As opposed to many games that we can only sketchily retrace to someplace back in history, we know how all this came about in American football. The goal was no longer the game, as it was in its early history as a college sports, but winning. A more efficient game required more efficient football machines, specialized in a limited repertory, present only for the duration of their task. The game acquired a configurational aspect, takes place at many levels, requires distribution of tasks, and relies upon networks of communication for maintaining some sense of integration. Its violence, different from the staged buffoonery of wrestling, is in sync with the spirit of belligerence implicit in today's competitive environment: "We teach our boys to spear and gore…. We want them to plant that helmet right under a guy's chin." (Woody Hayes, legendary coach at Ohio State University, better known for its football team than its academic standards). There is physical involvement, injury, steroids, drugs, illicit money-and there are statistics. The spirit of the game is disseminated to other sports and other aspects of life (business, politics). In the case of baseball, the statistics are most important. They attach to each gesture on the field a meaning which otherwise would escape the mind of the viewer. In games of a more continuous flow (soccer, tennis, handball), the attraction is in the particular phase, not in the number of yards gained or the average (hits, home runs, strike-outs).
The general dynamics of existence and human interaction in the civilization of illiteracy also marked the dynamics of the practical experience of sports. Higher speed, shorter encounters, short action spans-these make the sports event more marketable in the environment of the new civilization. The more precise the experience, the less expressive. Almost no one watched the compulsory ice skating exercises at world championships, and so they were canceled, but millions enjoy the dramatics of dancing on ice that is becoming more and more a show watched around the world. The more extensive the effort, the less attractive to spectators. A twenty-five kilometer cross- country competition will never interest as many viewers as a fast, dangerous downhill race. These characteristics are definitive of the civilization of illiteracy. People do not want to learn how to perform at the same level; knowledge is irrelevant. Performance is what attracts, and it is the only thing which gains prizes that the winner of the ancient Olympics, who was also spoiled, never dreamed of. "Winner take all" is the final rule, and the result is that winning, more than competing, has become the goal.
The efficiency requirement leads not only to the relative illiteracy of those involved in sports, but also to a practice of discriminatory physical selection. In the USA, for instance, black African-Americans dominate football and basketball, which have become national obsessions. If equal opportunity were applied to professional sports as it is to other activities, the competitions would not be so attractive. The irony of this situation is that, in fact, black African-Americans are still entertainment providers in the USA. Regardless of how profitable professional sports are, the obsession with efficiency effectively consecrates an important segment of the population to entertaining the rest. Blacks are also playing in the most advanced major basketball leagues in the world. In what used to be the Soviet Union, chances were that the winter sports teams would be recruited from the Siberian population, where skiing is a way of life. All over Europe, soccer teams recruit from Spain, Italy, Africa, and South America. It is easier to attain maximum efficiency through those endowed with qualities required by the new goals of the games instead of creating a broad base of educated athletes.
The public, homogenized through the mediating action of television, is subjected to the language of the sports experience and is presented with performance and interpretation at the same time. Thus, even the mechanism of assigning meaning is rationalized, taken over by the market mechanism, freed from the constraints of literacy and reason, and rendered to human subjects without requiring that they think about it.
Blaming changes in sports, or for that matter in literacy, the condition of the family, the fast-food curse, television, increased greed, new technology, or lower levels of education, results in only partial explanations of the new condition of sports. Yes, the greatly celebrated champions are illiterate. No matter how good in their political game of finding excuses and alibis, colleges care for the high performances of physically gifted students, recruited only insofar as they add to the marketability of the institution, not to the academic entry requirements. Literacy is not a prerequisite for sports performance. It might actually interfere with it. In the world of competitions, sportsmen and sportswomen are either jetting around the globe or traveling from one exhibition game to another, barely able to breathe, never mind to take care of their literacy or their private lives. Their language is one of pitiful limitation, always inferior to the energy spent in the effort or externalized in frustration when the rules don't work in their favor. They don't read, they don't write. Even their checks are signed by others. The description might be somewhat extreme and sound harsh, and the attitude might seem impertinent, but after all, it is not because sportsmen and sportswomen know Shakespeare's sonnets by heart that people watch baseball, nor because they write novels (or even short stories) that the public applauds the ice skating dancers, and even less that they keep diaries, with minimal spelling errors and full sentences, that spectators die to be on the stand of the stadium where the drama of football starts in the fall and ends shortly before another sports takes over the media.
Sports are marketable work, of high intensities and no literate status. The efficiency of each sport is measured in the attraction it exercises over many people, and thus in the ability of a sport to transmit messages of public interest, insofar as public interest is part of the market process. Alienated from the expectation of integration, corresponding to the ideal of the complete human being, sport is as specialized as any other form of human praxis. Sports constituted their own domains of competence and performance, and generate expectations of partial sport literacies. That in the process, because they address physical attributes and intellectual functions, sports became a molding machine for the athletes, another nature, should not go without saying or understanding what it takes to succeed. All over the world, where efficiency reached levels corresponding to the new scale of humankind, football, basketball, soccer, and tennis players, swimmers, runners, and gymnasts are created almost from scratch. Experts select children, analyze their genetic history and current condition, devise training procedures, and control diet, psychology, and emotional life until the desired performer is ready to compete.
Gentlemen, place your bets!
The investment in sports, as in the stock market, is supposed to return profit. Successful sportspeople need not testify to how high their own return is. That this return also means compromised physical or mental integrity is part of the cynical equation that the public enthusiastically validates. When players are traded and contracts are signed, the money they earn, disproportionate as it seems at times, corresponds, almost to the last digit, to the number of people who will watch them, some for the sake and pleasure of the performance, others making money from a team's victory or an athlete's record. In some states and countries, whether betting is legal or prohibited, it is by far the strongest sector of the economy. It takes very interesting forms, however. One is the direct bet: this horse, this player, this team.
Betting, with its partial literacy involving its own mediating elements that render reading and writing useless, is not a new institution. People were challenged by the odds down through history. But once the structural change that entailed means of networking, task distribution, and almost instant access to any event in the world was in place, the experience of betting totally took over that of competing. All our unfulfilled desires and drives are now embodied by those we choose to represent us, and for whose victory we not only root, but also invest in. There is an ideal stake-the successful player-and a mundane stake-the actual wager. Expectation of high figures is an extension of literate expectations. It embodies the naive assumption that cultivated minds and challenged bodies unite in a balanced personality of high integrity. The reason this model failed over and over need not be restated here. But the point needs to be made that the ideal stake and the trivial stake are not independent. This introduces to competition an element of obscurity in the form of motivations not intrinsic to sports. The indirect wager represents this element.
The message is the sneaker
The biggest indirect bet is made by marketing and advertising. On the never- ending table of Olympic records, the most spectacular performances are dollar signs preceding figures into the billions. Within the general shift from manufacturing to service economy characteristic of the civilization of illiteracy, sport becomes a form of entertainment. New media, replacing the printed word as the dominant means of communication, makes possible international viewing of competitions as they happen. In the past, we were satisfied with the image of the winner. Now we can own the tape of the game and can retrieve each moment of any event. More broadband, and soon we will download the running athlete directly onto our monitors. For a price, of course.
