"Know thyself": aphorism that locates or returns us to the most essential and valuable of the Greek philosophical tradition: the importance of the first essential knowledge without which no authentic knowledge could begin. Before starting any knowledge process, it is necessary to analyze, that is, to know the own capacities that I have to carry out said project: I cannot leave without making some preparations as one who must have everything planned before starting any sailing trip. What resources do I have to know how far I can go. In the case of knowledge, it is necessary to previously know who I am as a subject that initiates a knowledge process, what resources and above all what limitations or what limited elements I have. Today especiallybefore the perspective of a more complex or problematic knowledge as it is intended to develop is when it is most necessary to analyze the implications of this famous Greek aphorism. Knowing yourself in this context means that before starting a scientific research process, you must first investigate what resources I have to start and carry out that process. This is where we find the first feature of the complexity of the knowing process: knowing is not a linear process that begins at A and has to reach point B immediately or successively. Knowing is a complex process because it is not just about starting from a certain moment said process to arrive at its development or objective as it had been intended to do in Modernity through the famous “scientific method”.Knowledge is complex because it is always required to be reflecting not only from the theory that we are trying to "apply" to reach a certain result in the respective scientific research process but because it is a constant and continuous problematic reflection: I am always it demands to be thinking about what as a subject of knowledge I am doing: not only if I am applying the respective laws or rules of the scientific method but above all how my epistemological or rational analysis of what I am doing is: knowing myself implies that I must be acting throughout the process of knowing as the Greek philosopher when he stated that there was another more essential or indispensable matter before starting any project of knowledge or rational approach to the real: self-knowledge,to question how I am proceeding at each specific moment of scientific research.
Right now we are talking about an epistemology of complexity because it is not just about understanding how the process of scientific knowledge is carried out or should be carried out so that it is really a process of scientific knowledge and does not deviate or become anything, but more important or essential than this same point, we must be vigilant about the way we are proceeding as subjects of knowledge. The complexity of current epistemology lies precisely on this specific point: it is necessary to reflect on more elements or problems than we have hitherto addressed or taken into account. Bachelard had already intuited this whole dimension of epistemology when he spoke of an epistemology of the subject or of "a psychoanalysis of objective knowledge."
Although the need to start from this essential self-knowledge is accepted in order to really know or carry out scientific research in all its complexity, at present it is when there are more obstacles to do so because effectiveness or efficiency is being demanded in any research project that is carried out. start. Results must be presented as soon as possible or, in other words, it cannot be carried out except what has previously been approved or financed, and time cannot be spent on "psychological discussions or speculations". When the “epistemological obstacle” is mentioned, it is believed that it is everything that refers to the resistance that opposes the real to be known or addressed in a process of knowledge.The obstacle is not seen on the side of subjectivity, that is, everything that prevents starting a process of authentic knowledge from the point of view of the subject, from the initial inertia or resistance recognized as laziness or habits that bind the project of knowing or that they restrain that desire to know, which limit and restrict them to take any idea or opinion as an explanation of what we see or experience directly.
"Knowing yourself" then, implies starting to recognize all this tangle of obstacles that entangle each other and confuse the same subject in his project of knowing. The overcoming of this set of epistemological obstacles of a subjective nature does not occur by itself but it is necessary to assume a true self-criticism or metatheoretical reflection to promote that state of rational vigilance in order to initiate a true approach to the problem to be investigated. Instead of immediately leaving towards the object of knowledge, that is, reality, to try to approach it or assume it as such,what it is about is to return to our own subjectivity or to the processes that are carried out in the subject and that until now had been left aside or at once had been avoided and avoided because it was believed that they corresponded more to a psychology than the science in question we were working on. A mathematical physicist, for example, is not going to pose problems of this nature, he is required to go directly to the subject. "Get to the point," he is constantly warned.
Now, the complexity of knowledge as it is currently accepted implies addressing this entire layer of theoretical problems that until now had been avoided. The epistemology of complexity implies taking knowledge of all this expanded problem, addressed and recognized as such by the scientists themselves. (Take, for example, the case of S. Hawkins, for whom the process of knowing itself was a complex project that in turn involved matheoretic questions and that still went beyond the modern and even postmodern context in which the sciences had been located physical and natural).
La actual era informática en la que tienen tanta vigencia las nuevas tecnologías de la información con el acceso a través de Internet a las bases de datos de toda índole ha evidenciado aún más este carácter complejo del conocimiento y de la problemática teórica en torno a él. Los conocimientos ya no se pueden tomar como meros datos reunidos en teorías cerradas o sistematizadas a partir de grandes dogmas o principios generales o universales, sino que están articulados de tal modo que sus imbricaciones son irracionales o desbordan lo que hasta ahora se venía teniendo como racional al estilo de un Kant, o un Hegel, por ejemplo. La articulación se da más bien por problemas que desbordan el sentido mismo de las teorías, es decir por algún problema metateórico que no estaba dado de antemano del tal modo que alguien pudiera predeterminar los pasos a seguir y la teoría como explicación a la que habría que llegar de manera ineludible. Como se decía desde la Historia de las Ciencias, en una ciencia nada está dado, todo hay que plantearlo. O sea, una ciencia no es un conjunto sistemático de contenidos o de conceptos ya estructurados o planteados. Una ciencia es más bien un contexto teórico y metateórico para plantear nuevos problemas. Nada está dado para ser recibido, aprendido y repetido en forma indefinida. Una formación científica es la capacidad para descubrir y sobre todo saber plantear nuevos problemas. Estas nuevas redes de la comunicación tan dominantes actualmente han permitido descubrir y hacer evidentes estas nuevas formas de acceder a los conocimientos. Estos, más que unos contenidos cerrados y sistematizados que habría que estudiar, esto es, sacar de los libros ubicados en las bibliotecas públicas o privadas, están constituidos por un conjunto de acciones en que participan y se comunican muchos sujetos de conocimiento. (Pensemos lo que representa la Wikipedia: un proyecto enciclopédico elaborado con la participación de los mismos internautas a nivel mundial).
More than a rationality to structure knowledge, the criterion of communication prevails, that is, ideas matter more when they are communicated in these networks in which subjects of whom the name is scarcely known participate and suddenly only a photo uploaded from your office or workplace that may already be your home. It is no longer reflection as thought centered on a Cartesian subject (cogito) but communication as such that prevails as a guarantee of truth or acceptance or criteria for the dissemination of these new "truths". These are considered as such if they have been disseminated and accepted by many, hopefully by almost everyone who can access them. Hence the importance of the famous "like" as a guarantee of its dissemination and acceptance.
Communicating is here sharing knowledge, (it does not matter that there is a lot and it does not matter its validity or its truth) extending it as a “trail” so that more and more passive recipients of said received content cover. Knowledge becomes "news", data, which must be delivered to new recipients or avid subjects of this type of content who will always be waiting for the new that is being disseminated to be consumed. In this communication process, it is being claimed that these contents are appropriated by many individuals in each time new networks of Internet users that are becoming universal networks. Thus a new sense of truth is imposed: what is accepted by all who receive these supposed "true knowledge".Since no one begins to doubt or even inquire who or how they have been produced and it is only sufficient that they be accompanied, if possible, by an image as the only guarantee of their "truth". There is no place for discussion or reflection on these received contents. They are accepted and ready: if you access them with just “click”, it is already a guarantee that you have fulfilled the objective of dissemination and extension and thus we see how “false truths” have become everything and everything in "Truths" that everyone tends to accept as such only because they have read or obtained it on the Internet and others have "confirmed" it. A statement is considered true if it is accepted by many with a tendency to be for all and this is enough to take it as true. Thus we come to the famous "post-truth", that is,what cannot pass through the test of truth, or its "verification", but since it has been achieved with other criteria, it must be accepted as such.
Now, an epistemology of complexity is not that you have to start and accept this state of affairs, but you have to enter to analyze and question why this complex situation occurs and how a new situation is being imposed. criterion of truth and a new ethic: the one that is validated by many or by almost all: as "they" said and spread it, that is how it should be and that is how we must accept it and proceed to retransmit it to be "good" with everyone because these "all "(Unnamed or anonymous subjects) have thus imposed and spread it. It is the law of the mass, of the flock, as it is very well expressed in the popular adage: "where Vicente goes, where the people go". We are being led by those who manage social networks like the herd that goes to the cliff. And so it is said: there is no ethics here.The only valid thing is that it is followed by everyone and that's enough. There is nothing more to ask or ask. Here ends everything for this knowledge turned into news: let's keep opening pages or windows to see other more "new" content that may interest or excite us. There is no longer an ethic that is worthwhile because it is no longer looking for who or what determines the correct procedure in this new access to knowledge that is supposed to be true or that is not even questioned as to its state or character of truth. It is simply imposed because they have spread it and it has been accepted by all. These ideas or contents are accepted without taking into account an ethic or a philosophy as a guarantee of access to the true.Here ends everything for this knowledge turned into news: let's keep opening pages or windows to see other more "new" content that may interest or excite us. There is no longer an ethic that is worthwhile because it is no longer looking for who or what determines the correct procedure in this new access to knowledge that is supposed to be true or that is not even questioned as to its state or character of truth. It is simply imposed because they have spread it and it has been accepted by all. These ideas or contents are accepted without taking into account an ethic or a philosophy as a guarantee of access to the true.Here ends everything for this knowledge turned into news: let's keep opening pages or windows to see other more "new" content that may interest or excite us. There is no longer an ethic that is worthwhile because it is no longer looking for who or what determines the correct procedure in this new access to knowledge that is supposed to be true or that is not even questioned as to its state or character of truth. It is simply imposed because they have spread it and it has been accepted by all. These ideas or contents are accepted without taking into account an ethic or a philosophy as a guarantee of access to the true.There is no longer an ethic that is worthwhile because it is no longer looking for who or what determines the correct procedure in this new access to knowledge that is supposed to be true or that is not even questioned as to its state or character of truth. It is simply imposed because they have spread it and it has been accepted by all. These ideas or contents are accepted without taking into account an ethic or a philosophy as a guarantee of access to the true.There is no longer an ethic that is worthwhile because it is no longer looking for who or what determines the correct procedure in this new access to knowledge that is supposed to be true or that is not even questioned as to its state or character of truth. It is simply imposed because they have spread it and it has been accepted by all. These ideas or contents are accepted without taking into account an ethic or a philosophy as a guarantee of access to the true.
