The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 30

Time and s.p.a.ce: freed hostages

The Encyclopedic tradition centered around the scientific human being (l'homme scientifique) who it defined through language.

This tradition continued a line of progressive changes in humankind's scientific experience. We can learn about these changes by examining the language through which they are expressed. The syncretic stage of human activity was dominated by observations and short cycles of action- reaction. Incipient, rudimentary science was not independent of the human being's practical projection. Images and, later, names of plants, animals, mountains, and lakes pertained to the beginning. Only when the scope of observation broadened and, instead of the immediate connection, a series of connections was accounted for, did science become a praxis in itself.

Science was born together with the magical, and would continue to develop in this symbiosis. Eventually, it joined religion in opposing the magic. Observation and fear of the observed were one. Names of stars testify to changes in the language in which what we call astronomical science is embodied. Obviously there was little awareness of the mechanics of the cosmos during the time names changed. Mytho-magical terminology, followed by zodiac signs of magic origin (in both cases with reference to the practical activity of people during changing seasons), and by the Christian names (after the establishment of Christianity), is a line continued today in detailed catalogs encoding positions, dynamics, and interrelations in numeric form.

In the experience of observing the sky and in deriving the notion of duration (how long it took for celestial objects to change position), humans projected their biological and cognitive characteristics: seeing, a.s.sociation, comparison. Names were given and observations were made, of position mainly, but also of light intensity. With the emergent notion of time, generalized from the notion of duration, stars were nolonger related to divinities. Still, astronomical observation was used to structure monastic life. Stars served as a nighttime clock.

At a time of reduced scientific inquiry (Europe from the 5th century to the 10th), the observation of the skies, reflected in maps of various constellations, prepared for future progress in astronomy. Physical properties, such as intensity of light, color, and brilliancy, later suggested better names because the experience in which stars were recognized (navigation, in the first place) required identification for successful performance.

Magic and science explained success in very different ways. This was the time when planets were identified through properties evident to all who needed the sky. The magic layer was projected as a result of a.s.sociations people made between qualities characteristic of persons and the behavior of certain stars, i.e., the perceived influence they had on events pertinent to human existence. During the entire process, language served as an instrument of integration and observation, as well as a means for logical practice, such as deductions. Molding the experience of time perception, storing the acquired knowledge, and further shaping practical experiences of time, language acquired a very powerful position in the human being's self-const.i.tution in time. This position would be strengthened by literacy, bound to generalize distinctions in language and introduce them as effective means of structuring new expectations. Only when time-dependent practical requirements, such as those of relativity, impossible to satisfy within literacy, became critical was time freed from the captivity of verbal language.

A giant cognitive step bridged the immediacy of the surroundings-where magic forces were rumored to exist, waiting for humans to free them-and the notion of s.p.a.ce. Geometry-which literally means to measure land-is relevant as a practical experience of human self-const.i.tution that unites the concrete task at hand (surveying, building, decorating, observing the sky) and the generalization of distance. Measuring land ends up not only in description of the land, but also in its reconst.i.tution in the abstract category of s.p.a.ce. Language was part of the process, and for as long as practical experiences in the immediate surrounding were direct, geometric conventions remained very close to their practical implications. Once distinctions beyond direct relations in s.p.a.ce were made possible by the experience of navigation, by settled forms of social life (leading to future cities), and by strategies for successful securing and defense of land, the language of geometry changed.

Internally motivated developments, as well as those rooted in forms of human praxis other than geometry, resulted in the const.i.tution of many geometric languages.

The languages of the foundations of geometry and of algebraic, differential, or topological geometry are as different as the practical experiences from which they are derived. In many cases, literate language suffices for formulating geometric problems, but breaks down in supporting the practice of attempting solutions. Obviously enough, the intuitive visual aspect of geometry is quite often better adapted to subjects such as symmetry, higher order s.p.a.ces, and convexity than is literacy. Rigid s.p.a.ces and elastic s.p.a.ces behave differently from s.p.a.ces describable in language. Geometry frequently uses notations whose referent is rather abstract. The freeing of time and s.p.a.ce from the captivity of language made an impact on the condition of rationality, where scientific praxis is rooted, and of reason, where philosophy originates.

