification requires us to choose between two ontological views of systems: (1) either the system is a real physical category which imposes itself naturally on the perception of the observer, who must then take care to “reflect” it correctly in his or her description, or (2) the system is a mental category or ideal model, merely heuristic or pragmatic in nature, which is applied to phenomena in order to control, to master, or to “model” them.

system

being

interaction

organization*

order

existence

disorder

(*auto-(geno-pheno)-eco-re-organization)

Figure 25

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The complex conception of system cannot allow itself to be trapped within this alternative. System is a double-entry concept:

physis

psyche

It is a chimera concept: a psychical head on a physical body. It is as described in Figure 27. And the following principles flow from the relations indicated in Figure 29:   

a principle of art (diagnostic principle); a principle of critical reflection (on the relativity of system concepts and frontiers); and an uncertainty principle.

The fact that the psychical and the physical nature of system are indissociable also entails the indissociability of the relation between the observer/subject and the observed/object. This leads to the necessity of including, not excluding, the observer in the observation. This, in turn, leads to the necessity of elaborating a meta-system of understanding in which the system of observation/perception/conception is itself observed/perceived/ conceived within the observation/perception/conception of the observed system. This, then, sets in motion a series of consequences which lead to the complexification of our very mode of perceiving/conceiving the phenomenal world. Whence the necessity for an even more significant paradigmatic and epistemological reform than the one we have envisioned up to this point, since the connection between the knowledge of organization and the organization of knowledge demands a reorganization of the process of knowing. This can be done by introducing a second-order reflection—that is, a knowing of knowing. By the same token, the radical dissociation between the sciences of physis and the sciences of the mind—that is, between the sciences of nature and the sciences of culture, or the biophysical sciences and the anthropo-social sciences-appears to us as an ongoing mutilation and an obstacle to any serious knowledge. If the ambition to reconnect these disjointed sciences seems absurd, to accept this disjunction would be even more so. Therefore, if we are not yet capable of accomplishing this reconnection, we must at least bring into face-to-face contact: • the observer with the observed system; • the subject with the object; and • culture (which with physis (which produces physical biological organization science) which produces anthroposocial organization, and hence culture). In this way the process of distinguishing, which is fundamental to all cognitive acts, becomes complex. It appears to us as the result of a transaction between the observer and the world that is observed—a transaction in which either one of the participants can very well deceive the other one. In any event, this process takes

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PSYCHICAL

by virtue of its formative and existential conditions (interactions, conjunction of ecological constraints, energetic and thermodynamic conditions and operations); even a system of ideas has a physical component (biochemical-physical phenomena linked to the cerebral activity, i.e., the need for a brain).

by virtue of its distinguishing and isolating conditions, and by virtue of its choice of conceptual focus (system, sub-system, supra-system, eco-system).

Figure 27 place within a given culture (which provides the paradigms which permit and require distinguishing), and thus involves, among its other aspects, an ideological component. If science cannot be reduced to ideology (that is, if science cannot be viewed solely as the ideological product of a given society), one must nevertheless acknowledge the ideological component in all scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge cannot be spared from ideological critique, and thus from self-knowledge—and that also applies to those who think they possess the true science and denounce the ideology of others. D. The Paradigm of Complexity In all of the preceding discussion, the fundamental term in need of clarification was complexity. What is recognized as complex is most often the complicated, the entangled, and the confused, and thus something that cannot be described, given the astronomical number of measurements, operations, computations, and so forth such a description would require. However, those who recognize this complexity at the level of phenomena generally share the belief that it can be explained at a fundamental level in terms of a few simple principles that allow for an almost infinite combination of a few equally simple elements. In this way, for instance, the extreme complexity of speech can be explained by means of structural principles allowing for the combination of phonemes and words. Similarly, the discovery of a double-helix structure allowing for combinations based on a four-letter chemical alphabet is thought to have revealed the key to living organization. Certainly, such explanations are of immense import; for example, they allow us to understand at one and the same time the unity and the diversity of complex phenomena (like human language or the language of life). However, by no means do they exhaust the problem of explanation. Structural linguistics does not explain the meaning of speech, any more than the genetic code explains the various existing phenomena—this cluster of emergent qualities—we call life. To be sure, since molecular biology has explained the chemical machinery of life (although not life itself), it has come to regard life as a mythological notion (or in any event as unworthy of science), and so has banished life from biology. But what it ought to do is just the reverse: reflect on the inadequacy of all explanatory principles based on simplification.

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Complexity is not merely the phenomenal froth of reality; it is in the principles themselves. The physical foundation of what we call reality is not simple, but rather complex. The atom is not simple. Even the so-called elementary particle is not a simple primary entity: it oscillates between being and non-being-between wave and particle-and it may itself contain components which by their very nature cannot be isolated (quarks). At the macrocosmic level, the universe is no longer the ordered sphere dreamed of by Laplace. It is both dissipation and crystallization, both disintegration and organization. Uncertainty, indeterminacy, randomness, and contradictions appear, not as residues to be eliminated by explanation, but as ineliminable ingredients of our perception/conception of reality—thus spelling ruin for simplification as an explanatory principle. From now on, all of these ingredients must nourish the elaboration of a principle of complex explanation. Complexity cannot be simplified—that is the moral of the system paradigm. It is complex because it forces us to unite ideas which are mutually exclusive within the framework of the principle of simplification/reduction (see Figure 28). It is complex because it establishes mutual implication—and therefore necessary conjunction—between notions which that classically disjunct (see Figure 29). It is complex because it introduces a complex concept of causality—in particular, the idea of an eco-auto-causality. (The notion of auto-causality—which always requires an external causality—is synonymous with recursive causality-in which the organizing process elaborates the products, actions, and effects necessary for its own generation or regeneration.)

One

Many

Whole

PartT

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Subject (observer)

System

Disorder

Object (observed system)

Organization Figure 29

Interactions

Existence

Figure 28

Being

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Systemized Theories System is better understood as a generic, rather than a general, concept. It is generic to a new way of thinking, which can then be applied in a general fashion. But in order to be applied in a general fashion, it has no need of a general theory of systems. Rather, the organization/system dimension should be present in all theories bearing upon the physical universe (including the biological, the anthroposocial, and the noological realms). If these theories were considered as so many branches of a general theory of systems, they would reduce the diverse phenomena perceived to the system dimension alone. By contrast, what is required is a differentiation among theories bearing upon types of phenomena with each having its own nature (that is, each of which has a physics, a chemistry, and a thermodynamics—thus an organization, a being, and an existence—peculiar to itself). Moreover, General System Theory, which is founded solely on the notion of the open system, is wholly insufficient when applied to living or social systems. What we must do, then, is reconsider our physical, biological, and anthropo-social theories so as to deepen their system/organization dimension and to uncover their connections with (a) the key concepts of organization, and (b) a way of thinking capable of creating a dynamic feedback loop among terms which are simultaneously complementary, competitive, and antagonistic. Otherwise, we will fall back into the same old vices of reduction, homogenization, and abstraction that system theory claimed to cure.

