domingo, 31 de marzo de 2013
La mitad de la historia de todo
Esta es la parte de mi conferencia que me dio tiempo a dar ayer en el congreso de París de la ENN:
The Story behind any Story:
Evolution, Historicity, and
Narrative Mapping
José Angel García Landa
Universidad de Zaragoza
"The
narratives of the world are numberless"; yet, all stories may be seen as
chapters of a single story. Evolutionary approaches to literary and cultural
phenomena (E. O. Wilson, Joseph Carroll) have led to a growing awareness that
these literary and cultural phenomena are best accounted for within a
consilient disciplinary framework. From this consilient standpoint, human modes
of communication must be contextualized as situated historical phenomena, and
history as such is to be placed within the wider context of the evolution of
human societies and of life generally (what is often called "big
history"). Using the notions of "narrative mapping" and
"narrative anchoring", the present lecture aims to draw from the
aforementioned theoretical outlook a series of conclusions relevant to
narratology, in particular to the narratological conceptualization of time.
Diverse cultural conceptions of big history underpin the production, the
reception and the critical analysis of any specific narrative, as well as any narrativizing
strategy, in the sense that these conceptions provide both a general ideational
background to the experiences depicted in the narratives, and a mental
framework in which to situate (e.g. historicize) the narrative genres used in
the depiction. Herbert Spencer's philosophical work will be seen through the
lens of its narratological significance, as a significant contribution in the
development of our own big history, in the narrativization of science, and in
the development of a scientific narratology.
—oOo—
Narratology was
born with a scientific aspiration to universality. In Aristotle's poetics,
philosophy as a knowledge of universals is contrasted to history as a knowledge
of individual facts. Any opposition seems to call for a synthesis or mediation,
and Aristotle suggested one in his theory of poetry: poetry is more
philosophical than history, because it imposes a conceptual order or pattern on
the events of human experience and action. The Poetics offers a foundational model for narratology—it is the first
formal narratological treatise, besides much else. But in addition to its
structural analyses of plot, of discovery, of closure, or of structure, it also
contains some pointers relating to the origin of drama, and of mimetic art
generally, grounding it on the imitative insticts in human nature. And it can
also lay claim, therefore, to taking precedence as the first treatise in
cognitive poetics.
Paul Ricoeur
pointed out the cognitive importance of emplotment, as first conceived by
Aristotle. Emplotment, organizing events into a story, paving the road to a
closure, is a prime cognitive move, equal at least in importance to the joining
of subject and predicate in a proposition, or to metaphor, which—as
Giambattista Vico pointed out—stands at the root of creative thought. There is
of course a chapter on metaphor in the Poetics,
but the main emphasis falls on the analysis of plot.
Emplotment and
narrativity allow us to see, or to establish, the connection in a series of
events. Most post-structuralist criticism has been suspicious of such
connections, and has deconstructed narrative causality and the unities built by
master plotters. As an instance of such criticism I'd like to mention Gary Saul
Morson's Narrative and Freedom, a
masterful critique of several ills attending the retrospective stance of
narrative, and a major contribution to the analysis of hindsight bias, although this term is not used in the book, he
calls it backshadowing. Hindsight
bias is the narrative fallacy par excellence, although one might go one step
further and argue that narrative is
the narrative fallacy par excellence—so entwined with distortions and with
illusions are the truths we articulate and the stories we tell, with facts,
fictions, omissions and additions being present in almost equal proportions,
though not in the same way, in fictional stories and in historical or
biographical records.
Unity and
unity-finders have been much disparaged since the 1960s, although they no doubt
tell part of the truth in the story. Nietzsche's aphorisms and his hermeneutics
of suspicion have been much been preferred to the grand philosophical
systematics of Hegel, which are largely left unread, at least outside the
philosophical field. But the work of unification, unfashionable like romantic
fiction, goes on nonetheless, with much work being done behind the back of the
deconstructors, changing the very landscape in which we live and think. The
unforeseen revolution of Internet communications, unforeseen by the imagination
of science-fiction even, is a particularly relevant example. The demise of the
Great Narratives was one of the catchphrases of Academia precisely at the time
in which the Great Narratives of globalization, electronic communications and
relativistic cosmology were asserting their influence in an incontestable way.
As my title
suggests, I want to emphasize one such aspect of narrative, its inherent power
to provide unification, to connect—in the last analysis, to connect all
narratives in a cognitive step which makes sense of the whole of the world we
live in. The term "third culture" has become widespread in recent
years, associated to E. O. Wilson's notion of consilience—building bridges
between the sciences and the humanities, on the basis of cognitive science,
evolutionary psychology, and sociobiology.