Coherence and diversity

Science integrates the results of diversified experiences and expresses the perceived human need to maintain a coherent perspective of the whole. As a reaction to the establishment of a permanent and universal language embodied in the practice of literacy, partial languages of scientific focus emerged. Those who knew from their own self-const.i.tution in scientific practice that global coherence, as preserved in language, and specialized knowledge conflict, gave up the effort to harmonize the general framework (of language) and the specialized perspective (of science). The understanding that the language of science is not simply a descriptive device, but a const.i.tutive element of scientific practical experience, did not come easy, especially since language kept human awareness of s.p.a.ce and time captive to its mechanism of representation. Seemingly, it was less difficult to notice how measuring some phenomena (especially in physics) changed the system observed than to understand how a scientific hypothesis expressed in language created a framework of subjective science. The subjectivity of the language description corresponds to a particular practical experience involving identification through language.

Particular developments in science are not identical in all scientific branches. Astronomy and geometry evolved differently from each other and from other sciences. As a result of the inherent dynamics of conflict between means and goals of sciences, a phase of liberation from language started. Once language itself reached its limits in literacy, in respect to the efficiency of the new human experiences that the current scale of humankind brought about, new languages were needed.

Breaking the language barrier, with implicit emanc.i.p.ation from literacy, is a practical experience in itself. In this experience, two aspects of language come under scrutiny: the epistemological and the communicational. In the epistemological status, we evaluate how language is a medium for embodying science and shaping the perspective of scientific inquiry. The communicational status refers to language as a medium for sharing knowledge. The levels of problem formulation, of solutions, of interpretation, of experiment and validation, and of communication are quite different. They will continue to differentiate even more in order to be efficient. The rationality intrinsic to this new science is no longer reducible to finding the logos in things and phenomena, or to instill a logos into techn. This is why the legacy of Francis Bacon-the prophetic theoretician of experimental science-as well as of Descartes-whose rules for understanding dominated the literate phase of humankind's scientific practical experience-literally cease to be relevant once we move from language to languages, from literacy to illiteracy.

Computational science

Language is ambiguous, imprecise, and not neutral in respect to the phenomena observed and accounted for. For these and other reasons, researchers working within the informational paradigm needed to synthesize specialized languages designed in such ways to avoid ambiguity and make higher efficiency of automated processing possible. Many formal languages have become the new scientific laboratories of our time, preparing quite well for the new stage of computational disciplines. In parallel, new forms of scientific experimentation, which correspond to the complexity of the phenomena under observation and to their dynamics, were developed. These forms are known under the name simulation (sometimes modeling) and consist of observing not the behavior of the researched aspect of the world, but one or several of its descriptions.

To observe the explosion of a remote star, a time-span of data collection that extends well over the age of humankind is required. Instead of waiting (forever, so to speak), scientists model astrophysical phenomena and visualize them with the aid of sophisticated computable mathematical descriptions. These are better suited to the scale of the phenomena than all the equipment ever used for this purpose. Radio astronomy is no longer about the stars seen through human eyes. It is not about the visible, and it is not burdened by all the history of star names. Radio-astronomy is about star systems, cosmic physics, dynamics, even about the notion, so often discarded, of the beginning of the universe. The geometry of higher (than three) s.p.a.ce dimensions is not about the visible-the surveyed land, building, or ornament-never mind the magical spirits inhabiting it. Such geometries submit theoretical constructs supporting a practice of thinking, explaining, even acting, that is not possible without the generalization of s.p.a.ce dimensions. Whether in the fiction of Flatland (Edwin Abbott's book about how different life is in lower-dimension s.p.a.ce compared to life in what we take to be 3-dimensional reality), or in the computer graphics animated representation of the hypercube, or in the theories of higher dimension s.p.a.ces (relating to Einstein's relativity theory), scientific languages, irreducible to the general language and non- translatable into it, are at work.

There are quite a number of similar subjects which make evident the border at which science can no longer rely on language. A non-language-based rationality- spatial reasoning, for instance-becomes necessary in this realm of inquiry. As sciences enter the age of computation, necessities become possibilities. There are subjects of research in which the brevity of a process makes impossible its direct observation and appropriate description in language. Indeed, the universe of extremely short interactions, of fast exchanges of energy, of high frequency patterns (which give the appearance of a continuum), among others, can be approached only with instruments of observation whose own inertia is lower than that of the phenomena scrutinized and with a conceptual framework for which language (of high inertia) is ill equipped.

Language preserves in its structure the experience that made it necessary; literacy does the same. This is why their sequentiality conflicts with subjects of configurational condition. This is also why linearity, inherent in the pragmatics that formed literacy, conflicts with the inherent non-linearity of the world. Many other conflicts are at work at the same time: centrality of work opposed to distribution of tasks; hierarchy and distributed networking; clear-cut distinctions and vagueness; deterministic experiences of limited scope opposed to self-configurational, chaotic processes of infinite adaptation to new circ.u.mstances; dualism as opposed to pluralism (in scientifically significant forms). At stake is the efficiency of the effort, as it approaches issues of recuperation mechanisms in nature and society, strategies of co- evolution (replacing strategies of dominance) with nature, holistic models made possible by both increased mediation and powerful integrative mechanisms. Idealizing all these possibilities would be as counterproductive as demonizing literacy-based practical experiences. Nevertheless, we need a better understanding of what no longer responds to requirements of human self-const.i.tution under the new scale of humankind, as we need an image of the alternative practical experiences through which a new rationality is formed.

In the rapidly expanding context of parallel scientific endeavors and distributed tasks supported by speedy and reliable networks, scientific research is liberated from the industrial model.

Instead of centralized inst.i.tutions sharing in the use of expensive instruments, there is an increasing number of experiments taking place all over the world. Tele-presence is less expressive a name for what researchers actually perform thousands of miles away from each other, using expensive machines and various measuring and testing devices. The laboratories that once served as the place for scientific self-const.i.tution are replaced by collaboratories, a combination of real instruments, which can be used more efficiently, and virtual places of research that allow for more creativity. Real-time interaction is fundamental to the context of focusing on nano-scale.

Multidisciplinarity is no longer an illusion, but a practical requirement for the integration that scientific effort requires.

Explaining ourselves away

Systematic domains of human practical experiences are changing fast. The science of the ever shorter and more intense phenomena in which the human being of this age is const.i.tuted consists of a body of expressive means in which language either plays a secondary function or is subst.i.tuted with forms of expression other than language. Procedures to capture the coherence of the phenomena researched now need to be adapted to this reality. The coherence embodied in language reflects past experiences, but does not properly explain experiences characterized by new kinds of coherence. In recent years, a question has come up time and again: Is there some common element in language, in the possible messages exchanged in our universe by civilizations different from ours, in the messages exchanged at the genetic level of our existence or in the biochemical trails which we a.s.sociate with the behavior of ant colonies or beehives? It would be premature to attempt an answer. As already mentioned, David Hirsch ascertains that 97% of human activity is concept free. Control mechanisms in charge of this form of activity are common not only to humans, but also to lower level biological ent.i.ties (insects, for instance). Exploration of cosmic civilizations, genetics, biochemistry, not to mention memetics, is not necessarily helped by this answer. Having to explain abstract mathematical concepts or the behavior of complex systems (such as the human nervous system), some displaying learning capabilities or self-organization tendencies, raises the stakes quite high: Do we explain ourselves away in the effort to emulate the human being?

Replication of ideas (scientific, philosophic, or of any other type) based on the genetic model inspired by evolutionary theory, contributes new angles to the subject. But even if we manage to establish methods for successful replication, have we captured the characteristics of human self-identification?

