Dear Howard and Colleagues,
Many thanks for your contribution! This is the third time we have a New Year
Lecture, and the first one devoted to humanities. Well, to the "inhumanities"
should I say, as what you have depicted succinctly with the Lucifer Principle
describes the main evil that has been torturing human history.
There are matters of detail to comment (as previous messages have already
pointed out), but also of general perspective. First about the apparent
simplicity. The LP scheme looks simple, too simple... but at the same time it
may be powerful, really powerful in explanatory capabilities. I really do not
particularly like any of the three components involved (super-organism, pecking
order, meme/group-identity), and do not trust much about their respective
"scientificity", but their combination is chilling. It reminds some of the
Marxian strictures about class struggle, partially right but missing and
transposing essential ingredients of human life. Presumably some more
objectivity in this case --but also missing some counterpart, say the
"Archangel Principle", that has confronted and resisted the solvent forces of
the Luciferian complex and, in the long trend, supported the complexity growth
of societies and improved their structural decency.
With only the action of LP, history would not go beyond barbaric empires
briefly raising from a mosaic of ever fighting tribes... That's plausible, and
some parties may remind Tom Stonier in this list, late 90's I think, on warfare
as part of the adaption scenario of human evolution. Then, what could be the AP
"bright forces" of history that have counteracted LP? The Pantheon of
politheistic cultures could give a hint... I venture to single out three
components of AP: knowledge, justice, and the third... what about
love/compassion?
Anyhow, both the details of your LP scheme and the general canvas of human
history need an informational perspective, we completely agree. And it is
interesting that the whole trinity of LP have biological/informational origins;
but disentangling the info physics from the info bios has not been done yet
(and so your final comment is well intended but still confusing in my view).
Let me ad, looking both at the achievements of our times and at the open
intractable conflicts, that it is amazing the absence of a real international
system of justice...
Discussing on justice, on its capability to social problem solving and to
quench the LP permanent hunger, might not be a bad idea.
Best wishes to all for the New Year.
--Pedro
________________________________
De: Fis [fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] en nombre de howlbl...@aol.com
[howlbl...@aol.com]
Enviado el: lunes, 04 de enero de 2016 6:45
Para: fis@listas.unizar.es
Asunto: [Fis] January Lecture--Information and the Forces of History
The Force of History--Howard Bloom
In 1995, I published my first book, The Lucifer Principle: a Scientific
Expedition Into the Forces of history. It sold roughly 140,000 copies
worldwide and is still selling. Some people call it their Bible. Others say
that it was the book that predicted 9/11. And less than two months ago, on
November 13, 2015, some current readers said it was the book that explained
ISIS’ attacks on Paris. Why? What are the forces of history? And what do
they have to do with information science?
The Lucifer Principle uses evolutionary biology, group selection, neurobiology,
immunology, microbiology, computer science, animal behavior, and anthropology
to probe mass passions, the passions that have powered historical movements
from the unification of China in 221 BC and the start of the Roman Empire in
201 BC to the rise of the Empire of Islam in 634 AD and that empire’s modern
manifestations, the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran and ISIS, the
Islamic State, a group intent on establishing a global caliphate. The Lucifer
Principle concludes that the passions that swirl, swizzle, and twirl history’s
currents are a secular trinity. What are that trinity’s three components? The
superorganism, the pecking order, and ideas.
What’s a superorganism? Your body is an organism. But it’s also a massive
social gathering. It’s composed of a hundred trillion cells. Each of those
cells is capable of living on its own. Yet your body survives thanks to the
existence of a collective identity—a you. In
1911,[i]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn1>
Harvard biologist William Morton Wheeler noticed that ant colonies pull off
the same trick. From 20,000 to 36 million ants work together to create an
emergent property, a collective identity, the identity of a community, a
society, a colony, or a supercolony. Wheeler observed how the colony behaved
as if it were a single organism. He called the result a
“superorganism.”[ii]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn2>
Meanwhile in roughly 1900, when he was still a child, Norway’s Thorleif
Schjelderup Ebbe got into a strange habit: counting the number of pecks the
chickens in his family’s flock landed on each other and who pecked whom. By
the time he was ready to write his PhD dissertation in 1918, Ebbe had close to
20 years of data. And that data demonstrated something strange. Chickens in a
barnyard are not egalitarian. They have a strict hierarchy. At the top is a
chicken who gets special privileges. All others step aside when she goes to
the trough. She is the first to eat. And she can peck any other chicken in
the group. Then comes chicken number two. She is the second to eat. And she
can peck anyone in the flock with one notable exception. She cannot peck the
top chicken. Then comes chicken number three, chicken number four, and so on.
