The Mind of Society

Yvon Provencal, Provencal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9789057005145
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134389292
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Theatre
• Index: Social Sciences

First Published in 1999. This book brings together the ideas of theoretician Marvin Minsky and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Provencal's theory inverts Minsky's "society of the mind" into the "mind of society," giving a new and firm basis to the Teilhardian idea of Noosphere and allowing for unsuspected transdisciplinary regularities between several scientific domains including phys­ics, biology and anthropology. Provencal aims to show that a very special type of global, planetary consciousness is emerging and to explain better the way in which human ideas constitute a global, auto-organizing system.

1:

IDEOMETRY

Ideometry is to be understood as the study of ideas just as they are. The word “ideas” here has a very broad meaning; rather than properly defining it, however, I will simply describe it. It concerns all that pertains to human creativity and taking form in symbolic language. “Ideas” therefore include concepts, principles, scientific laws, theories, philosophical systems and, in general, all that can be considered as constituting human creation in the domain of thought.

I intend to illustrate how ideometry provides a new way of integrating ideas. This integration will involve identifying original relationships among numerous concepts belonging to domains of thought that ordinarily remain distinct and separate from each other. Thus, I will show how these relationships connect certain fundamental concepts belonging to different disciplines and create, in each case, a certain formal structure which is always essentially the same.

The most original aspect of ideometry consists in the special relationships (herein called “ideometric relationships”) it establishes among ideas, relationships that express an especially new kind of signification. The term I use to designate this approach is intended to establish an analogic bond with mathematics (and with “geometry” in particular). However, this approach in no way pertains to mathematics. We know that geometric relations deal with elements which appear as idealizations of forms perceived in space. In comparison, ideometric relations appear as conceptual relationships between idealized elements of thought.

The units of thought implied in ideometric relationships generally appear, first of all, to be endowed with a cultural significance associated with science or literature. Examples of such cultural units can be “Plato,” “Descartes,” “Marx,” “Galileo,” “Darwin,” “Einstein,” “Giotto,” “Michelangelo,” and “Renoir.” They can also be concepts such as the genetic code, biological evolution, the evolution of the nervous system, the prebiotic evolution of macromolecules, the Florentine School of painting, the Elizabethan Theater, Impressionism, etc. More precisely, the units of cultural signification implied in these relationships are considered first as cultural “references”. These units will be said to be “idealized” because, as known references, they meet certain norms which happen to have been established inside a certain cultural framework (scientific or other kinds of culture). We will see that the ideometric relationships connecting such idealized elements create, in a formal way, linguistic relationships of signification connecting language units (for example morphemes or monemes) with the objects they signify. However, ideometry is not a language in the usual sense of the word. It consists, rather, of a certain structure of differences which reproduce certain formal characteristics of a linguistic structure.

The name “ideometry” was formed from two Greek words: idea, which means form or appearance; and metron, which means measure, space, proportion, verse, meter. “Ideometry” thus literally means the “measure of ideas as forms”; here, the word “measure” is used in its original sense, meaning “proportion,” that is to say, an idealized relationship between a set and its elements or parts, or a relationship between these elements and parts.

Although ideometric relationships first appear to be like analogies, they are not ordinary analogies. On the one hand, they are founded on a relation of similarity but, on the other, they are founded on an alterity relation which is at least as essential. For instance, I will establish an ideometric relationship between, on the one hand, articulate and symbolic human language and, on the other hand, a biological kind of language which is to be associated to the “genetic code” and which enables “information” to be encoded in the DNA of living beings. In this correspondence of one type of language with another, we must acknowledge a profound similarity based on several precise features of resemblance, as well as an equally profound alterity that no scientist should neglect if he does not want to fall into confusion.

2:	THE CONCEPT OF COMPLETE STRUCTURE

The concept of complete structure will be useful as a way of introducing the ideometric approach to the integration of knowledge and the establishment of special correspondences across different scientific fields. Complete structures are transdisciplinary and meaningful. They represent entities that play a fundamental role in contemporary science. The definition of this transdisciplinary concept is relatively simple to state.

Definition of a Complete Structure

By definition, a complete structure is a constitutive unit of a whole range of reality. The expression “range of reality” must be taken here to mean a general domain of objects in a science. This definition is expressly very general because of its transdisciplinary characteristic.

Thus, for example, the atom is the constitutive unit of all physical objects, whether we are talking about a star, a planet, a gaseous nebula or smaller objects such as rocks or molecules. Space, time or force fields are significant entities in physics but they are not generally called physical objects. These can be located and are made up of something “material”. Therefore, the atom is a particular case of a complete structure.