Conclusions 1. System is not a master-word for totality; rather, it is a root-word for complexity. 2. We have to raise the concept of system from the theoretical level to the paradigmatic level (I could say as much, if not more, about the cybernetic concept of machine—everything said here about the idea of system is valid a fortiori for the idea of machine).3 3. The problem is not to create a general theory covering everything from atoms, molecules, and stars to cells, organisms, artifacts, and society. Rather, the problem is to consider atoms, stars, cells, artifacts, and society—that is to say, all aspects of reality, including, and in particular, our own—in a richer way in the light of the complexity of system and organization. 4. Under the reign of the paradigm of simplification/disjunction, being, existence, and life dissolve into the abstraction of system, which then becomes the successor to all the abstractions, obscuring the richness of reality and provoking its unbridled manipulation. In contrast, the inevitable effect of the development of a complex concept of system/organization will be to cause being, existence, and life to emerge once more. 5. In other words, as long as the idea of system remains at the level of theory, it in no way affects the paradigm of disjunction/simplification. System theory thought it had overcome this paradigm ( just as it thought it had overcome the atomization of reductionism); on the contrary, however, its “holism” becomes a new kind of reductionism by reducing everything to the whole. Only at the paradigmatic levelwhere the true extent of a system’s potential complexity can be revealed—will the

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idea of system be able to open out onto a new complex organization of thought and action. We begin to catch a glimpse of a new form of rationality. The old rationality was content to fish for order in the sea of nature. But it caught no fish—only fishbones! By allowing us to conceive of organization and existence, the new rationality allows us to perceive not only the fish, but the ocean as well—that is to say, that which can never be caught. The old rationality organized on the basis of order (that is, through the act of ordering). The new rationality, however, orders on the basis of organization (that is, the play of interactions between the parts involved and the whole). In this sense, organizing must replace ordering. The more complex the organization, the more it harbors those forms of disorder we call freedom. Organization is not an institution, but a continually generative and regenerative activity at all levels based on computation, strategic planning, communication, and dialogue. The system paradigm demands that we master, not nature, but the desire for mastery (as Michel Serres has urged),4 which opens up for us forms of action which necessarily entail self-consciousness and self-control. Such a principle leads to a praxis that is at once responsible, liberal, libertarian, and communitarian (each of these terms being transformed through its interactions with the others). It also leads to the rediscovery of the problem of wisdom and the necessity of establishing our own form of wisdom. This is the sense in which the search for new wisdom must be an effort to overcome the split that has occurred in the West between the world of reflection and the world of social praxis.

Notes 1 This paper, titled “Le système, paradigme ou théorie?,” was first read as the inaugural address to the Congrès de I’A.F.C.E.T., Versailles, November 21, 1977. It was published in Science avec conscience, Paris: Fayard, 1982, pp. 172–189; and reprinted in Science avec conscience, new edition, Paris: Points/Seuil, 1990, pp. 238–255. Reprinted from Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 15 /4, Morin, E. From the concept of a system to the paradigm of complexity, 371–385, Copyright (1992), with permission from Elsevier. 2 Cf.: “We foresee the possibility of transforming vicious circles into virtuous cycles which become reflexive and begin to generate complex thinking” (Morin, 1977, p. 19). 3 See Morin, 1977, pp. 255–282. 4 See Serres, 1982, esp. Chapter 2, “Knowledge in the Classical Age: La Fontaine and Descartes,” pp. 15–28.

References Beer, S. (1960). “Below the twilight arch: A mythology of systems.” General systems: Yearbook of the society for general systems research, 5, 9–20. Gunther, G. (1962). “Cybernetic ontology and transjunctional operations,” in Yovits, M. C. Jacobi, G. T., & Goldstein, G. D., (eds.) Self-organizing Systems (pp. 313–392). Washington, DC: Spartan Books. Morin, E. (1977). La Méthode 1, La nature de la nature, (Method. 1. The nature of nature). Paris: Seuil. Pascal, B. (1966 [1662]). Pensées. Krailsheimer, A. J., (trans.). London: Penguin Books. (Pascal worked on the Pensées until his death in 1662; they were first published in 1670. The arrange-

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ment of the Pensées by Léon Brunschvicg, available in Le Livre de Poche and numerous other editions, is standard.) Serres, M. (1982). Hermes: Literature: Science, philosophy. Harari, J. V. & Bell, D. F., (eds.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Translations of texts drawn from Hermès. Vols. I–V. Paris: Minuit, 1968–1980, and other sources.) Spencer Brown, G. (1972). Laws of Form. New York: Julian Press. (Originally published: London: Allen and Unwin, 1969.)

Suggestions for Further Reading Bougnoux. D., Le Moigne. J. L., and Proulx, S., (eds.) (1990). Arguments pour une méthode: Autour d’Edgar Morin. Paris: Seuil. (Morin volume in the prestigious Colloque de Cerisy series). Kelly, S. (1988). “Hegel and Morin: The science of wisdom and the wisdom of the new science,” The owl of minerva, 20 (1), Fall, 51–67. (Morin as heir to Hegel and as exponent of the new sciences of complexity). Morin, E. (1977–1991). La méthode. 4 vols. Paris: Seuil. (Vol. I. La nature de la nature, 1977; Vol. 2. La vie de la vie, 1980; Vol. 3, La connaissance de la connaissance, 1986; Vol. 4. Les idées: Leur habitat, leur vie, leurs moeurs, leur organisation, 1991.) (Morin’s magnum opus). Morin, E. (1990). Science avec conscience. New ed. Paris: Points/Seuil. (Originally published: Paris: Fayard, 1982.) (Collected essays). Morin, E. (1990). Introduction à la pensée complexe. Paris: ESF. (accessible summary statement of Morin’s philosophy of complexity).

