The Phenomenon of Science, a cybernetic approach to human evolution. – Turchin

WHAT IS scientific knowledge of reality? To answer this question from a scientific
point of view means to look at the human race from outside, from outer space so to
speak. Then human beings will appear as certain combinations of matter which
perform certain actions, in particular producing some kind of words and writing some
kind of symbols. How do these actions arise in the process of life’s evolution? Can
their appearance be explained on the basis of some general principles related to the
evolutionary process? What is scientific activity in light of these general principles?
These are the questions we shall attempt to answer in this book.
Principles so general that they are applicable both to the evolution of science and to
biological evolution require equally general concepts for their expression. Such
concepts are offered by cybernetics, the science of relationships, control, and
organization in all types of objects. Cybernetic concepts describe physicochemical,
biological, and social phenomena with equal success. It is in fact the development of
cybernetics, and particularly its successes in describing and modeling purposeful
behavior and in pattern recognition, which has made the writing of this book possible.
Therefore it would be more precise to define our subject as the cybernetic approach to
science as an object of study.
The intellectual pivot of the book is the concept of the metasystem transition—the
transition from a cybernetic system to a metasystem, which includes a set of systems
of the initial type organized and controlled in a definite manner. I first made this
concept the basis of an analysis of the development of sign systems used by science.
Then, however, it turned out that investigating the entire process of life’s evolution on
earth from this point of view permits the construction of a coherent picture governed
by uniform laws. Actually it would be better to say a moving picture, one which
begins with the first living cells and ends with present-day scientific theories and the
system of industrial production. This moving picture shows, in particular, the place of
the phenomenon of science among the other phenomena of the world and reveals the
significance of science in the overall picture of the evolution of the universe. That is
how the plan of this book arose. How convincingly this picture has been drawn I
propose to leave to the reader’s judgment.
In accordance with the plan of the book, many very diverse facts and conceptions are
presented. Some of the facts are commonly known; I try to limit my discussion of
them, fitting them into the system and relating them to my basic idea. Other facts are
less well known, and in such cases I dwell on them in more detail. The same is true for
the conceptions; some are commonly recognized while others are less well known and,
possibly, debatable. The varied nature of the material creates a situation where
different parts of the book require different efforts from the reader. Some parts are
descriptive and easy to read, in other places it is necessary to go deeply into quite
specialized matters. Because the book is intended for a broad range of readers and
does not assume knowledge beyond the secondary school level, I provide the
necessary theoretical
information in all such cases. These pages will require a certain effort of the untrained
reader.
The book gives an important place to the problems of the theory of knowledge and
logic. They are, of course, treated from a cybernetic point of view. Cybernetics is now
waging an attack on traditional philosophical epistemology, offering a new naturalscience
interpretation of some of its concepts and rejecting others as untenable. Some
philosophers oppose the rise of cybernetics and consider it an infringement on their
territory. They accuse cyberneticists of making the truth “crude” and “simplifying” it;
they claim cyberneticists ignore the “fundamental difference” between different forms
of the movement of matter (and this is despite the thesis of the world’s unity!). But the
philosopher to whom the possessive attitude toward various fields of knowledge is
foreign should welcome the attacks of the cyberneticists. The development of physics
and astronomy once destroyed natural philosophy, sparing philosophers of the need to
talk approximately about a subject which scientists could discuss exactly. It appears
that the development of cybernetics will do the same thing with philosophical
epistemology or, to be more cautious, with a significant part of it. This should be
nothing but gratifying. Philosophers will always have enough concerns of their own;
science rids them of some, but gives them others. Because the book is devoted to
science in toto as a definite method of interaction between human society and its
environment, it contains practically no discussion of concrete natural-science
disciplines. The presentation remains entirely at the level of the concepts of
cybernetics, logic, and mathematics, which are equally significant for all modern
science. The only exception is for some notions of modern physics which are
fundamentally important for the theory of sign systems. A concrete analysis of
science’s interaction with production and social life was also outside the scope of the
problem. This is a distinct matter to which a vast literature has been devoted; in this
book I remain at the level of general cybernetic concepts.
It is dangerous to attempt to combine a large amount of material from different fields
of knowledge into a single, whole picture; details may become distorted, for a person
cannot be a specialist in everything. Because this book attempts precisely to create
such a picture, it is very likely that specialists in the fields of science touched on here
will find omissions and inaccuracies; such is the price which must be paid for a wide
scope. But such pictures are essential. It only remains for me to hope that this book
contains nothing more than errors in detail which can be eliminated without detriment
to the overall picture.
V.F. TURCHIN

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