Developing a Worldview
to Conduct Global Evolution
Source:
ECCO seminar VUB 08MAY2008 by Bernard Goossens (thanks to Clément Vidal)
Abstract:
First
the concept of worldview is (re)defined in relationship with the concept of consciousness, referring to
Vanbremeersch and Ehresmann (2005) modelization of consciousness. Then drivers
and research requirements to develop a worldview are analyzed.
After giving a list of
important actual trends, topics and tools of rational worldviews, two
examples (1992 & 2000) are presented of potential breakthroughs to
highly integrated multi-disciplinary insights based on the physical scale
relativity approach of Laurent Nottale. This enquiry finally leads to reinforce
the paradigm of the Global Brain as culmination of the ongoing worldwide
integration but also points to the urgency for substantial
improvement in the domain of praxeology, more precisely in the mechanisms
of involvement, (s)election and governance, in order to allow at least a
glimpse of hope to adequately control this most profound phase change ever in
the now global human society, in accordance with the requirements formulated by
Ervin Laszlo in a Contribution to the Understanding of the World
Problematique (1987), a Club of Rome's publication.
Keywords:
acceleration, actions,
adaptive, aware, bifurcation, brain, category, classification, colimit, complexity,
consciousness, control, cybernetic, decision, development, election, emergence,
evolution, fitness, fractal, freedom, fundamental, future, generalist, global,
goal, governance, hierarchy, holistic, human, individual, information,
integration, knowledge, mathematical, memory, model, multifold, multiplicity,
multi-disciplinary, order, organization, orientation, phenomenon, philosophy,
physics, praxeology, principle, process, quantum mechanics, rational, reflection,
relativity, representation, scale, sense-aware, society, specialist, structure,
selection, superorganism, synopsis, synthesis, system, task, thinking,
universal, whole, worldview
Contents
1 Introduction
Aerts et al. proposed to
define a worldview as a symbolic system of reference in which everything we
know about the world and ourselves is represented into an integrated global
picture, one that illuminates reality as it is presented to us within a certain
culture. The fundamental questions to be answered are: “What is? Where does it
all come from? Where are we going? What is good/evil? How should we act? What
is true/false? Where do we start in order to answer those questions?” [1].
If we generalize following
Vidal and Heylighen and try to describe the limits of what could be classified
as a worldview, it is becoming obvious that this depends on how wide we choose the
range of “cultures” that actually give rise to worldviews: e.g. from bacteria
up to human societies [2]. But why, for instance, not extend down to viruses?
A precisely parallel boundary
problem appears to haunt the concept of consciousness, because it is also
fundamentally emergent and, as we will see, both concepts are intrinsically
related. Moreover, consciousness is often surrounded by a cloud of mystery,
although this only obscures its relevancy.
2
Emergence
up to Consciousness
2.1
Evolution
So, let’s first have a closer
look to consciousness, in the track of Jean-Paul Vanbremeersch
(a physician) and Andrée
Ehresmann (a categorician) [3].
Their multi-disciplinary contribution
is “Memory Evolutive System”, a deeply explanatory mathematical model of
emergence, complexity, hierarchy and organization with practical applications
in biology, medicine, sociology, ecology, economy, meteorology, etc...
The Big-bang model assumes
that the universe has been formed from interacting particles, which have
associated to form nuclei, then atoms, then molecules, then more and more
extended and complex objects, giving rise to the whole tree of living beings,
from bacteria to animals presenting some consciousness.
2.2
The
Colimit as Complex Object
This evolution is described as
a succession of ‘complexification’ processes, in which patterns (P) of interacting
objects (Ni) are aggregated into new higher objects taking their own
complex identity, represented in the categorical model by the colimit of the
pattern. The state of a system, such as a biological, social or neural system,
at a time t is modeled by a ‘category’: its ‘objects’ represent the
components of any level of the system, and the ‘morphisms’ (links) their
interactions in the system around this time.
In natural systems, the
objects are partitioned into different complexity levels, each level satisfying
its own rules. There are intralevel links, but also interlevel links. An object
of level n+1 is an aggregate of objects of level n, bound by strong interactions
between them which generate their cohesion in the aggregate. A colimit must not
be confused with the simple sum of the objects of the pattern (without the
distinguished links), which does not take into account their coherent behavior.
