Thinking the Problematic

Front matter

Oliver Leistert, Isabell Schrickel (eds.)

Genealogies and Explorations between Philosophy and the Sciences

[transcript] Philosophy

Contents

The Problems of Modern Societies — Epistemic Design around 1970 Isábell.SChrickel:; «etUm RM RU $5

The Problematic of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Sciences Esther. Meyer i cR en be o diede ob apis 69

A Genealogical Perspective on the Problematic: From Jacques Martin to Louis Althusser

Conclusion

Egle Rindzeviciüté has recently argued that the mobilisation of complex systems perspectives and the ‘smuggling’ of policy sciences developed at IIASA, entailing notions of uncertainty and limits to knowing, had a liberalising impact on Soviet governance in the sense that they challenged totalitarian notions of control (Rindzeviciüté 2016: 206-209). In a similar vein we can describe how these joint research initiatives opened up an international space for the construction and governance of transboundary problems in Europe, or how particular problematisations and the enactment of more ambiguous epistemologies and proposed frameworks to think about sustainable future pathways of modern societies both confirmed and challenged values, epistemic ideologies and imaginations of modernity (Schrickel 2017). In that sense we can evaluate problem-oriented research and interdisciplinary thinking at IIASA and other places in terms of the questions and futures perspectives generated and the interventions and differences they made (Barry/ Born 2013). In any case, they represent various ways of actively creating and engaging with the future outlooks of modern societies in the light of emerging global challenges.

This paper presented an integrative historical approach to the study of changing conceptual frameworks and epistemological developments in interdisciplinary scientific fields such as systems science, futures research and policy sciences, which have been traced through the making of novel institutions in the years around 1970. It attempted to embed conceptual developments in the scholarly world in a broader intellectual and political environment fostering increasingly reflexive and constructive approaches. The positivist approach to progress, growth and development, which had been carefully constructed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, was called into question. The same applies to teleological ideas about the future and societal progress. It has been suggested to study these epistemic shifts through the changing notion of the problem, which was brought forward in various contexts at the time as a post-positivist operational concept. The conjuncture of and ‘problem-talk’ has been discussed as a marker for a questioning situation in the international history of modern societies, and it has been argued that through the construction of problems broader intellectual debates on the perceived challenges for modern societies, in the light of social, political and technological developments, have been enacted. In a historical moment of post-Cold War uncertainty, complexity and openness that came to the fore in the writings and discussions of various scholars, institutional entrepreneurs and policy advisors, the high-modernist problem-solving mentality of the previous era had lost its epistemic appeal.

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