| The faulty division of the sciences and the Humanities has been of interest to philosophers from the very inception of the division -- and transcending this separation is necessary for the progress of both philosophical spheres for the furthering of our knowledge, not only of ourselves, but of our universe. Smith, in the following, works towards bridging this gap through an analysis of theories of observation, some the providence of the Humanities, and others explained by the sciences. This fine mixture of theory and analysis is a progressive, and foundational, work in the now narrowing gap between formerly divorced spheres, as well as an enlightening study of humanity and the universe. |  |
The Observing Body: Quantum Mechanics, the Anthropic Principles, and Panopticism [printable version]
C. Jason Smith
<1> When philosopher of history and science Michel Serres wrote of "that rare and narrow passage" between the human sciences and the exact sciences [1], he intended to suggest not only the infrequency and difficulty of such contact, but also the unwillingness on either side to engage in what could be a dangerous, low-profit venture. It seems a long haul back to our common origins in philosophia, and typically, efforts to regain common ground between the disciplines have approached the problem as a one-sided move from the exact sciences to the study of the humanities. Notable exceptions such as N. Katherine Hayles' Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (1990) do attempt to create the atmosphere of dialog; yet, while Hayles discusses how "Different disciplines are drawn to similar problems because the concerns underlying them are highly charged within a prevailing cultural context" [2] her text still operates largely as a science-based approach to the study of cultural texts. Those in the humanities may agree to the applicability of complex dynamics and field theory to the study of culture, but the inverse is not typically true. For example, while we find Hayles' application of scientific theory to culture "interesting" or even "enlightening," works such as Donna J. Haraway's Simians, Cyborgs and Women (1991) are deemed "intrusive" and are largely ignored by the scientific community. Practical applications of scientific theories to specific works in the humanities may be useful, but in essence, these projects either simply advocate or court the sciences and rarely seek common parallels in theory or practice which are mutually supporting and enlightening. We need to look again at what we have always had in common, at something which prefigures even philosophia: the means of observation.
<2> This study is
grounded in two propositions: first, our bodies are the essential apparatus
of all observation. (We may think of "body" in these terms as the
"mind-body complex," but the mind-body dichotomy is not necessary
to the argument.) Furthermore, based in our own sense of embodiment and observation
of other bodies, our corporeality defines the starting point and ultimate
limit of human perception. In essence, as Carl Gustav Jung writes in Archetypes
and the Collective Unconscious (1959), "No one can escape from the
prejudice of being human" [3]. In the
humanities, Jung's sentiment has become a virtual given of any postmodern
critical approach to the study of culture and its artifacts. In the sciences,
however, the role of the observer in the observation and collection of data
is somewhat of a sore spot as many scientists are feeling the necessity to
assert in strong terms the essentially "human nature" of observation
which seems to undermine the notion of scientific objectivity.
<3> Second, in scientific
terms we are complex dynamical systems and this fact affects our observational
capacity in a very real way. In the exact sciences, the critical problems
of observation stem, at least in part, from the fields of quantum mechanics
and of complex dynamical systems (more popularly Chaos Theory) where the objectivity
of the human body as an observation "device"-via the eyes, nose,
ears, mouth, brain, etc.-comes into question. As James Gleick writes in the
often quoted Chaos: Making of a New Science (1987),
The paragon of a complex dynamical system and to many scientists, therefore, the touchstone of any approach to complexity is the human body. No object of study available to physicists offers such a cacophony of counterrhythmic motion on scales from macroscopic to microscopic: motion of muscles, of fluids of currents, of fibers of cells. No physical system has lent itself to such an obsessive brand of reductionism: every organ has its own micro-structure and its own chemistry, and student physiologists spend years just on the naming of the parts. Yet how ungraspable these parts can be! [4]
The body, in these terms,
is a complex dynamical system, and from this position of complex embodiment
we speak, we observe, and we produce knowledge. This fundamental fact ties
all the disciplines together and supplies us with a common teleology, to maximize
and improve observation.
