The Challenge of Complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin

by Amy Heath-Carpentier

Overview

The Challenge of Complexity gathers in one volume over 32 essays by the esteemed French philosopher and sociologist, Edgar Morin, probably France's greatest living public intellectual. The essays span six decades of his career, addressing topics such as complexity, sociology, ecology, education, film, biology, and politics. At his centenary (July 2021), Morin holds honorary doctorates from over 20 universities in Europe and Latin America, and recently the Centre d'Etudes Transdisciplinaires, Sociologie, Anthropologie, Histoire, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the prestigious French National Research Center, was renamed the Centre Edgar-Morin. He is also the UNESCO Chair of Complex Thought. Several university centres and institutes have been dedicated to advancing his work in Europe and Latin America. He is the author of more than 80 books, translated into 28 languages, and the 1960 documentary Chronicle of a Summer, which he co-directed with Jean Rouch, has become a classic and the first example of cinema verite. Morin's work on complexity is distinct from the mathematically driven science of complexity. He argues for an epistemological revolution and focuses on the need to develop complex thought to address the lived complexity of an interconnected, interdependent, uncertain world. Morin's contribution in such a wide range of disciplines has been influential because of his ability to bring complex thought to bear on seemingly diverse topics, reflecting on the limitations of how they are approached and articulating a transdisciplinary way that doesnt sacrifice complexity in an effort to find an oversimplified clarity. Morin illuminates the complexity and creativity of the world and of our lived experience, and invites us to participate in the creative process that is existence itself. A substantive overview of Morin's philosophical journey by Alfonso Montuori introduces the reader to Morin's remarkable work and life. And the work is completed by a substantive Letter from Edgar Morin, putting his life's work in the context of recent advances in Science and the Humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789761658
Publisher:	Liverpool University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2022
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Amy Heath-Carpentier is a transdisciplinary scholar of gender, religion, and politics, lecturing in Global Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, USA. In addition to contributing to dialogue on transdisciplinary research and transnational feminist theories and praxes, Heath-Carpentier studies the juncture between revolutionary politics, feminist identity development, and religious transformation in the lives of Irish feminists. A mid-career academic, she is an authority on careers in government, policy, advocacy, and international affairs.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Encountering Morin by Alfonso Montuori
Preface by Amy Heath-Carpentier
Annotated Bibliography of Chapters
Note to the Reader by Alfonso Montuori

A Letter from Edgar Morin
The Dissolution of Complexity
Blind Intelligence

Introduction—Edgar Morin, an Intellectual Journey
Edgar Morin at 96: 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
A New Way of Thinking
The Three Theories
Self-organization
The Three Principles

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

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

On the Definition of Complexity

Epistemology—Complexity
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
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

Organization and Complexity
Unitas multiplex
Emergences
The complexity of the notion of organization
Basic complexity

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

Complex Thinking for a Complex World: About Reductionism,
Disjunction and Systemism

The Concept of System
1.Beyond holism and reductionism: The relational circuit
2.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
3Beyond 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

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

Beyond Determinism: The Dialogue of Order and Disorder
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

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

The Fourth Vision: On the Place of the Observer

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

Can We Conceive of a Science of Autonomy? 1 and 2
Conclusions

What Could Be a Mind Able to Conceive a Brain Able to
Produce a Mind?
The Extraordinary Problem
The Great Schism
Uniduality
The New Monism
The Idea of Subject
Conclusions

The Emergence of Thought
The Prehistory of Thought
Language and the Emergence of Thought
The Use of Dual Thought
The Seculariztion and Individualization of Thought
The Modern Adventures of Thought
Conclusion

For a Crisiology
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?

Commandments of Complexity

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

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

The Principles of ‘Contemporary Sociology’
The Phenomenon
The Event or Happening
Crisis
Social Temporality
Clinical Sociology
The ‘Field of the Present’
Conclusion

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

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

A Shared Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

The VI International Catalonia Prize
A Warning

Ecology: The Uses of Enchantment

Demythicising and Remythicising the Mediterranean

Editorial Reviews

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 him complexity (from complexus—inter-weaving) is not a technique but a generalized epistemology—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
 
 
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 come approaches to complexity.

In this extremely valuable volume of translated essays he turns his attention to the technical
and philosophical underpinnings of complexity theory and applies it to a wide-ranging number
of issues including the nature of scientific thinking, self-organisation, action theory, the notion of
the subject, education, the idea of solidarity and the idea of the “enterprise.” These essays will certainly stimulate the critical debate within complexity circles, but is 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 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 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 provided plenty of inspiration for doing so.
Mary Jo Jatch, author, Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives. Professor Emeritus, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia, USA
 
 

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