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Klaus Philipsen
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This article explores whether the quest for knowledge is the motor of civilization and if knowledge depends on growth. It addresses current cultural pessimism vs the value of rationalism and the scientific method and culminates in some optimistic vision for the future.
Is enlightenment passé?“The future is open. It is not predetermined and thus cannot be predicted – except by accident. The possibilities that lie in the future are infinite. When I say 'It is our duty to remain optimists”, this includes not only the openness of the future but also that which all of us contribute to it by everything we do: we are all responsible for what the future holds in store. Thus it is our duty, not to prophesy evil, but, rather, to fight for a better world.” Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality
Over long periods of history, there was very little growth of any kind, including growth of knowledge. Whatever knowledge there was, it was cloistered, literally, in the libraries of monasteries. What the father and grandfather had learned from their fathers was still useful to their children because nothing had changed. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture to manufacturing (by hand) was very slow. Book printing, colonialism, international trade, steam and electricity changed all that. Depending whether following a more idealistic or a materialistic view, enlightenment enabled the
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The Hockey Stick curves of prosperity
and doom (Socioeconomic and
earth system trends 1750 to 2010)
via Phenomenal World.com
[/td]and doom (Socioeconomic and
earth system trends 1750 to 2010)
via Phenomenal World.com
inventions or it followed them. Either way, once much broader segments of the global population were connected, knowledge skyrocketed, and with it productivity, economic output, and population. The graphic for this is the famous "hockey stick curve" which, unfortunately not only depicts knowledge but also energy use, resource consumption, CO2 output and population growth. Would the reverse also hold true? Would stagnating productivity, economic output and population mean knowledge would also stagnate? The answer depends on whether there exists a clear causality and if so, what is the chicken and what is the egg? How do technology, economic output, population growth and knowledge depend on each other, which one is cause, which effect?
This is not a futile question in the current scene in which growing parts of the population struggle to keep up with this rapid pace of change. As the German philosopher Peter Slotterdijk observed in a recent interview. People react in two ways to this unprecedented challenge of rapid change. They either subvert, avert, oppose or ignore it, or they try to get ahead of it.
A growing segment of the populations of developed countries are taking the first route. Many begun to question rationality science, and the resulting knowledge altogether in what can be called relativism. Others critique growth in general as unsustainable. A cultural critique is flourishing which suspects technology to enslave us rather than having brought liberation and emancipation. This line of thought also nourishes aversions against the well educated "elite" which benefits from and drives technological change.
The very rationalism that propelled science and progress in the last 300 or so years is in question. As the argument goes, this type progress has led us further away from awareness of ourselves and awareness of the world around us. In the wake of this skepticism religious ideology, superstition, conspiracy, and fear are gaining ground. Some use the confusing new insights of quantum mechanics as proof that the world is not nearly as rational and orderly as enlightenment originally thought. The prospect of artificial intelligence adds more fuel. Now that AI already knows more than the most knowledgeable person on the planet and generative AI will soon outsmart the collective wisdom of all of mankind, fear and misgivings about the information technologies have reached a fever pitch that casts its shadow across elections in democracies around the world.
The mélange of science skepticism and environmentalism challenging growth creates a volatile mix in many democracies. The environmental challenge goes far beyond the "carrying capacity" of the earth and limited resources. Doubts about the scientific method, modern medicine and modern agriculture frequently come from environmentalists as well, often with good reason. Technological leaders such as the "father of AI" Geoffrey Hinton suddenly are found on the side of the doubters with warnings about AI that could get out of hand. Scores of economists and environmentalists are trying to figure out prosperity after growth, beyond neo-liberalism and without globalism. Those movements are based on data that show that the benefits of a global liberal economy have reached limits and led to ever larger inequalities between countries and within countries. The longstanding critique of relentless growth and its effects on resource consumption and the resulting pollution and degradation of the natural environment is now elevated by the fact that devastating climate change is no longer just a future event but a daily threat.
With all that the foundation of the modern age becomes challenged. Could enlightenment be temporary and not the pinnacle as Auguste Comte (1798-1857) the father of Positivism, had assumed? He and Positivist philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994) would turn in their graves.
Many contemporary thinkers are alarmed. The physicist David Deutsch wrote a book declaring "The beginning of Infinity" in which he essentially postulates that knowledge and science knows no limits; the psychologist Steven Pinker publishes a book with the imperative "Enlightenment Now!". The futurist Florence Gaub very recently wrote
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Futurist Florence Gaub
[/td]These big questions beg a deeper look and what better time to do it than the end of 2024?
What is the motor of enlightenment?