Questioning this current state of affairs in accessing theoretical content (so called because it is what we now think about most) is one of the tasks assigned to an epistemology of complexity. Just as Bachelard and other authors who participated in his main approaches were questioning the scientific revolutions that occurred in the 20th century, now in the current context it is necessary to question to understand, understand and, if possible, redirect the use of these social networks, even if especially for the exercise of scientific knowledge and scientific training in students who must access knowledge using this new computer technology.
In this context, we define the possible critical approaches for an epistemology of complexity: Cartesian reason is no longer taken as the criterion of truth of knowledge, since recognizing the new conditions of production of scientific theories, its character of truth can no longer be defined by the evidence that a subject could demonstrate by itself or in itself. It is no longer intended the demonstration or peremptory conviction that a subject could reach by himself or in himself. The need to communicate with other subjects is imposed in an exercise of communication and confrontation with other projects within the same transdisciplinary cultural context. In this sense, from the experimentation and exposition of theories,As a result of these empirical and experimental tests, a critical and theoretical confrontation has been carried out in the various cultural contexts. We can speak then of a new sociocultural context to validate the theories that try to be defined as true. Thus, social networks acquire all their importance in this process of construction and consolidation of scientific theories since they are the most appropriate and accessible methodological resources for this task and indirectly, an essential importance would be given to computer technology so that it is not Keep reducing to spread trills in all areas of communication. In this way, communicability becomes an essential context in this entire postmodern scientific project.This would be the criterion of the dialogicity of thought according to Gadamer, which not only rests on the relationship of an I with a You according to M. Buber, who in turn had influenced this specific point in Gadamer himself, but transcends it by proposing that there are several (or all who could assume themselves as Me) who can communicate with others (the You) in these virtual relationships that are being determined and consolidated as such.
An epistemology of complexity must begin to confirm that there is no "royal way" for scientific knowledge. This is conceived rather as a project, a construct in which those who work on it participate. Above all, this means that a scientific theory is not a given whole before we begin to work on it as something we receive to be applied or taught or replicated repeatedly and indefinitely. In other words, an epistemology of complexity must begin to question this and other paradigms with which we have identified so far. It is necessary to know how to pose a problem of knowledge or research and not try to arrive at its immediate effective response or suppose that theories should give us an answer to every new problem or hypothesis that we make about the real. In this sense,The history of science is inexcusable in current scientific work, understood not as a simple journey into the past of a science with a merely encyclopedic interest, but because to understand and above all understand current scientific work, one must know how problems were posed and how (in what epistemological and cultural context) his answers were constructed, that is, the scientific theories in force today.