The accounts of "Big History" we can find in the books by
David Christian or Fred Spier provide histories of cosmic evolution. Inspired
by Jan Smuts's concept of emergence,[1] they set in a wider
context the rise of life and of civilization, and provide a scientific context
which throws a much-needed light on the present problems of human societies and
cultures—especially in the light of the energy crisis, overpopulation,
sustainability, and the depletion of the environment. These are the inescapable
contexts of both present and future cultural investigations and
representations. And these Big Histories make it clear that there is a human
story, and a history of the universe, which is the inescapable backdrop to all
the stories of mankind, and the soil on which they grow.
There are many
directions one can take to go from the many stories to the principle of all
stories. One such was the road taken by structuralist critics, the founding
fathers of narratology, trying to find the common structural principles of
stories, a grammar of stories or a semiotic system accounting for all
narratives. Both the central and east European formalists in the early decades
of the 20th century and the structuralists from the 60s were retaking
Aristotle's project—all narratives answering to common structural principles.
Myth criticism as best exemplified in the work of Northrop Frye undertook a
similar project—and the insights provided from these perspectives can be
usefully rethought from a consilient stance. Joseph Carroll's Darwinian poetics
or Brian Boyd's book On the Origin of
Stories are only the first steps in this reassessment, which sometimes
takes a contentious turn, given that the sociobiological critics stress the
limited flexibility of human nature, as against the claims of constructivist
critics which tend to see human nature as a blank slate for culture to write
on.[2] The sociobiological critics claim that human
nature, for all its flexibility, is limited and circumscribed, and tied to our age-long heritage and
evolutionary history. The Big Story is especially prominent from this stance,
it weighs heavily on the shoulders of the naked and the clothed ape.
Another way to synthesis,
from the many to the one, and to science, was provided in the nineteenth
century by the philosophy of history (Hegel) and also by evolutionary theory,
which set down the conceptual frame for a scientific grounding of all natural
phenomena as part of a single big history. Cultural theory, biology, and
geology all became historical sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth
century; chemistry, astronomy and physics followed suit in the twentieth
century—resulting in narrativization of the Universe, no less.
One of the
earliest and most complex theories of evolution was formulated by Herbert
Spencer one hundred and fifty years ago. The first edition of his
groundbreaking First Principles is
from 1862, last revised by the author in 1900. It is somewhat ironic that
Spencer is usually regarded today as something of an epigone of Darwin, given
that his theory of evolution not only predated the publication of the Origin of Species, in Social Statics (1850): it is also much
more complex and wide-encompassing than Darwinism. It is a theory of the global
evolution of the universe and its phenomena, not merely a theory of the
evolution of living forms, although it certainly takes into account the
evolution of living beings, for the details of which Spencer often refers readers
to Darwin. He goes much farther in trying to account for the generation of many
phenomena, at the physical-mathematical level, at the cosmological level, and
also at the level of geology, of biology, psychology, sociology, economics and
culture. Clearly Spencer's conception of evolution is much more abstract and
general than Darwin's, as it aims to explain a multitude of phenomena which
were outside the scope of Darwinian biology. Actually, Darwin does not address
the origin of life, not venturing to write on the subject, being as he was too
prudent both in scientific terms and in terms of the possible damage to his
social life and reputation. Darwin suggests that all living beings descend from
one primeval living form, but he does not speculate on the origin of that
being, only telling us in pseudo-Biblical language that "life was breathed
into it". Darwinism addresses evolution understood as the formation of
species and diverse varieties of living beings; evolution means for Darwin (who
does not much use the term himself) "descent with modification"; and
his celebrated principle of natural selection and the self-organizing emergence
of complexity applies only to living beings. But many complex biological
phenomena, such as consciousness, are not dealt with by Darwin either, while
the evolution of consciousness is central for Spencer.
Spencer's very definition
of evolution is more encompassing and ambitious than Darwin's, too ambitious
some have said:
1. "Evolution is an
integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which
matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite,
coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a
parallel transformation." (§145; p. 358, italics in the original)
Evolution is the process whereby greater complexity is
generated, through the spontaneous integration of natural forces and phenomena.
Some examples of this relative integration, at various levels, may be mentioned
(2):
- The formation of a planet out of dispersed matter
- The formation of pluricellular beings out of
unicellular beings
- The formation of complex societies, unifying
dispersed populations.
- The integration of productive and economic systems
in a global economy.
I pause to say that these can only be accounted for
through narrative, through the kind of storytelling which integrates diverse
phenomena into a coherent story of processes and development.
