The phenomenon of science

261 Pages·1977·1.287 MB·English

by  Valentin Fedorovich Turchin

The Phenomenon of
Science
a cybernetic approach to human
evolution
Valentin F. Turchin

Translated by Brand Frentz
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Copyright ©: Valentin Turchin. This book is copyrighted material. If you intend to
use part of the text or drawings, please quote the original publication and make
detailed references to the author.
This electronic edition for the Web was produced by the Principia Cybernetica Project
for research purposes (see http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/POSBOOK.html). The web
edition is also available as separate chapters in HTML. The hard copy book was
scanned and converted to HTML by An Vranckx and Francis Heylighen, and from
there to PDF by Allison DiazForte. The pagination and layout are not identical to the
original. The following information pertains to the original 1977 book edition:
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Turchin, Valentin Fedorovich.
The phenomenon of science.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Science—Philosophy. 2 Evolution 3. Cosmol-
ogy. 4. Cybernetics. I. Title.
Q175.T7913 501 77-4330
ISBN 0-231-03983-2
New York Columbia University Press Guildford, Surrey
Copyright (c) 1977 by Columbia University Press
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Foreword BY LOREN R. GRAHAM...................................................................................................8
PREFACE.........................................................................................................................................14
CHAPTER 1 The Initial Stages of Evolution.....................................................15
n THE BASIC LAW OF EVOLUTION........................................................................................15
n THE CHEMICAL ERA..............................................................................................................15
n CYBERNETICS..........................................................................................................................17
n DISCRETE AND CONTINUOUS SYSTEMS..........................................................................18
n THE RELIABILITY OF DISCRETE SYSTEMS......................................................................19
n INFORMATION.........................................................................................................................21
n THE NEURON...........................................................................................................................23
n THE NERVE NET......................................................................................................................25
n THE SIMPLE REFLEX (IRRITABILITY)................................................................................26
n THE COMPLEX REFLEX.........................................................................................................28
CHAPTER 2 Hierarchical Structures.................................................................30
n THE CONCEPT OF THE CONCEPT........................................................................................30
n DISCRIMINATORS AND CLASSIFIERS................................................................................32
n HIERARCHIES OF CONCEPTS...............................................................................................33
n HOW THE HIERARCHY EMERGES.......................................................................................35
n SOME COMMENTS ON REAL HIERARCHIES....................................................................37
n THE WORLD THROUGH THE EYES OF A FROG...............................................................38
n FRAGMENTS OF A SYSTEM OF CONCEPTS......................................................................40
n THE GOAL AND REGULATION.............................................................................................43
n HOW REGULATION EMERGES.............................................................................................44
n REPRESENTATIONS................................................................................................................47
n MEMORY...................................................................................................................................48
n THE HIERARCHY OF GOALS AND PLANS.........................................................................48
n STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL DIAGRAMS................................................................50
n THE TRANSITION TO PHENOMENOLOGICAL DESCRIPTIONS.....................................52
n DEFINITION OF THE COMPLEX REFLEX...........................................................................54
CHAPTER 3 On the Path toward the Human Being.........................................55
n THE METASYSTEM TRANSITION........................................................................................55
n CONTROL OF THE REFLEX...................................................................................................57
n THE REFLEX AS A FUNCTIONAL CONCEPT.....................................................................58
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n WHY ASSOCIATIONS OF REPRESENTATIONS ARE NEEDED.......................................59
n EVOCATION BY COMPLEMENT..........................................................................................60
n SPOTS AND LINES...................................................................................................................61
n THE CONDITIONED REFLEX AND LEARNING.................................................................63
n MODELING................................................................................................................................65
n COGNITION OF THE WORLD................................................................................................67
CHAPTER 4 The Human Being...........................................................................68
n CONTROL OF ASSOCIATING................................................................................................68
n PLAY..........................................................................................................................................69
n MAKING TOOLS.......................................................................................................................70
n IMAGINATION, PLANNING, OVERCOMING INSTINCT...................................................71
n THE INTERNAL TEACHER.....................................................................................................74
n THE FUNNY AND THE BEAUTIFUL.....................................................................................76
n LANGUAGE...............................................................................................................................77
n CREATION OF LANGUAGE...................................................................................................79
n LANGUAGE AS A MEANS OF MODELING.........................................................................79
n SELF-KNOWLEDGE.................................................................................................................81
n A CONTINUATION OF THE BRAIN......................................................................................81
n SOCIAL INTEGRATION..........................................................................................................82
n THE SUPER-BEING..................................................................................................................84
CHAPTER 5 From Step to Step..........................................................................86
n MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CULTURE..............................................................................86
n THE STAIRWAY EFFECT........................................................................................................86
n THE SCALE OF THE METASYSTEM TRANSITION...........................................................87
n TOOLS FOR PRODUCING TOOLS.........................................................................................90
