World of complexity and its observer

The project's Creator and moderator — Julia V. Sineokaya

Abstract

Participants in the dialogue reviewed the concept of complexity within the context of the multiplicity of its definitions and demonstrated that in the epistemological perspective complexity cannot be reduced to its objective or subjective dimensions. Complexity is a time-unfolding, becoming a network of events that are determinated in relation to the past and as uncertain in relation to the future. An assumption is advanced that the post-nonclassical complexity has ‘quantum-like properties’. A new concept is introduced, that is an observer of temporal complexity. The assumption is based on the inner connection between the problems of understanding complexity, on the one hand, and quantum mechanics where the concepts ‘observer’, ‘observability’, ‘contingency’, ‘contextuality’ form a recursively linked conceptual cluster, on the other. The thinking through this concept is focused on a finding ways to overcome the Cartesian delineation of extended and unextended substances and to include consciousness in the context of understanding the problems of post-nonclassical complexity as a key interdisciplinary concept.