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The Structural Realism of Agent-Network Theory
as the Philosophical Basis for Understanding Complex Systems
Paweł Zgrzebnicki, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw
pzgrzebnicki@st.swps.edu.pl
Keywords: artificial life, complex systems, ontic structural realism, Actor-Network Theory
Interdisciplinary scientific efforts toward understanding the phenomenon of life, in particular
the focus of work known as the study of artificial life encounter a number of problems related
to the need to work out a common understanding of the issues under consideration. In particular,
the researcher's efforts are geared towards defining terms such as agent, agency, life,
purposefulness and similar definitions, which are intuitively understandable but difficult to
formalize.
It is worth pointing out in this context that the problem we are dealing with here is on the one
hand an ontological issue, and on the other hand it has epistemological character, which is
traditionally the domain of philosophy. The attempt to define the above concepts in the way of
an experiment or in general of some research method seems to be a logical contradiction,
because they are placed in the domain of the most primordial assumptions of the physics of the
system, and therefore they belong to the metaphysical space, describing what is to be dealt with
by chemistry, computer science, or any other field of study. Applying on a possible definition
based on the observation of the result of the experiment does not necessarily have to be the best
path of understanding, so it may be worthwhile to begin the search by finding the appropriate
philosophical formalism to describe the very space of the problem.
Reaching such a basis can have one more advantage. The sciences of artificial life often try to
operate the same concepts that humanists have so far been dealing with. Cultures, communities,
life and even intentions are taken into account. It may be possible that using the thought already
present in some way in the humanities and in particular in cultural sciences or sociology, will
not only sort out metaphysical inquiries and allow for a new, perhaps more fruitful glimpse of
the problem, but it will also bring together the two intellectual streams - human sciences and
exact sciences. They have one goal - understanding reality - but they use different tools and
consider another level of complexity of the issues they analyze.
One of the ideas worth considering in this context is Agent-Network Theory (ANT), which
since the seventies of XX-th century has been dealt with by research centers around the French
Center de Sociologie de l'Innovation of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Paris, e.g.
by Bruno Latour, Michael Callon and John Law. ANT was derived directly from the work
carried out under the so-called Studies in Science and Technology and - although the coauthors
of Theory often denied their postmodern philosophical sympathies - it is associated mainly with
the postmodernism and deconstructivism. These two words have been discredited in the eyes
of scientists representing science, especially in the face of the so-called Science Wars of the
nineties of the previous century. Irrespective of the historical connotation and the way in which
the Theory was described by the authors, its analysis may lead to the conclusion that it is -
perhaps even against the intentions of the creators - surprisingly constructive. If you deprive
ANT of postmodern language and overflowing words with a small amount of real information,
it turns out that this Theory leads to a very attractive, metaphysical vision of the Universe. First
of all, ANT says that the world consists solely of relationships and that there is no indivisible
basic substance. Philosophically, such a viewpoint converges with the assumptions of ontic
structural realism. Next, ANT is considering agents who are inseparable in the network of
ubiquitous relationships, but in reality, these agents - the "black boxes", as the Theory calls
them - when one looks into their interior, are made up of other agents involved in each other.
And so, ad infinitum: every identity of an agent or his internal components turns out to be
illusory. The world seems to have a fractal structure in which every agent is in fact the network
of relationships that make him up. It is worth noting that the name in which the dash is inserted
clearly suggests that the concept applies to an agent who ontologically is both a network and a
network that is the agent himself. ANT also says that it does not look into the black box as long
as it "works flawlessly". Therefore, this definition is satisfactory when we recognize that
something fulfills the imposed criteria that uniquely identify this set of relationships. The
problem starts when something stops responding to a fixed formula, such as when the definition
of life, intent, or any other stereotype ceases to function properly, or - generally speaking -
when the adopted classifier with respect to the studied system produces a logically negative
result. At this point it is worth noting that the above is always present in relation to the observer.
It is sufficient, for example, that an observer challenges the "man" as something solid, as
a fundamental being, and opens the prospect of looking inside and outside of the system that
creates that being. Such a look inside and outside the agent makes us find other relationships:
in the society of individuals and in fact of human cells, also influenced by external environment.
However, at this level, no human being as originally perceived is ever seen. In this way, being,
agent or culture are defined according to the place from where the observer refers, and it makes
no sense to talk about any general, always true definition that can function from any perspective.
For example, let's consider an object moving in space. Concentrating attention on it, so in
relation, for example with its shape, we easily conceptualize it as a separate being. However,
when we look at a fixed space that changes its contents only for a moment when the object
moves through it, the issue of defining this "agent" does not seem so easy anymore; similarly,
when we look inside this hypothetical object. In the representation of Agent-Network Theory,
any ontological and epistemological considerations have only the meaning "in relation to", and
in this sense, should be examined every time. This is a real challenge, because instead of
a specific answer to the question "what is ...", we get a whole class of possible solutions.
Perhaps, however, this is the right direction that can lead to a fuller understanding of the
behavior of complex systems. Instead of considering these systems as complex objects, perhaps
it is worth looking at the whole as a function of transforming the domain of possible relations.
The number of relationships can be infinite in general, but concentrating on the interest in the
function and its properties brings the ability to make the result more specific.
Agent-Network Theory also has another constructive advantage - it says that everything that
happens in the world is governed by the so-called "translations that can be understood as
conveying information from an agent to an agent in accordance with their interrelationships.
Such perceived metaphysics of reality ceases to be an abstract postmodern description, and may
be a solid core of understanding complex systems in which the information processing
mechanism is also involved. This valuable point of view can also be linked to the humanities,
as nothing generates humanist resistance as an indisputable, often silly assumption, a rigid
definition that later functions in the social circle as a "scientific fact," in an indisputable way
dividing the world into what it is and what it is not. Particularly in relation to man and his
communities, which (even indirectly, per analogiam) are dealt with by the science of artificial
life, each model raises reservations about the assumptions underlying it, and which in practice,
in subsequent research applications, can do harm to a human being, for example, through the
soulless categorization or the "scientific" classification of some of its properties. It is worth
mentioning here that especially in this context, the so-called "statistical truth" is strongly
criticized, as generally accepted by the people as "scientific fact" of the theorem based on
random distribution. Hence, it is the source of the humanistic fondness for relativism, the
perspective in which one can always take a different view and the state of the system depends
on the observer. It may be worthwhile to reach for a theory that has its place in the space of
social sciences and which at the same time can make the classes of solutions to problems in the
science of artificial life wider by their relational perspective.
Bibliography:
Ladyman, J., Ross, D., Spurrett, D., & Collier, J. G. (2007). Every thing must go: metaphysics
naturalized. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford ;
New York: Oxford University Press.
Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts.
Princeton University Press.
Harman, G. (2009). Prince of networks: Bruno Latour and metaphysics. Melbourne: re.press.
Sokal, A. D., & Bricmont, J. (1999). Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals’ abuse
of science (1. paperback ed). New York: St. Martins Press.
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