Abstract
The world, according to Nietzsche, is will to power, and nothing besides (WP 1067; BGE 36).1 But the world as will to power remains enigmatic, despite Nietzsche’s many efforts to explicate its operation in physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and politics.2
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Notes
Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Nietzsche’s works are by text and section number. The texts are Beyond Good and Evil (BGE), trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966); The Gay Science (GS), trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974); The Will to Power (WP), trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1968); Twilight of the Idols (TI), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 1984 ); Philosophy and Truth (PT), trans. D. Breazeale (London: Humanities Press, 1979 ).
Many writings on the will to power are from the Nachlass. Scholars such as Kaufmann and Magnus wish to devalue or discredit these notebooks; others, such as Danto and Moles, value them as highly as the published writings. We side with Danto and Moles, for precisely the reasons offered by Moles. See A. Moles, Nietzsche’s . Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology,(New York: Peter Lang, 1990), Introduction, section II.
In doing this we need to be sensitive to Nietzsche’s own philosophy of science. To this end we are guided by B. Babich’s Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Science (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994).
Here Nietzsche is inspired by R. J. Boscovich’s A Theory of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967/1763). See also G. Stack, “Nietzsche and Boscovich’s Natural Philosophy,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 62,1981, pp. 69–87; G. Whitlock, “Roger Boscovitch, Benedict de Spinoza and Friedrich Nietzsche: The Untold Story,” Nietzsche-h’tudien 25, 1996, pp. 200–220.
Such a statement is striking to ears acquainted with quantum physics. See Alistair Moles, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology, p. xii. In it we find (however darkly guessed), something very much like Bohm’s notion of a particle and its pilot-wave. Nietzsche’s entirely holistic treatment of the will to power cannot but reinforce the relation to Bohm. See D. Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order ( London: Routlege and Kegan Paul, 1980 ).
P. Umbanhowar, F. Melo, and H. Swinney, “Localized Excitations in a Vertically Vibrated Granular Layer,” Nature. Vol. 382 (29 August 1996 ), pp. 793–6.
PDP systems manifest deep holism, such as rearranging the parts in a whole without decomposing the whole into its parts (i.e. rearranging the parts without manipulating the parts themselves, but just the whole). See D. Blank, L. Meeden, and J. Marshal, “Exploring the Symbolic/Subsymbolic Continuum: A Case study of RAAM,” in J. Dinsmore (Ed.), The Symbolic and Connectionist Paradigms: Closing the Gap (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992), pp. 113148. See especially sec. 6, and 6.2 for holistic transformations.
T. Horgan and J. Tienson, “Cognitive Systems as Dynamical Systems,” Topoi 11(1),pp. 27–43.
In thermodynamics, energy, entropy, and temperature are all carefully distinguished. For a very readable and highly engaging introduction to thermodynamics, particularly the second law, see R. Penrose, The Emporer’s New Mind (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), eh. 7.
Nietzsche is explicit about the global thermal cycle in WTP 1067, describing the will to power as alternating between hottest forms and coldest forms. The local cycle is not explicitly discussed, but the cycle described in WTP 636 exactly parallels the global cycle described in WTP 1067.
For the relation of the eternal return to thermodynamics, see Moles, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology,Postscript.
Nietzsche draws a parallel between the ocean (which is disturbed both by local crests and troughs and by global tidal flows and ebbs) in GS 310, whose title is “Will and Wave.”
Supposing the Great Year of Zarathustra (Z III:13/2) to have duration G, the global cycle is sin(t/G) and the local cycle is sin(t) where t is (discrete) time.
Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1974 ), p. 235.
In a tennis match, for instance, the play becomes hotter as the motion of the ball becomes more chaotic and the players exercise more and more ordering power (i.e. skill) to keep the ball in play.
See W. H. Zurek (ed.) Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Vol. VIII. ( Redwood, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1990 ).
We emphatically do not want to understand the interpretive activity of the will to power in terms of von. Neumann-style computation. F. Evans presents a powerful Nietzschean critique of VonNeuman-style approaches to computation and cognition in Psychology and Nihilism: A Genealogical Critique of the Computational Model of Mind ( Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992 ).
G. E. Hinton and T. J. Sejnowski, “Learning and Relearning in Boltzmann Machines,” in D. E. Rumelhart and J. L. McClelland (eds.), Parallel Distributed Processing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), Vol. 1, eh. 7.
