This article discusses the issue of social and cultural ‘autotran-
scendence’ – self-production, creativity – in the debates on self-organization.
The point of departure is Cornelius Castoriadis’s idea of ‘self-creation’. First, a
schismabetween mechanical and ontological modeling is indicated and used
to introduce the idea of a ‘creative organization’. This is further discussed in
relation to Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s concept of social ‘autotranscendence’ by
‘complex methodological individualism’, with particular respect to the incom-
prehensionof the social. Following Johann P. Arnason’s treatment of the question
of cultural articulation in Castoriadis, the article argues that the problem of
autotranscendence presents a further problem of self-creation discernible in
Castoriadis’s notions of phusis/nomos, living being/human, and constraint/
magma. The article closes with a consideration of Duncan Watts, Alberto-László
Barabási and Bernardo Huberman’s sketch of a network sociology.
KEYWORDS autotrancendence • constraints • magma • network sociology
• self-creation • self-organization