Dalla Wechselwirkung all’entanglement. Simmel e la scienza del XXI secolo

Simmel's sociology has been explored and exploited from perspectives largely belonging to a homogeneous culture that "translated" his insights in its own terms. Ground-breaking ideas - such as Wechselwirkung, "reciprocal action" - have thus been interpreted as rational and instrumental, losing sight of their innovative potential. Not only the relational network that Wechselwirkung creates between people forms the humus from which stem social structures and institutions; it also works on multiple levels that are qualitative and emotional, as well as rational and calculating, and most of all simultaneous, as Morin would have it. Wechselwirkung establishes a complex bond between persons and institutions and allows for a deeper understanding of reality in its processual essence, as revealed by Oriental mysticism and Western Quantum Theory (Capra). The idea of a qualitative, intuitive component of knowledge was highlighted in Goethe's work, in his Anschauung, "vision", as a multidimensional approach to reality that could go beyond the subject-object dichotomy and reveal and make understandable the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Simmel built on that and put this constant exchange at the heart of society, as the fundamental dynamics that allows humanity to create its world. His sharp criticism of quantitative science and measurability, of the ideas themselves of "concept" and "object" is easier to understand today, in the light of Quantum Mechanics and of the little-known insights of its founders, from Heisenberg, who speaks in favour of Goethe's view on science, to Bohm, who stresses the need for creativity and metaphorical thinking to set a new, different, paradigm. In Simmel we could easily find seminal ideas perfectly fitting for this challenging purpose. This paper is meant as a first step on the road to mending our divided knowledge and creating new tools for a better understanding of reality.