And some instances of the growing heterogeneity which
goes along with these unifications:
- The formation of planets with different
characteristics, a plurality of worlds, in different positions of the Solar
System.
- The diverse forms of pluricellular beings and of
anatomical structures, as compared with the relative uniformity of
single-celled organisms, or of the first hypothetical primeval organism.
- Different modes of social life, different ecological
economies, exploiting a variety of natural resources and landscapes.
- The differentiation of social classes and
professions in a nation.
- The global division of work, and the extreme
specialization of production allowed by the development of communications.
Although Spencer was not familiar with the Internet or
with GATS, the global village, the business niches of the Long Tail, etc.,
are only a corollary of this law of evolution, once we acknowledge the growing
generation of complexity. And he did not know the European Union, either, but
he announces it quite explicitly, a century in advance, in the mid-Victorian
age, based on the analysis of data and of historical processes, and well before
the idea had reached the thoughts of any politician.
Spencer could not deal in any detail with the origin
of life and consciousness, but he does situate them within the framework of
this general theory of the evolution of
complexity out of more basic components.
It should be said that although in a more general sense any change, including
processes of disintegration and disaggregation, are part of evolution, Spencer
considers the latter a contrary process: the growth of integrating and
complexifying evolution in certain sections of the Universe may be followed by dissolution, or this may be taking place
elsewhere at the same time; this is the result of a tendency to what others
have called entropy,[3] a reduction in
heterogeneity. Consciousness is, within the scope of Spencer's theory, a
phenomenon which is possible only in the context of highly complex living
processes, resulting from high heterogeneity. (The materialist and evolutionary
theory of consciousness developed some decades later by George Herbert Mead in The Philosophy of the Present is highly
consonant with Spenser's thought, and it is tempting to see each of these two
theories of complexity in terms of one another).
This global integration of evolutionary processes
(resulting from what Mead would call the sociality of physical phenomena), and
this notion of consciousness, cannot but culminate in a philosophy of evolution
which redefines itself, and accounts for itself, in such terms. Philosophy must
needs be a process of integration, and being the highest activity of
consciousness, philosophy must conceive of itself in these terms; it must
develop an awareness of what it is, that is, what is the status of philosophy
considered in the light of overall evolutionary processes. (And Spencer, like
Hegel, must be forgiven if these reflections lead to a somewhat circular
reflexivity, consciousness being essentially reflexive, or more immodestly to
an aggrandizing of their own system within the scale of Being. I for one will
not question the accuracy of their self-assessments).
William Whewell's term "consilience",
revived of late by E. O. Wilson in his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, is not used by Spencer, but he
is as clear-sighted and ambitious as Wilson when it comes to the formulation of
this as an aim for thought.[4] Without any need to
reorient the task of philosophy, Spencer finds consilience presupposed in the
very notion of philosophy, which operates under "the tacit implication
that Philosophy is completely unified knowledge" (First Principles 484). After a preliminary definition of the task, First Principles sets down the axiomatic
bases of knowledge, "Fundamental propositions, or propositions not
deducible from deeper ones" and deriving from the very nature of
rationality, taking as our data "those components of our intelligence
without which there cannot go on the mental processes implied by
philosophizing" (484)—and from there we pass to certain basic truths, which
for Spencer are "the Indestructibility of Matter" (remember that we
are working here within a largely Newtonian paradigm predating Einstein and
Bohr) and "The Continuity of Motion", both derived from the more
basic principle of "The Persistence of Force"—a notion whose ultimate
nature would have to be revised in our universe of quantum fluctuations. Be as
it may, Spencer derives other basic principles of physics from these primary
axioms: "The Persistence of the Relations among Forces" or the
"Uniformity of Law", a necessary consequence of the fact that a Force
cannot arise out of nothing nor lapse into nothing. (Present-day cosmology is
still grappling with the limits set to these principles, and to our universe,
by the Big Bang theory, black holes and baby universes, but of course those lay
beyond the Newtonian paradigm of nineteenth-century physics).
The next step in reasoning is that forces which seem
to contradict that principle and seem be lost, "are transformed into their
equivalents in other forces; or, conversely, that forces which become manifest,
do so by the disappearance of pre-existing equivalent forces" (484-5), a
principle exemplified in astronomical physics, in common geological phenomena,
and in biological processes—for instance, Spencer reminds us of the huge amount
of biological or geological forces on earth which result from the
transformations of incoming solar radiation.
