In our Times all the key challenges require a certain scientific mindset and some good quality knowledge to make sense coping with threats and opportunities. Strategic high quality science for high quality life in peace, prosperity, wealth and health seems the crossroads of our times with the alternative of an a emotional-perceptional based opinionmaking managed by influence techniques in which a human being and a guinea pig are absolute equivalent. Complex evolutionary social system paradigm is the conceptual,semantic and methodological platform for quality research for quality lifestyle. To be a scientist is avery serious matter especially in geopolitics, nowadays. This intuition is nonetheless not so new.
In 1949, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, age 17, joined the university course of Introduction to Social Sciences chaired by Florestan Fernandes at the University of Sao Paulo. The students where organized in quite small classes and through the academic corridors, some professors walked and moved wearing white coats as if they were scientists. The goal and meaning of that white coat was twofold: science is labor and sociology is science. In Cardoso’s original words in his superb book “Pensadores que inventaram o Brasil” ( Companhia das Letras, Sao paulo 2013, p.176):
“Cada clase nao tinhia mais de que dez ou doze alunos. E havia profesores que desfilavan pelos corredores(…) vestidos de avental branco como se fossem cientisras(…) O avental era quase um macacao. Era una maneira para mostrar duas coisas: uma è que a ciencia è trabalho e a outra que a sociologia è ciencia”
The white coat symbolic metaphor is still valid today nevertheless 1949 and 2025 are very, very different times thus we must be careful to force comparisosns. Most of the key challenges of our times can be managed by science and science based policy. Research determines policy which determines politics, systemically. There is no survey , public opinion debate, philosophical intellectual, politician, ecc. who might answer questions like these ones :
1 What is sustainable?
2 What is the feature of climate change and its impact?
3 What behaviors are adequate to prevent ex transmissible diseases ?
4 What are the most effective, valid and viable ways to assist procreation?
5 In which way(s) alcohol, smoke, drugs ecc are/can be bad for health?
6 What are risks and opportunities of the different kinds of energy sources?
7 What is the state of the art of space studies, AI, genetics, nanotechnologies , informatics, ecc.?
Politicians , philosophers, public opinion , religious institutions, ecc. have no knowledge based valid answers about those matters while these people and organizations can provide you all the common sense beliefs, moral and value judgement, ideological opinion the audience wants. Nevertheless knowledge and beliefs could not be more separate than they are nowadays. Science has limits, science does not know anything, science can make mistakes, confutations and upgrades nevertheless, science and its technological applications are the key toolkit mankind has to survive and evolve . Observation, conceptual modeling and generalizations are conceptual cognitive patterns and properly featuring science all the rest is perception-emotion drive thus not meaning but rather noise in evolutionary terms. Globalization , for example, is expanding although the political narratives try to tell a story of fragmentation trying to catch wonds with a bottle.
Finance is going more and more global , likewise science, technology and policy modeling when research based. Well, to be a PhD is not a synonim of perfection, but still it is very hard to believe that someone completely untrained in research can provide strategic – pragmatical: the anxiety to be concrete sometimes, often , shows merely a lack of skills and competences and an amateur mind.
Despite the radicalization and polarization of political rhetorics and of ideological symbols such as “nation” whose meaning is rather ambiguous if we consider the genetic and memetic mixture among tribes, population, ecc. through continents and times, despite this radicalization complexity and convergence are emerging faster and faster in every system ( science economics, education ecc) thus the increasing rigidity of the national state shape appears more and more as a piece of evidence of rigor mortis. Knowledge and science(the king and queen of memetics) and for other ways ( not coped with here) love and sex (the king and queen of genetics) , the world as an open society is emerging at high speed through a turbulent convergence we are living in these decades.
On the very short run, rigidity and radicalization might suggest to a naif observer an increasing fragmentation, separation and the trompe l’oeil of a unilateralism revival , nevertheless it is not so because of the kings and queens of memetics and genetics and , last but no least , the key material resources of our planet are distributed by chance in a way that does not allow autarchy. Global interdependence marches on . The paradox is that war – which I personally do not support- is nevertheless a way to unify not to separate, as in the case of the world and global brain circulation or the genetic and memetic recombinatory powers of refugee flows. WCSA systemically focuses on macro, wide and long, shocks not on noisy short run shifts.
