TPF : Mechanistic Worldview

[Gnomon]

Disclaimer: this thread is inspired by recent interviews by Prof. Dr. Mattias Desmet — Tzeentch

A quick Google search indicates that Dr. Desmet is primarily concerned with The Psychology of Totalitarianism. And I infer that he views the current trend toward Fascist politics as a return to the ruthless top-down control of the Catholic Church, that eventually led to the Protestant rebellions and to the Scientific emancipation from Inquisition-enforced dogma. One ironic result of the rise of sectarian & secular worldviews was the emergence of NAZIism in Germany a few centuries after the Enlightenment era. The Industrial Revolution, built upon scientific knowledge, but allied with top-down Capitalism, fostered the rise of robber barons, and allowed Hitler to produce the most powerful war machine the world had ever known. His radical worldview was a sort of secular revival of the "glory that was Rome", including the imperial Roman Church. Hitler's implementation of that dream of world dominion was also based on a belief in essential superiority & purity of the Chosen People. A pseudo-religious political worldview, based on strict obedience to authority.

Although that kind of Totalitarianism was tamped-down for a while, it is currently resurgent in the secularized & scientized Western democracies. Donald Trump, among others, has revived the spirit of Totalitarianism, by synthesizing politics with a religious inclination to worship a higher power, as embodied in an all-powerful Father Figure : the Fuhrer, the King, the Pope. Apparently, some people are not comfortable with free-thinking; preferring to be told what to do, and to believe. Such top-down control systems -- in both Fascist & Communist forms -- tend to emphasize the collective "Folk" over individual persons, and conservative traditions over progressive innovations. Yet it utilizes the fruits of Science -- technology; weapons, etc -- while ignoring the free-thinking philosophy underlying its Mechanistic Power over Nature.

Perhaps it was the observation that Totalitarian Politics is based on a Mechanistic Paradigm of centralized power, that roused Dr. Desmet to call for the End of the Mechanistic Worldview. I'm not sure what alternative egalitarian political system he has in mind, but I doubt it requires submission of Science & Philosophy to Politics & Economics & popular Media. Tzeentch, do you know what he envisions as a Non-Mechanical Worldview to guide a multi-cultural & querulous planet, that is about to conquer new worlds beyond Terra Firma?

[Gnomon]

Totalitarian states have been characterized by such beliefs in singular truths; a belief that complex human systems and problems can be solved like scientific or mathematical equations. — Tzeentch

One "singular truth" of the Mechanistic worldview may be the assumption that humans in a "state of nature" are completely selfish, and always in a "war of every man against every man", as Thomas Hobbes put. So his solution, like Plato's, was to appoint a "philosopher king", presumably from among the aristocracy, to rule over the unruly masses. But history shows that "philosopher kings" are in short supply. Which is why Democracy eventually seemed to be the least-bad option for controlling the irrational urges of human animals. And that common-people-rule premise may be based on the "wisdom of crowds" postulate, which mathematically averages-out extremes in favor of moderate positions. Yet again, reality reveals that not all crowds are wise : e.g. stock market stampedes & crashes.

What then are we to do? Today, many Western societies seem to be leaning toward the sovereign king solution. Technically, Hitler was not elected to his position, but he was popular in some segments of society, frustrated with the debacles of Democracy. And his simplistic mechanical logic seemed to promise a more orderly state. Unfortunately, that group order was purchased at the cost of diminished individual rights. Ironically, his avowed goal to Make Germany Great Again had popular appeal to both aristocrats & plebeians. So, it seems that societies tend to vacillate between the poles of loosely bound Liberty and rigid mechanical Order. And the statistical political math usually produces a muddled middle state that is not acceptable to either pole of the political spectrum.

Organized state religions have always been integral to the political purposes of ruling factions. For example, the Pagan Romans had an official chief priest, called a "Pontifex". And that political role was transferred to the Christian Church after it became the official state religion. However, over the years, the top-down rule of the secular & sacred Empire varied from Liberal (weak) to Totalitarian (strong), depending on internal & external circumstances. When economically & militarily stable, it relaxed the rules. But when threatened from within & without, it tightened the reins of the reign. Consequently, it seems that a simple singular solution to social order has not been found by the heuristics of history.

[Gnomon]

While science suggests that we ought to be humble about the extent of our current knowledge,the mechanistic worldview, where it has mostly been faithful to scientific methods and principles, now has departed from it. — Tzeentch

Perhaps, the "mechanistic worldview" you are referring to is the philosophical faith labeled "Scientism"*1. It seems to consider mechanistic Classical Physics as a final revelation of the absolute Truth about Reality. That worldview envisions a Newtonian clockwork universe, which runs reliably until human egos & passions (and religions) interfere to knock the smoothly-running system off course. However, that simplistic model of reality was called into question by two parallel developments in the early 20th century : Quantum Physics and Information Theory.

