The Will to Incorporation: Separating Science from State
by Asa Boxer
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An analogical point of convergence essential to my subject is how psychological models and physical ones both partake in a tendency to close themselves off and rigidify. As Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) explained in his famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), science requires rigid paradigms in order to produce the anomalies that will lead to improved paradigms. This phenomenon is what I have referred to earlier as the will to incorporation. All systems, from galaxies and solar systems to organic cells, and social systems, are defined by this phenomenon of locking in a gain, shutting out change, and making all phenomena conform to a unique way of seeing and doing things.
If we consider the brilliant move of the first prokaryote to lock in its system with a cell wall, and the first eukaryote to close off its nucleus along with numerous other structures, we are on to the phenomenon I’m indicating. The genius of the eukaryote is that it can build large and complex organisms like plants and animals that almost holographically reflect the same inner processes of closing off structures and locking in gains. The cell treats every element it encounters on its own terms, incorporating whatever benefits its purposes and rejecting elements that would corrupt them.
Take spiders. The spiderweb reflects the productivity of the spider’s system of seeing the world. But this spider’s perspective would be impossible if it weren’t for a number of systems closing themselves off from one another (as cells and organs) and interacting under the agency of a single spider, and over time through the interaction of many spiders with many ecosystems.
So too is the case with human beings and humanity. Instead of spiderwebs however we’re talking about an abundance of artefacts that could not have arisen without this dynamic of disciplines closing themselves off and then seeking expression with reference to a selection of other artefacts authored by both humanity and nature. (By “artefacts,” I mean instrumentation, inventions, technologies, cities, traditions, cultures, economies, literatures, entertainments, organisms, geographies, ecosystems, etc.) In other words, this will to incorporation somehow participates in both the inner and outer worlds.
The reason it’s urgent to consider the issue is that there’s a tendency in human affairs to incorporate all persons in any given paradigm and to do so by force. Whether it’s the religious idea that all must partake in the body of Christ or be damned, or whether it’s the secular idea that as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) put it, “Those who will not be free will be forced to be free”—we’re talking about a sinister side of the will to incorporation. It seems to be related to the instinct to eat (hunger) insofar as any organism seeks to incorporate all manner of life.
If the process of closing off and locking in is inherent to all systems and organisms, then how do we escape the problem of seeing our models as final revelations that must be all-inclusive and all-consuming? How do we prevent science from taking its latest incarnation as somehow the last word and final revelation to which we must all conform?
From Kuhn’s perspective, there should be no such need because the rigidity of our paradigms is productive: it resists novelties that could represent a step backward. In other words, when science is working as it should, there’s nothing to worry about: we will always be working with the best model available.
But he was only looking at scientific paradigms and how they serve, not at how paradigms in general tend toward tyranny. And moreover, Kuhn was writing at a time of relative scientific sanity, from within a science culture that, while enjoying a certain privilege and esteem, did not mistake its business with taking direct command of the political and cultural infrastructure. There was no sense that scientific paradigms were actively seeking to obviate and replace our most cherished humanist ones, those that nurtured modern science.
Of course I’m concerned with how the present probability cult has suddenly shunted aside what amounts to thousands of years of human progress in the realms of democratic governance and individual freedoms (both great boons to personal development). No social science model based on statistics can prescribe a better program for human development than Montesquieu (1689-1755) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809). The reason for this barrier is that statistical models necessarily lose sight of the individual and the inner, psychological world. In fact individuals is where stats break down (fail to account for the appearances).
The urgent problem we’re facing is one in which human beings are enjoined to serve and fit into the model instead of understanding that the model ought to fit and serve human beings. It might appear that we’re encountering a new challenge. How avoid lockdown and takeover by model- (or idol-) worshipping science cults? How allow science to pursue its rigid models while at once understanding that these paradigms are not in fact binding “laws”?
Perhaps our separation of church from state will serve as an example here: we require a separation of science from state. But how exactly is that supposed to work? We need science to help with responsible governance. The only way out as I see it is a separation of science from state where its prescriptions are concerned. Ultimately all scientific prescriptions must be left to individual choice. Science can busy itself all it likes with descriptions. But when it comes to making a recommendation, that’s where the relationship ends, with tentative and carefully balanced recommendations.
