The Words of the Sciences of Complexity: from Ambiguity to Dialogue
Science is constantly defining new uses of language, creating terminologies and taxonomies, generating new vocabulary and giving new meanings to the words of non-scientific language. In fact, the vocabulary conformed by scientific neologisms (specifically related to chemistry) is wider than that which is moulded by other more commonly used words in standard language. However, words derived from specific, scientific theories have come to be used in non-scientific, semi-scientific or pseudo-scientific ways, extending to various other areas of knowledge. Thus, words such as relativity, diffusion, and atom, have reinforced and acquired new meanings that trespass the barrier of scientific academic usage. For example, the word, “entropy” originally born under a scientific context, is increasingly being used within other spaces, such as the arts.
Analytical philosophy has also contributed to the development of new humanistic meanings for technical terms that were previously related exclusively to science. Words such as chaos, order, phase, limit, difference, energy, potency, infinite; were assimilated by mathematics and the sciences when they already existed within the public domain. And, in the ultimate decades, the concepts of Intelligence and Consciousness have led science to break its own limits or at least, to introduce new frontiers. These expressions do not only hold enormous philosophical and theological weight, but also and more importantly, an importance in everyday life.
In the 1990’s, when the study of the brain was significantly advanced, sciences such as philosophy and neurology approximated themselves to each other, more than they had ever done before. And some came to believe – and continued believing – that a study of emotions was possible. The debate around this is in process but, -what is emotion? In the same instant in which one intends to precisely define that which could be utile in the context of observable phenomena, the word is distanced from its quotidian use, complex and polemic.
Whose place is it, for example, to define the meaning of life? -Biologists, philosophers, chemists, historians, writers, journalists, theologians, mystics, metaphysicians, school teachers, parents? -All of them at the same time? Every one of us? We are not interested in the definition of the word, but rather in the dialogue created around it. A single word, like life, contains an infinite extensive trans-cultural and trans-temporal dialogue.
In both scientific and everyday contexts, the same word can define different things, however they will not be radically different. In each case, the configuration of the word is according to its usage. In the words of Wittgenstein, two meanings of the one word, in their respective contexts, are like brothers or cousins, members of the same family; they’re not the same but they’re similar. It is possible that they may never establish a perfect equivalency, but maintain a common air, “an air of family”. For this reason, the debates of science are not contained dialogues of a closed and isolated sphere; on the contrary, they possess an extensive and porous surface which makes them permeable and open; in fact a part of a much larger dialogue: Culture.
If we take the word, chaos, as an example, we see that even within a scientific-academic context, it has various possible uses. On the one hand, in its stronger version, there exists a mathematic definition: it is a theory defined by three axes (a dynamic system is chaotic if and only if…). Far beyond mathematics, in the realm of chemistry and physics, there is no precise definition, but rather certain types of dynamic manifestations are denoted- related with the established properties in the mathematical axioms, especially those which express the concepts of sensibility to the initial conditions. Passing from the frontiers of science, the word chaos when placed in an everyday context, is more extensive yet still possessing of scientific characteristics such as those of physics. Chaos, for example, applied to the metaphor of the fluttering of butterflies that create storms (Butterfly Effect), is in accordance to the sensibility of initial conditions. It is said that it is associated with a process; a dynamic in which phenomena of little importance produce other spectacular events. Many of us have thought of our past, small incidents that have radically affected our life. If they could modify the imperceptible occasions of these moments, our present would be very different. Hollywood has approached this theme on different occasions.
From the three axioms that define a dynamic chaotic system, to the dialogues we construct to explain our own lives to ourselves, there is a conceptual continuity; it is said, there is no paradigmatic separation among these types of discourse.
The so-called sciences of complexity possess an ample vocabulary used in both the scientific and everyday context. This occurs for various reasons:
On the one hand, the sciences of complexity elude to the specialization due to that which is more transversal; they refer to phenomena that give them various patterns of organization (from the accumulation of galaxies, to civilization, to the formation of crystal).
The sciences of complexity, apart from their name (they study the simplicity!), occupy themselves with the manners in which the simple and complex are related. Or, from another point of view, how complexity results from simplicity.
Some of the more interesting and important aspects of the sciences of complexity are essentially comprehensible, easy to understand, in distinct levels of profundity, without the need of a high-school level knowledge of science. It is not necessary to understand that which is a compact space in order to understand, essentially, the process of the formation of self-resemblance. In fact, it is not necessary to know the algebraic definition of limit to understand, in essence, in what direction drive certain infinite as well as convergent processes.
There are certain narrative schema that have become very common: fractals, cellular automata, the behaviour of certain species of predator or prey, the randomness of weather, the paradoxes of self-reference and self-containment, the chaos of bourse movements and tendencies, etc… The butterfly effect has been remarked upon to such an extent that we have already forgotten where the flutter of wings occurred and where the storm actually took place!
The sciences of complexity implicate a different vision of the world. This vision avoids the so called “mistakes” of traditional modern science, such as mechanism, positivism, reductionism… It seems then that the discourse elaborated by the complexity supposes a post-modern science.
Thus, for example, B. Mandelbrot. shows that fractals implicate a less simple-minded way of observing and understanding nature; and F. Capra. remarks that a holistic science, based in interrelations, may implicate a different relationship, more harmonic, one of occidental culture with nature. Both scientists are, by the way, very well known at the moment.The success of these theories, as some might say, has generated conflicting debates. Mathematicians complain that the word chaos is used inappropriately. This is inevitable however: words have no owner and unique uses; there are no possible control mechanisms/displays to submit them.
Actually, the more ambiguous and polygenic the words are, the more interesting they become: Intelligence, life, emotions, poetry, beauty, point, frontier, infinite, everything, something, reason, madness…The ambiguity of language is not the problem, but rather that it creates pretexts and conversations. This ambiguity allows a confrontation between multiple visions of the world, its primary resources being poetry and humour, in conclusion: The Generation Dialogue.
This is why words and expressions of the sciences of complexity (in their public incidence) conform an excellent surface for communications between scientist and non-scientist; an interface of dialogue, debate, speculation, poetics, humour and critical thinking that concern common themes.
Santiago Ortiz, 2005, text written for the spheres proyect, moebio.com