The Demise of Systems Thinking: A Tale of Two Sciences and One Technoscience of Complexity

Zusammenfassung

Stuart Kauffman and Brian Goodwin treat organisms as complex systems. Their claim revitalizes the vitalism of Hans Driesch who situated biological processes within a general theory of order. Along with many others who emphasize the challenge of complexity all three maintain that “[w]e will have to rethink what science is itself ” (Kauffman 2000, 22). But what is this challenge to canonical ways of doing science? Here, Kauffman and Goodwin part company. Though both fend off the accusation that the very idea of a “scientific vitalism” is conceptually incoherent, only Kauffman’s scientific vitalism involves a wholly different science of complexity while Goodwin foregrounds a wholly new class of complex phenomena which, however, are subject to familiar modes of causal analysis.—Kauffman and Goodwin’s disagreement about the requirements for a “science of complexity” reappears in a new guise in discussions of systems biology and synthetic biology and generally of complex systems.

Alfred Nordmann is Professor of Philosophy of Science and of Technoscience at Technische Universität Darmstadt. His research focuses on epistemological, metaphysical, and aesthetic aspects of technoscientific research in chemistry, nanotechnology or synthetic biology. Grounding an account of scientific knowledge production in the philosophy of technology, he explores the notion of working knowledge. Nordmann is the editor of the book series History and Philosophy of Technoscience, author of introductions to the philosophy of technology and the philosophy of Wittgenstein.