The Ghost in the Machine (8 page)

 

 

'Active speech' (in contrast to 'passive speech', i.e., listening)
consists in the stepwise elaboration, articulation, concretisation,
of originally inarticulate generalised intents. The branching of the
tree symbolises this step-by-step, hierarchic process of spelling out
the implicit idea in explicit terms, of converting the potentialities of
an idea into the actual motion-patterns of the vocal chords. The process
has been compared to the development of the embryo: the fertilised egg
contains all the potentialities of the future individual; these are then
'spelled out' in successive stages of differentiation. It could also
be compared to the way a military command is executed: the generalised
order 'Eighth Army will advance in direction of Tobruk', issued from
the apex of the hierarchy, is concretised in more detail at each of
the lower echelons. Furthermore we shall see that the exercise of any
skilled action, whether instinctive, like the nest-building of birds,
or acquired, as most human skills are, follows the same pattern of
spelling out a 'roughed-in' command by a hierarchic sequence of steps.

 

 

The next point to note is that each step in our imaginary lecturer's
progress was governed by
fixed rules
, which, however, leave room
for
flexible strategies
, guided by
feedbacks
. On the highest
levels operate the rather esoteric rules of academic discourse; on the
next lower level the rules of generating grammatically correct sentences;
lastly, the rules which govern the activities of the vocal chords. But on
each level there is a variety of strategic choices: from the selection and
ordering of the material, through the choice of metaphors and adjectives,
down to the variety of possible intonations of individual vowels.*

 

* Once more it is interesting to note the intense reluctance of
academic psychologists -- even those who have outgrown the
cruder forms of S-R theory -- to come to grips with reality.
Thus Professor G. Miller writes in an article on psycholinguistics:
'As psychologists have learnt to appreciate the complexities of
language, the prospect of reducing it to the laws of behaviour
so carefully studied in lower animals has grown increasingly
remote. We have been forced more and more into a position that
non-psychologists probably take for granted, namely, that language
is rule-governed behaviour characterised by enormous flexibility
and freedom of choice. Obvious as this conclusion may seem, it has
important implications for any scientific theory of language.
If rules involve the concepts of right and wrong, they introduce
a normative aspect that has always been avoided in the natural
sciences. . . . To admit that language follows rules seems to
put it outside the range of phenomena accessible to scientific
investigation'. [14]  What a very odd notion of the purpose and
methods of 'scientific investigation'!

 

When we speak of fixed rules and flexible strategies, it is important
to make a further distinction between these two factors. The
rules
on every level function more or less automatically, i.e., unconsciously,
or at least pre-consciously in the twilight zones of awareness, whereas
the
strategic choices
are mostly aided by the bright beam of focal
consciousness. The machinery which canalises inarticulate thought into
grammatically correct channels operates hidden from sight; so does the
machinery which ensures the correct innervation of the vocal tracts, and
also the machinery which controls the logic of 'commonsense' reasoning,
and our habits of thought. We hardly ever bother to have a look at these
silent machineries, and even if we try, we are unable to describe their
modes of operation, unable to define the rules embodied in them; and yet
these are the rules of language and thought which we blindly obey. If
they contain hidden axioms and built-in prejudices -- so much the worse
for us. But at least we know that those rules which both discipline and
distort thinking are only binding for the individual who acquired them,
and subject to historical change.

 

 

Nevertheless, as far as the individual is concerned, his language and
thought are rule-governed, and to that extent determined by automatisms
beyond conscious control. But only to that extent. The rules which
govern a game like chess or bridge do not exhaust its possibilities, but
leave the player at practically each step with a number of strategical
choices. These choices, of course, are also determined by considerations
of a higher order -- but the emphasis is on 'higher order'. Each choice
is 'free' in the sense of not being determined by the rules of the game
itself, but by a different order of 'strategic precepts' on a higher
level of the hierarchy; and these precepts have an even larger margin
ofindeterminacy. We are once more in an infinite regress -- comparable
to the endless types of ambiguities of language, each of which can only
be resolved by reference to the next higher level of the open-ended
hierarchy. This line of argument evidently leads to the problem of freedom
of choice, to be further discussed in
Chapter XIV
.

