Janus: A Summing Up

  Arthur Koestler JANUS A Summing Up $3.95 * V-886-394-72886-6 "A splendid overview of some of the most remarkable developments in recent intellectual history." Los Angeles Times JANUS A SUMMING UP No man is an island; he is a 'holon'. Like Janus, the two-faced Roman god, holons have a dual tendency to behave as quasi-independent wholes, asserting their individualities, but at the same time as integrated parts of larger wholes in the multi-levelled hierarchies of existence. Thus a man is both a unique individual but also part of a social group, which itself is a part of a larger group, and so on. Koestler shows that this polarity between the self-assertive and integrative tendencies is a universal characteristic of life. Order and stability can prevail only when the two tendencies are in equilibrium. If one of them dominates the other, this delicate balance is disturbed, and pathological conditions of various types make their appearance. These seemingly abstract considerations turn out to be of prime importance when applied to emotive behaviour -- the 'paranoid streak' in our species which has played such havoc with its history and now threatens it with extinction. Yet Koestler believes that the two-faced god may guide us to a proper diagnosis and thus provide an 'alternative to despair'. JANUS is both a summing up and a continuation of Koestler's work over the past twenty-five years, since he turned from politics to the sciences of life -- or, more precisely, to the 'evolution, creativity and pathology of the human mind'. The insights gained on that long journey are here assembled in a coherent and comprehensive synthesis, and in the last part of the book, he offers us a tantalizing 'glance through the key-hole' from subatomic physics to metaphysics. He shows that in the light of the new cosmology, the strictly deterministic, mechanistic world-view of the last century, which still dominates many fields of contemporary science, has become a Victorian anachronism. The nineteenth-century clockwork model of the universe is in shambles, and since matter itself has been de-materialized by the physicists, materialism can no longer claim to be a scientific philosophy. JANUS JANUS A Summing Up Arthur Koestler Vintage Books A Division of Random House New York ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to the Editors of the Encyclopaedia Brittannica (15th edition, 1974) for permission to quote substantial extracts from my article 'Humour and Wit' in that edition. I wish to thank the Editors of Mind in Nature: Essays on the interface of Science and Philosophy, J. B. Cobb,Jr, and D. R. Griffin (University Press of America, Washington, 1977) for permission to quote passages from my paper, 'Free Will in a Hierarchic Context' which appeared in that book. I also wish to thank the following for permission to quote extracts from their work: Professor Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and Keeper Emeritus, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in Flying Saucer Review (July/August, 1970); Professor Holger Hyden, University of Gothenburg, in Control of the Mind (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961); Professor Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (Harper and Row, New York, and Tavistock, London, 1974) and in Dialogue (Washington, 1975); Dr Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell (Viking Press, New York, 1974). Lastly, I am grateful to Mrs Joan St George Saunders of Writer's and Speaker's Research for giving me invaluable help with this book, as she did with earlier ones. FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, March 1979 Copyright © 1978 by Arthur Koestler All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., London. First American edition published by Random House in March 1978. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Koestler, Arthur, 1905 -- Janus: a summing up. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Philosophy. I. Title. [B1646.K773J36 1979] 192 78-23626 ISBN 0-394-72886-6 Manufactured in the United States of America to Daphne

  AUTHOR'S NOTE This book is a summing up (and also a continuation) of works published over the last twenty-five years, since I turned from writing political novels and essays to the sciences of life -- i.e., the evolution, creativity and pathology of the human mind. Such a summing up has its difficulties. When the author puts a summary at the end of a scientific paper or a chapter in a book, he can assume that its contents are still fresh in the reader's mind. Not so in this case, where I have tried to distil the essence of a number of books, which the reader may have read some years ago, if ever at all. Thus I could never be sure how much to take for granted, and had to repeat myself to some extent. The reader may occasionally get a feeling of déjà vu -- or déjà lu -- where I cribbed a few lines or even entire paragraphs from earlier books. What I hope to show is that they add up to a comprehensive system, which rejects materialism and throws some new light on the human condition. In case this sounds over-ambitious, let me quote from the Preface to The Act of Creation: I have no illusions about the prospects of the theory I am proposing; it will suffer the inevitable fate of being proven wrong in many, or most, details, by new advances in knowledge. What I am hoping for is that it will be found to contain a shadowy pattern of truth. London, September 1977

  CONTENTS

  Author's Note

  Prologue: The New Calendar

  PART ONE: OUTLINE OF A SYSTEM

  I The Holarchy

  II Beyond Eros and Thanatos

  III The Three Dimensions of Emotion

  IV Ad Majorem Gloriam ...