In the same vein, another question needs to be addressed: the mystique of science comes from the realization that the law of gravity applies everywhere, that electricity does not depend on the geographic coordinates of the place where people live, that computation is a universal calculus. Still, science is not value neutral; one model dominates others; one rationality wins over others. The truth of a scientific theory and its empirical adequacy are only loosely related. To accept one science over another is to the scientist an issue of rationality, while for those integrating it in their practical experiences, it becomes an issue of adequacy. This aspect const.i.tutes more than a cultural or memetic issue. At stake is the fact that the natural condition of the human being is quite often rationalized away, regardless of the reason.

The efficiency of science

In recent years language has changed probably more than in its entire history. Still, these changes are not of the depth and breadth of scientific and technological praxis. Computer science, as Dijkstra pointed out, deserves a better name, more in line with the fundamental change this practical experience brings about. ("Would anyone call surgery knife science"? he asked.) We don't have better names for many other fields of new human experience: artificial life, artificial intelligence, genetics, qualitative reasoning, and memetics. But we do have powerful new notation systems, new ways of reasoning (combining qualitative and quant.i.tative aspects), and fresh methods of expression (interactive). Consequently, a new human condition resulting from the practice of science will probably emerge.

This condition will reflect the changed premises of scientific experiment.

Experimentation joined logical a.n.a.lysis over 350 years ago.

Simulation, the experiment of the civilization of illiteracy, is becoming the dominant scientific form of expression of the systematic search for the mult.i.tude of elements involved in new scientific theories and in their applications. A variety of simulators embody knowledge and doubt. This can be seen in a broader context. Through simulation, variability is accounted for, relations are scrutinized, functional dependencies are tested over a wide array of data critical to the performance of new systems, or over a wide array of the people involved with them. After heroically, and necessarily, separating from philosophy and establishing its own methods, science is rediscovering the need for the dimension covered by human reasoning. This is, after all, what the subject matter of artificial intelligence is and what it ultimately produces: simulations of our capability to reason. In the same vein, scientists are concerned with the metaphysics of the beginning of the universe, and the language of the mind (lingua mentis), evidently a.s.sumed to be different from language as we use it in the framework of community, cultural, and national existence.

To reflect upon the beginning of the universe or upon the mind means to const.i.tute oneself, together with the appropriate language, in a pragmatic context different from community interaction, cultural values, or national characteristics. The focus is changed from obsession with quant.i.ty to preoccupation with quality. Qualities are pursued in the attempt to build a science of artificial reality. As a scientific artifact, this reality is endowed with characteristics of life, such as change and evolution over time, selection of the fittest, the best adapted to that world, and acquisition of knowledge, common sense, and eventually language. Focused on the model of life as a property of organization, artificial reality is intent on generating lifelike behavior: iterative optimization, learning, growth, adaptability, reproduction, and even self-identification.

Whereas science followed strategies of standardization, artificial life is focused on generating conditions for diversity, which eventually foster adaptability. Allocation of resources within a system and strategies of co-evolution are seen as resources of incremental performance. Research starts from a premise that belongs to the realm of reasoning, not rationality: humans and the problem being solved are continuously changing.

Exploring the virtual

Virtual realities are focused on almost everything that art pursues: illusion of s.p.a.ce, time, movement, projection of human emotions. Interacting with such a system means that the person becomes involved in the inside of images, sounds, and movements.

All these are simulated, using animation as the new language of the science that the moving image embodies. In some ways, virtual reality becomes a general purpose simulator of a captivating variable reality, made possible by mediating elements such as computer graphics images, animation, digital sound, tracking devices, and quite a number of other elements.

Inside this reality, virtual objects, tools, and actions open the possibility of practical experiences of self-const.i.tution in a meta- knowledge world.

Quality in virtual reality is also pursued as scientists try to give a coherent image of the very first minutes of the universe.

Physics, genetics, biophysics, biochemistry, geology, and all else integrated in this multi-mediated effort are turned from science into natural history or philosophic ontology. To explain why physicists needed an indestructible proton for explaining matter is not an issue of numbers, precision, or equations, but of common sense: If protons could decay, mountains, oceans, stars, and planets would crumble and turn back into neutrons and electrons, and a reversal of the Big Bang might occur. Is this predictive rationality? Is validation of this type of experimentation a subject of language? As a possible explanation, which facilitates a new array of experiments in computer simulation, particle accelerators, and radio- astronomic observations, virtual reality facilitates new forms of human praxis and is embodied in new theories of physics.