Part One: Observing the Body
<4> It was the Enlightenment
that consciously redefined the body as an apparatus of observation in order
to observe, dominate, and eventually incorporate nature. In The Dialectic
of Enlightenment (1972), Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno argue that
the scientific impetus of the Enlightenment was not a liberating move in the
quest for truth, but a quest for a power which ultimately enslaves. They indicate
the Enlightenment motto "knowledge, which is power, knows no obstacles"
[5] as a type of confession of the true
goals of the Enlightenment. The emphasis on the power of the individual is
directly related to the drive to dominate nature, a drive that inevitably
turns back on itself and leads to the formation of individuals who are internally
repressed. As Foucault writes in The Birth of the Clinic (1973), "What
counts in the things said by men is not so much what they may have thought
or the extent to which these things represent their thoughts, as that which
systematizes them from the outset, thus making them thereafter endlessly accessible
to new discourses and open to the task of transforming them" [6].
All observation becomes standardized so that Sournia may write in Logique
et morale du diagnostic that "We 'observe' [a patient] in the same
way that we observe the stars or a laboratory experiment" [7].
This relativization of the means of observation yields subjects whose function,
in Horkeheimer and Adorno's terms, is to both add to the base of information
as commodity or consume that commodity; subjects who are in Foucault's terms
simultaneously reconstructed as both apparatus of observation (observer-bodies)
and information production (subjects of the empirical gaze) where the whole
relationship of signifier to signified is redistributed to the aims of observation
[8]. As he writes in Discipline and Punish
(1975),
The historical moment of the disciplines was the moment when an art of the human body was born, which was directed not only at the growth of its skills, nor at the intensification of its subjection, but at the formation of a relation that in the mechanism itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely....Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms or obedience) [9] .
Once subjects are redefined
as apparatus of observation, observation itself necessarily reforms as a hierarchical
structure as power is dissociated from the body and turned into an "aptitude"
or "capacity." Discipline seeks to increase this capacity while
at the same time changing the course of power so that while the subject becomes
an ever more rigidly calibrated observation device the power associated with
observation is bled away. In essence, the individual power associated with
observation is reorganized towards the ends of observation in general.
<5> This reconstruction
of subjects as apparatus for observation yields more or less rigidly calibrated
-- educated and socialized -- subjects who may be categorized as "objective"
to varying degrees within the observational system. Even the shoddiest of
human observers could still supply data for the interpretation even if they
could not supply the "correct" interpretation themselves. Freud's
Dora, for example, comments upon her own life and dreams, but it is only through
the clarifying observation of Freud that we believe Dora or understand her
in any meaningful way. This hierarchization of observation necessitates a
chain of command which in turn implies an Ultimate Observer or Final Observation.
In analytical psychology, for example, that Ultimate Observer is Freud himself
as he designed and taught his theory and analyzed his "disciples"
before sending them out to analyze others. Of all the possible meanings of
Dora's dream of a burning house and "a jewel case," Freud recontextualizes
the information within his theory as "My 'jewel case' is in danger and
if anything happens it will be father's fault" [10].
His higher-level observation effectively commits Dora's statement to a single
context and a single reality where "jewel case" is symbolic of her
vagina and the burning house the modus for her "loss" of it to Mr.
K. The subject, then, can be imagined as caught in an infinite regress of
observation all the way back to an inferred "Final Observer" who
would be able to realize the fullness and meaning of the data. Of course,
the fact that Dora ultimately rejected Freud's analysis reminds us that, at
least on a local level, two realities can exist and hierarchical observation
does not always have the intended effect on the observed.
<6> The problems of
interaction between observer and observed are fairly easy to understand when
we are dealing with individual humans, especially when we consider that Freud's
interpretations are no longer generally considered accurate. We simply do
not all see the same way and generally accepted interpretations change over
time, which is the very reason the scientific method was adopted in the first
place in order to counteract individual subjectivity. As suggested earlier,
the real problem of observation arises in the hard sciences and specifically
in quantum mechanics where problems of subjectivity, supposedly eliminated
(or greatly reduced) by the scientific method, re-emerge at the base of all
observation in the smallest, most essential form of matter in the universe.
<7> According to quantum
mechanics, all reality is (to some degree) observer-dependant. "In general,"
Stephen Hawking writes in A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to
Black Holes (1988), "quantum mechanics does not predict a single
definite result for an observation. Instead, it predicts a number of different
possible outcomes and tells us how likely each of these is" [11].