Complex Thinking for a Complex World About Reductionism, Disjunction and Systemism 2014—Originally published in The Bertalanffy Center’s journal Systema: Connecting Matter, Life, Culture and Technology

When thinking about systems, the first thing to note is that systems are complex. They are complex in several senses. First, systems include many connections between parts that appear as separate entities when viewed from the perspective of the classical scientific disciplines. Second, the system is a unity even though it is comprised of a diversity of parts. Thus we have the primary definition of the complexity of a system, given by Ashby as being a measure of the diversity of parts within the system. This was the first important definition of complexity in the field of science. However, I maintain that a system is also complex in a logical sense, because when you look at a complex problem you immediately see the limits of classical logic, because we can see that the system is, at the same time, both more and less than the sum of its parts. The claim that a system is more than the sum of its parts is very well known, and indeed was already made by Aristotle, and it encapsulates a very interesting point, namely that a system has certain qualities and properties that we cannot find in the parts by themselves. These qualities come from the organization of the system. However, the system is also less than the sum of its parts, in the sense that it imposes constraints on the behavior of the parts, so that some qualities or properties of the parts cannot be expressed. This phenomenon is especially evident is social systems: as individuals we have many qualities and potentials that present us with many possibilities for behavior which we cannot exhibit because of constraints, due to socially determined laws or inhibitions due to group norms. Such phenomena take us beyond the limits of classical logic because here the terms “more” or “less” can only be used in a metaphorical sense. In this case the term “more” signifies the existence of new qualities that we designate by the term “emergence”. It is interesting that in this case these emergent qualities cannot be inferred from an examination of the different parts—we cannot deduce them but only observe and characterise them at the level of the system. This confounds the powers of deductive logic. In my view, the systems concept provides us with the essential insight needed for gaining knowledge of complex phenomena, in the sense that when we begin to look at classical science from a critical perspective; we see that the “objects” studied by science, and treated by science simply as objects, in fact, are all systems. For example, molecules are systems of atoms, and atoms are systems of particles. The fundamental

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particles also can only be understood from a systems perspective. They are usually presented to us as logically paradoxical objects, having mutually contradictory properties such as being both corpusclar and wave-like. However, this problem arises because the classical perspective does not take account of the systemic context of the object. Classical science is based on the two principles of disjunction and reduction. “Disjunction” is an investigatory principle whereby objects are divided into more basic things, and the specialized disciplines study objects at every level of separation without regard for the connection between them. In this approach, it is virtually impossible to see the object in a way that preserves its connection to its environmental context. We cannot understand the significance of the context when we have removed the context! It means something very different to be called “darling” by your wife in your home, and to be called “darling” by a prostitute in the street—the different contexts change the meaning completely. For this reason we have to take as a fundamental principle when dealing with complexity that we have to take account of the connections between things, so we take proper account of the significance of contexts. In my view present-day classical science is in crisis in many areas, with apparently intractable problems in fields such as fundamental physics, cosmology, biology and so on, but people have a mind-set which makes it very difficult for them to look at things in a new way and to change to a different paradigm. The crisis of classical science began with the breakdown of the great principle of universal determination. This breakdown is provoked in the 18th century by the second law of thermodynamics. This law implies the existence of irreversible processes, and this introduces a time-element in physics. Before this it was thought that processes are always reversible, but the second law implies that the passage of time introduces disorder that makes deterministic prediction impossible. The behavior of atoms or molecules can now only be assessed as a group, by using statistical methods, and not traced on the level of individuals. This law also introduces a principle of disintegration or destruction, by implying the accumulation of disorder over time. We see this at work everywhere in the universe. We know that the stars are undergoing disintegration, that our own sun will die in five billion years, and that dispersion is occurring throughout the universe. However, at the same time, we see in the universe processes that create organization. Right at the beginning we had a great dispersion in the form of the “Big Bang” from which our universe originated, and this process was so violent that neither matter nor antimatter could persist during this time. However, despite this great dispersion, things were still connected at the quantum level, and via processes mediated by these connections there formed firstly atoms and in due course stars, solar systems and so on. So we see in the universe processes that produce complex matter and complex organization, and in the case of our planet the production of the complex organization represented by living systems. It is impossible to understand this scenario from the perspective of “disjunction,” for when things are treated separately we cannot understand why in some parts of nature we see disintegration while in other parts we see progressive organization. But, in fact, these processes are a single phenomenon—it is the interplay of ordering and disintegration that makes the development of new kinds of organization possible. This is the great principle behind the complexity of the universe, but it is impossible to discover this if we look only at the second law’s production of disintegration or if we look only at the production of complexity. In this light, it is interesting to consider the nature of life. Living systems represent

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a complex type of organization. The organization of a living system is more complex than the organization of the molecules of which it is composed. However, this organization is achieved using only molecules from the physical universe—living systems are not made from something like “living matter”, but from ordinary physical and chemical substances. “Life” is a property created through complex self-organisation. Life is characterized by processes of self-reproduction and self-repair, processes that involve knowledge and memory. The central feature of a living system is the selforganizational capacity to produce and reproduce itself. However, as von Foerster noted, calling this self-organisation is paradoxical, because the organizational processes of life require a continuous input of energy. We need energy even when we sleep—energy to drive our heartbeat, our digestion, our breathing. We use energy in all moments of life. However, we also need to compensate for the dissipation of energy in line with the second law of thermodynamics, and this means we must take in energy from the environment. We do this by ingesting material that contains energy, and to this we need knowledge of the environment, and in particular knowledge of the organization of the environment. So self-organisation requires an interplay between the knowledge of how to organize the self and the knowledge of how the environment is organized. The significance of this is that while living beings are autonomous systems in the sense that they maintain themselves, they are necessarily also dependent systems because they cannot self-organize without an input of energy and matter from the environment. This is one of the logical paradoxes of complexity; autonomy is always accompanied by dependency. Here again we see that complexity takes us beyond classical logic. This is an important insight because it shows that to understand living systems and many other kinds of complex systems we have to consider such interactive loops between the systems and the environment. This presents a deeper understanding than just to regard the autonomy of the system as grounded in the negative feedback loops that constrains deviations in the system within its homeostatic limits. In my view, the “separatists” assign fundamental importance to the homeostatic feedback loops in order to eliminate linear causality and hence to establish the scientific possibility of designing autonomous systems. A good example is a heating system in a house that uses a feedback loop between a thermostat and a furnace to regulate the temperature in the house. However, such interactive loops provide a very limited kind of autonomy. A fuller kind of autonomy is provided by recursive loops. A recursive process, in the sense at stake here, is a process where the product produced by the process is necessary for sustaining the productive process. A living system is like this, in that it is both the product of a process and the producer of that process. As living systems, we are both the product and the producer of the product. Societies are also like this. A society is the product of interactions between individuals, but the society has emergent properties that are retroactive on the individuals, and hence shape what we become as human beings, so we are both the product and producer of the society. This notion of recursivity is important for all processes of self-production and significant for understanding complexity at the human level. There are two issues at stake here. First, we are obliged to define what we mean by “humanity” in a “trinitary” way, in terms of being spatial, an individual, and a member of society. Just like in the example of the Holy Trinity these elements are generated in a specific sequence, and although they are distinct they also constitute a whole in which

