Dr. Arantzazu Saratxaga Arregi

CV

Arantzazu Saratxaga Arregi, PhD, born 1982, is a university lecturer and philosopher. She hold her PhD in 2018 from the University of Design Karlsruhe on the topic "A Systematic Introduction of a Matrixial Philosophy. Mother - World - Womb. Towards a multivalent ontology." In 2019 to 2021, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on the project "Contemporary Prehistories. The Dissident Goddesses' Network. An Epistemology of complex and self-organizing processes such as theories of operational closure and a philosophy of endomilieus and environmental ties, informs her current research. In 2023 she founded Omphalos Academy: A philosophical academy for the exploration, education and knowledge exchange of complexity and matrixiality. Currently she is working in her post-doctoral dissertation, "The embedding principle of the hollow form". Most important publication: "Matrixial Philosophy. Mother - World- Womb: Towards a Multivalent Ontology."

Selected Publications

• Saratxaga Arregi, Arantzazu, Matrixiale Philosophie: Mutter-Welt-Gebärmutter: Zu einer dreiwertigen Ontologie. Bielefeld. Transcript, 2019, 330 pp. DOI: 10.14361/9783839445907-012

• Saratxaga Arregi, Arantzazu: „Philosophical Foundations of Cybernetics: The first steps in Epistemologies of Complexity“, in: Philosophy Kitchen PK #18, 2023.

• Saratxaga Arregi, Arantzazu; „Heinz von Foersters Operative Epistemologie: Orientierungsenklaven für eine Erfassung der Komplexität“, in: Constructivist Foundations (forthcoming)

• Saratxaga Arregi, Arantzazu, “An Ontology of Nothingness: From a Matrixial Dialectic to a Multivalent Ontology of Matrixial Materialism, Endo Interior-Relation Toward an Ontological Multivalence Versus Substantive Immaterialism”, in: Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, special Issue “Immaterial and Material Discourse”, Vol. 44, No.4, 2021.http://jcla.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/JCLA-44.3_Arantzazu-Saratxaga-Arregi.pdf

• Saratxaga Arregi, Arantzaz, „Zu gnostischen Motiven der operativen Erkenntnistheorie“, in:  Johannes Benke & Virgil Brower (Hg.), Mediality, Religion, Theology, Internationales Jahrbuch für Medienphilosophie, Bd. 7, Berlin (2021) S. 33-62. https://doi.org/10.1515/jbmp-2021-0011

• Saratxaga Arregi, Arantzazu, „Liebe: Wenn eine Unmöglichkeit wahrscheinlich wird“, in: Tuczay/Ballhausen (Hg.), Mahrtenehe (forthcoming)

FRIAS Research Project

Epistemology of complexity through a conceptual and historical discourse analysis of entropy

Complexity research is an interdisciplinary study of how order can be generated from multiple interactions between different components, where the number of unpredictable elements is enormous. An epistemology of complexity should then require that the question of cognition be transformed from one of the description of reality and the
analysis of the epistemic ordering parameters of this observation.

In this context, the epistemology of complexity aims at a critical analysis of the conditions of observed order/ordering structures of complex processes. This critical question - critical insofar as one deals with the conditions of possibility of the cognition of order structures - is dealt with by means of a discourse analysis of order/disorder and on the basis of the concept of entropy.

The discourse-analytical work with the concept of entropy does not devote itself to a detailed analysis in the various scientific disciplines, but draws attention to those conditions that assign it the meaning of disorder.

In this sense, the question of how the organisation of a system achieves a higher order, which is dealt with in detail by second-order cybernetics, is followed by a second one: under what conditions are the created orders produced, how does the order/disorder affect observation, how much disorder can observation bear, and what does actual disorder/disorder mean for observation.

I consider such a critical approach crucial to finding a new epistemic approach to the uncertainties that that research on complexity evokes ever more rapidly and frequently.