The cell is such a unit, this time within the biological domain. For it is the constitutive unit of all living beings, whether they be simple or complex. Microbes, as well as large vertebrates, are made up of cells.

In the same way, a human being is a complete structure, if it is understood as an individual or personal entity. The human being is a constitutive unit of all human societies or cultures, whether they form a family, village, city, nation or civilization.

The atom, the cell and the human being are all known cases of complete structures in the reality studied by the sciences. That is why these three entities together can be used to define the de facto concept of complete structure. This is an extensive definition of the concept rather than a comprehensive one.

Remarkable Characteristics of Complete Structures

The existence of these three kinds of complete structures is in itself a remarkable fact which, as such, remains unexplained in contemporary science. The fact that the atom, the cell and the human being appear as three distinct levels of a more and more embodying complexity has been explained by neither physics, biology nor anthropology (or social science, if one prefers). These three kinds of entities play a fundamental role in their respective domains. Moreover, they have certain additional common characteristics which emphasize what is remarkable in each.

In every known case of a complete structure, there is a very problematic substructure. Both the origin and the conceptual complexity of this substructure raise many difficulties in the scientific discipline concerned.

Thus the atom comprises a remarkable substructure known as the “nucleus”. This is composed of particles such as neutrons and protons, which are bound together by nuclear forces. Research into the characteristics of these particles and forces is of prime importance for the whole of contemporary science, although the focus is generally on nuclear and particle physics. What is the exact relation between these forces and the other known forces in physics, such as electromagnetic forces and gravitational interaction? Is it possible to find a genuinely unitary theory? Can one determine the basic reason why these particles exist and why they have such characteristics? These are among the most disconcerting questions raised by contemporary science.

In biology, the cell possesses a substructure that is problematic for contemporary science. Because the cell comprises a nucleus, it plays a major role in the functioning of the genetic code.³ Many fundamental problems have to do with the specific molecular structure of DNA. As a problematic substructure of the cell, this can be conceptually correlated with the elementary particles of nuclear physics. How did DNA, which is a self-replicating macromolecule, take form as life emerged on the Earth? Another fundamental question concerns the exact functioning of the genetic code itself and of the respective parts played by the nucleus and the remainder of the cell in this functioning.

Accordingly, contemporary science sees the human being as having a highly problematic substructure, that of the human brain. How did this take form? How did it emerge from the less complex animal nervous systems? How exactly does the human brain function? These questions along with the preceding questions about the atomic nucleus and the genetic code have provided the basis for an entire research program.

The expression, “complete structure,” which has been used here to designate three kinds of very different structures, means that, in these three cases, the structure appears as a highly perfected system with regard to its efficiency and its actual universality. There is a kind of misunderstood “perfection” of the respective funtionings of these structures, that is to say, there is a structural and functional completeness in them.

We will conclude this section with Table 1, giving an overview of the complete structures.

Table 1 The Complete Structures

	Complete Structure	Problematic Substructure
Physics	atom	nucleus
Biology	cell	DNA
Anthropology	human being	human brain
…	…	…^4

3:	THE CONCEPT OF ALTERITY

The new concept of alterity will now be introduced.⁵ Alterity, in this case, must be understood as being a very strong sense of difference. It is called “anti-equivalent alterity” in accordance with the formal properties that define it.

To begin with, let us consider the formal properties of equivalence in mathematics. A relation r(A, B) is called a “relation of equivalence” in a domain of objects designated by A, B, C,… if and only if it has the following three properties:

reflexivity	(for all A, r(A, A) is true),
symmetry	(for all A and all B, if r(A, B) is true, then r(B, A) is true),
transitivity	(for all A, all B and all C, if r(A, B) and r(B, C) are true, then r(A, C) is true).

These three properties of equivalence in mathematics can define equivalence in general. In fact, they denote many objects belonging to one class. They also state that these objects are identical to one another. The relation of equality (A = B) is a particular case of this.

My approach i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Introduction to the Series
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Ideometry
• 2 The Concept of Complete Structure
• 3 The Concept of Alterity
• 4 The Ideometric Sequence of Physics-Biology-Anthropology
• 5 The Mind of Society: From Minsky to Teilhard de Chardin
• 6 The Physiology of Society
• 7 The Consciousness of Society
• 8 The Development of Science as the Growing Self-consciousness of Society
• Conclusion The Auto-organization of Ideas: Toward an Impending Emergence
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index