I translated this interview-conversation with Corriere della Sera, published in the cultural insert “La Lettura,” on the occasion of an important international conference held in April (2024). An interview that aroused much interest in Italy and I hope it will be read abroad as well. I hope it will be of interest to you.
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Interview with Piero Dominici by Ida Bozzi, from the weekly cultural insert “La Lettura del Corsera” of the daily national newspaper Corriere della Sera, published on March 31, 2024:
TEACHING UNPREDICTABILITY: WE ARE LIVING IN A NEW NATURE
The sociologist and philosopher Piero Dominici reflects on the themes of complexity and Artificial Intelligence, giving us a preview of the topics that will be discussed in the upcoming “Intercultura” conference.
The world is becoming more and more complex, owing to globalization and to the effects of AI (Artificial Intelligence). But what does “complexity” mean, and how can it be coped with? On this topic, The Fondazione Intercultura (Interculture Foundation) is bringing together many international experts for the conference Abitare le diversità: culture e complessità nuove (Inhabiting diversity: new cultures and complexities), which will be held in Florence from Thursday Aprile 4th to Saturday April 6th. Among them, the sociologist Piero Dominici, author of the volume Oltre I cigni neri. L’urgenza di aprirsi all’indeterminato (Beyond Black Swans. Inhabiting Indeterminacy), published by FrancoAngeli. “Black Swans”, which are the unpredictable factors of reality, are part of the evidence of complexity.
But what is “complexity”?
«Apart from how it is often represented, complexity is (and is carrier of) a gaze, an epistemology, a thought system. At the same time, it is a structural, connotative feature of “organic compounds”, that is, of all living bodies and forms. Recalling the “complex” nature of subjects, phenomena, or processes means underlining their systemic and relational dimension, with the profound awareness that these “objects” of study are in reality “systems” with non-linear evolutive dynamics, capable of self-organization, and characterized, as complex beings, by “emergent properties”, which can be observed only while the systems are evolving. To quote one of my old mantras: the opposite of complexity is not simplification, but rather reductionism».
The grand illusion of control…
«Humans have always believed themselves capable of being able to control everything, to maintain order and equilibrium. A continuous tension, due mainly to our incompleteness and fragility, to our condition of “limited rationality”, to cite the economist Herbert Simon; and at the same time, an aspiration linked to the confusion being made between “complicated systems” (which are mechanical and manageable) and “complex systems” (which are not manageable, and are like organisms). But complexity is not a problem-solving paradigm, nor is it design thinking, with which it is often erroneously associated. And the solutions, in their being temporary and never “prototypes”, require a systemic view of problems, to identify connections and interdependencies, avoiding shortcuts or breakdowns into parts».
Aren’t the parts, that is, the elementary data that we obtain from reality, sufficient?
«The data are fundamental. But they can never speak for themselves; they are not self-evident: it must be researchers and experts to make them speak. How? By trying to identify the connections and correlations. Therefore, the challenges of this hypertechnological civilization are first and foremost epistemological and educational. The extraordinary scientific discoveries and technological innovations underway are irreversibly transforming our forms of knowledge».
What is going on with the proliferation of AI?
«I have been speaking of a “new epistemological fracture” ever since the mid-nineties. Artificial Intelligence is an extraordinary opportunity that risks remaining exclusively in the hands of more or less enlightened elites, as well as continuing to be being governed by powerful private subjects. This is also linked to the issue of transparency regarding algorithms. As far as education, for example, is concerned: the risk is that of equating the necessity of radically rethinking education with technological change, delegating everything to technology, and bringing human beings to “think like machines” (incapable of thinking of the indeterminate or of reaching significant levels of abstraction). It is necessary to go beyond the “false dichotomies”, like that which considers technology to be neutral and “outside” of culture. We continue to see scientific studies, knowledge and skills as the opposite of humanistic knowledge or studies in the humanities. Instead, technology is culture. We live in artificial environments, in a “new nature”, and it will be of little use to face our problems by marginalizing the human. But there will be no substitution; on the contrary, the human factor will become even more determining».
In your essays you speak of a “mechanism-society” …
«Besides technocracy and technoscience, the civilization of automation is founded on grand illusions, which are fueled by scientific discoveries and connection technologies. And under the illusory certainty of being able to eliminate error in all of its forms (deviance, conflict, unpredictability, disorder…), this civilization continues to be designed as though it were an enormous “mechanism”, made up of interchangeable parts, cogs and gears. The logics of this system are translated into procedures, regulations, educational cultures, cultures of evaluation and research, which augment the conviction of being able to convert quality into quantity, measuring everything. The hegemonic evaluation culture that is imposed in schools and universities comes to mind».
How can a culture of error and unpredictability be created?
«The question, I repeat, is epistemological and educational. From the first years of life on, from the first years of school on, error is too often stigmatized, as are emotions and creativity. The illusion of being able to eliminate error denies the fundamental presupposition of any kind of learning and of scientific research itself. At times, researchers are trained to seek whatever will confirm their hypotheses and theories, rather than attempting to refute them. On an educational plane, it is urgent to contrast the “great mistake”: that of considering that for the civilization of automation, all that are needed are “technical fields of knowledge”, producers of precision and calculation (the STEM disciplines), and (hyper)specializations. Even in the midst of emergent uncertainties, we continue to teach control and rationality, with subsequent fallout in terms of psychic and social unease. Educating towards unpredictability implicates destabilizing dogmatic forms of knowledge and consolidated practices, overturning the way in which we observe and think about reality (and the way we teach how to think about it). Observing can never be external or neutral: what we observe is “nature” exposed to our methods of investigation, to quote Werner Heisenberg. Hence, we need to prepare ourselves for coexistence with unpredictability and with what cannot be observed, instead of using knowledge of what has happened before, or models/praxes that have always worked but which preclude innovation and change».
