This work deliberately positions itself beyond the dominant model- and simulation-based approaches to complexity research. While these approaches primarily conceive of complexity as a phenomenon that can be mathematically formalized, algorithmically simulated, and predictively managed, the present perspective adopts a philosophical–epistemological approach. The focus is on the conditions under which complexity is produced as an object of scientific knowledge.
Drawing on the categories of asymmetry, contingency, and uncertainty, complexity is understood as an epistemic limit situation in which irreversibility, non-necessity, and constrained predictability are constitutive. Digital modeling and simulation thus appear not as neutral tools, but as epistemic practices that simultaneously generate, structure, and delimit complexity.
Against this background, cybernetics—particularly second-order cybernetics—is highlighted as a form of epistemic field research. It conceives of knowledge as a situated, recursive process within complex systems and marks the transition from representational modeling to reflexive, operative knowledge.
Projects
09.2026 – 12. 2026
Cybernetics of Complexity
Researchproject on development.
03.2025 – 03. 2026
Paradoxes of Complexity: Philosophical and Scientific Discourise Analysis of the concept of order.
T-core.re. Transcisciplinarity and Complexity Research. Excellence Chair AMIDEX Foundation Aix-Marseille University.
Project in development
10.2024 – 12. 2024
Why complexity is ALSO a question of philosophy
Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Kollaboration mit dem WIN Projekt Komplexitätsreduktion)
09.2023 – 08. 2024
Epistemology of complexity based on a conceptual-historical discourse analysis of entropy.
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow,FRIAS (Frieburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludgwigs Universität Freiburg)
07.2021 – 10. 2021
An epistemology of complexity – with Heinz von Foerster.
Stadt Wien
Lectures
2026
Der Kreislauf: Das Pharmakon der Asymmetrien. Eine technikphilosophsiche Lesart des Verhältnisses von Zirkularität und Entropie.
(The Cycle: The Pharmakon of Asymmetries.
A Philosophy of Technology Reading of the Relationship between Circularity and Entropy)
AG Medienphilosophie, Essen.
2024
Digitalisierung & Epistemologien der Komplexität. Beobachtung, Messung & Reduktion.
Zentrum für Europäischen Wissenschaften (ZeM), Potsdam.
Digitalisierungsschub und Komplexität.
Worksop, Peter Weibel Institut für Digitale Kulturen; Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Wien
2023
The complexity turn as a metaphor for a paradigm shift.
FRIAS Lecture, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Epistemologies of complexity on the basis of a discourse analysis of the concept of entropy.
FRIAS Lecture, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.
Endophysics and the complexity of seeing.
International Ontology Congress, Donostia.
2021
Uncertainty as epistemological tool of complexity.
Congress, WOSC 2020-World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics 18th Institute of Control Sciences of Russian Academy & Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Epistemologien der Komplexität.
Tagung, Konstellationen Wissensansprüche zwischen Kunst, Philosophie und Politik, Universität Tübingen
Teaching
12. 2025
Complexity Class, in:
Los bosques como sistemas complejos -curso de campo.
Oregon University, Canada University, Lleida University.
SoSe 2025
Epistemologien der Komplexität.
(Epistemologies of complexity)
Institute of Philosophy, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg
SoSe 2024
Epistemologische Probleme der Komplexitätswende.
(Epistemological problems of the complexity turn)
Institute of Physics, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg
SoSe 2023
Philosophien der Komplexität.
(Philosophies of complexity)
Summer Academy in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts & StadtWien
WS 2022/23
Mit ökologischen Augen sehen: Medialität, Relationalität und Black Box als Tools für die Beobachtung der Komplexität.
(Seeing with ecological eyes: Mediality, relationality and black box as tools for observing complexity.)
MA, Media Studies, University of Potsdam
Komplexität und Kommunikation.
(Complexity and Communication)
BA, Module Science problematized, University of Leuphana
SoSe 2022
Epistemologien der Komplexität.
(Epistemologies of Complexity)
BA, Philosophy, University of Vienna
WS 2021/22
Paradoxien der Kommunikation.
(Paradoxs of Communication)
BA & MA, Media Studies, University ofPotsdam
WS 2019/20
Prozessphilosophien und Medienphilosophie.
(Processphilosophies & Mediaphilosophy)
BA & MA, Media Theory, University of Applied Arts, Vienna.
Wissensformen und Darstellungsformen der Entropie.
(Forms of knowledge and forms of representation of entropy).
MA, Media Studies, University of Potsdam.
Writings
2026
Entropy and the Threshold of Order
Asymmetry, Irreversibility, and Contingency — An Epistemology of Complexity
(Habilitation thesis)
2025
Review of Merz Art between System and Chaos: Complexity and Dynamics in Kurt Schwitters,
Yearbook for Philosophy of Complex Systems, 1 (2025): 249–252
2025
Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty: A Conversation with David Familian,
Yearbook for Philosophy of Complex Systems, 1 (2025): 235–248.
2026
Vertrauen als Mechanismus der Komplexitätsreduktion
.
(Trust as a Mechanism of Complexity Reduction)
The Future of Trust: Trust by Design. Innsbruck University Press
(In Bearbeitung)
2024
Heinz von Foerster´s Operational Epistemology: Orientation enclaves for insight into Complexity.
in: Kybernets Journal.
Jacob Taube´s Rede der Eschatologie in Revision
in: Julian Kiefer, Christian Loos (Hg.) Geschichtsphilosophie und Eschatologie. Perspektiven nach Jacob Taubes, LIT Verlag
2023
A Reconstruction of Epistemological Foundations of Cybernetics. The First Steps in Epistemologies of Complexity
in: Philosophy Kitchen, n.18: Cibernetica. Prospettive sul pensiero sistemico.
2020
Immunitas im Zeitalter des Neganthropozäns: Die Kompensationslogik in der Weltoffenheit,
in: Der Anthropos im Anthropozän. Die Wiederkehr des Menschen im Moment seiner vermeintlich endgültigen Verabschiedung. Berlin: De Gruyter, 168-188.