Any attempt of trying to describe the course of civilization is as audacious as it is treacherous. Too much is depending on cultural heritage and perspective to allow the unbiased view that some extraterrestrial observer might have; it remains an open question if there must be any rhyme or reason at all.
Historically mankind has created many narratives to explain civilization, purpose and objectives, some teleological (steady progress), some cyclical. Some focus on fate, some on faith, and the divine, others are secular. Epistemology has described many ways of gaining knowledge, some idealistic some into materialistic some relativistic, claiming that there is no sole truth and that even science is influenced by the culture of the observer, by technology, resources and even threats, whether of competing nations, nature or the universe itself. Each school of thought provides a different angle from which to analyze civilization. In many ways enlightenment settled the debates in favor of reason, logic, science and materialism which henceforth took up a large space previously occupied by philosophy and religion.
Enlightenment sees the human as a free subject with inalienable rights as this quote from Thomas Jefferson shows:
Will and Ariel Durant tried in 11 volumes a still incomplete History of Civilization. They concluded:
My interest here is seemingly simple. Is enlightenment destroyed from within? Can the concerns of of current skeptics be incorporated into an enlightened shaping of our future that doesn't go back on the great promise of enlightenment and the subsequent scientific progress, innovation and knowledge but also doesn't return to the simplifications and materialist shortcuts that enlightenment and science has produced as well?
Every small child, when it is done eating and sleeping, is energetically discovering things. Adults get up in the morning for more than just survival. Song, play, art and romance are also expressions of curiosity and inquiry. How to maintain all those fundamentally human aspects and rational, scientific inquiry in spite of all the doubts, all the fear and all the resentment? The extraterrestrial observer might see us humans like we see the ants on an ant hill: Chaotic and without a decipherable purpose.
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Durant: The history of Civilization
[/td]We and the ants, both produce material outcomes, but only human insights cumulate and progress over generations. materially and intellectually. Can that cumulative aspect of knowledge be reconciled with the fact that the earth is limited in size and resources?
The history of knowledge
Modern man is so used to the daily cacophony unfolding each morning that he/she may have given up on trying to make sense of the daily toil. Still, the search for purpose and meaning is as old as mankind and distinguishes us from the rest of nature. Naturally there have been early on inquiries into what constitutes knowledge. The study of knowledge, epistemology, is considered one of the primary branches of philosophy which found many more kinds of knowledge than we can discuss here.
In the quest of purpose, meaning and knowledge the ancient philosopher Diogenes of Sinope is said to have lived in a barrel so he could limit his life to contemplation. He defied all the norms and didn't even refrain from insulting Alexander the Great when he asked him coolly to get out of the sun. Baruch Spinoza's (1632-1677) contemplated the "perspective of the eternal" as a viewpoint, in essence the viewpoint of an all knowing God as a base for ethics.
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Diogenes: Wisdom through contemplation
[/td]Christian belief puts curiosity and knowledge right to the beginning of time when the serpent is challenging Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
It didn't end well. A rift between belief and knowledge seemed to appear. The expulsion from paradise ripped humans from the pre-ordained cycle of nature and can be seen as humans' fate to fight for knowledge to keep domaine over nature and to make fateful choices. Unlike choices of our fellow animals, our decisions could be be good or evil, a distinction that became the field of ethics. We acquire knowledge to make better decisions. In the Quran, the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden is referred to as the "tree of immortality", this, possibly the ultimate quest. Religion's ambivalent attitude towards knowledge remains to this day and so remains the battle between materialism and idealism in which some current day philosphers enlist quantum physics to arrive at something like object based ontology or analytical idealism, schools of thinking who put the traditional enlightenment thinking into the trash bin of history.
In the following I will explore a sidebar that is exploring how knowledge is tied to growth and how the a critical discussion of growth could be tied to the gains in knowledge or, conversely, if natural limitations exist for growth and potentially for knowledge as well.
The role of growth
Today, knowledge is said to be doubling every year, maybe faster. Whether we agree that mankind has made actual progress or not, we have to agree that there is more knowledge today than there was yesterday, at least in a strictly quantitative way. The prevailing western explanation puts progress at the feet of science, technology and productivity that were freed from religious cages during enlightenment and the age of reason. Flights deep into the universe, a vast reduction of diseases, lower mortality, less hunger, almost universal literacy, an expansion of freedom, the declaration of human rights, the Internet and unprecedented insights into matter and the workings of nature are the fruits of reason.
