THE CYBERNETICS OF SOCIETY
The Governance of Self and Civilization
***
See Conclusion
***
SOCRATES:
Or again, in a ship, if a man having the power to do what he likes, has no
intelligence or skill in navigation [αρετης κυβερνητικης, aretes
kybernetikes], do you see what will happen to him and to his fellow-sailors?
Plato, Alcibiades
I; Benjamin Jowett, translator
***
Introduction
The French
"cybernétique" was coined in 1834 by André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836).
The English "cybernetics" first appeared in Cybernetics, or
Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine (1948), a book by
Norbert Wiener (1894-1964). These and related words in other languages are
rooted in the ancient Greek word κυβερνητικός or kybernetikos, meaning good at steering. Kybernetes
(sometimes spelled kubernetes) denoted a rudder, rudder-man,
steersman, or skipper. The Latin form was gubernetes or, later, gubernator.
The phrase Kybernetike
tekhne — the art of the helmsman — was favored by Aristotle, tekhne
meaning "art" (from which we get the word technology).
Aristotle insisted that tekhne implied, not mere knowledge or skill, but
teleological or goal-oriented activity.
To Aristotle, in
short, governance was an art, not a science.
See Note on Tekhne.
***
Thus,
"cybernetics" shares the same root as the word "governance"
and — contrary to simpleton notions — has relatively little to do with
computer-aided, internet-mediated machinery and institutions. It has everything
to do with thought-aided, purpose-directed, history-illuminated, feedback-dependent,
and future-affirming or "feed-forward"[1] governance.
***
The distinction
between science and cybernetics becomes ever more crucial as the
"found-in-nature" and the "made-by-culture" become ever
more intertwined. This intertwining must not be haphazard, yet it is
irreducibly complex and therefore unpredictable. In one instance, however,
science and cybernetics are (arguably) indistinguishable, and this instance is
most revealing, as we shall see — the exception that proves the rule.
Both nature and
culture are multi-causal, non-linear, synergistic, impossible to fathom, and
difficult to control or even guide. Their modern combination is awe-inspiring,
the best antidote against hubris.
Weaving
"found" and "made" calls forth complications to be embraced,
not bemoaned.
***
The synergistic
intertwining of science and art is very familiar to lawyers, especially
common-law scholars. The common-law system of case-by-case analysis, synthesis,
construction, recalibration, and evolution is quintessentially cybernetic,
focused on that "governance" which is itself governed: by
feedback-driven, history-informed, goal-refining dialectics or
"conversations" among the bits, bytes, and constituent subsystems of
coevolving nature and culture.
Being
synergistic, this coevolution is only partially knowable through
"science" — broadly defined as the fruits of all systematic empirical
inquiry, including systematic inquiry into the history of ideas about the
relationships of art to science, culture to nature. Yet, in an odd sense,
as we shall see, common-law jurisprudence reflects a sort of long-term
"controlled experiment" that we are conducting upon ourselves.
The conversation
between found and made is its own best meme or, more precisely, memeplex: a
mutually-defining group of seminal ideas. If the evolution of regenerative
intelligence on this planet is fundamentally unintelligible or mysterious, then
perhaps our best fallback position is simple acquiescence: That which cannot be
fully understood must be respectfully engaged.
Whatever counsels
against hubris should, additionally, be loved. We celebrate ignorance as the
first step towards enlightenment — and, hence, the enlightened governance of
self and society.
***
To say that
cybernetics is the "science" of communication, feedback, and control
in mechanical, biological, and social systems (as some do) derogates from the
vital point that cybernetics is an "art" focused on converting
knowledge (including arguably-irreducible limits upon knowledge) into
choice (including the choice not to choose) and converting choice into
action (including deliberate — deliberative? — inaction).
Cybernetics is
quintessentially teleological. To the extent that our "future
making" will be assessed and evaluated in the future, as we now assess and
evaluate previous eras, cybernetics is also "science": an
eon-spanning controlled experiment we are conducting upon ourselves.
Let us explore
further.
***
First Things First
The most
evocative (and possibly the first recorded) discussion of the relationship
between cybernetics and governance appears in Plato's Alcibiades I, at
134(e)-135(b):
SOCRATES: For if
a man, my dear Alcibiades, has the power to do what he likes, but has no
understanding, what is likely to be the result, either to him as an individual
or to the state—for example, if he be sick and is able to do what he likes, not
having the mind of a physician—having moreover tyrannical power [135a], and no
one daring to reprove him, what will happen to him? Will he not be likely to
have his constitution ruined?