At the atomic level, an atom binds together the pattern formed by its
electronic configuration in atomic orbitals.
2.3
Multifold
Objects as Key to Emergence
But Quantum Physics asserts
that the atom has several such configurations related to different energy
levels; we say that it is a 'multifold' object. This property is the key of the
emergence problem. The existence of multifold objects entails the existence of 2
kinds of links: a (P,P')-‘simple link’ f from N to N' just binds together a ‘cluster’
of links between the objects of the decompositions P of N and P' of N', and
thus does not represent 'new' properties with respect to the lower level. But
there also exist ‘complex links’, which are composites of simple links binding
non-adjacent clusters, e.g., a link from N to N" which is the composite of
f with a (R',P")-simple link f' from N' to N", where N' is multifold;
this link represents new emerging properties at the level of N and N",
since it depends not only on the constituents of N and N" of the lower
level (reductionism) but on the whole structure of this lower level through the
existence of a ‘complex switch’ balancing between P' and R'. By a categorical
reasoning, it is proven that if a system has multifold objects (Multiplicity
Principle), so do all its successive complexifications, and they lead to the
formation of objects of increasing orders of complexity connected by complex
links that represent, at each level, new emerging properties, ‘Emergentist
Reductionism’ in the sense of Mario Bunge. As the quantum system satisfies the
MP, it follows that the MP is satisfied by all the natural systems which have
evolved from it or its sub-systems by successive complexifications.
2.4
A
Comprehensive Model of Consciousness
This result is applied to some autonomous anticipatory systems, such as
biological and more specially neural systems, modeled in the categorical frame
by a MES. Successive complexifications of the category of neurons lead to the
emergence of higher and higher cognitive processes including the development of
a general memory with a classification of its records in a semantic memory.
The emergence of consciousness relies on the formation, from birth on,
of a sub-system of the memory, the archetypal core, formed of multifold
objects, which integrates the main sensorial, proprioceptive, motor
experiences, …, with their emotional overtones, and connects them in patterns
with strong links, quickly activated and gradually strengthened. A new event
starts a semiotic search in the archetypal core and in the records linked to
it, through balances between their different decompositions. This leads to the
formation of a 'holist' extended landscape (dynamic memory structure), in which
are effected: a retrospection process toward the near past to find the causes
of events; and a prospection process to select long term strategies for the
future.
Conscious control systems are thus characterized by having developed
more or less powerful means for retrospective causal analysis and prospective
complex planning, processes which take into account the whole experience of the
subject, with its multiple aspects, integrates the temporal dimensions and
gives it evolutive advantages by allowing for more adapted responses.
2.5
From
Consciousness to Worldview
It is worthwhile now to review a brief history of my own consciousness, from
conception to maturity. As all of us, I was initiated as huge (DNA) molecule
(about 108 atoms). My perception of the world was limited to the
genetic apparatus, which I was embedded in. I could only control my own
development according to this highly preprogrammed system. Gradually my receptors
developed and submerged me with impressions of the unlimited richness of
reality. After a tremendous growth in size and complexity (increase in atoms
with a factor of 1019), I became a self-aware child, still mainly
involved in self-development. Years of further assimilation of life experience
and knowledge enhanced my consciousness towards whole-awareness and
responsibility. But as soon as I felt responsible for my acts, I understood
that I needed a general reference frame to guide my decisions. This appeared to
be called a worldview.
Here is a clarifying coarse hierarchical
representation of salient levels of information processing in our brain:
Input
|
Process
|
Function
|
Output
|
Driver Type
|
Phenomenon
|
Filtration
|
Selection
|
Data
|
Induced
|
Memory
|
Structuration
|
Classification/Ordering
|
Information
|
Induced
|
Intelligence
|
Integration
|
Synopsis/Synthesis
|
Knowledge
|
Goal-oriented
|
Self-awareness
|
Thinking
|
Reflection
|
Wisdom
|
Goal-aware
|
Whole-awareness
|
Evaluation
|
Orientation
|
Sensefulness
|
Sense-aware
|
The higher the level, the more
conscious the process and the more elaborate the required worldview. One can thus
understand consciousness as emerging gradually and manifest itself as an increasing
ability of a control system to reflect on his world over increasing ranges of
time, space, complexity etc.
