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The Jubilatory Virtual: Assumption or Dissolution of Complexity?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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A riddle or a joke? I regret having made light of both myself and the reader. However, the concept of complexity has been explored with such intensity and pedantry, has been analyzed from so many points of view – the mathematical, linguistic, physical, chemical, political, psychological, sociological, physiological, algorithmic, logical, religious, and metaphysical – that nothing, not even the title of this piece, can escape it. Indeed the situation has reached the point where we grow misty-eyed over the very thought of the discrete charms of yesterday's simplicity. Sometimes we dream that complexity itself, after having given us so much, muses – now that its task is fulfilled – of flying up miraculously into the sky, like the Virgin Mother (the Assumption); or ourselves wish to experience – for those spirits who prefer to keep their feet on the ground(!) – the “dissolution” with which entropy begins. Isn't it true that certain words, marked by the spirit of their age, are themselves in fact carried away by the spirit of the age?
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- Copyright © 1993 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
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Notes
1. Among the copious material on this subject, see the works of Edgar Morin, in particular: La Methode 3 – La Connaissance de la Connaissance 1, Paris, Ed. du Seuil, 1986; Introduction à la pensée complexe, Paris, ESF Éditeur, 1990; and Les Théories de la complexité, autour de l'œuvre d'Henri Atlan, colloque du Cerisy, under the direction of Francoise Fogleman Soulié, Paris, Ed. du Seuil, 1991; from Jean-Paul Delahaye, Complexités; and "La Profondeur Logique selon C. Bennet," Pour la Science, no. 166, August 1991; from the Nobel Prize winner in physics, Murray Gell-Mann, "Simplicity and Complexity in the Description of Nature," Engineering and Science, California Institute of Technology, Spring 1988, vol. LI, no. 3, pp. 3-9.
2. It is in the afterword to my book L'effet des changements technologiques - En muta tion, l'art, la ville, l'image, la culture, NOUS! (Lausanne, Ed. Pierre-Marcel Favre, 1983) where, in speaking of what I called the rise of "techno-imagination," I wrote: "Technologism … is the first philosophy to integrate objects and machines into its system. In so doing, its aim is less to understand than to transform the world. Technomorphism thus designates the power and results of technological activity." (pp. 226-227). The totality of this activity is part of what I called "technoculture," a neologism that is gaining currency today.
3. To date, the most complete inquiry on the subject was carried out by Howard Rheingold, in Virtual Reality, The Revolutionary Technology of Computer-Generated Artificial Worlds – and How it Promises and Threatens to Transform Business and Society, New York, Summit Books, Simon and Schuster, 1991. See also: Catherine Richards, Neel Tenhaf, Seminar Leaders, Visual Seminar on the Bioapparatus, The Banff Center, 1001, published in Canada; Michael Benedikt (ed.), Cyberspace: First Steps, Cambridge, Mass./London, The MIT Press, 1991; Stan Davis and Bill Davidson, 2020 Vision, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1991; Derek Leebaert (ed.), Technology 2001, The Future of Computing and Communications, Cambridge Mass./London, The MIT Press, 1991; Myron W. Krueger, Artificial Reality II, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley, 1991; Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theater, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley, 1991; Richard Kadrey, Cyberthon 1.0 Whole Earth Review, Spring 1991, Sausolito, Ca., pp. 54-60; Jean Segura, "'Réalité virtuelle,' un plongeon dans l'image?" in La Recherche, 229, February, 1991, Paris, pp. 232-235. Especially relevant to the current essay is Actes d'Imagina 92, in which the principal examples that I cite (and which I personally witnessed) can be found (see the Guide, which gives a good summary of what took place).
4. "Virtual Reality, An Interview with Jaron Lanier by Kevin Kelly," Adam Heilbrun and Barbara Stacks, Whole Earth Review, 1989, Sausalito, pp.108-119.
5. Patrice von Erstel, Actuel, no. 137, Paris, November 1990, p. 70.
6. On this subject see issue number 155 of Diogenes, "From the Cosmos to the Mind," with its articles on the origin of the universe (Herbert Reeves), the emer gence of thought (Edgar Morin), the origin and evolution of mankind (Yves Coppens), and other subjects.
