Planetary Models and the Politics of Reflexion

Hoyng, Rolien (2025) Planetary Models and the Politics of Reflexion. In: AsSIST-UK conference, 2025-06-02 - 2025-06-03, Edinburgh University.

Abstract

This paper reflects on my own approach to models as research objects, while I take models themselves to be technologies enacting reflexion. Here I mean reflexion in two ways: 1) the representationalist sense of presenting a truth claim via a model and 2) the performative sense of practicing reflexivity vis-à-vis the frame and format of the model. The models I focus on are planetary models such as climate models and Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that revolve around coupling earth systems with social and economic factors. As I and others have argued, when models such as IAMs are taken to be a reflexion of reality, and hence as analogous with reality, the conception of the planet itself starts following the format that is deployed for its modeling. That is, the format of the model starts to define how the planet is approached ontologically: the planet and the climate are drawn into a computational episteme. For instance, the cosmos appears a system of computable relations, and climate change can be expressed in the simple quantifiable metric of CO2 emissions (Brodie 2024). The climate crisis does not only appear human-made but also human-manageable and subject to strategic intervention and design. In treating the planet as such, indeterminacy is erased and therewith the possibility of planetary agency beyond what we are predicting (Hoyng forthcoming a & b). But what would a more reflective use of models—in the sense of performing reflexivity—look like and what possibilities for climate politics are implied? Second-order cybernetics revolved around the critical insight that observing systems are in fact observed at the same time. As Katherine Hayles (2025) argues, what emerged is reflexivity regarding the relational frame to analyze relations. One consequence can be that the above ontologization of a computational episteme is questioned. This could lead us to treat models heuristically as speculative technologies and act on the basis of precaution rather than presumed control. At the same time, however, this approach reveals the contingency of what counts as ontologically primary. Hayles proposes an attractive notion of the multiplicity of planetary cognition, according to which there are many forms and formats of cognition, interpretation and meaning making, including technological ones as well as more-than-human biological ones pursued by all living beings. The multiplicity of planetary cognition is the driving force of creative potential for emergence and transduction, which for Hayles is all the more needed in the light of the climate crisis. Biological, human, and technologies all make part of this mix, and in fact are fused to the extent that ontological distinction becomes untenable. But how do we differentiate aspirations for geoengineering and technologization that reduce the planet to a resource from more inclusive and participatory integrations of technics and more-than-human life? How do we critique any claims to participation without contesting exclusions and holding on to some notion of a primary order? How does reflexivity inform what we might understand from sustainability and climate justice? Bibliography: Brodie, P., Fratczak, M., Gkotsopoulou, O., Halkort, M., Hoyng, R., Quinn, P., Nost, E., Bates, J. (2024) Environmental data power. In J. Jarke and J. Bates (eds) Dialogues in data power: Shifting response-abilites in a datafied World, (pp. 138-158). Bristol: Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/edcollbook-oa/book/9781529238327/9781529238327.xml Hayles, N.K. (2025). From Bacteria to A: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hoyng, R. (forthcoming a) Digital modeling and the climate crisis. In G. Bollmer, K. Guinness, Y. Soncul (eds) Handbook of digital cultures. De Gruyter. Hoyng, R. (forthcoming b) Computing the cosmos and us: Uncertain models of ecological crisis. In P. Banerjee, D. Chakravarty, S. Seth and L. Wedeen (eds) Handbook of cosmopolitanism. Oxford University Press.