People consume sports. They are able to fly to the Olympics, wherever the best bid takes them (Barcelona, Atlanta, or Sydney), even able to pay for forty-five minutes or a whole week of shaping up with the very best trainers. Facts in the world of sports, as much as in the rest of our activities, are less important than the image. The authority and self-discipline, on which physical education was built, are replaced by the freedom and opportunity to choose from among many sports events, and by an attitude of permissiveness and self-indulgence which many times results in considering the whole world as a sports show. Sports are used to further many causes and support many interest groups. On the stage of the events they sponsor, the world's largest companies compete with feminism, equal opportunity, AIDS, and various disabilities for the attention and dollars of the audience. Sponsorship is a highly selective experience. Nevertheless, it frequently contradicts the slogans it sets before the public. These are important because the indirect bet on sports takes into consideration the huge market of entertainment, and defines within this market the segments it will address.
Product endorsements, advertising, and public relations are the media through which marketing places its bets. No less than 500,000 brands were traded in Atlanta. Only to keep track of them was a major task, described officially as "protecting the integrity of the Olympic Games and the rights of official sponsors," but also "detecting attempts at parasitic marketing." Every square inch on the body of a tennis player or a track and field athlete can be rented. And is. The better the manager (not necessarily a player's game), the higher the endorsement contract. The minute detail picked up by the camera allows us to see the name of the maker on the watch, the manufacturer's logo on the socks, a sponsor company's name on the shirts and headgear, the brand of glucose or mineral water, the maker of ice or snow for winter games. It seems that the competition on the court and the competition among those who buy the space available on cyclists' ware, football players' uniforms, skiers, swimmers, runners, and chess players are feeding off one another. When the Canon company chose as its prime-time advertising actor a tennis player who did not make it beyond the preliminary games, the bet continued on the waves, on the screens, on the videotapes, and on any other imaginable display.
Marshall McLuhan plays year after year in the Superbowl. The world indeed becomes a village. Moreover, the world has almost decided that the outcome is less important than the new commercials, the new thirty-second drama, followed by the numbers telling us all how much more a second of prime time costs, and what benefits it might bring. But the message is actually lost. Here McLuhan was still somehow captive to literacy, believing there was a message, as we are used to when writing or reading a text. The message is the sneaker, or whatever will take over, for its own short turn in the glory of consumption, the world. The day the object is acknowledged, between New York and Zambia, Paris and the tribes in the Brazilian rain forests, Frankfurt and the starving populations of Africa or Asia, there will be a trade in the original and its many substitutes, reaching sheer madness. Sports entrusted with the marketing image are equalled in their persuasive power only by the entertainment stars, of similar illiterate condition, singing for the world's hungriest only in order to add one more marketing craze to their torment.
In these and in other characteristics mentioned, the unnatural aspect of sports takes over their original, natural component. It seems almost as though the sports experience is falling into itself, is imploding, leaving room for the many machines and gadgets we use at home in order to salvage our degenerating bodies. Now we still bicycle, ski, climb stairs, and row in the privacy of our rooms, with our eyes glued to the images of the very few who still do the real thing, but for reasons less and less connected with excellence. Soon we will swim in the pools and ski on the slopes of virtual reality. Some are already timing their performance. Little do they know that they are pioneering one of the many Olympic games of the future.
Science and Philosophy-More Questions Than Answers
Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. T.S. Elliot, Burnt Norton
In some of the most advanced fields of scientific inquiry, research results are exchanged as soon as they become available. Obviously, the sluggish medium of print and the long cycles involved in the review process prior to academic publication do not come into the picture. On Web sites dedicated to research, the review process consists of acknowledging, challenging, and furthering breakthrough hypotheses. It is carried out by real peers, not by the geriatric or opportunistic hierarchies that have the publishing process in their firm grip. Frequently, research is carried out in and through the communication media. Images, data, and simulations are part of the work and part of the shared knowledge, already available in formats that can be inputted for further work or can be technologically tested.
Of course, there are many issues connected to the new dynamics of science, not the least of which is intellectual property and integrity. A totally new experience in research and knowledge dissemination is taking place. The majority of the researchers involved know that previous models, originating in the pragmatics of the civilization of literacy, will not provide answers. As beautiful as the science embodied in the technology of industrial society is, it will not, not even accidentally, contribute to the scientific progress in nanotechnology, in bioinformatics, in fluid dynamics, and in other frontier domains researched today. Gene expression and protein syntheses are many working centuries-the total of the years contributed by researchers to the advancement of their respective fields-ahead of everything that science has produced in the past. Add to these accomplishments in the ever-expanding list of modern sciences, and you get the feeling that humankind is literally reinventing itself in the civilization of illiteracy.
The list to follow is telling of the shift from the coarse level of scientific effort corresponding to the industrial operations of milling and grinding, to a level of atomic and sub-atomic re-ordering. The same components, differently ordered, can appear to us as graphite or diamonds, sand or silicon for chips. The list represents a reality of enormous consequence, confirmed in the daily commotion of a never-ending series of discoveries. Life on Mars, molecular self-assembly, protein folding, atomic resolution imaging, nano-structural materials with unprecedented properties, quantum devices, advances in neuro-medicine-the list is a shameless exercise in creating headlines, soon to be replaced by newer and more creative endeavors. This is why, in addressing issues of science and philosophy, I do not intend to offer a catalogue of current research, but to put the subject in a dynamic perspective. By all means, I want to avoid the danger of presenting science especially as the agent of change, as though its own motivations and means could give humankind its direction and purpose.
Rationality, reason, and the scale of things
The dynamics of change in scientific and philosophic thinking is not independent of the underlying structure of the pragmatics that leads to the civilization of illiteracy. Both involve rationality, which connects human practical experiences to consistent inferences (sometimes seen as logical conclusion) and to the ability to predict events (in nature or society), even to influence and control them. Rationality is connected to efficiency insofar as it is applied in the selection of means appropriate to accomplishing goals; or it serves as an instrument for evaluation of the premises leading to a selected course of action. In short, rationality is goal oriented. Reason, in turn, is value oriented; it guides practical experiences of human self-constitution in the direction of appropriateness. Rationality and reason are interconditioned. Right and wrong, good and bad, are the axes along which human action and emotion can be diagrammed in the matrix of living and working that they constituted under the guise of literacy.
The process through which human rationality and reason become characteristics of human self-constitution is long and tortuous. People defining themselves in different pragmatic contexts enter into a network of interdependency. At a very small scale of human existence and activity, rationality and reason were indistinguishable. They began to differentiate early on, already during hunting and gathering. But during the long experience of settlement and taking care of plants and animals, they grew aware of the distinction between what they were doing and how. With the culture of artifacts, to which tools belong, reason and rationality took separate paths. With the advent of science, in its most primitive forms, documented in ancient China, Egypt, India, and Greece, rationality and reason often conflicted. Things can be right, without being good at the same time. There is a rationality-goal oriented: how to get more goods, how to avoid losses-with the appearance of reason-actions to please forces supposed to control nature or matter. Parallel to science, magic manifested itself through alchemy, astrology, and numerology, all focused on the attempt to harmonize human beings, constituted in practical experiences focused on goodness, with the world housing them. In some cultures, rationality resulted in the propensity to face, change, and eventually dominate nature-that is, to submit the environment to a desired order. Reason aimed at finding practical grounds for harmony with nature.
