The Cybernetic Dream of the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Over the last few decades, several critics of modern science have been able to demonstrate that science is not a value-free instrument for ascertaining truth, as many believe, but is rather a mode of cognition whose very "neutrality" constitutes its bias. That is to say, science is ultimately zweckrational (purposive-rational); it projects a world of pure form that can be bent to any purpose. In the last analysis, "value-free" really means "possessing scientific values." As the awareness of the ideological and culture-bound character of science began to grow over the past twenty years, Europe and North America experienced a twin development that reflected the need for a new epistemology. One aspect of this was a revival of magic and occult practice. The magical world view was attractive because it is strongly value-laden, biased toward an ecological or sacred view of nature; and unlike its scientific counterpart, it is embodied-sensuous and concrete rather than formal and abstract. The second aspect of the search for an alternative mode of consciousness was the emergence of a large "new paradigm" literature, which draws heavily on fields such as systems theory and quantum mechanics-those branches of knowledge that have departed, epistemologically, from the mechanism and reductionism of classical physics. This new "holistic paradigm," which relies heavily on cybernetic theory for its elaboration, claims to be a major shift in the history of Western thought; for in addition to its break with scientific materialism, it also claims to be value-laden rather than value-free and, as such, a major step forward in the evolution of consciousness.

It is the argument of this article that, as things currently stand, most formulations of the new holistic paradigm are neither valueladen nor significantly discontinuous with the scientific world view of the last three centuries. Instead, they represent the philosophical aspect of a much larger process going on in society today that can loosely be termed "cyberneticization," or the rise of a "computer consciousness," a process that is now unfolding on three levels. The first level, as already noted, is that of abstract philosophy, and includes figures such as Ken Wilber, David Bohm, and Douglas Hofstadter. The second level is that of the professional disciplines, such as biology, ecology, and psychology, in which an information theory terminology is now being used to redefine the central concepts of these fields. The third level, the grass-roots level, is that of the home computer and the video game, which are starting to pervade the environment in a dramatic way. As different as these three levels seem, a similar process is occurring on each: A purely formal, disembodied, and abstract reality is informing the mode of perception and cognition held by those engaged in the activity. On the level of the video game or home computer, the impression created and reinforced for the participant is that reality is a matter of programming. On the professional level, real life situations are being translated into the jargon of information exchange. And on the philosophical level, reality is now seen as a matter of "mentation" or "symbolic patterned activity." On all of these levels, life is being neutralized, rendered "value-free"-a condition that many proponents of artificial intelligence regard as an achievement. The new holistic paradigm is thus not really a substantive methodological shift from the scientific paradigm that preceded it. As in the case of its predecessor, it too is formal, abstract, "value-free," and disembodied. Based on the computer rather than on the clock (the model for Cartesian mechanism), cybernetic holism is in reality the last outpost of the mechanical world view.

As the transition from mechanism to holism inevitably continues into the twenty-filrst century, we shall have to be wary of what is happening, and start to make distinctions between varieties of holistic thinking. If we wish to avoid the pitfalls of the previous paradigm, we cannot afford to leave the insights of the magical tradition behind. By "magic" here I mean the affective, concrete, and sensual experience of life. This would be a paradigm grounded in the real behavior of people in the environment; one that would incorporate the sort of information that arises from our dream life, our bodies, and our relationship to plants, animals, and natural cycles. The alternative view-the belief that we can do without such things, that we can profitably regard reality as pure metaphor, "programming," or "patterned activity," that we can neutralize the pain and conflict of human life by what is in reality the latest technological fix-this is the cybernetic dream of the twentyfirst century.

[I]n the future the community of the learned will have to propose this new and humane theology which is natural philosophy and positive magic.... However, if the sense of the individual [i.e., of particular entities] is the only good, how will science succeed in recomposing the universal laws through which... the good magic will become functional?

-William of Baskerville, fourteenth century, in Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

[T]he main point is that the world of life is to a great extent created and maintained through the expression of emotional energy. It is this energy through which magic operates.... The control and manipulation of emotional energy is the secret of all magic.

-Father Sylvan, in Jacob Needleman, Lost Christianity