The Contributory Revolution

Postface

The crises of the Anthropocene amplify and dramatize several fundamental questions concerning the organization of society. In this context, The Contributory Revolution focuses on the primary question of knowledge. Depending on how we conceive the articulation between knowledge and the known object, we will respond differently, for example, to climate change or to the erosion of biodiversity. Pierre Giorgini explores and develops the idea of a change of epistemic organization, through the shift of organizations from a dominantly exo-distributive character to endo-contributive organizations.

The former places intelligence outside a system, and this external intelligence arranges the system according to the ends that are conferred upon it. For example, physics allows us to study the thermal insulation of houses to reduce energy consumption, and the solutions found are then deployed in an industrial way, potentially with the support of political measures. However, these models exclude the inhabitant (and the physicist), who are placed outside the world from the point of view of the analysis. These are exo-distributive models.

On the contrary, the endo-contributive perspective posits intelligence as distributed within the system and organizes itself in this perspective. For example, the thermal insulation of a house has a very different effect depending on what the inhabitant does with it, which in practice limits the scope of the exo-distributive approach to fight against ...