ALCIBIADES: That
is true.
SOCRATES: Or
again, in a ship, if a man having the power to do what he likes, has no
intelligence or skill in navigation [αρετης κυβερνητικης], do you see what will happen to him and to his
fellow-sailors?
ALCIBIADES: Yes;
I see that they will all perish.
SOCRATES: And in
like manner, in a state, and where there is any power and authority which is
wanting in virtue [135b], will not misfortune, in like manner, ensue?
ALCIBIADES:
Certainly.
SOCRATES: Not
tyrannical power, then, my good Alcibiades, should be the aim either of
individuals or states, if they would be happy, but virtue.
ALCIBIADES: That
is true.
Benjamin Jowett, translator
***
Cybernetics and
governance are quintessentially teleological.
As ontology
(asking, What is?) called forth epistemology (asking, How do we know what is?),
so these two coevolved, over time, to call forth the teleological question —
ultimately the touchstone of human striving and the greatest philosophical
question of any time and all times — So what?
What should I do
with my ontology and epistemology this morning? How shall we live our lives?
How can humankind best balance liberty and justice, here and now? How can our
emergent planetary civilization find and pursue the path of virtue? In short,
how can wisdom, sophia, put Logos — knowledge of the naturally found —
into best service to the culturally made, the Nomos: knowledge, wisdom,
understanding, and know-how focused on ordaining and establishing
"quality" governance that will sustain Regenerative Intelligence
Still Evolving (RISE)?
***
The teleological
quest for "good government" was the preoccupation of the ancient
Sophists, of whom (despite Plato's protestations) Socrates was the greatest. As
cybernetics is quintessentially teleological, so law must advance as a
quintessentially cybernetic "calling" — transcending science as
science transcends logic.
Logic, science,
and cybernetics are each indispensable. Feedback processes among them are
essential to worthwhile global progress. Such feedback requires distinctions
between "self" and "environment" no less than between
"knowing" and "doing" — because feedback consists of
"news about" difference, similarity, and (in a word) significance.
Significance
always implies context. The context of wisdom, of sophia, and of friends
of wisdom, philosophers — so thunders logic, science, cybernetics, and
the history of thought and action! — is the forging of a better future, an
embodiment of areté.
***
The ancient Greek
idea of areté is hard to translate, but all its meanings evoke that same
quest for highest "quality" — impeccability — in thought and
action.
Socrates — that
is, Plato [2]
— used αρετης (aretes, translated by Jowett, above, as
"skill" and translated by most as "excellence") to modify
κυβερνητικης (kybernetikes, "good steering"), thereby
reinforcing the quest for "highest quality" or
"impeccability" in the art of the kybernetes, the good
governor.
Areté is often translated as "virtue"; perhaps
"impeccable bearing" — standing, walking, running, fighting,
peacemaking, singing, debating, and otherwise embodying the best one can be and
do — provides the best translation; yet these and all other definitions of areté
serve only as "pointers" towards the transcending quest of areté:
seeking highest quality in all choices and actions.
Seeking is the operative word here.
Personal virtue,
societal excellence, evolutionary impeccability, etc., must never be conceived
as a plateau of perfection that can ever be reached. Rather, the goal must be
an ongoing process of reaching, of seeking, of becoming, of evolving.
Areté
is less a result than a yearning for
"quality relationships" between self and society and among all humans
and our cultural institutions, etc. Cybernetics transcends ontology and
epistemology, as precious as these are, in order to put logic, science,
experience, and wisdom to good service aimed at the impeccable
"self-governance" of individuals and societies. As already suggested,
the concepts "self" and "self-governance" are not
self-defining.
***
The idea of
know-how is crucial here, for it implies a learning-by-living process of
acquiring, improving, and accumulating skills aimed — in the art of good
governance — at converting past experience into future choices and actions
which are feedback-sensitive, subject to revision and further
learning-by-living.
A government that
does not cultivate and harvest feedback, including "unwelcome" news
and reproof, is a contradiction of terms. It is illogical. It flies in the face
of systematically-gathered, analyzed, and synthesized experience, thereby
mocking science. And it is not cybernetic. It is not a "government"
worthy of that word. It is not good.
