The Garbage Disposal Unit
30th October 2013, 18:53
Any other dedicated readers?
Unconvinced detractors?
For those unfamiliar, here is a critique they wrote of Zerzan:
Zerzan tries to make it appear as if numbers and technology have a power of their own. He clouds the water with a whole lot of randomly arranged conjectures/theories about 'time' and 'number' that provide a kind of a white noise background for his ‘signal’ to stand out against. he says; “It is not what we can do with number, but what it does to us. Like technology, its intimate ally, number is anything but neutral. It tries to make us forget that there is so much that shouldn’t or can’t be measured. ... Counting means imposing a definition and a control, assigning a number value. It is the foundation for a world in which whatever can be domesticated and controlled can also be commodified. Number is the key to mastery: everything must be measured, quantified.”
Zerzan would never simplify things for us because he needs that white noise background to make his own theory stand out, as if it is the only pronouncement on such things that makes consistent sense; ... it does NOT!
There is no mention, for example, of one of the world’s most famous mathematicians who made sense out of all of the stuff that Zerzan presents as unresolved; i.e. Henri Poincaré.
Let’s simplify these issues, Poincaré style;
1. Numbers are idealized independent units whose discrete and unique existence is signified by inventing a word-label for each number.
2. Numbers-as-idealized independent units are useful for making models, such as scientific models. As Mach observes;
“Science itself, … may be regarded as a minimization problem, consisting of the completest possible presenting of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought”
3. Mathematical physics reduces relational features to ‘numbers’ by way of establishing ‘categories’ of ‘things-in-themselves’ (see ‘Origin of Mathematical Physics’ in ‘Science and Hypothesis’ by Poincaré). Starting from a transforming relational spatial activity continuum (e.g. the atmosphere) we can use visual observation and identify a ‘number of storm-cells’ in the atmosphere. The relational transformation is in physical precedence over the relational features or ‘storm-cells’ but they kind of ‘look like the same thing’ and in fact, mathematical physics and differential calculus is used to RE-cast these relational forms as ‘local, visible, material systems-in-themselves’ using analytical inquiry to impute inside-outward asserting jumpstart action.
This is where Zerzan starts his ‘white noise’ campaign, saying;
“Philosopher of science Keith Devlin is wrong to aver that numbers “arise from the recognition of patterns in the world around us.”xvii They arise because they are necessary for running a certain kind of society; numbers have only an imposed relationship to what is found in the world.”
The example of storm-cells is general. Modern physics says that relations are in precedence over ‘local things-in-themselves’ [e.g. see Manfred Kuhlmann’s article ‘What is Real’ in August 2013 Scientific American’]. Keith Devlin’s statement is NOT wrong. Sure, numbers are used to run a certain kind of society, but they start off as convenient simplifiers. It is convenient to say ‘there are five storm-cells brewing in the Atlantic’, implying that these phenomena are are all of the ‘same species’ or ‘category’ which they are since we invent these categories of things based on ‘commonality’ in their appearance. That doesn’t contradict the greater reality of each one of these relational forms arising from non-local, non-visible, non-material nexus of influence [wavefield interference, if you like] and being unique. That’s what you get if you understand these same relational forms, the storm-cells, acknowledging the inherent outside-inward engendering and sustaining influence that is conjugate with their inside-outward asserting structure/behaviour. No two storm-cells are alike, they only ‘look alike’, just like twin sisters ‘look alike’, but everything that we call a ‘thing’ is a relational form in a continually transforming relational space.
Mathematical physics synthetically reduces these relational forms to ‘local systems’ and it defines ‘time’ in the process;
“Origin of Mathematical Physics. Let us go further and study more closely the conditions which have assisted the development of mathematical physics. We recognise at the outset the efforts of men of science have always tended to resolve the complex phenomenon given directly by experiment into a very large number of elementary phenomena, and that in three different ways.
.
