Social Sciences, Complexity and Sociology of the Present in Edgar Morin

Abstract

The article intends to revisit the contribution of the french thinker Edgar Morin (1921-) to the construction of a plural and open method of research in Social Sciences. We will have as theoretical-epistemological basis the sociology of the present, an approach of social phenomena developed by the author during three decades, from the 1940s to the 1970s, constituting the matrix of complex thinking. The present work defends the idea that the central categories of the present sociology, such as phenomenon, crisis and event, as well as the so-called living method of empirical research are still fundamental today in the sense of proposing an opening of the social sciences to phenomena increasingly more complex and multidimensional. This presupposes the researcher's subjective and objective engagement, narrative ability, and sensitivity to grasp revealing detail.