n THE LOWER PALEOLITHIC...................................................................................................90
n THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC.....................................................................................................92
n THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION............................................................................................93
n THE AGE OF METAL...............................................................................................................94
n THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS.......................................................................................94
n THE QUANTUM OF DEVELOPMENT...................................................................................95
n THE EVOLUTION OF THOUGHT...........................................................................................95
CHAPTER 6 Logical Analysis of Language.....................................................96
n ABOUT CONCEPTS AGAIN....................................................................................................96
n ATTRIBUTES AND RELATIONS............................................................................................97
n ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC...........................................................................................................98
n HEGEL'S DIALECTIC.............................................................................................................101
n MATHEMATICAL LOGIC.....................................................................................................103
n OBJECTS AND STATEMENTS.............................................................................................103
n LOGICAL CONNECTIVES.....................................................................................................104
n PREDICATES...........................................................................................................................106
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n QUANTIFIERS.........................................................................................................................106
n THE CONNECTIVE “SUCH THAT”......................................................................................108
n THE PHYSICAL OBJECT AND THE LOGICAL OBJECT..................................................108
n FUNCTIONS............................................................................................................................110
n SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS.................................................................................................112
n LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE...............................................................................113
CHAPTER 7 Language and Thinking..............................................................115
n WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THINKING?......................................................................115
n LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY.........................................................................................................116
n THE BRAIN AS A “BLACK BOX”........................................................................................118
n AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION........................................................................................120
n THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF SEMANTICS..........................................121
n THE LOGICAL CONCEPT.....................................................................................................123
n THE STRUCTURAL APPROACH..........................................................................................124
n TWO SYSTEMS.......................................................................................................................126
n CONCEPT “PILINGS”.............................................................................................................128
n THE SAPIR-WHORF CONCEPTION.....................................................................................128
n SUBSTANCE............................................................................................................................130
n THE OBJECTIVIZATION OF TIME......................................................................................131
n LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY....................................................................................................133
n THE METASYSTEM TRANSITION IN LANGUAGE..........................................................134
n THE CONCEPT-CONSTRUCT...............................................................................................135
n THE THINKING OF HUMANS AND ANIMALS.................................................................136
CHAPTER 8 Primitive Thinking........................................................................138
n THE SYSTEM ASPECT OF CULTURE.................................................................................138
n THE SAVAGE STATE AND CIVILIZATION.......................................................................138
n THE METASYSTEM TRANSITION IN LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY.....................................140
n THE MAGIC OF WORDS.......................................................................................................141
n SPIRITS AND THE LIKE........................................................................................................143
n THE TRASH HEAP OF REPRESENTATIONS.....................................................................144
n BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE.................................................................................................146
n THE CONSERVATISM OF PRECRITICAL THINKING......................................................146
n THE EMERGENCE OF CIVILIZATION................................................................................147
CHAPTER 9 Mathematics Before the Greeks................................................150
n NATURE'S MISTAKE.............................................................................................................150
n COUNTING AND MEASUREMENT.....................................................................................151
n NUMBER NOTATION............................................................................................................152
n THE PLACE-VALUE SYSTEM..............................................................................................155
n APPLIED ARITHMETIC.........................................................................................................158
n THE ANCIENTS' KNOWLEDGE OF GEOMETRY..............................................................160
n A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF ARITHMETIC..............................................................................161
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n REVERSE MOVEMENT IN A MODEL.................................................................................163
n SOLVING EQUATIONS.........................................................................................................164
n THE FORMULA.......................................................................................................................165
CHAPTER 10 From Thales to Euclid...............................................................167
n PROOF......................................................................................................................................167
n THE CLASSICAL PERIOD.....................................................................................................169
n PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY.........................................................................................................171
n WHAT IS MATHEMATICS?..................................................................................................172