After the phase of orality, writing served both of them equally. It made language a mold for new experiences, a container for storing knowledge, and an effective means for the practical experience of evaluation and self-evaluation. The overwhelming majority of human accomplishments leading to the possibility and necessity of literacy were connected to the experience of human self-constitution in writing. The science and philosophy upon which the scientific revolution and the revival of humanities (in particular philosophy) of the 16th and 17th centuries took place are deeply rooted in the pragmatics that made writing necessary. This revolution is usually summarized through three main accomplishments. First: a new picture of the universe, scientifically expressed in heliocentric astronomy and philosophically a turning point in understanding the role of the human being in this world. Second: the mathematical description of motion. Third: the new conceptual framework of mechanics. As impressive as they are, their meaning is revealed in the fact that the Industrial Revolution was actually triggered by the scientific and humanistic renewal embodied in these accomplishments. The change from an agrarian economy, appropriate to a relatively reduced scale of population and work, to industrial production changed efficiency by orders of magnitude corresponding to those of the critical mass reached by humankind. All the characteristics of this new pragmatics-sequentiality, linearity, centralism, determinism (mechanical in nature), clear-cut distinctions, interdependencies-contributed to the establishment of literacy.
A lost balance
Within the pragmatic framework of the industrial society, science progressively assumed the leading role over philosophy. In fact, science changed from an elitist practical experience strongly controlled by the guardians of literacy (i.e., religion) to an experience integrated in society. Philosophy followed an inverse path, from a generalized attitude of wonder to becoming the privilege of the few who could afford to contemplate the world. Generalized in technology, the rationality of science reached its peak in the civilization of literacy through standardization and mass production of processed food, means of transportation (cars, airplanes), home building, and the use of electricity as the efficient alternative energy source. But the real challenge was yet to come.
Einstein took a daring guess. "The tragedy of modern men…is that they created conditions of existence for which, from the perspective of their phylogenetic development, they are not adjusted." The lost balance between rationality and reason is reflected in the image of all the consequences of the Industrial Revolution that led to the runaway capitalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Exhaustion of raw materials, air and water pollution, erosion of productive land, and mental and physical strain on humans are the concrete results of this imbalance.
But if these consequences were all people and society had to cope with, the dominance of literacy in science would still be defensible. The challenge comes from the new scale of humankind for which the Industrial Revolution model and literacy are no longer adequate. Efficiency expectations, of an order of magnitude incompatible with the underlying structure of the pragmatic framework based on literacy, result in the need for a new dynamics, for mediation, acknowledgment and use of non-linearity, vagueness, and non-determinism. Science, as well as the implicit philosophic component of this new science, already approached areas of knowledge beyond the borderline guarded by literacy. On the initial success of micro-physics, the first non- literacy-based technological challenge for more energy was met in the form of relatively rudimentary weapons. In the meanwhile, it became clear that a new physics and a new chemistry, and a new biology, along with many disciplines non-existent within literacy, of a systemic focus with quality and process is what we need. Some of the scientific themes mentioned already illustrate how science is evolving. They also illustrate how a new epistemological condition is established, one that is based on projecting explanatory models upon the world and testing them for appropriateness and coherence. In the lead are practical experiences of science driven by cognitive resources no longer constrained by observation. What is free of epistemological doubt is that almost all the science that has emerged has reclaimed interest in the living. These new sciences, which are philosophies at the same time, are computationally disclosed biophysics, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, medicine, and knowledge of the micro- and nano-universe.
Literacy, because of its inherent structural characteristics, is no longer the appropriate mold for such new experiences, the proper container for knowledge, or even an effective means of evaluation. Among many possible literacies, it maintains a domain of appropriateness, and within this domain it allows for local performance synchronized with the general expectation of efficiency. The shift from literacy to literacies-in fact, the shift to the pragmatic framework of the civilization of illiteracy- takes place against the background of conflict between means of restricted efficiency and new means for coping with larger populations, and with the newly acquired right to well-being, or even affluence. Almost all new sciences evolve in new technologies. We are already familiar with some, since we were told that from science programs (space exploration, genetic research, biophysics), products as trivial as calculators, thermal fabric, and new construction materials were made available at prices affordable in the global economy. We are getting used to others as they become available: intelligent materials able to alter their structure, and self-assembling materials.
Thinking about thinking
One dominant inherited assumption is that thinking takes place only in language; that is, that language is the medium of thinking. This is a very difficult subject to deal with because, despite claims to the contrary, some people (Einstein is most quoted witness) maintain that they think in images, others in sounds, others in some combination of shapes, colors, textures, even odor and taste. Until now, no one could conclusively prove whether this is a way of speaking or a fact. But the same can be said of language. That we can express thoughts, sometimes frustratingly incomplete, in language does not necessarily mean that we think in language, or only in language. That language is a medium for explanation and interpretation, well adapted to support incomplete inductions or deductions, and sometimes hypothetical thinking (so-called abductions), is not necessarily the proof that it is the only one. Scientists think in the language of mathematical or logical formalism, or in some of the new programming languages, even if they do not carry on dialogue or try to write poetry or love letters in such languages.
Literacy, as a socially encompassing ideal, states that people should be literate because people think in language. Accordingly, proper use of language, as set forth in the rules of literacy, is a premise for successful thinking. Besides introducing circularity-the premise turns out to be the conclusion-this is a strong assumption, with too many implications for science and for philosophy to be left unchallenged. The assumption was never entirely proven; and it is probably impossible to prove, given the strong connection between all signs participating in thinking processes. Images call up words, but so do odors, flavors, textures, and sounds. Words recall or trigger images, music, etc. The integrated nature of thinking is probably affected by mechanisms of voluntary decision-making or by genetic mechanisms structured to accept a certain sign system (language, mathematical formalism, diagrams) as dominant, without precluding modes of thought different from those resulting from the premise of literacy.
If defining thinking as language processing resulted in human experiences possible only under this assumption, there are also other ways to define thinking which, in turn, may become, if they haven't yet, necessary and beneficial. In this respect, one question can be raised: Are thinking machines, i.e., programs able to autonomously perform operations we associate with human thinking, excluded from the discussion because they do not qualify as literate? Many scientific endeavors of our time would not have started if potential success were to be put to a literacy test. The area of new materials, able to fix themselves, and of machines resulting from self-assembly belong among our examples. Fortunately, science based on alternative practical human experiences, fairly independent of language and literacy, discovered that there are alternative ways to define thinking, and rationality, for that matter. Considering thinking together with other human traits, such as emotion, sense of humor, aesthetics, the ability to project ideas through various media, senses or languages will probably lead to even more daring scientific research.
