On the matter of time, and my participation in the consultation
on the European Commission’s FET Proactive Programme, here I present my input on
the topic Time for Time, but dealing
also with Art Practice as Research
and also the so-called Global System
Science. And what follows is that input about time:
Put aside now your notions of the arrow of time, of time the
independent variable, of time the dependent variable. Look beyond irreversible
processes that point to the uni-directional nature of this arrow of time, or to
its illusory nature when it comes to deterministic equations which work equally
well when time runs forward or backwards. Forget matters of seconds, minutes,
hours, days, months, years and so on, which are but human notions for the
counting of time. Think not about the linear view of time, with its
chronological ordering of events, both natural and human. All these things are
but the product of the rational mind, of objective thought, of which there is
already far too much!
I invite you instead to enter a different world, one of
artistic making, where the subjective is important, and where time can be bent
by creative will, and in doing so becomes not any of the above, but something
profoundly different – a product of the imagination, from which flows a simple
question, and on this turns the beginnings of ideas for technologies and
processes far beyond the limiting horizons of the obvious and distracting
pretty pebbles of time, lying, so to speak, on the seashore, while a greater
ocean of truth remains unseen.
Time you see, in this world that I created – in a work of
fiction called
Moments in Time,
being a novel about time, and
that which
is timeless and that which is not – can be seen in a different way. In this
strange book you will find, if one cares to look closely and explore the
messages hidden there, that time is always, a single moment in time, in which
all other moments in time, past and future, co-exist in this one time that is
known as the present for the person who is experiencing that moment. And from
this comes the simple question to which I referred: how would our view of the
world change, if we could create a technology and processes that would make
such a subjective understanding of time, a human understanding of time, where
past, present and future co-exist, a reality to share with others?
Before I answer this question, which in effect will also
explain why we should do this and its importance, I want to mention the process
by which I came to this subjective understanding of time.
I spent over ten years writing Moments in Time, and did very little research about time, for this
was not to be a book of facts and knowledge, but a work of the imagination. In
creating my imaginary world, which is in no way connected to science fiction, I
did something that few, if any one, has done before – I lived for an extended
period, in my imagination, in two times separated by over 250 years, for this
is the storyline. And the tale is not one enabled by a time machine, the act of
human creation so much seen in time related fiction, but by the universe itself
behaving counter to what modern science believes – yes your eyes do not deceive
you, I am saying believes.
This imaginative process, this act of creation, is a key
point that I want to address. Elsewhere in this consultation (under ideas for
new topics) there is a proposal presented of art being used in ICT research.
There was a FET Open project (a CSA), known as FET-ART, that addressed this
issue, and spoke of co-creation, where artists and technologists work together,
and artists participate in research projects. What I have briefly presented
above is an example of artistic expression being used in ICT research, with
this note being one result – a proposal for a new research topic. But this is
not the outcome of co-creation, but of creation that results when two (possibly
more!) areas of quite contrasting knowledge and skills co-exist in one mind.
So it was not the process of background research (which I
have already told you was quite small) that I undertook for the book that led
me to this subjective understanding of time, but the act of artistic creation
itself. This resulted in new insights and new knowledge about time, as it is
experienced subjectively by humans. This process has a name: it is called art practice as research, or art as
research, or creative arts enquiry. It uses the artistic process, whether that
be painting, dance, music composition, creative writing (like writing a weird
novel about time), etc., as a means of producing new knowledge. And I cannot
stress here enough, the importance of the subjective nature of the knowledge,
for this also relates to the common misunderstanding that science is entirely
based on the rational and objective, which it most definitely is not!
Here I just quote from the work of another writer, one of
the most outstanding thinkers and artists of the 20th century, Arthur Koestler
(who was also a physicist by education), who studied the matter of scientific
(and artistic) creativity in depth, and said in his book The Act of Creation: “Here, then, is the apparent paradox. A branch
of knowledge which operates predominantly with abstract symbols, whose entire
rationale and credo are objectivity, verifiability, logicality, turns out to be
dependent upon mental processes which are subjective, irrational, and verifiable
only after the event.” This will of course sit uncomfortably with those whose self-image is one of being rational,
objective, and evidence-based. More about this follows shortly.
