Pretty bril Sam. Bravo. And strongly supported by the historical awareness at play, reminding that the Reformation and Enlightenment were deeply intertwined - a historical reality willingly fudged by many.
There is the possibility, too, that what may be occurring is not a metaphysical mutation but instead a cluster of rapid and catastrophic changes in the environment where metaphysical structures need to function, thus undermining their stability and effectiveness. Mutations may be favored by the disruption, but they may or may not already be present to take advantage of the space created by disruption.
Still, a blindness to catastrophic processes and a faith in gradualism has blinded even earth scientists to what was going on under their very feet.
Fascinating. The essay suggests this question: in past “metaphysical mutations”, what part of the metaphysical “architecture” persists through the change more or less as a constant? When I read Gurri on the manner in which cheap publishing disintermediated (word?) ecclesiastical moral authority, it seemed to me interesting that the basic framework of moral thinking pretty much persisted for many many centuries despite the chaotic uprooting. Human beings continued to attempt to reconcile God’s ways to man, and vice versa. That framework really didn’t start to fall apart until the late 19th century. And even then, everybody basically treated the pursuit of truth as an undertaking that could legitimately be imagined in a universal context (“the truth”, even if we don’t like it).
Now, with knowledge itself turning into silly putty, what metaphysical framework for human aspirations might be reasonably expected to persist? Something has to. You can’t leave your house in the morning if nothing is solid. Something is always solid. And human beings refuse to live hopelessly. Even though the strange spasms of political idealism on both extremes of our modern political life seem to indicate that if the future is a truthless place - if our metaphysics completely empties of universally accepted fact claims - that big contests for political and cultural supremacy will be all we have, I don’t think that’s right. I think that’s the past leaking into the future, when politics was still a battleground for totalizing claims about the world. My hunch is that the future will be atomized and sectarian in some kind of culturally walled nest of loosely coupled cultural cells. In a way it’s happening already. People seem to be sorting themselves into groups whose most basic understandings of the world are mutually exclusive.
The physiological changes that are driven by gene-based reactions to a physical environment result from a need to adapt in a being where immediate adaptabilities are lacking.
They are tangible and real, slow, chance accretions of differences and are not reversible unless the environment reverts over long period of time.
(Having written these words, I recollect the case of a particular moth in England that adapted its wing pattern and coloring in short time to improve its blending on tree trunks with increasing pollution from heavy industry, but I’ll go on.)
Human beings are enormously adaptable by nature, both to physical and cultural changes around them. That is the key reason we’ve survived as a species. Physically, we manufacture adaptive constructs to deal with physical alterations in or characteristics of the physical world. Mentally, the species has a bewildering, built-in arsenal of adaptive responses to varying cultural/belief systems.
The brain is a plastic entity, physically altering its neural network as it interacts with the world. But the organism outside that organ itself does not change. We remain what we are; the brain assimilates environmental shifts in culture and technology, adapting to them, through conscious awareness and interaction, sometimes reverting.
We do not move into new categories of species. We adapt to the here and now through consciousness.
That is why I hesitate to use the term “evolve” or “evolution” in this context, why it makes me uncomfortable. It seems to me a metaphor to do so, and while that is how we think, through metaphor and comparison, it remains a mental construct, not a physiological reality in the sense that Darwin meant evolution to be: an irreversible genetic shift rendering species into sub species and other species so different in nature and genetics and form that they are no longer able to interbreed.
Mutations occur all the time. Most of them are not useful, many catastrophic. Occasionally and by chance, they are useful. They are at the base of evolution; they drive it.
But “metaphysical mutation”…I have a hard time buying that notion. It feels to me like a mistaken application of a metaphor. I mean yes, the events mentioned are sudden and very large shifts in the conveyance (in this case) of information. But they are driven by human adaptability, by human intervention and invention in a societal construct. They are not happenstance occurrences.
Unless one takes the view that technology/culture/etc. exist on their own as an independent force of nature, an external entity, outside human the human sphere, not driven by it, not controlled by it.