Before considering alternative ways to define thinking and the relation between rationality and human reason, let us look at the characteristics of thinking in current praxis, science and philosophy included. The amount of language we need to function in the workplace and in social life has diminished in comparison to previous circumstances of human experience. If thinking took place only in language, that would mean that thinking itself has diminished. Very few people would be inclined to accept this conclusion. The small subset of language used in social life and in professional interaction is representative of the segmented nature of this life and of the interactions it supports. This small subset of language, the command of which does not require literacy skills, is composed of social stereotypes, but is not sufficient to constitute a medium for thinking. Parallel to the diminished subset of natural language, the languages of science and technology expanded as expectations of scientific and technological efficiency increased. Expressions in the small subset of natural language that people use in order to function are generated regardless of the requirement of variety and change in our reciprocal relations. As canned expressions of limited function, they are taken over from previous circumstances, and used independently of what once determined their need. Chances are that an illiterate neighbor will never be noticed since everything pertaining to the social status of such a neighbor is literacy independent: driving, washing clothes, cooking, banking, telephoning, watching television, connecting to the Internet. The trained illiterate can perform these tasks and those pertinent to work perfectly without ever displaying a literacy handicap. No doubt that the new machines, new materials, new foods, and new medicines that are more at the frontiers of science than in the mainstream of living and working will further affect the need and possibility of a civilization dominated by more than one of its means of expression and communication.
People can function as illiterates in societies of extreme specialization without being noticed as illiterates and without affecting the efficiency of the system to which they belong because their own involvement in the functioning of the world in which they live is changing. Illiterate rationality is no less goal oriented than any other rationality. It is just expressed through other means. And it is no less concerned with predicting the behavior of systems driven by languages of extreme functionality, working regardless of the literacy of the operators. Scientific literacy is either stored in skills, through training, or in the systems operated by people who know less about their functioning than the machines themselves.
Symptoms such as misuse of words, sloppy language and grammar, use of stereotypes, the inability and even unwillingness to sustain dialogue might be telling something about thinking, too-for instance, that forms of thinking based on sign systems other than language are more effective, or more appropriate to what people do in our days; or even that appropriateness in one particular sign system does not translate into appropriateness and effectiveness in another practical experience. No wonder that science, in addition to reasons implicit in the nature of scientific inquiry, shies away from language, from its imprecision, ambiguity, and tendency to coalesce in stereotypes, or become stereotypes under circumstances of patterned use. Philosophy, by and large, follows the same tendency, although its alternatives are not comparable to those of science. The experience of science, and to a more limited degree that of philosophy, is simultaneously an experience in generating language capable of handling continuity, vagueness, and fuzzy relations. Spatial reasoning and replication of phenomena, usually associated with the living as aspects of common-sense knowledge, are also constitutive of the new science.
Extremely specialized human practical experiences are no longer predominantly experiences based on knowledge, but on constituting the person as information integrator. The continuous diminution of the need to think corresponds to the extreme segmentation of work and to the successful technological integration of various partial contributions resulting from this highly efficient segmented and mediated work. In one's individual life, in activities pertinent to self-maintenance (nourishment, rest, hygiene, enjoyment), the process is the same. Thinking is focused on selection: cooking one from many pre-processed meals at home, dressing in one from among many ready- made clothing items, living in pre-fabricated homes, washing objects in programmed machines. But the objects embody someone else's thinking. The reified thinking projected into gene manipulation, materials, and machines leads to a reduction of live thinking. People integrate themselves in the information network, and for a greater part of their existence they act as information processors: heat something until it pops; snap or zip to close; press a button that will adjust water temperature and wash cycle according to the type of clothes. More generally, people rely on the living machine that adapts to the user, re-assembles itself as requirements change, and/or fixes itself. Rationality is more and more integrated in the technology; thus it is rationalized away from the process of individual self-constitution. As tremendous as the consequences can be, they will be infinitely more dangerous if we do not start thinking about them.
Technology at this level uncouples the past from the present. Consequently, life and actual existence are alienated. Individuals do not have to think, they have to integrate themselves into the program embodying high efficiency rationality and reason. Today, knowledge of what goes into food, how preparation affects its qualities, what makes for a good shirt or sweater, what makes for a good house, what it means to wash, and how a material is affected by certain chemicals and water temperatures are rendered irrelevant. What matters is the result, not the process. What counts is efficiency, not individual know-how. Thinking is detached from thinking in the sense that all thinking, and thus rationality, is embodied outside the self-constituted human being. The appearance is that this outside thinking and this outside rationality have a life of their own. Memetic mechanisms are a testimony to the process.
In the civilization of illiteracy, we experience not only the benefits of high efficiency, but also the self-perpetuating drive of new pragmatic means. At times it appears that humans do not compete for achieving higher levels of creativity and productivity. Affluence appears as a given that takes over the need to match efficiency expectations characteristic of the global scale of humankind. To keep pace with technological progress and with scientific renewal becomes a rationale in itself, somehow disconnected from human reason. The confusing rationality of ever- increasing choices is matched by the frustrating realization that value options literally disappear, leaving no room for sensible reasoning. As a result, social and political aspects of human existence are short circuited, in particular those affecting the status of science and the condition of philosophy. Frequently, research is questioned as to whether its goals make sense at all. Only 15 years ago, half of the population in the USA suspected that science and the technology it fosters were the cause rather than the cure of many problems faced in the country, social problems included. The balance changed, but not the attitude of those captive to literacy's goals and values, who oppose science and the humanities instead of seeing them in their necessary, although contradictory, unity.
Quo vadis science?
Discovery and explanation
From among the many levels at which the issue of language in relation to science is relevant, two are critical: discovery and explanation. In all fairness, it should be said that literacy never claimed to be a way towards scientific discovery, or that language is the instrument making discovery possible. The main claim is that access to science, and thus the possibility to continue scientific work, is primarily through language. This assertion was correct in the past as long as scientific practice took place in a homogeneous cognitive context of shared representations of time and space. Once this context changed, the built-in language metrics of experience, what is called the ratio, the shared measure, started to get in the way of new discoveries and efficient explanations of previous discoveries. Among the many new codes scientists use today, symbolic reasoning (used in mathematics, logic, genetics, information science, etc.) is the most pervasive. All in all, a transition has been made from a centralized scientific practice to new experiences, which are quite often independent of each other and better adapted to the scale of the particular phenomenon of interest. This independence, as well as sensitivity to scale, results from different objects of specialized disciplines, from different perspectives, and from different sign systems structured as research tools or as medium for constituting efficient explanatory theories.
Plato would have barred entrance to the Academy to those who did not master mathematics: "Let no one enter who is not a mathematician." In today's world, the guardians of science would require logic, and others the mastery of artificial languages, such as programming languages, themselves subject to improved focus (as in object programming) and increased computational efficiency. In the time of Socrates, "the orator," language was ascertained to be constitutive of cities, laws, and the arts. In the time of the Roman poet Lucretius, physics was written in verse (7,000 lines of heroic hexameter were used to present Epicurus' atomic theory). Galileo preferred the dialogue, written in colloquial Italian, to share discoveries in physics and astronomy with his contemporaries. With Newton, equations started to replace words, and they became, almost to our time, the vocabulary of physics. Very similar developments took place in the evolution of science in China, India, the Middle East. The emergence of new visual or multimedia languages (of diagrams, systems of notation, visual representations, mixed data types) corresponds to the different nature of visual and multimedia experience. They are steps in the direction of deeper labor division, increased mediation, and new forms of human interaction-in particular, of a practice that is more intensional than extensional.
