Beyond Uncertainties Some Open Questions About Chaos and Ethics

Abstract

Lately, a new language for the understanding of the complexity of life (organism, ecosystem, and social system) has been developed. Chaos, fractals, dissipative structures, self-organization, and complex adaptive systems are some of its key concepts. On this view, reality is not the deterministic structure that Newton envisaged, but rather, a partially unknown or at least unpredictable world of multiple possibilities. As the horizon of our knowledge of natural realities expands, the emergent comprehensive perspective requires a radical reconstruction of both the concrete structure upon which human life is materially built and the symbolic structure that reason has schemed.

Discursive stability meets climate instability: A critical exploration of the concept of ‘climate stabilization’ in contemporary climate policy

“…Partly this can be associated with a 'quasi-religious' ideal of stability (Kwiatkowska, 2001) that holds discursive power for engaging public and government attention to 'save the planet'. A guiding ethos of climate stabilization is the imagined future, safe, secure, stable climate, which can be engineered by our actions now; but the flipside of this myth is that if action is not taken the future will be insecure, unsafe, and unstable.…”