Soul and Science

ILYA PRIGOGINE ■ PETER SLOTERDIJK

JACQUES ELLUL ■ JACQUES ATTALI

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA ■ GERALD EDELMAN

J. CRAIG VENTER ■ DANIEL COHEN ■ IAN WILMUT

ALAIN TOURAINE ■ RUDOLF BAHRO ■ ELON MUSK

If the 20th Century was the century of physics, the 21st Century is the century of

cybernetics, biology and ecology. Technological advance has both crossed new fron-

tiers and discovered old limits.

Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine broke new ground with his understanding that

nature, including its human component, seeks to establish order out of chaos by

“self-organizing,” not only according to pre-determined laws, but through random

creative choices as well that are responsible for the endless novelty and potentiality

of being.

The technologically-armed purposive role of humans in the Anthropocentric Age

thus takes on a new significance: “What we do today depends on our image of the

future rather than the future depending on what we do today” as Prigogine puts it.

“The equations of the future are written in our actions as well as in nature. Time

becomes construction.”

Nowhere is this truer than in the new science of genomics, which touches the

soul, and in the effort to preserve the ecological balance that has enabled humanity

to flourish within the narrow band of earth’s livable climate.

In this section we bring together leading thinkers, scientists and technologists

of our age to address these issues of mankind’s fate.

4 WINTER 2014
 Anthropo-Technology
The information age may have at last found its philosopher. PETER SLOTERDIJK, the
German author of A Critique of Cynical Reason, is one of the most revolutionary thinkers
to arise in a long while. Yet, in the English-speaking world, he remains scarcely known.
Information in our era of networks and genome maps, according to Sloterdijk, binds man
and his tools that transform nature into one operative system.This “post-metaphysical” con-
dition not only tends to abolish the separation between the subjective person and “objective
spirit,” but the distinction between culture and nature as well.
For Sloterdijk, one co-intelligent system now encompasses subject and object, culture and
nature. This information ecology gives man a new fused identity with the other, with his
For Sloterdijk, one co-intelli-
world and his tools. He is no longer an identity apart.
gent system now encompasses
Such a civilization of co-intelligent “anthropo-technology” requires an entirely new per-
subject and object, culture and
spective on ethics. For Sloterdijk, today’s passionate debates over man’s domination of nature
nature. This information ecolo-
or technology’s domination of man miss the point because they are fearfully rooted in the
gy gives man a new fused iden-
obsolete master-slave dichotomy that holds such a hallowed place in Western philosophy. As
tity with the other, with his
Sloterdijk sees it, this dichotomy, based as it was on the opposition between subject and object
world and his tools. He is no
and between culture and nature, needs to be updated: In our time, master and slave are dis-
longer an identity apart.
solved in the advance of intelligent technologies whose operability is non-dominating. One can
only talk about self-manipulation, not slavery; not about a master, but about self-mastery.
Unleashing the basic force of nature against the people of Hiroshima may have been pos-
sible prior to the information revolution when “allo-technology” (the division between man
and machine) still predominated. But, the anthropo-technology of the post-metaphysical 21st
century, Sloterdijk contends, holds out a generous promise. In this system bound together by
information feedback and artificial intelligence, the preservationist instinct of the co-benefi-
ciaries of co-intelligence will limit the destructive acts of anthropo-technology against itself.
Between the lines, Sloterdijk even seems to suggest that the “astraying” fate of alienat-
ed Being may at last find its dwelling place rejoined with nature and the world.
In May 2000, Sloterdijk gave lectures at the Goethe Institute in Boston and in Los
Angeles that covered these topics. Some excerpts appear below.
The fundamental differentiation [in the metaphysical period] of soul and thing, spirit
and matter, subject and object, freedom and technique cannot cope with entities that
are by their very constitution hybrids with a spiritual and material “component.”
Cybernetics, as the theory and practice of intelligent machines, and modern biol-
ogy, as the study of system-environment-units, have forced the questions of the old
metaphysical divisions to be posed anew.
Here, the concept of objective spirit turns into the principle of information.