This analysis allows us now to
re-define the concept of worldview:
A
worldview can be interpreted cybernetically as the holistic model to represent
reality used by a conscious control system to define its goals and orient its
actions in order to achieve its goals, taking into account the effects on its
world as a whole.
But the unquenchable human
curiosity goes beyond this pragmatic cybernetic need and elevates the
construction of rational worldviews to the summit of intellectual activity. In
fact it became an art in creativity, as once was cathedral building, to defy
the challenges of nature in realizing the most elegant and far reaching building
possible, within the universally imposed limits of reality.
3
Fitness
Impositions on Worldviews
3.1
Drivers
and Requirements to Develop Rational Worldviews
A variety of worldviews have emerged and evolve over time under
influence of many factors.
Drivers will ‘push’ an organism to develop a worldview:
Driver
|
Goal
|
Domain
|
Survival
|
practical / effective actions
|
cybernetics
|
Curiosity
|
knowledge / understanding / satisfaction
|
psychology
|
Challenge
|
self-confidence / prestige / excitement
|
psychology
|
Requirements can be defined in order to maximize the worldview’s
efficacy and its development efficiency:
Efficiency
|
Open minded researchers
Receptive
(multi-disciplinarity)
Communicative (non-esoteric)
|
Efficacy
|
Critical selection of proposals
Well-founded
Coherent (speculative part)
Internally: no
contradictions
Externally:
possible according to ‘accepted’ knowledge
Observed and verified
(non-speculative part)
Falsifiable:
driver for new experiments
|
The process of worldview development can be schematized:
Old theories à selection & synopsis
| 
synthesis
|
|
New theory ß observation & intuition
|
New theories should embrace successful old theories. In this way new
theories will allow to recover former salient results as special case
approximations.
Trends of universal evolution:
|
acceleration, complexification, diversification, specialization
|
integration, rationalization, virtualization
|
|
Topics of particular interest:
|
causality, determinism, chaos, chance, bifurcation, instability,
reductionism, locality, non-locality, fragmentation, wholeness,
irreversibility, geometricality, bootstrapping, evolution, uncertainty,
emergence (material substrate à abstract
processing), scale approach ( the three infinities: small, big, complex)
|
Tools for construction:
|
physics, cybernetics, systems, cognitive sciences
|
Principles of reasoning:
|
-
The survival of the fittest
-
Occam’s razor
-
Symmetry
-
Relativity
-
Covariance
|
3.2
Relativity
as a Philosophy
3.2.1
About
the Status of Fundamental Physics
Theoretical physics have
struggled for about a century now, trying to reconcile antagonist
representations of reality, each one firmly trenched into its side of the rift
like landscape dividing the most successful theories ever. As is well known,
the task is of unprecedented difficulty because so many amazingly good results
have already been accumulated. Both General Relativity (GR) and Quantum
Mechanics (QM), which have been developed on the opposite sides of the
universal range of scales in nature, tend to grow towards each other, up to the
point of trying to give complementary descriptions of the same phenomena, but
still based on deeply incompatible conceptual foundations and using a
completely different mathematical apparatus.
GR is based on fundamental
physical principles, namely the principles of general covariance and of
equivalence. Its mathematical tools come as natural achievements of these
principles. On the contrary QM, at present, is an axiomatic theory, founded on
purely putative mathematical rules which, up to now, were not understood in
terms of a more basic mechanism. This leads to a strong dichotomy in physics:
two apparently opposite worlds cohabit, the classical and the quantum. These
and other signs indicate that physics is still in infancy. Several great
problems, maybe the most fundamental ones, are still completely open [4].