Dialogicity allows us to understand this communicability of the postmodern scientific project: it is through the dialogical character that we are currently verifying and discovering how scientific theories are constructed. Theories that are being built can be communicated because they are discourses and this is how they must be disseminated or made understandable. When preparing reports to make the state of the matter known, when a thesis is presented to be debated by peers in scientific projects, when a theoretical answer to a hypothesis that has been investigated is sustained, etc., we are faced with the need of converting into discourse, that is, into language to be understood by other subjects who would be in the same range of communicability, that is,at the same level of theoretical competence to be receiving subjects in these different acts of theoretical communication. Dialogicity is implicit in these different acts of communication. We communicate these different discursive contents to be able to understand each other through them, that is, to establish a constant and continuous dialogue while each scientific theory lasts and is built. But these different dialogical moments can be carried out by the dialogicity that we are finding here as essential to all scientific theory in postmodernity. The epistemology of complexity allows us to analyze not only how this dialogicity occurs in these various orders of knowledge, but it also allows us to understand that there is to investigate (discover, reflect or become critically aware) of this dialogical nature of knowledge.Dialogicity is not only being able to communicate at the various moments of a scientific project but being able to discover that scientific theories as linguistic discourses can and should be communicated at those various moments of their constitution as such: that is why at these moments when only we would be communicating as scientists (or participating subjects) in some of these moments of construction of knowledge -by the mere fact of communicating them- we can "take up" a certain hypothesis and state it better or make it more understandable so that it is understood by their respective scientific pairs or recipients of the same. In other words, it is all a linguistic work in order to achieve better communication. Then we must become critically aware of this order of linguisticity as a support for communicability.But it is not a matter of saying that we can communicate at these levels of scientificity because we handle or have a certain language (Spanish or English) and that therefore this is evident and as everyone does, because this would be obvious, it is something that it is already given and there should be no time or energy devoted to thematizing on these linguistic issues. But it is that this is the so-called "linguistic turn" of postmodern philosophical and epistemological thought that has been working from the Circles of Vienna and Prague and that precisely the epistemology of complexity must become increasingly conscious in our scientific context and cultural.
Thinking about linguisticity is not only verifying and discovering the importance of language as such in these various moments of production and dissemination of scientific works, but working on the concepts articulated as linguistic elements of scientific theories, that is, that the constituent elements of theories They are articulated, first of all, as elements of a linguistic scientific theory, that is, produced and disseminated as essentially linguistic. But not only because in order to speak and present this theory in writing, you have to follow linguistic parameters (which would be the same as when we speak or write in everyday life, that is, in everyday discourse, when we would not be doing science) but because - and here would be the essence of this "linguistic turn", the statements,concepts and theoretical discourses at all levels are articulated in an intrinsic linguistic complexity that only the "initiates" in it could account for. Now, scientific training is not only the healthy competence to navigate (enter and manage) within a certain scientific theory as a linguistic construct, but the linguistic level allows us to start and continue this journey within each scientific theory. The complexity of this character of linguisticity, as has been verified by an epistemology of complexity, encompasses or implies two equally essential aspects: the linguistic nature of a theory is constituted by the successivity of its linguistic elements, when they are presented or arranged one after on the other, following the temporal succession.(We imagine it horizontally as it is the daily sensation of the temporal succession) This is the syntagmatic level. And by another dimension or level not so evident but it is the one that sustains our knowledge or domain or competence of said theory: the paradigmatic level. This is the memory that in its entirety constitutes the scientific theory in question. A scientific theory is a paradigmatic construct in which all its theoretical elements or concepts are articulated with each other: each concept refers not only to those that precede and continue it in each linguistic chain, but if - as F.de Saussure- we make a cross section we verify the relationship and articulation that each concept has not in the order of successivity but of interrelation with those who define it and with those who in turn allows to define but in an order that is no longer temporary but it occurs at the present time (such as when in an organism each cell is part of a certain set whether it is called an organ, tissue or system: the dissection of a certain organ would be done to verify in an anatomical analysis how it works in itself and especially how it works and articulates with the entire organism).the dissection of a certain organ would be done to verify in an anatomical analysis how it works in itself and especially how it works and articulates with the entire organism).the dissection of a certain organ would be done to verify in an anatomical analysis how it works in itself and especially how it works and articulates with the entire organism).
At the level of everyday language when a subject speaks, at the moment he speaks he is choosing, selecting from the paradigmatic system of his language, the elements that must correspond in his syntagmatic discourse according to what he wants to say or communicate (so as not to “go to contradict ”Or simply repeat) in what he is talking or writing. This linguistic knowledge has been called competence but I think that with this name this linguistic complexity that we are analyzing here is minimized, since it would not be a simple competence (“speech act”) that is intended to characterize with this denomination. It is rather a complex knowledge of which we are not aware as speaking subjects:linguistic knowledge (being able to speak and write in a certain language) not only enables us or better enables us to carry out these certain linguistic acts in a given discourse, but also enables us to carry out all these kinds of paradigmatic choices and selections, which in subjects who This selectivity has already been carried out more, the writers and even the announcers ex officio, it becomes more professional.
