“The twenty-first century would be the century of complexity!” This is how Stephen Hawking answered the question about science of the coming century in January 2000. The award of the Nobel Prize for Physics 2021 to three physicists [K. Hasselmann – S. Manabe – G. Parisi] who have contributed significantly to complexity research seems to confirm the prediction. Indeed, complexity as a research object and at the same time as a research perspective plays a prominent role in many sciences and disciplines today, in addition to physics, for example, also in climate science, sociology and economics, strategy innovation, urbanism, management and so on. This fact allows us to speak of a (scientific) “revolution of complex systems”.
Network analysis and network modelling become nowadays an increasing development in every field of complexity research. They are largely used in social sciences (Sociology, Economy, History, Archeology, Geography, Management, Linguistics, Psychology etc.). They also play a prominent rule in hard sciences (like Mathematics (Graph Theory), Biology, Neurosciences, Physics and Information Theory). They are also even more used in interdisciplinary approached oriented to understand and model complex systems like in Climatology, Eco-Systems Theory, Migrations theory.
Since ten years, a scientific project aims to integrate the skills and the methods of such rising and increasing approach in order to define a network science. Others aim to speak and think of a “new paradigm” and to build the complementarity of network analysis with other perspectives (notably in social sciences).
Network analysis is the study of relational systems. It focuses on the observation of relationships between entities and the system formed by these relationships. These entities (nodes) can be individuals, organisations, objects, places, texts, events, websites, neurons… or even combinations of different types of entities at several levels. Relationships can be interpersonal links (kinship, friendship, collaboration…), citations, co-presences, air links, hyperlinks, neural connections, etc. The system formed by these entities and their relationships constitutes the network. The precise study of its structure (dense, segmented, scattered, hierarchical, modular, etc.) is crucial for many questions posed in different scientific disciplines and research fields, and lends itself particularly well to interdisciplinary approaches. It allows us to go beyond the static and morphological approach that thinks in terms of groups, bodies and affiliations. It is not opposed to it but offers a complementary, often more dynamic point of view. Network analysis can be at the heart of a research approach, but it can also be only one part of it, alongside other qualitative or quantitative approaches.
In the “COMPLEXITY AND NETWORKS” Conference will be presented and discussed the contribution of network analysis in relation to different disciplines of complexity science, showing their commonalities and specificities, based on empirical research and epistemological reflection.
During the international conference, researchers from both the mathematical and natural sciences and the humanities will present their work and approaches to network modelling
All these initiatives are open, on the basis of a genuinely interdisciplinary philosophy, to doctoral students as well as to teacher-researchers from various backgrounds.
Keynote speakers: Caroline Angelraux (CNRS), Ginestra Bianconi (Queen Mary University London); Silvia Caianiello (INSERM) David Chavalarias (CNRS – Institut des systèmes complexes de Paris); Gabriele Gramelsberger, Josè Fernando Mendes (Aveiro University); Franck Varenne (Université de Rouen); Stephan Hartmann (LMU München);
Organisation :
Fausto Fraisopi (Professor at the University of Freiburg i.B. and Multiannual Research Fellow at Iméra),
Contact : faustofraisopi@gmail.com
Place : Iméra, Institute for Advanced Study of Aix Marseille Université, Maison des astronomes, 2 place Le Verrier, 13004 Marseille
Past conferences
From September 18 to 20, 2023, Fausto Fraisopi, professor at the University of Friborg and multiannual reseaarch fellow at Iméra, is organizing an international conference entitled “The thinking of the image: interdisciplinary approaches to imagery and imagination”. This conference is part of the cycle complexity, networks and interdisciplinarity of knowledge.
What shall we call an “image”? Is it that from which knowledge proceeds, or that which anticipates knowledge? Is image something only able to be recognised as object of thinking, or it shows per se, in its polysemy and equivocal constitution, a deep, still unexplored generative form of thinking?
From the point of view of the understanding of the digital age, where we entered in, to a strong consideration of the new frontiers of science, knowledge, and philosophy and from here up to societal and cultural dimensions, the thinking of the image still remain an enigma.
Since the ancient world, the philosophical antiquity from Plato to Aristotle has left this question as a legacy. This question has continued to pursue the history of thought: Islamic World and Christianity, Middle and Modern Age. It can be found massively in contemporary philosophy, culture studies, history of art and ideas. The aim of the international conference is, perhaps for the first time, to study and to explore in a genuine interdisciplinary approach the multiversal horizon of human imagery and, in particular its constructive, generative capacity of building a world-meaning.
The international conference is organised on the behalf of Iméra, the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix Marseille Université, in collaboration with the LESA, Laboratoire d’Études en Sciences des Arts (EA 3274) and the Research Group on the Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Image and Imaginary: Fausto Fraisopi, Professor at Freiburg University and Multiannual Research Fellow at Iméra, Agnes Callu, Research Director at the CNRS (LAP -Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Politique), Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Research Director at the CNRS (CRH – Centre de recherche historiques – CéSor Centre d’études en sciences sociales du réligieux) and Alexander Schnell, Professor for Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Transcendental Philosophy and Phenomenology).
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Contemporary Knowledge
15-17 January 2024 at Iméra, Institut d’études avancées d’Aix Marseille Université (conference room of Maison Neuve, access by allée Jean-Louis Pons, 13004 Marseille) – Conference also available on Zoom.
Complexity science is nowadays a solid reality and, so to speak, determines the horizon of contemporary science. From ecology to biology, from studies on migration (animal and human) to sociology and anthropology, complexity as a property of certain phenomena, at various scales, occupies scientists and questions our idea of knowledge. The complex systems approach is coupled with the notion and need of modelling, and in particular models that can reproduce (and/or anticipate through simulation) the evolution of these systems. In this respect, network analyses and network modelling are currently developing in all scientific disciplines. They are also very present in interdisciplinary approaches to understanding and modelling complex phenomena, such as climatology, ecosystem theory, migration, etc. For the past decade, a scientific movement has been proposing to bring together all the knowledge needed to understand, use and model networks in a “network science”.
The interdisciplinary conference will bring together scientists and scholars from different fields to reflect on the advances and problems of complexity science and its relationship with modelling practices and, in particular, with network science.