Complexity and inconsistency

If we follow Spencer’s above-mentioned thought in ‘Progress: Its Law and Cause’, we come very close to what Murray Gell-Mann thinks:

Complex adaptive systems include a human child learning his or her native language, a strain of bacteria becoming resistant to an antibiotic, the scientific community testing out new theories, an artist getting a creative idea, a society developing new customs or adopting a new set of superstitions, a computer programmed to evolve new strategies for winning at chess, and the human race evolving ways of living in greater harmony with itself and with the other organisms that share the planet Earth (Gell-Mann 2002, 9).

Spencer and Gell-Mann share the optimism about the direction of the complex adaptive systems, and yet Gell-Mann makes a point of rejecting social Darwinism (ibid, 366). It seems that Plato is not alone when he is ‘always concerned to advocate views that will make people what he thinks virtuous’, or when ‘he is hardly ever intellectually honest, because he allows himself to judge doctrines by their social consequences’, or when ‘he pretends to follow the argument and to be judging by purely theoretical standards, when in fact he is twisting the discussion so as to lead to a virtuous result’ (Russell 1996, 84). It is a pity, if political correctness makes us unable to see the core of Spencer’s thought, which is tantamount to what researchers do when they approach human brain as a system following avalanche dynamics. None of them claims that human brain is snow or that it ought to act like an avalanche.

They simply compare theoretical models of avalanche dynamics with observations made of actual human brains, and if the patterns correlate, avalanche dynamics may be an appropriate description of actual brain activity (Poil et al. 2008; Kitzbichler et al. 2009). Distinguishing scientific models from ontological claims seems to be difficult. Equally difficult is practising logical consistency. Spencer was no exception:

Obviously, in this resolute attack ‘on the coming slavery’ Spencer could not appeal simply to the automatic working-out of any law of evolution. His words are clearly inspired by a passionate conviction in the value of liberty and initiative, a conviction which reflected the character and temperament of a man who had never at any period of his life been inclined to bow before constituted authority simply because it was authority (Copleston 1966, 134).

Spencer was not a consistent evolutionist. Had he been, he would not have hung to the old distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’. If we are part of nature, our manufactures are equally natural as volcanic activity and weather conditions. If we are part of nature, ‘artificially enforced’ is indistinguishable from ‘natural necessity’ (Spencer 1885a, 19). Ironically, Spencer’s popularity was in inverted ratio to his logical consistency. He “was in his day acceptable in that he was able to retain so many attitudes, values and precepts from his ancestral faith and yet reject in his agnosticism both the revelation and the theology of that faith” (Macrae 1969, 37). He was acceptable, because he committed the very sin he condemned in others; after rejecting all the rest of the ancient religion, he strenuously defended last remnants of it (Spencer 1891a, 7). On the other hand, he was unacceptable, because he did not commit this inconsistency often enough. He believed in “the open secret, that there can be no social phenomena but what, if we analyse them to the bottom, bring us down to the laws of life” (Spencer 1885c, 95). If society is not a ‘manufacture’

but a ‘growth’, it follows the laws of life, one of which is “the law that a creature not energetic enough to maintain itself must die” (Spencer 1885a, 19; 1885b, 74).

The beneficial results of the survival of the fittest, prove to be immeasurably greater than those above [quoted from Social Statics]

indicated. The process of “natural selection,” as Mr Darwin called it, cooperating with a tendency to variation and to inheritance of variations, he has shown to be a chief cause […] of that evolution through which all living things, beginning with the lowest and diverging and rediverging as they evolved, have reached their present degrees of organization and adaptation to their modes of life (Spencer 1885b, 68–9).

Quite obviously, then, interfering with these laws is tampering with nature – unless, of course, human beings are part of nature and whatever we do is as natural as wind and rain. A human society may decide to do all it can “to further survival of the unfittest” (ibid, 69). By Spencer’s own standards this will just change what is deemed fittest. If human beings and their societies are part of nature, whatever human beings and their societies do is natural. They are part of the environment, the surroundings, the circumstances in which the adaptation happens. The fittest in those particular circumstances will survive.

If the circumstances partially created by us in our societies are unsustainable,

they will either change or perish – like they did in the European socialist countries and appear to be doing, albeit slowly, in Cuba, and metamorphosing into something new in China. Our present age of globalisation is an excellent test of a variety of human societies. We have Anglo-Saxon liberal democracies, European welfare-states, transition economies in former developing and socialist countries, and developing countries in an emerging competition.

Time will tell which societies will be the most adaptive ones.

If we apply Spencer’s phrase about the survival of the fittest as a description of everything that actually happens in the world, it is irrelevant and meaningless, whether Spencerianism preceded Darwinism in the history of science. If Darwin was on the whole more acceptable than Spencer, if he was better adapted to the scientific and social environment by being more palatable to his contemporaries and successors, he was duly given priority. He deserved priority by being fitter. As a scientific model that focuses on the actual world and its workings Spencerianism seems very applicable. A good scientific model contains the relevant features of the reality so framed that they enable description and possibly prediction of what is empirically observed. As noted above, the human brain may not in fact follow avalanche dynamics, but if avalanche dynamics is the best available description of the observed phenomena and offers best possibilities for predicting future phenomena, avalanche dynamics deserves to be the model applied in brain research.

Nevertheless, science is a human endeavour, and the models applied are chosen by the scientists, who, as noted above, are just human beings with all sorts of non-scientific preferences. If they feel constant unease with a model, be it because it appears ‘inhuman’ or ‘politically incorrect’ or for any other reason, they will quite probably look for another model instead. Moreover, what the general public thinks about the models applied in scientific research may in the future be ever more relevant. Science has an ever-changing relation with the general public, be it funded by private people, or business, or by government.

Let us repeat our question: I know they say they are evolutionists, but have you ever met one? In evolutionary theory survival is by definition the only criterion of success. The point, amount, and nature of inconsistency is relevant and to be evaluated only according to its effect on the survival of the individual practising it. Spencer may have been inconsistent in his opposition to slavery and defence of liberty, but he was probably aware of his inconsistency: “The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world – knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at – well; if not – well also; though not so well”

(Spencer 1867, 123, emphasis in the original). He spread his ‘memes’ around and believed that every action has several influences, many of them unanticipated and unintended. Survival of the fittest may have little to do with logical abilities and everything to do with finding an incentive to do anything at all, with finding a reason to continue life – ‘that anything has value at all and is motivating at all’ (Suhler & Churchland 2011, 48, emphasis in the

original). These incentives are neither spawned nor limited by logic. They are only limited by the reciprocity that governs our social relations. One’s incentives have to be tolerated by others. If one’s sole incentive is something that no one else tolerates, one is left without vital social support.

2.2.5 CONSTRUCTAL LAW – CONNECTING PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY