Perhaps the development of civilization can be attributed not just to ourselves, but also the organisms that we have a relationship with. Not only cats, but domesticated crops, dogs, bees, and innumerable other things. Following this metaphor, perhaps the human animal can be likened to the nerve cells of a much larger organism: necessary for its development perhaps, but hardly sufficient.Definitely. The human being is a system, but human societies are much larger systems that involve much more than just humans. One of the hallmarks of civilization is sedentary agriculture, a new system which was made possible when we realized we could collect seeds and plant them in one spot rather than collecting our food from the wild (foraging/hunting). Without this technology, it seems unlikely that division of labour would have achieved the levels it needed to in order to provide for centralized leadership, academic study, slavery, and other such civilized things. Furthermore, this new relationship was a full system with feedback loops,
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Re: Your comments about agriculture. This is exactly what I was trying to get at in my post, not sure if that was clear or not. If it wasn't, I guess your comment fills in some of the blanks.
Anyway, yes, your post reminds that cybernetics (and general systems theory) probably has much to say on this topic. Do you know of anything which deals with what I'm talking about specifically? And what on earth do the German idealists have to do with all of this? ;)
I don't think I've read anything specifically about the intersection of systems theory and anthropology, but I would be surprised if there wasn't anything out there. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were both anthropologists and cyberneticists, so that would be a good starting point, although I've read embarrassingly little of their work.
As for idealism, one of its central tenets, as I understand it, is that the objective world is one big indescribable "blob" with no necessary distinctions within it, and hence no independent objects. The primary act of a conscious mind is to create distinctions within it, defining what we refer to as objects. These distinctions aren't necessarily arbitrary; they are made for various biological, psychological, and social reasons. However, they are subjective, in that the subject imposes them on an objective world. This is, by the way, how idealists cope with the thing-in-itself problem, by essentially sidestepping it--there is really no thing-
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The proper intellectual heirs of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche would probably be Heidegger and Sartre, among a cast of more minor characters. I don't think those two have had much influence on cybernetics or anything else at all practical, though some rogue cognitive scientists find Heidegger interesting.
I think you really mean Kant when you talk about all those other guys. :) Your summary (which was indeed fairly ingenious) could almost have been taken from him verbatim. In any case, I can see the relation now that you express it more fully.
Indeed very interesting. Perhaps I'll write my thesis someday on idealism and systems. :)
And yeah, I realize Kant was the father of these ideas, but I've read precious little of his work so I am hesitant to reference him. My real introduction to idealism came with my course on Hegel, followed by a course on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, hence why I drop their names. :) I hope to take a course on Kant next year.
I just remembered another interesting example of the intersection between cybernetics and idealism: cyberneticist Francisco Varela's calculus of self-reference was based on G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form, a system of logic and mathematics based on the idea of distinction. Unfortunately the latter is a brutally difficult book to read.
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Anyway, yes, your post reminds that cybernetics (and general systems theory) probably has much to say on this topic. Do you know of anything which deals with what I'm talking about specifically? And what on earth do the German idealists have to do with all of this? ;)
Reply
I don't think I've read anything specifically about the intersection of systems theory and anthropology, but I would be surprised if there wasn't anything out there. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were both anthropologists and cyberneticists, so that would be a good starting point, although I've read embarrassingly little of their work.
As for idealism, one of its central tenets, as I understand it, is that the objective world is one big indescribable "blob" with no necessary distinctions within it, and hence no independent objects. The primary act of a conscious mind is to create distinctions within it, defining what we refer to as objects. These distinctions aren't necessarily arbitrary; they are made for various biological, psychological, and social reasons. However, they are subjective, in that the subject imposes them on an objective world. This is, by the way, how idealists cope with the thing-in-itself problem, by essentially sidestepping it--there is really no thing- ( ... )
Reply
The proper intellectual heirs of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche would probably be Heidegger and Sartre, among a cast of more minor characters. I don't think those two have had much influence on cybernetics or anything else at all practical, though some rogue cognitive scientists find Heidegger interesting.
I think you really mean Kant when you talk about all those other guys. :) Your summary (which was indeed fairly ingenious) could almost have been taken from him verbatim. In any case, I can see the relation now that you express it more fully.
Reply
And yeah, I realize Kant was the father of these ideas, but I've read precious little of his work so I am hesitant to reference him. My real introduction to idealism came with my course on Hegel, followed by a course on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, hence why I drop their names. :) I hope to take a course on Kant next year.
I just remembered another interesting example of the intersection between cybernetics and idealism: cyberneticist Francisco Varela's calculus of self-reference was based on G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form, a system of logic and mathematics based on the idea of distinction. Unfortunately the latter is a brutally difficult book to read.
Reply
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