Time and space: freed hostages
The Encyclopedic tradition centered around the scientific human being (l'homme scientifique) who it defined through language. This tradition continued a line of progressive changes in humankind's scientific experience. We can learn about these changes by examining the language through which they are expressed. The syncretic stage of human activity was dominated by observations and short cycles of action- reaction. Incipient, rudimentary science was not independent of the human being's practical projection. Images and, later, names of plants, animals, mountains, and lakes pertained to the beginning. Only when the scope of observation broadened and, instead of the immediate connection, a series of connections was accounted for, did science become a praxis in itself.
Science was born together with the magical, and would continue to develop in this symbiosis. Eventually, it joined religion in opposing the magic. Observation and fear of the observed were one. Names of stars testify to changes in the language in which what we call astronomical science is embodied. Obviously there was little awareness of the mechanics of the cosmos during the time names changed. Mytho-magical terminology, followed by zodiac signs of magic origin (in both cases with reference to the practical activity of people during changing seasons), and by the Christian names (after the establishment of Christianity), is a line continued today in detailed catalogs encoding positions, dynamics, and interrelations in numeric form.
In the experience of observing the sky and in deriving the notion of duration (how long it took for celestial objects to change position), humans projected their biological and cognitive characteristics: seeing, association, comparison. Names were given and observations were made, of position mainly, but also of light intensity. With the emergent notion of time, generalized from the notion of duration, stars were nolonger related to divinities. Still, astronomical observation was used to structure monastic life. Stars served as a nighttime clock. At a time of reduced scientific inquiry (Europe from the 5th century to the 10th), the observation of the skies, reflected in maps of various constellations, prepared for future progress in astronomy. Physical properties, such as intensity of light, color, and brilliancy, later suggested better names because the experience in which stars were recognized (navigation, in the first place) required identification for successful performance. Magic and science explained success in very different ways. This was the time when planets were identified through properties evident to all who needed the sky. The magic layer was projected as a result of associations people made between qualities characteristic of persons and the behavior of certain stars, i.e., the perceived influence they had on events pertinent to human existence. During the entire process, language served as an instrument of integration and observation, as well as a means for logical practice, such as deductions. Molding the experience of time perception, storing the acquired knowledge, and further shaping practical experiences of time, language acquired a very powerful position in the human being's self-constitution in time. This position would be strengthened by literacy, bound to generalize distinctions in language and introduce them as effective means of structuring new expectations. Only when time-dependent practical requirements, such as those of relativity, impossible to satisfy within literacy, became critical was time freed from the captivity of verbal language.
A giant cognitive step bridged the immediacy of the surroundings-where magic forces were rumored to exist, waiting for humans to free them-and the notion of space. Geometry-which literally means to measure land-is relevant as a practical experience of human self-constitution that unites the concrete task at hand (surveying, building, decorating, observing the sky) and the generalization of distance. Measuring land ends up not only in description of the land, but also in its reconstitution in the abstract category of space. Language was part of the process, and for as long as practical experiences in the immediate surrounding were direct, geometric conventions remained very close to their practical implications. Once distinctions beyond direct relations in space were made possible by the experience of navigation, by settled forms of social life (leading to future cities), and by strategies for successful securing and defense of land, the language of geometry changed. Internally motivated developments, as well as those rooted in forms of human praxis other than geometry, resulted in the constitution of many geometric languages.
The languages of the foundations of geometry and of algebraic, differential, or topological geometry are as different as the practical experiences from which they are derived. In many cases, literate language suffices for formulating geometric problems, but breaks down in supporting the practice of attempting solutions. Obviously enough, the intuitive visual aspect of geometry is quite often better adapted to subjects such as symmetry, higher order spaces, and convexity than is literacy. Rigid spaces and elastic spaces behave differently from spaces describable in language. Geometry frequently uses notations whose referent is rather abstract. The freeing of time and space from the captivity of language made an impact on the condition of rationality, where scientific praxis is rooted, and of reason, where philosophy originates.
Coherence and diversity
Science integrates the results of diversified experiences and expresses the perceived human need to maintain a coherent perspective of the whole. As a reaction to the establishment of a permanent and universal language embodied in the practice of literacy, partial languages of scientific focus emerged. Those who knew from their own self-constitution in scientific practice that global coherence, as preserved in language, and specialized knowledge conflict, gave up the effort to harmonize the general framework (of language) and the specialized perspective (of science). The understanding that the language of science is not simply a descriptive device, but a constitutive element of scientific practical experience, did not come easy, especially since language kept human awareness of space and time captive to its mechanism of representation. Seemingly, it was less difficult to notice how measuring some phenomena (especially in physics) changed the system observed than to understand how a scientific hypothesis expressed in language created a framework of subjective science. The subjectivity of the language description corresponds to a particular practical experience involving identification through language.
Particular developments in science are not identical in all scientific branches. Astronomy and geometry evolved differently from each other and from other sciences. As a result of the inherent dynamics of conflict between means and goals of sciences, a phase of liberation from language started. Once language itself reached its limits in literacy, in respect to the efficiency of the new human experiences that the current scale of humankind brought about, new languages were needed. Breaking the language barrier, with implicit emancipation from literacy, is a practical experience in itself. In this experience, two aspects of language come under scrutiny: the epistemological and the communicational. In the epistemological status, we evaluate how language is a medium for embodying science and shaping the perspective of scientific inquiry. The communicational status refers to language as a medium for sharing knowledge. The levels of problem formulation, of solutions, of interpretation, of experiment and validation, and of communication are quite different. They will continue to differentiate even more in order to be efficient. The rationality intrinsic to this new science is no longer reducible to finding the logos in things and phenomena, or to instill a logos into techné. This is why the legacy of Francis Bacon-the prophetic theoretician of experimental science-as well as of Descartes-whose rules for understanding dominated the literate phase of humankind's scientific practical experience-literally cease to be relevant once we move from language to languages, from literacy to illiteracy.
Computational science
Language is ambiguous, imprecise, and not neutral in respect to the phenomena observed and accounted for. For these and other reasons, researchers working within the informational paradigm needed to synthesize specialized languages designed in such ways to avoid ambiguity and make higher efficiency of automated processing possible. Many formal languages have become the new scientific laboratories of our time, preparing quite well for the new stage of computational disciplines. In parallel, new forms of scientific experimentation, which correspond to the complexity of the phenomena under observation and to their dynamics, were developed. These forms are known under the name simulation (sometimes modeling) and consist of observing not the behavior of the researched aspect of the world, but one or several of its descriptions.