I guess it’s the application of “mutation” that bothers me—the simultaneous use in two contexts—the genetic, evolutionary context and the social one, as in a mutation of a moral system as opposed to a biological mutation, a physical alteration or aberration in the specific sequencing of genes on a specific location of a chromosome.
The essay feels in places like a loose collection of possibilities, and I’m wanting more specifics, in order to wrap my head around an accurate understanding of how these tems are interchangible.
I guess there are some ontological issues I have to sort out here as well.
In any case, Sam, I loved the essay. It’s free-wheeling and thought-provoking.
"(Having written these words, I recollect the case of a particular moth in England that adapted its wing pattern and coloring in short time to improve its blending on tree trunks with increasing pollution from heavy industry, but I’ll go on.)"
Well, I grew up with that understanding as well--there's an iconic image illustrating that which has been in probably every biology textbook for the last half-century or more--but there's some serious controversy about it.
So I wouldn't be too quick to assume it's the measure of things regarding microevolution.
But leaving that nitpick aside, the concept of evolution isn't limited to biology. *Darwinian* evolution, perhaps. But it seems uncontroversial to note that languages evolve, societies evolve, customs and mores evolve...
The mechanisms may not be the same but the underlying processes do bear a strong resemblance to the classic Darwinian model. Words fall into disuse; societies stumble from one-man rule to a broader-based system; minority groups of various sizes and shapes gain rights and privileges.
Once human action enters into the equation, everything changes. In our advanced, wealthy societies, we don't just let people die. We help them. Nowadays, if you're born with a deformity or defect that would cause you to be quietly smothered--or, in ancient societies, openly exposed--we do our level best to fix it and give the child a shot at life.
So in that sense, biological evolution within the human race has ended. But social evolution hasn't, and probably never will--at least this side of the Kingdom.
Thanks Terrance. Yes, these analogies from science are always tricky and always to be taken with a grain of salt. I felt that there was something intuitively right about Houellebecq's "metaphysical mutation" idea when I read it - and Gurri's theories provide a more brick-and-mortar understanding of how mutation works in practice. But thinking in this way I find myself with a bit more clarity about why liberal institutions' approach often strikes me as so wrong-headed - they're always proceeding incrementally from what worked before. They seem to have no understanding that the shift in communication technologies is so radical that it creates, in many ways, an entirely new society - and our politics, basically, falls into that gulf.
I agree with you about the frustrating incrementalism, Sam, and you are right about the liberal lack of understanding around what abrupt changes are, what their effects are, and what reponses are appropriate. It's a head-in-the-sand kind of position. "Make it new!" goes the saying from the 60's. We're failing at that. I think we can see the point you make here about liberal institutions pretty clearly in the machinations of the DNC. Lord, it's enough to make one pull their hair out.
"something intuitively right about Houellebecq's "metaphysical mutation"--okay, yes, I see that now. I've had a chance to let it all simmer for a bit. My radicla left background hit a bump with my time studying genetics when the word "mutation" appeared. It surprises me, how one's mind works, chugging away as it does.
Thanks for what you do Sam, and for this patient reply, and for making so many of us think and question.
This is interesting and making me want to go back to the science books and understand evolution better. I am attracted to the idea that it's not just random mutations but some internal drive for order pushing things forward, a la Stuart Kauffman. But I think you're right that there are bigger mutations happening right now without a strong sense of direction. I hope we can settle into some new equilibrium!
My understanding is that the new evolutionary paradigm is less about steady gradual change and more that species hit an equilibrium that can last a very long time and then suddenly gets disrupted.
If I'm reading you right, your premise is that the digitized flow of information acts as a mutation of the socio-political form, interrupting the notion of a constant evolution toward a 'more perfect' condition. Assuming your diagnosis is correct, and we're not just dealing with a temporary glitch in the evolutionary paradigm (which we'll only know in hindsight), what does that mean for those who care about democracy and civic life? Certainly, not to just „rely on habit or tradition.“ And beyond that? Making sure you don't get swept away? Or is it about working toward more 'alert' or 'agile' modes of cultivating freedom and social cohesion? But what would those actually look like?
