Inclusional Science - From Artefact to Natural
Creativity
BY ALAN D.M. RAYNER
Dept of Biology and Biochemistry, University of
Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
ABSTRACT
Science,
as it has come to be practised most widely, has been immensely successful in
the invention and production of artefacts, whether these are in the form of
conceptual frameworks within which to define, predict and constrain natural
processes, or material technologies. This success has largely been based on an
absolutely definitive logic that abstracts material 'content' from spatial
'context'. Such abstraction greatly diminishes the dimensionality of natural,
non-Euclidean, dynamic geometry by fixing reality within rectilinear structural
limits of length, breadth and depth. It may therefore come at the expense of
deeper understanding of natural dynamic processes, which is needed to address
currently emerging environmental, social and psychological concerns bearing
upon human well being.
Meanwhile, scientific research has itself provided
evidence, implicit in relativity, quantum mechanics and non-linear theory,
which undermines the logical foundations for definitive methods of enquiry and
explanation. 'Hard science' is being revealed as inappropriately premised and
simplistic, capable of complicating and obscuring rather than simplifying our
understanding of natural creativity, through presenting a very partial (one-sided) worldview. Here I explore how science
theory and practice may be made more comprehensive, so as to correspond in a
truly more simple way with natural process, and hence enhance - not abandon -
its successful application. Primarily, I suggest this is possible through a
form of enquiry that transforms - but does not replace - objective rationality,
by spatially fluidising - not absolutely removing - its boundary definitions.
Definitive
Science and the Construction of Artefacts
At
its simplest, Science may be described as a human endeavour to comprehend the
nature of physical reality by means of unbiased observation and enquiry, which
avoids distortion, misrepresentation and fantasy. This is, however, easier said
than done. Bias is hard to avoid for three main reasons. Firstly, the practice
of science cannot readily be isolated from its cultural context - the dynamic
set of customs, expectations, aspirations and values that evolves in any human
community. This community will only reward those scientists who conform to its
demands, and may ignore or even punish those who don't. In such circumstances,
both intellectual honesty and the potential scope of enquiry are liable to be
compromised, especially in a competitive community. Secondly, the community of
practising scientists will impose its own demands, for example through the
process of 'peer review', based on its current knowledge and paradigms.
Thirdly, and perhaps most insidiously, any attempt to avoid bias itself depends
upon making assumptions about the nature of bias and hence about the nature of
'reality'. If these assumptions are inapt, then bias will be introduced by the
very effort to avoid it.
So
it can be that the mainstream of Science becomes diverted from the very course
that it most honourably seeks to follow. Far from faithfully representing
natural creativity, its products may be artefacts, man-made constructions
incongruent with the world in and from which they are forged. Moreover, the
more useful and convenient these artefacts may seem, the more powerfully will the stream be diverted until ultimately it
proves to be unsustainable in the natural world of its origins that it sought
to comprehend.
The
most tangible artefacts of Science are those demanded by its ravenous sister,
technology, in order to ease our
human way of life. Some, not necessarily all, of these artefacts may, however,
all too readily engender dis-ease.
Many a technological 'silver lining' brings with it a 'dark cloud' that
compromises human and environmental well being in one way or another, whether
it be gunpowder, nuclear energy, cars, planes, wind-turbines, genetically
modified crops, nitrogenous fertilisers, drugs, computers or whatever. Somehow,
however, the 'dark cloud' always seems to take many of us[1]
by surprise, looming from some neglected quarter of nature or human nature that
wasn't accounted for in the initial research and development. Maybe there's
something about our current accounting methods, which is intrinsically
neglectful and therefore biased in its expectations. If so, what is being
neglected? Could there be a form of enquiry and accounting that enables us to
be more circumspect, more aware of and able to navigate unpredictable
possibilities?
Less
tangible, but ultimately far more profound and intractable artefacts of science
lie deep in its mathematical and logical foundations. These were laid during a
phase of human cultural evolution when our technologies had developed
insufficiently to enable us to see much beyond or within what could be revealed
by our naked eye. Ironically, we appear to have remained more attached to the
definitive worldview arising from this restrictive vision, than what new
technologies have actually revealed about the microscopic and macroscopic
character of the cosmos and our own human physiology, biochemistry and anatomy.