Quantum Physics undermined the ancient Atomic dream of a firm foundation to reality by revealing that particles of matter, hopefully labeled "Atoms", were actually composites of even smaller bits of stuff. Scientific slicing & dicing of matter has continued to the point where now the foundation of the material world is considered to be merely matter-less mathematical fields of abstract potential*2. At the same time Information Theory was revealing the ubiquitous role of Information (Ideas) in the real world. That led physicist John A. Wheeler to conclude that we live in a "participatory universe", where the minds of men can interact with the physical world*3. He wasn't talking about Magic though, but about Meta-Physics*4 (ideas & intentions).

Wheeler was re-interpreting Classical Physics in terms of Information Theory. And that novel concept is also at the root of my personal worldview : Enformationism. Such analog holistic views (e.g. Systems Theory) are already beginning to fill some of the gaps in digital reductive science. This development does imply an "end of the Mechanistic Worldview", in the sense of outdated physical models. The information-based approach doesn't do away with the reliability of physical mechanisms though, it merely learns to control them more accurately, with meta-physical understanding, to allow us to work with the Fuzzy Logic, and spontaneity, of the quantum foundation of reality.


*1.What is the Difference Between Science and Scientism :
Conclusion. The main difference between science and scientism is that science is the study of nature and behaviour of natural things and knowledge obtained through them while scientism is the view that only science can render truth about the world and reality.
https://pediaa.com/what-is-the-differen ... scientism/

*2. Quantum Non-Mechanics :
"One of the least mechanical aspects of QT is the “wave/particle duality”. What Schrodinger’s wavefunction equation refers to is neither a wave in a medium, nor a particle standing alone, but BothAnd. “In fact it’s not a wave that corresponds to any concrete physical property. It is just a mathematical abstraction . . .” Surprisingly, the equation that is the primary tool of QT includes Imaginary Numbers. And its solution is not a “description of an entity”, but a “prescription” for a future measurement. It doesn’t refer to a physical thing, but information about a possible thing. Which is why Ball says that QT is a theory about Information." quotes from___Philip Ball, Quantum Weirdness
http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page43.html

*3. Participatory Universe :
Wheeler divided his own life into three parts. The first part he called “Everything is Particles.” The second part was “Everything is Fields.” And the third part, which Wheeler considered the bedrock of his physical theory, he called “Everything is Information.”
https://futurism.com/john-wheelers-part ... y-universe

*4. Meta-Physics :
This is not the scholastic topic of gods & ghosts, but the Aristotelian observation that human intentions can make a difference in the physical world. For example, the Panama Canal was nothing but a dream in imaginative minds (1513), until their designs were implemented in money & machinery to literally move mountains (1914). What Nature (physics) had left undone after millions of years, Culture (metaphysics) accomplished in a few generations.

[Gnomon]

I've studied this very issue for a long time. And as an ardent holist and organicist myself, the great irony has been to discover that life and mind – representing the highest levels of "organismic complexity" – came about by semiosis, or the ability to organise nature by employing the constraints of a mechanistic causality. — apokrisis

This is slightly off-topic, but I just read a book review in Philosophy Now magazine (issue 150), which reminded me of this thread. The name of the book is Organicity : Entropy or Evolution. Written by an Architect & Urban Planner, the book proposes an attitude of "organicity", to guide those involved in trying to deal with cultural entropy by aligning with the organic-systems-approach of Nature. This is not a new idea --- in the early 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright called his design-with-nature approach "organic architecture" --- but the book uses some novel terminology. For instance, he labels Mechanistic Thinking (dominant & competitive) as "machinic" to contrast with "organic" (cooperative & mutual aid).

His political and economic philosophy seems to be openly socialistic. Yet he refers to it as "anarcho-communism", and says its socially-responsible adherents are "communists who won't wait for the state". He also insists, ominously, that "Nature is going to compel posterity to revert to a stable state on the material plane and to turn to the realm of spirit for satisfying man's hunger for infinity". That latter remark doesn't sound like Marx's atheistic prescription for the ills of industrial & mechanistic society. So, I suppose he's merely acknowledging that the human "spirit" cannot live on mass-manufactured bread alone (Matt 4:4).

[Gnomon]

And then life and mind become the mechanical addition to this base layer of "pure organicism". — apokrisis

Ironically, the emergence of Life & Mind from the heuristics of evolution, is what resulted in Human Culture. And intentional artificial culture is now evolving much faster than the blind groping of the natural process. Anyway, I think the Simplistic Mechanistic products of techno-culture are merely the low-hanging fruit. We may have to climb the organic tree to get at the more functionally-organized systems. Systems Science is still waving a rattle in the cradle. So, there's hope that holistically-designed systems might eventually reach the sophistication of self-organized organisms that took billions of years to create. You might call it "alloyed organicism"


Evolutionary Design :
Special computer algorithms inspired by biological Natural Selection. It is similar to Genetic Programming in that it relies on internal competition between random alternative solutions to weed-out inferior results, and to pass-on superior answers to the next generation of algorithms. By means of such optimizing feedback loops, evolution is able to make progress toward the best possible solution – limited only by local restraints – to the original programmer’s goal or purpose.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_programming