Yes, that's right. The idea is that we're basically in a different era. Communications technologies are the fundamental building block in the Lego set of society. Once those change, then everything else kind of shifts around with it. Right now, our society is basically run by a mass media structure that emerged with the Industrial Revolution that is (to some extent) superimposed over an older, more "bookish" set of values (the Constitution, etc). The two-way street of social media produces, basically, a new social structure and everything else follows from that. Trump, for instance, is a Twitter president - he's unimaginable in the earlier structure. So the red thread becomes understanding what the communicative modalities are and how they reshape the society.
That sounds plausible, but I wonder if such a powerful explanatory model only works for fundamental media shifts (orality > literacy > printing press > digitalization) and becomes too reductionist when applied to smaller, more incremental steps. One-directional mass media sustained democracy just as much as they enabled totalitarian propaganda. Obama's 2008 campaign relied on social media just as much as Trump's election did. So, how meaningful is a model that operates on this distinction?
Love to see any acknowledgement of the Airplane, but as someone who's long loved and written about Paul's work, that's not the message of "Crown of Creation". It was saying to The Older Generation "You think you're the crown of creation? Well, not necessarily." And as I've said before, I think the real "conceptual ground for how we see the world" is the Garden of Eden story, if not from the original than from all the belief systems which have descended with modification from it.
Pretty bril Sam. Bravo. And strongly supported by the historical awareness at play, reminding that the Reformation and Enlightenment were deeply intertwined - a historical reality willingly fudged by many.
Thank you Tim!
There is the possibility, too, that what may be occurring is not a metaphysical mutation but instead a cluster of rapid and catastrophic changes in the environment where metaphysical structures need to function, thus undermining their stability and effectiveness. Mutations may be favored by the disruption, but they may or may not already be present to take advantage of the space created by disruption.
Still, a blindness to catastrophic processes and a faith in gradualism has blinded even earth scientists to what was going on under their very feet.
Thanks,Sam
Yes, I think that's right. The key is changes in the environment and then we see what's favored by those changes. Cheers, Greg!
Fascinating. The essay suggests this question: in past “metaphysical mutations”, what part of the metaphysical “architecture” persists through the change more or less as a constant? When I read Gurri on the manner in which cheap publishing disintermediated (word?) ecclesiastical moral authority, it seemed to me interesting that the basic framework of moral thinking pretty much persisted for many many centuries despite the chaotic uprooting. Human beings continued to attempt to reconcile God’s ways to man, and vice versa. That framework really didn’t start to fall apart until the late 19th century. And even then, everybody basically treated the pursuit of truth as an undertaking that could legitimately be imagined in a universal context (“the truth”, even if we don’t like it).
Now, with knowledge itself turning into silly putty, what metaphysical framework for human aspirations might be reasonably expected to persist? Something has to. You can’t leave your house in the morning if nothing is solid. Something is always solid. And human beings refuse to live hopelessly. Even though the strange spasms of political idealism on both extremes of our modern political life seem to indicate that if the future is a truthless place - if our metaphysics completely empties of universally accepted fact claims - that big contests for political and cultural supremacy will be all we have, I don’t think that’s right. I think that’s the past leaking into the future, when politics was still a battleground for totalizing claims about the world. My hunch is that the future will be atomized and sectarian in some kind of culturally walled nest of loosely coupled cultural cells. In a way it’s happening already. People seem to be sorting themselves into groups whose most basic understandings of the world are mutually exclusive.
Interesting. Can you say more what you mean by "loosely coupled cultural cells"? Like does that start to affect the nation-state structure?
I’m having a hard time with this one.
The physiological changes that are driven by gene-based reactions to a physical environment result from a need to adapt in a being where immediate adaptabilities are lacking.
They are tangible and real, slow, chance accretions of differences and are not reversible unless the environment reverts over long period of time.
(Having written these words, I recollect the case of a particular moth in England that adapted its wing pattern and coloring in short time to improve its blending on tree trunks with increasing pollution from heavy industry, but I’ll go on.)
Human beings are enormously adaptable by nature, both to physical and cultural changes around them. That is the key reason we’ve survived as a species. Physically, we manufacture adaptive constructs to deal with physical alterations in or characteristics of the physical world. Mentally, the species has a bewildering, built-in arsenal of adaptive responses to varying cultural/belief systems.
The brain is a plastic entity, physically altering its neural network as it interacts with the world. But the organism outside that organ itself does not change. We remain what we are; the brain assimilates environmental shifts in culture and technology, adapting to them, through conscious awareness and interaction, sometimes reverting.
We do not move into new categories of species. We adapt to the here and now through consciousness.
That is why I hesitate to use the term “evolve” or “evolution” in this context, why it makes me uncomfortable. It seems to me a metaphor to do so, and while that is how we think, through metaphor and comparison, it remains a mental construct, not a physiological reality in the sense that Darwin meant evolution to be: an irreversible genetic shift rendering species into sub species and other species so different in nature and genetics and form that they are no longer able to interbreed.
Mutations occur all the time. Most of them are not useful, many catastrophic. Occasionally and by chance, they are useful. They are at the base of evolution; they drive it.
But “metaphysical mutation”…I have a hard time buying that notion. It feels to me like a mistaken application of a metaphor. I mean yes, the events mentioned are sudden and very large shifts in the conveyance (in this case) of information. But they are driven by human adaptability, by human intervention and invention in a societal construct. They are not happenstance occurrences.
Unless one takes the view that technology/culture/etc. exist on their own as an independent force of nature, an external entity, outside human the human sphere, not driven by it, not controlled by it.
I guess it’s the application of “mutation” that bothers me—the simultaneous use in two contexts—the genetic, evolutionary context and the social one, as in a mutation of a moral system as opposed to a biological mutation, a physical alteration or aberration in the specific sequencing of genes on a specific location of a chromosome.
The essay feels in places like a loose collection of possibilities, and I’m wanting more specifics, in order to wrap my head around an accurate understanding of how these tems are interchangible.
I guess there are some ontological issues I have to sort out here as well.
In any case, Sam, I loved the essay. It’s free-wheeling and thought-provoking.
"(Having written these words, I recollect the case of a particular moth in England that adapted its wing pattern and coloring in short time to improve its blending on tree trunks with increasing pollution from heavy industry, but I’ll go on.)"
Well, I grew up with that understanding as well--there's an iconic image illustrating that which has been in probably every biology textbook for the last half-century or more--but there's some serious controversy about it.
So I wouldn't be too quick to assume it's the measure of things regarding microevolution.
But leaving that nitpick aside, the concept of evolution isn't limited to biology. *Darwinian* evolution, perhaps. But it seems uncontroversial to note that languages evolve, societies evolve, customs and mores evolve...
The mechanisms may not be the same but the underlying processes do bear a strong resemblance to the classic Darwinian model. Words fall into disuse; societies stumble from one-man rule to a broader-based system; minority groups of various sizes and shapes gain rights and privileges.
Once human action enters into the equation, everything changes. In our advanced, wealthy societies, we don't just let people die. We help them. Nowadays, if you're born with a deformity or defect that would cause you to be quietly smothered--or, in ancient societies, openly exposed--we do our level best to fix it and give the child a shot at life.
So in that sense, biological evolution within the human race has ended. But social evolution hasn't, and probably never will--at least this side of the Kingdom.
Thanks for this David. I tend to agree, though I might use “change”, “develop”, or “grow” as synonyms too. But yes, I see your point.
The term “mutate” was what intially brought me up short.
And I always appreciate prompts that make me think more about an utterance—so thanks for that too. Perhaps my underfstanding here is “evolving.”
Fair enough, and thank you for your kind words...so rare nowadays, even here on Substack... :-(
Thanks Terrance. Yes, these analogies from science are always tricky and always to be taken with a grain of salt. I felt that there was something intuitively right about Houellebecq's "metaphysical mutation" idea when I read it - and Gurri's theories provide a more brick-and-mortar understanding of how mutation works in practice. But thinking in this way I find myself with a bit more clarity about why liberal institutions' approach often strikes me as so wrong-headed - they're always proceeding incrementally from what worked before. They seem to have no understanding that the shift in communication technologies is so radical that it creates, in many ways, an entirely new society - and our politics, basically, falls into that gulf.
