This article gives an overview of my book French Philosophy and Social Theory. A Perspective for Ethics and Philosophy of Management, published by Springer 2014. As an extension of my earlier work on French philosophy...This article gives an overview of my book French Philosophy and Social Theory. A Perspective for Ethics and Philosophy of Management, published by Springer 2014. As an extension of my earlier work on French philosophy, this book provides an application of important concepts from contemporary French philosophy to business ethics and the ethics of organizations. Although the book covers a wide range of philosophers and philosophical movements, there is a core and deep unity of the book. This is the demonstration of how the conceptual resources of contemporary French philosophy from the early 20th Century to the present day can be applied to give us new perspectives on business ethics and the ethics of organizations.展开更多
This essay presents a reflection on the main implications of Complexity Theory for science in general, redefining and dispelling myths of traditional science, and Sociology in particular, suggesting a redefinition of ...This essay presents a reflection on the main implications of Complexity Theory for science in general, redefining and dispelling myths of traditional science, and Sociology in particular, suggesting a redefinition of Parsons’ classic concept of Social System, articulated around the property of self-maintenance of order rather than on its possible discontinuity and instability. It argues that Complexity Theory has established the limits of Classic Science, leading to a more realistic awareness of working and evolution mechanisms of Natural and Social Systems and showing the limits of our capacity to predict and control events. Dissipative structures have shown the creative role of time. Instability, emergence, surprise, unpredictability are the rule rather than the exception when systems move away from equilibrium (entropy), even if these processes are generated from a system’s deterministic working mechanisms. Therefore, we have come to realize how constructive the contribution of Complexity is, in regards to the long lasting problem of the relationship between order and disorder. Today, the terms of this relationship have been re-specified in its new configuration of inter-relationship link, according to a unicum which finds its synthesis in self-organization and deterministic chaos concepts. From this perspective, as Prigogine suggested, studies on Complex Systems are heading toward a historical, biological conception of Physics, and a new alliance between natural systems and living, social systems. Non-linearity, far from equilibrium self-organization, emergence and surprise meet at all levels, as this paper attempts to highlight. In Sociology, insights of Complexity Theory have contributed to a new way of thinking about social systems, by re-addressing some fundamental issues starting to social system, emergence and change concepts. The current social system conception as complex dynamical systems is supported by a profitable use of non-liner models (in particular, the Logistic map) in the study of social processes.展开更多
文摘This article gives an overview of my book French Philosophy and Social Theory. A Perspective for Ethics and Philosophy of Management, published by Springer 2014. As an extension of my earlier work on French philosophy, this book provides an application of important concepts from contemporary French philosophy to business ethics and the ethics of organizations. Although the book covers a wide range of philosophers and philosophical movements, there is a core and deep unity of the book. This is the demonstration of how the conceptual resources of contemporary French philosophy from the early 20th Century to the present day can be applied to give us new perspectives on business ethics and the ethics of organizations.
文摘This essay presents a reflection on the main implications of Complexity Theory for science in general, redefining and dispelling myths of traditional science, and Sociology in particular, suggesting a redefinition of Parsons’ classic concept of Social System, articulated around the property of self-maintenance of order rather than on its possible discontinuity and instability. It argues that Complexity Theory has established the limits of Classic Science, leading to a more realistic awareness of working and evolution mechanisms of Natural and Social Systems and showing the limits of our capacity to predict and control events. Dissipative structures have shown the creative role of time. Instability, emergence, surprise, unpredictability are the rule rather than the exception when systems move away from equilibrium (entropy), even if these processes are generated from a system’s deterministic working mechanisms. Therefore, we have come to realize how constructive the contribution of Complexity is, in regards to the long lasting problem of the relationship between order and disorder. Today, the terms of this relationship have been re-specified in its new configuration of inter-relationship link, according to a unicum which finds its synthesis in self-organization and deterministic chaos concepts. From this perspective, as Prigogine suggested, studies on Complex Systems are heading toward a historical, biological conception of Physics, and a new alliance between natural systems and living, social systems. Non-linearity, far from equilibrium self-organization, emergence and surprise meet at all levels, as this paper attempts to highlight. In Sociology, insights of Complexity Theory have contributed to a new way of thinking about social systems, by re-addressing some fundamental issues starting to social system, emergence and change concepts. The current social system conception as complex dynamical systems is supported by a profitable use of non-liner models (in particular, the Logistic map) in the study of social processes.