Other laws derive from the principle of the
Persistence of Force, and illustrate in their turn a multitude of physical,
biological or neuropsychological phenomena. Thus, the celebrated Law of Minimal
Effort, "The law that everything moves along the line of least resistance,
or the line of greater traction, or their resultant" (485).[5] It is to be noted that
long before Ramón y Cajal or neuroscience, Spencer lays down at this point a
bridge between the psychology of the association of ideas and the modern
science of neural connections.
3. "A
stimulus implies a force added to, or evolved in, that part of the organism which
is its seat; while a mechanical movement implies an expenditure or loss of
force in that part of the organism which is its seat: implying some tension of
molecular state between the two localities. Hence if, in the life of a minute
animal, there are circumstances involving that a stimulation in one particular
place is habitually followed by a contraction in another particular place—if
there is thus a repeated motion through some line of least resistance between
these places; what must be the result as respects the line? If this line—this
channel—is affected by the discharge—if the obstructive action of the tissues
traversed, involves any reaction upon them, deducting from their obstructive
power; then a subsequent motion between these two points will meet with less
resistance along this channel than the previous motion met with, and will
consequently take this channel still more decidedly. Every repetition will
further diminish the resistance offered; and thus will gradually be formed a
permanent line of communication, differing greatly from the surrounding tissue
in respect of the ease with which force traverses it. Hence in small creatures
may result rudimentary nervous connexions." (§79, p. 211-12)
The same principle is applied by Spencer to the acquisition
of habits, to learning, to the personal association of impressions and memories
(before Proustian madeleines).
Another of the principles derived is that of the Rhythm of Movement, the creation of
alternance and rhythm out of the composition of forces, repetitions,
ondulations, or partial balancing of forces. As a matter of fact, if life
exists at all as a form of complex order, it is because physical forces and
chemical processes have come to be arranged in a complex and rhythmical way,
and because there have come to exist large, complex and long-standing
equilibria of forces giving rise to the appropriate ecosystems.
Knowledge of natural phenomena thus rests on a physics
grounded in its turn on the principles necessary for the rational understanding
of phenomena. The task of philosophy is to elucidate the way in which diverse
physical and cosmical phenomena obey a common logic, a "law of
cooperation" (which Mead will refer to as the basic sociality of physical
phenomena, present at any level from the interaction of forces to the
phenomenology of consciousness and cultural dynamics). (Hd 4): "And hence
in comprehending the Cosmos as conforming to this law of co-operation, must
consist that highest unification which Philosophy seeks" (486)
The law Spencer was looking for, a law accounting for
"the continuous redistribution of matter and movement" might be seen
realized at least in part in Einstein's theory of relativity, specified in the
formula relating energy and matter, e=mc2. Although physicists are
still looking for a comprehensive "theory of everything" which
accounts for all of the basic forces of the universe under a single
explanation.
But, beyond the problem of physical reductionism, a
consilient science should account for emergent phenomena; it should be able to
explain all phenomena at their own level "in their passage from the
imperceptible to the perceptible, and back to the imperceptible." This
passage takes place in each of the phenomena of the universe, and also in the
universe considered as a whole. The passage from nothing to everything and
back to nothing is at once the
ultimate expression of the short short story and the most comprehensive
evolutionary backdrop to any narrative. It is the history of everything, the
gradual and emergent development of all phenomena which is evolution as
conceived by Spencer.
I find a fascinating historiographic and
narratological dimension in this philosophical project, and one much akin to
the contemporary concerns with the natural and ecological contextualization of
the whole of human endeavours, for instance in Edward O. Wilson's books Consilience and The Social Conquest of Earth. A philosophy of evolution is
necessarily a global theory of the history of the universe, considered in its
physical, astronomical, geological and biological aspects. It includes a
history of human evolution, although Spencer avoids dealing with the subject in
First Principles. This evolutionary conception also provides a
framework—a cognitive map, or all-encompassing script—for the narratives of
human history: the development of cultures and societies, and of psychological
and ideological phenomena. Recently we have had a spate of excellent
documentaries popularizing this issue, notably those by Jacques Malaterre,
which witness to a growing interest and consciousness on the educated audience
about the need to connect cultural history and the history of civilization with
an increased awareness of the origins and the ecological significance of the
human phenomenon. Anthropology and cultural history find their appropriate
perspective within this scope, as does the more specific disciplinary study of
psychological, political, economic and ideological phenomena in the various
branches of the social sciences and the humanities. Any given phenomenon is
understandable, on the one hand, as a manifestation of more basic principles of
which it is an emergent expression; on the other, it becomes part of a wider
interactional context. Thus, the history of specific phenomena, "in their
appearance and until their disappearance", is rooted on a wider history,
the comprehensive framework of all effective histories. As to possible worlds
or imagined histories, they are best approached initially as culturally
situated fictions in the highly specific context of human communications.