The power of art
practice as research is that it links to subjectivity and makes it
explicit, and this leads to strange notions and questions which are essential
to the creative process (be it scientific, technological, artistic, etc.),
which in turn links to the more objective work that follows as a result. Art practice as research however is not
primarily a matter of co-creation, nor even a question of interdisciplinary
research, but mainly one of transdisciplinary working, which has profound
implications for Global Systems Science, about which I will say more, later. I
suspect that Leonardo da Vinci and his contemporaries would have known what I
am talking about, but many modern (fragmented) minds, often only knowing a lot
about very little, and having been subjected to the legacy of the Age of Enlightenment, do not. Instead
they usually believe in dualities and the need for co-creation, and hence do
not understand that there is a unity of opposites (in this case of art and
science) – or put another way, a
oneness in that which many people now see as being separate and different.
Now back to the matter of this question I posed, which I
here remind you was: how would our view of the world change, if we could create
a technology and processes that would make such a subjective understanding of
time, a human understanding of time, where past, present and future co-exist, a
reality to share with others? I can tell you that, as a result of the
experience of constructing in my imagination and living in a rather strange
world where all time co-exists at a single moment in time, has brought about a
radical transformation in the way that I see the world, for I now look and see
time at work, and, as a result, also see many things that others are blind to.
Here I introduce to you the topic of Behavioural Agriculture, which very likely you will not have heard
of, for the book that I am writing on this has not yet been published. The
topic is the product of transcending disciplines, of unifying many opposites,
and bringing knowledge, both subjective and objective, and from quite dissimilar
domains, together, to form a very different perspective on agriculture – one
based on behaviour set in the context of time, past, present and future, all
co-existing in a single moment in time.
One of these dissimilar domains is cognitive psychology, the
same research in fact that Behavioural
Economics is founded on, hence the name Behavioural
Agriculture, only in this case there is more than just cognitive psychology
and macro economics in play, but also philosophy of science; agronomy; biology;
history; genetics; ecology and much more … This however is another story.
What is important are the findings from research in
cognitive psychology, that people, all people (scientists included), make
decisions based on cognitive biases. These biases are acquired over time and
they lead people to make many mistakes, but people often do not recognise these
mistakes or the reasons for them, and they actually engage in the delusion that
what they are doing is rational, objective, … But worse still, is the finding
that this is in our genes, and for very good evolutionary reasons, but which no
longer apply. Thus what was once an asset for survival has now become a
potential liability, for it leads humans to make serious mistakes, and this has
profound implications for all sorts of processes – Global Systems Science, the
way science is conducted, the development of policy, the design of future
agricultural systems, the development of sustainable economies, the redesign of
financial systems... The list is quite long! See also how time makes its
appearance here.
In the case of agriculture, the cognitive biases at work
today took hold about 10,000 years ago. These were significantly reinforced in
the 1950s and 1960s, resulting in rigid mental frameworks that lead people
today – scientists, technologists, engineers, policymakers and others – to do
that which is no longer fit for purpose, but which they regard as been
objective, rational, evidence-based, etc. But they cannot see this, for they do
not know or understand that which is
timeless and that which is not. This has serious and dangerous implications
in the longer term (future time) for humanity, but if we could bring time past
and future to bear in the present, to make the cognitive biases visible, along
with subjective matters such as values and beliefs, we could instead make a
different future. This is also part of the storyline in Moments in Time.
And just as one can refer to Behavioural Agriculture, one can also speak about Behavioural Global Systems Science. To
what extent is Global Systems Science just the past presenting itself as the
future, because it brings with it, that which is no longer relevant, and that
which does not recognise cognitive bias and human delusions? How much of Global
Systems Science is founded on the misunderstanding that science is only about
the rational, the objective and the logical, because it is based on self-image and misunderstandings rather
than what science really is?
Here perhaps one can see the importance of time past, and of
creating a technology that brings time past into the present, for it can be
said that time reveals the patterns in life, the trail that is often
unknowingly followed, and provides the vantage point from which understanding
begins to emerge, which casts past events in a different light, pointing
towards a path that could be followed in the future. And time is important to
the future as well, because, for example, one of most fundamental principles
(if one can call it such) of sustainability, is that we should not do today,
that which leaves an unwanted legacy for future generations. We are in our own
time dealing with unwanted legacies created by previous generations – but we
are doing exactly the same ourselves, and leaving unwanted legacies for our
children, with the added danger that what we create today will overwhelm them.