When a democracy
guarantees freedom of inquiry, association, and expression, including a free
press; and establishes checks and balances among governmental organs that
include an independent judiciary; and ensures free and fair elections for
legislators and highest-level executive officers; and forbids electoral and
governmental corruption in its many sordid guises, including debasement of the Conversation of Democracy by lies, defamations, unfair restrictions on media
access, unwarranted governmental secrecy or manipulation of truth, and the
silencing or unjust prosecution of critics; when, in short, a democracy ordains
institutions by which majority and coalition rule is competently balanced by
minority and individual rights — and otherwise establishes Ordered Liberty based on the Rule of Law
governed by the Rule of Reason — then, and only then, does it merit being called a constitutional
democracy.
A
constitutional democracy is a government under law in which coalition and
majority rule is balanced by minority and individual rights, and in which most
[3]
rights are balanced by responsibilities — including the responsibility of each
citizen to study the history of constitutional government in order to
illuminate it in ways that no definition ever can … and in order, thereby, to
allow it to evolve further in light of ancient wisdoms and the needs of our
evolving global civilization.
***
All Things Considered
As we have seen,
"cybernetics" shares the same root as the word "governance"
and — in its essence — has relatively little to do with computer-aided,
internet-mediated machinery and institutions. It has everything to do with
thought-aided, purpose-directed, history-illuminated, feedback-dependent, and
future-affirming or "feed-forward" governance. That said, our
modern age of computer-aided, internet-mediated knowledge and conduct, etc.,
enhances the cybernetics of self and society. That enhancement might trigger a
near-future "singularity": a difference not merely of degree but of
kind — a fundamental reshaping of self and society, with deepest implications
for human liberty, justice, accountability, and governance.
This website will
explore the realms of cybernetics, properly understood, in all respects. It
seeks to illuminate the "art of governance" in aid of illuminating
the meaning and importance of constitutional democracy, worldwide ... and possibly beyond our current biosphere.
Medium and message will be mutually-defining. How we proceed in addressing this
subject is the key to understanding it.
Of this we must
be clear: "Inevitable historical forces" are not controlling. Winds
of change without leaders to trim the sails will not avail.
***
In asserting the
relationship between "government" and "cybernetics"
Socrates was essentially summarizing the entirety of Greek philosophy, thus
far, integrating Mythos, Logos, and Nomos.
This kind of
deliberative piloting must integrate knowledge of the changeless
(metaphor: "stars") and the naturally changing ("winds
and waves") in order to alter and fine-tune the humanly changeable:
the angle of the rudder, the trim of the sail.
Note that the
rudder and sail are "linked" not physically but cybernetically,
informationally, and this linkage is somewhat analogous to that of the
three branches of government in a competent, checks-and-balances,
constitutional democracy. Changing one affects the others. These branches
co-exist, indeed coevolve, in a dynamic "self-governing equipoise"
that has been designed — consciously as well as through distributed
intelligence, including tacit (unarticulated) cultural know-how — to secure
liberty, justice, the general welfare, and institutions of systemic oversight.
***
Arguably the most
important attribute of constitutional democracy is that it is an "elevated
message" from the past to the present and future. Therefore, "dumbing
down" this message destroys it. We must understand, and thereby allow
ourselves to be inspired.
Humans have
evolved into free, thinking, choosing, learning, self-aware, and
socially-empathetic creatures, and must evolve further on this course. "Liberal-arts" education, properly understood, is vital to that endeavor. As
already emphasized, the worthwhile survival of Regenerative Intelligence Still
Evolving (RISE) depends on liberty, free inquiry, independent choice,
purposive activity, the pursuit of excellence, and all that these imply.
Thinking
creatively and optimistically about this, we realize that we must be equal in
our liberties, and hence equal in all constitutional restrictions upon our
fundamental rights. Thus, we must be equal under the law. That is the essence
of justice — the path towards individual and societal health — according to the
so-called Western Legal Tradition. This theme is developed
"mythologically" in Arakam to Jurlandia, whose pedagogical approach is intended for deep,
internet-mediated explorations of the First Trinity — Mythos, Logos, and Nomos. This theme is central to that
"evolving jurisprudence" which undergirded isonomia: justice,
properly understood: that necessity which is the mother of our resulting
invention, demokratia.
The "subordination" of demokratia to isonomia is crucial. There
is far too much talk of democracy and far too little of
constitutional democracy.