Doubting the achievements is not a matter of "left" and "right" politics. Marxism and capitalism share the belief in growth and both systems are guilty of ransacking nature. What Marxists call growing "production forces" market economists call Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Even if we allow that the true trajectory of human development is less smooth than the hockey stick curve suggests and that there were places of significant knowledge in periods long before the age of enlightenment and in places outside the traditional Eurocentric perspective, the question of the interconnectedness of growth and knowledge remains:
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The history of GDP and a critique of its effects
(Dirk Philipsen, PhD, Duke University)
[/td](Dirk Philipsen, PhD, Duke University)
Did we experience growth when population grew because there we simply more people conducted scientific experiments or did population grow because technology brought increased productivity which allowed to sustain a larger population? Much speaks for the latter, even though the two factors also reinforce each other in a dialectic and initially mutually beneficial way. Cities were always the locus of scientific and technological progress because here people rubbed shoulders, exchanged information and cultivated education and arts.
This would suggest that knowledge wouldn't have to stagnate only because population stops growing, as demographers predict will happen in a few decades, as long as there are places of interaction and exchange. Some countries with very high productivity have already reached a point in which population stopped growing or even began to shrink.
Would knowledge stagnate if vital commodities became exhausted or the natural environment would collapse? Material growth could very well collapse under its own weight. This prospect should alarm pro-growthers and growth critics alike, it requires an exploration of the dependencies between growth and knowledge.
Is economic growth dependent on population growth?
Economists rarely consider non-growth as an option and frequently assert that a growing economic output depends on a growing population. Indeed, more people need more output. But could science, technology, and knowledge continue to grow when population stagnates? Nations with shrinking or stagnating populations such as Japan and some countries in Europe managed to keep their economy vital but with mixed results. On the other hand, unchecked population growth has not yet led to the predicted mass starvation but it certainly contributed to the depletion of the environment. It is frequently postulated that entire civilizations collapsed because of overpopulation and the associated degradation of eco systems, as it is said about the Maya. However, research on this is also divided.
It is probably safe to say, though, that thriving knowledge during the Greek and Roman empires followed by counter revolutions, famine repression and stagnation during the "Middle Ages" has little to do with population size. Today we see countries experiencing rapidly growing populations with simultaneously shrinking GDP, including Pakistan and several nations in sub-Saharan Africa like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Angola where high birth rates contribute to population surges and economic instability.
The link between prosperity and population growth remains in dispute though. Some scholars maintain that inverse correlation between population growth and a thriving economy exist only locally and for relatively short periods of time. In Spinoza's global view over eternity, though, the positive correlation between population growth and GDP appears to hold. At least that is what Angus Maddison maintained when he compiled data for population and GDP for all countries in the world from year 1 to 2008 CE and graphed the resulting GDP per capita over time.
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Diminishing returns of growth
[/td]A closer look at the Maddison data confirms the hockey-stick curve for economic output. Fluctuations in GDP per capita in the flat period are explained by what economists call the Malthusian trap which assumes a zero sum economy in which static metrics such as the amount of fertile soil in a geographic area or a certain climate define production as essentially static. When the population drops thanks to calamity, such as the plague, it results in a higher per capita income for the rest. This type of zero sum economy may describe the entire flatlining period of history but is changed with the Renaissance and the industrial revolution where output increased more than population did avoiding starvation and allowing for a relative increase in wealth.
Academicians remain cautious about a causal link between population growth on one side and productivity and knowledge growth on the other. Peterson notes in an article that provides an overview of research on productivity and population growth:
Do we need new different metrics?
We see, under the hood the population /economic output machine it is much more complicated than the argument that population growth fuels productivity. The inconclusive picture begs a closer look at the metrics of economic output. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is today the most common measure. It was only introduced in the 1920s as a presumably "value free" metric for economic success. GDP can't distinguish between "bad" growth from calamity and "good" growth from productivity and thus misses the critical distinction between good and evil that was so central in the story of the tree of knowledge. The definition of GDP accrues social strife, war, economic collapse and break-throughs in productivity equally as long as they mean output. It is a system in which wars accrue growth.
If we replaced GDP with more qualitative metrics, such as productivity (output per capita),
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Beyond GDP (Federal Reserve, St Louis)
[/td]unemployment, income per capita, income equality, pollution, sustainable energy share, life expectancy and such, one could certainly imagine a system that strives for prosperity without environmental degradation and the one-dimensional transactional relations that we see under global neoliberalism. A better metric would include consideration of externalities (impacts on things that don't show up on a particular balance sheet) which current production doesn't count.
The confusion about the interdependencies between population, productivity, science, technology, knowledge and prosperity needs new definitions not only for economic output(GDP) but also for what we call knowledge.