First, with respect to time. Instead of embracing in its entirety the progressive development of a phenomenon, we simply try to connect each moment with the one immediately preceding. We admit that the present state of the world only depends on the immediate past, without being directly influenced, so to speak, by the recollection of a more distant past. Thanks to this postulate, instead of studying directly the whole succession of phenomena, we may confine ourselves to writing down its differential equation; for the laws of Kepler we substitute the law of Newton.
.
Next, we try to decompose the phenomena in space. What experiment gives us is a confused aggregate of facts spread over a scene of considerable extent. We must try to deduce the elementary phenomenon, which will still be localised in a very small region of space.” —Henri Poincaré, ‘Science and Hypothesis’, Chapter IX, Hypotheses in Physics.
We come out of this ‘language game’ as Poincaré calls it, with the idealized concept of a ‘local system’ which we endow with a local ‘identity’. Emerson, in The Method of Nature that these relational forms are constituted by ‘transmitting influences from the vast and universal to the point on which its genius can act’. That is a definition consistent with modern physics . Poincaré is entirely on the same page with Emerson.
Thanks to this language game (the numbers game is part of the language game), we have left behind the physical reality where we see an energy-charged bedimpled flow manifesting ‘similar-appearing’ but nevertheless UNIQUE, nonlocally-engendered relational forms [the bedimpled flow is otherwise known as the continuously transforming relational spatial plenum], ... and emerged into a new, ‘simplified reality’ supported by our language game, where we have a discrete numerical multiplicity of things-in-themselves separated by ‘nothing-in-particular’ (empty euclidian space). Furthermore, our language game has these things ‘changing in time’ rather than ‘changing in space’ [i.e. undergoing relational spatial transformation].
We have anchored our description of dynamic phenomena associated with ‘relational forms’ to their ‘visual appearance’. ‘Visually’, the relation forms (e.g. storm-cells) appear to be ‘local phenomena’. There’s a good reason for that. In a ‘flow’ or ‘transforming relational spatial plenum’, while ‘relations rule’, relations are non-local, non-visible and non-material. E.g. if we wave a magnet under a piece of blank paper with iron filings on it, what we observe with our visual sense is movement that is ‘local, visible and material’. As Poincaré described in ‘The Origin of Mathematical Physics’, we can get rid of the complexity that associates with the fact that the primary influence is non-local, non-visible and non-material, by orienting to the visual features and redeveloping them, mathematically/numerically, as if they were local, visible, material things-in-themselves. As Schroedinger points out, there are no ‘pluralities’ in the universe, there is only a ‘Unum’ (a continually transforming relational spatial Unum or Plenum) and the notion of plurality is something we impose; e.g. a ‘thousand islands’ is a numerical plurality the capitulates to the limited capability of our visual sensing.
Reducing the relational forms in the relational space to notional ‘local things-in-themselves’ that ‘develop/change and move ‘in time’’ comes from imposing an absolute space and absolute time reference frame so that we can refer the extension and movement and development of the relational form relative to the synthetic reference frame rather than relative to the relational space it is a relational form within. This puts us into an artificially reduced reality where dynamics are now in terms of ‘what local things-in-themselves do’. This is a language game based reality which makes us forgetful of our real life experience which is decidedly ‘relational-spatial’.
And as the Systems Sciences point out, while it may be convenient to think in terms of ‘local systems notionally with their own local process driven and directed behavious’, ... ‘every system is included in a relational suprasystem’ (all the way out to the ‘mother-of-all-suprasystems’, the continually transforming relational spatial Plenum/Unum.
4. The ‘map’ is NOT the ‘territory’
As is implied by the above discussion, ‘Texas’ is not going anywhere, anymore than any of the ‘50’ states are going anywhere. When we invented them, we defined them in terms of an absolute space reference frame. While the natural terrain is a continually transforming flow of rock; i.e. a convecting current in the earth’s mantle and crust that is part of the continually transforming relational spatial Plenum, Texas is a Euclidian geometric form that stays in place even if the ranches and prairies are covered with 30,000 feet deep seas. The ‘map’ is NOT the ‘territory’, and the same is true generally.