The difference in the possible outcomes is observer dependant and as John
Gribbon explains in his In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (1984),
all vision involves bouncing protons of light off objects and into our eyes.
A photon doesn't disturb large objects like a passing semi-truck on the Interstate
very much, so we don't expect the tuck to be affected by simply looking at
it, though we may wish it was. By looking at the truck, we do change
it, though the change infinitesimally small. Observation effects everything
we observe and ourselves. An electron, however, is so small that we have to
use electromagnetic energy with a short wave-length in order to "see"
it at all. And as Gribbon explains, "Such gamma radiation is very energetic,
and any photon of gamma radiation that bounces off an electron and can be
detected by our experimental apparatus will drastically change the position
and momentum of the electron -- of the electron is an atom, the very act of
observing it...may knock it out of the atom altogether" effectively dismantling
it [12]. At the particle level, the base
for all other observation, observer and observed are intertwined and their
paths forever changed by their interaction. Form this starting point in quantum
mechanics emerged a theory which eventually had repercussions up the observational
scale from the smallest particles to the universe.
<8> To understand
the full implication of what one particle could change we turn to Erwin Schrödinger's
metaphorical cat. As he explains in "Naturwiss,"
A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left the entire system to itself for an hour, one would say the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Y [theta] function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts [13].
The mathematical equation, for those interested, looks like the following where theta=1 over the square root of 2 (theta "dead" + theta "alive"):
Schrödinger's metaphor
is constructed as a cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison gas attached
to a proton detector. If all circumstances are favorable to the creation of
a proton, what happens to the cat? Is it alive or dead? According to quantum
theory, the proton will at the same time be created and strike the detector
and not be created and not strike the detector, so that the answer to Schrödinger's
question is a paradoxical "yes and no." Without an outside observer
opening the box and committing to one reality or another, then, theorists
argued that both events have happened: live cat, dead cat. The implication
is, as James Gleick summarizes, "Gone was the luxury of supposing that
a single reality existed, that the human mind had reasonably clear access
to it, and that the scientists could explain it" [14].Most
physicists agree that there are five ways to resolve the paradox: the first
is solipsism, or to assume that the only thing verifiable is the self so the
seeming paradox is just part of everything else outside the self which cannot
be known. Physicist would reject this possibility out of hand as inconsistent
with the goals and means of science.
<9> The second possibility,
and generally considered the simplest, is that any being with consciousness
can collapse the wave functions (the mathematical symbol of multiple cats)
by observation, effectively either committing the universe to one reality
or another or identifying which universe we already occupy. Practically, the
paradox is a local event contained in the box itself. This possibility is
called the Copenhagen interpretation and as Barrow and Tipler summarize,
According to quantum theory, it is necessary to include some physics of the observer or measuring apparatus in the analysis if one wishes to talk about the result of a measurement on a system. A moment's reflection will show that the essential feature of a measuring apparatus is the ability to record the result of a measurement. The essence of a successful measurement is the transfer of information about the system being measured to the memory of the apparatus [15].
Which is to say, the act
of observing properly and "recording" (or remembering) the data
resolves the paradox. However, there is a further implication: "In the
opinion of Heisenberg and Weizsäcker, the Copenhagen Interpretation implies
that properties of objects do not exist until they are observed; the properties
are 'latent' but are not 'actual' before the observation" [16]
or that "the act of observation is responsible for bringing properties
of physical systems into existence [17].
<10> The third possibility
is that a community of observers can collectively collapse wave-functions.
One observer looks in the box which starts the process which is verified and
solidified through the hierarchy of observation. Implicit in this interpretation
is the effect of the observer on the system being observed.
<11> Fourth, there
is some sort of Ultimate Observer who is responsible for the collapse of wave
functions. In essence, the Final Observer is constructed as the un-observable,
the last on the chain of observables who clarifies and solidifies all previous
observation. The Christian Jahova would fit the bill nicely as omniscience
is the essence of the Final Observer and the fact of omniscience, in this
case, actually explains omnipotence. In The Physics of Immortality: Modern
Cosmology, God and the Ressurection of the Dead (1994), Tipler terms this
Ultimate Observer the "Omega Point" (essentially our own descendents
in the a galactic computer) which comes into being in the far future and from
that position collapses all wave functions.