Is it not time to change?
This is one of the core messages to be found in Moments in Time. And it could be that
Global Systems Science will provide the means of changing behaviour and exposing
the delusions that lie behind our current self-inflicted woes. You will also
find these woes depicted in the novel, in the form of the unintended and
unforeseen consequences of the actions of the central character who, being an
icon of the modern world, an industrial age engineer, strangely finds that he
fits into 1750 with great ease! See here the creative act at work, where
through the means of the imagination and the subjective, that which is timeless and that which is not is explored.
However, for Global Systems Science to become a means of
changing behaviour, the potential that lies within Global Systems Science has
to be recognised, and this involves moving beyond thinking of this as a means
of supporting policymaking, and to re-conceiving it as a more advanced way of
doing science, which of course also involves policymaking, but which also
involves undertaking scientific research, and, potentially designing completely
different systems than those that exist today.
So instead of carrying on with a science based on a
reductionist and mechanistic world-view, which creates many problems, we could
re-invent science. Instead of working with the agricultural system that exists
today, and adding new bits here and there to supposedly make it more sustainable,
we could reinvent it completely. Instead of working with global financial
markets as they exist today, trying to make them more stable and less damaging,
by changing policies, we could reinvent these systems completely. And this, if
you have not already realised, is exactly what we need to do. But you will not
so easily recognise this if you do not know that
which is timeless and that which is not! And to reinvent one needs
creativity, thus once again we are back to matter of subjectivity which is an essential
aspect of creation.
What I am proposing is a radical rethink of Global Systems
Science, which involves bringing time and behaviour to the fore, and also
laying to rest this obsession with the rational and the objective and embracing
also the subjective, the irrational, the qualitative, with an accompanying
reconsideration of what constitutes so-called evidence. It is also necessary to
move beyond the now standard call for an interdisciplinary approach, and to
embrace transciplinarity – transcending largely artificial disciplinary
boundaries, reassembling knowledge in a different way, and moving beyond
dualities.
Arthur Koestler, in his book The Act of Creation, says, after examining the self-reflections of
many leading scientists across history: “Their virtually unanimous emphasis on
spontaneous intuitions, unconscious guidance, and sudden leaps of imagination
which they are all at a loss to explain, suggests that the role of strictly
rational thought-processes in scientific discovery has been vastly
over-estimated since the Age of
Enlightenment; and that contrary to the Cartesian bias in our beliefs ‘full
consciousness’, in the words of Einstein, ‘is a limit case’.”
Koestler is right, and this is another reason why we need to
bring artists into research, into FET, into Global Systems Science. And note
too, this is the second time I have questioned the legacy of this thing called
the Age of Enlightenment. The
importance of understanding that which is
timeless and that which is not cannot be stressed enough. It comes back to
time once again! And if you think that questioning the Age of Enlightenment is out of bounds, think again, for slowly
people are beginning to realise that its legacy has become a liability. We need
to re-thinking the whole basis upon which our culture is based (see DG
CONNECT’s Onlife Initiative https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/onlife-manifesto),
and this is another reason to work with artists, for this is something many of
them do as a matter of course. This is why they are so central to the President
Barroso’s New Narrative for Europe initiative.
And their conclusion is that Europe needs a
new renaissance. We do indeed! Time for
Time within the context of FET Proactive is a very necessary part of this,
for it could bring to this new renaissance, the disruptive ideas and
technologies that will allow more people to understand just how tyrannical the
past is in determining our thinking about the future.
And on this note I also mention Charles Handy, a leading
business thinker from the 1980s and 1990s. Handy wrote in his book Beyond Certainty, that when
discontinuities occur as a consequence of structural changes in the business
environment, the past becomes no guide to the future. These discontinuities can
render assumptions and practices invalid and inappropriate. This then makes
extrapolating into the future based on the past, an exercise of little value.
When discontinuities are present, the success stories of yesterday can have
little relevance to the problems of tomorrow. In fact, according to Handy
“these success stories might even be damaging since the world, at every level,
has to be reinvented to some extent.” In
another book, The Age of Unreason,
Handy strongly argued that in times of structural change, one should not be
taking note of what is reasonable, but should be listening to those who seem to
be saying unreasonable things.
We are living through times of massive structural change –
in society, in business, in technology, in peoples’ behaviour, in the nature of
being human, in human civilisation. So it is time to say what seem to be
unreasonable things. We need to bring time into our discussions and begin to
recognise that which is timeless and that
which is not.
As for the creation of a technology that brings time, past
and future, into the present, this is something that I have reflected upon as
part of the continuing process of using the novel Moments in Time as act of research and knowledge creation.
Elsewhere in the consultation (under ideas for new topics), a number of people
mention the importance of art and artists, and also observe that technological
development work is being undertaken by artists (see no duality!), and they are
right – some artists are technology developers and they are also researchers. These
types of artists should be integrated into the ICT programme, and FET Proactive
is one of the most obvious places for them to be, because of the
transformational potential that they create, and their interest in questioning
that which others just accept (like the notion of so called big data) and
offering different perspectives that may in turn lead to new ideas.
One of the inputs provided on the topic of ICT and Art,
suggests a number of research topics, which include: technologies for
uncertainty and technologies for a non-human perspective. These are the kinds
of ideas that need to be explored and developed further in this context of Time for Time. I could myself add
another one: big data considered not as something to be mastered and
controlled, but something to be addressed in a time context: past, present and
future.
In my novel I provide a metaphor for the technologies that
bring the golden threads of time past and future, into the present, and for
experiencing the resulting complex tapestry that this merging creates. I called
it the Time House, an architectural construction being “… a house built by two
different builders; one working on the physical features, shaping it within the
bounds of what is physically possible to meet the needs of those who will live
there and make it their home, and the other, unseen, forming it into that which
I will, in due course reveal.” Thus, one can conceive of an architectural
construct, a physical space, where people (by which I mean scientists,
policymakers, members of the public, and many others) come to understand … that which is timeless and that which is not,
and also what the future might become because of thoughtless decisions in the
present that are masquerading as being based on the rational and objective, and
so on and so forth. The potential needs to be further explored.
There is a field of artistic practice called Technoetic Art,
which is quite fundamental for creating a realisation of the Time House.
Technoetic Art is an area concerned with the technology of consciousness, being
a convergent field of practice that seeks to explore consciousness and
connectivity through many different means. And Technoetic artists, along with
other artists, will bring into this work an important insight, which is that another
legacy of the Age of Enlightenment
needs to be left outside the Time House. What I am referring to is this notion
that humans can be compared to machines! They can of course if that is what you
want to do, and this one can observe, is the story of technology development
over the past several hundred years, but the point is that humans should not be
thus compared. We should be looking at a different type of technology that is
not one based on this now familiar refrain: humans are better at …, computers
are better at …
And the new enlightenment goes like this: people have
characteristics and behaviours determined by genes and social conditioning
(acquisition of paradigms!), and we need a technology that brings this to our
attention, so that we can make better decisions, with one of these decisions
being, that it is we who will take decisions and not computers. Moreover, to
replace the human-computer comparability paradigm mentioned above, this new
enlightenment should be developing a different model – one based on
human-computer complementarity, which is a topic much in need of development.
And as for causality, this too should be reconsidered, for people should not be
regarded as machines, subject to cause and effect. Instead we need to be
looking at meaning and purpose, and other aspects which define humans and which
differentiate them from machines. There is evidently much to reformulate!
However, we live in challenging economic times, where
budgets are tight, and there is little money to explore new topics. So in
response to this constraint I ask: why not explore new topics through existing
ones; specifically Global Systems Science? By expanding the scope of this
existing FET Proactive topic it would be possible also to begin to develop
several new areas: Time for Time, Art
in ICT and FET Research, and Behavioural Agriculture, while at the same time
developing the field of Global Systems Science, making it in effect, wider in
scope, which is also an answer to the question posed in this consultation about
whether the scope of Global Systems Science is too wide or too narrow – it is
most definitely too narrow.
So, to conclude, it is without doubt Time for Time. But is also a time for a different approach to
science through an expanded understanding of the scope of Global Systems
Science. And it is time to move beyond the legacy of the Age of Enlightenment. It is time for a new renaissance, a new
enlightenment, and this means that it is time for art, and it is time for
behaviour, and much more.
It’s all about time!
And as a footnote, I here add, with the benefit of the
passage of time, that the above shows just how much DG CONNECT, with their
notions of creativity deficits, to be corrected through the non-creative ones
(the technologists) collaborating with the creative ones (the artists), are, out-of-time.
