1.5 Morphogenesis of Knowledge
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sees is created for him and for his tribe, for them to live by this order and to be
thankful to its creator. There will be no watches around for thousands of years to
come – no watches besides this enormous one in the skies, and no need for them
yet, since this one suffices to govern his daily routine and the calendar of his tribe.
He is nevertheless sure that there should be One settling the heavenly order, for him
and his tribe to live by. He creates his creation myths, thousands of years before
the account of God building the heavenly firmament that separates the waters above
from the waters below, thousands of years more before it is reinterpreted as a phase
transition in the first minutes after the Big Bang. Thousands of years before the allencompassing waters of Thales and the Pythagorean harmony of numbers, before
Aristotelian quintessence resurrecting and fading again in the 19th century aether
and the 21st century vacuum, he creates rational myths of the creation of order.
Thousands of years before internet and wide-body jets, and the disorder of globalization – but just a few thousands, not more. There are no negative dates for historic events in the Biblical calendar. His hunter ancestor, with brains as clear and
vision as keen, had neither incentive nor leisure to follow heavenly motions. One
does not see clear skies in the jungle, nor in the icy storm, nor in the mortal struggle.
We think of a shepherd following the motions of the stars by projecting ourselves
into the past. Order comes to the heavens when there is at least a semblance of order on Earth. But here, down below, one cannot discern motion as regular as in the
skies. True, one can follow the sequence of seasons, one can figure out when it is
the proper time to sow and when to drive sheep to higher pastures. The earthly clock
is also moved by the Sun. The Sun god dictates social order as well, and tells one
to obey the elders. Other things, however, remain unpredictable. Squalls, deluge,
drought, still worse, marauding hordes emerging from the desert.
Discerning order and explaining its course was the way followed by philosophers
and physicists to come. The aim was understanding, expressing knowledge first in
human and then in mathematical language. The latter’s power is in its transformational abilities, creating new knowledge by manipulating symbols. The driving force
was the pursuit of knowledge per se. There were no practical incentives prior to the
20th century; the great advances of mechanics and thermodynamics in the 18th and
19th centuries played a marginal role in the Industrial Revolution. The developing
forms of knowledge were still of the same kind that applied to heavenly order. Newton understood logically what the ancient shepherd dreamt about, and it turned out
that tangible things on the Earth, like his fabled apple, obey the same rules as the
stars.
Both methods and incentives changed when science approached earthly complex
systems. Experiments unveiled microscopic structures (with the prefix micro mutating now to nano) and complex interaction networks. What is the proper form of
knowledge in this age? Is it an abstract structure disconnected from observed reality and driven by the pure logic of the mathematical ivory tower? Is it a qualitative
model using traditional tools and discerning (given luck) essential features of complex phenomena? Is it a detailed computation elucidating (given luck) a particular
detail in a narrow field? Or is it just whatever is funded, cited, and helps academic
9
sees is created for him and for his tribe, for them to live by this order and to be
thankful to its creator. There will be no watches around for thousands of years to
come – no watches besides this enormous one in the skies, and no need for them
yet, since this one suffices to govern his daily routine and the calendar of his tribe.
He is nevertheless sure that there should be One settling the heavenly order, for him
and his tribe to live by. He creates his creation myths, thousands of years before
the account of God building the heavenly firmament that separates the waters above
from the waters below, thousands of years more before it is reinterpreted as a phase
transition in the first minutes after the Big Bang. Thousands of years before the allencompassing waters of Thales and the Pythagorean harmony of numbers, before
Aristotelian quintessence resurrecting and fading again in the 19th century aether
and the 21st century vacuum, he creates rational myths of the creation of order.
Thousands of years before internet and wide-body jets, and the disorder of globalization – but just a few thousands, not more. There are no negative dates for historic events in the Biblical calendar. His hunter ancestor, with brains as clear and
vision as keen, had neither incentive nor leisure to follow heavenly motions. One
does not see clear skies in the jungle, nor in the icy storm, nor in the mortal struggle.
We think of a shepherd following the motions of the stars by projecting ourselves
into the past. Order comes to the heavens when there is at least a semblance of order on Earth. But here, down below, one cannot discern motion as regular as in the
skies. True, one can follow the sequence of seasons, one can figure out when it is
the proper time to sow and when to drive sheep to higher pastures. The earthly clock
is also moved by the Sun. The Sun god dictates social order as well, and tells one
to obey the elders. Other things, however, remain unpredictable. Squalls, deluge,
drought, still worse, marauding hordes emerging from the desert.
Discerning order and explaining its course was the way followed by philosophers
and physicists to come. The aim was understanding, expressing knowledge first in
human and then in mathematical language. The latter’s power is in its transformational abilities, creating new knowledge by manipulating symbols. The driving force
was the pursuit of knowledge per se. There were no practical incentives prior to the
20th century; the great advances of mechanics and thermodynamics in the 18th and
19th centuries played a marginal role in the Industrial Revolution. The developing
forms of knowledge were still of the same kind that applied to heavenly order. Newton understood logically what the ancient shepherd dreamt about, and it turned out
that tangible things on the Earth, like his fabled apple, obey the same rules as the
stars.
Both methods and incentives changed when science approached earthly complex
systems. Experiments unveiled microscopic structures (with the prefix micro mutating now to nano) and complex interaction networks. What is the proper form of
knowledge in this age? Is it an abstract structure disconnected from observed reality and driven by the pure logic of the mathematical ivory tower? Is it a qualitative
model using traditional tools and discerning (given luck) essential features of complex phenomena? Is it a detailed computation elucidating (given luck) a particular
detail in a narrow field? Or is it just whatever is funded, cited, and helps academic