<12> Fifth, Wave functions
never collapse (as there is no ultimate observer). The best known interpretation
of this possibility is "Everett's Friends Paradox." With no Ultimate
Observation, all possibilities are, mathematically at least, possible. As
John Gribbon explains,
Everett's interpretation [of Schrödinger's Cat] accepts the quantum equations entirely at face value and says that both cats are real. There is a live cat, and there is a dead cat; but they are located in different worlds. It is not that the radioactive atom inside the box either did or did not decay, but that it did both. Faced with this decision, the whole world -- the universe -- split into two versions of itself, identical in all respects except that in one version the atom decayed and the cat died, while in the other the atom did not decay and the cat lived [18].
The opening of the box is
not the moment when the universe splits but only the moment of recognition
of which universe the observer belongs. We might think of a series of observers
going all the way back, but unlike the previous possibility, Everett suggests
that as an observer is supplanted by another observer, he is observed and
vice versa, therefore, for Everett's interpretation the Ultimate Observer
is discounted as a mathematically logical possibility. The Ultimate Observer
is simply a paradoxical answer to a paradox because how can an observer exist
who is not observed (if she was observed she would not be the Ultimate Observer
at all, and so on).
<13> The interpretations
of Schrödinger's Cat applied not only to Quantum Mechanics, but to many
of the other sciences as well because as Tipler writes, "everything in
sight is a quantum system" [19].And
that includes us humans as well.
Part Two: Observing the Universe
<14> Based on our
role as quantum-system observers, Barrow and Tipler, among others, developed
what has come to be called The Anthropic Cosmological Principle: a series
of principles focused on the role of the observer in the Universe based on
quantum mechanics and defined under one rubric.
<15> The basic fact
of observation derived from Quantum Mechanics, according to Barrow and Tipler,
is that "we are a carbon-based life-form which spontaneously evolved
on an earth-like planet around a star of G-2 spectral type, and any observation
we make is necessarily self-selected by this absolutely fundamental fact."
Our bodies, in essence, are measuring devices "whose self-selection properties
must be taken into account, just as astronomers must take into
account the self-selection properties of optical telescopes" [20].
This selection effect suggests that data is limited by what can be observed;
i.e. the smallest "quanta" is now a quark because we can't see anything
smaller (yet). All of which implies that that we must always take into accounts
the limits of the observation devices we use beginning with the device which
is "us." In other words, what we have come to call "the subject"
is an observation apparatus fine-tuned to observe the universe from the smallest
quanta, to the mundane motes of dust, to the galactic rim. But, to what end?
Well, as Robert Penn Warren's Jack Burden states in All the King's Men
(1946), "The end of man is to know." Complete observation is both
our telos (purpose) and thantos (end).
<16> The base premise
of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle states that we cannot conceive of
a universe without us because we would not be in that universe to conceive
of it. The very term "without us" asserts that we are here and any
conception can only be in comparison to our presence; the a priori
of observation is the presence of an observer. As Barrow and Tipler explain,
"The Anthropic Principles seek to link aspects of the global and local
structure of the Universe to these conditions necessary for the existence
of living observers" [21]. In essence,
the basic features of the Universe, including such properties as its shape, size, age and laws must be observed to be of a type that allows the evolution of observers, for if intelligent life did not evolve in an otherwise possible universe, it is obvious that no one would be asking the reason for the observed shape, size, age and so forth of the universe [22].
The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle is broken down by Barrow and Tipler into three separate postulates:
"The Weak Anthropic Principle" (or WAP), "The Strong Anthropic
Principle" (SAP), and "The Final Anthropic Principle" (FAP).
<17> The Weak Anthropic
Principle states that "The observed values of all physical and cosmological
quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by
the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve,
and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already
done so" [23]. Or, to restate, only
on a planet where carbon-based life and intelligence evolves is it possible
to wonder about the origin of carbon-based life in the Universe. Barrow and
Tipler make the distinction of "carbon-based" life because other
universes could conceivably evolve without "us" (carbon-based intelligence)
with non-carbon-based intelligence, but these universes would not necessarily
include us. In this view, intelligence is not a necessary, but a sufficient
condition for the presence or creation of the Universe.
