The Ghost in the Machine (17 page)
its structural and functional aspects is a hierarchy of self-regulating
holons which function (a) as autonomous wholes in supra-ordination to
their parts, (b) as dependent parts in sub-ordination to controls on
higher levels, (c) in co-ordination with their local environment.
Such a hierarchy of holons should rightly be called a
holarchy
--
but, remembering Ben Jonson's warning, I shall spare the reader this
further neologism.
VIII
HABIT AND IMPROVISATION
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.The somewhat technical character of the preceding chapters and the
John Stuart Mill
frequent use of engineering terms like 'input', 'output', 'triggers',
'scanners' and the rest, might have aroused in the reader the uneasy
suspicion that the author is trying to replace one mechanistic model by
another mechanistic model, the concept of man as a conditioned automaton
by a concept of man as a hierarchic automaton. In fact, however, we are
gradually -- though perhaps rather painfully -- moving towards a way out
of the trap of mechanistic determinism. The escape hatch, so to speak, is
at that 'open end' at the top of the hierarchy, to which I have repeatedly
referred, although the meaning of this metaphor can emerge only gradually.
It will perhaps become a little clearer if we consider the appearance of
more complex, more flexible and less predictable forms of behaviour on
successively higher levels of a hierarchy. Conversely, with each step
down to lower levels, we find increasingly mechanised, stereotyped and
predictable behaviour-patterns. When one is writing a gossipy letter
to a friend, it is difficult to foretell what will come into one's head
next; the choice of possible alternatives is very large. Once you have
decided what to say next, the number of alternative ways of saying it is
still large, but nonetheless more restricted by the rules of grammar,
the limits of one's vocabulary, etc. Finally, the muscle-contractions,
which depress the typewriter keys, are stereotyped and could as well be
carried out by a robot. In the language of the physicist, we would
say that
a sub-skill, or holon, on the
n
level of
the hierarchy has more 'degrees of freedom'
(a larger variety of
alternative choices permitted by the rules)
than a holon on the
(n - 1)
level
.
Let me briefly recapitulate some points from earlier chapters: every
skill (or habit) has a fixed and a variable aspect. The former is
determined by its canon, the 'rules of the game', which lend it its
characteristic pattern -- whether the game is making a spider's web,
constructing a bird's nest, ice-skating, or playing chess. But the rules
permit a certain variety by alternative choices: the web can be suspended
from three or four points of attachment, the nest can be adjusted to the
angle of the fork in the branch, the chess-player has a vast choice among
permissible moves. These choices, having been left open by the rules,
depend on the lie of the land, the local environment in which the holon
operates -- they are a matter of strategy, guided by feedbacks. Put in a
different way, the fixed code of rules determines the permissible moves,
flexible strategy determines the choice of the actual moves among the
permissible ones. The larger the number of alternative choices, the more
complex and flexible the skill. Vice versa, if there is no choice at all,
we reach the limit case of the specialised reflex. Thus
rigidity
and
flexibility
are opposite ends of a scale which applies to
every type of hierarchy; and in every case we shall find that flexibility
increases, rigidity decreases, as we move upward to higher levels.
The Origins of Originality
In the
instinctive behaviour
of animals, we find at the bottom end
of the scale monotonously repeated patterns of courting and threatening,
mating and fighting -- rigid, compulsive rituals. Sometimes, when the
animal is frustrated, these rituals are performed pointlessly on the wrong
occasion. Cats will go through the motion of burying their faeces on the
kitchen tiles. Young squirrels, reared in captivity, when given nuts will
go through the motions of burying them in the bottom of the wire cage,
'and then go away contented, even though the nuts are exposed to full
view' (Thorpe [1]).
