From Atomism to Complexity System, the Cybernetics

Agazzi unites properly the concept of Complexity “to the idea of an organized, structured system, different from a pure multiplicity consisting of elements essentially of the same type” (Agazzi 2008: 163).

in set theory the axiomatic construction can be done using as the only primitive notions that of element and the relationship of membership of an element to a set. This means that the nature of the elements is completely irrelevant, and that they are not supposed to be provided with structures or internal relations. We could say that the ontology of set theory (i.e. the type of entities that it presupposes) is atomistic (ibid.).

Understanding perfectly the meaning of the perspective of complexity, he notes that

vice versa, if we consider, for example, a living organism, it is naturally conceived as consisting of ‘parts’ and not by ‘elements’, and these are the various ‘organs’, all differ­ent from each other, characterized by specific structures and functions and at the same time connected and cooperating to form a unity, namely a whole, provided with its over­all properties as well (of which the most notable is precisely life). Moreover, these parts are themselves a ‘whole’ compared to the other parts that constitute them. The ontology underlying this concept is holistic (ibid.).

To be more precise and to achieve a better comprehension, and with different arguments, of the difference between the atomistic and the holistic approach, it should be duly noted that “in the holistic perspective the structure and functions of the parts are of considerable importance, and the relationships between parts and whole are not of mere membership, but of correlation, interaction, and also lie on other relations established between the different parties” (ibid.). The differ­ence between the two perspectives is really radical since, unlike the set theoretic approach, within the systemic-relational approach “as a result of all these relation­ships, it is said that each whole is more than the sum of its parts in the sense that it has properties that are not typical of any of its parts, and it does not even appear to be a sort of sum or combination of them” (ibid.).

Agazzi rightly insists on “the feature of originality or creativity that charac­terizes the complex systems”, and observes that, considering the problem from a more rigorous historical perspective,

the holistic point of view has always been implicitly subtended to the life sciences, but only in the twentieth century it emerged with strength and explicitness, casting a new light on many problems and resulting in refined conceptual elaborations that can be rightfully considered as clarifications and developments of the notion of complexity (ibid.).

In a sense, this point of view has been integrated by System Theory and by Cybernetics, issues on which Agazzi develops a broad, structured and rigor­ous discourse, which in this context cannot be examined in depth, but cannot be completely omitted, either. I will briefly mention it, beginning with the “General System Theory”, highlighted by Agazzi both for its methodological originality and because—precisely for this reason—it has encountered many obstacles and aroused fiery controversies. As a matter of fact, although the concept of system has always accompanied philosophical and scientific thought, actually

systems theory is relatively young, since it achieved success in the second half of the twentieth century, being at first the object of animated debates and controversies.

Agazzi prevents the objection that such a finding could not always be true, and there are several examples of disciplines that have developed peacefully: he grants that this

is true, but everything depends - so to speak - on the degree of intensity with which are combined the claims of scientificity and those of novelty: in other words, the instinctive reaction of the scientific community, in front of a new discipline, seems to be the state­ment according to which, if it is really new it is not science, and that if it is really science, it is not new (ibi: 172).

To avoid misunderstandings we should clarify that we need to be careful and, for example, point out that throughout the history of Western scientific culture it usu­ally happened that

when novelty comes not in the sense of ‘a new development’ of an existing framework, but in the more challenging sense of being able to make claims that ‘do not fit’ in the pre­vious framework, in that case the most common reaction is to state that the new claims are actually ‘unscientific’ extrapolations or digressions (ibi).

For this reason, Agazzi rightly notes “systems theory has been the object of con­troversy, not for its content, but because it presented itself as a way to concep­tualize and theorize that wanted to be ‘new’ compared to the already tested and established scientific criteria, considered too narrow” (ibi). In other words, although the concept of system has been historically used to describe coherent theoretical philosophical constructions or, for example, even those of Newton and Linnaeus, the new theory inspired by it aroused skepticism “since the concept of system was used in a partly new and even alternative sense, compared to its tradi­tional sense” (ibi).

Connecting these observations to those expressed earlier about the idea of complexity, Agazzi—to avoid any misunderstanding or possible confusion— reminds that the classical system “corresponded to the need for unification, reduc­tion of multiplicity to one, about which we have already discussed, which had found its fullest expression in the mechanical determinist reductionism” (ibi: 172-173).

gave a framework and a rigorous and harmonic characterization to a number of concepts, such as the one of ordered whole, of functionality, of hierarchical structure, of organism, of development, of adjustment, of interrelation between individual and environment, of centralization, of self-preservation, of finalized process, which are frequently used and indispensable in several sciences (from the biological ones to the psychological and social ones), but that had been used with an almost exclusively intuitive meaning, or with a meaning just a little more specific than in common language (ibid.).

The most common reaction to this attitude was, as Agazzi precisely emphasizes, a kind of “temporary tolerance”, waiting and hoping that the approach would adjust to the traditional scientific standard. But complex systems theorists, starting from the founder, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, were not disposed to align to this wishes, and defined in a more precise way their methodological and ontological approach, con­verging in outlining a “generalist” perspective whose “aspect of interest and origi­nality lies in ‘breaking’ the traditional scheme, and thus introducing new and prolific perspectives in many disciplines, not only belonging to the natural sciences” (ibi: 176).

This is, essentially, what Agazzi intended to say about the new approach to the Real. However, “to better understand the meaning of systems theory we should consider in any case another almost coeval and strongly linked discipline, cyber­netics, and also the contribution that systems theory itself gave to a new scien­tific methodology, interdisciplinarity” (ibid.). To coherently realize the latter, one didn’t need only cybernetics, but also information theory, soon named computer science, and the life sciences. After a due reconstruction of the essential events related to these new approaches, Agazzi rigorously explains why the relations between disciplines should be investigated in all their complexity, drawing conclu­sions on which we shall now linger to enucleate their most innovative aspects.

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