<18> The Strong Anthropic
Principle posits that "The Universe must have those properties which
allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history" [24].
This view supports several other possibilities. First, there exists one possible
Universe "designed" with the goal of generating and sustaining observers,
which suggests that the a priori of the Universe is mind. We
could say that intelligence, wherever it might exist, is equivalent on the
galactic scale to the frontal lobe in man and the other higher mammals. Even
more, the sum total of all minds in the Universe is the frontal lobe
of the Universe, or will be at some point in the future.
<19> Second, the SAP
suggests that observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being (this
premise is also called the Participatory Anthropic Principle, or PAP), which
is basically an extension of the previous proposition with the exception that
the Universe does not exist as such until it "knows itself" through
the evolution of intelligence. There are some interesting lines of influence
between this view and Marx's First Historical moment and we could say, in
essence, that the Universe does not enter history until it evolves intelligence
to interact with it through the work of observation. Finally, the SAP suggests
that an ensemble of other, different universes are necessary for the existence
of our Universe [25]. Which is to say
that "all possible worlds" must exist in order for this universe
to exist.
<20> The Final Anthropic
Principle is stated as "Intelligent information-processing must come
into existence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will
never die out" [26]. The FAP suggests
that "information processing" is central to the existence of the
Universe, or as Timothy Leary jokes in his popular work on complex dynamics,
Chaos and Cyberculture (1994), the "you-niverse" [27].
In this case, the evolution of intelligence is a necessary condition to the
existence of the Universe, and is, in a word, the reason the Universe
comes into existence at all.
<21> The Anthropic
Principle, in each of its various forms, is a cosmic extension of Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle and the theories behind Schrödinger's Cat Paradox,
extensions which attempt "to restrict the structure of the Universe by
asserting that intelligent life, or at least life in some form, in some way
selects out the actual Universe from among the different imaginable universes:
the only 'real' universes are those which can contain intelligent life, or
at the very least contain some form of life" [28].
In sum, intelligent life exists in the Universe and must exist in order to
"know" the Universe, or any part of it, which may be one of many
possible universes (WAP), and/or by that observation to "realize"
the Universe, which may be the only Universe or one of many, any one of which
might be dependent upon observers (SAP). As long as intelligent information
processing exists, the Universe will exist, and is, in effect its raison
d' être (FAP).
<22> The Universe
and intelligence (of which humans are at least a part) are inter-dependant
in a complex system of interaction that is evolving from intelligence towards
complete, complex observation. In the Anthropic Cosmological Principles, observation
is the first tool which humans use to remake their universe, and by extension
and feed-back, internalize the Universe. The rest of the discussion will support,
to some extent, the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles, but it is in the
Final Anthropic Principle that we find the most use for critical positioning
to the effect that the Universe cannot exist without the observer. And it
is from the position that intelligence exists in order to observe that we
return to Foucault and the Panopticon.
Conclusions
<23> In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault critiques Jeremy Bentham's now infamous Panopticon vision of the prison which is constructed with a central tower and surrounding cells. "In short," Foucault writes, "it reduces the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions -- to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide -- it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness....Visibility is a trap" [29]. The ultimate goal of the Panopticon is "to induce in the inmate a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.... [P]ower should be visible and unverifiable" [30]. In essence, "The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without being seen" [31].
<24> Foucault's point,
of course, is not just that the Panopticon existed in Bentham's vision and
in practical application in prisons, but that the power structure it represents
exists everywhere in our culture. We must remember that this spreading of
the Panopticon was Bentham's ultimate goal and the prison is but a poor shadow
of what he intended as the prison is too obviously one-side as the prisoners
cannot enter the tower and see. In society at large, however, the Panopticon
operates so that an observer may observe at a single glance, not only the
subjects of observation, but also other observers as well. And the observer
must always assume that he is also observed [32].