As far as WCSA as a think tank can do , our research, educational projects, academic publishing, public engagement our commitment in terms of research based policy modeling to expand complexity patterns mathematically which means to understand one of the key challenges of XX century from Einstein : space is a function of time and time is neither a cycle, nor a line. Complexity is movie script of time evolution thus complexity is neither complicate ( as amateurs believe) nor a cultural trait of humanity (as intellectuals believe), no way to add moral, ethical, ideological, common sense or religious adjectives to the concept of complexity. Wide, long, nonlinear, chaotic , irreversible are mathematics based adjectives which can fit with the concept of complexity.
In its synergy with Bots R Here chaired by Jo Lernout (2023 WCSA Medalist, an ex aequo with Alfredo L. Spilzinger Chairman and President of SFAI Global ) also this conference is a great chance to empirically show what Space=(F) Time means. Two continents as headquartes of the conference (Latin America and Europe) in a global flow of knowledge shared worldwide by digital platform in open access. What is globalization ? Not what politicians or journalists usually think : globalization is the total collapse of space inside time. Science based knowledge in real time, everywhere. Our conference , with the strategic support of Bots R here, will also provide real time artificial translation service In 256 languages. Communication time is meaningfully reduced. No physical barriers, no language ones either. Time flows with its chaotic trajectories and knowledge spreads all over cross fertilizing the space the shaped by time with no such “local” or “national” space codes cheating by simulating walls which do not exist. Whoever works, science knows there is a global struggle against cancer and cancer cell do not care about the citizenship or passport of their host, likewise the oncological patient is interested in a successful remedy not in the skin color of the doctors and researchers or in their nationality. No language and no physical barriers are a great starting point nevertheless the challenge is to facilitate scholars to share the same scientific semantics and paradigm to create convergent projects and comparable outcomes on a global scale.
The Complex evolutionary social system approach greatly provides a key paradigm and a strategic platform for:
i) Interdisciplinary convergence
ii) Cosmopolitan globalized ( by protocols) science
iii) Mathematization of concepts and logically based terminological classification
iv) Dealing with uncertainty , turbulence and chaotic dynamics in life
v) A solid and viable epistemology and methodology in which concepts are both systemic positions in a theoretical field and data containers transparently showing the process through which data are constructed thus clarifying data are constructions
vi) A viable toolkit for policy modeling , global governance and policy making.
I emphasize: complex evolutionary social systems. Complexity and system are two conceptual determinations that are inseparable in their spatio-temporal determinations ( S=(f)T) Between complexity and system there are no real distinctions, at most modal distinctions-in the differentiation between forms and functions for example-and distinctions from abstract reasoning that highlight their inherently co-evolutionary character. The idea -vague, not abstract- of a complexity without a system would be bad philosophy drifting toward an entirely arbitrary mystical metaphysics devoid of sufficient reason. There ” complex ” would become a fashionable adjective used meaninglessly by people who are very ignorant but eager to seem cultured.
System without complexity, on the other hand, indicates a naïve and hyperreductionist drift from naive empirical inductivism based on the “illusion of the possibility of an observation with one’s own eyes” ( with attached clichés, stereotypes, prejudices , beliefs etc.) as such scientifically valid from which would arise an “observed system” – one per observer more or less – then presented as an operational tool. An error of method perhaps conceded by playing “little chemist” at age eight .
The drift of complexity without system leads to the appearance of “gurus” who play with words in front of those who are completely incompetent in front of these issues. The drift of the system without complexity, on the other hand, leads-metaphorically-to the appearance of workers who are convinced that they are not only architects but also Gropius, Lloyd Wright, Lerner or Gaudi simply because they added an adhesive to the handle of their trowel.