As so explicitly shown by David
Bohm in his “Rheomode” thought experiment [5], our representations are
permanently biased by the language we use to express them. One definitely needs
broad imagination to get out of this trap and a lot of powerful intuition to
find a successful alternative. That is why dealing with the same subjects,
expressed in totally different languages is a powerful way to promote new
insights. Philosophy and physics are reinforcing each other, just because
physics is in fact the mathematisazion of (parts) of philosophy. A part of philosophy
can truly been seen as metaphysics, in the sense of dealing about physics.
Although philosophy is rational, it has more freedom than physics because it
inherently contains speculative aspects, trying to orient further hard-science
work by exploring possibilities of integration far beyond the presently proven
facts.
At present there is no theory
able to make predictions about the two "tails" of the physical world,
namely elementarity and globality, i.e., at the smallest and largest time and
length scales. Also the intermediate classical world is not devoid of open
fundamental problems. Recent years have known an impressive burst in the study
of dynamical chaos. Chaos is defined as a high sensibility on initial
conditions which leads to rapid divergence of initially close trajectories,
then to a complete loss of predictability on large time scales. Chaos is
encountered in equations which look quite deterministic, in a large number of
different domains like chemistry, fluid mechanics and turbulence, economics,
population dynamics, celestial mechanics, meteorology... The challenge of chaos
is that structures are very often observed in domains where chaos has
developed, while ordinary methods fail to make prediction because of the
presence of chaos itself. The understanding of how organization emerges from
chaos is the key for the foundation of a future (still not existing) science of
classical complexity. Also the goal of a completely general relativity cannot
presently be considered as reached, since it is clear that the methods of the
present theory of general relativity do not apply to reference frames which
would be swept along in the quantum motion, which is continuous but
non-differentiable, as discovered by Feynman. This non-differentiability of
virtual and real quantum paths is one of the key points to a new approach [4].
3.2.2
From
the Relativity of Scales to Scale Relativity
From Plato, Euclid and
Aristotle, to Leibniz, Laplace and Poincaré, many philosophers, mathematicians
and physicists have thought over scales and their transformations, dilations
and contractions. What determines the universal scales in Nature? What is the
origin of the elementary particles scales, of the unification and symmetry
breaking scales, of the large scale structures in the Universe? Not only are
fundamental or characteristic scales observed to occur in the world, but
physical laws may in some situations depend themselves on scale.
Scale dependence may in some cases be very fundamental: hence in QM the results of measurements explicitly depend on the resolution of the measurement apparatus, as described by the Heisenberg relations; in cosmology, it is the whole set of interdistances between the objects of the Universe that depends on a time varying universal scale factor (this is the expansion of the Universe). Moreover, scale laws and scaling behaviors are encountered in many situations, at small scales (microphysics), large scales (extragalactic astrophysics and cosmology) and intermediate scales (complex self-organized systems), but most of the time such laws are found in an empirical way, since we still lack a fundamental theory allowing us to understand them from fundamental principles.
The proposal of Laurent Nottale (an astrophysicist) is that such a fundamental principle upon which a theory of scale laws may be founded is the principle of relativity itself [4].
In a relativistic approach to
physics, one tries to analyze what, in the expression of physical laws, depends
on the particular reference system used, and which properties are independent
of it. But, by ‘principle of relativity'
we mean something more general than its application to particular laws: we actually
mean a ‘universal method of thought’. Following Einstein, we shall express it
by postulating that ‘the laws of Nature
must be such that they apply to reference systems whatever their state’.
Then it is suggested that the
principle of relativity also applies to laws of scale. Taking advantage of the
relative character of every length and time scale in Nature, we define the
resolution of measurements (more generally, the characteristic scale of a given
phenomenon) as ‘the state of scale’ of the reference system. This allows
us to set a ‘principle of scale relativity’, according to which ‘the
laws of physics must be such that they apply to coordinate systems whatever
their state of scale’, whose mathematical translation is the requirement of
‘scale covariance’ of the equations of physics. While the classical
domain is apparently unchanged by such an analysis, its fundamental laws being
scale independent (but situations where dynamical chaos occurs may call for a
reopening of the question), there are two fundamental scale-dependent domains
on which this extension of the principle of relativity sheds new light, namely
quantum physics and cosmology.
