Complexity Science and Commoning
*This is a section in Free, Fair and Alive. I personally am very interested in the intersection of complexity science and commoning.
Complexity science has important things to say about the commons, too, because it sees the world as a dynamic, evolving set of living, integrated systems.
They both have a focus on the relationships between things, not just the things themselves.
a shift towards a relational ontology has created a new paradigm of discovery, complexity science, which is revolutionizing biology, chemistry, evolutionary sciences, physics, economics, and social sciences, among other fields.
Doughnut Economics includes this relational ontology in a framework for ecomonics.
Kate Raworth, in her brilliant book Doughnut Economics, has proposed a real-world economic framework that recognizes a new ontology — that people are social and relational (not rational and individualistic); that the world is dynamically complex (not mechanical and tending toward equilibrium); and that our economic systems must be regenerative by design.
By viewing the world through this window — a relational ontology that moves beyond mechanical metaphors and individualism — it becomes possible to offer much better explanations for all sorts of human and ecological phenomena.
We can begin to understand a commons as a life-form, not as a "resource," and as an organic, integrated system, not a collection of discrete parts.
Yes I like this. The commons as a complex system and as a life-form that persists. One can then see how things such as homeostasis and autopoesis apply to it. I think this is where Andreas Weber takes things.
The window on reality that a commons expresses is more encompassing and real (in our estimation!) than ontologies that consign relational dynamics to the background as “exogenous variables.”
The philosopher and biologist Andreas Weber has expressed the view of being that we take in this book: "The world is not populated by singular, autonomous, sovereign beings. It is comprised of a constantly oscillating network of dynamic interactions in which one thing changes through the change of another. The relationship counts, not the substance."
1. Elsewhere
1.1. In my garden
Notes that link to this note (AKA backlinks).