All this has a narrative dimension, and many
implications for the theory of narrative. In analyzing a story's narrative
anchoring, we show how individual narratives are not a narratologically simple
phenomenon; rather, they are made up of many narrative layers and structures:
processes, anecdotes, previous histories, archetypes, interpretive frames and
scripts, virtual plots and sideshadows. All of these find an anchoring in the
narrative in question which articulates, uses or invokes them, but they can
only do so through the link provided by the general narrativity of reality—that
relational character of all evolutionary phenomena, the all-encompassing frame
of temporal development, which can be conceptually grasped by evolutionary and
consilient "Big Histories" such as the one articulated by Spencer.
The many ways such big histories or contextualizing narrative frames are
invoked or negotiated in any specific encounter or discourse event should
provide much matter for narratological analysis; here I can only focus on my
Spencer example as an instance of emergent narrativity in the context of
evolutionary philosophy.
Every time a narrative presupposes a given world view,
a given theory of reality, or a practical assumption of the way things are or
are not, it is anchoring itself in such a narrative understanding of reality—or
if it does not do so explicitly, we must bring that anchoring to light in order
to make sense of it. This is also the case every time a "grand
narrative" is taken to be the background of lived or narrated
experience—grand narratives such as the spread of civilization, progress,
globalization, consumption, rural exodus and the development of cities, dreams
of utopia—or conversely, grand narratives of crisis, impending catastrophes,
ecological doom, overpopulation and global warming. Perhaps we need an updated
Theory of Myths, a contemporary and historicised Anatomy of Criticism, to help us contextualize and historicize
these narratives of Spring, Summer, Crisis, and Winter which are at work
structuring our discourse every time we do not hold our peace.[6] Michel Butor said about
narrative: "it is a phenomenon which goes significantly beyond the domain
of literature; it is one of the essential constituents of our apprehension of
reality."[7]
And indeed our understanding of reality is a narrative one; reality is
narrative in nature because it is
evolutionary; the human symbolic world is made of words and of the stories
we build with them, but there is a perceptual grounding both in words and in
stories which ensures that our virtual world of symbols is not arbitrarily
imposed on the real world.[8] One may say that reality
is a narrative, literally so, from the moment we have a brain to understand it.
There is an intuitive cognitive projection of complex
narrative frames in everyday experience, as well as in the production of
narrative discourses and in their interpreters and critics. Elaborate
intellectual articulations of this complexity, such as the one we find in
Spencer's philosophy, build on this general narrativity of our experience and
communication. We perceive the world as an ongoing process of transformation
and change, integrated in its complexity and diversity, made up of analogies
between temporal processes and obeying to observable regularities. The analogy
between the cycles of the day and of the year, the course of human life, and
stories of creation and apocalypse is only one prominent example.
The Universe, universal evolution, can be conceived,
as suggested by Spencer's philosophy, as an all-encompassing narrative (or
narrable) process, as a complex multitude of narrative processes rather, framed
within one another, embedded or sequenced in ways familiar to narratologists;
processes which are classifiable or understandable through their relation to
the whole. History as usually taught, that is, the history of civilizations, is
only a small chapter in this big history of mankind, the history of
humanization, of the origin of language, the history of the dozen extinct
species of humans and proto-humans which preceded us or were driven to
extinction, as happens even today to the primitive populations, cultural
isolates, still surviving in their ancestral mode of life. The Big History of
mankind was for Darwin a "grand sequence of events" which should be
explained by evolutionary biology. And sociobiologists like E. O. Wilson have
done their best to show how our story is not just our story—it is our nature,
stamped in our being. The evolutionary perspective shows just to what extent
our very bodies and minds are living narratives, structured by embodied
history, if only we can read them.
Darwin's perspective was grand, but Spencer's is
grander, and much more closely argued than Nietzsche's vision of the Eternal
Return. The history of life and consciousness is only a chapter, our chapter,
in the history of physical and chemical processes. And Spencer conceives the
role of his evolutionary philosophy (his System
of Synthetic Philosophy as he called it) as a consilient perspective on
reason and knowledge, on the natural and human sciences, a narrative
explanation of all possible phenomena in nature (and culture), from their
emergence (at the beginning of the story) to their disappearance, as nothing is
eternal:
5. "If [Philosophy] begins its explanations with
existences that already have concrete forms, then, manifestly, they had
preceding histories, or will have succeding histories, or both, of which no
account is given. Whence we saw it to follow that the formula sought, equally
applicable to existences taken singly and in their totality, must be applicable
to the whole history of each and to the whole history of all. This must be the
ideal form of a Philosophy, however far short of it the reality may fall."
