via ufblog.net
I recurring theme in my reading lately (such as, Beniger‘s The Control Revolution, Horkheimer‘s Eclipse of Reason, and Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics work) is the problem of two ways of reconciling explanations of how-things-came-to-be:
- Natural selection. Here a number of autonomous, uncoordinated agents with some exogenously given variability encounter obstacles that limit their reproduction or survival. The fittest survive. Adaptation is due to random exploration at the level of the exogenous specification of the agent, if at all. In unconstrained cases, randomness rules and there is no logic to reality.
- Purpose. Here there is a teleological explanation based on a goal some agent has “in mind”. The goal is coupled with a controlling mechanism that influences or steers outcomes towards that goal. Adaptation is part of the endogenous process of agency itself.
Reconciling these two kinds of description is not easy. A point Beniger makes is that…
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Deterritorial Investigations 