How can we now conceptualise our newly gained understanding of complexity and its implications? In the introduction I made it clear that the paper is founded on a logical scientific approach which is in contrast to purely empirical research and particularly critical analysis. The logical approach implies that the concept of complexity, as a consequence of many different descriptions of the phenomenon of climate change and its impact, should be incorporated into any governance considerations. This offsets classical logic and revolutionises governance and requires some explorations in theory.
Generally, discussions of the topic of political control and governance eventually lead to the emergence of the reality/normativity dichotomy. Thus, some scholars maintain that the purpose of scientific research should be founded on the moral position that favours the improvement of society and its living conditions, creating a normative outlook. On the other hand, other scholars support the function of science as providing a descriptive reality based on logical argumentation, culminating in the reality approach in science.
It is, of course, in the nature of politics to have a normative outlook. After all, it aims at making changes within the existing social configuration. This aim is associated with a kind of wishful thinking about steering development in society, and society is often connected with the image of a ‘better’ future, a futurist utopia.
However, theorising about climate change and its ecological and social consequences means theorising about reality. Theorising about reality, thus, has to do with what is actually happening, not what ought to be done. With respect to the governance of society for the purpose of dealing with the aforementioned consequences, the future has not happened yet. It actually never happens: since resource management always takes place in real time, it is always occurring in the present.
The reality approach essentially questions the very basis of policy making, its effectiveness. Given that governance takes place in the present only, it is actually not possible to know how the future is going to look. Thus, in terms of predicting outcomes, which is the nature of policy making, governance is largely a process of trial-and-error. This fits the following quotation:
Politics [as a system] is only possible because nobody knows what the future holds. Hence, politics contains and enables exchangeable programmes. The programmes are as diverse as their possible (indeterminable) consequences.
(Bolz 4, )
The studies undertaken by Juhler-Kristoffersen (), Koivurova () and Sreejith () on the political role of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council in combating climate change, the initiatives in the international sphere to assist the Inuit in their effort to mitigate the impact of climate change, and the Nordic industry confederations’ admission of particularly European politics in taking the lead on climate change governance, show that the ideas in the quotation above have not yet entered our consciousness.
More scientifically, reality can be understood through an analysis based on system theory. System theory is frequently misunderstood due to misconceptions about its apparent radical constructivism. System theory is the outcome of our awareness that logic matters in science (and science can stand here for the way we derive information). There is a tradition, however, of analysing reality as if it were a ‘dead’ object or a set of dead objects. The general goal in mainstream
research is not to understand reality as a living reality, but the analysis commonly assumes that life takes place outside the scientific observation.
As soon as humans or any other form of life are involved in the analysis and description, we are no longer dealing with dead objects. And here it does not matter whether the “observing organism is part, partner, [and] ... participant in its world of observation” (Foerster, cited in Goldammer and Kaehr , ). Thus, reality is always a process for which the conventional ways, the single-value logic, of observation and measuring seem ill-suited. Consequently, a theory of reality must be concerned with life and the consequences for logical analysis.
The explorations of O’Brien and Leichenko (), Macdonald et al. (5), Anisimov et al. () and van Vuuren et al. () on climate change and its impacts in the North have shown this.
Life is considered to be a cognitive process; thus living systems are cognitive systems. Cognition refers to the ability to draw a distinction between oneself and one’s environment. It is a process of self-referentiality, a form of consciousness where, with the capacity to make a decision, choices can be made based on self-generated alternatives. These alternatives use a system’s internal image of the system itself and the system’s environment. This is a significant statement, implying that a living, cognitive system makes its own choices and does not act upon decisions made in its environment. The system is, thus, autonomous.
Organisational autonomy also implies a process of self-organisation. This refers to the system’s self-regulation, involving the reproduction of the systems through the system’s elements. Through willful decisions the system structures its environment in so far as it determines what is relevant to the system and what is not. As a consequence, the system produces the very context within which the system observes. Moreover, if we assume that all such cognitive systems possess their own context within which meaning is generated, we will correspondingly get a reality that contains a multiplicity of values, logics and knowledges. The presence of autonomous cognitive systems leads to the above-mentioned complexity, the amalgamation of hierarchical and heterarchical orders.
Given now the parallel existence of many cognitive systems in reality, a simple subject-object relationship where the object is generalised as being independent of the subject is not sufficient. This single-value, monocontextural logic is not applicable at all. Monocontexturality implies that there is only one context of observation that is applicable to reality, one context that would provide an objective view of what is true and what is false. Incidentally, the
classical perspective of the so-called hard sciences, the natural sciences, is one where object and subject can be separated, conveying the idea that all things in nature constitute an objective truth. It is also the perspective of the critical approach, involving much of classical political rationality, where, through careful study, any phenomenon or process can potentially be controlled. In reality, however, this viewpoint does not hold up. It is logically incorrect.
Consequently, reality can then only be understood by what would be called a network of parallel-organised multi-value calculi (sets of rules), involving the interaction of many contexts with many logics. This represents wholeness (holism), which, in contrast to a reductionist (as by applying an unrealistic single-value logic) world view, is needed to describe reality. Philosopher and logician Gotthard Günther called the theory that is founded on a multi-value reality “polycontexturality theory”; it was developed between the 5s and s. The focus of analysis turns from the independent object to the relation between subject and object, or, in other words, the relation between the observer and the observed. Thus, polycontexturality theory as a theory of reality describes how the world is conceived as a whole (cf. Günther 5).