(First Principles §186; p. 486)
The Universe is a complex process, in which Spencer
distinguishes a primary process of evolution, an "integration of matter
and dissipation of movement" as he puts it, and secondary processes
accompanying it, a composite evolution—"The primary re-distribution of
Matter and Motion is accompanied by secondary re-distributions" (§186, p.
487), re-distributions resulting in the generation of complexity, not in the
integration of everything into a simple universal unity. Separate wholes
divided into parts are created, and there are indirect processes of integration
making these parts mutually dependent, even as they become differentiated—and
so reality unfolds into complex emergent levels,[9] even as it maintains an
essential unity:
6. "From this primary re-distribution we were led
on to consider the secondary re-distributions, by inquiring how there came to
be a formation of parts during the formation of a whole. It turned out that
there is habitually a passage from homogeneity to heterogeneity, along with the
passage from diffusion to concentration. While the matter composing the Solar
System has been assuming a denser form, it has changed from unity to variety of
distribution. Solidification of the Earth has been accompanied by a progress
from comparative uniformity to extreme multiformity. In the course of its
advance from a germ to a mass of relatively great bulk, every plant and animal
also advances from simplicity to complexity. The increase of a society in
numbers and consolidation has for its concomitant an increased heterogeneity
both of its political and its industrial organization. And the like holds of
all super-organic products—Language, Science, Art, and Literature." (§187;
p. 488)
In any kind of phenomena, as Spencer puts it in a
necessarily general formulation, we pass from a relatively diffuse, uniform and
indeterminate structure to the creation of multiple, concentrated, complex and
mutually integrated forms. Unless, that is, these complex forms enter a process
of decay and dissolution. It is not by chance, Spencer asserts, that all
disciplines of knowledge and all phenomena can be subsumed unter this all-encompassing
law of evolution. It is, rather, the other way round: the disciplines we use to
know and classify reality are "mere conventional groupings, made to
facilitate the arrangement and acquisition of knowledge" but their
ultimate object is the same, cosmic evolution—so "there are not several
kinds of Evolution having certain traits in common, but one Evolution going on
everywhere after the same manner" (p. 490). As a matter of fact, the
labour of science is to show the common grounding of the evolution of all
phenomena, once we have come to know the general principle of reality as
manifested in the elementary laws of physics governing matter and energy—that
is, in the primary effects of the Force which has generated the universe:
7. "Analysis reduces these several kinds of
effect to one kind of effect; and these several kinds of uniformity to one kind
of uniformity. And the highest achievement of Science is the interpretation of
all orders of phenomena, as differently conditioned manifestations of this one
kind of effect, under differently-conditioned modes of this one kind of
uniformity" (§194, p. 498).
Spencer's theory of complexification and dissolution
has an interesting aspect related to observability and to information processing
which might be further explored, though not at this point. Still, we may note
in passing that the difference established here between Evolution and
Dissolution is relative to the observing subject. As life and consciousness are
in themselves complex phenomena, and the necessary basis on which theories of
evolution must rest, the very phenomenological constitution of the subject
matter leads per se to conceive of the subject matter directionally.
Complexification is positively evaluated, it is a "rising" phase of evolution,
while disintegration is negatively evaluated—although, if we imaginatively
suppress the material basis of our cognitive viewpoint, it's all the same
process of evolution, and as a matter of fact both evolution and dissolution
fall in Spencer's theory under the same explanation, as effects resulting from
the same causes, as a continuum in fact. We may argue that the mere fact that
Spencer uses two different terms, evolution
as against dissolution, is
invidiously "teleological", "directionalist,"
"anthropic" and other nasty words fron the standpoint of late 20th-century
evolutionism. Nonetheless, his theory is quite self-consciously deliberate on
this point: we live in a world of objects—as a matter of fact subjects have to
be objects before they are subjects—and therefore we are keenly interested in
the formation of objects, and in their dissolution—in their biography we might say, because we [subjects
indeed!] are subject to the same law of evolution and dissolution which governs
other objects.[10]
Our knowledge is narrative knowledge
because it is not neutral with respect to the structure and history of the
universe—the structure of our knowledge is of a piece with the evolutionary
nature of the universe itself. This is perhaps the key sentence of my talk, so
I will repeat it for emphasis: Our knowledge is narrative knowledge because it is not neutral with respect to the
structure and history of the universe—the structure of our knowledge is of a
piece with the evolutionary nature of the universe itself. Understanding of
narrative is therefore an essential cognitive tool in order to understand the
universe and evolution. But understanding the universe and evolution, our
evolution, is an essential cognitive tool in order to understand narrative.