To
cut a long story short, current scientific orthodoxy continues to hold
unswervingly to faith in objective rationality as the basis for unbiased
enquiry, but in doing so produces artefacts in the form of abstract logical
frameworks and explanatory concepts. This is because objective rationality
depends on the supposition that nature can be defined absolutely into
independent, singular 'forms', 'bodies' or 'objects'. These objects obey the
logic of the 'excluded middle' in that they cannot be other than themselves;
everything, according to this logic, which originated with Aristotle and
Parmenides and persists in various forms to this day, must be either
A or not A. For this logic to hold true an absolute
demarcation must exist between 'something' and 'nothing' - 'solid' matter and
'empty' space. Space must, in other words, be discounted as 'immaterial', an
absence of physical presence', which cannot be included in matter. For if space
is counted as a physical presence, no thing can be truly isolated from any
other thing - all inescapably co-exist in a common, fluid dynamic pool, like
fish in an ocean and solutes in a solution, distinct and distinguishable but
not discrete and definable.
Correspondingly,
by treating space as 'nothing', an absence that nonetheless puts distance
between (i.e. isolates) one thing and another, objective rationality mentally
subdivides nature into discrete and therefore independent factions and
fractions. These may be atomic particles, genes, human bodies, plots of land,
nation states, natural ecosystems, planets, galaxies or whatever. They are
studied in objective isolation from one another by a distant observer,
supposedly without bias, who does not allow his or her own feelings to affect
interpretation or analysis of whatever presents itself to view. They are
categorised, measured, counted, manipulated and analysed within a discrete,
three-dimensional, Euclidean structural framework, with space and time
abstracted as background and subdivided into identical units. They are added,
subtracted, multiplied and divided according to the rules of elementary
arithmetic.
All
interpretation of natural form and process in terms of objective rationality,
whether 'deterministic' or 'stochastic' (fate or chance-based) is therefore 'definition-driven'. It is dependent upon the tacit assumption that material
content can be fully separated from spatial context, and hence that nature is
definable into entirely discrete entities. There is, however, no contemporary
scientific evidence to support this premise, and much evidence and reason to
suggest that it cannot possibly apply to any kind of natural evolutionary
process because 'space' - as an omnipresence of structural absence - cannot be
excluded from natural dynamic geometry at any scale (Rayner 2004). In short,
without the physical presence of space, no movement or distinction of form
would be possible. 'All' would be a self-referential 'concrete point' of the
kind envisaged by 'big bang' cosmology and exposed mathematically by Gdel's
theorem to be a paradoxical axiom (definition) - an extrapolation or reductio ad absurdum (cf. Hofstadter, 1980).
Objectivity is therefore liable to introduce profound bias, the very thing it claims to avoid, whilst also
greatly restricting the scope of scientific enquiry and interpretation. It does
so by presenting an ineluctably partial (one-sided and self-referential) view of reality, ironically through
its very insistence on material completeness. Note, however, that this view is not entirely wrong,
because it is partially based in reality! But it is utterly inadequate to
account for natural creative possibility.
Since
the vast majority of scientific concepts and mathematical procedures and proofs
are artefacts of objective definition (what Poincar, 1905, referred to as
'hidden axioms'), serious reservations must attach to their application to
real-world dynamics. They may well provide excellent tools of enquiry, if used
wisely, with full awareness of their partiality, but they cannot substitute
nature. In particular, they re-present, and hence to varying degrees misrepresent,
fluid dynamic natural process in much the same way that a cine film does.
In
effect, independent snapshots of natural flow are abstracted and frozen within
a fixed, rectilinear spatial frame at discrete time intervals. These snapshots
are then run together, leaving our imagination magically to restore the spatial
continuity in the gaps between frames. Trouble begins when the re-animated
sequence is considered equivalent to the original undisrupted animation, with
the isolated frames treated as if they were its fundamental, independent,
particulate ingredients.