History is constituted and understood from the present. The totality of the real that is what constitutes the present is what gives meaning to everything that has existed. What we are currently allows us to understand what we have been and from here we can understand in turn what we will be or can be. For this reason, the history of the sciences, as it is intended to do and write from the present, from the current state of each determined science, is to understand how problems have arisen in said theoretical tradition. Complex epistemology tries to account for these complex processes of problem solving and construction of the corresponding scientific theories.It is from the present moment of the construction of a theory that we project an illuminated lens that allows us to understand with conscious and rational transparency what has been the past of each knowledge. This is the paradigmatic character that the epistemology of complexity has: it is necessary to account for this process of constitution of knowledge but not simply going back in time to make, from what was considered the first or original landmark, the reconstruction as accurate as possible in which all the data (dates, characters and petty and particular events) would find their proper place.It is necessary to give an account of this process of constitution of knowledge but not simply going back in time to make, from what was considered the first or original milestone, the most accurate reconstruction possible in which all the data (dates, characters and insignificant events) and individuals) would find their proper place.It is necessary to give an account of this process of constitution of knowledge but not simply going back in time to make, from what was considered the first or original milestone, the most accurate reconstruction possible in which all the data (dates, characters and insignificant events) and individuals) would find their proper place.
Gadamer takes the cases of the game and dialogue to understand this paradigmatic analysis: those who participate in a certain game can play because they follow, although they do not subject or raise awareness, certain rules established for the game in question. Those who dialogue in turn as subjects participating in the dialogue do so following certain prescriptions in such a way that it is the language system they know and master as subjects of that language that allows them to enter the structuring chain of dialogue but not only to enunciate each articulated speech to those who have already delivered, as subjects and to those who in turn have heard and understood the subject or subjects with whom they speak, but to choose from the theoretical system they have as subjects, be they scientific or no,depending on their theoretical training or the knowledge they had on the particular topic on which they are dialoguing. It is the dialogicity, then, that allows us to be carrying out the dialogue that is taking place at the present moment.
Another example that could be given and analyzed of this paradigmatic totality would be that of a musical work (although a professional musician could already explain it better from his practice): when it is played, it follows a certain score in which the notes are written. that each voice or instrument must interpret in unison to carry out this work in two dimensions that must be carried out at the same time: one melodic and the other harmonic. (Although other elements that can be analyzed –or perceived– included in the previous two or separately are also developed, such as timbre, tempo, quality or virtuosity of the performance, etc.) Harmony is the correlation they must have the sounds as they are produced with all the others in a coherent and articulated whole in such a way that they produce consonant sounds,“Harmonics” and here would be the meaning of music: to produce a total result when listened to. Although this totality must be governed by the temporal order of sequentiality. Paradigmatic and paradoxical level of music: that the whole of a musical work cannot be independent from the longitudinal and successive thread of the temporal order.
The different syntagmatic discourses of each science account for the paradigmatic nature of reality according to their objectivity. Reality is structured in such a way that the different phenomena, physical, biological, ecological, etc., are governed by certain laws, in the case of physics, translatable into a mathematical language. In other words, reality exists regardless of whether theories are made or could be constituted that account for or explain its operation. The movement of celestial bodies occurs and has been occurring before or independently of Einstein having raised the theory of relativity. Or as Galileo said, physical reality operates according to a mathematical language.What allows us to explain from the fall of a body to the movement of a star in space is a set of physical laws that can be expressed in mathematical language.
In the current physical reality a set of laws, principles or rules are operating, without which said reality would not exist. It is an articulation of laws, some of which can be expressed in a mathematical language and others in “paradigmatic” or peremptory statements as scientific theses that would explain the operation of the real whole. It is a true ecosystem in which every element, simple as it may be, fulfills a certain role and meaning. That is why it is very interesting that today we tend to talk when it comes to taking care of the environment or the environment that surrounds us in terms of ecology or study of everything that constitutes this totality in which we are all in some way committed.
An epistemology of complexity would be located or better connected with this paradigmatic approach: it would have to account not only for how scientific knowledge has been constituted, which hitherto the rational epistemology of a Bachelard or a Foucault had tried to do, for example, and which was continued by an epistemology of a hermeneutic nature, but how the organic totality of the sciences are articulated or shaped at the present time. This complexity in which all scientific knowledge participate is the task to clarify on the part of this new approach to epistemology. We situate ourselves in a complex cultural context in which all knowledge, whether particular or elementary, plays a role in determining this complex totality.