 

 

To conclude, let me revert once more to that Behaviourist lecturer who
turns his mouth loose and goes to sleep. I have compared him to a bar
pianist reeling off a popular tune. In both cases a single command from
a higher level of the hierarchy 'triggers off' a pre-set, more or less
automatised performance. The process is comparable to pressing a button
on a jukebox. The pianist merely has to say to himself: 'La Cucaracha'
or 'Pop goes the Weasel', and let his fingers look after the rest. But
even in this routine he is not simply unfolding an S-R chain, where
depressing one piano key acts as a stimulus to depress the next. For, as
a skilled bar pianist, he is perfectly capable, again at a single trigger
command, of transposing the whole piece from C Major into B Flat Major,
where the keys and intervals form
a totally different chain
. The fixed
'rule of the game' in this case is represented by the melodic pattern;
the scale -- and the rhythm, phrasing, syncopation, etc. -- are again
a matter of flexible strategies.

 

 

The 'spelling out' of an implicit command in explicit terms often involves
such trigger-releaser operations, where a relatively simple command from
'higher quarters' activates complex, preset action-patterns. These,
however, are not rigid automatisms, but flexible patterns offering a
variety of alternative choices. To shake hands, to light a cigarette,
to pick up a pencil, are routines often performed quite unconsciously
and mechanically, but also capable of infinite variations. I would only
have to press a single mental button to continue writing this page in
French -- or Hungarian; but that does not necessarily mean that I am to
be regarded as a jukebox.

 

 

 

 

 

III

 

 

THE HOLON

 

I ask the reader to remember that what is most obvious may be most
worth of analysis. Fertile vistas may open out when commonplace
facts are examined from afresh point of view.
L.L. Whyte

 

The concept of hierarchic order occupies a central place in this book, and
lest the reader should think that I am riding a private hobby horse, let
me reassure him that this concept has a long and respectable ancestry. So
much so, that defenders of orthodoxy are inclined to dismiss it as 'old
hat' -- and often in the same breath to deny its validity. Yet I hope
to show as we go along that this old hat, handled with some affection,
can produce lively rabbits.*

 

* More than thirty years ago, Needham wrote: 'Whatever the nature of
organising relations may be, they form the central problem of
biology, and biology will be fruitful in the future only if this is
recognised. The hierarchy of relations, from the molecular structure
of carbon compounds to the equilibrium of species and ecological
wholes, will perhaps be the leading idea of the future'. [1] Yet
the word 'hierarchy' does not even appear in the index of most
modern textbooks of psychology or biology.

 

 

The Parable of the Two Watchmakers

 

 

Let me start with a parable. I owe it to Professor H.A. Simon, designer
of logic computers and chess-playing machines, but I have taken the
liberty of elaborating on it. [2]

 

 

There were once two Swiss watchmakers named Bios and Mekhos, who
made very free and expensive watches. Their names may sound a little
strange, but their fathers had a smattering of Greek and were fond of
riddles. Although their watches were in equal demand, Bios prospered,
while Mekhos just struggled along; in the end he had to close his shop
and take a job as a mechanic with Bios. The people in the town argued
for a long time over the reasons for this development and each had a
different theory to offer, until the true explanation leaked out and
proved to be both simple and surprising.

 

 

The watches they made consisted of about one thousand parts each, but the
two rivals had used different methods to put them together. Mekhos had
assembled his watches bit by bit -- rather like making a mosaic floor
out of small coloured stones. Thus each time when he was disturbed in
his work and had to put down a partly assembled watch, it fell to pieces
and he had to start again from scratch.