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the elements are not fractional parts. We are not 30% each element, but each one wholly. I am located in space, but there is also space inside me, the spatial volume that I occupy. I am a member of society but I also have society ‘as a whole’ inside me, existing as rules, culture and so on, so although I am in society, society is also in me. I live in an ecosystem, but there is also an ecosystem inside me. These elements form a “trinity,” each one generating the others and being regenerated by the others. In this way a person is a perpetual recursive loop, and it is only to this that the complexity of humanity can be reduced. Traditional reductionism claims that we are all individuals, in society and in ecosystems. In this perspective we are merely units inside these systems, and we are not the connections. In contrast, complexity tries to understand the type(s) of connections that are present. And looking at complex systems in this way reveals something interesting—not only is the part inside the whole, but the whole is inside the part. For example, each cell in my hand contains the complete genetic code for my whole body. Some of this code is inhibited, but the whole of it is present in each part of my body. We can call this a “holographic principle” because in a holographic image, each part of the hologram contains a substantial portion of the total image. If one cuts a hologram in half and projects light through the two parts, one does not get two halfimages but two complete ones. The holographic principle describes this—the whole is in each part. The implication is that human beings have a very complex ontology, and it is important to keep this in mind. The definition of homo sapience is of man as a reasonable being, but this is a deficient view, because we are also homo demens, existing in a tension between the two polarities of rationality and madness. This madness is not something exceptional—we become mad when we are angry, or in a state of furore. There is also the madness of the great conquerors, which the ancient Greeks called hubris. It may also be that we are in the grip of a kind of political madness. It is interesting that we have these two polarities, but more importantly we should recognize that we cannot be rational in a pure way—as Damasio and others have shown, even in our most rational intellectual moments our emotions are engaged. Even mathematicians who are doing completely abstract work are passionate about their mathematics. It is because of emotion and passion that we can become mad, but when we are completely coldly rational that is another type of madness. And so we always try to create a balanced interplay between reason and passion, while recognizing that passion is only passion and not reason. It is also possible to define humankind as homo faber, man the tool maker, who thinks up techniques and technologies. But this is also a deficient view because humans also have other kinds of ideas, such as having a sense of there being a life after death, and the existence of genii and of spirits. All societies have religions, and in my view being homo mythologicus is of central importance for being human and for being homo faber. The capacity to make myths and to imagine is a fundamental ability for humanity. We are not only homo economicus with a passion for modernity and acting only in self-interest, but we also play games and write novels, we are also homo ludens. The point is that humanity has all these possibilities. We cannot make a policy decision that only says that humans are rational, because they can be mad as well. We cannot only say that people are good, because they can be bad also. We need to look at both sides. Just as it is deficient to look only on the positive aspects, we should also guard against focusing on the negatives and just setting constraints in society, this is also a false approach. Human complexity requires a versatile politics.

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In thinking about this it is important to remember that life is more than just living. People strive to survive but life is more than just survival—people have fundamental needs beyond survival—needs to express themselves, to expand their capacities, to commune with each other, and so on. Another aspect of life, which is also very interesting, is that man is also a member of a species, the human species, which is part of the primates, who are part of the mammals, who are part of the vertebra, who are a part of all animals, animals being part of life. Western civilization has totally forgotten the deep, vital relation between humanity and the living environment, the biosphere, ecosystems. Perhaps this started with the Bible, because in the biblical narrative God separates creation: he makes man in his image and the animals are totally separate. But it is mainly the development of Western civilization in the 17th century and afterwards that makes the great separation. Descartes says that science must make man the master of nature. For Buffon and Marx man becomes the dominator, who can manipulate all of nature, all living beings: but he forgets that this manipulation conducts us, finally, not only to the degradation of the biosphere, but ultimately to our own degradation—this is the problem of our scientific civilization. We can say that if we look at complexity, complexity’s presence suggests logical paradoxes. Heraclitus, a philosopher of the 5th century before our era, said: “living by death, dying by life”. Dying by life is self-evident, but living by death does not only mean killing in order to eat. Now we know that our bodies are self-destructive to make room for new cells. The regeneration of cells, the creation of new cells means that we are living through the death of cells. The regeneration of cells ensures the continuation of life. Life, in order to fight against death, utilizes death from within in order to be stronger in in the confrontation with death. In the end death wins this battle, but this type of relation is very interesting. The paradox in the physical world is also the paradox of the “separability,” which goes with inseparability. It is the same as with the wave-particle paradox. The waveparticle duality is a paradox of microphysics, but in a similar way: we are separate as individuals, but we also emerge from continuity: the continuity of life, of the species, of society. It is not only a paradox for microphysics it is a general paradox. We are product and producer,we are the cause and the effect, the effects becoming the cause, life and death. This gives a sense of the logical problem which the reflection on complexity must confront, and it must do so in a way that I call “dialogical”. “Dialogical” means the union of two antagonistic terms in order to understand a complex problem. Before discussing our present situation, I want to say that complexity is, finally, not only what we encounter when we try to understand the world, to understand life, to understand ourselves. Complexity is also a mode of knowledge when we integrate certain principles: the principle of retroactivity, of connectivity, in a dialogical principle. It is a way of thinking. I am amazed by how researchers go about investigating complex systems. They study complex systems with uncertainty, randomness, chaos theory, but they don’t change their mind, they don’t change the structure of their worldview, but, in fact, they need to undergo a paradigmatic change. I want to make one more point before considering our current situation. One must consider the ecology of action. What does this mean? When we decide upon an action the action often does not fulfill our intent because it enters in a play of interactions, retroactions and so on. The way things turn out can be completely contrary to what

