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La Méthode #1
La Nature de la nature
Nous avons besoin de ce qui nous aide à penser par nous-même : une méthode. Nous avons besoin d'une méthode de connaissance qui traduise la complexité du réel, reconnaisse l'existence des êtres, approche le mystère des choses. La méthode de la complexité qui s'élabore dans ce premier volume demande : - de concevoir la relation entre ordre/désordre/organisation et d'approfondir la nature de l'organisation. - de ne pas réduire le phénomène à ces éléments constitutifs ni l'isoler (ou l'abstraire) de son environnement. - de ne pas dissocier le problème de la connaissance de la nature de celui de la nature de la connaissance. Tout objet doit être conçu dans sa relation avec un sujet connaissant, lui-même enraciné dans une culture, une société, une histoire.
399 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
15 people are currently reading
258 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Morin
419 books374 followersEdgar Morin (born Edgar Nahoum) is a French philosopher and sociologist who has been internationally recognized for his work on complexity and "complex thought," and for his scholarly contributions to such diverse fields as media studies, politics, sociology, visual anthropology, ecology, education, and systems biology. He holds degrees in history, economics, and law. Though less well known in the United States due to the limited availability of English translations of his over 60 books, Morin is renowned in the French-speaking world, Europe, and Latin America.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Morin's family migrated from the Greek town of Salonica to Marseille and later to Paris, where Edgar was born. He first became tied to socialism in connection with the Popular Front and the Spanish Republican Government during the Spanish Civil War.
When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Edgar fled to Toulouse, where he assisted refugees and committed himself to Marxist socialism. As a member of the French Resistance he adopted the pseudonym Morin, which he would use for the rest of his life. He joined the French Communist Party in 1941. In 1945, Morin married Violette Chapellaubeau and they lived in Landau, where he served as a Lieutenant in the French Occupation army in Germany.
In 1946, he returned to Paris and gave up his military career to pursue his activities with the Communist party. Due to his critical posture, his relationship with the party gradually deteriorated until he was expelled in 1951 after he published an article in Le Nouvel Observateur. In the same year, he was admitted to the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS).
Morin founded and directed the magazine Arguments (1954–1962). In 1959 his book Autocritique was published.
In 1960, Morin travelled extensively in Latin America, visiting Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.He returned to France where he published L'Esprit du Temps.
That same year, French sociologist Georges Friedmann brought him and Roland Barthes together to create a Centre for the Study of Mass Communication that, after several name-changes, became the Edgar Morin Centre of the EHESS, Paris.
Beginning in 1965, Morin became involved in a large multidisciplinary project, financed by the Délégation Générale à la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique in Plozévet.
In 1968, Morin replaced Henri Lefebvre at the University of Nanterre. He became involved in the student revolts that began to emerge in France. In May 1968, he wrote a series of articles for Le Monde that tried to understand what he called "The Student Commune." He followed the student revolt closely and wrote a second series of articles in Le Monde called "The Revolution without a Face," as well as co-authoring Mai 68: La brèche with Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort.
In 1969, Morin spent a year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.
In 1983, he published De la nature de l’URSS, which deepened his analysis of Soviet communism and anticipated the Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Morin was married to Johanne Harrelle, with whom he lived for 15 years.
In 2002, Morin participated in the creation of the International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium.
In addition to being the UNESCO Chair of Complex Thought, Morin is known as a founder of transdisciplinarity and holds honorary doctorates in a variety of social science fields from 21 universities (Messina, Geneva, Milan, Bergamo, Thessaloniki, La Paz, Odense, Perugia, Cosenza, Palermo, Nuevo León, Université de Laval à Québec, Brussels, Barcelona, Guadalajara, Valencia, Vera Cruz, Santiago, the Catholic University of Porto Alegre, the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, and Candido Mendes University Rio de Janeiro.
The University of Messina in Sicily, Ricardo Palma University in Lima, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the French National Research Center in
At the beginning of the 20th century, Morin's family migrated from the Greek town of Salonica to Marseille and later to Paris, where Edgar was born. He first became tied to socialism in connection with the Popular Front and the Spanish Republican Government during the Spanish Civil War.