At the opposite end of the scale we find very complex and flexible skills
displayed by mammalians like chimpanzees and dolphins -- but also by
insects and fishes. Ethologists have produced impressive evidence to
show that under favourable circumstances even insects are capable of
behaving in ways which could not be predicted from the creature's known
repertory of skills, and which fully deserve to be called 'ingenious'
or 'original'. Professor Baerends, for instance,* has spent years on
an exhaustive study of the activities of the digger wasp. [1a] The
female of this species lays her eggs in holes which she digs in the
ground. She provisions the holes first with caterpillars then, when the
eggs have hatched, with moth larvae; then with more caterpillars, until
she finally closes the hole. Now the point is that each female has to
look after several holes at the same time, the inhabitants of which are
in different phases of development, and thus need different diets. She
not only provides each according to its needs, but when a hole is robbed
of its supplies by the experimenter, promptly replenishes it. Another
wasp builds clusters of clay-cells, lays an egg in each, provides it with
provisions for the future, then seals the cell -- much as the Egyptians
used to do with Pharaoh's burial chambers. If now the experimenter makes a
hole in the cell -- something quite unprecedented in the wasp's scheme of
things -- she will first pick up the caterpillars which have fallen out,
and stuff them back through the hole, then set about mending the cell
with pellets of clay -- a repair job which she has never done before. But
that is not the end of it. Hingston has described the exploits of another
type of wasp in a crisis. He made a hole in a cell in a fiendish way,
so that it could not be repaired from the outside. But this species of
wasp always works from the outside. The wasp wrestled with the task for
two hours, until night came and she had to give up. Next morning she flew
straight to the damaged cell, and set about repairing it by a new method:
'she examines it from both sides and then, having made a choice, elects
to do the repair from
within
.' [2]
* A participant in the Stanford Seminar.I have deliberately chosen these examples of improvisation by
insects
because the flexible skills of the higher mammalians are
more familiar. Even
fishes
, according to Thorpe, can change their
habits: 'If their normal behaviour-pattern is continually interfered
with, quite large modifications in the normal instinctive orientation
may be made.' [3] As for
birds
, in some species the male,
who normally never feeds the young, starts doing so in the absence
of the female. Lastly, I must briefly mention Lindauer's study of the
honey-bee. We all know about von Frisch's discovery of the dance-language
of the bee, but this is something different. Under normal conditions,
there is rigid division of labour in the hive, so that each worker is
occupied on different jobs in different periods of her life. During
her first three days she cleans the cells. For the next three days she
feeds the older larvae with honey and pollen. After that she feeds the
younger larvae (who require an additional diet). From the age of ten
days she is engaged in building cells; at twenty days she takes over
guard-duties at the entrance of the hive; finally she becomes a forager,
and remains one for the rest of her life.
That is, if all goes well. However, if any of the specialised age groups
is taken away from the colony by the experimenter, other age groups take
over their duties 'and thus save the superorganism. When, for instance,
all foragers are taken away -- usually bees of twenty days or over --
young bees of scarcely six days old, who normally would feed the larvae,
fly out and become foragers. If all building workers are taken away,
their task is taken on by older bees who have already been builders
before, but who had gone on to the stage of forager. To this end they
not only change their behaviour, but also regenerate the wax-glands. The
mechanisms of these regulations are not known.' [4]
Thus at one end of the scale we find fixed action-patterns and rigid
compulsive rituals; at the other end surprising improvisations, and the
performance of feats which seem to go far beyond the animal's repertory
of habitual skills.
The Mechanisation of Habits
In man, innate instincts are merely the foundation on which learning
will build. While learning a skill we must concentrate on every detail
of what we are doing. We learn laboriously to recognise and name the
printed letters of the alphabet, to ride a bicycle, to hit the right key
on the typewriter or on the piano. Then learning begins to condense into
habits: with increasing mastery we read, write, type 'automatically',
which means that the rules which control the performance are now applied
unconsciously. Like the invisible machinery which transforms inarticulate
thoughts into grammatically correct sentences, so the canons of our
manipulative and reasoning skills operate below the level of awareness, or
in the twilight zones of awareness. We are obeying the rules without being
able to define them. In so far as our reasoning skills are concerned,
this situation has its obvious dangers: the axioms and prejudices built
into the canon act as 'hidden persuaders'.