There are plenty of ideas on how economic output or productivity could be measured in better ways but redefining knowledge is more difficult. Gaining knowledge through insight by sitting in a barrel (Diogenes) or trough thought experiments (Einstein) is an essentially immaterial activity. A different story is knowledge through experimentation such as smashing of protons in the large Hadron collider, flying to Venus, launching elaborate space telescopes or blasting off giant rockets to ship people to the space station. We see the difference between knowledge gained by thought and knowledge gained by doing stuff with large material implications. Gaining knowledge about the essence of matter and the universe has required some of the costliest contraptions ever built. The cultural critics would say that the prevailing culture has erred too far into building huge gizmos at the cost of better self awareness and knowledge gained through contemplation.
Artificial intelligence will introduce yet another type of knowledge. If quantum computers and generative AI could think better and faster than the human brain, the material side of experiments could potentially be reduced in favor of virtual experiments, scenario formation and modelling, even though AI itself currently still uses huge amounts of energy.
AI could potentially accelerate the unification of physics on the very large scale (the universe) and the very small scale (Quantum Mechanics) and overcome the problem of physical boundaries we have often reached in our experiments. It is an open debate if AI can help in solving current conundrums in physics and create a unified field theory or accurately model climate change so that it becomes far more actionable and targeted. AI could open up a new age of knowledge in which shooting off gigantic rockets like Space X would become obsolete methods of discovery. Of course it could also unleash nuclear war, mirror bacteria or other accidental calamities if it would get out of control.
The limited benefits of unqualified growth
"Better" knowledge vis a vis of just "more" knowledge could potentially help us to resolve the current growth is good conundrum. Technology frequently has diminishing benefits when it comes to productivity defined as total time spent for a certain output. Again we speak about externalities. Huge parts of efficiencies gained through technological advance are used up for acquiring, maintaining and operating the complex systems that are needed to gain the technological advance in the first place but are usually not counted in the productivity equation.
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Diminishing benefits: The increase in communication
between 1970 and 2010 due to new tools
(Bain and Co)
[/td]between 1970 and 2010 due to new tools
(Bain and Co)
A six-share plow gets a field done much faster but requires a $100k tractor and lots of Diesel to pull it compared to a one share plow pulled by an oxen. Plus this highly efficient modern way of agricultural plowing proved actually detrimental to the soil in the long run so that no-till is now recommended. Sometimes the purchase of the tractor is seen as an externality, almost always environmental degradation has been handled as an externality.
Complexity reigns all around from health care systems to education, to mobility and even entertainment. We have to acquire, operate and maintain systems that require computers, smart devices, apps and much time, money and knowledge. For every invention that makes things faster or easier we need more resources to acquire it, do the same faster but more often so the time advantage disappears, whether it is cooking, washing laundry, traveling, growing food or building stuff. Quicker shopping on Amazon? Let's shop more! Efficiency of e-mail or texting? Multiply the communication events! Easier to keep up with friends: Just have more of them.
Often this quantitative growth is combined with a qualitative decline. The giant plows deplete the soils, the large number of virtual Facebook friends rather create isolation than overcome it in the manner a few true real friends do. The quantitative fixation also averts the gaze from the limits of knowledge that we still have, some of which can probably not be overcome. For example, The fact the 90% of matter needed to make our model of the universe work hasn't even been identified should teach science some modesty.
There are also social consequences: The widening gap between those who have the resources and education to acquire, maintain and operate current information systems and those who don't greatly contributes to rising inequity and to the discontent with current affairs.
In summary, the modern economy grew output (GDP) exponentially, but benefits are frequently elusive if we include externalities and even more so if we consider qualitative measures, such as "free time", fulfilment or satisfaction.
Is that rather unsatisfactory outcome of progress as we know it just the result of bad habits or is it a "natural law" in which quantity and quality have an inverse relationship, neutralizing large parts of the benefits? The writer Robert Pirsig investigated these questions already in 1974 in his popular book Zen or the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Is it the fate of civilization that "the ants" keep toiling towards better only to achieve more instead? The global population of around 8 billion in itself requires complicated and time consuming processes to keep so many people fed, clothed housed and connected. This to say that current complexity is not simply reversible in a quest for a simpler life. Even individual de-coupling, as Diogenes did it, is hard to achieve today without running afoul of the law.
Can the future be bright?