When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Edgar fled to Toulouse, where he assisted refugees and committed himself to Marxist socialism. As a member of the French Resistance he adopted the pseudonym Morin, which he would use for the rest of his life. He joined the French Communist Party in 1941. In 1945, Morin married Violette Chapellaubeau and they lived in Landau, where he served as a Lieutenant in the French Occupation army in Germany.
In 1946, he returned to Paris and gave up his military career to pursue his activities with the Communist party. Due to his critical posture, his relationship with the party gradually deteriorated until he was expelled in 1951 after he published an article in Le Nouvel Observateur. In the same year, he was admitted to the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS).
Morin founded and directed the magazine Arguments (1954–1962). In 1959 his book Autocritique was published.
In 1960, Morin travelled extensively in Latin America, visiting Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.He returned to France where he published L'Esprit du Temps.
That same year, French sociologist Georges Friedmann brought him and Roland Barthes together to create a Centre for the Study of Mass Communication that, after several name-changes, became the Edgar Morin Centre of the EHESS, Paris.
Beginning in 1965, Morin became involved in a large multidisciplinary project, financed by the Délégation Générale à la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique in Plozévet.
In 1968, Morin replaced Henri Lefebvre at the University of Nanterre. He became involved in the student revolts that began to emerge in France. In May 1968, he wrote a series of articles for Le Monde that tried to understand what he called "The Student Commune." He followed the student revolt closely and wrote a second series of articles in Le Monde called "The Revolution without a Face," as well as co-authoring Mai 68: La brèche with Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort.
In 1969, Morin spent a year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.
In 1983, he published De la nature de l’URSS, which deepened his analysis of Soviet communism and anticipated the Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Morin was married to Johanne Harrelle, with whom he lived for 15 years.
In 2002, Morin participated in the creation of the International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium.
In addition to being the UNESCO Chair of Complex Thought, Morin is known as a founder of transdisciplinarity and holds honorary doctorates in a variety of social science fields from 21 universities (Messina, Geneva, Milan, Bergamo, Thessaloniki, La Paz, Odense, Perugia, Cosenza, Palermo, Nuevo León, Université de Laval à Québec, Brussels, Barcelona, Guadalajara, Valencia, Vera Cruz, Santiago, the Catholic University of Porto Alegre, the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, and Candido Mendes University Rio de Janeiro.
The University of Messina in Sicily, Ricardo Palma University in Lima, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the French National Research Center in
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 9, 2007
I consider this book to be one of Morin's best. Although he is not often listed with the common Cyberneticians, he is right there beside them on all of the ideas.
If sections like:
The organization of organization;
The relations of relations;
The transforming formations and the forming transformation;
all sound like killer sections, this is the book for you.
I'm so excited about this review that I might just re-read this again.
If sections like:
The organization of organization;
The relations of relations;
The transforming formations and the forming transformation;
all sound like killer sections, this is the book for you.
I'm so excited about this review that I might just re-read this again.
August 28, 2025
where system, there complexity. with system as basal complexity, complexity as unity of mutual reciprocation, which is to say: interrelation, so said, the simultaneity of: complementarity, concurrentness, & antagonism, thereby co-presencing, co-implicating, [co-]ing & ec(c)oing. definitions can never reduce, nothing may be known through isolating, only knowing wholes, so knowing hologrammatic, & let it be known, these are formal distinctions, to make distinct is to partition, these partitions but add folds as parts (they could just as well be other partitions), in conjuncting, model not the thing, but co-agent.
paraphrasing: even the atom is realized to no longer be the primary unit: it’s realized as a system of particles in mutual interaction. the particle undergoes not only crisis of order & unity, but especially identity. to define it, we appeal to the interactions in which it participates, which weave it.
applied and rerealized along the 20th c. — this seen more lucidly as a Complexity intruding itself upon the epistemologies in all fields rears its head: atom, cell, star, solar-system, eddy, novel, poem, evolution, body, pattern. the correlative developments of disorder-order-organization-interactions themselves must be traced.