***
Consciously and
deliberatively coevolving our freedoms and empathies, and
"incarnating" their governance within natural, made, and
moral-intellectual environments, we have traveled far. As we reflect upon the
human condition, upon this long-term "controlled experiment" we are
performing upon ourselves and our planetary Self — thereby uniting science and
cybernetics in global inquiry and artistry — we know that freedom has formed
us, empathy has expanded our capacities, purpose has steeled our common
determination, and the Conversation of Democracy has become our preferred path
towards defining, and governing, that "motile colony" by which our
biosphere has parented its memesphere, this Info-world of coevolving ideas and
ideals that compose us and offer our emerging global civilization's salvation.
***
Standing Tall
Some say we know
much about our universe, including its origins about 14 billion years ago.
However, according to Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything
(2003), between 90% and 96% of our universe is composed of "dark"
matter that we cannot detect; furthermore, "the universe may not only be
filled with dark matter, but with dark energy ... [called]
'quintessence'." (p. 171). Of the detectable, much is said to be
"strange" or "charmed" or strung together with metaphors
that celebrate poetic license rather than empirical exactitude. Our nest's
"world view" and "world to view" are utterly mysterious — a
dancing of quarks, quanta, and quintessences. Truly, we are children of
unfathomable mystery.
Yet in recent
times the veil of mystery has been lifted somewhat, and here we can start (as
the ancient Greeks did) to convert Mythos into Logos, a world of eternal gods
into one of abiding truths and values built up, over time, through systematic
observation, thought, planning, action, and reflection.
Furthermore,
systematic action and reflection play an ever more crucial role in converting
Logos into Nomos: "the conventions of conduct" — of mutual
undertakings on which others may reasonably rely — undergirding law.
The beginning
point of legal inquiry is the question: What does it mean to be a human? What
does it mean, today, to be a child of convention-refining planetary
civilization?
***
Over two million
years ago, as our ancient forebears rose up onto their hind legs and lifted
their eyes and arms towards the stars, they had — as it were — "time on
their hands" to evolve opposable thumbs, nimble fingers, the capacity for
tool-making, and an inclination to dream and plan.
Since that time,
the human forebrain has tripled in volume, largely because our tool-making
capacity allowed, indeed required, specialization: hunters, gatherers, farmers,
builders, craftsmen, sailors, administrators of waterworks, coordinators of
city states, and composers of symphonies and global constitutions and thus-far
unimaginable creative endeavors.
All this
specialization — and particularly that essential
"meta-specialization" of being multi-competent (see below) — required
communication and information exchange, both inside and outside our brains.
Arguably the greatest impetus for brain growth has been the necessity for
ever-greater sub-systemic and pan-systemic communication and
information-processing that presumably accords survival advantages to those who
are most adept at cultural "communification": another heuristic term
denoting a largely-unmapped yet intuitively-grasped territory.
The fact that,
with the dawn of our computer- and internet-mediated era, ever more information
can be stored outside the brain, probably provides an added impetus for brain
growth, albeit now our greatest "internal genius" must involve,
first, knowing how to access and use the external InfoSphere; second, learning
how to integrate all available knowledge and know-how; and third, discerning —
case by case — how to focus logic, science, and cybernetics in aid of action,
especially mutual action and cultural construction.
***
The most complex
"thing" our brains evolved to deal with was other humans navigating,
as all must, among the rocky shoals and warm harbors of … each other, of
civilization in the making, and (increasingly) of RISE.
Arguably, the
human brain is the most complex phenomenon we know of in our universe, except
for civilization itself. Our galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars, and
there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, yet the human brain has hundreds of
billions of cells, and those cells are connected (on average) to about twenty
thousand others. The number of combinations and permutations of possible
connections among those hundreds of billions of cells is utterly staggering:
Try about 100 billion times 20,000 times 19,999 times 19,998 times 19,997 ...
etc.
Yet that vast
number of "potential info-bits" contained in each human brain is
itself vastly eclipsed by the number of actual info-bits generated within and
among the billions of humans on this planet ... aided by libraries,
universities, think tanks, and websites galore!
Quantity does not
imply quality, of course. However, what "being human" involves has to
include mind-boggling quantities of "mental activity" with
staggeringly non-trivial qualitative implications.
Human
civilization is, indeed, worth contemplating. Yet the "datum of
analysis" that is the focus of this website transcends it, dwarfs it.
RISE requires
"modern civilization" as its foundation, yet builds beyond anything
our current conception of civilization contemplates.
