Review:Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, + Mysticism

I've finally gotten off of my duff, and written my take on Erik Davis' Techgnosis: Myth, Magic + Mysticism, one of the more esoteric books that we've reviewed. For those of you interested in the sociologic roots of our culture, click below to read more. Techgnosis: Myth, Magic + Mysticism author Erik Davis pages 304 publisher Harmony Books rating 7.5 reviewer Erik Davis ISBN summary An interesting book, exploring the conjunction of technology and mysticism. Academic feel.

Erik Davis, a journalist in his own right, and a self-admitted geek is the author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, + Mysticism in the Age of Information, a book which purports to attempt to understand and explain how technology, magic and mysticism aren't really all that far apart. Davis makes an interesting arguement, and this is an issue that I've given some thought about to before. The perception of engineers, scientists and technical people is not one of fuzzy, soft images; it's a hard, straight edge image. But if you spend much time talking with anyone of that ilk, you soon realize that this group, like any other one, is one that has it's idosyncratic tendencies.

This image is one that hasn't come up accidentally - in many ways, the image of the technical person as a pure-logic person is one that has been built up and developed by the community of technical persons itself. This image of science as unquestionable and infalliable is one that quickly corrodes if you spend much time inside of graduate and scientific communities, watching the politics run rampant. But on a broader level, this image of science as a monolith began to fall apart with Schrodinger and Einstein and the notion of relativity. Kurt Godel also contributed to this notion in discrediting the Principa Mathematica

So, the issue of exploring this in literature, and exploring what in some ways is the unacknowledged side of the technological community. Recent issues like Joe Firmage's The Word is Truth, geeks fascination with shows like X-Files, and movies like Star Wars belies the notion of the one-sided, all logical personality.

Davis does an excellent job exploring the roots of our present technological society in the alchemical secret societes of the Middle Ages, and the present day raise in paganism amongst technologists. This is perhaps the strongest segement of the book, dealing with the religion issues, and why people like us choose alternatives or non-conformity.

The book has several drawbacks, the most glaring of which is the book's seemingly dual personality. While its research and tone are that of a book that wants to be an academic book, there are numerous points in which the facts cited, or a point is made that seems more soft-cover, and less hard-cover, if you can forgive my analogy. My other complaint, and one that shows my true colors as a history major - the book rests on itself on too few references. While I appreciate and understand Davis' points, and would recommend it to my fellow geeks, I wouldn't recommend this book to a non-technical person. The feel of the book in many ways is one of a book written for the commuity, and one that will work within the community, but not something that those outside the community would appreciate.

In the end though, for this audience, I recommend it. It's an academic read, but if you need a break from learning Perl, then this book is worth picking up. It can be slow at times, but ultimately is worth the time spent.

Buy this book at Amazon.

Comments

The topic of Science is not Truth but Usefulness

[peter hoffman]

Often it is forgotten that in the field of science True means "not inconsistent with currently accepted theories".

This is not a cause for confusion so long as it is remembered that the rules governing the acceptance of theories boil down to reproduciblity and simplicity.

Unfortunately, it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that (for example) cause and effect are only illusions caused by something we don't yet perceive (or can't). If this suggestion is accepted, then reproducibility is a moot point.

It is also reasonable to question the metric of simplicity. The reason simplicity appeals to us is because it makes our lives easier.

For example, it is possible to design a geocentric universe but the resulting mathematics are so complicated that nothing useful can be derived (such as what trajectory to use to launch a probe to the moon). Therefore, we reject a geocentric universe as False.

Unfortunately, we use the same words True and False in daily conversation where they have quite different meanings. For example, "Is it true that Bill Clinton is a liar?".

Science really has nothing to do with Truth, it has a lot to do with Usefulness.

That way lies madness

[Tal Cohen]

There is a big, wide gulf between (proper) science and mysticism, new-age, and all that. The recent (last few decades) drift away from science and onto "alternatives" is a cause for worry not only for scientists, but also for all who care for the future of humanity.

