I finished My Mother Was a Computer yesterday afternoon, and am about to embark on the most difficult reading the utopias project has asked of me so far: I’m going to get back into Hegel.
I’m not about to spill all the beans here, especially because there are literally years ahead of me working on a project where Hegelian conceptions of history and time play a significant role, and this blog updates daily. But Hayles marks a good transition for me in this research, in terms of how her book ends.
One of the ideas in Hayles’ last chapter is her discussion of the “anthropic principle” in physics. Essentially, this is the idea that because we exist, the universe must have the physical constants and underlying laws that permit us to exist. The flaw in this reasoning: it mistakes an effect for a cause. Another way to think about the flaw in this reasoning: taking some contingent facts (our existence and the physical regularities and natures that are the conditions for our existence) for necessities. Mistaking what is the case for what must be the case.
My suspicion is that the Hegelian approach to history commits the same fallacy of reasoning. Taking the contingent fact of our current existence (or in his case, his current existence in 1820s Prussia) for a necessity to which all the significant structures of the past condition and constitute. The causal history of the universe necessarily brings about the subjects who, through their power of thinking and understanding that history, create it.
I have a serious problem with this idea, mainly its flagrant and nauseating egotistical humanism. Of course, as I explore Hegel’s Philosophy of History, I’m sure to find more nuance than my brief summary above. The man wouldn’t have been as influential if he didn’t have a little flexibility in his thought. But sometimes, I’m not so sure. If one common theme can be found in the Hegelian-Marxist trajectories of political philosophy and action, it’s that history seems to culminate in the revolution that allegedly creates a new workers’ state for humans in which all resources are mobilized to create humanity’s new Eden. When history is defined in terms of human goals, then there will be no room in your thinking to consider that which isn’t human. This despite nonhumans making up the vast majority of what exists and has existed.
The Hegelian rejoinder to this might be that only humans have history anyway, and that there was no history before humanity. Now, that sentence certainly does seem to stack the deck against Hegel. You might accuse me of a bias before I start my exploration again, but that was an actual conversation I had with one of the most remarkable Hegel-influenced philosophers in the United States. But that’s a subject for A History Boy.
Great critique of Hayles's argument (cause-effect confusion and mistaking the contingent for the necessary). My concerns and interests are entirely with humans but I appreciate your point that Hegel, like Hayles, is blinded by a similar focus. My perspective would be that this is the frame of reference for his era and especially his audience (i.e. humans are what matter to philosophical endeavors) and to judge him within those terms. Clearly, he is, to our eyes, unhelpfully focused on men of ideas, Europe, Christendom, Rome and humans, and even with that focus is further limited by his failure to grasp historical contingency, nonlinear events/ processes. The negatives are well known, so it will be interesting to see what positives you pull out as you go through.
ReplyDeleteRe history and humans -- Hayden White influenced many others in defining history as records of passing time that have a purposeful reflective narration. With this definition, there can be no question that humans are the only things on Earth that we know of with history. I suspect you'll want to use a different definition so I'd be interested in seeing you spell it out -- or counter my assertion!
I should clarify: That's my summary of Hayles' own argument against anthropic reasoning. She sees it in cybernetic, transhumanist reasoning, and the conception of evolution that seems to predominate in transhumanist circles.
DeleteMaybe I need a post at some point explaining how I read. Because I study what the authors themselves say, but also look for material on which I can improvise and riff in my own thinking.
Hayden White's definition certainly sounds like history the way a historian would use it. But that's not what history is to a geologist, an astrophysicist, or an ecologist. Those latter conceptions of history are what interest me most.
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ReplyDeleteRe history vs time -- I'm with White here that those realms have time (obviously) and time leaves traces, but the "history" of even these realms is still a human endeavor, since the work is to craft narratives from the record that make sense in relation to humans -- not to say it needs to confirm to human expectations in a sort of Hegelian teleology, but just that it needs to be humanly comprehensible. Humans do all the work making sense to other humans of these realms' past time, hence it remains "history" in the sense of being a human artifact with culturally-contingent codes embedded in it. I think White would say that geologists, astrophysicists etc make a naturalistic fallacy when they think that describing the big bang (for example) is an act of pure and objective mathematical reasoning, rather than a cultural act constrained by the usual human limitations. The key issues here are not just the narrative plot hiding in notions like a big bang, but also the human intervention in defining the record e.g. which sorts of signals to study, distinguishing between signal and noise, describing interrelations. That's the theory, but I guess the burden is on us to prove or disprove. (And then this introduces another epistemological problem at the level of assessing specialist research.) Interested in your take on this, of course, even just as it comes up implicitly in future posts.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to introduce you to some of the peer reviewers at journals where I've tried to get my theory of knowledge work published. Because the conception of how the sciences work that you've just described is precisely what Science and Technology Studies (and the associated acronyms) folks think no longer exists. Scientists don't conceive of their work as "pure and objective mathematical reasoning." They've known ever since their work started becoming especially weird and counter-intuitive that their work was laden with metaphor, institutionally-embedded, and required significant and complex human interpretation to make any sense. But my point in some of my recent work on this area is that this "common knowledge" never filtered out of academic science studies and academic science.
DeleteHere's what I mean when I say "how the astrophysicist conceives of history." Stuff happens, and that happening affects and conditions what other stuff can happen and how. Nebulae coalesce into stars, planets coalesce out of muddy fields of hot matter in space, self-replicating molecules coalesce out of carbon soups, and so on. It doesn't become a discipline or a body of knowledge once there are humans (or at least knowledgeable creatures) to notice it and make sense of it. But there are still events.
It took me a few times to get your point here -- you're saying that STS people think that because they (STS people) have long ago debunked the naturalist perspective, scientists will surely have recognized it and moved on as well, but you're countering that the scientists have never gotten on board, are still naive. Ironically, I would say most academic historians ignore White and hew to a completely naturalistic and common-sensical approach to history. Could be an article in that. Possible title: "The Owl of Cassandra: naturalistic fallacy as event horizon in historical and scientific research".
DeleteIt's not the scientific community, most of whom know how immersed in human culture, institutions, politics, and interpretation their work is. It's the general public who still think that science is completely naturalistic, and that scientists never disagree on matters of fact.
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