Zerzan does make note of this in the second sentence of the previously cited quote;
[I] “Philosopher of science Keith Devlin is wrong to aver that numbers “arise from the recognition of patterns in the world around us.”xvii They arise because they are necessary for running a certain kind of society; numbers have only an imposed relationship to what is found in the world.”
You may therefore wonder why Zerzan says Devlin is wrong in the preceding sentence.
The answer is here where Zerzan says;
“It is not what we can do with number, but what it does to us. Like technology, its intimate ally, number is anything but neutral.
Zerzan wants to ‘blame’ our screwing up society on ‘technology’ and the technology architects who are pushing it on us. As he has said, his outlook is similar to Theodore Kazcyinski’s [the ‘unabomber’s]. Wikipedia notes that Zerzan's essay "Whose Unabomber?" (1995), signaled his support for the Kaczynski doctrine, but criticised the bombings, and cites from that essay as follows;
“[T]he mailing of explosive devices intended for the agents who are engineering the present catastrophe is too random. Children, mail carriers, and others could easily be killed. Even if one granted the legitimacy of striking at the high-tech horror show by terrorizing its indispensable architects, collateral harm is not justifiable...
.
... The concept of justice should not be overlooked in considering the Unabomber phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets, when have the many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World ever been called to account?... Is it unethical to try to stop those whose contributions are bringing an unprecedented assault on life?
The alternative view to Zerzan’s is that of Poincaré, Whorf, Sapir, Watt, Peat and others; i.e. that we are confusing the language-game based idealizations of mainstream [newtonian] science for ‘reality’. As we know, those subscribing to the Enlightenment European mindset, conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar with its ‘reason-driven-automaton’ archetype of organism and organization [human, state, corporation] are confusing idealization for physical reality. The relational forms in the transforming relational spatial plenum ARE NOT REALLY a numerical multiplicity of ‘things-in-themselves’ with their own (in the case of organisms and organizations) internal process driven and directed development and behaviour. This is a ‘dualist’ view which splits apart self-and-other, inhabitant-and-habitat, mind-and-matter, good and evil, construction and destruction, growth and decline, ... and has us animate these dualities ‘in time’ [and space] rather than in timeless relational space [in the transforming-in-the-now relational spatial activity continuum or ‘plenum’]. It asks us to accept a reduced-to-the-yang pole pseudo-reality that is ‘very newtonian’, ... very different from the reality of our real-life experience, ... very different from the physical reality of modern physics and very different from the world view of indigenous anarchists.
As is readily evident, Zerzan’s view of the problems in today’s society is in terms of ‘what things do’; i.e. ‘what technology is doing to us’, ... ‘what the architects of technology are doing to us’, ... it is NOT identifying the problem as a reduction of our reality due to language. Zerzan never gets out of the reduced reality which sees dynamics in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves with their own internal process driven and directed behaviours’ ‘do’. Technology becomes a subject that can inflect a verb in Zerzan’s view [e.g. ‘technology is not neutral’, ... ‘technology is screwing us up’], which as Nietzsche points out is a ‘double error’.
For further elaboration on the how a relational space acknowledging language avoids the reality-reduction of our noun-and-verb European language-and grammar, see Whorf’s ‘Science and Linguistics’ (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2F94.23.146.173%2Fficheros%2Faf01d3 133ce9343f5b69b73e827d6fc1.pdf&ei=CnRvUv3yM-iiiQL41YC4Cg&usg=AFQjCNGFNYE__TknmQq3DRTvXzeZbHVnXg&sig2=opC8uQBLeBRDRgFw66NGoA&bvm=bv.55123115,d.cGE&cad=rja)
Pretty heavy stuff, but very par for the course. Many, many of their posts incorporate similar themes. Over the course of the last couple years, they've sketched out a pretty comprehensive scientific/philosophical understanding: its particular political implications (of which there are almost certainly some - agreed?) tend to only be clear on a topic-by-topic basis. I think perhaps this is intentional, and an encouragement for others to work out their own conclusions from "better" starting points.
