COMPLEXITY, POST-STRUCTURALISM, AND CONSILIENCE

doi:10.7906/indecs.24.2.1

COMPLEXITY, POST-STRUCTURALISM, AND CONSILIENCE

2026-01-01

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Van Der Merwe, Ragnar *

DOI：10.7906/indecs.24.2.1

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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

COMPLEXITY, POST-STRUCTURALISM, AND CONSILIENCE

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