Overcoming these two drifts, however, the paradigm of complex evolutionary social systems becomes a very powerful platform shared between the worlds of investment, business, research, management and the higher cognitive liberal professions, a platform where someone before launching a “new paradigm” would read very, but very carefully at least Robert K. Merton and Niklas Luhmann, learning them by heart. I had the good fortune to train myself systemically -sometimes more directly, sometimes more indirectly- with Niklas Luhmann, Ervin Laszlo and Loet Leydesdorff and on the side of the sociology of macrosociological processes with Abram De swaan and Joop Goudsblom, both brilliant revisers of the thought of their Master Norbert Elias to whose paradigm they made great strides without, however, stepping out of that paradigm or wanting to formulate a new one. Turning back, allow me this little autobiographical note, Between De Swaan , Goudsblom and Leydesdorff how much Universiteit va Amsterdam helped to shape me, what a priceless debt I owe to that Athenaeum and that city!
In the field of social systems theory, the last great Kuhnian revolution is due precisely to Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998). Luhmann dematerialized and deconstructed the social system by making it mobile on horizons of meaning and symbolism.
Systemic processes -for autpoiesis of communication- are the way by which Luhmann conceptualizes social systems within an epistemology with a strong mathematical-cybernetic denotation. I think I can venture -and I will explain this in a moment- that Luhmann has brought social systems and social political science within the same epistemology as astrophysics subject to some, not decisive, differences. The epistemology of complex systems.
In summary:
1. There is no direct observation : the technological intermediation (the telescope, the satellite) are the best reminder to the observer that his observation is shaped by the medium and the conceptual, cognitive and technical maps underlying it . It also applies to any sociological observation at least micro , if not meso or macro . A thread, a social media post on geopolitics is not in itself knowledge, much less scientific knowledge, about geopolitics. The interconnections between forms, media, processes and systemic functions give the cognitive brainframe . The content is an illusion. Let us leave out here the psychosocial observation of an observer who sees with his own eyes for example a robbery with shooting and then in court as a witness gets confused , does not remember ecc. or is convinced of his version which however does not get corroborated by ballistic findings, for example. Not surprisingly, Luhmann expunged the naive human observer from the social system.
2. There is no direct empirical survey. If I want a sample of Martian soil I have to take it with various machines and probes that I control, really remotely. In the political and social sciences the retrieval of this material is equally difficult, and often the worst research wanders off into surveys thinking that opinion gathering can substitute for material gathering. The aforementioned Merton in 1949 had well distinguished between the sociology of knowledge – hunting for concepts , models , patterns, ecc.- and the sociology of mass communication hunting for surveys of public opinion i.e. hunting for opinions of the everyday man. Well, both sociologies have a chance to exist as long as one does not believe that a popular referendum can decide the feasibility of a scientific enterprise or technological innovation.
3. Where neither observation nor technologically mediated detection can extend their prata there enters -as it was with Einstein and Hawkin, for example- abstract conceptual mathematical formalization. For astrophysics of complex systems this path is obvious. Political social science, on large numbers, after Luhmann, on the other hand, seems to have raised the white flag. Disillusioned by general theories that never were such ( Bodin , Montesquieu down to Parsons) or falling back on “empirical verifications” of such a small scale that they cannot be relevant to the general conceptual framework. Luhmann, however, formulated his general theory for codes and programs , written in binary and with a conceptual transparency that is entirely cybernetic. From there we need to start again -as De Swaan and Goudsblom did with Elias- in order to develop a grand unified theory of global evolutionary change without which on key challenges of our time( such as artificial intelligence, the singularity, the global formalization of capital of the all-financial etc.) sociology at most degenerates into a series of tedious sermons of a pseudo-ethical, pseudo-moral character and more concerned with gaining common sense consensus than with describing and managing the changes taking place and producing knowledge and innovation. Mind you, the political choice of most of sociology not to accept the challenge of a mathematical GTU is precisely a political choice, not nun scientific epistemological and heuristic limitation. Certainly sociology has been in shock at the imposture of social system proposed by Parsons with AGIL in which we talk about system and complexity but AGIL remains a system without complexity, which everything wants to integrate that is to normalize by labeling as deviant everything that does not correspond to the values of the system (and that a system has a set of values makes it clear how little complex that system is). So here is where a complex system mathematizes flows and processes by density and variety, a system without complexity begins to define deviance everything that does not fit into its value set so the system stiffens until it implodes. The film The Dead Poet Society is probably the best portrait of the Parsonsian system and its failure.
