For a friend who did not know he was one A tribute to Edgar Morin from the Complexity–Education Field

Abstract

This essay pays tribute to Edgar Morin from a dual perspective: that of a reader who found in his work the authorization to think differently, and that of a researcher who, years later, mapped the influence of that work within the Latin American educational field. Drawing on a corpus of 167 documents (1996–2025), the study demonstrates the decisive presence of complex thinking—explicitly addressed in more than half of the publications—and identifies uncertainty as the Morinian concept most strongly incorporated into the definition of complexity within the field. The analysis, however, reveals a paradox: what is conceived as complex is often investigated through methodological tools that deny such complexity. The article concludes by proposing, as an unfinished yet regenerative task for Morin's legacy, the need to bridge the gap between thinking uncertainty and developing
research methods that are epistemologically consistent with it.