Page 236 - The Black Box Book

B A B Y L O N O F E X P E R T S
When we think of sustainable approaches, some deeper questions
about our society arise. Natural resources are depleted by the extractive
consumption economy, but there is undeniably a cultural dimension of
unsustainability relating to behaviors, social conventions, institutions,
values, worldviews, and epistemological bases. (Kagan, 2013, p. 24)
In our society, vertical, spiritual, substantive rationality that fostered critical
reflection was supplanted by sensoric, hyper-consumerist rationality and
technologist effectivity. Historical developments of science has constituted
a worldview that is atomistic and individualistic. Things are distinct and
measurable material entities, people are separated from each other and
from their environment. Industrial and postindustrial western societies
are the paradigms of economic progress and development. However, not
only philosophers suggest that there might be something wrong with
the modernist scientific thought and its application. Erwin Laszlo points
out that this atomistic view, inherited from the modern scientific method,
has its roots in the fragmentation of our understanding. (Laszlo, 1996,
p. 33) An advocate of transdisciplinary thinking, Basarab Nicolescu , re-
fers to it as a ’paradigm of simplicity’, and contends that it is based on
the binary thinking produced by classical logic and the rigid norms of
truth in science, thanks to which “discipline can pretend to contain all
knowledge within its own field entirely”. (Nicolescu, 2002, p. 33)
During the pandemic of Covid-19 disease we could observe how the
impervious boundaries of specializations limited any expert discussion.
Journalists were often met with evasive answers from experts like: “I am
a clinician, you have to ask epidemiologist”, “I am an epidemiologist,
you have to ask immunologist”, “I am an immunologist you have to ask
vaccinologist” and so on. Even the scholars of environmental subdisci-
plines, that just operate on varied scales, e.g., population biology and
ecosystem ecology, were often not able to communicate with each other.
(Kuneš, 2020, p. 215)
Nicolescu describes this situation of narrow specialization of human
knowledge as Babelisation:
“The decision-maker becomes increasingly more incompetent
regardless of his or her intention […] even a group comprised of
the best specialists from all the various disciplines would only be
able to develop a generalized incompetence, for the simple reason
that the sum total of competencies is not competence: on technical
level, the intersection between different domains of knowledge is an
empty ensemble.” (Nicolescu, 2002, p. 42)
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He also sees the technology as a main driver force of the atomiza-
tion of science and claims that the awaited benefits of specializations of
disciplines turned to opposite consequences: “a multischizoid, complex
reality has replaced what should have been the simple one-dimensional
reality of classical thought”. (Nicolescu, 2002, p. 37)
Despite all the scientific discoveries and knowledge, we’ve seen
the growth of anti-scientific worldview. The number of Flat Earthers, re-
jecting any fact or rational argument, the Q-anon and other conspiracy
theories that accumulated followers by offering easy answers to complex
problems. What science cannot explain is replaced by magical thinking
and slippery logic that home on affective concerns and behaviors. Q-anon
snowballed this way other social groups, being interested in holistic think-
ing, yoga, or wellness. Undermoderated social platforms provided by global
corporations just took advantage of situation they created themselves,
and amplify affect and fear to monetize on, while slipping out of any social
responsibility.
We should learn from this situation on social media while searching
for transdisciplinary solutions for science suffering from ‘Babelisation’ and
to work for a more consistent, socially interconnected communication
networks set up to ensure that exclusive specialized knowledge has to
be followed by additional levels of inclusive public discourse. The same
goal is necessary when the interfaces of public cultural repositories are
designed.
In Art and Sustainability, Sacha Kagan (Kagan, 2013, p. 37) describes
how ‘Technological System’, e.g., efficient and rational implementation
of technology and technocratic decisions throughout the whole society,
is deeply rooted in positivism of Enlightenment accepts only one com-
mon logic that is based on representation by numbers, while anything
escaping this reasoning is seen as a mere illusion. The pure reason of
positivists science is driving the technical progress, and thus it is re-
quired to be free of any mythical thought and to become an universal
instrument in all-encompassing economical apparatus. Universal robots
in Karel Čapek’s dystopic play R. U. R., Rossum’s Universal Robots (1921)
illustrated this idea by being designed to produce anything ‘ad infinitum’,
without rising any ethical or moral questions. Niklas Luhman, system
sociologist, remarks:
“Technological progress leads to ecological disasters, which can-
not be avoided however only through more advance technological
progress and thus at the price of an even greater dependency of
society to technology.” (Luhmann, 1999, p. 47)
On the contrary, Kagan explains, the art does not fit into this system of the
‘most efficient method’ and artists as dreamers are part of quite opposite
invention of 19th century – subjectivity and individualism of Romanticism.
‘Romantic Order’ is where all intuition, imagination, attention to feelings
and admiration of nature reside. Artists in Romantic Order are gifted to
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