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was expected. History is replete with examples of this. As you know, the French revolution had its prelude in an aristocratic reaction, based on the intent to recuperate powers lost during the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. It begins with the provocation of the Estates General of 1789, where the king preserves the majority for himself, the church and aristocracy. In 1789, the third estate imposes a decision to vote by head-count instead, and this totally changed the majority. Another example shows that even Hitler’s decisions led to outcomes that were contrary to his intent. Likewise, the Soviet Revolution eventually led to results that were contrary to its intentions. The challenge is always to do with the ecology of actions. But what can we do? Sometimes we are obliged to take a decision, because not to take a decision is also a type of decision. It is like the abstention of a vote: it is an action. This means that each decision contains a measure of uncertainty about what the consequences will be. In French we say “un part”, a wager. It is important to understand the limits of the power of human decision-making and control. Even in the case of the most determinate strategies, we have limitations in our capacity to follow and correct the trajectory of a decision and even perhaps of preventing a negative reaction to a decision. Finally, today we are in the system Earth. This system is a physical system, a biological system, a human system: the spheres are very imbricated. It is evident that in terms of the evolution of life, we are in the “Anthropocene,” in the period where humankind’s actions are the dominant influence on the evolution of humankind. As a system, Earth is both closed and open: it is open to the solar system and galaxy, and life depends on the rays of light coming from the sun. It is also closed due to the restrictions of the atmosphere and the stratosphere. It is always the same logical problem. Some people call this “the theory of open systems,” after Bertalanffy. His theory is very astute. We have to be open, in order to receive and to give to the environment, but it is also necessary to be closed in order to preserve the integrity and the uniqueness of the system. The frontier is at the same time the point of closure and of communication. If we look at human evolution from this perspective, we see, leading to the Anthropocene and starting in the 15th century, the beginning of what we can call the “planetarian” epoch. It is nowadays called globalization, but it is better called “planetarian,” because it connects all the parts of the earth, through colonization, slavery and so on. Today the system is exhibiting a very widespread process of development, a process of development of technology, science, economics, and so on, but it is ungoverned, without control, without limitation. And it is a great positive feedback, because science and technology today engenders the multiplication of nuclear bombs, without constraints. An economy without regulation goes from crisis to crisis, leading to the development of human antagonism and fanaticism. It is very interesting to note that this development is not only material and technical, but is the development of human madness, in the sense of fanaticism, of the human unconsciousness. I remember when I was young: ten years before the Second World War all politicians were somnambulists, going through the world without the slightest awareness of the war that was about to occur. Madness, unawareness, productivity, and destruction of the biosphere: we are stuck with a series of catastrophes, and we cannot predict them. However, if we do not find a way to regulate ourselves, to change the path we are on, the number of catastrophes will become more frequent. At the point of the system we call `singularity’, the globalized earth system will be unable to deal with its fundamental problems, its mortal or living problems. It will be unable to treat the problem

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of the degradation of the biosphere, unable to treat the problem of the multiplication of atomic bombs, unable to treat the non-regulation of the economy and the domination of financial speculation. It will be unable to control the phenomenon of madness, of fanaticism in the current world. When a system is unable to treat its fundamental problems, either the system disintegrates or the system regresses and becomes even more barbarian than it already is. However, there is also the possibility that the system will be able to produce a meta-system, a system with new properties with the capacity to treat these vital and mortal problems. The problem is to know whether we have the possibility of bringing about that metamorphosis. The concept of metamorphosis is very interesting, because it implies continuity and transformation. A caterpillar can become a chrysalis from which emerges something new, something that has wings. Metamorphosis is not only a phenomenon for insects, like butterflies, but also a historical phenomenon of human societies: in the Middle Ages society was metamorphosed into the Modern society via wars, transformations, destructions and so on. It is not impossible that a metamorphosis to a new type of society will take place again, but it seems very unlikely: we have to change our direction, but we are going at such a great velocity, it seems impossible to change. And yet, when we consider the great historical changes of the past, all of them seemed impossible. Religious change for example: one began with the idea of a prince, the Buddha, with a new way of thinking about personal existence, about the life of the ruler, and it became a great religion. In contrast, Jesus Christ was isolated and crucified but still we have this stupendous deviation within the Jewish world and the Roman Empire that became a great revolution within four centuries. Islam developed in the same way: Mohammed was rejected by Mecca and exiled to be a refugee in Medina, and yet Islam became a great religion. Likewise democracy began in a small city in Greece, Athens, which was destroyed several times, and yet today democracy is a general ambition in the world. Similarly for ideas like Capitalism and Socialism, which became great movements for the best or for the worst in the twentieth century. All the great beginnings seemed so unlikely at the outset. In the light of this, I think today one cannot think that it is impossible that society can metamorphose again. Maybe the beginning is more diffuse, we don’t know. But there is a possibility, even if it is improbable. Very improbable events have occurred quite frequently in human history, and so even if what is probable for humanity is very bad, we still have the possibility of the improbable, and for the possibility of hope in the improbable. To conclude, I give you an interesting historical example of an improbable outcome coming to pass. It was probable, in September of 1941, the autumn of 1941, that Hitler and the German army would invade the Soviet Union, take millions of prisoners at Leningrad, and finally arrive at the doors of Moscow and take Moscow. But what happened was the deeply unexpected: the German army was immobilized at the doors of Moscow by a premature onset of winter. But, as you probably know, Hitler had planned to attack in May 1941, but postponed it. The reason for this was Mussolini, the Italian dictator, was in great difficulty in Greece where the little Greek army had repelled the great Italian army. Mussolini called Hitler for help, and Hitler’s army had to pass by Yugoslavia to render aid, but the resistance of Serbians cost Hitler a month: that’s how long it took him to destroy the Serbian resistance. If Hitler had stood by his decision to attack in May, he would have taken Moscow, but there was also another confounding element. Stalin’s great informer, Sorge, who was in Japan, told Stalin

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that Japan wouldn’t attack Siberia, because Japan was planning to attack the United States in the Pacific. For Stalin, this meant he could take the army off the East to put it in front of Moscow. He designated a good general, (because the other generals were only courtesan generals, really very poor generals), Zhukov, to the front of Moscow. On the 4th of December, Zhukov attacked and repelled the German army by 200km. It was Hitler’s first defeat, and the first victory of the Soviet Union. But they could not have done this unless Japan had planned to attack Pearl Harbour. Of course that attack meant that the United States would enter the war. This means that in the space of two days the probability of the great victory of the century, of the establishment of the Hitlerian empire, becomes improbable and the great improbability of a victory for the other Europeans begins to be probable. You know history is not written. It is not, as the Islamic saying goes “mektum”. It is not like that. We are in an epoch of great uncertainty, but, I repeat, with the possibility of hope: hope does not mean certainty; hope maintains confidence, because hope opens up possibilities. Reprinted from Systema, 2 (1), Morin, E. Complex thinking for a complex world: About reductionism, disjunction and systemism. 14–22., Copyright (2014), with permission from Systema.

The Concept of a System 1977—From La Méthode: La nature de la nature Translation by Sean M. Kelly

Objects give way to systems. Instead of essences and substances, organization; instead of simple and elementary units, complex unities; instead of aggregates forming bodies, systems of systems of systems. The object is no longer a form—essence or a matter— substance. There is no longer a form-mould that sculpts the identity of the object from the outside. The idea of form is preserved, yet transformed; form is the totality of organized complex unity which manifest itself phenomenally as whole in time and space; Gestalts form between elements of internal organization, of the conditions, pressures, and constraints of the environment. Form is no longer conceived in terms of essence, but in terms of existence and organization. Likewise, materiality is no longer reducible to the idea of substance enclosed within form. But materiality has not thereby vanished; it has enriched itself in its dereification: all systems are constituted by physical elements and processes. The idea of organized matter only becomes fully intelligible within the more complex idea of self-organizing physis. Thus the Aristotelian model (form/substance) and the Cartesian model (simplifiable and decomposable objects)—both subjacent to our conception of objects—do not provide the system’s principles of intelligibility. The system can neither be grasped as pure unity of intelligibility. The system can neither be grasped as pure unity nor as absolute identity, nor as decomposable composite. We need a systemic concept which expresses at once unity, multiplicity, totality, diversity, organization, and complexity.