Two drifts are decreasing this paradigm scientific reputation:
a) The amateur drift which happens when non specialist intellectuals start using some systemic terminology out of context and in a wrong way but they do that to appear very fashionable scholars before people with no scientific skills. I described described in a previous presidential speech of mine https://www.wcsaglobal.org/volume-2-issue-3-2021/social-systems-a-game-not-for-scrabble-amateurs/ become visible and slightly ridiculous.
b) The mystical drift : it takes place when complex systemic semantics is adopted within a non scientific paradigm being features it does not belong to for example chaos is chaos and complexity is complexity which by definition implies they are interconnections by non linear trajectories. State more than this would mean to assess chaos and complexity by subjective, moral ,ethical, ideological, religious or common sense beliefs which area child -like attempt of man to give a human shape to something which is neither pro or against man . The “Antropocene Misunderstanding” as I call it , is an interesting case study Humanists talk about our Age as Antropocene as if itv were taken for granted, as if it existed. Geologists and other scientists stare antropocene does not exist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00675-8
The key point is that science needs a gigantic amount of systematized data constructed within a transparent and unambiguous conceptual and processual framework and it is not the case of Antropocene (yet). As a matter of fact still at the time of the Little Ice Age ( circa between last quarter of the XVI century till circa the mid XVIII one) the “ecological footprint” of our species was not very different from the sheeps one. The problem is the according to science the time range, geographical and geological scenarios are still too small and with no proper evidence to state Antropocene exists. Science states not yet ( maybe so or maybe never in the future but as for today no way to state Antropocene exists). The mystical drift looks a bit like a paranoic conspirncy vision o the world thus:
1 Science has no evidence Antropocene exists.
2 Science has no evidence Antropocene will never exist.
3 Thus Antropocene exists as a ack of evidence it will not exist is is the evidence ot might exists thus it exists.
This conspirancy based narrative pattern states that lack evidence is evidence. I have never seen a flying pig but a s I can provide no evidence pigs will not fly in the future ( maybe as a follow up of a genetic hybridation) I state we ae living I the age of the flying pigs. No educated person can take this reasoning seriously.
Creativity and imagination are very important for science as Einstein or Hawking greatly witnessed nevertheless reverse of he burden of proof is just cheating in science.
Since its 2014 and 2015 conferences, respectively in Budapest and and Amsterdam (https://www.wcsaglobal.org/book-series-cambridge/) WCSA focused its systemic geopolitical analysis on turbulent convergence ( https://rtsa.eu/RTSA_3_2019_Introduction.pdf ) whose key assets are science, technology, finance, and whatever further asset can expand the abstract and intangible shapes of wealth and value creation. This vision implies and increasing investment on universal standards in finance, cybersecurity, and health, education and research quality, UN SDGs ecc. The making of universal, global standards is not perfect, nevertheless it is the least bad way to peacefully unify a very small planet with a population like ours and the need to optimize asset and resource allocation. Research determines policy and policy determines politics. As a think tank, WCSA has no political party or belonging, nevertheless its experts in Political Sciences, at large economists, lawyers, political scientists, sociologists etc., are aware that the results of an election depend much more on the election laws and regulations than on how voters cast their votes.
Turbulent convergence implies a very high speed, nonlinear, complex systemic evolution mostly inspired by a hub network shape like the one connecting all the airports of the world which are the symbol of what Popper called an open society. Nevertheless, also fortresses exist and if they become too rigid and structured, they can become hurdles towards the expansion of the network knots and hubs. Schumpeter, Kuznets, and further theorists of the economic cycles explained that about every 30 years the evolutionary turbulence hits where fortresses are. The last time it happened was 1989, now it is 2024, and here we go. In 1989, the symbol of the opening was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mostly a “peaceful revolution”. However, it must not be forgotten, for example the public shooting of the Rumanian dictator, that Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, Yemen are likely the current key focuses of the fortresses’ hub evolution and evolution does not evolve by good/bad and neither by focusing on historical reasons but rather on the power of horizontal, synchronic interconnections.