They
build too low who build beneath the stars, as Longfellow asserted.[4] But now, it seems, the stars hang
too low.
***
Our brains have
coevolved with our civilization, adding 300,000 cells per generation over two
million years, and this process apparently continues. It represents a
remarkably rapid genetic advance, giving survival advantage to those who can
navigate an ever-more-complex civilization that is (let us hope) still in its
infancy. Humans accord ever-greater significance to thinking — as an individual
as well as a cultural phenomenon — and our thinking increasingly focuses on how
to cultivate and improve a "culture of mindfulness" nurturing, and
nurtured by, a free press, regular elections, independent universities,
scientific explorations, technological advances, transparent economies, and all
the other "cultural tools" of Open World
development.
***
Being Human
Freedom implies
obligations, including the obligation to understand how majority and coalition
rule is best balanced by minority and individual rights, and how this balance
serves those Open World values that keep civilization ever young, always
nimble, eternally hopeful … yet also stable and secure. Hope is the mainspring
of life. But it must be built on a firm foundation of genuine confidence, which
itself is founded on genuine competence — including competence in
understanding, and enhancing, liberty bounded by justice, choice bounded by
wisdom.
As noted,
isonomia predated demokratia. The ancient Greek sequence, whether of
thinking or of coevolving reality, was that if we are equal under the law we
should be equal in the making of law. Yet note: Isonomia required not
merely any kind of law — it required general law, prospectively
applied, binding all equally, and always (on principle) subject to reasoned
development ... the focus of the Sophists. In archaic yet remarkably
"modern" terms, these ancient "teachers of virtue" were
investigating the Rule of Law
based on the Rule of Reason — a special kind of reasoning, what I here call,
following Socrates’ famous formulation, "cybernetic reasoning": the
reasoning of the kubernetes, which cultivates and harvests feedback, the
abiding lessons of history, the records of current successes and failures, with
the purpose of avoiding past mistakes and enhancing future wellbeing.
Isonomia was the foundation of justice, what Aristotle considered
the core ingredient of a civilization that seeks to promote individual and
social happiness. First ordained by the ancient Athenian lawgiver Solon, isonomia
was later championed by the Roman Republic's finest orator, Cicero; but it
was subsequently eclipsed for a millennium, until (in effect)
"rediscovered" in the eleventh century A.D. by the true founders of
the Western Legal Tradition, the law students of Bologna who synthesized the
Greek genius for systematic thought, the Roman genius for pragmatic
administration, and the (Western Christian) preoccupation with the
"uses" of faith and reason to secure a common humanity under a common
deity. Not coincidentally, the "common law" of England (more than is
generally appreciated) grew out of, and contributed to, that same nascent
"second coming" of isonomia.
The origins of
the Western Legal Tradition, the Common Law Tradition, and the
"cybernetics of society" suffuse these Jurlandia writings. They
examine it from many standpoints, initially summarized for this website in Inquiry and Proposal on the Goals of Law Reform
and Legal-Education Reform within the Countries of the Former Communist Bloc. Much of that essay is now superseded by other writings
on this website, especially Post-Soviet Law Reform and Legal-Education Reform. Eventually those essays will be completely replaced by
an internet-mediated "encyclopedia of constitutional democracy" at
this website. Needless to say, or maybe not, this is a huge undertaking.
***
Integrative Jurisprudence
The Western Legal
Tradition has evolved "legal reasoning" into an integrative
jurisprudence whose core values compose Open World commitments to liberty,
equality, and empathy-based fraternity. These values integrate moral as well as
pragmatic considerations; they learn from history; and they accept the burdens
of future scrutiny. They include the hard-won lessons upholding property rights and contract rights — albeit limited by isonomia — as essential
ingredients of any constitutional democracy worthy of that name, yet they
recognize that these achieve their full value only when contextualized by the
experimental participation of "Man" with "God" in
"Creation" (what the term "synergism"
first denoted). This subject is further explored in The Enterprise of Integrative Jurisprudence.
***
As suggested,
Open World “reasoning” prudently recognizes that participatory systems, such as
human societies, are very complex; this is partly because our efforts to
understand such systems changes them, and changes our relations with them and
with our fellow-participants. Accordingly, this reasoning places great faith in
the Conversation of Democracy — ongoing free inquiry and debate, periodic elections
(and possibly internet-mediated referenda), constitutional checks and balances,
and “transparency” which does not unreasonably burden privacy, including the
foundational values of private property and freedom of contract. Balancing — a
verb, an ongoing, self-reflective, self-governing process — itself "balances"
upon faith in free discourse, freedom generally, and all that these imply.