[1] Jan Smuts proposed the holistic conception of cosmic
evolution as an organized series of emergent systems.
[2] See some of the arguments against evolutionary
criticism and neuroaesthetics in Tallis (2012).
[3] Rudolf Clausius, Ludwig Boltzmann,etc.
[4] For some narratological remarks on Whewell, Wilson
and consilience, see my paper "Consiliencia y retrospección."
[5] Alfred J. Lotka and other
scientists used a version of this principle in order to extend Darwin's concept
of natural selection to physics and cosmic evolution. Lotka's maximum power principle was proposed by
Howard Odum as an additional law of thermodynamics governing the ecology of
ecosystems (see Odum 1994; Odum and Pinkerton 1955).
[6] Big history should provide
us with tools for rethinking both the modes of repetition and of static time
(habit, laws, customs, etc.) and the modes of crisis and event (transformation,
conflict, epiphany), etc.—historicizing them in a new light. More generally
speaking, Frye's poetics of myth is in for an appreciative revaluation from the
present standpoint of present-day evolutionary and cognitive poetics.
[8] See Benjamin K. Bergen, Louder than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning
(Basic Books, 2012).
[9]
The concept of emergence or holism are not
explicitly stated by Spencer, although it can easily be seen they are ready to
emerge. It is nonetheless curious that in Holism
and Evolution (1926) Jan Smuts refers to Spencer only marginally.
[10] I would modify, however, the way in which Spencer
formulates the relationship between evolution and dissolution, to show that the
mutual involvement of processes of integration and of decay is much closer than
his formulation would seem to suggest. I add the italicised words: "All
things are growing and / or decaying,
accumulating matter and / or wearing
away, integrating and / or
disintegrating" (§95, p. 251).
sábado, 30 de marzo de 2013
viernes, 29 de marzo de 2013
Una historia sobre las historias de todo
Mañana doy la conferencia más importante que he dado hasta ahora en mi vida, y que daré seguramente. Me invitaron como conferenciante al tercer congreso de la Red Europea de Narratología (European Narratology Network), que se celebra en la Ciudad Universitaria Internacional de París. Y aquí estoy en el Quartier Latin en la calle de Hemingway y de Joyce, con los bouquinistes y toda la pesca. Hoy ha sido la jornada inagural, y mañana a primera hora doy mi conferencia, seguida de otra de Dan Shen, que viene desde China.
La mía va del tema que me trae a vueltas estos últimos años, el anclaje narrativo, los mapas narrativos, y la teoría de la evolución. Aquí en Historia(s) de todo trato algunos de esos temas, y mañana más.
Cuando se inaugura la segunda fase de mi vida, a saber, "Después de la Conferencia".
—oOo—
Rue Cardinal Lemoine
Aquí en la Rue Cardinal Lemoine oyendo los ruiseñores toda la noche. Hay una frase que siempre he querido decir en París: "Innombrables sont tous les récits du monde."
miércoles, 27 de marzo de 2013
martes, 26 de marzo de 2013
Big History and the Future of Humanity
Una conferencia de Fred Spier en Villanova University
Sobre Spier comenté algo en Globalización y Sostenibilidad.
Sobre Spier comenté algo en Globalización y Sostenibilidad.
Maps of Time - David Christian
Dos conferencias de David Christian sobre qué, sobre Gran Historia; una en Think:
Y otra en Macquarie University:
Esta semana doy una conferencia en París que tiene que ver con esta cuestión de la Gran Historia, relacionándola con la narratología. Y en preparación llevo desde hace varios meses un blog sobre evolución, cosmología, Gran Historia y representaciones narrativas. Allí van a parar todas las cosas que voy encontrando en esta línea:
Y otra en Macquarie University:
Esta semana doy una conferencia en París que tiene que ver con esta cuestión de la Gran Historia, relacionándola con la narratología. Y en preparación llevo desde hace varios meses un blog sobre evolución, cosmología, Gran Historia y representaciones narrativas. Allí van a parar todas las cosas que voy encontrando en esta línea:
lunes, 25 de marzo de 2013
Mimicking Death
Omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est, et speculum.
Nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis,
nostri status, nostrae sortis
fidele signaculum.
Nostrum statum pingit rosa,
nostri status decens glosa,
nostrae vitae lectio.