I agree with you about the frustrating incrementalism, Sam, and you are right about the liberal lack of understanding around what abrupt changes are, what their effects are, and what reponses are appropriate. It's a head-in-the-sand kind of position. "Make it new!" goes the saying from the 60's. We're failing at that. I think we can see the point you make here about liberal institutions pretty clearly in the machinations of the DNC. Lord, it's enough to make one pull their hair out.
"something intuitively right about Houellebecq's "metaphysical mutation"--okay, yes, I see that now. I've had a chance to let it all simmer for a bit. My radicla left background hit a bump with my time studying genetics when the word "mutation" appeared. It surprises me, how one's mind works, chugging away as it does.
Thanks for what you do Sam, and for this patient reply, and for making so many of us think and question.
Also, by the way, very nice article on Saunders in Compact Magazine. Congratulations, Sam.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/george-saunderss-reluctant-morality-tale/
Thanks!
This is interesting and making me want to go back to the science books and understand evolution better. I am attracted to the idea that it's not just random mutations but some internal drive for order pushing things forward, a la Stuart Kauffman. But I think you're right that there are bigger mutations happening right now without a strong sense of direction. I hope we can settle into some new equilibrium!
My understanding is that the new evolutionary paradigm is less about steady gradual change and more that species hit an equilibrium that can last a very long time and then suddenly gets disrupted.
I think this compliments my work well. https://eliasjohnson1.substack.com/p/why-is-evolutionary-stasis-so-hard
Please find a completely different Understanding of the evolutionary potential of human beings via these references:
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/enlightenment
The potential
http://beezone.com/current/truereligionevolutionhumanexistence.html
http://beezone.com/current/structureevolutiondestinyman.html
http://beezone.com/current/fiveevolutionarystatesoftrueman.html
http://adidam.org/society/beyond_ego/unique_potential_man5.html
The failure http://beezone.com/current/stresschemistry.html
If I'm reading you right, your premise is that the digitized flow of information acts as a mutation of the socio-political form, interrupting the notion of a constant evolution toward a 'more perfect' condition. Assuming your diagnosis is correct, and we're not just dealing with a temporary glitch in the evolutionary paradigm (which we'll only know in hindsight), what does that mean for those who care about democracy and civic life? Certainly, not to just „rely on habit or tradition.“ And beyond that? Making sure you don't get swept away? Or is it about working toward more 'alert' or 'agile' modes of cultivating freedom and social cohesion? But what would those actually look like?
Yes, that's right. The idea is that we're basically in a different era. Communications technologies are the fundamental building block in the Lego set of society. Once those change, then everything else kind of shifts around with it. Right now, our society is basically run by a mass media structure that emerged with the Industrial Revolution that is (to some extent) superimposed over an older, more "bookish" set of values (the Constitution, etc). The two-way street of social media produces, basically, a new social structure and everything else follows from that. Trump, for instance, is a Twitter president - he's unimaginable in the earlier structure. So the red thread becomes understanding what the communicative modalities are and how they reshape the society.
That sounds plausible, but I wonder if such a powerful explanatory model only works for fundamental media shifts (orality > literacy > printing press > digitalization) and becomes too reductionist when applied to smaller, more incremental steps. One-directional mass media sustained democracy just as much as they enabled totalitarian propaganda. Obama's 2008 campaign relied on social media just as much as Trump's election did. So, how meaningful is a model that operates on this distinction?
Sam,
Love to see any acknowledgement of the Airplane, but as someone who's long loved and written about Paul's work, that's not the message of "Crown of Creation". It was saying to The Older Generation "You think you're the crown of creation? Well, not necessarily." And as I've said before, I think the real "conceptual ground for how we see the world" is the Garden of Eden story, if not from the original than from all the belief systems which have descended with modification from it.
Ah, interesting! I've taken that song totally differently.
Most of the lyrics were taken (with permission) from John Wyndham's The Chrysalids.