In order to describe physical laws complying to this principle, one needs some mathematical tools capable of achieving such a fundamental and explicit dependence of physics on scale in their very definition. There is one geometrical concept that immediately comes to mind in this respect, ‘fractals’, that name objects, sets and functions whose forms are extremely irregular and fragmented, but not necessarily self-similar, on all scales. One can prove that a continuous and non-differentiable space is fractal, in Mandelbrot's general definition of this concept, namely, the coordinates acquire an explicit dependence on resolutions and diverge when the resolution interval tends to zero.
Approximation of a
self-similar fractal curve.
|
Progressive increase in
resolution on a general fractal curve.
|
The theory of Scale Relativity
(SR) is based on the giving up of the hypothesis of manifold differentiability,
which is a key assumption of Einstein's GR. In the new theory, the coordinate
transformations remain continuous but can be differentiable (and therefore it
includes GR) or non-differentiable (a necessary condition to include QM). The
standard laws of classical physics (motion in space / displacement in
space-time) are completed by new scale laws (in which the space-time
resolutions are used as intrinsic variables, playing for scale transformations
the same role as played by velocities for motion transformations). The hope is
that such a stage of the theory is only provisional, and that motion and scale
laws will be treated on the same footing in the final theory. However, before
reaching such a goal, one must realize that the various possible combinations
of scale laws and motion laws lead to a large number of sub-sets of the theory
to be developed. Indeed, three domains of the theory are first to be
considered:
(i) Pure scale-laws: description of the internal structures of a non-differential space-time at a given point / event;
(ii) Induced effects of scale laws on the equations of motion: recovering QM as mechanics on a non-differentiable space-time;
(iii) Scale-motion coupling: effects of dilations induced by displacements, that are tentatively interpreted as gauge fields.
Several levels of the description of scale laws (point i) can be considered. These levels are quite parallel to that of the historical development of the theory of motion:
(i1) Galilean scale-relativity: standard laws of dilation, that have the structure of a Galileo group. When the fractal dimension of trajectories is D = 2, the induced motion laws are that of standard QM.
(i2) Special scale-relativity: generalization of the laws of dilation to a Lorentzian form. The fractal dimension itself becomes a variable, and plays the role of a fifth dimension, called 'djinn'. It is combined, not with the standard space-time coordinates, that keep their four-dimensional nature of signature (+,-,-,-), but with the four fractal fluctuations. Two impassable length-time scales, invariant under dilations, appear in the theory; asymptotic behavior replaces the zero and the infinite, and play for scale laws the same role as played by the speed of light for motion. The minimal horizon scale is identified with the Planck length-scale, and the maximal one with the scale of the cosmological constant.
(i3) Scale-dynamics: while the first two cases correspond to "scale freedom", one can also consider distortion from strict self-similarity. This generalization includes log-periodic corrections to scale invariance (see specific further development hereafter). Still more general distortions from self-similarity can also be described in terms of a 'scale-dynamics', i.e. of the effect of a "scale-force" (that is a mere Newton-like way to describe geometric effects in the scale space).
(i4) General scale-relativity: in analogy with the field of gravitation being ultimately attributed to the geometry of space-time, a more profound description of the scale-field can be done in terms of geometry of the scale 'space-djinn' and its couplings with the standard classical space-time. The account of scale-motion couplings, that leads to a new interpretation of gauge fields (third step here above), is a part of such a general theory of SR.
(i5) Quantum scale-relativity: the above cases assume differentiability of the scale transformations. If one assumes them to be continuous but, as we have assumed for space-time, non-differentiable, one is confronted for scale laws to the same conditions that lead to quantum mechanics in space-time. One may therefore attempt to construct a new quantum mechanics in scale-space, thus achieving a kind of `third quantization'.
The possible complication of the theory becomes apparent when one realizes that these various levels of the description of scale laws will lead to different levels of induced dynamics (point ii) and scale-motion coupling (iii), and that other sublevels are to be considered, depending on the status of motion laws (non-relativistic, special-relativistic, general-relativistic).
