Pragmatics

Oguntede, The Dialectic Interpretation of Cybernetics, 4/1/1989

Science of regulation in real life

What then is the contribution of cybernetic thinking to science or philosophy?

The most obvious characteristic of all cybernetic writing, be it Wiener or Beer, or any of their acolytes and successors, is its inherent struggle: a self-conscious disciplining of highly abstract powerful symbolics into a heavy-encompassing pseudo-worldview. Very little is elegant, very little is indeed readable. The struggle is to tie down those elusively fecund concepts, which exist only in cybernetics and are otherwise without weight, to the turbulent ‘real world’.

The message of cybernetics is still, as it was for its originators: if you are going to sensibly understand the totality of controllable existence – not just the controlled microsystems of categorical science, nor even the harmonised synthesis of general science, but the waring totality of all that goes on, and of which we are part, then you need to investigate the phenomena and laws of complexity and of control; in and of themselves. You need to believe that these are worthy objects; and as fully real as their physical [manifestations] components

A corollary is that attempting to understand by [the medium of ] extension of particulate knowledge is [ineffective] inappropriate, inefficient if not classically false.

Cybernetics must then be understood outside the pervasive, scientific ideography assigning a gross social value to the accumulation of scientific knowledge, and the externally-to-that-knowledge dominance of instrumental human control.

It is a thin strand surviving from the march of the more reserved discrete scientific philosophies flowering in the afterglow of the Encyclopediasts and the Naturalists of the Enlightenment .

Nature was not a (romantic) object of wonder, still less was it a subject for control. Rather there exists a necessary incompleteness to any Natural subjectivism; which is the key to a relativistic principle in all knowledge. Furthermore this [is] a discovered principle, the product of a non-categoric phenomenalistic study.

Knowing that knowledge is relative – relative to the engendering process – we avoid the drift into closed systems of thought; we may observe the subjectivism of the observer, and the subjective quality to the universe of observation.

It is this frightening specificity to experience [that] science has been retreating from, controlling the enclosed spaces of particulate systems, but not taking responsibility for general understanding: in short instrumentalism.

Why cybernetic writing is so struggle-prone is through the containing influence of instrumentalism, a science of control – [  ] never emerged, but it was certainly attempted; systems theory applied for [totalising] military purposes – leading to grotesque misrepresentations of some political situations: artificial intelligence, aimless model building.

The absurdity of instrumentalism has been recognised by more percipient contributors who have refused to indulge it; and by those who have taken it with irony to its whimsical conclusions {Stafford Beer comes to mind]. 

Science as an instrument of humanity

It is fashionable to see science thus, in these days when we are led by ‘the science’ to accept constraints never dreamt of in more ordinary times. As we edge to the realisation that the constraints of experts reach beyond the circumstances of a natural disaster, or catastrophic accident, into constrained freedom of action in the world – by individuals affecting the material economy of everyday life, we are challenged as to our primitive beliefs. The core of our religious faith is stripped or exposed or reinterpreted by a universality in scientifically anchored knowledge ‘about everything’. Only science in this broad sense can give us the cohesion to face existential crises crossing all systems of belief.

The theme was taken up remorselessly in Roszak, and more recently by Flannery, Gare and others. The instrumental triumphs of technology disguise the blinding of vision and purpose of human life within a living planet that we witness daily as natural systems with which we were once in harmony turn against us. The ability to steer through this coming age is wrapped in an acceptance of the contingency of existence within larger intelligences, or systems of control, or more prosaically ecosystems. The health of these systems should be of primary concern as on it depend our survival and enjoyment of life.

Scientism is exhausted. It has turned soil to dust; the air and the sea to depositories of dangerous particles. It has driven out diversity in the forms of life around; narrowed gene pools; compromised the great climate systems of the oceans and the atmosphere; fuelled the race for global control of scarce natural resources; and made wars more likely, more brutal and less discriminatory.

Removing the handle from the Broadstairs pump broke the back of the cholera epidemic in mid-19th century London. It also converted , in conjunction with the advances of Pasteur from studies of diseases in viticulture in France, the savants of the medical world to the germ theory of disease. Similarly the breakthroughs from the late 20th century in constitutional aspiration towards freedoms within a global respect for the living are guiding the governance into the present century, now clothed with a depth of theory and knowledge, concern and vigilance of citizens and organisations they support.

It is a pragmatic approach to overcoming the false dawn of the scientific revolution that has fuelled the dangerous uneven material prosperity of the technological age. Science as presently conceived yields knowledge of the constituents of things; it ignores why they are there. Science is now turning on the monster of its invention, dismantling the miracles and revolutions that transformed lives in the last century as fatal flaws emerged.

The case for an ecological civilisation draws heavily on the shape of things, on cohabitation and health in systems, as indeed in individuals. The surrounding theory may appear strange (as indeed the germ theory may have been at the time it was proposed, given that the germs were not detectable or described until later in the century) but is testable. There is ample room for scientific, philosophical and ethical validation. This must surely be “an argument for hope”.

References

Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends – politics and transcendence in post industrial society (1972) Faber and Faber, London

Tim Flannery, Here on Earth – an argument for hope (2010) text, Melbourne

Kopytin A. and Gare A. (2023) Ecopoiesis: a manifesto for ecological civilisation, Ecopoiesis: Eco-human Theory and Practice 4(1)