Memory is made possible by this paradigmaticity: what I have been configures and determines what I am in the present moment and in turn constitutes what I will be or what, rather, I can be. In the current state, now, in the present, all the constituent processes that started from the past have converged and must continue to continue in the future, according to a syntagmatic logic, according to syntagmaticity, which would define the succession of stages at different times turn present. One can speak of a presentification of structures that would be constituting from the past. This way of understanding what memory is insists on taking it not as a "remembrance" or subjective memory that a rational subject would do when she stops to think about what her temporal journey has been as a subject with a series of mental processes,.cognitive, family or social that would define him as a subject that he is. Memory already constitutes this paradigmatic structure that is as a subject. In other words, memory is not the result of a mental operation called remembering or remembering, but it already occurs in the mere fact of being this or that subject: I am what I am because up to now a complex series of processes of those that I am not fully aware of, but I can, if I want, and through reflection, "make memory" of some of them. In order to live in the present, I do not need to be aware of all the moments of the past, but they are already present in some way in the present moment, so it can be said that the "past has passed" and the future does not exist because it is not yet known. Has made. Knowing in this new complex context is no longer copying an object, that is,Obtain a true image of the object that is presented to the subject. It is not removing, extracting, a concept from the same object that would be hidden in the most intimate part of said object as its essence. Knowing is also not extracting the law that would be behind many similar phenomena (many or several objects) explaining their operation as facts or events of nature or even of society, as empiricism and positivism have posed at the time: from of the experience, that is, of the relationship that a subject would have with an object in which the latter would send the data or what must be known or captured. The subject would only have to have their capacities to receive said real data: their senses well tuned to achieve total perception of each object.
It is necessary, therefore, to overcome the conception of knowledge as a relationship between a subject and an object in which, through various moments, the most complete knowledge of all would be reached: scientific theory as a reproduction of the given phenomenon or fact that it was intended to know. Thus, a theory would be true if it totally coincided with the reality it purports to explain: it is truth as adequacy with the real ("adaequatio res et intellectus"). The scientific method would be made up of the set of procedures by which the truth of said scientific theory would have been verified from the facts from which it would have been extracted.
It is also necessary to overcome (question and abandon) the idealistic thesis, from Plato to Descartes, Kant or Hegel, according to which the scientific theory would have been constituted from an intuition or evidence that a transcendental Subject or rational subjectivity would have achieved. Thus, for example, according to Plato, knowledge is true if it has been achieved through anamnesis in the logical process of remembering through or from dialogue ascending from real objects, which would only be shadows of ideas, to true ideas, which would be hidden in the subject, only that he did not know that he already had them because he was dominated by the opinions, the doxai.
Then, surpassing the empiricist, realistic, positivist and neopositivist conceptions, on the one hand, and on the other, the idealistic, rationalist or subjectivist conceptions, knowledge is understood as a complex process in this complex context mediated by Postmodernism in which there is to integrate the contributions of hermeneutics, critical epistemology and the history of the sciences and in which criteria given by Heidegger, Gadamer, Vattimo, Derrida, etc. are also taken up, on the one hand, and on the other, Bachelard, Koyré, Foucault, etc.
In the process of knowing, these various contributions must be integrated in order to account for their complexity. To know is above all to understand, or better, to understand by understanding and interpreting. This implies that in order to explain not just a single fact or phenomenon but a problem, it is necessary, first of all, to know how to pose it based on everything that can be perceived or confronted with the real. Understanding is interpreting: it is necessary to relate the data, theoretical and real, from which it starts, in order to be able to integrate in increasingly complex theoretical contexts as they are confronted with more elements. In other words, knowing is a dialectical, dynamic process,unfinished and syntagmatic that goes through this complexity that is given by the set of processes carried out not by a single subject but by those who participate in these various moments of research, in turn, various moments of dialogue, communication and confrontation with the subjects and theories in which they have been formed and in which they participate in an inter and transdisciplinary way.
To know is to understand, it is to integrate interpretations in a dialogical, syntagmatic, successive and unfinished way, because from one theory it is necessary to build others that can better account for or explain more coherently and comprehensively the problem or problems that are Has left.
It is in this hermeneutical cultural context that what is being understood is understood and how the knowledge that I can say: “I am who I am” is proceeded, but with the following clarifications: I am what could have been up to this present moment. I am what I have been, what I have been constituted from the past with the possibility of being or continuing to be in the future.
The aforementioned is better understood if it is integrated with what has been explained before about memory and its relationship with presence: memory is understood as the paradigmaticity that already existed and that is realized or constituted by all the elements that participate in or integrate this totality and that enable the presence as the various updated moments of the syntagmaticity of the real. Presence is the updating of successive articulations that were already in the paradigm from the past and that are developed in time or simply in time: this is the horizon of the possibilities of such structuring. The time exists prior to such updates. These would be ontic acts of being according to Aristotelian ontology. According to Heidegger, the entities would be attempts to presentify the Being,Dasein would be the most complete, because as Being-there, it would be contingent actualization and be given for death as Vattimo clarifies and completes.