Conceptual results
- Recovering QM
as mechanics on a non-differentiable space-time
- Quantum potential as manifestation of the
non-differentiability and fractality of space-time
- Postulates of
QM from the first principles of SR
- Complex plane
in QM
- Complex nature
of wave function
- Particle/wave
duality
- Probabilistic
nature of quantum theory
- Correspondence
principle
- Schrödinger,
Klein-Gordon, Dirac and Pauli equations
- Quantum / Classical transition
- Divergence of
masses and charges
- Nature of
Planck scale
- Nature and
quantization of electric charge
- Origin of mass
discretization of elementary particles
- Nature of the
cosmological constant
- Vacuum energy
density problem
- Large number
coincidence
- Problems of Big-Bang theory
- Complexergy
Quantified results
- GUT scale
- Mass-charge
relations
- ElectroWeak
scale
- Electron scale
- Weak boson
mass ratio
- Elementary
fermion mass spectrum
- Top quark mass
- Values of low
energy coupling constants
- Power of
galaxy-galaxy correlation function
- Structuration
of the Solar System
- Quantization
of binary galaxies
- Global red
shift quantization of galaxies
New predictions
- Precise value
of the strong coupling constant
- Precise value
of the weak bosons mass ratios
- Breaking of
quantum mechanics at high energy
- Value of the
cosmological constant
- New planets in
the solar system
- Universal
structure of external planetary systems
- Position and
velocity structures of stars and stellar associations in our Galaxy
- Structuration
of the universe
- Value of power
of galaxy correlation function at very large scale
3.3
The
Future of Global Society
3.3.1
Universal
Structures of Evolution
The everyday experience of
most of us unmistakably exhibits the ever increasing pressure due to overall acceleration
and densification of the occurrence of events of higher and higher systemic
level [6]. What is going on with our world, where are we heading to, is this trend
under control or can we only endure the hard consequences?
Many authors have published
documents on this subject, referring to various denominations as The
(Technological) Singularity, Accelerating Change, Developmental Spiral,
Convergent Evolution etc. [7].
As a complement to the
references mentioned in ‘Accelerating
Socio-Technological Evolution’ [8] by Francis Heylighen we will now
consider the “groundbreaking” but again not at all widely accepted work [9] of Laurent
Nottale, Jean Chaline (a paleontologist), and Pierre Grou (an economist).
Thanks to their interdisciplinary view they propose a universal
self-structuration of evolutionary processes.
They have been studying a variety of evolutionary lineages in the three
fields of their specialty and at very different scales. Observing that in nature
the jumps between species involve bifurcations, allowed them to liken general evolutionary
processes to a "tree” of life, where "branch" lengths represent
time intervals between the “nodes”, representing the successive major events or
crisis’s of the respective system. By analogy with real trees, they started, as
first approximation, with the simplest possible law, i.e. a self-similar parameterable
fractal tree. Such a law corresponds to discrete scale invariance and log-periodic
acceleration or deceleration, characterized by a critical point of convergence
Tc, which varies with the lineage in question. The physical model underlying
the appearance of such laws is that of critical phenomena. It is shown that one
can obtain a log-periodic correction on a power law by the request of scale
covariance. Moreover, the critical behavior is a priori symmetrical around the
critical value of the variable under consideration. Both log-periodic accelerations
before the critical point ("precursors") and decelerations after it ("replicas")
are expected, and have been confirmed with high statistic representativeness for
spatial structures and temporal structures from the scale of the
"global" tree of life (appearance of life to homeothermy), to the distinct
scales of organization of clades, such as sauropod and theropod dinosaurs,
North American equids, rodents, primates including hominids, and echinoderms, the
acceleration observed in the economic crisis / no-crisis pattern in Western and
pre-Columbian civilizations.
3.3.2
The
Evolution of Human Society
A specific conclusion of the previous
analysis, particularly relevant to the present context of human societal evolution,
is the prediction of the approach to a super critical point in the period 2080
± 30years, corresponding to a culmination point likening a “phase” change,
which will be more far-going than everything that happened to forms of human
cooperation since the first tribal organizations in the Neolithic age. It
should be understood that this ‘point’ is a mathematical limit, which is spread
out to earlier times due to physical effects as diffusion resulting from
increasing interactions between human activities and saturation due to finite
resources on Earth, so that we probably already are experiencing the effects of
innovative crisis’s overlapping each other into a continuous rush towards the
next big step. What the content of the super change finally will be is not part
of the study, but others have been thinking of something.