There are two sides to this tendency towards the progressive mechanisation
of skills. On the positive side, it conforms to the principle of parsimony
or 'least action'. By manipulating the wheel of the car mechanically
I can give all my attention to the traffic around me; and if the rules
of grammar did not function automatically, like a programmed computer,
we could not attend to meaning.
Mechanisation, like rigor mortis, affects first the extremities -- the
lowest subordinate branches of the hierarchy. But it also has a tendency
to spread upward. To be able to hit the right key of the typewriter 'by
pure reflex' is extremely useful, and a rigid observance of the laws of
grammar is an equally good thing; but a rigid style composed of clichés
and prefabricated turns of phrases, although it enables civil servants
to get through a greater volume of correspondence, is certainly a mixed
blessing. And if mechanisation spreads to the apex of the hierarchy,
the result is the rigid pedant, slave of his habits -- Bergson's
homme
automate
. First, learning has condensed into habit as steam condenses
into drops; then the drops have frozen into icicles. As v. Bertalanffy
wrote: 'Organisms are
not
machines, but they can to a certain extent
become
machines, congeal into machines. Never completely, however,
for a thoroughly mechanised organism would be incapable of reacting to
the incessantly changing conditions of the outside world.'
One Step at a Time
Thus the mechanisation of habits can never transform even an 'organisation
man' into an automaton; but conversely, the conscious ego can interfere
to only a limited extent with the automatic functioning of the subordinate
units of his body and mind. The driver at the wheel can control the speed
of his engine, but has no power to interfere with the order in which the
cylinders fire, the valves open and close; and the conscious ego is in
a similar position. It has no control whatsoever over functions on the
sub-cellular or cellular level. It has no direct control over smooth
muscles, viscerae and glands. Even the co-ordination of 'voluntary'
skeletal muscles is only to a limited extent under conscious control:
one cannot alter at will one's characteristic gait, gestures, handwriting.
We have seen that when a conscious intent is formed at the apex of the
hierarchy, such as 'Unlock that door' or 'Sign that letter', it does
not activate individual muscle contractions, but triggers off patterns
of nerve impulses which activate sub-patterns, and so on, down to the
single motor units. But this can only be done one step at a time. The
higher centres in the hierarchy do not normally have direct dealings with
lowly ones, and vice versa. Brigadiers do not concentrate their attention
on individual soldiers, and do not give them direct orders; if they did,
the whole operation would go haywire. Commands must be transmitted by what
the army calls 'regulation channels' -- i.e., step by step down the levels
of the hierarchy. Attempts to short-circuit the intermediary levels --
to turn the focal beam of awareness on the obscure and anonymous routines
of lowly holons -- usually end in the paradox of the centipede. When the
centipede was asked in which precise order he moved his hundred legs,
he became paralysed and starved to death, because he had never thought
of it before, and had left it to the legs to look after themselves. We
would share a similar fate if asked to explain how we ride a bicycle.
The paradox of the centipede derives from a breach of what one might call
the 'one step at a time rule'. On the face of it it looks trivial; but it
leads to some unexpected consequences, if we try to go against it. Thus
the pseudo-explanations of language as the manipulation of the vocal
cords or the chaining of operants leave a gaping hole between thinking
and spelling, between the apex of the tree and its terminal branches. The
rule also has some applications to psychopathology -- from the awkward
condition we call (by a misnomer) self-consciousness, to psychosomatic
disorders. Self-consciousness (gaucheness, stage fright) results when
conscious attention interferes with routines which under normal conditions
are performed unconsciously and automatically. More serious disorders can
result when attention is concentrated on physiological processes which
function on even more primitive levels of the hierarchy, such as digestion
and sex, and which must be left 'to look after themselves' if they are
to function smoothly. Psychological impotence or frigidity, and spastic
colons, are distressing variations of the paradox of the centipede.
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