In
the resulting back-projection, the frames become regarded as the determinants
rather than as isolated fragments or
'fixed precipitate' of the flow. We become prone, with hindsight, to interpret
history back-to-front, as a regression line of best fit to present status
quo, with most of the original
'co-incidental' behaviour off this line edited out. We then proceed to use this
regression to forward-project or 'predict' an abstract future or 'end', and
contrive 'means' to serve whatever we perceive to be desirable outcomes.
Moreover, having dislocated each frame from the flow, we require some forceful
agency or actor to re-animate the flow. We begin to ask paradoxically
'what do we do to bring about our
desired fate? In so doing, we imagine that our bodies are inhabited by some
internal driver or 'ghost in the machine' decision-maker, notwithstanding that
they are in the meantime being pushed and pulled about from outside. Our
resulting actions may correspondingly prove fatally out of attunement with the
flow in which they are inextricably immersed, engendering profound
psychological, social and environmental distress and damage.
Such
prescriptive, definition-driven enquiry and interpretation is evident in a very
wide variety of positivistic scientific endeavours and their simplistic
popularisation. Egged on all the more by research funding agencies, assessment
exercises and pressures to publish or perish, scientific enquiry becomes
'self-fulfilling prophecy'. We set out to concoct and test 'falsifiable' and
thereby axiomatic hypotheses, with minds so closed off from indefinable
possibilities that we can and do ignore observations that 'don't fit' with our
presuppositions. Meanwhile we pay little or no attention to where and how these
hypotheses and presuppositions arise in the first place.
Potent
examples are to be found in the fields of Sociobiology and Game Theory, where
the mathematical convenience of defining individuals as discrete numerical
entities has led to inapt depictions of 'selfishness' and 'altruism'. These
depictions unjustifiably attribute the association of particular behaviours with genetic relatedness
directly to genetic motivation (cf. Wilson, 1998). They have in turn been incorporated
into damaging socio-political models, which reinforce the Darwinian axiom of
'survival of the fittest' (Rayner 2006).
With such models holding sway in the public imagination it is difficult
to imagine how human conflict can be minimised and environmental sustainability
encouraged. Somehow, they need to be transformed into a more comprehensive
understanding, by including the receptive space that they ignore by imposing
prescriptive definitions.
Fluidising
Science - the Natural Inclusion of Receptive Space
No
sooner are the definitions relaxed that scientists supra-naturally impose for
the sake of theoretical and methodological convenience, than Science may
transform from the study and generation of artefacts into a more naturally
attuned endeavour. The underlying logic for scientific enquiry and explanation
can hence transform from the opposition of fixed alternatives assumed to be
exclusively right or wrong, to the complementarity of inner and outer
possibilities both distinguished and pooled together through their dynamic
interfacial boundaries in common space. This transformed reasoning can be
thought of as the logic of the 'included middle' or 'mutual inclusion of one
within other'. It accords with a kind
of awareness that Ted Lumley and I have called 'inclusionality' to highlight
its distinction from divisive forms of 'rationality' (Rayner 2003, 2004). Here,
all form is regarded as 'flow-form', a dynamic inclusion - not an occupier - of space in
space, which cannot be defined absolutely in an unfrozen world.
With
inclusionality, the freeze-framed geometry of isolated form melts into a fluid
dynamic geometry where space pervades everywhere, throughout an
electromagnetically informed thermal and gravitational field. This geometry
extends from microcosm to macrocosm and differs radically from the hard-line
abstractions of Euclid. It is primarily non-linear or curved, due to the inductive receptivity of spatial
attraction, giving rise to spheres, ellipsoids, spirals and tubes.
Linear
structure emerges secondarily from
this geometry, as in the cylinders formed by trees or the hexagonal arrays
formed in honeycombs and the regular surfaces of crystals. This natural
geometry is also 'nested', with smaller domains contained within and
communicating with larger domains. The simplest form of expression of this
geometry would be a set of concentric perforated spheres, but has the potential
to become extremely 'involved' or 'complex'.