(...)Sic mors vitam, risum luctus,
umbra diem, portum fluctus,
mane claudit vespere.
In nos primum dat insultum
poena mortis gerens vultum,
labor mortis histrio.Todas las cosas del mundo
son como un libro e imagen
para nosotros, y un espejo.
De nuestra vida, de nuestra muerte,
de nuestro estado, de nuestra suerte
son una fiel representación.
Nuestro estado pinta la rosa,
comentario de nuestra existencia,
lección para nuestra vida.
...
Así la muerte cierra la vida, la pena la risa,
la sombra el día, la marea el puerto,
y la caída de la tarde cierra la mañana.
El primer golpe nos llega
en la forma de una pena
que nos entristece el rostro
—como un mimo de la muerte.
...
Hace muchos años que se me quedó grabado en la mente el poema "De miseria mundi" de Alain de Lille, pero hasta hoy no lo había visto entero. Aquí lo dejo a modo de memento audere semper; lo he encontrado en la Wikisource latina y en la web de un grupo que lo ha musicado, Liva.
De Insulis
The hymn De miseria mundi has certain similarities with Anticlaudianus, another work by the same author. The poet compares the human condition with that of the rose and “deals with the four makers of the world: God, Nature, Fortune, and Vice”. (...) Divisions and titles were inserted by Liva.
1. Omnis mundi creatura
Any worldly creature
Is like a book, a painting,
To serve as a mirror,
Faithful representation
Of our life, of our death,
Of our state, of our lot.
Our condition is painted by the rose,
Of our state, a great gloss and
A lesson from our existence:
In full bloom in the early morning,
Flourishing flower falling out of blossom
In the oldness of the night.
2. Rosa marcet oriens
The flower expires by breathing,
It raves by fading,
Starts to die at birth.
Both ancient and new,
Both elderly and damsel,
The rose fades at birth.
So the spring of our age,
In the very morning of youth,
Flourishes for a brief moment,
But this morning is soon excluded
By nightfall while the twilight years
Conclude.
3. Sic mors vitam
By ending its beauty,
Age or the course of time sweep it away,
Soon deflowers its splendour.
Flower turns into fruit, gem into mud,
Man turns to dust, and to death
Paying his tribute here below.
For his life, for his being are
Sorrow, pain, necessity
To end in death.
So death shuts life, mourning shuts laughter,
Shadow shuts daylight, the tide shuts the sea
And night shuts morning.
4. Mortis est conclusio
The first strike comes to us
From a dead-face sorrow,
From an ordeal mimicking death;
Subjecting us to sorrow,
Transforming us into grievous beings,
And death concludes it all.
5. Luge penam
Thus enclosed under this law,
Man, decipher your condition,
Look closely at who you are,
What you were before your birth,
What you are, what you will be,
Deepen this vision.
Weep in sorrow, lament your offence,
Suppress your impulses, break your pomp,
Cast off your pride;
Leader and coach driver of your soul,
Lead it and direct its course
Not to veer to evil.
Aquí el texto latino de De miseria mundi, también conocido como Omnis mundi creatura:
Omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est, et speculum.
Nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis,
nostri status, nostrae sortis
fidele signaculum.
Nostrum statum pingit rosa,
nostri status decens glosa,
nostrae vitae lectio.
Quae dum primo mane floret,
defloratus flos effloret
vespertino senio.
Ergo spirans flos exspirat
in pallorem dum delirat,
oriendo moriens.
Simul vetus et novella,
simul senex et puella
rosa marcet oriens.
Sic aetatis ver humanae
iuventutis primo mane
reflorescit paululum.
Mane tamen hoc excludit
vitae vesper, dum concludit
vitale crepusculum.
Cuius decor dum perorat
eius decus mox deflorat
aetas in qua defluit.
Fit flos fenum, gemma lutum,
homo cinis, dum tributum
homo morti tribuit.
Cuius vita cuius esse,
poena, labor et necesse
vitam morte claudere.
Sic mors vitam, risum luctus,
umbra diem, portum fluctus,
mane claudit vespere.
In nos primum dat insultum
poena mortis gerens vultum,
labor mortis histrio.
Nos proponit in laborem,
nos assumit in dolorem;
mortis est conclusio.
Ergo clausum sub hac lege,
statum tuum, homo, lege,
tuum esse respice.
Quid fuisti nasciturus;
quid sis praesens, quid futurus,
diligenter inspice.
Luge poenam, culpam plange,
motus fraena, fastum frange,
pone supercilia.
Mentis rector et auriga
mentem rege, fluctus riga,
ne fluant in devia.
—oOo—
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