Their staggering conclusion is
that it is clearly of capital importance to transform our social organizations
at a global level because of the obviously insufficient capacity to evolve of
the actual structures.
Ervin Laszlo, systems
philosopher, founder and president of the Club of Budapest, formulated already
in 1985, when he was still member of the Club of Rome, some concise goals for
human action on different levels [10]. At the time, he wrote: “It could be that
the capacity to forecast, the imagination and cleverness, the thoughts,
consideration and judgment of sufficiently many people will develop enough and
reach a critical mass, so to influence humanity in such a way, that it could
react more senseful to the challenge of evolution, as what is happening today.”
And he continued: “It is from uttermost importance that people from diverse
origins, interest and skills could contribute in their way to the guidance of
the transformation of their actual societies.”
Today, big structural and
functional differences exist between various societies, be it continents,
unions, nations, regions or communities. At the system level, two classes of
societies can be discerned: on the one hand the relatively strong highly
adaptive generalist core societies and on the other hand the vulnerable
dependant specialist peripheral societies.
Also here the global societal
evolution is understood as a series of subsequent crisis, characterized as
unstable (chaotic) transitions leading to unforeseen new structural and
functional modes by the mechanism of bifurcations, which represent the points
of potential choice for the future, insofar as goals are defined. He makes the
distinction between goals on the system level, which could define functional
modes of whole societies, and goals on the human level, which correspond to
human values and aspirations and are endeavored by such societal modes.
3.3.3
Goals
for Human Society
3.3.3.1
System
Level Goals
Specialized niche societies should be supported in their effort to learn
to control supranational currents using coordinated and cooperative structures.
Generalist societies should give up part of their already fictive
sovereignty and promote better supranational coordination organizations.
Economical politics and
international financial structures should be reformed in order to develop
conditions for trust, abort practices & regulations, which hinder
cooperation and replace them with other, which correspond to the new horizons
of social evolution. Effective action plans to counter catastrophic
bifurcations and promoting system convergence will lead to dynamic stability as
the whole would become more integrated and organic.
3.3.3.2
Human
Level Goals
Societal organizations should
be non-repressive, flexible and democratic goal oriented systems with high
degree of freedom for the subsystems.
3.3.3.3
Individual
Tasks
Tasks for researchers:
Specialized societies should
be supported in the transformation of their dependency relations to generalist
functions and self-supporting skills.
Generalist societies should
further increase their adaptivity, regarding all evolutionary imperatives.
Tasks for humanists:
Assure during the global
transformation that the societal organizations develop and keep flexible
democratic operation through participation and compromise (rights of individuals
versus societies, egalitarism versus liberalism, planning versus spontaneity).
The goal oriented alternatives
should be considered and evaluated with respect to the people and ethical
mature priorities should be set.
Tasks for administrators:
Because political and academic
institutions are bound to national status quo, the initiative for decisive
changes will have to come from individuals in key positions. Those key persons
are also able to build the critical mass of personalities with adequate skills,
to convince them from the importance of their task and to assure the required
communication channels with governmental and non-governmental organizations and
companies.
They have to inform as large
as possible layers of the population of the new facts and insights in order to
gain ever more people for those effective and actualized ideas and movements.
Tasks for the engaged citizens:
The more a society is exposed
to rapid uncontrolled changes, the more sensitive it reacts on the new ideas
and alternative movements. The presence of patterns and regularities in history
is no excuse for passivity. The processes, which are expressed by those
structures, permit mostly several outcomes and allow concerned citizens to
influence the events in favor of humanely desirable solutions.
If enough people adopt a goal
oriented behavior in times of turbulent societal transformation, their common
behavior is capable of creating and imposing ideas and movements, which can progressively
develop to new foundations of society. This will act as an attractor and assure
a controlled bifurcation of the destabilized social system towards a new human-dynamic
regime.