The Panopticon is the product of a long process of the internalization of
observation within the subject with its progression from public tortures and
executions to the physical movement of punishments from public to internal
spaces. Foucault is clear that the process of internalization of observation
is an ongoing one. On this point, Tipler and Foucault are in complete agreement
as both would say that observation has become central and is increasing. Foucault
would characterize this increase in observation as serving the needs of Power
while Tipler would say the increase in observation is teleological and leads
to the Omega Point and the survival of intelligence in the Universe. However,
this is simply a matter of scale as on the human level observation reinforces
power which leads to yet more observation ad infinitum, the logical
outcome of which would be progressive expansion until the entire universe
was continually under reciprocal observation at every point at all times.
This outcome is not only analogous to the Omega Point, it is the Omega
Point. But, is this what Foucault intended when he wrote Discipline
and Punish?
<25> No matter Foucault's
intention in Discipline and Punish, most critics read his critical
retelling of the history of the prison as proscriptive rather than descriptive,
or, at the very least, use his theory as such. This reaction is understandable
as panopticism, at least in Occidental culture, is a continual source of fear
and paranoia. We might think here of projective works such as George Orwell's
1984 (1948) which predict one ultimate outcome of such as process.
Even more contemporary, popular works like Star Trek: The Next Generation
and Voyager express the fear of panopticism as a major, recurring theme
in the ever-popular Borg episodes [33].
This fear of panopticism has roots in Occidental mythology and finds its major
expression in the Tower of Babel myth from the Old Testament where the greatest
sin was, according to the word of Jehova, that the people should unite: "And
the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language;
and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which
they have imagined to do." As Serres interprets, "An ingenious,
intelligent, organized, articulate, and sedulous people undertake to build.
The Tower of Babel will reach the sky. Near the end, however, the project
fails, so it is said, through a confusion of tongues. In the desert there
will remain some stones, a whole gigantic ruin slowly split and slaked by
waters and wind, mastic trees, frost" [34].
They would have been the people who, with the panoptical technology of the
tower, could see unilaterally and universally. They would have been able to
see the pattern of life passing below them, see their borders, any of them
and all of them. The fulfillment of the Panopticon is what Jehovah tried to
stop because Jehovah is already at the center of the Panopticon. Panopticism,
true panopticism, undermines and displaces Jehovah (the "high tower"
of Psalms) as all intelligence would be able to "see" unilaterally.
<26> Donna J. haraway's
voicing of the "new myth" of the cyborg, in Simians, Cyborgs,
and Women, is an important step in the direction of unilateral vision
which begins in panopticism. As she writes, "Vision in this technological
feast becomes unregulated gluttony; all perspective gives way to infinitely
mobile vision, which no longer seems just mythically about the god-trick of
seeing everything from nowhere, but to have put the myth into ordinary practice.
And like the god-trick, this eye fucks the world to make techno-monsters....But
of course that view of infinite vision is an illusion, a god-trick" [35].
And more:
We need to learn our bodies, endowed with primate color and stereoscopic vision, how to attach the objective to our theoretical and political scanners in order to name where we are and are not, in dimensions of mental and physical space we hardly know how to name. So, not so perversely, objectivity turns out to be about particular and specific embodiment, and definitely not about the false vision promising transcendence of all limits and responsibility. The moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision [36].
Objectivity, then, has nothing
to do with grand scale observation, as suggested by quantum mechanics and
the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. The Panopticon, originally conceived
in the tower and its extension, the observatory, is effectively an observatory
internalized. C. G. Jung addresses just such an issue when he writes of Archetypes
that "Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic
constitution, not in the form of images filled with content, but at first
only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility
of a certain type of perception and action" (48). Foucault's rendering
of the Panopticon is a contemporary archetypal representation which is internalized
so that the subject carries with them an ever-present observation as the a
priori of action. But, need this be a source of fear? There is no evidence
that it was for Foucault, nor that he intended to suggest anything other than
realization of the fact of observation as a critical necessity. In fact, we
could say that if Foucault was advocating anything at all it would be self-awareness
of the role of observation in the functioning of power. He is perfectly clear
that observation is inescapable and the best we can hope for is slight modifications
in the cycles of inscribing observation. If, as the Anthropic Cosmological
Principle asserts, the purpose of intelligence is observation, then the telos,
or end, of intelligence is optimum observation where intelligence serves the
needs of observation and not inverse.