These findings seem pessimistic, a happy ending unlikely, especially considering climate change. But hasn't history often looked bleak? Haven't pessimists predicted the near end throughout the ages? It is worth looking at David Deutsche's brash book "The Beginning of Infinity" again for its unbridled optimism and its belief in the capacity of the human mind and the validity of the scientific method? He is refuting the standard notion of the finite amount of resources by pointing out that nothing is a resource (for humans) until we use it as such. In that way humanity has moved through many resources and we don't know which one we will use in the future. Already we are no longer worrying about the finite amount of coal or oil, but lithium. Science may well tap the almost unlimited sources of energy as we already do with solar energy. We have managed to produce food for 8 billion (were it not for distribution issues) and we may well be able to learn doing it without harming the environment.
There is no reason why we as a species couldn't refine the metrics of productivity and knowledge along with a better understanding of complexities and unintended consequences. With modern data computation and processing we could include externalities and long-term views that earlier economic systems couldn't digest. We should be able to refine or replace neo-liberal globalism with a system that reigns in the global players by refining the system of nation states and their democratic governance which dates back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 with the addition of democracy in incremental steps fueled by thoughts of the enlightenment. It is probably the field of governance, participation, distribution and equity within nation states and among them which has benefited the least from technological and scientific progress and that needs the biggest push forward. (Just consider the rather archaic US election system).
Human ingenuity combined with AI could finally find a way to consistently require less effort to satisfy the basic needs of a global populace without the inefficiencies of waste, unnecessary complexity and foolishness. The roam of the virtual has the potential of substantially reducing the waste of matter. The issue of foolishness points to education as another field that remains rather static (excluding higher education) and may not have benefitted sufficiently from progress and technology with startlingly deficient outcomes.
There is no objective reason why we couldn't finally achieve a state in which we can really focus on gaining knowledge for everyone instead instead for a few? In this scenario productivity would continue to grow but people would need to work ever less to sustain themselves and the systems that make life possible. We would, indeed, look at a society beyond work, one in which people no longer derive their sense of self from the things they make or own but from their knowledge and understanding. This reversal from material quantity to quality would be far less matter intensive, far less wasteful and may overcome many of the lamented ailments of isolation and lack of awareness of ourselves and the world.
History has many examples in which privileged people did not derive their sense of self from work on sustenance. In ancient Greece or Rome the upper class had the luxury of a life of leisure and contemplation thanks to slaves and servants. With robots, automation and AI this model may be less repulsive if the gains of knowledge and productivity benefits would be spread across all segments of the global population. Life defined by pursuit of choice activities rather than activities of necessity would be worth pursuing since it opens up the path for wise decisions and a proper distinction between good and evil. Automation, robots and artificial generative intelligence have already triggered the onsets of the potential wealth of such a scenario. Current day highly developed aging and shrinking nations or potentially also some developing nations are perfect petri dishes in which to explore how to tap into this wealth in fair and just ways. Again, better governance, better education and better distribution are key to achieve conditions that would be far more equitable than today's conditions which exclude far too many from pursuing curiosity, creativity and knowledge.
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EU brochure
[/td]A world in which efficiency gains are used for much broader participation, much less waste, destruction, depletion would overcome any current shortcomings but still leave open the issue of purpose, meaning, compassion and happiness and the quality of life for humans and the entire eco-system.
For these aspects to be included in our future philosophy and theology need to catch up with science and rationalism to provide a proper complement. This is a tall order to achieve but it also a great promise. We have to believe that such a future is not only thinkable and desirable but also achievable. In the words of Popper, we are responsible for what the future holds. Most importantly, perhaps, this vision would prove the choice between (material) growth or stagnation as a false binary. In this vision knowledge would not come to an end and curiosity would continue as a force to move us forward.
Nature can teach us a lot, even though, expelled from the paradise, we will never be fully integral to it ever again. Some of nature's processes are glacially slow, some are accelerating, possibly exponentially, some are sudden changes of state. In nature most processes are not endless, except maybe the expansion of the universe. Nature knows gradual evolution but also tipping points, phase transitions and other sudden events in which a linear process reverses, ends or transforms. Time is real. The universe, instead of steady endlessness, is a history of discontinuities, eruptions and the collapse of entire galaxies, black holes that swallow everything in their reach and possibly there are subsystems, even multiverses.
Seen through Spinoza's eternal lens, current disruptions in the course of civilization become mere bumps in the road rather than the end of human reason or science.
For unpacking the potential of knowledge one has to carefully include the ethical and moral questions into the specter of the scientific method. In all, another phase of civilization could be on the horizon, one that shifts material quantity into qualitative values. A revolution which would finally relieve "man" from the toil of survival and allow the pursuit of happiness and knowledge instead.
Even if dystopia is equally possible, a Herculean effort to achieve a reconciliation of paradise and knowledge must be made. "It is our duty to remain optimists” as Popper says.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
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Steven Pinker: Enlightenment Now! (Video)