Horizontal, synchronic interconnections shape the systemic pattern of evolution in terms of processes, forms, functions, and systems themselves, of course. No historical or ethical interpretations can provide understanding of evolutionary scenarios, the former for a matter of linear reductionism, the latter for its very partial perspective expecting that one’s own values must be the same values for the whole mankind and thus creating a huge variety of conflicts as unintended, unexpected (nevertheless predictable) consequences of ethical reductionism.
The four key systemic factors generating convergence are demography(DE), business development(D), knowledge and science-based technology(T), and legislative expansion(LE) : The Leddet Cycle. On the other hand, religious conflicts and politics seems to generate most of the turbulence which is coded as external noise by the systemic creation of meaning, for example Artificial Intelligence is evolving and expanding worldwide independently from political or religious beliefs. What matters goes global, what does not goes local-national.
1. A COMPLEX SYSTEM APPROACH
2. A COMPLEX SYSTEM APPROACH OF UNITAS MULTIPLEX OF CONNECTED KEY DIFFERENCES (UNIFICATION) beyond the reductionism trap which leads to info + data = noise and beyond the holistic trap: if you do not know everything, you can do nothing
3. GEGNET, NETWORKS & PERFORMANCES
4. A WORLD CLASS THINK TANK IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE AND POLICY MODELING FOR SUPRA AND MULTINATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS.WCSA MULTISERVICES: research reports, scientific publishing, professional-managerial publishing, strategic consulting , entrepenurial spin off and start up incubator and mentor.
1. To become a key point of reference for supra/multinational organizations worldwide.
2. To provide knowledge-intensive research based on policy modeling beyond the risks and failures of emotion and perception-driven politics.
3. To empower global aware citizens beyond the reductionist trap of methodological nationalism
4. (connecting the previous three ones):
4.1 educating global awareness for global scenarios: the case for hypercitizens and Hypercities.
4.2 aligning relational, intangible, and financial capitals in a GLOBAL HELIX MODEL
From 4.1 to 4.2 it is a four-dimensional Goudblom’s process from psychosocial to macro, through micro and meso processes.
Relational Capital, Intangible IPR and Brand Reputation Capital: Our brand is nowadays well known and reputable worldwide among early adopters and first majorities, nevertheless we are not giants at all in mass majorities. “The Medal” (among its most prestigious recipients: Ervin Laszlo, Klaus Krippendorff, Edgar Morin, who has recently become also Honorary Life President of WCSA etc.), Alfredo Spilzinger , Jo Lernout and in this 8th edition Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Norbert Csizmadia and Pablo Fudim) is nevertheless a prestigious sign of our growth. The current 8th edition Medalists clearly mirror our vision , mission and policy.
FERNANDO HENRIQUE CARDOSO a world class scholar , researcher and thinker as a sociologist of development he could turn into academic policy as President of the International Sociological Association and then to politics through his “ accidental “ adventure as President of the Federal Republic of Brazil ( https://www.amazon.it/Accidental-President-Brazil-Memoir/dp/158648429X ). He embodies reseach determines policy , policy determines politics. The PLANO REAL is his masterpiece in economical macrosociology.
NORBERT CSIZMADIA, past secretary of the Hungarian State, President of a prestigious foundation converging research and funds, president of a high quality high tech university ( J. von Neumann) and top thinker of the geofusion mapping of our world order ( https://www.amazon.it/Geofusion-geography-mapping-century-English-ebook/dp/B07PKR5SRX/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_it_IT=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=2Y7OEPY25DV7V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.aAzFHbYBoAPcZc6BTCuCkJWHHTfZrX7kO4v-0HJ3R37GjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.ueUydc82eW-rUjWw3FdEbpqX39ghMSmaO2WfShjyXWM&dib_tag=se&keywords=Csizmadia+geofusion&qid=1746291515&s=books&sprefix=csizmadia+geofusion%2Cstripbooks%2C341&sr=1-1 ): left/ right, liberal/conservative do not apply to quality scientific research for example in the field of sustainability.
PABLO FUDIM: top manager of a high knowledge intensive systemic vision inspired multinational holding such as SFAI GLOBAL where it is impossible to separate systemic research , systemic training, systemic consulting , business development and global networking.
