1 Democratization and its Obstruction: A Complexity Perspective by Michael F. McCullough “The Difficulty of Democracy: Diagnoses and Prognoses” 8 th Annual Telos Conference, February 16, 2014 Immanuel Wallerstein, in his book The Uncertainties of Knowledge (2004), claims we are living in the midst of an epistemological crisis. It is a crisis caused by the split between the so-called two cultures, the physical sciences on the one hand and the humanities including the social sciences on the other. He likens the crisis to a hurricane. He writes: “The modern structures of knowledge, the division of knowledge into two competing epistemological spheres of the sciences and the humanities, is in crisis. We can no longer use them as adequate ways in which to gain knowledge of the world…We are living in the eye of the hurricane.” (2004: 49-50) In other words, the division of knowledge between the physical and social sciences is compromising the very process of scientific enquiry and we need to find ways to close the divide, a theme long echoed by French complexity theorist Edgar Morin (1973, 1977, 2001). So, what does this two-culture gap, this crisis in knowledge, this hurricane, have to do with the theme we have gathered here to discuss, namely democracy? Well, what if our understanding of democracy is hampered by the two cultures divide? What if all human social systems including the social and political systems where we wage our democratic struggles have a physical dimension? And what if, in order to understand the physical dimension of social and political systems, we need to collaborate with the physical sciences? In the 1970s, I developed a keen interest in how physical science concepts might apply to understanding democracy. This interest had what may seem an unlikely cause, namely my experience living in a dictatorship for three years. In late 1968, I arrived in military-ruled Brazil