Every generation must discover anew how dependent it is upon such balancing.
As Socrates long
ago noted, we live and learn, as individuals and as societies, integrating certainty
with probability, wisdom with will. At some fundamental level what we have
learned must be articulated in very personal terms: My liberty is valuable to
me because of what it allows me to do, using my own unique insight, wisdom,
energy; indeed, my liberty thereby allows me to be fully human. But human
liberty — inalienable and unbounded except by isonomia — is even more
valuable to me because of what it allows you … and each other "me" …
to do, using insights, wisdoms, and energies which I probably cannot aspire to.
With your liberty, you can write a book or symphony that elevates the human
condition, and hence elevates me; and you can also critique my book or
symphony, as I can critique yours; together, bounded by our rights and
resulting responsibilities, we can create a Meta Mind that far exceeds the
capacities of our individual understanding. While the scientific enterprise
partakes of that Meta Mind, this enterprise transcends logic and science — and
must itself be subject to purpose-filled, self-governing, self-transforming
cybernetics.
Logic, science,
cybernetics, these three abide ... rooted (as earlier discussed) in ancient
ontology, epistemology, and teleology. Mythos begat Logos, and Logos — through
ontology, epistemology, and teleology — begets Nomos; these "relic
ideas" properly forge the future of Nomos, of human law, and of our
emerging cybernetic civilization. Historically, the first and greatest
invention of Nomos was isonomia. Democracy must be "under"
such law.
***
Law and Cybernetics
Open World values
lie at the heart of open-ended but self-corrective evolution, for they both
espouse and limit what is possible by what is evolutionarily viable —
including, within ever-tested limits, what civilization has come to uphold as
being evolutionarily fundamental, such as liberty under law. These values
governing "societal cybernetics" are best advanced when, on
principle, every "you" can become a "me" who exercises liberty
under isonomia — what Adam Smith championed as individual initiative bounded
by equal justice.
Smith was above
all a moral philosopher, as reflected in his early book, A Theory of Moral
Sentiments (1759). His moral philosophy focused first and foremost on the
capacity of humans to stand in each other’s shoes, to see life from others'
perspectives, and to act accordingly. For him, for example, market competition
was the result of a higher-order "implicit cooperation" among
consumers to (a) obtain and pool market-affecting knowledge, and (b) force
producers to provide best-quality goods and services at competitive prices. In
truth, "cooperation" and “competition” are terms denoting a continuum
of complex interactions. Likewise, “law” and “economics” are coevolving,
synergistic; they and related fundamentals of our emerging Open World compose
the law, the rules of conduct, the unarticulated major premises, which govern
the human enterprise, which keep it focused on ongoing regeneration and
improvement.
Law, as
suggested, is the quintessential "cybernetic calling"; but lawyers
know little of cybernetic theory and cyberneticians know even less of law.
Jurlandia seeks to facilitate mutual understanding, thereby enhancing the
prospects for healthy Open World governance. Governance is not the same as
"government"; governance is much more fundamental.
That government
governs best which facilitates self-governance among all systems and
sub-systems. A good constitutional democracy ordains and establishes liberty
under law as a necessary element of such systemic self-governance.
***
Conclusion
The "art of
governance" is teleological. First, it is focused on the greatest quest of
Greek philosophy, namely, integrating "knowledge of the changeless"
(metaphor, "stars") and "knowledge of the naturally changing"
(metaphor, "winds and waves") so as to "inform" the humanly
changeable (metaphor, "angle of the rudder, trim of the sail"),
which metaphors, together, illuminate that most quintessentially-human
endeavor — cybernetic, teleological, purpose-driven, future-making
"conversion" of self-knowledge (including societal
"self-knowledge") into self-governance (including the
self-governance of our emergent global civilization).
Second (and this
concept of "teleological" is a direct outgrowth of cybernetic
theory), the "art of governance" is based not only on our knowledge
of the past and present (feed-back) but also our "knowledge" —
systematically-derived speculations — regarding the future, or alternative
futures ("feed-forward").