To observe the explosion of a remote star, a time-span of data collection that extends well over the age of humankind is required. Instead of waiting (forever, so to speak), scientists model astrophysical phenomena and visualize them with the aid of sophisticated computable mathematical descriptions. These are better suited to the scale of the phenomena than all the equipment ever used for this purpose. Radio astronomy is no longer about the stars seen through human eyes. It is not about the visible, and it is not burdened by all the history of star names. Radio-astronomy is about star systems, cosmic physics, dynamics, even about the notion, so often discarded, of the beginning of the universe. The geometry of higher (than three) space dimensions is not about the visible-the surveyed land, building, or ornament-never mind the magical spirits inhabiting it. Such geometries submit theoretical constructs supporting a practice of thinking, explaining, even acting, that is not possible without the generalization of space dimensions. Whether in the fiction of Flatland (Edwin Abbott's book about how different life is in lower-dimension space compared to life in what we take to be 3-dimensional reality), or in the computer graphics animated representation of the hypercube, or in the theories of higher dimension spaces (relating to Einstein's relativity theory), scientific languages, irreducible to the general language and non- translatable into it, are at work.
There are quite a number of similar subjects which make evident the border at which science can no longer rely on language. A non-language-based rationality- spatial reasoning, for instance-becomes necessary in this realm of inquiry. As sciences enter the age of computation, necessities become possibilities. There are subjects of research in which the brevity of a process makes impossible its direct observation and appropriate description in language. Indeed, the universe of extremely short interactions, of fast exchanges of energy, of high frequency patterns (which give the appearance of a continuum), among others, can be approached only with instruments of observation whose own inertia is lower than that of the phenomena scrutinized and with a conceptual framework for which language (of high inertia) is ill equipped.
Language preserves in its structure the experience that made it necessary; literacy does the same. This is why their sequentiality conflicts with subjects of configurational condition. This is also why linearity, inherent in the pragmatics that formed literacy, conflicts with the inherent non-linearity of the world. Many other conflicts are at work at the same time: centrality of work opposed to distribution of tasks; hierarchy and distributed networking; clear-cut distinctions and vagueness; deterministic experiences of limited scope opposed to self-configurational, chaotic processes of infinite adaptation to new circumstances; dualism as opposed to pluralism (in scientifically significant forms). At stake is the efficiency of the effort, as it approaches issues of recuperation mechanisms in nature and society, strategies of co- evolution (replacing strategies of dominance) with nature, holistic models made possible by both increased mediation and powerful integrative mechanisms. Idealizing all these possibilities would be as counterproductive as demonizing literacy-based practical experiences. Nevertheless, we need a better understanding of what no longer responds to requirements of human self-constitution under the new scale of humankind, as we need an image of the alternative practical experiences through which a new rationality is formed.
In the rapidly expanding context of parallel scientific endeavors and distributed tasks supported by speedy and reliable networks, scientific research is liberated from the industrial model. Instead of centralized institutions sharing in the use of expensive instruments, there is an increasing number of experiments taking place all over the world. Tele-presence is less expressive a name for what researchers actually perform thousands of miles away from each other, using expensive machines and various measuring and testing devices. The laboratories that once served as the place for scientific self-constitution are replaced by collaboratories, a combination of real instruments, which can be used more efficiently, and virtual places of research that allow for more creativity. Real-time interaction is fundamental to the context of focusing on nano-scale. Multidisciplinarity is no longer an illusion, but a practical requirement for the integration that scientific effort requires.
Explaining ourselves away
Systematic domains of human practical experiences are changing fast. The science of the ever shorter and more intense phenomena in which the human being of this age is constituted consists of a body of expressive means in which language either plays a secondary function or is substituted with forms of expression other than language. Procedures to capture the coherence of the phenomena researched now need to be adapted to this reality. The coherence embodied in language reflects past experiences, but does not properly explain experiences characterized by new kinds of coherence. In recent years, a question has come up time and again: Is there some common element in language, in the possible messages exchanged in our universe by civilizations different from ours, in the messages exchanged at the genetic level of our existence or in the biochemical trails which we associate with the behavior of ant colonies or beehives? It would be premature to attempt an answer. As already mentioned, David Hirsch ascertains that 97% of human activity is concept free. Control mechanisms in charge of this form of activity are common not only to humans, but also to lower level biological entities (insects, for instance). Exploration of cosmic civilizations, genetics, biochemistry, not to mention memetics, is not necessarily helped by this answer. Having to explain abstract mathematical concepts or the behavior of complex systems (such as the human nervous system), some displaying learning capabilities or self-organization tendencies, raises the stakes quite high: Do we explain ourselves away in the effort to emulate the human being? Replication of ideas (scientific, philosophic, or of any other type) based on the genetic model inspired by evolutionary theory, contributes new angles to the subject. But even if we manage to establish methods for successful replication, have we captured the characteristics of human self-identification?
In the same vein, another question needs to be addressed: the mystique of science comes from the realization that the law of gravity applies everywhere, that electricity does not depend on the geographic coordinates of the place where people live, that computation is a universal calculus. Still, science is not value neutral; one model dominates others; one rationality wins over others. The truth of a scientific theory and its empirical adequacy are only loosely related. To accept one science over another is to the scientist an issue of rationality, while for those integrating it in their practical experiences, it becomes an issue of adequacy. This aspect constitutes more than a cultural or memetic issue. At stake is the fact that the natural condition of the human being is quite often rationalized away, regardless of the reason.
The efficiency of science
In recent years language has changed probably more than in its entire history. Still, these changes are not of the depth and breadth of scientific and technological praxis. Computer science, as Dijkstra pointed out, deserves a better name, more in line with the fundamental change this practical experience brings about. ("Would anyone call surgery knife science"? he asked.) We don't have better names for many other fields of new human experience: artificial life, artificial intelligence, genetics, qualitative reasoning, and memetics. But we do have powerful new notation systems, new ways of reasoning (combining qualitative and quantitative aspects), and fresh methods of expression (interactive). Consequently, a new human condition resulting from the practice of science will probably emerge. This condition will reflect the changed premises of scientific experiment.
Experimentation joined logical analysis over 350 years ago. Simulation, the experiment of the civilization of illiteracy, is becoming the dominant scientific form of expression of the systematic search for the multitude of elements involved in new scientific theories and in their applications. A variety of simulators embody knowledge and doubt. This can be seen in a broader context. Through simulation, variability is accounted for, relations are scrutinized, functional dependencies are tested over a wide array of data critical to the performance of new systems, or over a wide array of the people involved with them. After heroically, and necessarily, separating from philosophy and establishing its own methods, science is rediscovering the need for the dimension covered by human reasoning. This is, after all, what the subject matter of artificial intelligence is and what it ultimately produces: simulations of our capability to reason. In the same vein, scientists are concerned with the metaphysics of the beginning of the universe, and the language of the mind (lingua mentis), evidently assumed to be different from language as we use it in the framework of community, cultural, and national existence.
