02.03 Rainforest Ontology – Beyond Networks: The Evolution of Living Systems
Channel: Johannes Jaeger
Date: 2020-04-23

Module 2 of "Beyond Networks" introduces the philosophy of scientific perspectivism (or perspectival realism). This third lecture of the module introduces the richness of rainforest ontology into our deserted reductionist world. It shows how perspectives on reality interact with levels of organisation, and how the biological realm consists of a "causal thicket" that is hard to unravel and requires a different approach to science that the one we are traditionally used to from physics.

Rainforest Ontology first appeared in William Wimsatt (1994), "The Ontology of Complex Systems: Levels of Organization, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets." A longish paper that will completely change the way you see the world. It was reprinted as chapter 10 of Wimsatt's 2007 book "Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings," published with Harvard University Press. If you are a scientist and you only read one philosophy book in your life, let it be this one!