Complexity theory for complexity reduction? Revisiting the ontological and epistemological basis of complexity science with Critical Realism

Bibliographic Data

ID8975014
AuthorsYi Yang (0000-0002-9729-8522, School of Government Peking University Beijing China, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume54
Issue4
Pages368-383
Publication date2024-01-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jtsb.12412
OpenAlexW4390583905
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited86

Complexity theory (CT) identifies our social system as a contingent and emergent product of non‐linear interactions between existing patterns and events. However, CT scholars carrying out various empirical applications have often adopted constructivist positions that disallow the separate existence of social systems and agency, thereby preventing effective analysis of their interactions. Instead, with the help of Critical Realism (CR), we offer a realist complexity approach that sees complexity in terms of the distinction between the domains of the Real, the Actual, and the Empirical, when existing studies of CT still work with a flat ontology that collapses the three domains into one (the Empirical domain). Our non‐conflationary CR‐CT approach thus argues that a satisfactory explanation of social complexity cannot be at the level of agential experience (the Empirical domain) or at the level of human and systematic events (the Actual domain) but needs to identify causal mechanisms (in the Real domain) of such events. It then combines this depth ontology (that distinguishes the three reality domains) with epistemological relativism (that underscores the contingent character of knowledge claims) to argue that though our knowledge and complexity reduction techniques are socially constructed, it hardly follows that the ontological dimension of reality (spreading across the three domains) is always affected by our complexity reduction efforts at the epistemological dimension in the Empirical domain

Agency (philosophy · Critical realism (philosophy of perception · Dimension (graph theory · Domain (mathematical analysis · Empirical research · Epistemology · Ontology · Realism · Relativism · Social constructivism · Sociology · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Critical Realism in Sociology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics