Foundations of the Ontology of Emerging Complexity/Order as Local Effect/I - Against Order as Principle

I - Against Order as Principle

Western ontology, shaped by the inheritances of classical thought, constituted order as the originative principle—prior and normative in relation to the real. This conception—what may be named archetypal ontogenesis—presupposes that the world is organized according to an implicit plan, a prior rationality, or a pre-established harmony that precedes the very existence of forms. From the Greek cosmogonic myths, through Aristotle's teleological metaphysics, to the dialectical structures of German idealism, order appears not as effect but as foundation—not as consequence, but as principle.

Aristotle, by proposing the distinction between efficient, material, formal, and final causes (Physica, II, 194b23–35), inscribes order into the structure of reality’s intelligibility itself: every change has an end, and this end participates in a form that precedes it. Finality, within this model, is not a retroactive projection of thought upon events—it is a structure immanent to beings themselves, directing their actualization. Entelecheia, that is, the realization of potential according to intrinsic essence, installs order as the very destiny of becoming.

This model is subsequently absorbed by Christian theology and reformulated by Hegel into a rational totality in process. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, history is not a contingent succession of events, but the progressive actualization of Reason in time (Hegel, 1807, p. 27). Apparent disorder must, therefore, be subsumed under an ultimate order—even if it remains latent. The real is rational, and the rational is real.

The Ontology of Emerging Complexity (OEC) frontally refuses this horizon. It not only rejects order as a prior principle to emergence—it affirms the radical impossibility of any teleological architecture prior to the event. Order, here, is not an archetype imposed upon matter, but a localized effect of matter in reorganizing tension. There is no prefigured direction in becoming; no form anterior to the field.

This critique of teleology is not a mere negation of finality as motor of reality—it is a reconfiguration of the very status of form. Against the tradition that conceives form as essence, OEC understands form as event. Form is what occurs when multiple instabilities intersect, producing for a moment an operatory consistency (cf. Document 6 – Order as Effect). But this consistency does not translate any prior truth—it is, itself, the real in its localized expression.

This epistemological displacement has decisive consequences. It releases matter from the status of passive residuum—no longer chaos to be tamed by exterior reason—but as operatory potency. Matter, far from resisting form, is what produces it. And in producing it, it inscribes itself—without plan, without model, without finality.

Prigogine and Stengers, in their critique of classical physics' determinism, had already intuited this movement by describing dissipative systems as structures emerging from instability—not from conservation (La Nouvelle Alliance, 1979, p. 132). Beyond preservation, there is production—a production that does not aim at a goal, but self-organizes from fluctuation itself. OEC radicalizes this perspective by abandoning even the idea of an immanent regulatory plan. Matter is not informed—it performs.

Simondon, in his theory of individuation, conceives the emergence of the individual through modulation within metastable fields (Simondon, 2005, p. 215). Yet even Simondon retains a distinction between the pre-individual and the individuated—preserving an ontological reserve beneath emergence. OEC refuses this schema entirely: there is no substrate, no anterior field—only tension already modulating itself.

To think ontologically, then, is not to discover the world’s order—it is to listen to its continuous friction. Order, like the concept of origin (cf. Document 9 – Origin is What Becomes Origin), is always an act of belated nomination: there is only order when something has endured long enough to be symbolically inscribed. Prior to that, there is only modulation, torsion, hesitation within matter. Order does not impose itself upon the real; it emerges from it—and in doing so, begins already to dissolve.

Even within evolutionary biology, the illusion of intrinsic directionality persists. As Gould demonstrates, apparent trajectories toward complexity are statistical artifacts—not evidence of ontological orientation (Gould, 1996, p. 58). Complexity grows not by fulfilling an essence, but by reorganizing operationally under tension. What persists is not what was prefigured—but what manages, momentarily, to hold.

Against archetypal ontogenesis, OEC proposes an operatory ontogenesis: every form is a singular event of matter—not the actualization of a model. Emergence is the new principle—not as foundation, but as function. And it is through this function that order dissolves as truth and reappears as effect.

The deconstruction of order as principle restores to thought its most urgent function: not to justify the world from invisible essences, but to accompany its transformation from immanence. To think, here, is to inscribe oneself within incompletion. Not to seek ultimate structure, but to recognize that every structure is temporary—and that intelligibility is always local, situated and provisional. Order does not found—it happens. And precisely for that reason, there is no principle: only emergence.