1. Beyond holism and reductionism: The relational circuit We have already said and it bears repeating: neither the description nor the explanation of a system can take place at the level of parts, conceived as isolated entities, linked merely by actions and reactions. Because the compositional rules of the system are not additive, but transformative, analytic decomposition into elements decomposes the system in the process. Also, the reductionistic explanation of a complex whole in terms of its simple elements disarticulates, disorganizes, simplifies, and, in the final analysis, destroys that which makes up the reality of the system itself: articulation, organization, complex unity. It ignores the transformations effected on the parts; it ignores the whole as whole, emergent qualities (which are conceived as the simple effects of combined actions), as well as latent or virulent antagonisms. Atlan’s remark concerning living organisms applies to all systems: “The simple fact of analyzing an organism according to its constituent elements entails a loss of information about that organism” (Atlan, 1972, p. 262). It is not a question of underestimating the resounding successes of the reductionistic perspective; the search for the basic element led to the discovery of the molecule,

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then the atom, then the particle, etc. The search for manipulable units and verifiable effects permitted, in fact, the manipulation of all systems through manipulation of their elements. In the process, however, a shadow was cast over organization, and obscurity was cast over complexity. In the end, the elucidations of reductionistic science were paved by obscurantism. Systems theory reacted to reductionism with its idea of the whole, but believing it had surpassed reductionism, its “holism” merely brought about a reduction to the whole: from which arose not only its blindness to the parts as parts, but its myopia with respect to organization as organization, and its ignorance of the complexity at the heart of any global unity. In either case, reductionistic or “holist” explanation seeks to simplify the problem of complex unity. The one reduces explanation of the whole to the properties of the parts conceived in isolation. The other reduces the properties of the parts to the properties of the whole, also conceived in isolation. These two mutually repelling, explanations each arise out of the same paradigm. The conception that is revealed here places us at once beyond reductionism and holism, and summons a principle of intelligibility that integrates the portion of truth included in each; there should neither be annihilation of the whole by the parts nor of the parts by the whole. It is essential, therefore, to clarify the relations between parts and whole, where each term refers back to the other: “I consider it as impossible,” said Pascal, “to know the parts without knowing the whole, as to know the whole without a precise knowledge of the parts.” In the twentieth century, reductionistic and holist ideas still do not measure up to the level of such a formulation. The truth of the matter is that, even more than mutually referring to one another, the interrelation which links explanation of the parts to that of the whole, and vice versa, is an invitation to recursive description and explanation; that is description (explanation) of the parts depends upon that of the whole, which depends upon that of the parts, and it is in the circuit that the description of explanation constitutes itself.

Part

Whole

This signifies that neither one of the two terms is reducible to the other. Thus, if the parts must be conceived in function of the whole, they must also be conceived in isolation: a part has its proper irreducibility in relation to the system. It is necessary, moreover, to know the qualities or properties of the parts that are inhibited, virtualized, and, therefore, invisible at the heart of the system, not only correctly to understand the parts, but also to better understand the constraints, inhibitions, and transformations effected by the organization of the whole. It is equally essential to move beyond the purely globalizing and enveloping idea of the whole. The whole is not just emergence. It has, as we shall see, a complex face, and here the idea of a macroscope (de Rosnay, 1975), or a conceptual point of view, which allows us to perceive, recognize, and describe global forms, becomes indispensable. The explanatory circuit whole/parts cannot, as we have just seen, do away with the idea of organization. It must, therefore, be enriched as follows:

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elements

interrelations

organization

whole

Elements must be defined at once according to their original characteristics, the interrelations in which they participate, the perspective of the organization in which they operate, and the perspective of the whole in which they are integrated. Conversely, organization must define itself in relation to the elements, the interrelations, the whole, and so forth. The circuit is polyrelational. In this circuit, organization plays a nuclearizing role with which we shall have to come to terms.

2. The whole is not all Scissions in the whole (the Immersed and the Emergent, the Repressed and the Expressed) Although emergents blossom as the phenomenal qualities of systems, organizational constraints immerse in a world of silence the characteristics which are inhibited, repressed, and compressed at the level of the parts. Thus all systems comprise an immersed, hidden and obscure zone, teeming with stifled potentialities. The duality between the immersed and the emergent, the potential and the actual, the repressed and the expressed, is the source in the great living and social polysystems, of scissions and dissociations between the sphere of the parts and that of the whole. The Freudian idea of the psychic unconscious, and the Marxist idea of the social unconscious, each reveal the bottomless pit hitherto concealed in the notions of identity and totality. The problem of the unconscious has its source—though only its source, for, as we shall see, it is not a question here of reducing everything to systemic terms—this profound scission between the parts and the whole, between the world of the internal and that of the external. In our own fashion, we recognize this duality when we distinguish between “structure” and “form” within a system. Our traditional logic, for its part, tends to reduce phenomenal characteristics, conceived as simple effects, to structural characteristics. It is thus perfectly understandable that in considering social or biological systems in light of the relation infra/superstructure, one of the terms tends to be ignored or forgotten. Such ignorance can only be overcome through a recognition of the indissoluble solidarity that exists between both terms. We must, therefore, seek to understand the biological and sociological complexity of systems which, while remaining fundamentally unitary, comprise several levels of organization and existence through which such systems become equally multiple, dissociated, and, at the limit, inwardly antagonistic. The Insufficient Whole There are black holes in every totality—blind spots, zones of shadow, and ruptures. Totalities harbor internal divisions which are not merely the divisions between its distinguishable parts. There are scissions that are potential sources of conflict and separation. It is extremely difficult to grasp the idea of totality in a world dominated by reductionistic simplification. And once grasped, it would be ridiculous to conceive