Memory has been understood only as the rational operation carried out by a subject when he is remembering or allowing him to remember or evoke the various moments in his personal or social history. Here we are understanding memory as already constituted in the subject, in a similar way as when talking about the RAM memory of a computer: computer processes are carried out from the data, files or programs that it already has stored and operating the computer and which are updated when it starts operating. Operating with the computer is to open said memory and proceed to relate the various data or elements that it has stored according to the specific task that we are executing. In a similar way as a subject I have saved (memory) everything that I am, which allows me to live and in the specific case that we have been analyzing, thinking,reflect or investigate: I am reflecting on what I already know or even what I do not know, but I have already become aware of its certainty or level of knowledge or ignorance. This is the intuition behind the know yourself aphorism that was mentioned at the beginning of this reflection. I know myself or I must start from becoming aware of what I already know or do not know yet, that is, of my memory: of what I already understand and understand and I have not simply stored cumulatively as someone who keeps chécheres in a garage. Memory is not then an accumulation of everything that I have thought or have read or reasoned from a past. Memory is all (or only) what I know and have been developing since that past. What I have been understanding because I have been understanding it from the presence.What I am as a subject and what I already understand or know as a subject as soon as I am oriented or interested in a knowledge process.
I can only know or make new knowledge from what I already know, or don't know yet, but I have already recognized it that way, I have already done the intellectual catharsis and with this relative certainty I can integrate new knowledge more accurately. I am always knowing from a given point of view, from an open perspective, from the horizon of my new possibilities of knowing. It surprises me how Gadamer insists so much on this aspect in his analysis of hermeneutic knowledge since it has to be interpreted to always understand from a certain cultural context, that is, from a conceptual horizon. (It would be necessary to add if this character of “horizon” implies the concept of temporal successivity…)
In this hermeneutical cultural context, one can analyze what the process of reading a text is. Reading is updating a text from the context of the reader. Reading is interpreting a text understanding it from the present, that is, from what I as a reading subject already understand from or in the present. It is necessary to integrate what I am reading with what I have already read in the same text that I am addressing and with what already constitutes my knowledge integrated with other previous elements… I am reconstructing the text made up of all its syntagmatic elements: the various elements that they conform it (syntactic, grammatical, lexicon…) to reconstruct or integrate its paradigmatic structure that is given by the text in its complex totality.
It is then in the reading process that the text reveals itself as such, it is reconstituted into a text as an articulated whole when I read it, when as a subject I restructure its being as text, its textuality. In other words, this textuality is its paradigmaticity. Before starting your reading process, it only exists as an object next to other books or copies in a library. As a reader then, I am producing the text as a text.
Living, like the process of reading discussed above, also involves updating a set of bodily functions. As an organism a living being integrates all the organs functioning at the same time in a biological and physiological balance in which each organ fulfills a certain function for the achievement of what constitutes its life. This holistic functioning of an organic whole as a totality of harmonically articulated functions is what constitutes life as such.
It is from these perspectives as horizons in which I place myself, I can understand each text in particular in its reading process, or each living being when it is being investigated. Understanding is holistic in this sense: it has to integrate each element in its execution with the other elements in order to understand the operation of a whole made up of its elements that give it this character of totality. We are not analyzing each element separately, but if an analysis is carried out it is to arrive at the synthesis that is here the intelligible understanding of all its elements forming a whole.
