'Form & Soul: On the Future of Ideas, Societies and Civilizations' is a philosophical work that traces the intellectual foundations of an emerging new civilization which is defined by artificial intelligence, information technology and quantum mechanics. This work can be considered as a great forward movement following Francis Fukuyama's ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ and Samuel Huntington's ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order’ to interpret the world where relations between various levels of human organizations are determined by a matrix of dynamic social flows. Defining this newly emerging global social matrix is the main theme of this work. The following article is an extract from the book.
"It is next to impossible to make a prediction as what our civilization would be like after a hundred years from our own time because this is entirely an aspect of linear evolution which proceeds from simple stages to complex stages. Intelligent men living in the middle of the eighteenth century could not predict the coming of the machine age which not only changed the complexity of our civilization but also had tremendous impacts on our ideas and institutions. Similarly intelligent men living at the zenith of the machine age, i.e. the middle of the twentieth century, could not predict about the technological changes that were to sweep the surface of the earth by the turn of the century. Now the whole world is on a rat race to define ideas and institutions which can adapt the new technological aspects of our civilization such as information technology, quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence. But we have no intention to construct a theory which states that historical progress is all about the development of technology and the consequent effort of man to adjust his society to the new phase of technological development by the innovation of new ideas and institutions, because technological development and the consequent or simultaneous institutional adaptation are the aspects of linear revolution.
However, when we make a prediction about the future, in spite of the fact that all predictions in the past went substantially wrong, we should necessarily take into account of the cyclic evolution process which every civilization ought to pass through.
Before discussing the cyclic aspects of historical development we should acquaint with the general trend that the intellectual world has taken as granted to understand the future of the world that obviously contains a linear view of historical progress. Political philosophers such as Richard E Flathman and Francis Fukuyama and historical futurists such as HG Wells and Yual Noel Harari have invested their complete faith in the ongoing linear progress trying to attain high end technologies and liberal democratic governments.
An entirely new platform called collective intelligence enabled by internet technology demonstrated that it is possible to break the boundaries between not only two different nations but also two different civilizations. Information Technology platforms in the grade of Wikipedia and Google Search have converted the whole world into a single laboratory, unlike in the previous ages where exploration of knowledge was undertaken by unrelated civilizations and for unmatchable purposes. Further, newly emerging technology platforms in the grade of Amazon, Uber and Zomato are forcing the world to rethink about the roles and meanings of human labor. Social interaction platforms in the grade of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are slowly proving that they are able to gather social forces unlike in previous ages where political campaigns, military strikes and labor demonstrations were inevitable components of social evolution.
Newly emerging artificial intelligence technologies in the grade of driverless vehicles, unmanned offices and robotic armed forces have the power to restructure the society. Now if we buy the theory of linear evolution, the technological aspects of which we have outlined above, we should expect ideas and institutions that can help man to adapt himself to the changing face of our civilization. In this regard we have heard nothing other than liberal democracy, the purest and highest form of which is practiced in the United States of America, the territory of which obviously is the greatest abode of all the newly emerging technologies in the world.
The idea of liberal democracy, which is still in the process of its evolution, generally speaks about the freedom of individual at social, political, economic and cultural level. Then there arises a question: if liberal democracy is all about freedom of individuals then what can hold individuals together to form social groups and political states. A national political state is the latest, but not the last, expression of human organization that is constituted to ensure the collective survival of man. As it is said, it holds true when we speak that liberal democracy is an aim to achieve when we fight against dictatorial regimes. If man is given complete freedom under ideal conditions, conditions that actually restrain his freedom by imposing corresponding responsibilities, we can expect him to behave like a man, and if conditions are not ideal he tends to become not just an animal but the most dangerous of all animals.
The proponents of liberal democracy have so far not gone deep into the dynamics of social evolution and it remains like the Promised Land which the propagandists of the previous ages had offered to their folks. However, in regarding linear evolution we can believe that man has tremendous potential to move forward by exploring the minuteness and vastness of the universe as well as unknown and unseen aspects of various phenomena which surround his existence. There are many aspects in the functioning of the human body such as how sleep happens, how dreams occur and how our brain works, the studies of which are still in the form of hypotheses.
