Abstract
This chapter proposes ways in which transhumanist emergent technologies can avoid the cybernetic fate that will otherwise likely meet. Current advances in materials research, the vanishing of vitalist preconceptions and changes in scientific practice, can all form the loci where the cybernetic impetus find fertile ground. Issues of scientific modeling can find a more positive environment: empirically, due to advances both in nanotechnology and supercomputer simulation; epistemologically, due to later scientific attitudes toward these “simulations”. Crippling questions of differentiation between what is natural/alive and what is not, might be trivialized due to advances in “synthetic biology” and ALife. These developments, coupled with the new ways in which we regard their methodologies and outcomes, can spell a unique opportunity for the cybernetic agenda to flourish this time.
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Notes
- 1.
Feynman 1960.
- 2.
Drexler 1986.
- 3.
Quantum effects, however, are part and parcel of the whole nanoscale somewhat “exotic” halo. Within the threshold of 1–100 nanometers, the effects pertaining to the so-called “quantum realm” are still present, and thus, materials tend to behave in a way that is absent at the macro-level of reality (e.g., an otherwise inert material becomes conductive, etc.). For an addressing of the quantum-related problems in nanoscale research, see Drexler’s “An Open Letter to Richard Smalley” in Drexler 1986, Appendix.
- 4.
The prefix “nano-” for these matters was not yet coined at the time (1960s), so Feynman did not use it.
- 5.
The awarded scientists were the German Gerd Binnig and the Swiss Heinrich Röhrer (Nobelprize.org 2014a).
- 6.
Eigler and Schweizer 1990.
- 7.
Chapter 9, Section “Cybernetics 2.0: The Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Convergence”
- 8.
European Commission 2004b.
- 9.
Royal Academy of Engineering 2004.
- 10.
A fullerene—or “buckyball”—is a spherical carbon molecule.
- 11.
The nano vehicle lacked an engine, and thus, it was not a car in the full sense of the word (a.k.a., a machine with four wheels, self-propelled by a motor) (Shirai et al. 2005).
- 12.
The scientists awarded are the French Jean-Pierre Sauvage, the Dutch Fraser Stoddart and the Scottish Ben Feringa (Nobelprize.org 2014b).
- 13.
Rosenblueth and Wiener 1945, p. 320.
- 14.
Since the machinery of nature found a way to do it, it is evidently feasible: Recall the exchange between Ashby and Pitts on this type of reasoning (Chapter 6, Section “The Macy Presentation: Keeping Cybernetics Honest”).
- 15.
Chapter 6, Section “William Ross Ashby’s Nature-machine Equalization”.
- 16.
National Nanotechnology Initiative (nano.org), Nanotechnology 101.
- 17.
Drexler 1986, ch. 1.
- 18.
This organism is of utmost interest for those who look at instances of nature that allegedly cannot be explained via Darwinian evolution. More on this in the next section.
- 19.
Paley 1802.
- 20.
The Dean of Frontier Biosciences at Osaka University, Keiichi Namba—a researcher thoroughly committed to bacterial flagellum studies—does not hesitate in identifying in such a mechanism an actual engine: “The bacterial flagellum is a rotary nanomachine that spins at hundreds of revolutions per second driven by the electrochemical potential difference across the cytoplasmic membrane” (Namba 2010, p. 417).
- 21.
Fully fleshing out the lineage between cybernetics and current scientific disciplines would entail a pain-staking articulation that remains to be done. As indicated in Chapter 3, Section “The Decline”, Margaret Boden’s two-volume work attempts to fill this gap in what pertains to, at least, the sciences of cognition (Boden 2006).
- 22.
Keiichi Namba believes that the “structural designs and functional mechanisms to be revealed in the complex machinery of the bacterial flagellum could provide many novel technologies that would become a basis for future nanotechnology…” (Namba 2002).
- 23.
Heidegger 1977a.
- 24.
Lartigue at al. 2007.
- 25.
ETC Group 2007, p.3.
- 26.
Gibson et al. 2008.
- 27.
Gibson et al. 2010.
- 28.
Hutchison III et al. 2016.
- 29.
Chapter 8, Section “Constructability as a Measure of Epistemic Success: The Intractability of a Highly Complex Model”.
- 30.
Davis and Kenyon 1989.
- 31.
For a detailed account of the whole trial, see Humes 2007.
- 32.
Chapter 9, Section “Baconian Subsumption of Nature to the “Mechanical Arts””.
- 33.
For an account of the place of ID in the history of science (in relation with the trial), see Fuller 2008.
- 34.
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case” (Darwin 1859, p. 189).
- 35.
The perceived exchangeability between the notions of “hypothesis” and “theory” seems to occur mainly in the English language. The statement of evolution as being “just a hypothesis” would in any case make more sense. Evolution as “just a theory” can be translated to evolution as “just a tested hypothesis”—the canonical definition of theory—which would be of course problematic. For the problems this inaccuracy raises in science teaching, see Williams 2013.
- 36.
For an explanation co-written by Pennock of the role of Avida in scientific methodology, see Lenski et al. 2003.
- 37.
Pennock 2007, p. 37.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Ibid., p. 32. Italics added.
- 40.
To be sure, the ID side (the defendants) lost the case not only due to this “demonstration”. An early printed draft of the controversial textbook was found by investigators, and in it, the word “creationism” was scratched and replaced with “intelligent design” on top. For the judge, this was incontrovertible evidence that religion was indeed being smuggled into science class in a public school, thereby violating the constitutional separation between church and state in the United States.
- 41.
Freddolino et al. 2004.
- 42.
It is traditionally understood that a virus does not qualify as a “complete” organism, given that it needs a host to survive. In fact, debates regarding its status as a “living” entity pivot upon this very issue.
- 43.
Karr, Sanghvi et al. 2012.
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Malapi-Nelson, A. (2017). Transhumanist Technologies: New Possibilities for a Cybernetic Worldview. In: The Nature of the Machine and the Collapse of Cybernetics. Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and its Successors. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54517-2_10
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