absolute closure, truly closed-systems are impossible, all systems are open-closed: organizationally closed (self-referential loops, boundary-maintaining) yet thermodynamically/informationally open to milieu. universe is not a “closed” system, but the idea of system. as unit, of measure, of unity, & unity as multiplicity. the universe is game (neumann) because of constraints, rules, configurations, looseness of articulation of organized phenomena, and an aleatory win-lose process, also with universe as fire (heraclitus), the big bang as thermic catastrophe, ever-ongoing catastrophe which is genesic (thom), generic, & generative of order and organization (stars, fire-machines).
vicious circles are virtuous cycles when seen as rotativity (recursivity), loop, opening, & so motricity, for emergent wholes. the eddy is part of the river, in which it is nothing but a moment, yet has it’s own identity, with respect to which the river becomes an environment; but having become environment, the river is also part of the eddy. the environment is not only co-present, but also co-organizing. the eddy: is it river-flow which organizes eddy around stone? is it stone which organizes eddy become swirling? is it eddy-system, constituted by the encounter of flow and stone, which organizes itself around itself? all these together: flow, arch, swirling process are co-producers and co-organizers of a generativity which, looping on itself, becomes the eddy.
as the christian to christ, so morin to genesis, so, then, the entire worldview, worldsystem, is aborn into swirl from a triplicity all his own: the genesic + generic + generative. to return to eddy/vortex: eddy is born of an encounter of two antagonistic fluxes, interacting one on the other, are intercombined in a loop, retroacting as whole, on each moment and element of the process (loop itself links opening to closing). this loop constitutes the genesic form. which is at the same time, typical and constant form, and so a generic form, of vortices and eddies. this generic form is itself organizational: organizes the centripetal+centrifugal movement of the flux; it’s entry, circulation, transformation, exit. endlessly rotative movement traps the flux, sucks it in, detours it, wheels it in circle, differentiates it, heterogenizes it, gives it a spiral form, then expels it. this form: which generates the genesic eddy, gives it its generic genus, at every instant generates the organization which regenerates the vortex. thus: genesic, generic, generative. since the eddy/vortex is a wild motor, a machine, it is a generator of kinetic energies (& man learns to domesticate/harness, yet he is machine, even in machining, as much as eddy).
to situate in lineage, see: bateson's ecological mind, ashby's requisite variety, prigogine's order-from-dissipation, maturana-varela's autopoiesis, atlan on noise-as-motor, cybernetic school writ large; later complements: bar-yam on multiscale complexity, ladyman/ross on naturalism's ontology, u. chicago school on networks — morin acts as a nice smither of schema that forges good ‘joints' for this canon (lord knows many a Frenchman has tried) what's sought after though, is, of course, and of course, of path & way, an adjointness of all.
to learn transit-ontology, para-ontology, of ever-moving valuations of One & Many. One & Many as complementary, concurrent, & antagonistic. a sys-cybernetics no longer subordinating ‘communication’ to ‘command’ but find both in proper correlative loop (& so rotative, so motricitous). a new emergence of inhabitable causalities: complex causality, endo-exo-causality, auto-eco-causality. beyond dialectic to dialogics is dialectic & dialogics: the double inscription+implication associating complementarity+concurrentness+antagonism with the eco-logics of its environment. all & more in Morin.
paraphrasing: even the atom is realized to no longer be the primary unit: it’s realized as a system of particles in mutual interaction. the particle undergoes not only crisis of order & unity, but especially identity. to define it, we appeal to the interactions in which it participates, which weave it.
applied and rerealized along the 20th c. — this seen more lucidly as a Complexity intruding itself upon the epistemologies in all fields rears its head: atom, cell, star, solar-system, eddy, novel, poem, evolution, body, pattern. the correlative developments of disorder-order-organization-interactions themselves must be traced.
absolute closure, truly closed-systems are impossible, all systems are open-closed: organizationally closed (self-referential loops, boundary-maintaining) yet thermodynamically/informationally open to milieu. universe is not a “closed” system, but the idea of system. as unit, of measure, of unity, & unity as multiplicity. the universe is game (neumann) because of constraints, rules, configurations, looseness of articulation of organized phenomena, and an aleatory win-lose process, also with universe as fire (heraclitus), the big bang as thermic catastrophe, ever-ongoing catastrophe which is genesic (thom), generic, & generative of order and organization (stars, fire-machines).