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of it in a simplified and euphoric manner. The true totality is always fissured and incomplete. The true conception of totality recognizes the insufficiency of the totality. This is the great advance of Adorno over Hegel: “The totality is the non-truth.” The Uncertain Whole Finally—and I shall return to this idea from another angle—the whole is uncertain. It is uncertain because we can isolate only with great difficulty, and can never truly close off, a system from the systems of systems of systems to which it is linked and where it may appear at once as Koestler has done well to indicate, as whole and part of a larger whole. It is uncertain for systems of high biological complexity with regard to the relation of individual/species, and especially for homo sapiens—that trisystemic monster—which involves the interrelations and interactions between species, individual, and society. Where, in this case, is the whole? The answer cannot but be ambiguous, multiple, and uncertain. One can assuredly look upon society as whole and the individual as part. But one can also conceive of the individual as the central system and society as its ecosystem, its organizer-placenta, and this even more so as consciousness emerges at the level of the individual and not the social whole. Likewise, we can invert the hierarchy species/individual as concrete whole, the species being nothing more than a mechanical cycle for the reproduction of individuals. The matter is not easily settled. In fact, one must, not only out of prudence but also out of the sense of complexity, understand that these terms finalize one another, refer back to one another in a circuit which itself is the “true” system:

species

individual

society

But such a system is a multiple totality, a polytotality, the three inseparable terms that are at the same time concurrent and antagonistic. It follows that at certain moments, from certain angles and in certain cases, the part can be richer than the totality. While a simplifying holism favors all totalities over its elements, we know that, henceforth, we need not necessarily favor all totalities over the components. We should consider the cost of the constraints on global emergents, and we should ask ourselves if these constraints do not annihilate the possibility of even richer emergents at the level of components. “The most profitable control system for the parts should not exclude the bankruptcy of the whole,” (Beer, 1960, p. 16). The bankruptcy of imperial mega-systems might allow for the constitution of polycentric federal systems. Finally, we need not favor the totality of totalities. What is the cosmos if not a totality in polycentric dispersion, the riches of which are disseminated into small archipelagos? It well seems that “small parts of the universe have a reflexive capacity larger than the whole,” (Guenther, 1962, p. 383). It even seems, as Spencer Brown has suggested, that the capacity to reflect could only come about in a small, semi-detached part of the whole, thanks to the virtue and the vice of its remoteness, its distance, its open finitude with respect to the totality, (Brown, 1969). Consequently, it is again evident that the point of view of the totality by itself is partial and mutilating. Not only is the whole the “non-truth”—the truth of the whole is actual as concrete individuality.

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The idea of totality becomes all the more beautiful and rich the more it ceases being totalitarian, the more it becomes incapable of being self-enclosed, the more it becomes complex. It is more radiant in the polycentrism of relatively autonomous parts than in the globalism of the whole.

3. Beyond Formalism and Realism: From Physis to Understanding, from Understanding to Physis; the subject/system and the object/system The notion of system is subject to a double pressure. On one hand, a smug realism considers the notion of system to be a reflection of the real characteristics of an empirical object, while on the other, formalism looks upon the system as an ideal model to be applied heuristically to phenomena without prejudging their reality. The reader is faced here with a fundamental problem associated with all phenomena and physical objects perceived and conceived by the human mind. In a sense, all descriptions upon which diverse observers agree refer to an objective reality. However, by the same token, the common description is related to the mental and logical categories and the perceptual structures without which there could be no description. This problem—the problem of the knowing of knowing—is treated at length in Volume III of La Méthode. Nevertheless, we can already insert the notion of system, not within the alternative realism/formalism, but in a perspective where both terms are related to one another in a manner which is at once complementary, concurrent, and antagonistic. The Rootedness in Physis All systems, including those which we isolate abstractly and arbitrarily from the sets of which they form a part (like the atom, which is otherwise a partially ideal object, or like the molecule) are necessarily rooted in physis. Conditions of formation and existence are physical: gravitational and electromagnetic interactions; topological properties of forms; ecological conjunctures; energetic immobilizations and/or mobilizations. “A system cannot but be energetic,” as Lupasco says; which is another way of saying: a system is necessarily physical. An ideal system, like the one I am in the process of elaborating, pays its tribute in energy, provokes electrochemical modifications in my brain, corresponds to the stabilizing and morphogenetic properties of neural networks and so on. Finally, the insertion of the notion of emergence at the very heart of the theory of the system implies a rootedness that is non-reducible and non-deducible, that what, in physical perception, resists our understanding and our rationalization. That is to say, it makes a rootedness in that aspect of the real that finds itself at the antipodes of the ideal. There is, therefore, in the theory of the system that that I am outlining something that is irreducibly linked at all levels to physical phenomenality: from below (originary interactions and the interrelations that maintain the system), from the periphery (the physical thresholds of existence beyond which the system disintegrates and transforms itself), and from above (emergents).

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The System is a Mental Abstraction Just as all systems escape, from one angle or another, mind of the observer to reveal their rootedness in physis, so all systems, even those two that seem phenomenally most evident—such as machines or organisms—reveal the activity of the mind insofar as the isolation of the system along with its concept are the result of abstractions effected by the mind of the observer/ conceptualizer. Ashby has remarked that “objects can display an infinity of systems of equal plausibility, distinct from one another according their properties” (Ashby, 1956, p. 274). When I ask, “What am I?” I can conceive of myself as a physical system consisting of billions upon billions of atoms; a biological system of some thirty billion cells; an organismic system of certain organs; an element of my familial system, of my urban, professional, social, national, or ethnic system, etc. To be sure, certain distinctions have been established which permit the categorization of systems. Thus, one uses the term:     

system, for anything that manifests autonomy and emergence with respect to that which is external to it. sub-system, for any system that manifests subordination toward a system within which it is integrated as a part. suprasystem, for any system that controls other systems, without integrating them within itself. ego-system, for the systemic set whose interrelations constitute the environment within which the system is encompassed. meta-system, for the system that results from the mutually transformative and encompassing interrelations between two previously independent systems.

In fact, however, the borders between these terms are not clearly defined. The terms themselves are interchangeable according to the framing, cutting, or point of view adopted by the observer of the system under consideration. The determination of systemic characteristics (sub-, eco-, etc.) depends upon selections, interests, choices, and decisions, which themselves depend upon the set of conditions that constitute the specific cultural and social context of the observer/conceptualizer. There are cases where uncertainty pervades all characterization: is society the ecosystem of the individual, or is the latter the perishable and renewable constituent of the social system? Is the human species the super-system or the system? We cannot escape uncertainty, but we can think and conceive of the concept homo as a triadic polysystem whose terms:

individual

species

society

are at once complementary, concurrent, and antagonistic. This requires a theoretical construct and a complex conception of system that recognizes the active participation of the observer/conceptualizer. There is always, therefore, something uncertain or arbitrary in the extraction, isolation, and definition of a system: there is always decision and choice, which introduces the category of the subject into the concept of system.