 

 

Bios, on the other hand, had designed a method of making watches by
constructing, for a start, subassemblies of about ten components, each of
which held together as an independent unit. Ten of these subassemblies
could then be fitted together into a subsystem of a higher order; and
ten of these subsystems constituted the whole watch. This method proved
to have two immense advantages.

 

 

In the first place, each time there was an interruption or a disturbance,
and Bios had to put down, or even drop, the watch he was working on,
it did not decompose into its elementary bits; instead of starting all
over again, he merely had to reassemble that particular subassembly on
which he was working at the time; so that at worst (if the disturbance
came when he had nearly finished the sub-assembly in hand) he had to
repeat nine assembling operations, and at best none at all. Now it is
easy to show mathematically that if a watch consists of a thousand bits,
and if some disturbance occurs at an average of once in every hundred
assembling operations -- then Mekhos will take four thousand times
longer to assemble a watch than Bios. Instead of a single day, it will
take him eleven years. And if for mechanical bits, we substitute amino
acids, protein molecules, organelles, and so on, the ratio between the
time-scales becomes astronomical; some calculations [3] indicate that
the whole lifetime of the earth would be insufficient for producing even
an amoeba -- unless he becomes converted to Bios' method and proceeds
hierarchically, from simple sub-assemblies to more complex ones. Simon
concludes: 'Complex systems will evolve from simple systems much more
rapidly if there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not. The
resulting complex forms in the former case will be hierarchic. We have
only to turn the argument around to explain the observed predominance
of hierarchies among the complex systems Nature presents to us. Among
possible complex forms, hierarchies are the ones that have the time to
evolve.' [4]

 

 

A second advantage of Bios' method is of course that the finished
product will be incomparably more resistant to damage, and much easier
to maintain, regulate and repair, than Mekhos' unstable mosaic of atomic
bits. We do not know what forms of life have evolved on other planets
in the universe, but we can safely assume that
wherever there is life,
it must be hierarchically organised
.

 

 

 

Enter Janus

 

 

If we look at any form of social organisation with some degree of
coherence and stability, from insect state to Pentagon, we shall find that
it is hierarchically ordered. The same is true of the structure of living
organisms and their ways of functioning -- from instinctive behaviour to
the sophisticated skills of piano-playing and talking. And it is equally
true of the processes of becoming -- phylogeny, ontogeny, the acquisition
of knowledge. However, if the branching tree is to represent more than
a superficial analogy, there must be certain principles or laws which
apply to all levels of a given hierarchy, and to all the varied types of
hierarchy just mentioned -- in other words, which define the meaning of
'hierarchic order'. In the pages that follow I shall outline several
of these principles. They may at first sight look a little abstract,
yet taken together, they shed a new light on some old problems.

 

 

The first universal characteristic of hierarchies is the relativity, and
indeed ambiguity, of the terms 'part' and 'whole' when applied to any of
the sub-assemblies. Again it is the very obviousness of this feature which
makes us overlook its implications. A 'part', as we generally use the
word, means something fragmentary and incomplete, which by itself would
have no legitimate existence. On the other hand, a 'whole' is considered
as something complete in itself which needs no further explanation. But
'wholes' and 'parts' in this absolute sense just do not exist anywhere
,
either in the domain of living organisms or of social organisations. What
we find are intermediary structures on a series of levels in an ascending
order of complexity: sub-wholes which display, according to the way
you look at them, some of the characteristics commonly attributed to
wholes and some of the characteristics commonly attributed to parts. We
have seen the impossibility of the task of chopping up speech into
elementary atoms or units, either on the phonetic or on the syntactic
level. Phonemes, words, phrases, are wholes in their own right, but
parts of a larger unit; so are cells, tissues, organs; families, clans,
tribes. The members of a hierarchy, like the Roman god Janus, all have
two faces looking in opposite directions: the face turned towards the
subordinate levels is that of a self-contained whole; the face turned
upward towards the apex, that of a dependent part. One is the face of
the master, the other the face of the servant. This