Anyway, I'd love to hear others' thoughts!
Unconvinced detractors?
For those unfamiliar, here is a critique they wrote of Zerzan:
Zerzan tries to make it appear as if numbers and technology have a power of their own. He clouds the water with a whole lot of randomly arranged conjectures/theories about 'time' and 'number' that provide a kind of a white noise background for his ‘signal’ to stand out against. he says; “It is not what we can do with number, but what it does to us. Like technology, its intimate ally, number is anything but neutral. It tries to make us forget that there is so much that shouldn’t or can’t be measured. ... Counting means imposing a definition and a control, assigning a number value. It is the foundation for a world in which whatever can be domesticated and controlled can also be commodified. Number is the key to mastery: everything must be measured, quantified.”
Zerzan would never simplify things for us because he needs that white noise background to make his own theory stand out, as if it is the only pronouncement on such things that makes consistent sense; ... it does NOT!
There is no mention, for example, of one of the world’s most famous mathematicians who made sense out of all of the stuff that Zerzan presents as unresolved; i.e. Henri Poincaré.
Let’s simplify these issues, Poincaré style;
1. Numbers are idealized independent units whose discrete and unique existence is signified by inventing a word-label for each number.
2. Numbers-as-idealized independent units are useful for making models, such as scientific models. As Mach observes;
“Science itself, … may be regarded as a minimization problem, consisting of the completest possible presenting of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought”
3. Mathematical physics reduces relational features to ‘numbers’ by way of establishing ‘categories’ of ‘things-in-themselves’ (see ‘Origin of Mathematical Physics’ in ‘Science and Hypothesis’ by Poincaré). Starting from a transforming relational spatial activity continuum (e.g. the atmosphere) we can use visual observation and identify a ‘number of storm-cells’ in the atmosphere. The relational transformation is in physical precedence over the relational features or ‘storm-cells’ but they kind of ‘look like the same thing’ and in fact, mathematical physics and differential calculus is used to RE-cast these relational forms as ‘local, visible, material systems-in-themselves’ using analytical inquiry to impute inside-outward asserting jumpstart action.
This is where Zerzan starts his ‘white noise’ campaign, saying;
“Philosopher of science Keith Devlin is wrong to aver that numbers “arise from the recognition of patterns in the world around us.”xvii They arise because they are necessary for running a certain kind of society; numbers have only an imposed relationship to what is found in the world.”
The example of storm-cells is general. Modern physics says that relations are in precedence over ‘local things-in-themselves’ [e.g. see Manfred Kuhlmann’s article ‘What is Real’ in August 2013 Scientific American’]. Keith Devlin’s statement is NOT wrong. Sure, numbers are used to run a certain kind of society, but they start off as convenient simplifiers. It is convenient to say ‘there are five storm-cells brewing in the Atlantic’, implying that these phenomena are are all of the ‘same species’ or ‘category’ which they are since we invent these categories of things based on ‘commonality’ in their appearance. That doesn’t contradict the greater reality of each one of these relational forms arising from non-local, non-visible, non-material nexus of influence [wavefield interference, if you like] and being unique. That’s what you get if you understand these same relational forms, the storm-cells, acknowledging the inherent outside-inward engendering and sustaining influence that is conjugate with their inside-outward asserting structure/behaviour. No two storm-cells are alike, they only ‘look alike’, just like twin sisters ‘look alike’, but everything that we call a ‘thing’ is a relational form in a continually transforming relational space.
Mathematical physics synthetically reduces these relational forms to ‘local systems’ and it defines ‘time’ in the process;
“Origin of Mathematical Physics. Let us go further and study more closely the conditions which have assisted the development of mathematical physics. We recognise at the outset the efforts of men of science have always tended to resolve the complex phenomenon given directly by experiment into a very large number of elementary phenomena, and that in three different ways.
.
First, with respect to time. Instead of embracing in its entirety the progressive development of a phenomenon, we simply try to connect each moment with the one immediately preceding. We admit that the present state of the world only depends on the immediate past, without being directly influenced, so to speak, by the recollection of a more distant past. Thanks to this postulate, instead of studying directly the whole succession of phenomena, we may confine ourselves to writing down its differential equation; for the laws of Kepler we substitute the law of Newton.
.
Next, we try to decompose the phenomena in space. What experiment gives us is a confused aggregate of facts spread over a scene of considerable extent. We must try to deduce the elementary phenomenon, which will still be localised in a very small region of space.” —Henri Poincaré, ‘Science and Hypothesis’, Chapter IX, Hypotheses in Physics.
We come out of this ‘language game’ as Poincaré calls it, with the idealized concept of a ‘local system’ which we endow with a local ‘identity’. Emerson, in The Method of Nature that these relational forms are constituted by ‘transmitting influences from the vast and universal to the point on which its genius can act’. That is a definition consistent with modern physics . Poincaré is entirely on the same page with Emerson.
Thanks to this language game (the numbers game is part of the language game), we have left behind the physical reality where we see an energy-charged bedimpled flow manifesting ‘similar-appearing’ but nevertheless UNIQUE, nonlocally-engendered relational forms [the bedimpled flow is otherwise known as the continuously transforming relational spatial plenum], ... and emerged into a new, ‘simplified reality’ supported by our language game, where we have a discrete numerical multiplicity of things-in-themselves separated by ‘nothing-in-particular’ (empty euclidian space). Furthermore, our language game has these things ‘changing in time’ rather than ‘changing in space’ [i.e. undergoing relational spatial transformation].
We have anchored our description of dynamic phenomena associated with ‘relational forms’ to their ‘visual appearance’. ‘Visually’, the relation forms (e.g. storm-cells) appear to be ‘local phenomena’. There’s a good reason for that. In a ‘flow’ or ‘transforming relational spatial plenum’, while ‘relations rule’, relations are non-local, non-visible and non-material. E.g. if we wave a magnet under a piece of blank paper with iron filings on it, what we observe with our visual sense is movement that is ‘local, visible and material’. As Poincaré described in ‘The Origin of Mathematical Physics’, we can get rid of the complexity that associates with the fact that the primary influence is non-local, non-visible and non-material, by orienting to the visual features and redeveloping them, mathematically/numerically, as if they were local, visible, material things-in-themselves. As Schroedinger points out, there are no ‘pluralities’ in the universe, there is only a ‘Unum’ (a continually transforming relational spatial Unum or Plenum) and the notion of plurality is something we impose; e.g. a ‘thousand islands’ is a numerical plurality the capitulates to the limited capability of our visual sensing.
Reducing the relational forms in the relational space to notional ‘local things-in-themselves’ that ‘develop/change and move ‘in time’’ comes from imposing an absolute space and absolute time reference frame so that we can refer the extension and movement and development of the relational form relative to the synthetic reference frame rather than relative to the relational space it is a relational form within. This puts us into an artificially reduced reality where dynamics are now in terms of ‘what local things-in-themselves do’. This is a language game based reality which makes us forgetful of our real life experience which is decidedly ‘relational-spatial’.
And as the Systems Sciences point out, while it may be convenient to think in terms of ‘local systems notionally with their own local process driven and directed behavious’, ... ‘every system is included in a relational suprasystem’ (all the way out to the ‘mother-of-all-suprasystems’, the continually transforming relational spatial Plenum/Unum.
4. The ‘map’ is NOT the ‘territory’
As is implied by the above discussion, ‘Texas’ is not going anywhere, anymore than any of the ‘50’ states are going anywhere. When we invented them, we defined them in terms of an absolute space reference frame. While the natural terrain is a continually transforming flow of rock; i.e. a convecting current in the earth’s mantle and crust that is part of the continually transforming relational spatial Plenum, Texas is a Euclidian geometric form that stays in place even if the ranches and prairies are covered with 30,000 feet deep seas. The ‘map’ is NOT the ‘territory’, and the same is true generally.
