1.2 Construction and Deconstruction
3
1.2 Construction and Deconstruction
Construction – making things – and deconstruction – understanding how things,
small and large, up to our world in its entirety, are made – are closely related, and
have been developing together. Chimpanzees are able to use tools, but they just
take them ready-made, similar to modern consumers buying ready-made gadgets,
though rather more sophisticated than a stick or a stone. Neither do they engage
in understanding the structure of these tools or trying to improve them; a chimp is
aware of the properties of wood no more than we of the innards of our smartphones.
Primitive humans go a step further. They hone a stick to a sharp arrow or spear; they
populate the woods by spirits and fairies – not exactly a scientific endeavor but a
sign of striving to acquire know-how.
The next stage, attained concurrently with agricultural evolution, is producing
tools, and, in parallel, consolidating pantheons and contriving creation myths. The
development of knowledge and proficiency became highly non-uniform. In any society that has advanced beyond a primitive level, knowledge is specialized, and what
counts is knowledge and aptitude acquired by the society as a whole. Advanced populations split into settled cultivators and nomad herders, worshipping different gods,
accustomed to different lifestyles, and deconstructing their world in different ways.
Focus for a moment on Greece, fifth–fourth century BC, setting the stage for two
millennia ahead, sculpting matchless images, erecting porched temples admired to
this day, and trying to penetrate the way forms are constructed.
One way is to assemble them from distinct parts, just as ships crossing the
Mediterranean are pieced together from boards, sails, and metal joints. This leads directly to the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, imagining the world being built
up of more abstract distinct entities, indivisible atoms of different shapes, moving in
the void or packed into various arrangements. Another way is to cast a desired form
by deforming a continuum, as craftsmen do by forging metal, or blowing glass, or
molding clay, or (jumping ahead in time) 3D printing. This was the outlook of Aristotelian natural philosophy, which has been dominant longer than any non-religious
belief.
Modern science and technology adopt both ways. Wares are assembled from
parts, but eventually parts should be made from a raw material. Science, striving
to discern internal structures, alternates between atomism and the calculus of the
continuum. Discretizing reality in the Democritean tradition, organizing the continuum by breaking it into discrete units, groups, and stages, contrasted with an
inspired but sterile holistic view, became dominant in the age of enlightenment and
the rational 19th century. The whole emerges from an interaction between parts,
and is dismantled iteratively, as with a series of Russian dolls: what is a “whole”
on a lower level may be a “part” on a higher level of the hierarchy. However, the
distinction between atomism and the continuum becomes blurred on both the microscopic and the macroscopic level. Quantum mechanics ostensibly quantifies reality
in some way, but etymology is deceptive here: in fact it blurs discrete particles into
fields spreading through space and time; whereas a particle’s trajectory is uncertain, the evolution of the wave function is deterministic. The continuum returns on a
3
1.2 Construction and Deconstruction
Construction – making things – and deconstruction – understanding how things,
small and large, up to our world in its entirety, are made – are closely related, and
have been developing together. Chimpanzees are able to use tools, but they just
take them ready-made, similar to modern consumers buying ready-made gadgets,
though rather more sophisticated than a stick or a stone. Neither do they engage
in understanding the structure of these tools or trying to improve them; a chimp is
aware of the properties of wood no more than we of the innards of our smartphones.
Primitive humans go a step further. They hone a stick to a sharp arrow or spear; they
populate the woods by spirits and fairies – not exactly a scientific endeavor but a
sign of striving to acquire know-how.
The next stage, attained concurrently with agricultural evolution, is producing
tools, and, in parallel, consolidating pantheons and contriving creation myths. The
development of knowledge and proficiency became highly non-uniform. In any society that has advanced beyond a primitive level, knowledge is specialized, and what
counts is knowledge and aptitude acquired by the society as a whole. Advanced populations split into settled cultivators and nomad herders, worshipping different gods,
accustomed to different lifestyles, and deconstructing their world in different ways.
Focus for a moment on Greece, fifth–fourth century BC, setting the stage for two
millennia ahead, sculpting matchless images, erecting porched temples admired to
this day, and trying to penetrate the way forms are constructed.
One way is to assemble them from distinct parts, just as ships crossing the
Mediterranean are pieced together from boards, sails, and metal joints. This leads directly to the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, imagining the world being built
up of more abstract distinct entities, indivisible atoms of different shapes, moving in
the void or packed into various arrangements. Another way is to cast a desired form
by deforming a continuum, as craftsmen do by forging metal, or blowing glass, or
molding clay, or (jumping ahead in time) 3D printing. This was the outlook of Aristotelian natural philosophy, which has been dominant longer than any non-religious
belief.
Modern science and technology adopt both ways. Wares are assembled from
parts, but eventually parts should be made from a raw material. Science, striving
to discern internal structures, alternates between atomism and the calculus of the
continuum. Discretizing reality in the Democritean tradition, organizing the continuum by breaking it into discrete units, groups, and stages, contrasted with an
inspired but sterile holistic view, became dominant in the age of enlightenment and
the rational 19th century. The whole emerges from an interaction between parts,
and is dismantled iteratively, as with a series of Russian dolls: what is a “whole”
on a lower level may be a “part” on a higher level of the hierarchy. However, the
distinction between atomism and the continuum becomes blurred on both the microscopic and the macroscopic level. Quantum mechanics ostensibly quantifies reality
in some way, but etymology is deceptive here: in fact it blurs discrete particles into
fields spreading through space and time; whereas a particle’s trajectory is uncertain, the evolution of the wave function is deterministic. The continuum returns on a