An approach and research since 1995
#QuoteTheAuthors
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Life, study and scientific research cannot be kept separate (an old illusion). And so, as always…
I share with pleasure a (very) short selection of scientific publications:
1. P.Dominici, “Democracy is Complexity. Social Transformation from Below” https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/smp/article/view/15009 , in SMP
#OpenAccess #PeerReviewed
2. Dominici, P. (2023), “Beyond the Emergency Civilization: The Urgency of Educating Toward Unpredictability”, Sengupta, E. (Ed.) Higher Education in Emergencies: Best Practices and Benchmarking (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 53), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 25-45. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120230000053003
3. From Emergency to Emergence. Learning to inhabit complexity and to expect the unexpected”, in Scientific Journal “Class A”. 🌎 Pdf https://academia.edu/resource/work/99942554
⬇️⬇️⬇️🔴
4. “Beyond the Darkness of our Age. For a Non-Mechanistic View of Complex Organization as Living Organisms” in #RTSA
http://rtsa.eu/RTSA_2_2022_Dominici.pdf?fs=e&s=cl #PeerReviewed
“The distinction between ‘society-mechanism’ and ‘society-organism’ – on which I have been working and doing research for many years – is linked to the confusion we continue to make, in educational, social, economic, social and cultural terms, between ‘complicated systems’ (manageable, predictable) and ‘complex systems’ (unpredictable, irreversible and marked by ‘emergent properties’).
La distinction entre “société-mécanisme” et “société-organisme” – sur laquelle je travaille et fais des recherches depuis de nombreuses années – est liée à la confusion que nous continuons à faire, en termes éducatifs, sociaux, économiques, sociaux et culturels, entre “systèmes compliqués” (gérables, prévisibles) et “systèmes complexes” (imprévisibles, irréversibles et marqués par des “propriétés émergentes”)”
#QuotetheAuthors #CitaregliAutori
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4. Dominici, P. The weak link of democracy and the challenges of educating toward global citizenship. Prospects (2022). UNESCO
Here’s the link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11125-022-09607-8#citeas Springer Nature – #PeerReviewed
👉 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-022-09607-8
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Research Article
5. The Digital Mockingbird: Anthropological Transformation and the “New Nature”, in World Futures.The Journal of New Paradigm, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, Feb. 2022.
#Routledge #research #transdisciplinarity #education #AI #FutureofEducation #ComplexSystems #EducationForAll
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6. ”La Gran Equivocación: Replantear la educación y la formación virtual para la “sociedad hipercompleja”, in “Comunicación y Hombre”.Número 18. Año 2022
👉 https://academia.edu/resource/work/71194859
#PeerReviewed
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7. ”Beyond the Darkness of our Age. For a Non-Mechanistic View of Complex Organization as Living Organisms” in RTSA
👉 http://rtsa.eu/RTSA_2_2022_Dominici.pdf?fs=e&s=cl #PeerReviewed
8. ”From Below: Roots and Grassroots of Societal Transformation, The Social Construction of Change”, in CADMUS, 2021 #PeerReviewed
“That systemic change must begin from grassroots communities and single individuals and groups, and by definition can never be a top-down imposition, implicates a necessary rethinking of our educational institutions, which are still based on logics of separation and on “false dichotomies” (quote)
http://cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-4/issue-5/essay5-social-construction-change
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9. ”Educating for the Future in the Age of Obsolescence”,
This article was peer-reviewed and selected as one of the “outstanding papers” presented at the 2019 IEEE 18th International Congress.
👉 https://academia.edu/resource/work/44784439
10. ”For an Inclusive Innovation. Healing the fracture between the Human and the technological*” #PeerReviewed
“Objects as Systems. The strategic role of Education”
👉 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40309-017-0126-4/ in European Journal of Future Research, SPRINGER Edu …__________
11. ”A New Paradigm in Global Higher Education for Sustainable Development and Human Security”, November, 2021 | BY G.JACOBS, J. RAMANATHAN, R. WOLFF, R.PRICOPIE, P.DOMINICI, A.ZUCCONI, in CADMUS, Vol.IV, 2021.
https://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-4/issue-5/new-paradigm-global-higher-education
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11.”Controversies on hypercomplexity and on education in the hypertechnological era”
Link to PDF https://www.academia.edu/44785185/Controversies_about_Hypercomplexity_and_Education_cvs_15_11dom
#PeerReviewed
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12. ”Communication and the SOCIAL PRODUCTION of Knowledge. A ‘new social contract’ for the ‘society of individuals’
https://academia.edu/resource/work/44804068
#Research #PeerReviewed
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13. ”Education, FakeNews and the Complexity of Democracy”.
“The real problems we are facing today are not the fake news, post-truths, deep fakes, or disinformation of various kinds and origins, but a socially constructed pre-disposition to conformism; in short, the decline of democracy. These are not problems merely of technology and cannot be solved by technology alone” (quote).
👉 https://www.francoangeli.it/Riviste/schedaRivista.aspx?IDArticolo=61331&Tipo=Articolo%20PDF&lingua=it&idRivista=177 #PeerReview
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An approach and research since 1995
#research #networking #education #RethinkingEducation #complexity #CriticalThinking #cultures #DigitalTransformation #HumanEcosystems #Technology #ParadigmShift #Hypercomplexity #FutureOfEducation #EducationForAll #EpistemologyOfError (since 1995) #WAAS2025 #UNESCO #APHELEIA2025