Each one cannot peck the chickens above her on the social ladder. But each has
free rein to peck the chickens below. Finally, there’s the bottom chicken, a
chicken everyone is free to peck but who is free to peck no one. Ebbe called
this a “peck order,” a pecking order, a dominance hierarchy.
And in 1976, Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined two new
terms.[iii]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn3>
He observed that biological life, all of it from bacteria to bathing
beauties, depends on the evolution of what Dawkins called “replicators,”
molecules that can make copies of themselves. Then Dawkins spotted a newer kind
of replicator at work. The first biological replicators—genes--did their thing
in primordial puddles. The new replicator worked in a puddle of a radically
different kind—the puddle of the human mind. Dawkins observed that we see
replicators at work when our mind fixates on a song we hate and plays it over
and over again, no matter how vigorously we wish it away. That song is using
our mind to make more copies of itself. But the most important replicators in
the soup of the human mind are not pop songs, they’re ideas. Dawkins called
these mind-based replicators “memes.”
Superorganism, the pecking order, and ideas—memes--that’s the holy trinity of
The Lucifer Principle. That’s the holy trinity that drives the forces of
history.
Here’s how it works. Social groups compete. They battle for pecking order
position in a hierarchy of groups. They strive to be at the top of that
hierarchy and to avoid the fate of the chicken at the bottom. What’s the main
thing over which groups compete? It’s a badge of group membership. A badge of
what molecular biologist Luis Villarreal and philosopher Guenther Witzany call
“group
identity.”[iv]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn4>
That badge? A cluster of memes. A knot of replicators that live in a sea of
minds. The Babylonians competed with the Assyrians and the Medes. They
competed using different languages. They competed using different ideas of
what clothes to wear, what was right and wrong, and, most important, what gods
to
worship.[v]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn5>
The eight states that made war in China in from 475 BC to 221 BC also had
competing languages, religions, and philosophies. Rome set itself against the
Persian Empire using the same tools of group identity: a different language, a
different clothing style, a different way of worship, and a different pantheon
of gods-- different ideas. And today militant Islam—in the form of the
Islamic State and what’s left of al Qaeda--is pitting itself against the West,
Russia, and China using the ideas of Islam. Using the words and deeds of
Mohammed, words and deeds that are still making copies of themselves in new
minds 1,384 years after Mohammed’s death.
Pecking order competitions between groups, pecking order competitions based on
ideas, are the meat and potatoes of the headlines. They are the forces of
history.
Where does information come into this? Everywhere. A fact that we shall have
to discuss.
Why? Because communication, sociality, and information exchange are at the
very heart of this cosmos. So are competition and hierarchy. Not to mention
the ancestor of superorganism-ness, the foremother of group identity—the
cosmos’ obsession with mobs, gangs, flocks, and massively integrated social
entities. Social entities that range from protons, atoms, galaxies, stars,
planets and moons to galaxy superclusters. What do all of these things have in
common? What do they share with megamolecules, DNA, cells, and bacterial
colonies, not to mention ants, nations, and ISIS? Competition, hierarchy, and
group identity. Superorganism, pecking order, and ideas—the holy trinity of
the Lucifer Principle. And guess what else they share? Information!
________________________________
[i]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref1>
Jürgen Tautz, The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism, Berlin:
Springer, 2008, p. 3,.
[ii]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref2>
William Morton Wheeler, The Termitodoxa, Or Biology And Society, The
Scientific Monthly, February, 1920.
[iii]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref3>
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.
[iv]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref4>
Luis P. Villarreal, Origin of Group Identity: Viruses, Addiction and
Cooperation, New York: Springer, 2009.
[v]<file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref5>
For more on the battle of the gods in Mesopotamia, see Howard Bloom, The God
Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2016.
____________
Howard Bloom
Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of
History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post),
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century
("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A tremendously
enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic),
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your
world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew! Wild!
Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
The Mohammed Code ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam." David
Swindle, PJ Media).
www.howardbloom.net
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University.
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space Development
Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding Board Member:
Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project; Founder:
The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society,
Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board Member,
Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space Philosophy; Board
member and member of Board of Governors, National Space Society.
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