  V An Alternative to Despair

  PART TWO: THE CREATIVE MIND

  VI Humour and Wit

  VII The Art of Discovery

  VIII The Discoveries of Art

  PART THREE: CREATIVE EVOLUTION

  IX Crumbling Citadels

  X Lamarck Revisited

  XI Strategies and Purpose in Evolution

  PART FOUR: NEW HORIZONS

  XII Free Will in a Hierarchic Context

  XIII Physics and Metaphysics

  XIV A Glance through the Keyhole

  APPENDICES

  Appendix I: Beyond Atomism and Holism -- The Concept of the Holon

  Appendix II: An Experiment in Perception

  Appendix III: Notes on the Autonomic Nervous System

  Appendix IV: UFOs: A Festival of Absurdity

  References

  Bibliography

  Index CONTENTS Author's Note Prologue: The New Calendar 1 PART ONE: OUTLINE OF A SYSTEM I The Holarchy 23 II Beyond Eros and Thanatos 57 III The Three Dimensions of Emotion 70 IV Ad Majorem Gloriam ... 77 V An Alternative to Despair 98 PART TWO: THE CREATIVE MIND VI Humour and Wit 109 VII The Art of Discovery 131 VIII The Discoveries of Art PART THREE: CREATIVE EVOLUTION IX Crumbling Citadels 165 X Lamarck Revisited 193 XI Strategies and Purpose in Evolution 205 PART FOUR: NEW HORIZONS XII Free Will in a Hierarchic Context 229 XIII Physics and Metaphysics 242 XIV A Glance through the Keyhole 274 APPENDICES Appendix I Beyond Atomism and Holism -- The Concept of the Holon 289 Appendix II An Experiment in Perception 312 Appendix III Notes on the Autonomic Nervous System 317 Appendix IV UFOs: A Festival of Absurdity 319 References 326 Bibliography 335 Index 343

  PROLOGUE: THE NEW CALENDAR

  1

  If I were asked to name the most important date in the history and prehistory of the human race, I would answer without hesitation, 6 August 1945. The reason is simple. From the dawn of consciousness until 6 August 1945, man had to live with the prospect of his death as an individual; since the day when the first atomic bomb outshone the sun over Hiroshima, mankind as a whole has had to live with the prospect of its extinction as a species.

  We have been taught to accept the transitoriness of personal existence, while taking the potential immortality of the human race for granted. This belief has ceased to be valid. We have to revise our axioms.

  It is not an easy task. There are periods of incubation before a new idea takes hold of the mind; the Copernican doctrine which so radically downgraded
man's status in the universe took nearly a century until it penetrated European consciousness. The new downgrading of our species to the status of mortality is even more difficult to digest.

  It actually looks as if the novelty of this outlook had worn off even before it had properly sunk in. Already the name Hiroshima has become a historical cliché like the Boston Tea Party. We have returned to a state of pseudo-normality. Only a small minority is conscious of the fact that ever since it unlocked the nuclear Pandora's Box, our species has been living on borrowed time.

  Every age had its Cassandras, yet mankind managed to survive their sinister prophecies. However, this comforting reflection is no longer valid, for in no earlier age did a tribe or nation possess the necessary equipment to make this planet unfit for life. They could inflict only limited damage on their adversaries -- and did so, whenever given a chance. Now they can hold the entire biosphere to ransom. A Hitler, born twenty years later, would probably have done so, provoking a nuclear Götterdämmerung.

  The trouble is that an invention, once made, cannot be disinvented. The nuclear weapon has come to stay; it has become part of the human condition. Man will have to live with it permanently: not only through the next confrontation-crisis and the one after that; not only through the next decade or century, but forever -- that is, as long as mankind survives. The indications are that it will not be for very long.

  There are two main reasons which point to this conclusion. The first is technical: as the devices of nuclear warfare become more potent and easier to make, their spreading to young and immature as well as old and arrogant nations becomes inevitable, and global control of their manufacture impracticable. Within the foreseeable future they will be made and stored in large quantities all over the globe among nations of all colours and ideologies, and the probability that a spark which initiates the chain-reaction will be ignited sooner or later, deliberately or by accident, will increase accordingly, until, in the long run, it approaches certainty. One might compare the situation to a gathering of delinquent youths locked in a room full of inflammable material who are given a box of matches -- with the pious warning not to use it.

  The second main reason which points to a low life-expectancy for homo sapiens in the post-Hiroshima era is the paranoid streak revealed by his past record. A dispassionate observer from a more advanced planet who could take in human history from Cro-Magnon to Auschwitz at a single glance, would no doubt come to the conclusion that our race is in some respects an admirable, in the main, however, a very sick biological product; and that the consequences of its mental sickness far outweigh its cultural achievements when the chances of prolonged survival are considered. The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums. Tribal wars, religious wars, civil wars, dynastic wars, national wars, revolutionary wars, colonial wars, wars of conquest and of liberation, wars to prevent and to end all wars, follow each other in a chain of compulsive repetitiveness as far as man can remember his past, and there is every reason to believe that the chain will extend into the future. In the first twenty years of the post-Hiroshima era, between the years 0 and 20 P.H. -- or 1946-66 according to our outdated calendar -- forty wars fought with conventional weapons were tabulated by the Pentagon [1]; and at least on two occasions -- Berlin 1950 and Cuba 1962 -- we have been on the brink of nuclear war. If we discard the comforts of wishful thinking, we must expect that the focal areas of potential conflict will continue to drift across the globe like high-pressure regions over a meteorological chart. And the only precarious safeguard against the escalating of local into total conflict, mutual deterrence, will, by its very nature, always remain dependent on the restraint or recklessness of fallible key individuals and fanatical regimes. Russian roulette is a game which cannot be played for long.