The
nearest approach that conventionally fixed-framed mathematics has made to this
natural fluid dynamic geometry of 'nested holeyness' or 'holey communion' is
known as 'fractal geometry' (Rayner 2004). This idea is closely linked with the
development of non-linear dynamical systems theory, versions of which have been
popularised as Chaos and Complexity theories (e.g. Gleick, 1989). It was made
famous by Benoit Mandelbrot (1977), as a way to describe structures whose
boundaries, unlike Euclidean surfaces, appear progressively more
complex/irregular, in 'self-similar' patterns, the closer they are observed.
Almost anything we look at in nature from clouds, to snowflakes, to river
valleys, to ferns, to trees, to lungs has this property, which makes them
immeasurable in terms of discrete units of length, area and volume, because how
much you see depends on how close you are. For example, the length of the
coastline of Madagascar seems much less to an astronaut orbiting the Earth than
it does to a mite crawling around its many indentations. At infinitesimal
scales of closeness, the length is infinite.
The problem of quantifying fractal structures can be solved by relinquishing the Euclidean idealization that dimensions can have only integral values of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 etc, and allowing them also to have fractional (hence 'fractal') values. The fractal dimension of a structure can be calculated from the equation:
M = krD
where M is the material 'content' of a portion of the structure, r is the radius of the field in which this portion of content is contained, and D is the dimension. D can readily be found from the relationship between the logarithms of M and r for different fields of view. If the structure is homogeneous, then D will have an integral value. If it is heterogeneous, D will be fractional.
Fractal
patterns can be simulated mathematically by iterating non-linear
equations. A famous example is the
'Mandelbrot set' itself, which appeared in many guises as a colourful modern
mathematical art form in the late twentieth century. This set is made by
mapping the distribution of points in the 'complex plane' that do not result in
infinity when iterated according to the rule, z →z2 + c, where z begins at zero and c is the complex number corresponding to the point
being tested. Here, a 'complex number' is a number that consists of a
combination of a 'real' and 'imaginary' component, the latter being a
derivation of, 'i', the square
root of -1. The complex plane is formed in the space defined by placing all
'real' numbers, from -°, through 0, to +° along a horizontal line, and all 'imaginary'
numbers, from -°i, through 0, to
+°i, along a vertical line, and
using these Euclidean lines as co-ordinates. In effect, it represents a way of
increasing the 'possibility space' for numbers as discrete entities to inhabit,
from one to two dimensions.
The
remarkable feature of the Mandelbrot set is the extraordinarily complex
boundary that occurs between points within and points outside the set, in
effect between an inner attractive space of zero and an outer attractive space
of infinity. Such complex boundaries formed between neighbouring attractive
spaces or 'attractors' have more generally been referred to as 'fractal basin
boundaries', and are clearly at least analogous to the complex boundaries of
natural process geometry.
Such
deterministic representations of
complexity, however, still begin
prescriptively with the implicit or explicit Euclidean framing or numerical definition of contents and containers as complete wholes or 'sets of initial conditions'. They hence retain
the paradoxical assumption of completeness and replace the simultaneous reciprocal dynamic correspondence – attunement or resonance - of coupled concave and convex domains with sequential 'feedback', fixed within a rectilinear structural
frame of space and/or time. They remain firmly in the 'box', even though they
may subdivide its contents indefinitely.
The
'warm', fluid dynamic geometry of inclusionality, by contrast, implies the
continual emergence of intermediary, incompletely definable transition zones
(dynamic boundaries) through which convex and concave spatial possibilities are
coupled and transformed by one another (Rayner 2004; cf. Shakunle, 1994). The
implications of this geometry for our understanding both of nature and human
nature are profound. They radically shift the emphasis we have traditionally
placed on isolated 'figures' by liberating them from definition against a fixed
background and including them inextricably within dynamic spatial context.
