Abstract

The paper proposes a rethinking of legal science in a naturalistic key, a topic closely connected to the idea, so crucial to Domenico, of overcoming the division between natural and human sciences. Resulting from a reflection gained by standing outside the boundaries of “orthodoxµ legal science, the work draws a perspective in which law is intended to be conceptualised and studied in empirical terms as part of the complexity of the natural world and in all its relations with the many levels of reality – from individual cognitive mechanisms to social macro-dynamics – which determine its emergence and evolution. After a presentation of the reasons behind the project, conceived as a response to not only practical and regulatory but also purely knowledge needs, the paper focuses on defining the scientific and methodological horizon of the enterprise. Different goals are thus evoked, ranging from the dialogue with the conceptual framework of the theory of complex systems to the encounter with cognitive sciences, from the use of simulations and computational models to the adoption of non-disciplinary approaches, all necessary components of a new research agenda, inclined to radical questions and, to a large extent, yet to be built