Steering and Scale Change

Abstract

Learning has been central to the human experience: learning from errors, successes, others (both near and distant), and the records (in whatever form). The applications gained from systematic observation, science, have been key to the human experience. No people could have survived without such observations forming the basis for individual and group practices. Imitating, reacting, adapting, and combining have been at the heart of the contact between cultures from the very earliest times. Nonetheless, who may learn and what may be learned is commonly subject to societal controls shaped by community goals. When stability is held to be a higher value than change, unfettered curiosity-driven inquiry is regarded as a threat and certain lines of critical scrutiny are discouraged.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.

—Oscar Wilde, ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’

There is no longer a clear division between what is foreign and what is domestic—the world economy, the world environment, the world AIDS crisis, the world arms race—they affect us all.

—Bill Clinton, ‘First Inaugural Address’