Again, the conclusion is that
it is high time to make use of this unique and truly fantastic opportunity we
have. For the first time the global system evolution is consciously observed
from within, resulting in the possibility to orient the future development.
This is probably the only way
humanity will survive the actual frightful combination of highly developed
order and complexity in our individual brains and the underdeveloped order and
complexity in our global society.
3.3.4
On
the Ascent of a Superorganism
3.3.4.1
The
Power of the Global Brain
The concept of Global Brain
has emerged and is currently subject to study as probable outcome of the
worldwide integration of computer and human networks to the nervous system of a
Social Superorganism [11], empowered with hardly conceivable cognitive
capacities.
One can imagine, by analogy,
to provide this superorganism with a mind, which then is nothing else than a
globally integrated virtual domain, supported by the global brain’s material
substrate. But in order to become an effective survivor, such a superorganism
will have to become superconscious and consequently develop a superworldview,
integrating global knowledge, values and methods for global action control. Although
knowledge increases freedom to choose and achieve goals, this should be
balanced by responsibility for the effects of those actions. Empathic holism could
be the guidance for sustainability and ethical considerations in the selection
of goals and actions.
3.3.4.2
The
Infirmity of Global Action
The question is raised if the
actual efforts, to develop such a superworldview, are adequately spread over
the different subtasks [1] of worldview construction. It is my opinion that today’s
praxeology is highly insufficient and should retain all attention in order to
urgently develop the means by which to effectively control our actions affecting
the global environment. The difficulty about action control resides in the
process of rational decision making. How can we optimize this complex process, while
fulfilling the democratic requirement of maximum involvement via representation,
realized through election, without falling in the actual trap of short term
governance. We should seriously think of future mechanisms of rational selection
instead of irrational election and polling.
(e.g. EU Convention & [12])
With high priority we should
develop a Meta Governance Theory as part of a superworldview to facilitate
globally coordinated conscious action, urgently required to conduct global
evolution.
As first step for each
individual, at its own level, we could adopt a behavior according to this:
Universal Cybernetic Manifesto
Keep on formulating and
publishing your goals.
Keep on discussing and
adjusting your goals.
Keep on respecting your
engagements.
Because nothing is more
threatening than growing indifference.
Discussion:
Vlaanderen In Action: the shamefully
outdated idea (1960) of still setting today our goal to become one of the wealthiest
regions on Earth, instead of the most integrated and fittest (2000). Should we
not resign to long for more and focus ourselves on performing better, in order
to pursuit the ideal of a really organic economy and society (e.g. cradle to
cradle).
4
References
and Bibliography
1
|
Worldviews, From fragmentation to integration Diederik Aerts et al. (1991)
|
|
2
|
An enduring philosophical agenda: Worldview construction as a philosophical
method Clément Vidal (2007)
|
|
3
|
Memory Evolutive System
Vanbremeersch and Ehresmann (2005)
|
|
4
|
Fractal Space-Time and Microphysics: Toward of Theory of Scale
Relativity
Laurent Nottale (1993) |
http://www.luth.obspm.fr/~luthier/nottale/arEJTP.pdf
|
5
|
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
David Bohm (1980) |
|
6
|
The Phenomenon of Science:
Valentin Turchin (1977) |
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MSTT.html
|
7
|
Acceleration Watch website
John Smart (1999) |
|
8
|
Accelerating Socio-Technological Evolution
Francis Heylighen (2007) |
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/AcceleratingEvolution.pdf
|
9
|
Les Arbres de l'Evolution: Univers, Vie, Sociétés
Laurent Nottale, Jean Chaline, Pierre Grou (2000)
|
|
10
|
Evolution, die neue Synthese, Wege in die Zukunft
Ervin Laszlo (1987)
|
The Club of
ISBN 3-203-50968-7
|
11
|
The Global Superorganism:
an evolutionary-cybernetic model of the
emerging network society
Francis Heylighen (2004)
|
|
12
|
To how many politicians should government be left?
Peter Klimek, Rudolf Hanel, Stefan Thurner
Complex Systems Research Group,
|
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.2202v1.pdf
|
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