Among the scientists who cared was the late Carl Sagan. His last book, and IMHO his most important one, was " The Demon-Haunted World ". This is a must read both for those who care about our future on one hand, and for those who think that there might be something in mysticism on the other hand.

Magic vs Science ...

[MeerCat]

I've long explained to non-computer people that computing in practice is too much like magic - it is a collection of arcance sequences and irrational invocations, memorised by the practitioners as "spells that work", without them neccesarily knowing how or why.

I'm looking forward to the day when I don't get told "you must follow these exact steps, if you get any two in the wrong order it won't work but we don't know why".

Any but the most specialist computing niches are now too large and too genereal for deep understanding to be feasible. So we rely on too many arbitrary black boxes, hence the popular success of OpenSource (yeah, preaching to the converted I know) so that instead of having to remember "that's the way it is" we can read the source and replace some of the magic with a bit of science.

I think this idea was inspired if not blatantly stolen from Weinberg's "The Psychology of Computer Programming" (1973 and still true).

As for why the magic/mysticism imagery is so popular right now ?
Fin-de-siecle always produces a swing towards mysticism, this coming at the peak of quite a sustained period of vicious technological acceleration, and I'm surprised the "backlash" (I think "whiplash" may be more accurate, but probably that word is banned for our friends in Oz ;^)) is still as weak as the X-Files, new age hippies, down-shifting and the odd eastern-inspired religious cult phenomena.

Science

[edhall]

It is one thing to say that science is laden with politics and subjective opinions, and quite another to say that this equates it to myth and mysticism. I don't think you can say that our myths or mystical insights or even our cultures or governments are better than they were two thousand years ago. Different, yes. Better, probably not. They seem to fit our perception of the world more or less as well as they ever have, and do just about as good or bad a job of explaining and controlling the world as they ever have.

But our science is indisputably better than it was 2000 years ago, and it's "fit" to the world as we experience it improves almost monotonically over time. Perhaps this is why we pang for better myths and greater mysteries, since the old ones don't seem to work as well even though our need for them continues unabated.

This may be why many of us try to mix science and myth, attempting to empower each with the other. This may be a mistake. Our myths and mysteries might not belong with science's notion of continual progress and refinement. The mystery of the meaning of our existance may never be satisfied by any amount of physical or biological explanation. Our relationship to each other and the world might be much more effectively described through our myths than through our neurochemistry, no matter how far we advance that science.

That said, there is a sense in which our relationship to the mysterious can and should be a progressing one. Each of use should strive to better understand the incredible mystery that surrounds and infuses each of us: our selves.

-Ed

Davis's Web page

[papertiger]

Davis has a web page, Figments & Inklings which has a section on his book including excerpts.

He also write s for the Village Voice.

Similarities

[adimarco]

While I haven't read this book yet, I suspect that its subject matter runs in close parallel with Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics which attempts to demonstrate the alarming similarities between the conclusions of modern theoretical physics, and Eastern (and other) mysticism. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an interesting read.

From the brief skimming I have done of the other comments posted so far in this discussion, I can see that most of them embody the same knee-jerk reaction that die hard science-types (such as myself) tend to have when non-scientific possibilities are even mentioned.

Anyone who believes that science and mathematics are the answer to everything, and can possibly describe the totality of existance should do some reading on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Alfred Korzybski's (sp?) General Semantics, and contemplate the implications of a set containing itself (a theory [a member of the set of "real" things, "Reality"] describing the "reality" [set] that contains it, FNORD).

The important thing to stress is that science, mysticism, philosophy, etc. are only models of the "reality" we observe. We too often mistake our models of reality for that which they describe. This misperception has been described as "The map is not the territory," or "The menu is not the meal."

The similarities between the conclusions of modern physics and those of ancient mysticism (and those of acid-heads) are too numerous and large to ignore. Two seemingly diametrically opposite methods of modeling reality have come to extremely similar conclusions. These include observer created reality, the illusion of indivisible particles, the interconnectedness of all existance, etc. etc. etc. I'll let you do the reading so as not to come off sounding like some new-age lunatic ;) The point being that we shouldn't be looking to pick sides on the issue, but to back up and see that they're both sides of the same coin.

