Frank Hartmann on Fri, 20 Jun 1997 03:21:17 +0200 (MET DST) |
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Re: <nettime> Dery on neo-biological cant (Barlow, Kelly) An underlying point in the discussion on bionomics (or whatever you name it) that is higly irritating is the notion of democracy as seen by the neoliberalistic mind. Let's dig into that a little more. Think of those second hand techno/ecologist like Kevin Kelly, who fosters the idea of a new biology of machines, with ideas of 'emergent control', just to bring in another fine example: "The biggest crowd wins. It's like an election hall of idiots, for idiots, and by idiots, and it works marvelously. This is the true nature of democracy and of all distributed governance." (Hive Mind, in: Out of Control, p.9) Nature never lies, nature tells us the truth. To fathom the reference, let us take a brief excursion in the history of science at this point. It was in 1899 when the zoologist Ernst Haeckel published his WELTRAETSEL (= world mysteries), as studies in monistic philosophy. An internationally bestselling author also by today's standards, he caimed to solve all existing epistemological riddles by introducing the principles of nature in sociology and philosophy. All knowledge is a natural process, never a metaphysical one. He appealed to commonsense that social progress would be granted if we adapted our world view to the process of nature: let all man-made formalities aside and politics will benefit. Study the cells and organisms and you have the best blueprint for a functioning society. Haeckel coined the term *ecology* and introduced Biogenetics. This had a horrid aftermath in the popularisation of eugenics. He had many followers, and a dark chapter in the history of ecological thought was opened. The young and later Nobel-price winning Austrian sociobiologist, Konrad Lorenz, came on the scene not only to dismiss forever Kant's philosophy by way of the naturalisation of reason in sociobiology, but also to write articles on 'racial hygiene' for the ruling Nazi breed, justifying the 'weeding out' of 'inferior humans' which could be identified by scientists like him, who prevent the VOLK from cancer, and so forth. He sure smoothed his words after 1945, but not his ideas. Nature always saved his argument. So it did for leadership, ethnic cleansing, and so forth. As Voltaire's 'Zadig' searched solid relief from his matrimonial troubles by studying nature, his 'Candid' looked for cure from the nonstop chatting 'Pangloss' on the compost heaps in his garden. Nature was always there when the tension got unbearable. Nature explains it all, and don't we love nature. The invocation of a slippery term like "nature" should trip alarms everywhere, as Mark Dery pointed out. But this also goes with ecology, sustainability, emergene, autopoiesis and so forth, especially in relation to organisational aspects of society. These terms do not solve, they conceal the real problems we have in a society of transition. This is why, in train of a deregulation of markets, neoliberalists and other 'cognitive dissidents' love them so much. Now search for Internet and Network in Kelly's book index. Organic of course. You will find a pointer to Hive and Swarm and there on the page, an apology of the Invisible Hand (control without authority, sure). Which leads us back to the above quote. We may marvel why all this gabble on nature then, in other parts of the book, needed such an emphasis on genetic engineering to improve natural selection. Mother nature seems to need yet another face lift. ~Frank Hartmann --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de