Master 2, Université de l'Aquila (Italie)
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Stage sous la direction de Giuseppe Longo et Jean-Michel Besnier :
" Epistemology of complexity and Social Impact Assessment -A possible way to go beyond the logic of emergency "
Programme du stage :
In epistemological terms, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (Withehead, 1929; cfr. Ronchi, 2003: 12, 28) is the contradiction produced by using abstract models to define and manage reality.
It is what scholar philosophers would call a modus deficiens: a defective way of reasoning obtained by abstraction to get specific practical purposes, and then superimposed on our living experience until inciting us in removing and replacing the variety of life and its indefiniteness, with the abstract analysis obtained (Ronchi, 2003: 12).
When these practical purposes are not reached, we realize that the abstract models used to reduce reality and make it efficient, are unsuccessful. That is when what was expected, does not happen, or when reality, that we wanted to reduce to our goals, reveals itself with all its brutal concreteness.
In these cases, these models appear quite inadequate to comprehend the complexity of reality.
In this research I will underline that the failure of these models it is due by their inability to interact with reality that, rather than a simple unity of fundamental laws, should instead be understood as a unitas multiplex.
Reality it is composed by singularities that should not be reduced and unified under few laws represented by “top-down models”, but that should be integrated and organized in a new dynamic and “bottom up” comprehension, interpreting “the world like an organization” (Von Bertalanffy, 2010: 287).
The field of the present research, that aims to follow an experimental approach to epistemology (Ceruti, 2009: 66) in using prof. Longo’s perspective, will be the “after quake” territory of L’Aquila. In particular, I will focus on the need of the passage from the management of the emergency to the management of reconstruction. In few words, after the shock of the 6th April 2009 earthquake, the passage from an emergency state, to a living process of reconstruction, consists in taking up the challenge of complexity (Ceruti-Bocchi, 1984).
My research will underline the concrete need of Community Projects (Pirzio-Biroli, 1976; cfr. Ray Lorenzo, 1998; cfr. La Cecla, 1988) that, rather than giving any general and top-down issues to the reconstruction, directly starts from inciting the participation of inhabitants in re-designing their own houses as finally rebuild.
The method here suggested, is the method of architecture social impact assessment (A.S.I.A. cfr. La Cecla, 2008) that will help the Community Project (CP) in analyzing the entities that CP should number among its process (houses, owners, local technicians, local enterprises etc.), and will evaluate the health of the relationships between them organized by CP in its convivial structure (Illich, 2005).
In doing this research I will try to give a scientific method to A.S.I.A. using the epistemic issues offered by the ongoing research work on extended criticality (Longo et al., 2008; 2011) and on the complexity of life unities (Longo et al., 2003). In particular the notion of extended criticality could show an internal “coherent structure” (Longo et al., 2011) inside a living unit, to be described by a diagram (Longo et al., 2003), that clearly underline “complexity as nesting and interaction of levels of organization” which are considered “the core aspect of biological phenomena".
In my opinion, the diagram proposed by Longo’s and coauthors work is important for two different reasons :
- it talks about “horizontal interactions”, “upwards integrations” and “downwards regulations” showing sensibility for the complex of a living unit, therefore for the relationships between parts and between different levels of these that are oriented in constituting not a static unity, but an unitas multiplex in which parts and their singularities have certain relevance;
- it is, before all, a description: it is not a normative model.
This second issue could allow to use this diagram as an important epistemic tool to orient knowledge in facing complex situations by having more attention to singularities and their interactions in a particular context analyzed. A knowledge so defined, could then give precious assessments in orienting actions in reality.
Moreover, coming back to A.S.I.A., what I would like to suggest is that this diagram (Longo, 2003) could be a useful scheme in order to
- “systematize” subjects (and every single information related to them) as part of CP,
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evaluate the level of integration/participation of subjects involved in CP,
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give assessments to CP about possible regulations to adopt for better coordinating subjects involved.
By adopting this descriptive model, we could go over the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and see some other relevant implications in epistemology (such as methodological pluralism, constructive knowledge etc.) that will be the philosophical and the epistemological conclusions of this work.
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