Here the analogical mind comes to rest on one of the chief motifs here at analogy magazine: science behaving like bad religion. Happily, historically speaking, we have already crossed this bridge before and we’ve already solved the problem by separating church from state.
But for the analytical mind it’s not so simple: religion is religion and science is science. In other words the main blocking figure to our emancipation is the popular perception of science as the opposite of religion. It is for this very reason that I have spent so much time debunking that myth. Once one sees that these two ways of approaching knowledge are in fact coeval, that in fact, the Church nurtured science and that science is indeed an outgrowth of religion, a new Reformation, one may begin to see how they resemble each other. And once the process of recognition begins, all the dominoes fall. Yes they are different in important ways, but in some ways religion accounts for more of the appearances. And the present science is failing to account for any of the appearances where the inner world is concerned.
Asa Boxer’s poetry has garnered several prizes and is included in various anthologies around the world. His books are The Mechanical Bird (Signal, 2007), Skullduggery (Signal, 2011), Friar Biard’s Primer to the New World (Frog Hollow Press, 2013), Etymologies (Anstruther Press, 2016), Field Notes from the Undead (Interludes Press, 2018) and The Narrow Cabinet: A Zombie Chronicle (Guernica, 2022). Boxer is also the founder and editor of analogy magazine.
These are great topics; I like the comparison between the microbiological (a topic I have learned a great deal from studying) and the ideological/paradigmatic especially. It is certainly undeniable that the sciences emerge from within the background of the religious, of course. In The Mythology of Evolution, I collect those who would project the 'science vs religion' metaphor under the heading 'positivist' (this is fairer than 'atheist' in my view, although this issue becomes complex rapidly). In general, however, it is the positivists who maintain the view of 'science vs religion', and this is a viewpoint that (as you are well aware) distorts both science and religion.
I have felt for sometime that what is needed is a means to reconfigure this split. Since the sciences are full of religion-like elements, and religions frequently entail science-like elements, trying to create a split here serves no purpose except one: it satiates the psychological desire of the positivists to define themselves as a negative image of what religion means to them (i.e. to collect the negative image of religious practice and pretend that there is an opposite, and that this opposite is embodied in magical science).
The sensible path forward is closed to us. That would be to reopen metaphysics as a legitimate field of study and discourse. As long as metaphysics are excluded from public discussion, we are trapped by our metaphysics. But this is impossible, because precisely the pact the positivists made with themselves - from the Vienna Circle onwards - is that they do not partake in metaphysics (and are therefore even more apt to be mislead by them).
What's required is a new metaphor that remounts 'science versus religion'. I do not know if the best path forward requires a new A vs B (these are easily absorbed in most people's minds) or a transition to an A, B, C (harder to absorb, but helpful for breaking out of the blindness). Charles Taylor mounts an attack of the latter kind. It didn't land despite being widely read (at least in Catholic and philosophical circles). That makes me wonder if a new A vs B is required.
I have spent a great deal of time on this issue, and I'm no closer to a solution. The problem being, of course, the solution has to be capable of incorporation into positivist metaphysics. But positivists do not believe they have metaphysics. And therein lies the problem.
As for 'separation of science and state', aye, I have argued for the same, in various ways. But technocracy remains functionally a kind of atheocracy, and until this can be exposed (the religious-like aspects of positivism) there is little hope of moving on this issue. Still, I persist!
Many thanks for a stimulating discussion!
Chris.
Its the Research Universities, we should never have placed science there in the decades after WW2, the Big Research Unis, Big Biz (who has outsourced so much of its science to them on the taxpayers dime all the while greatly shrinking Medium Biz and its science), and BIg Gov exist in a symbiotic relationship with each other and we have a far smaller scientific ecosystem than we had/would have and could have, and on top of that its very homogeneous and hierarchical -- which isnt good for genuine science either -- which along with the deeply interconnected relationships (in many cases its hard to tell where one ends and the other begins) produce most of these problems, plus more but that would take more space...