An Amateur’s Analysis of the New Introduction to TECHNICS AND TIME, 4 [Faculties and Functions of Noesis in the Post Truth Age ] By Bernard Stiegler [Translated by Daniel Ross]
ABSTRACTIt takes time to embrace a new or changed way of ‘seeing’ the world - especially if it is a perspective that spans from personal experience to the Milky Way and in the process goes back towards pre-history and out towards a possible future. Bernard Steigler’s oeuvre really lays out such a perspective [with each particular work providing a different angle or view on his outlook] and this brief note is intended to trace the movement in thoughts and ideas countenanced in Bernard Steigler’s latest [English translated] world view. This analysis simply looks at the “New Introduction” to the recently published [English version] Technics and Time 4. Much appreciation must go to Daniel Ross, Australian scholar and translator, who has provided such a clear mirror for us to see into Steigler’s extremely intricately worked perspective, with his masterly translation. Ross says “during his lifetime Bernard Stiegler unfailingly showed an immense spirit of generosity, both philosophically and personally, and this translation is offered in memory of that spirit.” I am deeply appreciative of your gift Dan, as this is such a compelling work.
The ‘new’ introduction to the book is titled “Opening and Closing: From the Infinite Universe to the Closed World” and from this introduction I have garnered what seems like an avalanche of issues and quasi causes that set the stage for this 4th in the series of Technics and Time - subtitled “ Faculties and Functions of Noesis in the Post-Truth Age”. My motive and approach to this review is that of an amateur thinker, seeking to ‘feel my way’ over the contours of the thoughts and ideas that make up Steigler’s outlook. In this regard I follow the amateur painters who once travelled many times to the Louvre, Paris in its early days, to copy the masters. For them it was an exercise in care and yearning - seeking to learn how to see what the masters saw - and paint like they could. For it was Cezanne who said
..one cannot see that which one cannot show by painting it, for example. One only sees to the extent to which one is capable of painting what one sees.
This quote comes from Stiegler in his essay on the proletarianisation [i.e. de-knowledging] of sensibility during the 20th Century. This line of thinking [identifying the stultifying impacts of algorithmic technologies] still clearly underpins this installment of Technics and Times: but it expands in all directions in an endeavour to encapsulate the enormous impact, since then, of exosomatic evolution on people and our world. In essence, Stiegler reiterates his position that the very nature of human thinking is shaped by technics and the evolution of humanity outside of ourselves through technology is now a clear threat to our individuality, our community and our whole planet. But, it needs to be reiterated that Stiegler does not believe that it always has to be that way. There is an improbable future, for which Stiegler aims, that sees man enter into a better informed partnership with technology to deepen, enliven and expand our connection with nature and to re ignite our community connection with both the local and the cosmic.
Much of what Stiegler has to say is built on the foundation of what Lotka says in his 1945 article The Law of Evolution as a Maximal Principle -
The one exception is the human species. Here evolution, especially in more recent times, has followed an entirely new path. In place of slow adaption of anatomical structure and physiological function in successive generations by selective survival, increased adaption has been achieved by the incomparably more rapid development of artificial aids to our native receptor-effector apparatus, in a process that might be called exosomatic evolution.
Then Lotka goes onto outline how he sees this unfolding
It is precisely this that has gone astray in the schemes of men: The receptors and effectors have been perfected to a nicety: but the development of the adjusters has lagged so far behind, that the resultant of our efforts has actually been reversed. From the perspective of life we have turned to the destruction of life; and the expansion of the human race we have, in some of the most advanced communities, turned to its curtailment.
In essence Lotka posits that technology is quasi causal to the very evolution of man to the extent that man creates a tool that creates a new context that creates a need for man to respond to that new context. Further, Stiegler is saying that these tools are now charged with so much of our knowledge that the knowledge as well as tools are fast evolving outside of the organism of man. And concurrently that is causing man to seek to respond and behave accordingly. We, as humanity, are well and truly on the tiger’s back.
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