Through this shift we invert the priority analytical thought gives to 'content'
over 'context' and appreciate that all content is by its very nature
'contextual' – a dynamic inclusion of all, not a sovereign ruler over
all. We focus primarily on how the 'field of animation' transforms in the
process of giving rise to and subsuming the local distinctions or
concentrations of energy that we may define through our explicit senses as
'material objects', not upon how these objects define and animate the field.
Hence
we may distinguish but not entirely define the
immense variety of evolutionary flow form in terms of 'natural inclusion' as the
co-creative, fluid-dynamic transformation of all through all in receptive
spatial context. We recognise that we
cannot change or move any local identity (distinct 'somewhere') without
simultaneously and reciprocally transforming the non-local identity of all
(heterogeneous 'everywhere'), and vice versa, spatially and relationally. We understand evolution
in terms of reciprocal relationship - resonance or dynamic attunement - not the
perfect adaptation of discrete individuals to pre-defined niches through the
Darwinian 'preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life'. Having not fixed the flow through prescriptive
definition, there is no need to re-animate it by means of some ineffable force. Instead of envisaging a world of independent objects
acting and reacting against and to one another in linear chains of cause and
effect, we appreciate a natural neighbourhood of receptive-responsive
flow-forms pooled together in common space.
Nothing
is lost in this inclusional view of nature apart from the sense of absolute,
predictable control and individual freedom that we may have gained by imposing
definition upon it. But if this sense is a false one, an artefact that does not
correspond with reality and may prove utterly misleading in the long run, what
is to be gained, and how much is to be lost by adhering to it?
There
is no reason to believe that a more geometrically realistic logical and
methodological basis for scientific enquiry would have prevented or even
delayed any of our scientific discoveries. It may, though, have made us more
circumspect about their technological development and application as
destructive weapons, sources of pollution and exploitative means of exercising
authoritarian power over both human and non-human forms of life. Inclusionality
doesn't prevent us from identifying, distinguishing and working with diverse
natural manifestations in dynamic relationship – it only holds us back
from imposing stultifying limits upon their expression. By the same token,
there is every reason to believe that fully definitive approaches have
restricted the scope of philosophical and scientific enquiry and contributed to
the conflicts that have drained human energies and creative and loving
potential throughout recorded history. Even if through the 'wrong reason' we
can contrive in very specific circumstances to predict some apparently 'right'
answers, the latter will only serve to entrap us in persistent habits until,
eventually, they find us out through the collapse of our social, psychological
and environmental relationships. Ultimately we can make life hard for others
and ourselves by trying to make it easy, within prescriptive limits of right or
wrong definition.
Becoming
Involved, not Complicated
Einstein
& Infeld (1938) referred to the 'inertial reference frame' and 'absolute
time' as 'two frightening ghosts', whose oppressive influence would be relieved
by the advent of relativity theory. But somehow the oppression has not lifted,
and definitive abstraction has remained firmly nailed in the heart of much
current scientific theory and practice. Why? Is there some even more
frightening presence that we become aware of as absolute fixed structures begin
to dissolve?
Correspondingly, principal among objectivity's objections to inclusionality is that the razed down simplicity that comes from defining things will 'get lost'. Personally, I rather wish that it would! But, seriously, this objection illustrates the addictive, all or none quality of false dichotomy: either we have total definition or no definition. Definition is something we must have if we are not to get totally lost in a sea of troubles. We exclude between two stools the dynamic 'middle ground' synthesis of 'neither entirely one nor the other' and 'not even both one and other in parallel universes' but 'one incompletely within other' as nested 'whirls within whirls within the whirl of common flow-field'. In that exclusion almost all possibility for natural creativity really does get lost.
In reality, nature will not become less simple to understand if we relax definition, but our understanding will become more involved through appreciating the simple underlying coupling of inner whirl with outer whirl over all spatial scales. By the same token, the complications and paradoxes that arise as artefacts from imposing an imaginary fixed reference frame upon natural field flow will disappear from view, in much the same way as did the Ptolemaic 'epicycles' following the Copernican Revolution. The latter were used to explain away the erratic planetary paths evident from a geocentric definition of the Universe, but became redundant no sooner had that definition been found wanting.