Academic Capital: 2 book series in Paris and Newcastle, one Budapest-based academic journal – recently top ranked by the Italian Ministry for University and Research in the sectors of General Sociology, Political Sociology and Sociology of Law – , moreover new Guanajato-based WCSA PRESS for academic and divulgation works.
Multimedia, social media assets: Our website www.wcsaglobal.org, Facebook, LinkedIN, Instagram, WhatsApp etc.
RELATIONAL CAPITAL: in crossover with, among others, The International Political Science Association (IPSA), the International Sociological Association (ISA), SFAI GLOBAL and many, many others. They represent the undervalued and unexpressed hubs and networks influenced by Moore’s Law (see below 5.1).
According to a variant of Moore’s Law: the ROI of a network investment = the squared value of its knots. Let’s follow this mainstreet.
A SCHUMPETERIAN TURNING POINT FROM CYCLE 1 (micro) TO CYCLE 2 (macro): leverage and scaling hubs.
INTERCONNECTING the WCSA not for profit legal shape into a triple helix with public and corporate legal shapes to have a high-speed development by optimizing the three legal shapes also in tax benefit terms in a 3.4a-3.4b process by shaping a global partnership according to the goal 17 of the UN SDGs.
A newco according to the 17 UN SDG might be founded, hopefully based in Belgium. This newco might be the strategic incubator of the global helix, this newco would be step 2 of a process starting with the step 1 thus the making of a WCSA CLUB OF FELLOWS!
As a follow up of our General Assembly held in Brussels on September 14th, 2023,
I hereby propose to shape inside WCSA, the WCSA Club of Permanent Fellows. If the Fellows are also WCSA honorary members (life or temporary), they are by rights members of the Club in a permanent way (honorary life members/presidents) or temporary members of the Club if WCSA honorary members pro tempore. They have the rights of a WCSA membership, of course. If they are not WCSA honorary Members, by becoming Fellows of the Club, they get a privileged ” wild card” as Club Fellows to be involved in systemic lobbying, investment, entrepreneurship, consulting etc. WCSA projects at large. This Club of Felows will be a convergent project among WCSA, WCSALATAM, Montevideo, and the costituenda WCSA EUROPE, Brussels
In the last 18 months WCSA strongly empowered its intangible value creation and cosmopolitan globalization of platforms by its agreement with Bots R Here to break logistics and language walls, WCSA empowered its complex evolutionary complex social system scientific approach to develop amore universal, cosmopolitan and interdisciplinary platrform systemic researchers, professionals, investors , entrepeneurs and managers can share their toolkits, knowledge and value. According to its mission “ research determines policy , policy determines politics “ WCSA promotes and encourages synergies with think tanks which are clearly research driven while WCS skips away from think tanks which are politics drive and ude white ppers as non scientific tools to try to take control of science based ageda and goals. From this point of view agenda 2030 is absolutely a precious epistemological framework nevertheless its specific projects must be subject to potential Popperian falsification to be reliable and valid. WCSA marches on with a triple mission helix and with a convergent vision in which science, validated knowledge, financial investment capitals, intangible assets.
Expand networks with organizations whose helix is Research-Policy-Politics (the power of Wahlvrwandtschaften !!!!). When organizations shaped as Politics-Policy- ( maybe) Research helices appear usually science is reduce at arhetorical level by those politicians and naif subjects who try to take control on research politically. Nevertheless you cannot launch a rocket to mars ony rhetorically and there all the “ scrabble amateurs” https://www.wcsaglobal.org/volume-2-issue-3-2021/social-systems-a-game-not-for-scrabble-amateurs/ become visible and slightly ridiculous.
As Ursula Von der Leyen recently reiterated with great clarity with the slogan “choose science, choose Europe” and as also highlighted in The Draghi Report on EU Competitiveness, the European Union is currently becoming a magnet for the world’s most important brains, studies, and research: with a view to the centrality of the European Union and the development of a network in which knowledge and modern science become tools for cooperation and the development of critical mass, problems affecting all citizens of the world, and not just European citizens, are being addressed.
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