R. Buckminster Fuller (imho, one of the greatest thinking minds of the century) once decided to test one of the theories of General Semantics, that we continually 'hypnotize' ourselves with our speech, by not talking for a full year. When he started talking again, he had a completely new way of modelling reality (and created some very interesting geometric shapes that seem to be 3 dimensional projections of 4th dimensional gemoetries). His patterns of speech also changed radically, for example he refused to say "the universe" and instead insisted on saying simply "universe" to emphasize that what he was referring to was a process, not a thing, as the language leads us to think of it. He also said "I seem to be a verb," and "God is a verb," which have thoroughly confused and enlightened many people since.

I'll conclude before I get too far off on a tangent, and encourage you to at least do some reasearch on the similarities here. There's a wealth of information out there on the 'net, and in print. I would highly recommend The Tao of Physics, Godel, Escher, Bach, and Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising.

-Anthony DiMarco
"If you don't see the FNORD it can't eat you. Dont' see the FNORD. Don't see the FNORD."

Re:Similarities

[thisrod]

Unexplained gaps in our basic theories of physics are not new. For
centuries after classical mechanics was developed by Galileo, Newton,
Kepler et al., no one had a convincing argument that the techniques of
calculus it relied on were valid. This led someone (I think it was
Bishop Berkeley) to suggest that science was just as much a matter of
faith as Christianity.

Of course, astronomical observations eventually agreed with the theory
so well that no one really doubted it; though it took some time for
calculations to reach a precision which would account for all the
observations. It was not until the 19th century that Cantor et
al. put calculus on a rigorous foundation, and moved the controversy
on to really bizarre matters like the axiom of choice.

Another good example is the inconsistency of electromagnetic theory
and Newtonian mechanics in the second half of the 19th century. It
was 50 years from Maxwell's calculation of a (constant) value for the
speed of light from his laws of electromagnetism before Einstein found
a consistent theory with special relativity. In this case it turned
out that the assumptions underlying the original theory were wrong.

So although some areas of modern physics lack a generally accepted
explanation, particularly in quantum mechanics with renormalisation
and non-locality, this is not at all an alarming situation to be in,
it just means that physics is still in progress, as it always has
been. I don't think anyone expects to have all the answers any time
soon.

Re:Science is a Journey, not a Destination

[MuppetBoy]

Although I agree with the bit about Science being a journey rather than a destination, I think some of your other arguments are really absurd (and I think the reason you hold these views is probably because you have a bipolar viewpoint that it's either Science or Religion somehow and not both). Especially the bit about "All things are knowable". We don't know this to be true. In fact, it's a concrete result of Quantum Physics at the moment that All things are NOT knowable! So you are spouting dogma every bit as irrational as traditional religious dogma.

The idea that Science progresses towards all-knowingness is an axiomatic *assumption* about the universe, which may (I predict *will*) ultimately fail to be true. Any *true* scientist is Rational first, which leaves open the possibility that Science is limited, not wholly rational or that it doesn't "progress" because there's no end-goal (aside from omniscience, which is provably impossible within Science at this point). That's not to say Science is not useful. It's just not The Search for The Penultimate Source of Truth(tm) anymore.

Also, I'd like to point out that there are many things which religious teachings have to say which strike at deep core Truths of human existence and the human condition which science doesn't even have a language for talking about (and can therefore never "disprove" by definition). To give you an idea of how ridiculous your position is, consider Buddhist beliefs about the origins of suffering (in the mind). How would you devise a scientific experiment to determine whether the statement is true when it's based on our individual social / emotional / psychological experiences? No. The statement can only be validated or invalidated by individuals based on their own experience in life (I have yet to meet anyone who really understood what was being said and disagreed with it... although many people disagree on what to do about it). That doesn't make it any less True, though. It just makes it a non-scientific Truth.