12 WINTER 2014
Information enters between thoughts and things as a third value, between the pole of
reflection and the pole of the thing, between spirit and matter. Intelligent
machines—like all artifices that are culturally created—eventually also compel the
recognition of “spirit.” Reflection or thought is infused into matter and remains there
ready to be re-found and further cultivated. Machines and artifices are thus memories
or reflections turned objective.
The statement “there is information” implies therefore that there are systems; there
are memories; there are cultures; there is artificial intelligence. Even the sentence “there
are genes” can only be understood as the product of the new situation wherein the prin-
ciple of information is successfully transferred into the sphere of nature.
Such a reconceptualization of reality diminishes the interest in traditional notions
of theory, such as subject/object relation. Even the constellation of “I” and “world”
loses much of its luster, not to mention the worn-out polarity of individual and soci-
ety. But above all, the metaphysical distinction between nature and culture withers.
This is because both sides of the distinction are only regional states of information and
its processing.
INFORMED MATERIAL | One of the deeper motivations behind the so-
called astrayness of humankind through history can be detected in the fact that the
Intelligent machines — like all
agents of the metaphysical age have obviously approached being with a false descrip-
artifices that are culturally cre-
tion. They divide being into the subjective and the objective, and they put the soul,
ated — eventually also compel
the self and the human on one side, and the thing, the mechanism and the inhuman
the recognition of “spirit.”
on the other. The practical application of this distinction is called domination.
Reflection or thought is infused
In the course of technological enlightenment—and this in fact takes place by
into matter and remains there
means of mechanical engineering and prosthetics—it turns out that this classification
ready to be re-found and fur-
is untenable, because it ascribes to the subject and the soul a superabundance of char-
ther cultivated. Machines and
acteristics and capabilities that in fact belong on the other side. At the same time it
artifices are thus memories or
denies to things and materials an abundance of characteristics that upon closer look
reflections turned objective.
they in fact do possess. If these traditional errors are corrected respectively, a radically
new view of cultural and natural objects comes about.
One begins to understand that “informed material,” or the higher mechanism,
performs parasubjectively. These performances can include the appearance of plan-
ning intelligence, capability of dialogue, spontaneity and freedom.
MAKING HUMANS | The most spectacular encroachment of the mechanical
into the subjective reveals itself in genetic technologies, for they draw a broad
expanse of physical preconditions of the self into the span of artificial manipulations.
This evokes the popular, fantastic image of a foreseeable future in which whole
“humans” can be “made.”

WINTER 2014 13
 In such fantasies, primitive biologisms compete with helpless humanisms and the-
ologisms, and it is impossible to detect in the proponents of such opinions a trace of
insight into the evolutionary conditions of anthropogenesis.
This invasion into the imaginary field of the “subject” or the “person” is beset with
fears. The basis for this is to be sought in the fact that even on the side of the so-called
object, in the fundamental material structure of life, as represented by the genes,
nothing “material” in the sense of the old culture/nature divide is to be found any
more. Rather one finds the purest form of information, for genes are nothing but
“commands” for the synthesis of protein molecules.
It is clear that the traditionally conceived personal subject no longer recovers in

Teilhard’s JACQUES ELLUL was a French philosopher and theologian. His seminal work was
Take The Technological Society.

For Teilhard de Chardin, evolution in general, since the origin of the universe, has
represented a constant progression. First of all, there was a motion toward a
diversification of matter and of beings; then, there supervened a motion toward
a higher Unity. In the biological world, every step forward has been effected when
man has passed from a stage of "dispersion" to a stage of "concentration."
At the present, technical human progress and the spontaneous movement of
life are in agreement and in mutual continuity. They are evolving together toward
a higher degree of organization, and this movement manifests the influence of
Spirit. Matter, left to itself, is characterized by a necessary and continuous degra-
dation. But on the contrary, we note that progress, advancement, improvement do
exist, and hence, a power contradicting the spontaneous movement of matter, a
power of creation and progress exists which is the opposite of matter. It is Spirit.
Spirit has contrived Technique as a means of organizing dispersed matter, in
order simultaneously to express progress and to combat the degradation of mat-
ter. Technique is producing at the same time a prodigious demographic explo-
sion, a greater density of human population. By all these means it is bringing
forth "communion" among men; and likewise creating from inanimate matter a
higher and more organized form of matter which is taking part in the ascension
of the cosmos toward God.
Granting that it is true that every progression in the physical and biological
order is brought about by a condensation of the elements of the preceding period,
what we are witnessing today, according to Chardin, is a condensation, a concen-
tration of the whole human species. Technique, in producing this, possesses a

14 WINTER 2014
these processes any of that to which it was ontologically accustomed—neither the side
of the self, as it traditionally presented itself, nor the side of the thing, as it was known.
Therefore it seems to the subject as if he/she were confronted with anti-human-
ism’s hour of truth: Instead of making the subject’s own home and integrating the
external into the self, the self is being sunk into the material and external where
he/she will be lost.
Naturally this horrifying vision is also only an hysterical illusion that stems from
the fundamentally false metaphysical classification of being.
MASTER VS. SLAVE | The anti-technological hysteria that holds large parts
of the Western world in its grip is a product of the decomposition of metaphysics,

function of unification inside humanity, so that humanity becomes able thereby to

