Arantzazu Saratxaga Arregi

Complexity

Complexity research addresses the interdisciplinary question of how order or patterns can emerge from the diverse interactions between different components, in which the number of unpredictable elements is enormous. Non-linearity, self-organisation and emergence are common features of complex systems. In this context, complexity refers to those systems that generate their own order.

First and foremost, it is about recognising the problem of complexity, now in the hands of algorithmic governmentality, as a collective diagnosis and social challenge. Complexity explores the question of patterns that emerge from interlocking assemblages in self-organising processes. They are complex because their organisation exhibits a high degree of unpredictability. Uncertainty and unpredictability should therefore not hinder action, but rather be incorporated in order to appropriate active agency. But this requires a new way of seeing, a new way of organising thinking and cooperative action. Systemic vision, agile thinking and operational autonomy are the thematic basis for gaining agency in complexity.

Projects

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


Talks

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

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

2025

Eine Gnoseologie der Komplexität: Kontingenz und Asymmetrie
(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.