To reflect upon the beginning of the universe or upon the mind means to constitute oneself, together with the appropriate language, in a pragmatic context different from community interaction, cultural values, or national characteristics. The focus is changed from obsession with quantity to preoccupation with quality. Qualities are pursued in the attempt to build a science of artificial reality. As a scientific artifact, this reality is endowed with characteristics of life, such as change and evolution over time, selection of the fittest, the best adapted to that world, and acquisition of knowledge, common sense, and eventually language. Focused on the model of life as a property of organization, artificial reality is intent on generating lifelike behavior: iterative optimization, learning, growth, adaptability, reproduction, and even self-identification. Whereas science followed strategies of standardization, artificial life is focused on generating conditions for diversity, which eventually foster adaptability. Allocation of resources within a system and strategies of co-evolution are seen as resources of incremental performance. Research starts from a premise that belongs to the realm of reasoning, not rationality: humans and the problem being solved are continuously changing.
Exploring the virtual
Virtual realities are focused on almost everything that art pursues: illusion of space, time, movement, projection of human emotions. Interacting with such a system means that the person becomes involved in the inside of images, sounds, and movements. All these are simulated, using animation as the new language of the science that the moving image embodies. In some ways, virtual reality becomes a general purpose simulator of a captivating variable reality, made possible by mediating elements such as computer graphics images, animation, digital sound, tracking devices, and quite a number of other elements. Inside this reality, virtual objects, tools, and actions open the possibility of practical experiences of self-constitution in a meta- knowledge world.
Quality in virtual reality is also pursued as scientists try to give a coherent image of the very first minutes of the universe. Physics, genetics, biophysics, biochemistry, geology, and all else integrated in this multi-mediated effort are turned from science into natural history or philosophic ontology. To explain why physicists needed an indestructible proton for explaining matter is not an issue of numbers, precision, or equations, but of common sense: If protons could decay, mountains, oceans, stars, and planets would crumble and turn back into neutrons and electrons, and a reversal of the Big Bang might occur. Is this predictive rationality? Is validation of this type of experimentation a subject of language? As a possible explanation, which facilitates a new array of experiments in computer simulation, particle accelerators, and radio- astronomic observations, virtual reality facilitates new forms of human praxis and is embodied in new theories of physics.
Obviously, the efficiency factor, one of the major elements in the transition from one dominant literacy to partial literacies, plays an important role in this endeavor. This generalized notion of efficiency has several components in the case of science. One is the efficiency of our attempts to make science productive. Compared to the efficiency of the lever and the pulley, the efficiency of the electric engine reaches a different scale of magnitude. The same applies to our new tools, but in more dramatic ways. So far, we have managed to make science the most expensive human endeavor. Its current development appears to be motivated by a self-perpetuating drive: knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Science generated technology, which dramatically affects the outcome of human effort.
The second component factor in the transition to the pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy is the efficiency of our preparation for commanding these new tools, new forms of energy, and new forms of human interaction. Learning how to operate simple mechanical devices is different from learning how to program new tools capable of commanding sophisticated technology and of controlling tremendous amounts of energy. Although mediation has increased in human praxis, people do not yet know how to handle mediation, even less how to adapt education, their own and their children's, to shorter cycles of scientific and technological renewal.
Last among the factors at work in the change we are going through is the efficiency of invention, discovery, and explanation. Largely supported by society (states invest in science in order to pursue their goals, as do businesses and various interest groups), science is under the pressure of performance.
Markets confirm scientific results from the perspective of the return on investment they promise to deliver. Parallel to the most advanced and promising scientific endeavors, venture capital underwrites the industries of the near future. Insulation of any kind, even secrecy, no matter how stubbornly pursued and justified, is no longer possible within the economic dynamics of the present. No matter how hard companies try to impose secrecy, they fail when faced with the interactivity and integration of effort characteristic of the new dynamics. The expectation of change, of shorter cycles of investigation, and of shorter times for integration of results in the productive ability of technology is unavoidable. Still, in the USA and in Europe, there are conflicts between the new dynamics of scientific and technological progress and the bureaucracy of science. Driven by motivations characteristic of literate infatuation with national pride and security, this bureaucracy extends well beyond science and is hard at work to protect what is already passé. For science to advance, networks of activity, distributed tasks, and shared resources, all implying transparency and access, are essential.
The conflict between scientific goals and morality takes on its own characteristics in the civilization of illiteracy. Indeed, scientific results might be right, but not necessarily always good for humankind. They might support higher efficiency, but sometimes to the detriment of people obsessed with maintaining high standards of living. There are many activities-too many to list-in which humans can be entirely replaced by machines. Extreme effort, exposure to chemicals, radiation, and other unfriendly elements could be avoided. However, doing away with the living person whose identity is constituted in work experiences makes the activity itself questionable. It is no longer the case that we only talk about genetic control of populations, or about mind control, about creating machines endowed with extreme capabilities, including control of the people who made them. These are distinct possibilities, to which we are closer than many believe. Neither science nor technology, even less philosophy, can afford to ignore the conflict immanent in the situation, or the danger posed by giving in to solutions resulting from a limited perspective, or from our dedication to make real everything that is possible. After all, we can already destroy the planet, but we do not, or at least not so radically as it could be destroyed. Short of being paralyzed by all these dangers, science has to question its own condition. In view of this, it is far from accidental that sciences in the civilization of illiteracy rediscover philosophy, or they re-philosophize themselves.
Quo vadis philosophy?
The language of wisdom
Reflecting upon human beings and their relation to the outside world (nature, culture, society) constitutes a determined form of philosophical experience. It involves awareness of oneself and others, and the ability to identify similarities and differences, to explain the changing dynamics of existence, and to project the acquired understanding into the practice of formulating new questions. Practical implications of philosophic systems are manifold. Such systems affect scientific, moral, political, cultural, and other human practical experiences of self-constitution. They accumulate wisdom more than knowledge. To this effect, we can say that the classic model of philosophy remains a science of sciences, or at least the alma mater of sciences. Philosophic systems are concerned with human values, not with skills or abilities involved in reaching goals defined by our rationality. Nevertheless, this status has been continuously challenged from inside and outside philosophy. The decline of respect for philosophy probably results from the perceived omniscient attitude philosophers have displayed and from their unwillingness to focus on aspects of human reason.
Philosophy has never been a domain for everyone. In our day, it has become a discourse expressed, if not in painfully contorted language, in a multitude of specialized languages addressed to a relatively small circle of interested parties, themselves philosophers for the most part. The change in the pragmatic condition of philosophy is reflected in its current linguistic equivocations. "My philosophy" is an expression used by anyone to express anything from a tactic in football to investments, drug use, diet, politics, religions, and much more.
Misunderstood cultural exigencies, originating in the civilization of literacy, and political opportunism maintain philosophy as a required subject in universities, no matter what is taught under its name, who teaches it, or how. Under communism in East Europe and the Soviet Union, where free choice was out of question, philosophy was obligatory because it was identified with the dominating ideology. In most liberal societies, philosophic abstraction is as much abhorred as lack of money. Philosophic illiteracy is a development in line with the deteriorating literacy manifested in our days. But what affects this change is the new pragmatic framework, not the decline in writing and reading proficiency.