Another aphorism of Greek thought that has application in the reflection on the epistemology of complexity is "I only know that I know nothing." Thinking about the conceptual implications of it, we have that we cannot accumulate, add or add knowledge to which we already have stored or memorized as if it were to increase some deposit of knowledge or concepts. We do not know how it has been tried to understand until now to increase a baggage of knowledge as the objective of a learning process has been called: it is learned to increase knowledge with an encyclopedic character: to train wise people who are skillful in keeping epistemic contents (dates, theories, authors, arguments or contents of books, algebra or physics formulas, historical or geographic data, etc.) Of course it will be said that without first seeking to memorize, all this information is recorded in our minds and this is how all these data are recorded, for example, the name of the bones or muscles that make up the human anatomy, etc.. But although this memorization is not being sought as the main or sole objective of a traditional teaching, this is being recorded and so we could remember all this information. Now, it is not that this memorization is being rejected as such: psychologists will already be analyzing in which specific part of the brain it is being located or stored or perhaps they may even inquire about the “possible mechanisms” of this memorization. How knowledge is recorded and even how to proceed to memorize more or better.All this information is recorded in our minds and this is how all these data are recorded, for example, the name of the bones or muscles that make up the human anatomy, etc. But although this memorization is not being sought as the main or sole objective of a traditional teaching, this is being recorded and so we could remember all this information. Now, it is not that this memorization is being rejected as such: psychologists will already be analyzing in which specific part of the brain it is being located or stored or perhaps they may even inquire about the “possible mechanisms” of this memorization. How knowledge is recorded and even how to proceed to memorize more or better.All this information is being recorded in our minds and this is how all these data are recorded, for example, the name of the bones or muscles that make up the human anatomy, etc. But although this memorization is not being sought as the main or only objective of a traditional teaching, this is being recorded and thus we could remember all this information. Now, it is not that this memorization is being rejected as such: psychologists will already be analyzing in which specific part of the brain it is being located or stored or perhaps they may even inquire about the “possible mechanisms” of this memorization. How knowledge is recorded and even how to proceed to memorize more or better.the name of the bones or muscles that make up the human anatomy, etc. But although this memorization is not being sought as the main or sole objective of a traditional teaching, this is being recorded and so we could remember all this information. Now, it is not that this memorization is being rejected as such: psychologists will already be analyzing in which specific part of the brain it is being located or stored or perhaps they may even inquire about the “possible mechanisms” of this memorization. How knowledge is recorded and even how to proceed to memorize more or better.the name of the bones or muscles that make up the human anatomy, etc. But although this memorization is not being sought as the main or sole objective of a traditional teaching, this is being recorded and so we could remember all this information. Now, it is not that this memorization is being rejected as such: psychologists will already be analyzing in which specific part of the brain it is being located or stored or perhaps they may even inquire about the “possible mechanisms” of this memorization. How knowledge is recorded and even how to proceed to memorize more or better.It is not that this memorization is being rejected as such: psychologists will already be analyzing in which specific part of the brain it is being located or stored or perhaps they may even inquire about the “possible mechanisms” of this memorization. How knowledge is recorded and even how to proceed to memorize more or better.It is not that this memorization is being rejected as such: psychologists will already be analyzing in which specific part of the brain it is being located or stored or perhaps they may even inquire about the “possible mechanisms” of this memorization. How knowledge is recorded and even how to proceed to memorize more or better.
What must be questioned is that a form of education only sought this accumulation of knowledge as a result of the entire educational process: the teacher limited himself to teaching, forcing the student to memorize more and more the contents that he transmitted to him and he to keep as these contents or theories, since he would have to “render” about them in an exam or evaluation below, to see how much he had been able to know or save from what he had previously been taught or transmitted.
So, an epistemology of complexity that would be guiding a current hermeneutical pedagogy would have to begin to question this way of understanding or reducing thinking. No one can compel another to think or to develop a process of which he does not understand how it occurs, how it begins or develops, only with the "correct indications" that he received from a subject called "teacher" or advisor. As has been discussed so far, thinking is such a complex process that it cannot be expected that all students achieve it at once in a group. This has been tried to obviate with the so-called “individualized or personalized” teaching, but the pedagogical scheme or paradigm has not been changed:The student (either one or a small group) continues to be forced to think in the same way and at the same pace as the teacher in question requires. So what it is all about is to proceed in another way: the way to do it: not start from the “blank mind”, not pretend to start from scratch to fill the thought with new data or concepts each time. As it is usually said: "here we are in physics class, I need you to leave behind, -so without more or more- all the previous knowledge you have so far" -as if the matter was to say it like that no more. No, this must be worked on in dialogue with the students. Hermeneutic pedagogy guides us in this way in this pedagogical procedure: until now I thought I knew, but these beliefs are only sensible or common sense perceptions:It is what everyone thinks or repeats (and now they feed social networks). I had not tried to question them because I took them as the only true or only true for myself. When I begin to confront them with other concepts that I already had and, most importantly for a hermeneutic proposal, with which other subjects, with whom I can dialogue, have and at the same time have expressed and have been able to understand them in a constant dialogue and sequential, then I can begin to understand, which in turn includes arguing and understanding as processes that are achieved in the hermeneutical knowledge process.When I begin to confront them with other concepts that I already had and, most importantly for a hermeneutic proposal, with which other subjects, with whom I can dialogue, have and at the same time have expressed and have been able to understand them in a constant dialogue and sequential, then I can begin to understand, which in turn includes arguing and understanding as processes that are achieved in the hermeneutical knowledge process.When I begin to confront them with other concepts that I already had and, most importantly for a hermeneutic proposal, with which other subjects, with whom I can dialogue, have and at the same time have expressed and have been able to understand them in a constant dialogue and sequential, then I can begin to understand, which in turn includes arguing and understanding as processes that are achieved in the hermeneutical knowledge process.