Law-making,
law-implementing, law-refining, and similar endeavors — all focused on
systematically-generated knowledge of the past and speculation about
alternative futures — are not only goal-oriented but also goal-redefining,
culture-reforming, civilization-reconstructing, etc. They are cybernetic,
requiring that we strive to know ourselves better so that we might govern
ourselves more wisely, with greater areté.
The most
effective reformers must ground their proposals as deeply as possible in
"conventional" history and philosophy, claiming nothing truly-new
under the sun. (Go
to Start of Essay.)
(Essay under
construction.)
___________________________
Note
on Tekhne:
This is another
of those hard-to-translate ancient Greek words. According to the Mythos,
Prometheus was the Titan who (by some accounts) made humans and (by all
accounts) gave us fire. Less reported is that Prometheus also gave us tekhne,
or, more precisely, entekhnon sophian, the wisdom of the arts —
not merely fire, but the "know-how" to do things with fire (besides
merely staying warm) and, more generally, the know-how to do things with
knowledge, logos, of every kind.
This Mythos was,
not surprisingly, recapitulated when Thales and his successor Cosmologists
(seekers of the One) systematized logos into Logos and thereby laid the
foundations of Nomos — the know-how by which wisdom, sophia, converts
Logos (logic, mathematics, astronomy, and other nascent pre-Aristotelian
"sciences" [see Note on "Sciences"]) into
cybernetics, governance: "made" culture growing out of
"found" nature.
The Cosmologists
sought the Logos. Subsequently, the Sophists, seeing how the cosmological
search for the One had degenerated into a cacophony of competing cosmologies —
warring Ones — transcended the "Gordian Knot of Logos" by changing
the question and inventing Nomos to answer it.
Prometheus,
meaning forethought, was "unbound" (in hindsight) by feedback-dependent
wisdom ... which the Titans, products of mere causality, could not possibly
have aspired to. Or so it seems. See Mythos, Logos, Nomos. (Go back)
Note
on "Sciences":
Although
Aristotle greatly advanced the concept of "sciences" as distinct from
"arts" and, arguably, from logic and mathematics, he did not have as
developed an understanding of what we now call "scientific method" as
we do. Our concept of "sciences" is largely based on the scientific
method — including controlled experiments — introduced 1,900 years later
by Francis Bacon. And of course there has been a growing literature on that
subject ever since, as anyone who searches the internet for "philosophy of
science" will find. Indeed, some modern thinkers question whether
"sciences" and "arts" ought always to be clearly
distinguished. But then, it was Aristotle who probably first asserted that only
similars can be usefully contrasted. I address "similarity" and
"difference" and "significance" in First Trinity.
Much of the
confusion regarding Aristotle's concept of "sciences" has to do with
the fact that during his long teaching career his thinking evolved (perhaps on
this issue more than on any other), so that his writings — or, more likely,
those of generations of his students (and their students) who, following
Aristotle's death in 322 BCE, created a "tradition" of Aristotelian
philosophy — can be interpreted to support contrasting if not contradictory
opinions. While initially he seems to have believed, with his teacher Plato,
that the only "real" knowledge was deductive
"demonstration" (little distinguishable from mathematical proofs and
logical "demonstrations"), Aristotle's greatest contribution
(arguably) was his elevation of empiricism — inductive analysis, synthesis, and
categorization based on observed particulars — as a source of
information that (a) can be organized into "fields of knowledge" and
(b) can, as a practical matter, be put to more useful service to humankind than
deductive knowledge ... especially when employing such science in aid of tekhne:
making as distinct from finding.
Granted, such
empirical knowledge is of a different quality; it is not certainly true,
only probably true — and, indeed, is normally subject to further
investigation, further "truth testing" in light of subsequent
empirical investigations. Yet, on the other hand, arguably most "certainly
true" things are essentially tautologies: true but trite — such as the
assertion that, if A is larger than B, and B is larger than C, then A is larger
than C.
Aristotle came to
see that the quest for systematic knowledge and understanding must go beyond
such self-evident certitudes. His greatest contribution was to "show"
how deductive and inductive knowledge can be persuasively combined ...
albeit no conclusion is ever more certain than its least-certain component. (Go back)
Note
on Synergetics:
I have been
puzzling over synergy, synergism, or synergetics for a long time. My
"Third Year Written Work" (a sort of thesis), required for my graduation
from Harvard Law School in 1970, was entitled Cosmic Synergism and the
Global Village Discontinuity. One of the goals of the Jurlandia website is
to delve further into synergism, discontinuity, and "singularities"
(as fundamental changes from "degree" to "kind" are
increasingly called).
