Читать книгу The Contributory Revolution - Pierre Giorgini - Страница 12

A field of forces for alteration from the depths of matter, then from the living world as a complex system, extends across the biosphere on every scale, from the nanometric level to the macroscopic: it is entropy. This is a system, in the sense of physical and biological systems. The term system has a broader meaning in philosophy, compatible with a real consideration of historicity (this thought has been eliminated from Santa Fe, but still exists at the Institute of Complex Systems). The term entropy, on the other hand, was introduced in 1865 by Rudolf Clausius. It characterizes the degree of disorganization or unpredictability of the information content of a system. It acts in depth, towards an increasing disorder of matter. The increase in entropy is due to the fact that a system always goes from a less probable situation to a more probable situation, and therefore towards the loss of the specifics of the earlier configuration. We can say that this often corresponds, intuitively, to a disorganization (which is not a physical concept) or to the loss of macroscopic patterns. However, this is not always the case. For those who want to look further into this complex and paradoxical concept of entropy, see the Appendix.

This field of alteration forces is therefore seen, for the living world, to oppose a counter-field of conservation forces which is anti-chaotic, adaptive and beneficial. This field of conservation forces is thus opposed everywhere and on every scale to the forces of alteration. The combination of the two produces a fruitful and wonderful co-fertilization, that of the appearance of ever more complex living things. Not all living things become more complex. Bacteria are doing well and are still relatively simple living things.

The overall complexity is always greater, always more beautiful and orderly in its interactions, always more resilient and diverse; it is called Life. According to Bailly–Longo–Montévil (Longo and Montévil 2012), this axis of increasing global complexity, very present in Teilhard de Chardin’s (1956) work, is due to an asymmetry in the random space of changes in complexity owing to the existence of a wall of minimum complexity allowing survival. The asymmetry induced by this wall results in a constant growth of the average level of complexity due to the fact that more and more complex living things always appear, whereas the minimum is limited. In other words, the axis of increasing complexification is infinite, while that of increasing simplification has a minimum. Taken as a whole, the level of average or global complexity is constantly increasing.

However, this prodigious survival of the living world as a global system does not imply the conservation of each of its localities. Place can designate a geographical, ecological place, as well as a place in the organized space of living species, or even a particular organism. Each locality (species, organism, ecosystem) must adapt or disappear. It must never exceed the intrinsic limit of any dynamic and dissipative energy system, that of adapting slower than its environment is transformed. It is a transformation due to the combined effect of the given locality and all those that interact with it. So, the question becomes: can the human locality be preserved, and be preserved by a conservation mechanism? This is a very daunting question. It can be formulated differently by taking up the idea of Bernard Stiegler (2018), who designates the entropic effect induced by human activity anthropia (anthropos). The question then is: will we be able to stimulate sufficient anti-anthropia to divert just in time from this fatal path? The most effective anti-anthropia, some currents of thought in radical ecology claim, would be the disappearance of humans from the biosphere, and that may be what is happening. This thesis makes little sense, from both an ecological point of view and a philosophical one. On the ecological level, there would then no longer be maintenance of anthropic and anti-anthropic processes, which in the short term would be catastrophic since all human intervention limiting the toxicity of technological devices would disappear (I am thinking of nuclear power plants, chemicals, oil wells, etc.). Philosophically, what would be the point of saving a biosphere in which there would be no one left to be aware of it?

Conversely, I believe that the metamorphosis which could be “anthropo-salutary” comes from a transition which I will describe as an endo-contributive revolution (ENC). The global paradigm shift that underpins it seems unattainable, a battle lost in advance, some say. This generates, particularly in the West, a crisis of hope and meaning in a context dominated by ecological issues. This desperation continues to grow.

Either there will be a dynamic of adaptive learning on a global scale, sufficiently powerful and rapid, or else a catharsis of hatred, a return of repressed violence, will overwhelm us. It will be fueled by the cumulative failures of States and institutions in the face of collapses of all sizes which are sure to occur in the fields of economy, ecology, health and society. It will then plunge us into revolutionary barbarity and war. This barbarity, favored by social networks guaranteeing the anonymity of exchanges and provoking a crisis in the language and ethics of argument, already shows signs of muted emergence, before, perhaps, we are able to migrate to a new alliance with nature, accompanied by a renewal of humanist and spiritual change.