Zerzan does make note of this in the second sentence of the previously cited quote;
[I] “Philosopher of science Keith Devlin is wrong to aver that numbers “arise from the recognition of patterns in the world around us.”xvii They arise because they are necessary for running a certain kind of society; numbers have only an imposed relationship to what is found in the world.”
You may therefore wonder why Zerzan says Devlin is wrong in the preceding sentence.
The answer is here where Zerzan says;
“It is not what we can do with number, but what it does to us. Like technology, its intimate ally, number is anything but neutral.
Zerzan wants to ‘blame’ our screwing up society on ‘technology’ and the technology architects who are pushing it on us. As he has said, his outlook is similar to Theodore Kazcyinski’s [the ‘unabomber’s]. Wikipedia notes that Zerzan's essay "Whose Unabomber?" (1995), signaled his support for the Kaczynski doctrine, but criticised the bombings, and cites from that essay as follows;
“[T]he mailing of explosive devices intended for the agents who are engineering the present catastrophe is too random. Children, mail carriers, and others could easily be killed. Even if one granted the legitimacy of striking at the high-tech horror show by terrorizing its indispensable architects, collateral harm is not justifiable...
.
... The concept of justice should not be overlooked in considering the Unabomber phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets, when have the many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World ever been called to account?... Is it unethical to try to stop those whose contributions are bringing an unprecedented assault on life?
The alternative view to Zerzan’s is that of Poincaré, Whorf, Sapir, Watt, Peat and others; i.e. that we are confusing the language-game based idealizations of mainstream [newtonian] science for ‘reality’. As we know, those subscribing to the Enlightenment European mindset, conditioned by noun-and-verb European language-and-grammar with its ‘reason-driven-automaton’ archetype of organism and organization [human, state, corporation] are confusing idealization for physical reality. The relational forms in the transforming relational spatial plenum ARE NOT REALLY a numerical multiplicity of ‘things-in-themselves’ with their own (in the case of organisms and organizations) internal process driven and directed development and behaviour. This is a ‘dualist’ view which splits apart self-and-other, inhabitant-and-habitat, mind-and-matter, good and evil, construction and destruction, growth and decline, ... and has us animate these dualities ‘in time’ [and space] rather than in timeless relational space [in the transforming-in-the-now relational spatial activity continuum or ‘plenum’]. It asks us to accept a reduced-to-the-yang pole pseudo-reality that is ‘very newtonian’, ... very different from the reality of our real-life experience, ... very different from the physical reality of modern physics and very different from the world view of indigenous anarchists.
As is readily evident, Zerzan’s view of the problems in today’s society is in terms of ‘what things do’; i.e. ‘what technology is doing to us’, ... ‘what the architects of technology are doing to us’, ... it is NOT identifying the problem as a reduction of our reality due to language. Zerzan never gets out of the reduced reality which sees dynamics in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves with their own internal process driven and directed behaviours’ ‘do’. Technology becomes a subject that can inflect a verb in Zerzan’s view [e.g. ‘technology is not neutral’, ... ‘technology is screwing us up’], which as Nietzsche points out is a ‘double error’.
For further elaboration on the how a relational space acknowledging language avoids the reality-reduction of our noun-and-verb European language-and grammar, see Whorf’s ‘Science and Linguistics’ (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2F94.23.146.173%2Fficheros%2Faf01d3 133ce9343f5b69b73e827d6fc1.pdf&ei=CnRvUv3yM-iiiQL41YC4Cg&usg=AFQjCNGFNYE__TknmQq3DRTvXzeZbHVnXg&sig2=opC8uQBLeBRDRgFw66NGoA&bvm=bv.55123115,d.cGE&cad=rja)
Pretty heavy stuff, but very par for the course. Many, many of their posts incorporate similar themes. Over the course of the last couple years, they've sketched out a pretty comprehensive scientific/philosophical understanding: its particular political implications (of which there are almost certainly some - agreed?) tend to only be clear on a topic-by-topic basis. I think perhaps this is intentional, and an encouragement for others to work out their own conclusions from "better" starting points.
Anyway, I'd love to hear others' thoughts!