Modern
synergetics teaches that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts or,
more specifically, that the behavior of whole systems is unpredictable
based on "full knowledge" (whatever that means) of the behavior of
constituent subsystems. You cannot "predict" a molecule based on
"full knowledge" of atoms. Of course, nobody tries to
"understand" atoms from the standpoint of ignorance about the
existence of molecules, so the point seems somewhat artificial. Yet it does
have its deeper implications, the most important being a rejection of
"reductionism" — the sort of silliness one often encounters which
says, for example, that we are "nothing more than atoms" or that we
are merely the products of our conditioning, etc.
Synergetics (more
precisely, "synergism") started as a theological idea: God depends on
human cooperation to carry out, well ... Creation. Although I am not religious
in any conventional sense, I find this earliest meaning of "synergism"
worth pondering. It is a major theme explored in these Jurlandia writings.
Rejecting reductionism, I embrace synergism: the belief (for it cannot be
proved) that "reality" is emergent, non-linear — that, in a
manner of speaking, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Around 1972, I
started to contrast "synergetics" with "cybernetics" —
based partly on the works of Gregory Bateson (see Catherine Bateson's discussion of her father's works) — in the sense that synergetics allows all sorts of
things and ideas, etc., while cybernetics weeds out those that are
flawed or dysfunctional, etc. Obviously, both synergetics and cybernetics
are "heuristics": ideas, mental constructs, intended to promote
further thought. The last thing I want to promote is a new reductionism
which asserts that we are merely synergetics bounded by cybernetics. Obviously,
we are far more. See Synergetics.
See Evolution and Coevolution. (Go back)
_____________________
Footnotes:
[1] In general, wherever in these Jurlandia writings I refer
to "feedback" I include what here I have termed
"feed-forward" — which is, in essence, feedback based on speculations
(presumably responsible and well-grounded) regarding the future, including
various alternative futures that might transpire based on past, current, and
future choices. The essence of teleology is that it is based not only on
knowledge of the past and present, but also on "knowledge of the
future" based thereon. Such knowledge is inherently probabilistic, not
certain. Cybernetics is by order and dimension teleological, goal-sensitive.
Like Janus, cybernetics and its parent, teleology, face forward and backward,
simultaneously. How the "brain" of our Janus-like civilization thinks
and plans is changed through self-reflection and self-governance. Indeed,
arguably the "self" comes into being due to its imbeddedness in
choices and actions in the past and present "transported" into the
future. See First Trinity. (Go back)
[2] As discussed by its translator, the great Greek scholar
Benjamin Jowett, there is a controversy whether Plato wrote Alcibiades I. See
Jowett's Preface. For
purposes of this essay, however, that is essentially immaterial. The analogy
between the art of the helmsman and the art of the governor was beyond doubt
"in the air" during the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and
if Alcibiades I was not written by Plato, it might be one of the many
lost Dialogues of Aristotle (highly regarded by his contemporaries) or the work
of a student of Plato or Aristotle (there were many imitators), or even that of
a contemporary of Socrates. The analogy between a helmsman and a governor
appears elsewhere in Plato. The text of Alcibiades I is the most
evocative of those analogies. Beyond doubt, over the ages many have considered Alcibiades
I (as distinct from Alcibiades II) to be one of the best
introductions to Plato's philosophy, whether or not he wrote it. Alcibiades
I, named after a real human and a favorite subject for dialogues and
commentaries, remains a gem of ancient Greek philosophy. And, all things
considered, it was probably written by Plato. (Go back)
[3] The rights of children and the infirm, for example, do
not require their contemporaneous "reciprocal responsibilities" to
understand the origins of those rights. We accord such rights based on a
broader sense of reciprocity: For example, if as children we "had"
such rights, or if as adults we now wish we had had them, then as adults we
must concurrently secure those rights for succeeding generations; and, to
secure them, we must strive (among other endeavors) to understand them.
Constitutional democracy requires that, at any given time, an "informed
consensus" of responsible adults will secure constitutional democracy as
an "intellectual endeavor" which they care, at least minimally, to understand.
(Go back)
[4] Longfellow: "He builds too low who builds beneath
the stars." This motto was prominently displayed in the boys' dorm of
Olney Friends School, a boarding school in Barnesville, Ohio, which I attended
during 1958-61. (Go
Back)
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