7. Gaston Bachelard, La psychanalyse du feu, Paris, Gallimard, Idées, 1949, pp. 23, 32, 94 (the quote attributed to Rodin was reported by Max Scheler).
8. Marvin Minsky, "Logical versus analogical or symbolical versus connectionist or neat versus scruffy. AI systems should assimilate both symbolic and connection ist views," AI Magazine, 12.2, 1991, pp. 34-51.
9. The process of encephalization is at the heart of the work of the great anthro pologist André Leroi-Gourhan. As for its relation to artificial intelligence, see Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1988, vol. 117, no. 1, Cambridge, Mass., in particular the article of Jacob T. Schwartz, pp. 85-121.
10. Henry Kennedy and Colette Debray, "Le dévelopment du cerveau," La Recherche, no. 184, Paris, January 1987, p. 28.
11. For how this tendency affects science itself, see Thomas Kuhn's classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970.
12. It is useful here to recall Descartes' own starting point: "My philosophy," he wrote, "takes into account only magnitudes, figures and their movements, as does mechanics." It is a mechanism, he continues, that affects even our bodies: "And in truth the nerves of the machine I am about to describe can be compared to the pipes of this fountain; its muscles and tendons can be compared to the other motors and springs that serve to move the pipes; its animal spirit to the water that stirs them; whose heart is the source, and the concavities of the brain are its eyes." (L'Homme) It is more than a little disconcerting to observe that nearly three centuries after Descartes the very same mechanistic spirit inspired the inventors of computer sci ence and continues to dominate the approach of the majority of engineers. This shows to what extent this mechanistic spirit, as much an attitude as a philosophy, remains profoundly anchored in both our mentality and our behavior.
13. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (W.W. Norton and Company, 1971) p.15.
14. My purpose here is not to pretend to be a physicist (which I am not). However, just because my scientific qualifications are limited, this should not pre clude my taking into account the contributions of modem science. It is a matter of reading and research: thus the books I cite below. I should also mention, in this con nection, that I am especially indebted to my friend Basarab Nicolescu, whose book, Nous, la particule et le monde (Paris, éd. le Mail, 1985) not only offers a lucid analysis of the revolution in quantum mechanics but also places it in the broader cultural context.
15. As an analogy, think of our own – and hundreds of millions of other television viewers – surprise when we watched the first astronauts in a state of weightless ness. Even if it did not concern quantum mechanics per se, this sight showed, indeed proved, that a change in environmental conditions has an influence on our behavior and of the image we have of that behavior. It therefore showed that our ordinary perception of the world depends on the habitual conditions under which our perceptions are made. This kind of experience can be the source of an instruc tive skepticism.
16. Abner Shimony, "The Reality of the Quantum World," Scientific American, March, 1988, p. 88.
17. Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind, Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics, Oxford/New York/Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1989. It is worth nothing that the author, although a mathematician and physicist, gives spe cial attention to artistic and aesthetic questions.
18. François Daumas, Les Dieux de l'Égypte, Paris, PUF 1965, p. 27.
19. Colette Goddard, "Les dieux que nous ne connaissons pas," L'Ete/Festival Avignon 1992, Le Monde. An analogous comment could be made about philosophy, which almost everywhere – at least on the high school and university level – has been transformed into the history of philosophy. Equally, the philosophical vocation, "to seek wisdom," has been replaced by the profession of historian! The authenticity of personal lived experience has become a matter of apprenticeship and academic mastery (in the form of performance, as at the theater?).
20. In English: news program (translator's note).
21. See Benoît Mandelbrot, Les Objets fractals, forme, hasard et dimension, Paris, Éd. Flammarion 1975. There is also the travelling exposition, Frontiers of Chaos-Computer Graphics Face Complex Dynamics, which inspired a book co-authored by H.O. Petitgen and P.H. Richter, The Beauty of Fractals – Images of Complex Dynamical Systems, Berlin/Heidelberg/New York/Tokyo, Springer-Verlag 1986.
22. George Vecsey, Herald Tribune, August 11, 1992. For his part, the President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranach, announced at the close of the games that Olympic amateurism, which was the ideal preached by Baron Coubertin and his successors, was at an end; and he added that in the future the games would see the presence of more and more professionals. This is a very significant admission about the general tendency in sports – and all competitive activities – today.
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