Gr-INS & UNITÆ seminar series (2023)

 Location:

L'amphithéatre 7, aile rouge, 5e étage.

Manuel Mercier from INS
"Walking on a thin blue line, complex systems and existentialism"

The planet, our civilization and the human brain are complex systems. Scientific research uses similar methods to investigate separately the dynamics of climate, human organization, or neural interactions, making predictions about their future states. Despite improving prediction analyses, we have already entered a dramatic transitional phase at the whole ecosystem level, and we are facing difficulties to translate our knowledges in acts.

This critical situation also materializes the limits of techno-productivism, which is built upon the denial of the physical boundaries of our planet. The rising slopes (temperature, resource depletion, life extinction, disease pandemics, etc.) must lead us to reconsider our relationships with the system earth and to change the current trajectory of humanity as a part of many life forms.

This "bifurcation" implies to overcome some obstacles at multiple levels: political levers, life/working habits, or cognitive schemas. Yet, bifurcating also leads to creativity in the anticipation of coming changes, it is an invitation to embrace the intertwining of complex systems and to face the meaning we draw for our journey on earth.