Abstract

OLIVEIRA, Juliana Michelli da Silva  and  ALMEIDA, Rogério de. Machines of complexity: dialogues with Edgar Morin. Educ. Pesqui. [online]. 2019, vol.45, e201945002002.  Epub Sep 10, 2019. ISSN 1678-4634.  https://doi.org/10.1590/s1678-4634201945002002.

The presence of the machine as a model of knowledge has gained increasing importance in contemporary societies, especially because of the amplified use of cognitive machines that have reconfigured the organization of productive, educational, social, and cultural activities. Edgar Morin dissects in his work, La méthode, the consequences of using machines for human thought and action, as well as the consequences of this artifice being our reference for optimal human and societal functioning. An interview with this author was performed at CNRS-Sorbonne Paris as part of my PhD research, initially carried out at the University of Grenoble Alpes and concluded at the School of Education at the University of São Paulo. The goal of this interview was to better comprehend, in complexity theory, the meaning of the machine and, more precisely, of the machine-being, as well as to confront the hypothesis of my PhD thesis, named Machine Life: the imagery of machines in Edgar Morin’s La méthode. After clarifying the pillars of the concept machine-being and its peculiarities in regard to the works of Descartes and La Mettrie, the author discoursed about the importance of imagery in the production of knowledge and mentioned the unusual images that he attributes to machines, such as Pétrouchka. Finally, Morin emphasizes the notion that human beings are non-trivial machines and must not be reduced to the determinisms that portray artificial machines (artifices), since most of human production occurs through creative and self-organized processes.

Keywords : Complexity theory; Machine-being; Machine imagery.

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