Obviously, the efficiency factor, one of the major elements in the transition from one dominant literacy to partial literacies, plays an important role in this endeavor. This generalized notion of efficiency has several components in the case of science. One is the efficiency of our attempts to make science productive. Compared to the efficiency of the lever and the pulley, the efficiency of the electric engine reaches a different scale of magnitude. The same applies to our new tools, but in more dramatic ways. So far, we have managed to make science the most expensive human endeavor. Its current development appears to be motivated by a self-perpetuating drive: knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Science generated technology, which dramatically affects the outcome of human effort.

The second component factor in the transition to the pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy is the efficiency of our preparation for commanding these new tools, new forms of energy, and new forms of human interaction. Learning how to operate simple mechanical devices is different from learning how to program new tools capable of commanding sophisticated technology and of controlling tremendous amounts of energy. Although mediation has increased in human praxis, people do not yet know how to handle mediation, even less how to adapt education, their own and their children's, to shorter cycles of scientific and technological renewal.

Last among the factors at work in the change we are going through is the efficiency of invention, discovery, and explanation.

Largely supported by society (states invest in science in order to pursue their goals, as do businesses and various interest groups), science is under the pressure of performance.

Markets confirm scientific results from the perspective of the return on investment they promise to deliver. Parallel to the most advanced and promising scientific endeavors, venture capital underwrites the industries of the near future.

Insulation of any kind, even secrecy, no matter how stubbornly pursued and justified, is no longer possible within the economic dynamics of the present. No matter how hard companies try to impose secrecy, they fail when faced with the interactivity and integration of effort characteristic of the new dynamics. The expectation of change, of shorter cycles of investigation, and of shorter times for integration of results in the productive ability of technology is unavoidable. Still, in the USA and in Europe, there are conflicts between the new dynamics of scientific and technological progress and the bureaucracy of science. Driven by motivations characteristic of literate infatuation with national pride and security, this bureaucracy extends well beyond science and is hard at work to protect what is already pa.s.s. For science to advance, networks of activity, distributed tasks, and shared resources, all implying transparency and access, are essential.

The conflict between scientific goals and morality takes on its own characteristics in the civilization of illiteracy. Indeed, scientific results might be right, but not necessarily always good for humankind. They might support higher efficiency, but sometimes to the detriment of people obsessed with maintaining high standards of living. There are many activities-too many to list-in which humans can be entirely replaced by machines.

Extreme effort, exposure to chemicals, radiation, and other unfriendly elements could be avoided. However, doing away with the living person whose ident.i.ty is const.i.tuted in work experiences makes the activity itself questionable. It is no longer the case that we only talk about genetic control of populations, or about mind control, about creating machines endowed with extreme capabilities, including control of the people who made them. These are distinct possibilities, to which we are closer than many believe. Neither science nor technology, even less philosophy, can afford to ignore the conflict immanent in the situation, or the danger posed by giving in to solutions resulting from a limited perspective, or from our dedication to make real everything that is possible. After all, we can already destroy the planet, but we do not, or at least not so radically as it could be destroyed. Short of being paralyzed by all these dangers, science has to question its own condition.

In view of this, it is far from accidental that sciences in the civilization of illiteracy rediscover philosophy, or they re-philosophize themselves.

Quo vadis philosophy?

The language of wisdom

Reflecting upon human beings and their relation to the outside world (nature, culture, society) const.i.tutes a determined form of philosophical experience. It involves awareness of oneself and others, and the ability to identify similarities and differences, to explain the changing dynamics of existence, and to project the acquired understanding into the practice of formulating new questions. Practical implications of philosophic systems are manifold. Such systems affect scientific, moral, political, cultural, and other human practical experiences of self-const.i.tution. They acc.u.mulate wisdom more than knowledge. To this effect, we can say that the cla.s.sic model of philosophy remains a science of sciences, or at least the alma mater of sciences. Philosophic systems are concerned with human values, not with skills or abilities involved in reaching goals defined by our rationality. Nevertheless, this status has been continuously challenged from inside and outside philosophy.

