THE COMPLEX DYNAMICS OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Scientific communications are expected to search for truth, while the Truth is no longer given as in (religious) belief systems. Truth, then, can be considered as a code or a meta-heuristics of communication. In this dynamic system of rationalized expectations new ideas can be entertained and tested, while communications must be normatively integrated in a belief system. Scientific communications in different fields no longer need to be organized hierarchically: in the course of their further development, the hierarchies may have been inverted. From this perspective, the concept of a unity of science' can be replaced with dynamics within and among the sciences. Such dynamics are both complex and non-trivial. Inter-human communication is expected to contain uncertainty, and it can be provided with (interactive and reflexive) meaning. Languages allow for the codification of these relations. Higher-order codifications (e.g. the paradigmatic control of the use of language) can be developed endogenously.