have access to a sort of unity. Technical progress is therefore synonymous with
"socialization," this latter being but the political and economic sign of commun-
ion among men, the temporary expression of the "condensation" of the human
Thanks to Technique, there is
species into a whole. Technique is the irreversible agent of this condensation; it
"socialization," the progressive
prepares the new step forward which humanity must make.
concentration on a planetary
When men cease to be individual and separate units, and all together form a
scale of disseminated spiritual
total and indissoluble communion, then humanity will be a single body. This
personalities into a supraper-
material concentration is always accompanied by a maturation of the spirit, the
sonal unity. This mutation
commencement of a new species of life. Thanks to Technique, there is "socializa-
leads to another Man.
tion," the progressive concentration on a planetary scale of disseminated spiritual
personalities into a suprapersonal unity. This mutation leads to another Man,
spiritual and unique, and means that humanity in its ensemble and in its unity
has attained the supreme goal, its fusion with that glorious Christ who must
appear at the end of time. Thus Chardin holds that in technical progress man is
"Christified," and that technical evolution tends inevitably to the "edification" of
the cosmic Christ.
It is clear that in Chardin’s grandiose perspective, the individual problems, dif-
ficulties and mishaps of Technique are negligible. It is likewise clear how Chardin’s
doctrine lies midway between the two preceding ones: On the one hand, it affirms
a natural and involuntary ascension of man, a process inclusive of biology, history
and the like, evolving as a kind of will of God in which Technique has its proper
place; and, on the other, it affirms that the evolution in question implies con-
sciousness, and an intense involvement on the part of man who is proceeding to
socialization and thus committing himself to this mutation. ■

WINTER 2014 15
 for it clings to false classifications of being in order to revolt against processes in
which these classifications are overcome. It is reactionary in the essential sense of the
word, because it expresses the ressentiment of those who cling to outdated
dichotomies and reject complexities they fail to understand.
This applies above all to the habits of the critique of power, which are still uncon-
sciously motivated by metaphysics. In the metaphysical schema, the division of being
into subject and object is mirrored in the difference between master and slave, as well
as that between labor and capital. Thus within this disposition, critique of power can
only be articulated as resistance of the suppressed object-slave-material-side against
If there is man, then that
the subject-master-worker-side.
is because a technology
But since information systems reign, this opposition no longer makes sense and is
has made him evolve out
developing ever more into a phantom conflict. This hysteria is indeed the search for a
of the prehuman.
master to stand up against. But the master as an effect is in the process of dissolving,
and more than anything else lives on as the postulate of the slave fixated on rebellion—
as the historicized Left or a humanism that is ready for the museum.
A living left-wing principle would need to constantly reinvent itself through
creative dissidence. Homo humanus can only maintain itself in poetic resistance
against metaphysical reflexes of humanolatry.
AUTO-EVOLUTION | If there is man, then that is because a technology has made
him evolve out of the prehuman. It is that which authentically brings about humans.
Therefore humans encounter nothing strange when they expose themselves to further
creation and manipulation, and they do nothing perverse when they change themselves
autotechnologically, given that such interventions and assistance happen on such a high
level of insight into the biological and social nature of man that they become effective as
authentic, intelligent and successful coproductions with evolutionary potential.
NON-DOMINANT TECH | We are witnessing that, with intelligent technolo-
gies, a non-dominant form of operativity is emerging which I call anthropo-technol-
ogy. By its very nature, it cannot desire anything different from what the “things them-
selves” are or can become of their own accord. The “materials” are now conceived in
accordance with their own stubbornness into operations with respect to their maxi-
mum aptitude.
With this they stop being what is traditionally referred to as “raw material,” which
can only be found where raw subjects—call them humanists or other egoists—apply
raw technologies to them.
Anthropo-technology is characterized by cooperation rather than by domination,
even in asymmetrical relationships. Outstanding scientists of the present express sim-
ilar ideas with the metaphor of “a dialogue with nature.”