The decline of respect for philosophy probably results from the perceived omniscient att.i.tude philosophers have displayed and from their unwillingness to focus on aspects of human reason.

Philosophy has never been a domain for everyone. In our day, it has become a discourse expressed, if not in painfully contorted language, in a mult.i.tude of specialized languages addressed to a relatively small circle of interested parties, themselves philosophers for the most part. The change in the pragmatic condition of philosophy is reflected in its current linguistic equivocations. "My philosophy" is an expression used by anyone to express anything from a tactic in football to investments, drug use, diet, politics, religions, and much more.

Misunderstood cultural exigencies, originating in the civilization of literacy, and political opportunism maintain philosophy as a required subject in universities, no matter what is taught under its name, who teaches it, or how. Under communism in East Europe and the Soviet Union, where free choice was out of question, philosophy was obligatory because it was identified with the dominating ideology. In most liberal societies, philosophic abstraction is as much abhorred as lack of money.

Philosophic illiteracy is a development in line with the deteriorating literacy manifested in our days. But what affects this change is the new pragmatic framework, not the decline in writing and reading proficiency.

The specialization of philosophic language, as well as the integration of logico- mathematical formalism in philosophical discourse, have not contributed to recuperating the prestige of philosophy, or of the philosopher, for that matter. Neither did it contribute to resolving topics specific to the discipline, in particular, to human experience and conscience. In fact, philosophy has disappeared in a number of philosophies practiced today: a.n.a.lytic, continental, feminist, Afro-American, among others. Each has const.i.tuted its own language and even perspective, pursuing goals frequently rooted in the philosophy of the civilization of literacy, or in its politics.

The relevance (or irrelevance) of philosophy cannot be ascertained outside the practice of questioning and answering, a practice that made philosophy necessary in the first place.

Indeed, as a practice of positioning the human being in the universe of human experience, philosophy is as relevant as the practical results of this positioning. There are scientific theories, such as the theory of relativity in physics or gene theory in biology, that are as philosophically relevant as they are scientifically significant. And there are, as well, philosophic theories of extreme scientific significance. Many components of Leibniz's system, of Descartes' rationalism, and Peirce's pragmaticism can be mentioned. Each originates within a distinct pragmatic framework of practical experiences through which reason comes to expression and questions specific forms of rationality.

Philosophy, as we know it from the texts in which it was articulated, is a product molded through the experience that initially made writing possible (though not universally accepted) and, later, literacy necessary. Its fundamental distinctions- subject/object, rational/irrational, matter/spirit, form/content, a.n.a.lytic/synthetic, concrete/abstract, essence/phenomenon-correspond largely to human practical experiences in the framework of language. The traditional gnoseological approach reflects the same structure, as does formal logic, based on Aristotle's syllogistic theory. The fundamental linguistic distinction of subject/predicate marks-at least for Western civilization-the entire approach. Expectations of efficiency pertinent to the human scale leading to the Industrial Revolution affected the condition of philosophy. At this juncture, philosophers realized the practical aspect of the discipline. Marx thought that it would empower people and help them change the world: "Until now philosophers interpreted the world; it's time to change it." And change it did, but in ways different from what he and his followers antic.i.p.ated. The hard grip of reified language turned the workers' paradise into a mental torture chamber.

Once the underlying structure (reflected in the requirements of literacy) changed, philosophy changed as well, also freeing itself from the categories of language that molded its speculative discourse. Nevertheless, its inst.i.tutions (education, professional a.s.sociations and conferences) continue to pursue goals and functions peculiar to literate expectations. This prompted a strong movement of philosophic dissidence (Feyerabend and Lakatos are the main representatives), attuned to the practical need of a philosophic praxis aware of the relative nature of its a.s.sertions.

Multi-valued logic, the logic of relations, fuzzy set theory, and computation in its algorithmic and non-algorithmic forms (based on neural networks) allow philosophers to free themselves from the various dualisms embedded in the language of philosophy.