CEFISES Seminar: Alexandre Francq, “The Haunting Specter of Complexity; the Pluralist Metaphysical Crutch”

Series: OLOFOS

Speaker: Alexandre Francq (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne – Institut Gustave Roussy)

Title: “The Haunting Specter of Complexity; the Pluralist Metaphysical Crutch”

Abstract

Broadly defined, Scientific pluralism holds that a plurality of models, theories, and methods is not merely useful but often necessary for understanding complex phenomena. Few would deny the success of this pluralist outlook in contemporary science and philosophy. Yet much of this success has rested on the background assumption that the world, and especially the biological world, is complex in a way that blocks reductionist explanation. Complex systems, we are told, display emergent behaviors, adaptive dynamics, and context-sensitive interactions that require multiple descriptive frameworks. But this appeal to complexity raises three fundamental problems.

First, is pluralism’s dependence on complexity truly necessary? Does a defense of pluralism require a metaphysical commitment to the complexity of biological entities, or could a more modest pluralism stand on epistemic or methodological grounds alone? If no such necessity exists, then appeals to complexity would appear superfluous to the defense of the pluralist agenda. Second, it is no secret that the notion of complexity itself is deeply ambiguous. It covers both properties of natural systems, such as emergence or adaptivity, and properties of the models we construct, such as non-linearity or multi-scalar behavior. This conceptual vagueness would be harmless if complexity were a purely descriptive notion, but it often functions as a justificatory and explanatory one. In philosophy of science, complexity often serves to justify particular explanatory or methodological strategies. In scientific practice itself, it functions as far more than a mere buzzword, for complexity can appear as an explanandum—when we ask why or how something is complex—or as an explanans—when we assume complexity in order to predict or explain other properties of a system.

Finally, canonical pluralist accounts such as Sandra Mitchell’s Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism rest on a metaphysical reading of complexity. I argue that this interpretation risks circularity and pointlessness. At the moment, complexity behaves less like a concept and more like a specter, it is evoked everywhere both in science and philosophy, yet never clearly seen nor grasped. It haunts our epistemological conception precisely because of its vagueness. If we truly endeavour to take complexity seriously, we have good reasons to release the notion from its metaphysical weight. A weaker, more modest epistemic conception of complexity may lack the grandeur of its metaphysical counterpart, yet it might be more defensible.