On Tuesday June 9th (15:00 Glasbak: ESPhil meeting room, Bayle building 5th floor, drinks afterwards), Alicia Juarrero will visit us for a research seminar. Alicia's work spans a wide range of topics (from Aristotle to dynamical systems theory), but in general she can be referred to as an exemplary philosopher of complexity. In 1999 she published Dynamics in Action (MIT Press), which has had a wide influence in the complex systems circles. She has since then published Context Changes Everything (MIT Press, 2023), and: Why Context Matters (Imprint Academic, 2026).
To receive her, we have our very own Milan Stürmer, who has been working in complexity and emergence through Whitehead, he will act as the respondent to her talk.
The presentation will deal with her 2023 MIT Press book, Context Changes Everything: How constraints create coherence. Here's a summary of the presentation:
When we speak of something being a "structural" problem, what do we mean? In particular, how do we understand the causal processes that result in a "structure" (organisms, social organizations, say, as opposed to a clump or a mass of matter). And as importantly, how does a "structure" bring about (cause) changes in its individual components or members? It is not a trivial question because, since the Scientific Revolution of the 16-18th centuries, scientists and philosophers understand by "cause" only transfers of energy -- push-pull, billiard-ball like causation. But clearly a social or ecological structure doesn't "push" its members that way. Nor does it come to be via energy transfers alone.
In philosophy, relations between parts and wholes are called "mereological" but since the time of Newton wholes are considered mere "aggregates" -- masses of stuff whose emergent properties are "epiphenomenal" -- that is, have no causal power. All causes are assumed to be "bottom-up" -- hence the promise of reductionism. As we will these questions I will propose a different approach, one that takes "enabling constraints" to be the driver of coherent wholes.