  The most striking indication of the pathology of our species is the contrast between its unique technological achievements and its equally unique incompetence in the conduct of its social affairs. We can control the motions of satellites orbiting distant planets, but cannot control the situation in Northern Ireland. Man can leave the earth and land on the moon, but cannot cross from East to West Berlin. Prometheus reaches out for the stars with an insane grin on his face and a totem-symbol in his hand.

  2

  I have said nothing about the added terrors of biochemical warfare; nor about the population explosion, pollution, and so forth, which, however threatening in themselves, have unduly distracted the public's awareness from the one central, towering fact: that since the year 1945 our species has acquired the diabolic power to annihilate itself; and that, judging by its past record, the chances are that it will use that power in one of the recurrent crises in the not-too-distant future. The result would be the transformation of space-ship earth into a Flying Dutchman, drifting among the stars with its dead crew.

  If this is the probable outlook, what is the point of going on with our piecemeal efforts to save the panda and prevent our rivers from turning into sewers? Or making provisions for our grandchildren? Or, if it comes to that, of going on writing this book? It is not a rhetorical question, as the general mood of disenchantment among the young indicates. But there are at least two good answers to it.

  The first is contained in the two words 'as if' which Hans Vaihinger turned into a once-influential philosophical system: 'The Philosophy of As If'.[2] Briefly, it means that man has no choice but to live by 'fictions'; as if the illusory world of the senses represented ultimate Reality; as if he had a free will which made him responsible for his actions; as if there was a God to reward virtuous conduct, and so on. Similarly, the individual must live as if he were not under sentence of death, and humanity must plan for its future as if its days were not counted. It is only by virtue of these fictions that the mind of man fabricated a habitable universe, and endowed it with meaning.*

  * Vaihinger's (1852-1933) philosophy should not be confused either with Phenomenalism or with American Pragmatism, though it has affinities with both.

  The second answer is derived from the simple fact that although our species now lives on borrowed time, from decade to decade as it were, and the signs indicate that it is drifting towards the final catastrophe, we are still dealing in probabilities and not in certainties. There is always a hope of the unexpected and the unforeseen. Since the year zero of the new calendar, man has carried a time-bomb fastened round his neck, and will have to listen to its ticking -- now louder, now softer, now louder again -- until it either blows up, or he succeeds in defusing it. Time is running short, history is accelerating along dizzy exponential curves, and reason tells us that the chances of a successful defusing operation before it is too late are slender. All we can do is to act as if there was still time for such an operation.

  But the operation will require a more radical approach than UNO resolutions, disarmament conferences and appeals to sweet reasonableness. Such appeals have always fallen on deaf ears, from the time of the Hebrew prophets, for the simple reason that homo sapiens is not a reasonable being -- for if he were, he would not have made such a bloody mess of his history; nor are there any indications that he is in the process of becoming one.

  3

  The first step towards a possible therapy is a correct diagnosis of what went wrong with our species. There have been countless attempts at such a diagnosis, invoking the Biblical Fall, or Freud's 'death wish', or the 'territorial imperative' of contemporary ethologists. None of these carried much conviction, because none of them started from the hypothesis that homo sapiens may be an aberrant biological species, an evolutionary misfit, afflicted by an endemic disorder which sets it apart from all other animal species -- just as language, science and art set it apart in a positive sense. Yet it is precisely this unpleasant hypothesis which provides the starting point for the present book.

  Evolution has made many mistakes; Julian Huxley compared it to a maze with an enormous number of blind alleys leading to stagnation or extinction. For every existing
species hundreds have perished in the past; the fossil record is a waste-basket of the Chief Designer's discarded models. The evidence from man's past record and from contemporary brain-research both strongly suggest that at some point during the last explosive stages of the biological evolution of homo sapiens something went wrong; that there is a flaw, some potentially fatal engineering error built into our native equipment -- more specifically, into the circuits of our nervous system -- which would account for the streak of paranoia running through our history. This is the hideous but plausible hypothesis which any serious inquiry into man's condition has to face. The best intuitive diagnosticians -- the poets -- have kept telling us that man is mad and has always been so; but anthropologists, psychiatrists, and students of evolution do not take poets seriously and keep shutting their eyes to the evidence staring them in the face. This unwillingness to face reality is of course in itself an ominous symptom. It could be objected that a madman cannot be expected to be aware of his own madness. The answer is that he can, because he is not entirely mad the entire time. In their periods of remission, schizophrenics have written astonishingly lucid reports of their illness.

  I shall now venture to propose a summary list of some of the outstanding pathological symptoms reflected in the disastrous history of our species, and then proceed from the symptoms to a discussion of their possible causes. I have confined the list of symptoms to four main headings.*

  * This section is based on The Ghost in the Machine, Part Three, and its résumé in a paper read to the Fourteenth Nobel Symposium ('The Urge to Self-Destruction', reprinted in The Heel of Achilles).