The specialization of philosophic language, as well as the integration of logico- mathematical formalism in philosophical discourse, have not contributed to recuperating the prestige of philosophy, or of the philosopher, for that matter. Neither did it contribute to resolving topics specific to the discipline, in particular, to human experience and conscience. In fact, philosophy has disappeared in a number of philosophies practiced today: analytic, continental, feminist, Afro-American, among others. Each has constituted its own language and even perspective, pursuing goals frequently rooted in the philosophy of the civilization of literacy, or in its politics.
The relevance (or irrelevance) of philosophy cannot be ascertained outside the practice of questioning and answering, a practice that made philosophy necessary in the first place. Indeed, as a practice of positioning the human being in the universe of human experience, philosophy is as relevant as the practical results of this positioning. There are scientific theories, such as the theory of relativity in physics or gene theory in biology, that are as philosophically relevant as they are scientifically significant. And there are, as well, philosophic theories of extreme scientific significance. Many components of Leibniz's system, of Descartes' rationalism, and Peirce's pragmaticism can be mentioned. Each originates within a distinct pragmatic framework of practical experiences through which reason comes to expression and questions specific forms of rationality.
Philosophy, as we know it from the texts in which it was articulated, is a product molded through the experience that initially made writing possible (though not universally accepted) and, later, literacy necessary. Its fundamental distinctions- subject/object, rational/irrational, matter/spirit, form/content, analytic/synthetic, concrete/abstract, essence/phenomenon-correspond largely to human practical experiences in the framework of language. The traditional gnoseological approach reflects the same structure, as does formal logic, based on Aristotle's syllogistic theory. The fundamental linguistic distinction of subject/predicate marks-at least for Western civilization-the entire approach. Expectations of efficiency pertinent to the human scale leading to the Industrial Revolution affected the condition of philosophy. At this juncture, philosophers realized the practical aspect of the discipline. Marx thought that it would empower people and help them change the world: "Until now philosophers interpreted the world; it's time to change it." And change it did, but in ways different from what he and his followers anticipated. The hard grip of reified language turned the workers' paradise into a mental torture chamber.
Once the underlying structure (reflected in the requirements of literacy) changed, philosophy changed as well, also freeing itself from the categories of language that molded its speculative discourse. Nevertheless, its institutions (education, professional associations and conferences) continue to pursue goals and functions peculiar to literate expectations. This prompted a strong movement of philosophic dissidence (Feyerabend and Lakatos are the main representatives), attuned to the practical need of a philosophic praxis aware of the relative nature of its assertions.
Multi-valued logic, the logic of relations, fuzzy set theory, and computation in its algorithmic and non-algorithmic forms (based on neural networks) allow philosophers to free themselves from the various dualisms embedded in the language of philosophy. Significantly better answers to ontological, gnoseological, epistemological, and even historic questions have to reflect such and other cognitively relevant perspectives of knowledge. Philosophy undergoes a process of mathematization in order to gain access to science and improve its own efficiency. It has become logic oriented, more computational. It has adopted genetic schemes for explaining variation and selection, extending to the current memetic conversations and methods. It is not unusual for philosophers to abandon the pattern of rehashing older theories and views, and to attempt to understand pragmatic exigencies and their reason. The scientification of philosophy could not have happened under the scrutiny of language and the domination of literacy. Neither could we expect, within the literate framework, anything comparable to Plato's Dialogues, to the great philosophical systems of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, to the literary seduction of Heidegger, Sartre, or Martin Buber.
In scientific disguise
Developing, parallel to common language (which philosophers frequently call natural language), different types of sign systems, humans utilize the latter's mediating force in order to increase the efficiency of their action. "Give me a fixed point and I'll move the world" is the equivalent philosophical statement characteristic of the civilization of the lever and pulley. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty says in a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less." "The question is," says Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." Reading the dialogue from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, with the magnificent works of great philosophers (from Plato to Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel, Peirce and many more) in mind, one understands Alice's trouble. With the exception of Wittgenstein, nobody really seems to have been bothered by the ability people have to make words mean many things.
Today, we could be directed to a philosophical paraphrase in which, instead of a fixed point, the need for a sign system (a language) is spelled out. Adapted to the scope of the conceived practical experience, such a sign system, when put into practice, will change the world, will "move" it. Diagrammatic thinking, the powerful cognitive model Peirce advanced, exemplifies the idea. Cybernetics, biogenetics, computers, and research in artificial intelligence and artificial life, as well as political, social, aesthetic, or religious concepts are examples of domains where such sign systems have been devised. They have facilitated forms of human self-constitution that contribute to the contradictory image of today's world. Such languages reflect the fundamental process of progressive mediation, participate in the diversification of the languages used, and affect the status and value system of the ideal of literacy. They serve as the scientific disguise of philosophy. Clarity (difficult to achieve in natural language), evidence, and certainty seem guaranteed in the language of science. In addition, objectivity and the ever seductive truth, for which philosophy was never known, are also apparently within reach.
There is to philosophic discourse an internal reason for its continuous unfolding: People constituting themselves as philosophers change as the world they live in changes. Human reasoning is part of the world; the ability and, moreover, the desire to think of new questions, attempt answers, and doubt our own ability to reach the right answer are part of what defines the human being. The consequences of mediation in philosophy should not be ignored. Mediation implies, on one hand, a high degree of integration of human praxis (to the extent of making individual contribution anonymous), and on the other, a no less high degree of the subject's independence in respect to the object of work or reasoning, or the object represented by the other participants in human praxis. While it seems appropriate for science to know more and more about a narrower range of subjects, it contradicts the image of philosophy as it is formed in language and embodied in the ideal of literacy. Due to this metaphorically defined deepening of knowledge, each philosopher is more independent of the other, but more intensely integrated than ever before due to the necessary interconnection of this knowledge. The meaning of this paradoxical situation is not easy to clarify. The overall process has followed two qualitatively contrary directions: 1) concentration on a precisely delineated aspect of knowledge or action in order to understand and control it; 2) abandoning interest in the whole as a consequence of the assumption that the parts will finally be reunited in the social integrating mechanism of the market, whether we want it or not. We now have particular philosophies-of law, ethics, science, sport, recreation, feminism, Afro-Centrism-but no longer a comprehensive philosophy of existence.
The scientific disguise of philosophy contributes to its renewed struggle for legitimacy. It adopts concepts and methods pertinent to rationality. In order to deal with reason, or to do away altogether with questions of reasoning, it unfolds in science and technology. Durkheim tried to apply Darwin's natural selection model to explain labor division. At present, philosophers have become memeticians, and examine computational simulations of Darwinian principles in order to see how ideas survive and advance. Spencer believed that the increase of the productive power of work increases happiness. Present-day philosophers are eager to diagram the relation between work satisfaction and personality. Some even try to revive Compte's positivist philosophy, to improve upon past Utopian schemes, or to invent a calculus of intellectual well-being. Short of a philosophic inquiry, everything becomes a subject waiting for a philosopher who does not want to stay within the boundaries of the history of philosophy.