P. Smolensky, “Information Processing in Dynamical Systems: Foundations of Harmony Theory,” in D. E. Rumelhart and J. L. McClelland (eds.), Parallel Distributed Processing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), Vol. 1, eh. 6. A good account of computation as path-following in an energetic or entropie state-space can be found in D. W. Tank and J. J. Hopfield, “Collective Computation in Neuronlike Circuits,” Scientific American 257(6), 1985, pp. 104–114.
D. L. Stein, “Spin Glasses,” Scientific American 261(1), 1989, pp. 52–61.
T. Toffoli and N. Margolus’s Cellular Automata Machines: A New Environment for Modeling Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), eh. 17.
During computation in a PDP system “parts of the network gradually assume values that become stable; the system commits itself to decisions as it cools; it passes from fluid behavior to the rigid adoption of an answer. The decision-making process resembles the crystallization of a liquid into a solid” (Smolensky, ibid., vol. 1, eh. 6, p. 233).
In this respect Nietzsche’s views anticipate the theories of I. Prigogine, winner of a Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work on self-organizing systems. Prigogine contends that order emerges spontaneously in systems far from thermal equilibrium. See I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam, 1984). Note the reference to Nietzsche on p. 136. See also J. Lothar, “Nietzsche: Dekonstruktionist oder Konstruktivist?,” Nietzsche-Studien 23,1994, pp. 226–240.
For algorithmic compressibility, see G. Chaitin, “Randomness and mathematical proof,” Scientific American 232 (5),1975, pp. 47–52. For logical depth and other definitions of complexity, see C. H. Bennett, “How to define complexity in physics, and why,” in W. H. Zurek ed.) Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information,pp. 137–148.
This is perhaps the most important feature of Nietzshe’s entire philosophy, yet commentators still get it wrong. Consider R. H. Grimm, who says that form “is something imposed upon the chaos of power-quanta… (… analogous… to the process whereby a potter may impose any form he chooses on a formless lump of clay)” R. H. Grimm, Nietzsche’s Theory of Knowledge,(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977). Grimm’s account is precisely what does not happen.
Jean Gravier, “Nietzsche’s Conception of Chaos,” in The New Nietzsche, ed. David B. Allison Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985 ).
Teuvo Kohonen, Self-Organization and Associative Memory ( New York: Springer-Verlag, 1984 ).
Self-reproducing power-constellations are not substances. From moment to moment, the elements (centers of force) in self-reproducing power-structure change, but perspectival relations among those elements remain the same (the content has changed, but the form is the same). It is through recurrence of structure that things sustain themselves in the flux of the will to power.
For self-reproducing patterns in PDP systems known as cellular automata, see: J. von Neumann,Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1966); E. Codd,Cellular Automata (New York: Academic Press, 1968); C. Langton, “Self-reproduction in cellular automata” Physica D 10,1984, pp. 135–144; E. Berlekamp, J. Conway, and R. Guy,Winning Ways (New York: Academic Press, 1982), vol. 2, ch. 25.
C. G. Langton (ed.) Artificial Life ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995 ).
A pattern C(t) encodes itself within C(t+1), but then (C(t) encoded within C(t+1)) encodes itself within C(t+2), and ((C(t) encoded within C(t+l)) encoded within C(t+2)) encodes itself within C(t+3). Earlier organizations recursively nest themselves within later organizations. This nesting structure is the genealogical structure of memory; it is the basis for the temporal order.
The point fits with Nietzsche’s Lamarckian understanding of evolution.
J. Pollack, “Recursive distributed representations,” Artificial Intelligence 46, 1994, pp. 77–105.
D. E. Rumelhart and J. L. McClelland, Parallel Distributed Processing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986 ), Vol. 1, pp. 134–5.
M. Minsky, The Society of Mind ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986 ).
D. K. Lewis, Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). Nietzsche might endorse a Gricean account of meaning.
R. Axelrod, “Effective choice in the Prisoner’s Dilemma,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 24 Ç1), 1980, pp. 3–25.
B. MacLennan, “Synthetic Ethology: An Approach to the Study of Communication,” pp. 631658; G. M. Werner and M. G. Dyer, “Evolution of Communication in Artificial Organisms,” pp. 659–688. Both in C. G. Langton, C. Taylor, J. D. Farmer, and S. Rasmussen (eds.), Artificial Life IL SFI Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Vol. X. ( Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991 ).
P. Thagard, “Societies of minds: Science as distributed computing,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24, 1993, pp. 49–67
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Steinhart, E. (1999). The Will to Power and Parallel Distributed Processing. In: Babich, B.E. (eds) Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 204. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2428-9_24
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