n PRECISION IN COMPARING QUANTITIES.......................................................................173
n THE RELIABILITY OF MATHEMATICAL ASSERTIONS................................................174
n IN SEARCH OF AXIOMS.......................................................................................................176
n CONCERNING THE AXIOMS OF ARITHMETIC AND LOGIC........................................180
n DEEP-SEATED PILINGS........................................................................................................182
n PLATONISM IN RETROSPECT.............................................................................................183
CHAPTER 11 From Euclid to Descartes.........................................................186
n NUMBER AND QUANTITY..................................................................................................186
n GEOMETRIC ALGEBRA........................................................................................................187
n ARCHIMEDES AND APOLLONIUS.....................................................................................188
n THE DECLINE OF GREEK MATHEMATICS......................................................................190
n ARITHMETIC ALGEBRA......................................................................................................192
n ITALY, SIXTEENTH CENTURY...........................................................................................193
n LETTER SYMBOLISM...........................................................................................................195
n WHAT DID DESCARTES DO?..............................................................................................196
n THE RELATION AS AN OBJECT..........................................................................................197
n DESCARTES AND FERMAT.................................................................................................199
n THE PATH TO DISCOVERY.................................................................................................200
CHAPTER 12 From Descartes to Bourbaki....................................................204
n FORMALIZED LANGUAGE..................................................................................................204
n THE LANGUAGE MACHINE................................................................................................206
n FOUR TYPES OF LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY..........................................................................207
n SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY...............................................................................................209
n FORMALIZATION AND THE METASYSTEM TRANSITION..........................................210
n THE LEITMOTIF OF THE NEW MATHEMATICS..............................................................210
n “NONEXISTENT” OBJECTS..................................................................................................212
n THE HIERARCHY OF THEORIES........................................................................................213
n THE AXIOMATIC METHOD.................................................................................................214
n METAMATHEMATICS..........................................................................................................215
n THE FORMALIZATION OF SET THEORY..........................................................................217
n BOURBAKI'S TREATISE.......................................................................................................220
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CHAPTER 13 Science and Metascience.........................................................223
n EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS...................................................................................................223
n THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD..................................................................................................223
n THE ROLE OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES..............................................................................225
n CRITERIA FOR THE SELECTION OF THEORIES..............................................................227
n THE PHYSICS OF THE MICROWORLD..............................................................................228
n THE UNCERTAINTY RELATION.........................................................................................229
n GRAPHIC AND SYMBOLIC MODELS.................................................................................231
n THE COLLAPSE OF DETERMINISM...................................................................................233
n “CRAZY” THEORIES AND METASCIENCE[7]..................................................................236
CHAPTER 14 The Phenomenon of Science...................................................241
n THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF THE HIERARCHY....................................................................241
n SCIENCE AND PRODUCTION..............................................................................................241
n THE GROWTH OF SCIENCE.................................................................................................242
n THE FORMALIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE.....................................................244
n THE HUMAN BEING AND THE MACHINE........................................................................245
n SCIENTIFIC CONTROL OF SOCIETY.................................................................................246
n SCIENCE AND MORALITY..................................................................................................247
n THE PROBLEM OF THE SUPREME GOOD........................................................................247
n SPIRITUAL VALUES..............................................................................................................249
n THE HUMAN BEING IN THE UNIVERSE...........................................................................251
n THE DIVERGENCE OF TRAJECTORIES.............................................................................252
n ETHICS AND EVOLUTION...................................................................................................254
n THE WILL TO IMMORTALITY............................................................................................254
n INTEGRATION AND FREEDOM..........................................................................................256
n QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS . . ...............................................................................................259
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Foreword
VALENTIN TURCHIN presents in The Phenomenon of Science an evolutionary
scheme of the universe—one that begins on the level of individual atoms and
molecules, continues through the origin of life and the development of plants and
animals, reaches the level of man and self-consciousness, and develops further in the
intellectual creations of man, particularly in scientific knowledge. He does not see this
development as a purposeful or preordained one, since he accepts entirely the
Darwinian law of trial and error. Selection occurs within a set of random variations,
and survival of forms is a happenstance of the relationship between particular forms
and particular environments. Thus, there are no goals in evolution. Nonetheless, there
are discernible patterns and, indeed, there is a “law of evolution” by which one can
explain the emergence of forms capable of activities which are truly novel. This law is
one of the formation of higher and higher levels of cybernetic control. The nodal
points of evolution for Turchin are the moments when the most recent and highest
controlling subsystem of a large system is integrated into a metasystem and brought
under a yet higher form of control. Examples of such transitions are the origin of life,
the emergence of individual selfconsciousness, the appearance of language, and the
development of the scientific method.