vicious circles are virtuous cycles when seen as rotativity (recursivity), loop, opening, & so motricity, for emergent wholes. the eddy is part of the river, in which it is nothing but a moment, yet has it’s own identity, with respect to which the river becomes an environment; but having become environment, the river is also part of the eddy. the environment is not only co-present, but also co-organizing. the eddy: is it river-flow which organizes eddy around stone? is it stone which organizes eddy become swirling? is it eddy-system, constituted by the encounter of flow and stone, which organizes itself around itself? all these together: flow, arch, swirling process are co-producers and co-organizers of a generativity which, looping on itself, becomes the eddy.
as the christian to christ, so morin to genesis, so, then, the entire worldview, worldsystem, is aborn into swirl from a triplicity all his own: the genesic + generic + generative. to return to eddy/vortex: eddy is born of an encounter of two antagonistic fluxes, interacting one on the other, are intercombined in a loop, retroacting as whole, on each moment and element of the process (loop itself links opening to closing). this loop constitutes the genesic form. which is at the same time, typical and constant form, and so a generic form, of vortices and eddies. this generic form is itself organizational: organizes the centripetal+centrifugal movement of the flux; it’s entry, circulation, transformation, exit. endlessly rotative movement traps the flux, sucks it in, detours it, wheels it in circle, differentiates it, heterogenizes it, gives it a spiral form, then expels it. this form: which generates the genesic eddy, gives it its generic genus, at every instant generates the organization which regenerates the vortex. thus: genesic, generic, generative. since the eddy/vortex is a wild motor, a machine, it is a generator of kinetic energies (& man learns to domesticate/harness, yet he is machine, even in machining, as much as eddy).
to situate in lineage, see: bateson's ecological mind, ashby's requisite variety, prigogine's order-from-dissipation, maturana-varela's autopoiesis, atlan on noise-as-motor, cybernetic school writ large; later complements: bar-yam on multiscale complexity, ladyman/ross on naturalism's ontology, u. chicago school on networks — morin acts as a nice smither of schema that forges good ‘joints' for this canon (lord knows many a Frenchman has tried) what's sought after though, is, of course, and of course, of path & way, an adjointness of all.
to learn transit-ontology, para-ontology, of ever-moving valuations of One & Many. One & Many as complementary, concurrent, & antagonistic. a sys-cybernetics no longer subordinating ‘communication’ to ‘command’ but find both in proper correlative loop (& so rotative, so motricitous). a new emergence of inhabitable causalities: complex causality, endo-exo-causality, auto-eco-causality. beyond dialectic to dialogics is dialectic & dialogics: the double inscription+implication associating complementarity+concurrentness+antagonism with the eco-logics of its environment. all & more in Morin.
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August 21, 2022
In fact, 101.
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August 13, 2007Complex systems application to the philosophy of the mind and epistemology. The only weakpoint is that it is too much French!
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June 25, 2016
Al ir a los entornos medidos en parsecs o los de partículas subatómicas hay un fenómeno sobre el que Morin llama la atención y es el de complejidad. Uno de los paradigmas que hay que reconsiderar en la ciencia, es que en la medida de buscar lo más elemental, no se va a encontrar algo más sencillo, porque igualmente hay complejidad inherente a este nivel. La complejidad es el hecho que hay muchas interacciones y sobre todo, hay tres características principales que Morin propone como capitales para la complejidad: la complementariedad, la concurrencia y el antagonismo. En un átomo, las energías que aportan las partículas subatómicas para constituir sistemas emergentes como electrones, neutrones, protones. Unos y otros son complementarios, están “obligados” a viajar en unas trayectorias definidas y a convivir con un opuesto. La materia es energía condensada, eso fue la genial develación de Einstein y depende de bucles, esos bucles o asas cibernéticos que fueron el legado intromisorio del paradigma de información que marcó el siglo XX.
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August 13, 2012Il libro del XXI secolo insieme a La vita della Vita
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews