Foundations of the Ontology of Emergent Complexity/Preface

Purpose and Educational Orientation This book introduces a philosophical current: the Ontology of Emergent Complexity (OEC). It offers a structured and pedagogically usable entry into a materialist ontology. Its central problem is how novelty, thought, symbolic operations, and local order can arise within a material field without requiring a second ontological domain. The current was first articulated in 2020 as an attempt to think the real without transcendent grounds or the privilege of permanence over variation. It also refuses the dualist architectures that divide matter from thought. This volume follows its own editorial path and is self-contained. The arguments and definitions required for its study are developed in these pages. The references document the sources used. Information about the author and the wider project is available at travessia.online. A Stable Edition of an Open Inquiry The work passed through successive states of public revision. Its seven-part architecture is now fixed. The present edition incorporates clarifications introduced when objections exposed ambiguities or when examples required greater precision. The stable form allows the argument to be read and assessed as a whole. Future conceptual revision remains possible. No symbolic ordering exhausts the real it seeks to render intelligible. A phenomenon may therefore expose the insufficiency of a present distinction and require its reformulation. The book can be complete as an edition while its claims remain answerable to what they attempt to describe. Its concepts have reached the degree of consistency needed for rigorous study and teaching open to criticism. Intended Readers The book is written primarily for students and teachers seeking a guided introduction to contemporary materialist ontology. It also addresses researchers working in epistemology, complexity studies, philosophy of science, technology, or artificial intelligence, as well as readers interested in emergence and non-dualist accounts of matter and thought. Readers may begin without specialist training. Explanations and cross-links support the cumulative argument. Examples and study questions allow readers to test their understanding. Accessibility here means making each distinction examinable while preserving the philosophical claim at stake. How to Use the Book The sequence matters. Part I establishes the philosophical commitments, and Part II examines the method and style of inquiry that follow from them. Part III develops the central mechanics of complexity, emergence, and local order; Part IV turns to ethical and political implications; Part V conducts critical dialogues with philosophical traditions; and Part VI stabilises the working vocabulary and shows how its terms vary by context. The Conclusion identifies its results and limits; its questions remain open. Part VII documents the principal interlocutors, conceptual sources, references, and routes for further reading; the Theoretical Appendix gives selected claims a more formal expression. The thirty-six numbered content pages from 1.1 to 6.3 share a common two-block architecture. The philosophical text carries the argument; the subsequent Reading Colloquium situates that argument, clarifies its problem, identifies the operative concepts, and provides pedagogical pathways. The Colloquium accompanies the philosophical text and leaves its argument intact. The Part I overview, the Conclusion, the documentary units of Part VII, and the Theoretical Appendix use formats appropriate to their distinct functions. The book also distinguishes philosophical commitments from claims of scientific consensus. Scientific research constrains examples and causal claims. Materialist monism and the refusal of teleology require argumentative assessment beyond scientific evidence. The same applies to the framework's divergences from Deleuze's virtual and Simondon's preindividual. Invitation to Critical Use The book asks readers to work on its distinctions. Its concepts should be compared with alternatives and tested against concrete cases. Where they fail, they should be rejected or reformulated. Two questions should remain active throughout: what does a distinction make possible, and what would count against it? The edition is stable. The inquiry remains open because its claims stay exposed to the field they attempt to describe. That exposure is a condition of rigour.