16 WINTER 2014
 TRUMANS OF GENETICS | The problem of evil no longer presents itself so
much as the will to enslave things and humans, but as the will to disadvantage the
other in cognitive competition.
It is not a coincidental observation that classical allotechnology, in which man
dominated through the machine, was linked with mistrust as a form of thought and
with cryptological rationality and its psychological sediment, paranoia.
Indeed, the emergence of a post-paranoid culture of reason is on the evolution-
ary agenda of civilizations that are highly advanced both technologically and commu-
nicatively, but it is delayed by the powerful inertia of the raw material age and its cus-
tom of rape in dealing with beings as such.
The assumption that the suspicious mood will remain the realistic one in the
future is most strongly confirmed by the actions of US strategists, who, in August of
1945, did not refrain from employing the most extreme allotechnological weapon,
the atom bomb, directly against humans.
In doing this, they provided an epochal argument for the suspicion against the
alliance between the highest technology and the most lowly subjectivity. Due to
Hiroshima, humans have reason to believe that the most advanced technologies are
uninhibited and reason to distrust the Oppenheimers and Trumans of genetics.
RELICS OF DOMINATION | In the inter-intelligently condensed net-world,
Due to Hiroshima, humans
masters and rapists have hardly any long-term chances of success left, while cooper-
have reason to believe that the
ators, promoters and enrichers fit into more numerous slots.
most advanced technologies
After the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, it becomes thinkable that the
are uninhibited and reason
relics of domination will be abolished in the 21st and 22nd centuries. But nobody
to distrust the Oppenheimers
believes this can happen without intense conflicts. Certainly, it cannot be ruled out
and Trumans of genetics.
that the master as reactionary might once more join forces with the mass ressenti-
ments to form a new kind of fascism. But the failure of such revolutionary reactions
is just as predictable as their rise.
THE TRAIL OF TRUTH | Since Hegel, one of the great intuitions of modern
European thought is that there exists a connection between truth and fate implying
something more than a metaphysical resort to the eternal. These intuitions are prefig-
ured in the schemata of Christian eschatology. Hegel sums these up in his attempt to
provide for the spirit a path that is modeled on the old-European scheme in which the
sun’s course is traced from Orient to Occident. It seemed as if the Hegelian spirit
managed to enter into a second eternity that follows its arrival in the distant twilit
west. The highest state of Hegelianism is the spirit’s complete grasp of itself: its
geopolitical symbol is the farthest extreme of the West. In it, the being-together-
with-itself would attain its final form, and thereafter the only remaining task would

WINTER 2014 17
 be to round off some uncomfortable provinces on the fringe of the inhabited world.
In essence there would already be validity to the statement: everything dwells. And
where? In the inevitable West End of history.
When Michel Houellebeq, at the end of his novel, Elementary Particles, has his
hero, the depressed inventor of biological immortality, seek death in the Irish Atlantic
under a “shifting, gentle light,” this is nothing more than an appropriate commentary
on Hegel. When all is achieved, one should sink into the ocean. In this twilight of the
world, “astrayness” [alienation] seems to come to an end.
Heidegger, however, had he had narrative intentions, would have had his hero
build a hut in the hills and there wait to see how the story goes on. To him it was evi-
dent that astrayness continues. A total coming-to-oneself does not take place. Rather
everything suggests that the revelation of man through history and technology is
about to enter into an age of even greater tensions and blindings.
In Heidegger’s view Hegel was right when he provided truth with a history, but
he was not right in having it run from Ionia to Jena, just as he was not right in depict-
Oppenheimer had enough
ing it as a sun rising and setting.
chutzpah to call the first
Heidegger, confronted with the state of affairs in 1946, does not consider the his-
nuclear test Trinity; when
tory of truth to be the course of the sun, but rather the burning of a conceptual fuse
Dolly bleats, the spirit is not
running from Athens to Hiroshima—and, as we see, yet further into the laboratories
together-with-itself familiarly,
of current gene technology and beyond to who knows where.
but when its producers think
In this advancing increase of technological knowledge and ability, man reveals
of their own, it’s in the form
himself to himself as the maker of suns and the maker of life, thus forcing himself
of patents.
into a position which he must address, whether that which he does and can do is actu-
ally himself and whether in this activity he is together-with-himself.
In the face of its results, there is no denying that this history, insofar as it is a
success — story of able knowledge and knowing ability — must also be read as a his-
tory of truth and its mastery by man. However, this is only as a partial history of
truth, a truth that is always only fragmentarily grasped by man and his operations.
When over the desert of New Mexico the atomic explosion flashed, there was
no human coming-to-oneself involved. At any rate, Oppenheimer had enough
chutzpah to call the first nuclear test Trinity; when Dolly bleats, the spirit is not
together-with-itself familiarly, but when its producers think of their own, it’s in the
form of patents.
Since history makes no preparations to close the circle, both they and the techno-
logical society remain caught up in a movement which Heidegger has labeled with the
term “astrayness.” Going astray characterizes the historical form in which an existence
moves that is not together with itself and that is working its way through a world it

18 WINTER 2014
does not possess, be it with the aim of coming home or in the mode of the never-end-
ing journey without arrival.
The enormous increases in
Both in directed and undirected astrayness, homelessness is the fundamental
knowledge and ability of mod-
state; misapprehensions in the apprehension of the self are the rule.
ern mankind force the question
However since astrayness is presented by Heidegger as an epochal constant, the
of whether the diagnosis of
question is unavoidable, whether it too, seeming to be linked by fate to metaphysics,
astrayness can apply to them
would not have to undergo a profound change following the subsiding and “decompo-
in the same manner today as
sition” of metaphysics.
to the times before the devel-
The enormous increases in knowledge and ability of modern mankind force the
opment of modern potential.
question of whether the diagnosis of astrayness can apply to them in the same man-
ner today as to the times before the development of modern potential.

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