Complexity sciences: A scientific platform

Abstract

Social scientists have proposed several concepts to give account of the way scientific life organizes. By studying ‘complexity sciences’ – established in the mid-1980s by the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico (USA) –, the present article wishes to contribute to interdisciplinary studies and emergent domains literature by proposing a new concept to describe this domain. Drawing from Bourdieusian sociology of science and STS, a ‘scientific platform’ is defined as a meeting point between different specialties, which, on the basis of a flexible common ground, pursue together shared or parallel socio-epistemic objectives. Most of the specialties inscribed in complexity suffer from a relative marginality in their disciplinary field. The term ‘platform’ metaphorically refers to what the heterogeneous members of the collective mutualize, both in cognitive and social terms, in order to exist and expand.