Research project
Complexity and transdisciplinarity A structural approach
Summary of the research project
From St. Hawking’s “prediction” (“the 21st century will be the century of complexity”) to the recognition of the Nobel Prize for Physics (Hasselmann-Manabe-Parisi), complexity, i.e. the science of complexity, has become prominent in almost all fields of knowledge. Its “counterpart” in scientific practice, namely trans-disciplinarity, has now become almost an essential element for thinking and designing knowledge in our time. To the question: “Why are (the knowledge of) complexity and trans-disciplinarity (of knowledge’s practices) so intrinsically linked?” The usual answer is that, being the complex phenomenon so rich in facets, it requires an approach from several (epistemic) points of view to study it. However, this answer is neither sufficient nor epistemically clear.
The main challenge of the two-year project is to study – from an epistemological-structural point of view but also through practice – in what sense (the knowledge of) complexity and trans-disciplinarity (of knowledge’s practices) are two sides of the same form of knowledge that faces in our time. This project will be concretised, beyond my own research on the epistemological and (meta)-ontological structures that characterise complex phenomena as such, in a rich activity of seminars and thematic meetings oriented to grasp the trans-disciplinary epistemic practice of the sciences of the complex as well as its methods.
Biography
Fausto Fraisopi is Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität of Freiburg in Breisgau.
After his studies in theoretical philosophy (University “La Sapienza”) and a thesis in history of philosophy (University of Macerata), conducted within the EA 3552 Métaphysiques, histoires, transformations, actualité (University of Paris IV “La Sorbonne”) he was a post-doc researcher at the same university and at the ENS of Paris. Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Freiburg (2010-2012), he defended his Habilitation to direct research in 2015, where he was appointed Extraordinary Professor in 2021. Since 2005 is strongly engaged in questioning and studying complexity science (of complex systems science) and putting it in relation with the contemporary issues in epistemology, ontology and metaphysics.
Among his publications, L’ouverture de la vision (Hildesheim-Zürich-New York, 2009), La complexité et les phénomènes. Nouvelles ouvertures entre science et philosophie (Paris, 2012), Untersuchungen über die Formen der Mathesis (Freiburg i.B. – München, 2016), (ed.). Mathesis, Grund, Vernunft, 2020, Baden-Baden, 2020), Philosophie et demande. On metaphilosophy (Paris, 2021).
