Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.24.2.1

Complexity, Post-Structuralism, and Consilience

Ragnar van der Merwe ; University of Johannesburg, Faculty of Humanities, Johannesburg, The Republic of South Africa *

* Corresponding author.

Abstract

Epistemological questions about knowledge of complex systems are not addressed as often as ontological questions about what complex systems are. As with many philosophical issues, one can identify two approaches to answering the former type of question: an analytic and a post-modern approach. In this article, I engage with the latter, specifically a post-structuralist view called Critical Complexity. Critical complexitysts defend a radical kind of epistemic perspectivism: Knowledge and understanding are always contextually situated; there are no meta-theories that can grant an overarching meta-perspective of some subject matter of interest (e.g. some complex system). Contra Critical Complexity, I argue that invoking William Whewell’s notion of consilience can help us account for successful epistemic inquiry into things like complex systems. On such an account, perspectives can be merged into meta-perspectives, which can be merged into meta-meta-perspectives, and so on. This represents a progressive and hierarchical epistemic schema, one that seems to match what we witness in actual successful scientific inquiry.

Keywords

consilience; perspectivism; complex systems; unity of science; William Whewell; Edgar Morin

Hrčak ID:

345585

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/345585

Publication date:

20.3.2026.

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