This is the third article in a series discussing the “curse of the straight line”, which is shorthand for the polycrisis of modernity and the industrial civilization.
We actually 'knew' all the Science we needed to be a successful species for countless millennia, before the horrors that have followed the Dawn of Civilization. But if our success wasn't enough to convince us, now more and more Science is finding evidence that this is true, that so-called 'primitive' people actually had regenerative agricultural practices, for instance.
“the love of money is the root of all evil” Sadly true! Short term profit and short term efficiencies determine what happen along with fantasies of transhumanism and endless tech innovation. For instance AI is driven by the needs of corporations, militaries, and governments for profit, power, control, competition. The Empire State Building was designed and built with no use of computers at all, let alone AI.
I like Aristotle’s definition of techne, the root word for technology, “a state involving true reason concerned with production”. He included it in his list of the five virtues of the intellect. Our techne is not often guided by true complete reason, instead by partial and even poisoned reasoning. We already have much if not most of the knowledge and techne needed to make a good world but it is sidelined.
Techology in its basic meaning is capabity to do something, tasks. That would include knowledge, skills,organisations and tools. The dominant technology we live under is capitalism which is set up to accumulate profit to distribute to shareholders.
For the task of living equitably, peacefully and in harmony with the living earth, capitalism, along with fossil transport and IT are shit.
Science when captured by capitalism becomes shit at helping the above tasks and gets roped in to help rich people earn money.
Berzelius, Polhem, Linnea etc started the Academy of Science to help with the second task, not the first. They would have been on the front line of Scientists Rebellion. (Steve Hinton)
The title of this article is a nice paradox - will science and technology save us... from our use of science and technology!
But of course neither science (method to acquire knowledge) nor technology (tools) is the problem. Humans have been doing something of that sort ever since the dawn of our species. Building up knowledge and tools to transform landscapes using fire, seed dispersal and eradication of large fauna are as ancient as us.
What has changed is the gradual accretion of power through continually improved knowledge and tools. With that power comes the ability to change the environment on a planetary scale. The old Hemingway quote about bankruptcy comes to mind - gradually then suddenly. We spent millenia gradually improving our knowledge and skills, then around 1600 it took off exponentially.
To my mind the key change is human beliefs about our place in the world.
Before agriculture humans learned that excessive burning and killing reduced the carrying capacity of the land. Carrying capacity could be increased again by voluntary restraint and good management, which then became socially embedded as a belief system. After agriculture the same occurred for overuse and extraction of the local ecology. Some agricultural societies became long-lived through sustainable practice (China, Egypt), many others failed.
The explosion of science and technology from around 1600 coincided with Western beliefs about Man's divinely granted dominion over Nature and the capitalist system. Capitalism emerged to profit from trade and resource extraction, using commodity markets and shareholding to open up a flood of new ventures. If profits are based on extraction from Nature, then the question becomes - how long before it's all used up?
In the 19th century extraction took on an industrial scale, with some disastrous regional effects (N American bison, passenger pigeon, whales, etc), serving notice of intent to consume the whole world. After WW2 the means to do that efficiently became available and the consumption frenzy has now been underway for many decades.
Whether humanity has any agency to solve this problem is doubtful. The scale of the human enterprise is too great, too entangled in the high-tech machinery of its life support system, and too fragmented into competing self-interested groups. If we can, then it will be in the same way that earlier societies reached an equilibrium with their ecologies - behavioural adjustment and restraint based on careful observation of what works. Clearly capitalism in all its forms would be replaced with an intentional system for resource management and allocation.
Should we achieve an equilibrium world, then it seems likely that science and technology can continue to be developed forever. But the emphasis will likely swing towards living systems and away from high energy physical systems.
We actually 'knew' all the Science we needed to be a successful species for countless millennia, before the horrors that have followed the Dawn of Civilization. But if our success wasn't enough to convince us, now more and more Science is finding evidence that this is true, that so-called 'primitive' people actually had regenerative agricultural practices, for instance.
“the love of money is the root of all evil” Sadly true! Short term profit and short term efficiencies determine what happen along with fantasies of transhumanism and endless tech innovation. For instance AI is driven by the needs of corporations, militaries, and governments for profit, power, control, competition. The Empire State Building was designed and built with no use of computers at all, let alone AI.
I like Aristotle’s definition of techne, the root word for technology, “a state involving true reason concerned with production”. He included it in his list of the five virtues of the intellect. Our techne is not often guided by true complete reason, instead by partial and even poisoned reasoning. We already have much if not most of the knowledge and techne needed to make a good world but it is sidelined.
Techology in its basic meaning is capabity to do something, tasks. That would include knowledge, skills,organisations and tools. The dominant technology we live under is capitalism which is set up to accumulate profit to distribute to shareholders.
For the task of living equitably, peacefully and in harmony with the living earth, capitalism, along with fossil transport and IT are shit.
Science when captured by capitalism becomes shit at helping the above tasks and gets roped in to help rich people earn money.
Berzelius, Polhem, Linnea etc started the Academy of Science to help with the second task, not the first. They would have been on the front line of Scientists Rebellion. (Steve Hinton)
The title of this article is a nice paradox - will science and technology save us... from our use of science and technology!
But of course neither science (method to acquire knowledge) nor technology (tools) is the problem. Humans have been doing something of that sort ever since the dawn of our species. Building up knowledge and tools to transform landscapes using fire, seed dispersal and eradication of large fauna are as ancient as us.
What has changed is the gradual accretion of power through continually improved knowledge and tools. With that power comes the ability to change the environment on a planetary scale. The old Hemingway quote about bankruptcy comes to mind - gradually then suddenly. We spent millenia gradually improving our knowledge and skills, then around 1600 it took off exponentially.
To my mind the key change is human beliefs about our place in the world.
Before agriculture humans learned that excessive burning and killing reduced the carrying capacity of the land. Carrying capacity could be increased again by voluntary restraint and good management, which then became socially embedded as a belief system. After agriculture the same occurred for overuse and extraction of the local ecology. Some agricultural societies became long-lived through sustainable practice (China, Egypt), many others failed.
The explosion of science and technology from around 1600 coincided with Western beliefs about Man's divinely granted dominion over Nature and the capitalist system. Capitalism emerged to profit from trade and resource extraction, using commodity markets and shareholding to open up a flood of new ventures. If profits are based on extraction from Nature, then the question becomes - how long before it's all used up?
In the 19th century extraction took on an industrial scale, with some disastrous regional effects (N American bison, passenger pigeon, whales, etc), serving notice of intent to consume the whole world. After WW2 the means to do that efficiently became available and the consumption frenzy has now been underway for many decades.
Whether humanity has any agency to solve this problem is doubtful. The scale of the human enterprise is too great, too entangled in the high-tech machinery of its life support system, and too fragmented into competing self-interested groups. If we can, then it will be in the same way that earlier societies reached an equilibrium with their ecologies - behavioural adjustment and restraint based on careful observation of what works. Clearly capitalism in all its forms would be replaced with an intentional system for resource management and allocation.
Should we achieve an equilibrium world, then it seems likely that science and technology can continue to be developed forever. But the emphasis will likely swing towards living systems and away from high energy physical systems.
No.