Emergence and ontogenetics: Towards a communication without agent

Abstract

In the scientific community, discussions about emergence are motivated by a need to understand the process by which complex systems exhibit novel characteristics that cannot be reduced to those of their parts. The whole is thus said to be greater than the sum of the parts. We borrow from this framework in order to explore a different understanding of communication. Instead of seeing the whole as the result of a communication process between the parts, we take a step back and propose to understand communication as the process through which both parts and whole emerge. This perspective opens the possibility to think of a communication that is not the result of an exchange between pre-existing individual agents, but the very process by which individuals emerge in the first place. From the perspective of social sciences in general, and of communication studies in particular, this theoretical experimentation points towards a model that is not subordinated to the traditional opposition between parts and wholes, individuals and collectives.