Complexity to inform issues of methodology, taxation and politics in a context of crisis

Looking hard at attacks on Complex Realism

What follows in this piece and the next is a response to three articles, one published in 2014 and two more recent ones which draw heavily on that 2014 article by Holland. Frankly, these get things very badly wrong. Holland, at least, had read some but not that much, written in the mode of Complex Realism, which is not a theory but rather a framework for understanding the world and, in the version I deploy, how to act within it. The two more recent pieces not only get things wrong but have  utterly failed to engage with what Gill Callaghan and I have described as “the state of the art” in complex realism, the title of a book which they might have read with profit. They either ignore, or more likely are wholly ignorant of, how complex realism has actually been put to work in social research and social action.  I could pay no attention to  this stuff, seeing it as mere academic waffle, as I did with Holland’s article when I first read it, but these things take on a life of their own. Hence, this response.

Response to ‘Complex Realism, Applied Social Science and Post-disciplinarity – A Critical Assessment of the Work of David Byrne’ Dominic Holland Journal of Critical Realism 13 5 (2014)  David Byrne

The abstract to this article is the best way to present its argument:

In this review essay I offer a critical assessment of the work of David Byrne, an applied social scientist who is one of the leading advocates of the use of complexity theory in the social sciences and who has drawn on the principles of critical realism in developing an ontological position of ‘complex realism’. The key arguments of his latest book, Applying Social Science: The Role of Social Research in Politics, Policy and Practice constitute the frame of the review; however, since these overlap with those of his previous books, Interpreting Quantitative Data and Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences, I consider all three books together. I identify aspects of Byrne’s ontological position that are in tune with the principles of original and dialectical critical realism and aspects that are not. I argue that these inconsistencies, which Byrne must resolve if he is to take his understanding of complexity further, stem from the residual influence of various forms of irrealism in his thinking.

I noticed this piece some time ago, read through it, decided it was merely a piece of heresy hunting by the Church of Critical Realism, and ignored it. However, there have been more recent products in the same vein attacking the whole programme of complex realism, of which more anon, so I have decided to respond, vigorously. Holland’s article, which has the virtue of being clearly written enables me to mount a critique of this sort of version of “critical” realism in relation to some fundamental errors in its overall understanding. Let me itemize:

1. Holland’s does not grasp the essentially dynamic character of far from equilibric complex systems and the consequent need to grasp causation in terms of multiple interacting real processes leading to the emergent character of the systems, after Hegel and even more after G.H. Lewes (who says the same things as Hegel but much more clearly). We need to understand causality not in terms of separate causes and effects with effect understood as static outcome. Rather we have to think in terms of processual and relational causation with effects being understood as dynamic system states and the reality of positive feedback meaning that effects have recursive/reflexive causal powers in relation to these causal processes / relations themselves.
2. Holland asserts that in my writing I regard the ontological levels as outlined by Bhaskar in terms of the Real, the Actual, and the Empirical as somehow separated and not causally inter-related. On the contrary and as illustrated for example by my picking up on Desrosiere’s discussion of the nature and role of official statistical systems, I absolutely do not hold that position. Desrosières notes that to repeat a constant mantra in Sociology, things are real if they are real in their consequences. Official statistics have a constitutive role in the development – note dynamism – of the whole social order of the states in which they are collected. So far, so good but Desrosières as an adherent of Actor Network Theory takes a fully social constructionist view on the status of the statistics in the first place whereas I, influenced by the development of a philosophy in the flesh after Merleau Ponty see reality at the level of both the real and the actual as having a voice in the construction of the data. This is a materialist position in the tradition of historical materialism which school is certainly not empiricist although deeply attentive to the empirical, a distinction made with great clarity by E.P. Thompson in his magisterial dismissal of Althusser in The Poverty of Theory. (1978).
3. Holland equates my use of the word ‘trace’ to describe the nature of the quantitative measurements we make of aspects of systems at points in their trajectories – dynamism again – through time as in effect equivalent to the abstracted conception of variables in positivist and empiricist accounts and sees my reference to the necessity to accommodate complexity by inserting interaction terms in regression models in the same way. So far as interaction is concerned,  I merely indicate that the necessity to insert interaction terms is an indication of the reality of complex causation, a point I first grasped from Cathie Marsh’s discussion of interaction in her The Survey Method (1982.)It is a tribute, but an inadequate one, made by regression approaches to the reality of complexity in the world. And traces are not variables – they are quantitative indications of what is happening in the trajectories in aspects of complex systems and of the subsystems which compose them. They do not have independent causal powers but are helpful in grasping the nature of systems as they develop through time, which is why I always emphasize the value of time ordered quantitative numerical taxonomies (including measurements at the nominal level) as a means of exploratory research – and for me all research is essentially exploratory.  I will not accuse Holland of this but for those who follow after him in the pieces I will review subsequently it seems as if adherence to the Church of Realism has innumeracy as a fundamental epistemological principle. By the way historical narratives of systems also trace their trajectories using language to do so.
4. In his assertion of the need to retain an absolute distinction between “pure” and “applied” science Holland asserts that my :

;… questioning of the distinction between pure and applied scientific inquiry and … emphasis on the construction of knowledge of social reality through practical engagement with it — as opposed to the transformation of pre-existing cognitive resources through a process of dialectical reasoning — indicates the residual influence of pragmatism and interpretivism in his thinking.’

Guilty as charged up to a point in relation to pragmatism but not positivisms at all. For me what matters is that Holland’s account of the nature of pure science as based on abstracted dialectical reasoning illustrates the idealist character of “critical” realism as is has developed. Of course, all the products of empirical research have to be interpreted. This is even more important for quantitative products where not only the products as traces but also the operationalizations which shaped them, require careful interpretations. This is a hermeneutic essential not least for the products of large language modelling. A dialectical sensibility is helpful but Complex Realism is a materialist position in all its aspects because it engages with the social and natural real at the levels of both generative overall systems, notably and of enormous importance of the nature of the Capitalocene global system which is currently in crisis – a word not deployed in “critical” realism very much if at all. It is precisely by recognizing how action matters for understanding – the essential content of the Thesis XI on Feuerbach as carved on Marx’s tomb and of Mao’s (monster though he was) assertion that we understand the world by changing it, that we can inform necessary social transformation. With Holland we are back to justification of  “theoretical praxis” as with Althusser. Hence my insertion of quotation marks around the “critical” in “critical” realism. Praxis it is not.

Complex Systems as dynamic and changeable

Bhaskar differentiated between open and closed systems. Complex far from equilibric systems are certainly open, open to a degree that Cilliers recognized in his exact critique of Luhmann’s Maturana derived notion of the nature of boundaries (Cilliers, P. (2001) ‘Boundaries, Hierarchies and Networks in Complex Systems’ International Journal of Innovation Management). Boundaries in complex systems delimit but they also connect. AND complex systems are also dynamic. But there is a lot more to understanding systems as complex than mere openness. Complex systems are dynamic. They are in constant motion but they have long periods of relative stability – the notion of longue dureè in sociological history fits that well – during which to use a topological metaphor they bang about within the boundaries of a torus attractor but do not change in kind – undergo a phase shift – all metaphors, but all description of value are based on metaphors with simile aiding comparisons and distinctions – like and unlike. Holland constantly refers to structures, things that are fixed, and events – things that happen once – in his discussion of the nature of the real / actual from which we develop the empirical.  Structure as Westergaard noted is a tricky metaphor for social reality but it can be usefully deployed to refer to the generative real nature, in Bhaskar’s sense of real, of social orders, as relatively stable social forms with causal powers running in both directions between the structure and all elements and relations within it. Our overall global social structure now is the Capitalocene, actually in a state of polycrisis – a system state which cannot endure for long but must actually revert to a previous relatively stable system state or be transformed into a new relatively stable system state which may include ceasing to exist as a coherent system.  Polycrisis is a useful expression for describing how crucial subsystems in an overall complex system are themselves in crisis and the interaction of those crises provokes an overall system crisis.  We need to deal not with causes which generate determinant effects but with processes and relations which interact, in the general sense of that word, to generate emergent system states. Lewes’ key discussion of process as causation and of the reciprocal / recursive nature of causes and effects in his Problems of Life and Mind (1870s), derived from his reflections on Darwin (not explicitly on Wallace but Wallace was actually clearer on his method than Darwin) are exactly the origins of complexity as an ontological framing.

Whenever we talk about structure in the social sciences, and now in the era of the Capitalocene we must recognize in the natural sciences as engaged with the all the ecological, meteorological and climate sciences, we need also to talk about agency. That is we need to recognize the capacity of human individual and collective actions, including the collective actions of all forms of institutions and organizations, in shaping and potentially transforming the overall character of systems. Gill Callaghan (strangely deprived of her doctorate whilst I keep my chair in the author credit) and I wrote about this in a piece on The Paradox of Agency https://paradoxof.agency/Byrne-and-Callaghan and engaged with object oriented ontology there.  We agree that there is agency beyond the agency of humans, but it is the agency of people which matters here. Let me quote the passage where Holland accuses me of pragmatism in full:

Byrne discusses the philosophy of pragmatism in chapter eight on action research and appears to be critical of it: ‘The problem is that the pragmatic turn is a turn away from any kind of non-contextual knowledge, however limited the bounding of application of that knowledge. We lose structure when we take this turn’ (p. 159). I suggest that it is in virtue of the influence of (transcendental realist) critical naturalism that Byrne recognizes the problems associated with the pragmatist position. Nevertheless, his questioning of the distinction between pure and applied scientific inquiry and his emphasis on the construction of knowledge of social reality through practical engagement with it — as opposed to the transformation of pre-existing cognitive resources through a process of dialectical reasoning — indicates the residual influence of pragmatism and interpretivism in his thinking. (2014 548)

That is the only engagement Holland makes with my emphasis on the unity of research and action in the construction of knowledge as a basis for transformative action.  Gill Callaghan, Emma Uprichard and I develop the argument for the necessity for the unity of research and action in relation to the polycrisis in the Capitalocene in our forthcoming book: Global Crises: Complexity Based Research and Practice for Social Transformation  Bristol: Policy Press (2025). I wonder if Holland will engage with that.

Let me conclude this section with a point Gill, Emma and I make in the preface to that book. We all write as synthesists – people who draw on a range of perspectives and approaches to try to develop knowledge as a basis for transformation whilst always recognizing that knowledge is a necessary condition for confronting power, it is not sufficient on its own – an exact example of multiple causation. The Church of “Critical” Realism seems stuck in its own obsession with the revealed truth of its scriptures and commentary confined to those scriptures. Its adherents really need to get out more and see if they can put their ideas to work. Thus, the whilst the heretical realist approach in relation to theories of the middle range developed by Pawson and Tilly has generated an enormous amount of practical and engaged research across a whole range of public policy, “pure” “critical” realism has had no meaningful impact in those domains at all and equally little in radical political engagement. I have (friendly) disagreements with Pawson and Tilly and will develop those in  a subsequent critique of Ray Pawson’s excellent How to Think like a Realist (Edward Elgar 2024) but the Church has nothing like that to its credit. Likewise, I have some important disagreements with some things in Malcolm Williams’ Realism and Complexity in Social Science (2021), notably with his understanding, as I read him of determination in terms of exact specification, rather than as setting limits to the range of possible system states. For me is to far too attached useful book which contributes to the complex realism canon.   to probability rather than variation within the possibility state. That said this is an important and useful book.