It's my experience that Science totally breaks down beyond the realm of the purely physical. The more complex and human things get, the more Science falls apart. And there's no good reason to think this will change. Given that, it's a really stupid idea to live life as a pursuit of Science. There are other meta-physical journies going on where Truth is much softer and more personal. Where Truth is more human.

Truth and Falsity

[MuppetBoy]

On the contrary, I think we are interested in non-Science because it represents a different kind of Truth, the depths of which Science is incapable of plumbing. Science doesn't reveal *intransient* Truths about our phenomenal world. Instead, it is merely a process of *refinement* (as opposed to *discovery*) of very narrowly defined "truths", and which only reveals answers to shallow questions that generally begin with "how". It utterly fails to address the bigger and more complex questions in life (particularly in social and moral life) and can never, by definition, prove anything about the ultimate nature of reality (in particular, it can't touch the Eastern mind-only school of thought because the whole phenomenal world and its rules for operation are considered projections of the mind).

And so the fascination with non-scientific viewpoints will only increase as it becomes more and more apparent how very weak and fragile Science really is. There are, of course, more ignorant ways of reaching the same fascination with non-Science, but I'm not sure it makes a difference in the end how you arrive. In some ways, a non-naive understanding is more tainted than the simple understanding because the sense of wonder is still completely intact. The most ignorant and ultimately irrational) thing I can think of is a closed mind. Unfortunately, many scientists choose to dogmatically follow Science as if it were a religion, when in fact it is scarcely more than a tool for developing technology at this point.

Ultimately, the question that always bothers us in our private moments and which Science is powerless to explain is "WHY *anything* at all?" It really makes one wonder. And in the end, I think that a sense of wonder at the universe is more worthwhile and useful than any scientific knowledge. Sadly, the West has yet to learn much about wisdom. This is the problem with the Cult of Science and the Cult of Youth.

Science and Mysticism

[johnrpenner]

a really excellent book on this same subject is called "Quantum Questions : Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists" by ken wilber.

it is really quite interesting to hear what einstein and heisenberg themselves have to say about mysticism.

this is a great text, because wilber selects telling comments, in their own words, from some of the key big names of modern physics. well edited and insightfully commented, wilber presents a strong case that these physicists were indeed not philosophical materialists, and some were outright mystical. (Thomas Brophy, PhD--physics).

Tesla and others

[anticypher]

I have noticed a tendancy among some of my friends to ascribe all kinds of mysticism and secrets to the experiments of Tesla and other great experimenters/hackers.

Tesla systematically did a lot of early work on AC power and the functioning of coils and capacitors and tuned circuits. Since he was the first to carefully research and document some of the properties of AC tuned circuits and magnetism, he made up his own words as he went along. When an EE goes back and reads his original notes and patent filings, modern concepts just leap off the page. Since Tesla's time, the words used to identify concepts and units of measurements (reactance, inductance, Hertz, Ohms, Farads, Amperes) have been codified by the scientific and engineering communities.

So when a modern EE looks at Tesla's work, it is pretty straight forward, but when someone not directly schooled in electronics looks at Tesla's work, they see magic. I know someone who has searched the web using Tesla's words, and not finding any modern engineering books using those same words assumes Tesla is being forgotten or written out of the history books. It is not true, just the words have been changed to honor the great hackers of yesteryear.

Two of the biggest corrections to be made are Tesla's discovery of "cold light", which is now called fluorescent light, and his lack of understanding of the additive effects of surface eddy currents on extremely large coils which caused his graphs to show "negative energy" or free energy. Makes the conspiracy nuts go crazy that Tesla found free energy and cold light sources but they don't exist today.

Some of the people whose names we use all the time:
Nikola Tesla == Magnetic density
James Watt == Electrical power
Alessandro Volta == Electromotive force
Andre Ampere == Current
Michael Faraday == Electrical capacitance
Heinrich Herz == Frequency of periodic phenomena

When I'm old I expect to see the Torvalds == unit of bug-free code, and the CmdrTaco == unit of flamage :-)

the AntiCypher
[whoa, I received 8.3 kiloTacos today :-]