<27> By my reading
Foucault's critical interpretation of the Panopticon and the Anthropic Cosmological
principle are not only analogous, but mutually supporting. Foucault has hypothesized
at the societal level what is already established (in theory) in physics at
the quantum level and in Cosmology at the cosmic level. The three parts of
the puzzle fit nicely together and it is a very short reach indeed to convert
Foucault into physics and vice-versa. In both the Panopticon and the Anthropic
Principles, the human is a transient phase observation apparatus which will
be outmoded (probably in the far future) in the interests of the evolution
of observation. If observation is the purpose of intelligence in the Universe,
then anything which stands in the way of complete (unilateral and non-hierarchical)
observation is questionable at best. Our end, our telos and transformation
through death of the human subject, is to eliminate obstacles to observation.
The Anthropic Principles already have a term for this unity of observation:
the Omega Point.
<28> The Enlightenment
redefined the body as an apparatus of critical observation stationed within
an observational hierarchy which presumes a "final" observation
or "theory of everything." Traditional science, however, rejects
teleology as a prejudice of the observer in an attempt to "objectify"
observation. This rejection of teleological hypotheses is one of the fundamental
divisions between the hard sciences and human sciences as, by their very nature,
the human sciences operate on teleological premises. The various forms of
the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, however, rooted in quantum mechanics
and complex dynamics consciously incorporate this teleological view inherent
in the dynamics of observation and thereby reconnect themselves with the human
sciences at the observational cornerstone of thought. The path of observation
is the most fundamental and accessible route in the project of a mutually
supporting theory between the disciplines. Primary to the goal of observation
is the exploration of borders, boundaries and so-called "givens,"
and most importantly, anything constructed as "natural." This project
is already underway, but needs a new impetus. The conflation of the panoptical
theory of power with the Anthropic Cosmological Principle will serve as the
theoretical bridge between the human sciences and the exact sciences. The
technology of observation must be self-consciously incorporated and
expanded. The observed must become the observer and vice-versa ad infinitum
until hierarchy as such comes to mean as little as "0" without "1."
Notes
[1] Michel
Serres, Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, 18. [^]
[2] N. Katherine
Hayles, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science,
xi. [^]
[3] Carl
Gustav Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 63. [^]
[4] James
Gleick, Chaos: Making of a New Science, 297. [^]
[5] Max
Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno,The Dialectic of Enlightenment, 4.
[^]
[6] Michel
Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception,
xix. [^]
[7] qtd.
in Foucault, Birth of the Clinic, xv. [^]
[8] Foucault,
Birth of the Clinic, xix. [^]
[9] Michel
Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 138. [^]
[10] qtd.
in Jerry M. Burger, Personality (Stamford, CT: Wadsworth, 2000) 63. [^]
[11] Stephen
Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,
55. [^]
[12] John
Gribbon, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality,
156-57. [^]
[13] Qtd.
in John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle,
465. [^]
[14] Gleick,
Chaos, 14. [^]
[15] Barrow
and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 472. [^]
[16] Ibid.
468-69. [^]
[17] Ibid.
463. [^]
[18] Gribbon,
In Search of Shrödinger's Cat, 238. [^]
[19] Frank
J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Ressurection
of the Dead, 31. [^]
[20] Barrow
and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 3. [^]
[21] Ibid.
13. [^]
[22] Ibid.
1-2. [^]
[23] Ibid.
16. [^]
[24] Ibid.
21. [^]
[25] Ibid.
22. [^]
[26] Ibid.
23. [^]
[27] Timothy
Leary, Chaos and Cyberculture. [^]
[28] Barrow,
The Physics of Immortality, 511. [^]
[29] Foucault,
Discipline and Punish, 200. [^]
[30] Ibid.
201. [^]
[31] Ibid.
202. [^]
[32] Ibid.
207. [^]
[33] Editor's note: The interior of Borg vessels are traditionally shown to be cellular in nature, comprising a series of compartments which the Borg "citizens" are housed within -- as such, the Borg live in a perfect realization of Bentham's Panopticon, but the nature of their observation is decidedly more discrete than the system of observation engendered by the architecture of the ship. [^]
[34] Genesis
11:6. [^]
[35] Serres,
Hermes, 123. [^]
[36] Donna
J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature,
189-90. [^]
[37] Ibid.
48. [^]
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