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The system requires a subject to isolate it from the polysystemic swirl, to cut it out, to qualify and hieraiarchize it. It is doubly determined by, on one hand, a physical reality which cannot be reduced to the human mind, and on the other, by the very structures of this mind, by selective interests of the observer/subject along with the cultural and social context of the scientific consciousness. The concept of system requires the full employment of the personal qualities of the subject in its communication with the object. It differs radically from the classical concept of the object, which referred uniquely either to the “real” or to ideal. Systems are profoundly related to the real. They are more real because more rooted in and linked with physis than the old quasi-artificial object and its pseudo-realism. At the same time, they are profoundly related to the human mind, that is to say, to the subject, which is itself immersed in culture, society, and history. The concept of system demands a natural science that is, at the same time, a human science. Phantom Concept and Pilot Concept In its dual nature, the system is a phantom-concept. Like the phantom, it takes on the form of material beings; but like the phantom, it is immaterial. The system links idealism and realism, without letting itself be trapped by the one or the other. It is neither “form,” nor “content,” nor elements conceived in isolation, nor the whole by itself, but all of these linked in and through the organization that transforms them. The system is a model that lets itself be modeled by the qualities proper to phenomenality. The idea of organization is a logical simulation, but as it comprises alogical elements (antagonisms, emergents), it is equally the reflection of what it simulates and what it stimulates. This is to say that the concept of system is no magic formula or some vehicle that might transport us to the state of knowledge. It offers us no security. It must be straddled, corrected, and guided. It is a pilot-concept, but only on condition that it is piloted. The Subject/Object Transaction The concept of system can only be constructed in and through the subject/object transaction, and not through the elimination of one term by the other. Naïve realism, which takes the system to be a real object, eliminates the problem of the subject; naïve nominalism, which takes the system to be an ideal schema, eliminates the object. But it also eliminates the problem of the subject, for it considers in the ideal model, not its subjective structure, but its degree of manipulative and predictive efficiency. In fact, however, the object, whether “real” or “ideal,” is also an object which depends upon a subject. Through this systemic route, the observer—excluded from classical science—and the subject—excoriated and rejected as so much metaphysical trash—make their renetry—into the very heart of physis. This brings us to a key idea: there is no longer a physis isolated from humanity, which can be isolated from its understanding, its logic, its culture, and its society. There are no objects independent of a subject. So understood, therefore, the notion of system leads the subject not only to verify its observation, but to integrate the same within the process of auto-observation.

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Observing and Observed System Thus the observation and study of a system must link to one another, in systemic terms. Physical organization and the organization of ideas. The observed system— and consequently the organized physis of which it is a part—and the observer-system—along with the anthroposocial organization of which it is a part— become interrelated in a crucial way: the observer is as much a part of the definition of observed system as the observed system is a part of the intellect and culture of the observer. By and through such an interrelation, a new systemic totality is created, which becomes the meta-system with respect to both and it admits the possibility of finding a point of view that permits the observation of the set constituted by the observer and his or her observation. The systemic relation between the observer and observation can be conceived in a complex manner whereby whereby the mind of the observer/conceptualizer, his or her theory, and more widely, his or her culture and society, are considered as so many ecosystemic envelopes of the physical system being studied. The mental/cultural create the system under consideration, yet it coproduces it and nourishes its relative autonomy. This is the view that I provisionally adopt here. We can, and indeed must, go further in the search for a meta-systemic point of view: we can no longer escape the key epistemological problem involved in the relation between, on one hand, the polysystemic group constituted by the subject-conceptualizer and his or her anthropo-social rootedness, and on the other, the polysystemic group constituted by the object-system and its physical rootedness. This would involve the elaboration of a meta-system of reference as the locus for the intercommunication and interorganization of both groups. It is from this perspective—both denied and forbidden by classical science—that a path is cleared for new theoretical and epistemological development. Such development requires not only that the observer observe themself observing systems, but also that they make the effort to know their knowing. Finally, the systemic articulation established between the anthroposocial and the physical universe, via the concept of system, suggests that the characteristic of organization is fundamental to all systems. The possibility of articulating, in systemic terms, the organization of physis as well as well as the organization of knowledge, implies an initial organizational homology. This homology would permit the organizational retroaction (feedback) of our anthroposocial understanding on the physical world out of which this understanding has emerged through the process of evolution. Here I wish merely to stress that the theory of organization will be of increasing concern to the organization of theory. The concept of system lends itself to theoretical elaborations, which allow itself to be outstripped. The complex theory of the system, in other words, transforms the theoretical system that forms it. I hope this much is clear: it is not a question here of a Hegelian ambition to dominate the world of systems with the System of Ideas. It is a question of an inquiry into the relation, both hidden and extraordinary, between the organization of knowledge and the knowledge of organization.

References Ashby ,W.R. (1956). An introduction to cyberrnetics. London: Chapman and Hal. Atlan, H. (1972). L’Organisation biologique et le theorie de l’information. Paris: Herman. Beer, S. (1960). Below the twilight arch. General Systems Yearbook, p. 16.

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Guenther, G. (1962). Cybernetical ontology and transjunctional operations, in Self-organizing Systems. Washington, DC: Spartan Books. Morin, E. (1977). La Methode 1 [Method, 1]. Paris: Seuil. Needham, J. (1977). La science chinoise et l’Occident [Chinese science and the west]. Paris: Seuil. Maruyama, M. (1974). Paradigmatology and its applications to cross-discipinary, crossprofessional and cross-cultural-communications. Dialectica, 28, 135–196. Spencer-Brown, J. (1969). The Laws of Form. London: Allen & Unwin. Von Foerster, H. (1983). Observing Systems. Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications.

Re: From Prefix to Paradigm1 2005—World futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research Translation by Frank Poletti and Sean M. Kelly

This essay is a translated chapter from a large study of the philosophy of ecology and biology. It looks at the vast array of reiterative processes in nature and culture and argues that continuous recursion is the core activity that sustains living processes at all levels. Therefore, the prefix “re,” which is central to the concepts of repetition, renewal, reinforcement, regeneration, reorganization, recursion, and religion, is a radical concept that should be considered at the paradigmatic level. The author shows that by working “revolutions into its revolutions” the process of RE complexly unifies and intermixes the past and future in order to generate the creative pulse of evolution.

Part I From the RE of Physics to the RE of Biology Toward a Radical Conceptualization of RE The idea of active organization is synonymous with permanent (or continuous) reorganization. As we have seen,2 all machine-beings,3 from stars to living individuals, organize and reorganize themselves in and through the repetition of processes, the renewal of components, and the restabilizing of stationary, or homeostatic, states. Each permanent reorganization is, simultaneously, a permanent regeneration, in the sense that the continuous re-immersion of being and existence involves a permanent recursion, which is necessary to the production of that being. We find the prefix “re” in all of the following terms: reorganization, recursion, repetition, renewal, restabilization, and regeneration. In what follows, we will explore a much more radical conceptualization of “re.” I will start by proposing a macro-concept described with the capitals letters “RE.” Even at first glance, the root concept RE appears surprisingly rich. It includes at once:    

the idea of repetition (and multiplication); the idea of re-beginning and renewal; the idea of reinforcement; the idea of communication (or connection) between things that otherwise would be separated (as in the words re-unite and re-ligion).

The root concept RE, much like the root concepts explored earlier in this book— autos and oikos—is a term so fundamental that it must be conceptualized in a manner much more radical (