Many authors in the last century have attempted to sketch schemes of cosmic
evolution, and Turchin's version will evoke memories in the minds of his readers. The
names of Spencer, Haeckel, Huxley, Engels, Morgan, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin,
Vernadsky, Bogdanov, Oparin, Wiener and many others serve as labels for concepts
similar to some of those discussed by Turchin. Furthermore, it is clear that Turchin
knows many of these authors, borrows from some of them, and cites them for their
achievements. It is probably not an accident that the title of Turchin's book, “The
Phenomenon of Science,” closely parallels the title of Teilhard's, “The Phenomenon of
Man.” Yet it is equally clear that Turchin does not agree entirely with any of these
authors, and his debts to them are fragmentary and selective. Many of them assigned a
place either to vitalistic or to theological elements in their evolutionary schemes, both
of which Turchin rejects. Others relied heavily on mechanistic, reductionist principles
which left no room for the qualitatively new levels of biological and social orders that
are so important to Turchin. And all of them—with the possible exception of Wiener,
who left no comprehensive analysis of evolution—wrote at a time when it was
impossible to incorporate information theory into their accounts.
The two aspects of Turchin's scheme of cosmic evolution which distinguish it from its
well-known predecessors are its heavy reliance on cybernetics and its inclusion of the
development of scientific thought in evolutionary development that begins with the
inorganic world. The first aspect is one which is intimately tied to Turchin's own field
of specialization, since for many years he was a leader in the theory and design of
Soviet computer systems and is the author of a system of computer language. Turchin
believes that he gained insights from this experience that lead to a much more rigorous
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discussion of evolution than those of his predecessors. The second aspect of Turchin's
account—the treatment of scientific concepts as “objects” governed by the same
evolutionary regularities as chemical and biological entities—is likely to raise
objections among some readers. Although this approach is also not entirely
original—one thinks of some of the writings of Stephen Toulmin, for example—I
know of no other author who has attempted to integrate science so thoroughly into a
scheme of the evolution of physical and biological nature. Taking a thoroughly
cybernetic view, Turchin maintains that it is not the “substance” of the entities being
described that matters, but their principles of organization.
For the person seeking to analyze the essential characteristics of Turchin's system of
explanation, two of his terms will attract attention: “representation” and “metasystem
transition.” Without a clear understanding of what he means by these terms, one
cannot comprehend the overall developmental picture he presents. A central issue for
critics will be whether a clear understanding of these terms can be gained from the
material presented here. One of the most difficult tasks for Mr. Frentz, the translator,
was connected with one of these central terms. This problem of finding an English
word for the Russian term predstavlenie was eventually resolved by using the term
“representation.” In my opinion, the difficulty for the translator was not simply a
linguistic one, but involved a fundamental, unresolved philosophical issue. The term
predstavlenie is used by Turchin to mean “an image or a representation of a part of
reality.” It plays a crucial role in describing the situations in which an organism
compares a given circumstance with one that is optimal from the standpoint of its
survival. Thus, Turchin, after introducing this term, speaks of a hypothetical animal
that “loves a temperature of 16 degrees Centigrade” and has a representation of this
wonderful situation in the form of the frequency of impulses of neurons. The animal,
therefore, attempts to bring the given circumstances closer and closer into
correspondence with its neuronal representation by moving about in water of different
temperatures. This same term predstavlenie is also used to describe human behavior
where the term “mental image” would seem to be a more felicitous translation. If we
look in a good Russian-English dictionary, we shall find predstavlenie defined as
“presentation, idea, notion, representation.” At first Dr. Turchin, who knows English
well and was consulted by the translator, preferred the translation “notion.” Yet it
seemed rather odd, even vaguely anthropomorphic, to attribute a “notion” to a
primitive organism, an amoeba, or even a fish. On the other hand, the term
“representation” seemed too rudimentary for human behavior where “idea” or “mental
image” was clearly preferable. This difficulty arose from the effort to carry a constant
term through evolutionary stages in which Turchin sees the emergence of qualitatively
new properties. The problem is, therefore, only secondarily one of language. The basic
issue is the familiar one of reductionism and nonreductionism in descriptions of
biological and psychological phenomena. Since the Russian language happens to
possess a term that fits these different stages better than English, we might do better to
retain the Russian predstavlenie. In this text for a wide circle of English readers,
however, the translator chose the word “representation,” probably the best that can be
done. The difficulties of understanding the term “metasystem transition” arise from its
inclusion of a particular interpretation of logical attributes and relations. Turchin
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believes that it is impossible to describe the process by which a particular system
develops into a metasystem in the terms of classical logic. Classical logic, he says,
describes only attributes, not relations. For an adequate description of relations, one
must rely on the Hegelian dialectic, which permits one to see that the whole of a
metasystem is greater than the sum of its subsystems. The Hegelian concept of
quantitative change leading to qualitative change is thus not only explicitly contained
within Turchin's scheme, but plays an essential role in it. The behavior of human
society is qualitatively different from the behavior of individual humans. And social
integration, through the “law of branching growth of the penultimate level,” may lead
eventually to a concept of “The Super-Being.” These concepts show some affinities to
Marxist dialectical materialism, in which a similar differentiation of qualitatively
distinct evolutionary levels has long been a characteristic feature. The British scientist
J. D. Bernal once went so far as to claim that this concept of dialectical levels of
natural laws was uniquely Marxist, when he wrote about “the truth of different laws
for different levels, an essentially Marxist idea.” However, many non-Marxists have
also advanced such a view of irreducible levels of laws; one should therefore be
careful about terming a system of thought Marxist simply because it possesses this
feature. Most Marxists would reject, at a minimum, Turchin's discussion of the
concept of the Super-Being (although even in early Soviet Marxism “God-building”
had a subrosa tradition). In Turchin's case we are probably justified in linking the
inclusion of Hegelian concepts in his interpretation of nature to the education in
philosophy he received in the Soviet Union. Soviet Marxism was probably one of
several sources of Turchin's philosophic views; others are cybernetics and the thought
of such earlier writers on cosmic evolution as Chardin and Vernadsky.
In view of the links one can see between the ideas of Turchin and Marxism, it is
particularly interesting to notice that Turchin is now in political difficulty in the Soviet
Union. Before I give some of the details of his political biography, however, I shall
note that in this essentially nonpolitical manuscript Turchin gives a few hints of
possible social implications of his interpretation. He remarks that the cybernetic view
he is presenting places great emphasis on “control” and that it draws an analogy
between society and a multicellular organism. He then observes, “This point of view
conceals in itself a great danger that in vulgarized form it can easily lead to the
conception of a fascist-type totalitarian state.” This possibility of a totalitarian state, of
whatever type, is clearly repugnant to Turchin, and his personal experience is a
witness that he is willing to risk his own security in order to struggle against such
state. As for his interpretation of social evolution, he contends that “the possibility that
a theory can be vulgarized is in no way an argument against its truth.” In the last
sections of his book he presents suggestions for avoiding such vulgarizations while
still working for greater social integration.
Turchin is wrestling in this last part of his interpretation with a problem that has
recently plagued many thinkers in Western Europe and America as well: Can one
combine a scientific explanation of man and society with a commitment to individual
freedom and social justice? Turchin is convinced that such combination of goals is
possible; indeed, he sees this alliance as imperative, since he believes there is no
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