Many of the assumptions of Quantum Mechanics depend on hypotheses which are no more than speculations. As the solar system is a microcosm of the universe, it can be stated with certainty that our knowledge about the universe is at a pioneering stage. Notwithstanding the pessimism expressed by many an author we can expect that man in the future will be able to unfold the secrets of his body and universe and the knowledge that will come out of these enquiries will spark the beginning of a new technological revolution.
In that case man will be able to break the boundaries of the distant planets and other heavenly bodies in our galaxy, just as he had broken the boundaries of the vast oceanic masses and continents on the surface of the earth by means of his mechanical inventions in the past. It is not unlikely to expect an age in the future where man goes from one planet to another planet, in the same way he goes from one continent to another continent today. It is not unlikely that man can establish vast nations on the surface of various oceanic masses by establishing agricultural farms and residential areas on them. It is not impossible to imagine an age where highly sensitive robots perform complicated surgeries and market analysis the scope of which will be beyond the level of human brains. It is also tenable to believe that with such kind of high-end technological advancement, man will be able to bring up ideological propositions more advanced than liberal democracy to assure his progressive survival in the universe.
However, against this promising picture of linear evolution, the specter of cyclic evolution hunts the onward movement of man and his civilization. This specter of cyclic evolution hunted the Indic civilization which had developed the greatest knowledge system and the highest practical philosophy on the surface of the earth by the end of the 6th century CE. Many hundreds of years of human progress in the forms of ideas, techniques and institutions went into oblivion gradually even though there were no natural calamities or external invasions. As the consciousness of the old society gradually dissipated, ideas and Institutions which sustained that consciousness became irrelevant.
Similarly, the modern civilization of Europe, which had developed epoch-making ideas, institutions and techniques within a span of 500 years, is now undergoing through the course of a systemic decline that completely obliterated the ideas that heralded the machine age. It follows that this course of systemic decline, which marks not only the decline of civilization but also obliteration of ideas and techniques, cannot be avoided during the onward movement of historical progress. This cyclic process of evolution, which we comprehend at the micro level, deals with the processes of coming into being and going out of existence of a number of societies in succession during historical progress.
The second process of cyclic evolution, which we take up at the macro level, deals with evolutionary systems because just as human societies are subjected to cyclic evolution, biological systems on the surface of the earth are subjected to the cycles of abiogenesis and extinction. At the macro level cyclic evolution consists of the processes of coming into being and going out of existence of many levels of biological systems in succession. The record of mass extinctions spreading through vast periods of time points us towards a processes of cyclic evolution at macro level and it can be surmised that evolutionary progress consists of the processes of coming into being and going out existence of many levels organisms in succession.
Going by this fact we have to expect an age of extinction in the future during which most of the existing organisms, including human species, undergo through the process of elimination which ultimately leads to the rise of new levels of organisms. But there is nothing for man to fear about this impending catastrophe because before reaching this stage man will live an unconscious life for thousands of years during which he will mate, eat and wander like other unconscious animals before succumbing to the final fate of extinction.
Then comes the process of cyclic evolution at the cosmic level which deals with the coming into being and going out of existence of many cosmic systems in succession during the process of cosmic progress, a term comparable to historic progress and evolutionary progress. Something like a clash of galaxies cannot be avoided, an antithesis of Big Bang that had brought the components of the universe into their existence. If the Big Bang theory is true then we should consider that after the clash of galaxies the cosmic systems would exist like a cloud of gas, much like the Nebula, which repeats the process of cosmic evolution by the process of a consequent Big Bang explosion." The book is AVAILABLE ON GOOGLE PLAY
SOURCES
☆Richard E. Flathman - Reflections of a Would-be Anarchist: Ideals and Institutions of Liberalism, U of Minnesota Press, 1998.
☆H. G. Wells - The Shape of Things to Come,
READ BOOKS, 2016.
☆ Yuval Noah Harari - Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Random House, 2016.
☆ Daniele Miorandi, Vincenzo Maltese, Michael Rovatsos, Anton Nijholt, James Stewart - Social Collective Intelligence: Combining the Powers of Humans and Machines to Build a Smarter Society,
Springer, 17-Sep-2014.
☆ John Horgan - The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, Hachette UK, 2015.
☆ Ashraf M.T. Elewa [Editor] - Mass Extinction, Springer Science & Business Media, 2007.
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