Art
Full Science - New Avenues for Creative Exploration and Communication
By excluding that which it defines itself not to be, objective science may not only alienate itself from the public whose appreciation, understanding and money it craves, but may also greatly diminish its own opportunities for creative evolution and correspondence with other human endeavours. Such exclusion is evident in the 'Two Culture' split between 'Art' and 'Science' notoriously brought to light by C.P. Snow (1959, 1963; see also Petroski, 2005), and the increasingly cantankerous collision between Darwinian evolutionary science and religious 'Creationism' or 'Intelligent Design' theory. In a non-linear inclusional perspective, there is no need for this split and the nastiness it engenders: the split is an artefact of definitive logic.
Inclusionality can transform science into a far more open, receptive-responsive endeavour, in tune with natural process. Inclusional Science welcomes diverse approaches and forms of expression and does not set itself up in antithesis to Art or Religion but searches for commonality and complementarity of meaning in all worldviews. Indeed the inclusion of forms of enquiry not conventionally regarded as 'scientific' could do much to loosen up prejudicial definition and 'warm' the language, mathematics and methodology of science, so helping to release a deeper spirit of human communion and creativity. This is the enduring dream that I dare, as one still happy to describe but not define himself as a scientist, to express as follows:
Achilles Heal
A gap breathed space
Into the fortress
Of a soul walled in
By dreaming of Absolute security
In its individual completeness
Elevated above some baseline standard
Of soles firmly planted
At odds with one as another
In foundations of quicksand
Set fast in cement
How quickly this dreaming
Would fade
In less than a lifeline
Of certain anchorage
When doubt made its fearful question
Of presence felt
In a blow below the belt
That crippled unbending fixture
Into sharply wrought relief
Curved into some new and ancient
Awareness
Where no One could still compete
When stilled by its own completeness
Of idolized concrete
Inviolate to all but its own violation
Of unfelt presence
So deeply disconcerted
By no sense of nonsense
In the absence of its motherhood
Through which to find communion
From sole to soul
Unblockaded
By proud pretension
A humility restored
To Faith in individual failure
As sure and omnipresent sign
Of love in human nature
Opening all ways
To unending Recreation
In the very Shadow of Tragedy
The Community Play of Foolish Genius
Beyond restrictive lessons
In Schools of Guilty Thought
That burden the bleating Heart
With endless ways to blame and shame
By reserving the right for One Alone
To claim superiority
References
Einstein, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta. Cambridge University Press.
Gleick,
J. (1988) Chaos. London: Heinemann.
Hofstadter, D.R. (1980) Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. England: Harmondsworth.
Mandelbrot, B. (1977). The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: Freeman.
Petroski, H. (2005) Technology and the humanities. American Scientist 93, 304-307.
Poincar, H. (1905) Science and Hypothesis. Dover Publications. Walter Scott Publishing Company Ltd.
Rayner, A.D.M. (2003) Inclusionality – an immersive
philosophy of environmental relationships. In Towards an Environment
Research Agenda – a second collection of papers (A. Winnett and A. Warhurst,
eds.), pp. 5-20. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rayner, A.D.M. (2004) Inclusionality and the role of place, space and dynamic boundaries in evolutionary processes. Philosophica 73, 51-70.
Rayner, A.D.M. (2006) Natural Inclusion – How to Evolve Good Neighbourhood. Bath: self-published on CD.
Shakunle, L.O. (1994). Spiral Geometry. The Principles (with Discourse). Berlin: Hitit Verlag.
Snow, C.P. (1959) The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Snow, C.P. (1963) The Two Cultures: And a Second Look. New York: Mentor Books.
Wilson, E.O. (1998) Consilience - The Unity of Knowledge. London: Little, Brown and Company.
[1] Throughout this essay I use 'we' and 'us' as collective terms for the common 'humanity' and 'natural neighbourhood' of which I feel 'myself' to be a dynamic inclusion, even though the attitudes and behaviour I describe need not apply to all in general or anyone in particular. Often these terms may be read as 'shorthand' for 'many of us'.