The Radical New Reality of Systems Science

​The Emergence of Our Preoccupation with Predictable Causality and Mechanism

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• ​Human adaptive survival derives from exceptional capacities for physical and mental manipulation of phenomena

• Human agency can profoundly amplify these capacities through conceptual abstraction

• A feedback loop can form between elaborations of technical manipulation and human worldview assumptions

• Significant shifts in worldview basics appear in transitions from archaic hunter-gatherer to civilized societies

• Hunter/gatherer societies necessarily adapted by living sustainably 'within' self-regulating ecosystems

• Agricultural-based, urbanized societies adapt by becoming more dependent on predictable control of environments

• These often generate hierarchical social systems of manipulative command and control that become self-reinforcing

• This impulse can become fixated upon extending its influence and dominance to a maximal extent, as in 'empires'

• The more we can manipulate phenomena, the more we can elaborate the power to control things and people

• Thus, techniques or technologies of control can become a high priority driving behavior in civilized worldviews

• ​The emergence of scientific insight into physical properties of cause and effect greatly leveraged such purposefulness

• Thereby promoting mechanistic assumptions about 'how things happen,' thus how to think and behave

• Through scientific knowledge and industrialized technologies, modern societies have become obsessed with control​​​

• Though this seems 'normal' to us, it is historically unique, relentlessly self-reinforcing, and psychologically 'manic'​

The Contraction of 'How Things Happen' in Modernist Worldview Assumptions

Modernity is Different

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Contemporary Human Systems have Globalized Civilization's Ecologically Decoupled Self-Assertion

There are many aspects of both similarity and change in how human's tended to 'view the world' from the past into our present era. Since the advent of civilized societies, there have been numerous permutations of cultural worldviews. Many of those have transformed over time. Some appear to have failed in terms of their long-term adaptive sustainability. It has been observed that most civilizations have tended to collapse on a regional scale within a few hundred to a couple thousand years, sometimes reconstituting in a similar fashion, sometimes not. Such collapse has often been associated with "ecological overshoot," meaning that the behaviors of civilized societies so exploited and disrupted their local ecosystems to such an extent that these lost their ability to self-sustain, resulting in the collapse of civilized agriculture. We can conceive such behavior as the result of 'decoupling' human systems from reciprocal embeddedness within the larger feedback relationships of natural ones. That 'detachment' is enabled by technological means of manipulative control. This notion suggests that a way to evaluate the long-term sustainability of a cultural worldview is in terms of how it promotes human behaviors which maintain recursively self-sustaining relationships with natural system self-assertion, thus avoiding severely disabling the natural systems upon which humans depend for survival.

Currently, significant distinctions can be made among how societies around the planet conceive aspects of life and human purposes. However, the majority are operating effectively under the dominance of some basic Western European-derived cultural assumptions about 'what is real' and 'how things happen,' and thus 'how to behave.' These base a sense of reality upon the reduction of phenomena to materialistic physics and deterministic causation and prioritize human systems dominance over natural ones. For all the observable differences in contemporary cultures, modern societies have become integrally linked in a global network of economic systems that are 'operationally mechanistic' and reflexively function for the purpose of elaborating manipulative control of 'resources,' including individual human agents. There now exists a 'globalized super organism economy.' The notion that 'economic growth' is a necessity in these systems indicates that their primary motive is the unchecked expansion of their self-assertion.

From a systems science perspective, that impulse emerges from their network structures and how feedback flows among their parts. Their behavior is intrinsic to their network configuration. That configuration can be seen as an expression of the basic assumptions of our mechanistic, control-obsessed modern worldview.  It is now obvious that contemporary civilized systems are destroying the naturally self-sustaining systems upon which life depends -- in a manner similar to, yet vastly more extreme than, pre-modern civilizations have done. However, this time, the ecological devastation is on a truly global or planetary scale. The self-regulating capacities of the biospheric systems, including that of climate, are no longer capable of accommodating to the disabling effects of technologically decoupled human systems. Natural systems have reached a "tipping point" of "cascading collapse" provoked by the non-reciprocating "systems forcing" of human system impacts.  That makes modernity different.    

'How Things Happen' is Different in Modernity

Though the word modern basically means 'just now,' or the contemporary time frame, it has come to characterize a cultural era. Considered to begin as early as the 15th Century and extending through the 20th, it is characterized by successive disruptions in philosophical, theological, social, political, and economic ideas. These involve principle influences from what are termed the "scientific revolution," the technological "industrial revolution," and the "intellectual enlightenment." Through this era, the basic assumptions of our contemporary worldview became profoundly different from those of preceding or pre-modern ones. Broadly, one might observe that some perennial aspects of human thinking were vastly elaborated, while others were severely devalued in historically distinctive ways. Modernity expresses much from the past, but in its worldview basics, it involves a profound reduction or contraction of references for reality that make it  fundamentally different from what came before it​. 

However, it derives from elements of inherent human modes of adaptive survival that were ever part of cultural worldviews. The capacity for manipulating materials and events in a predictably mechanistic manner, thus thinking in such a way, are practical necessities for human existence. It is the relatively exclusive prioritizing of this aspect of human purposefulness that makes modernity different.

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How Did We Arrive at Our Mechanistic Worldview -- And How Do We Conclude It is Correct?

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The Philosophical and Religious Impetus for Modernist Reduction and Mechanism

The emergence of modern science, as the application of reductive quantitative analysis to physical properties of matter and energy, can be seen as having both a philosophical and religious history. That is, our mechanistic modernist worldview was not simply a 'new discovery' of the last few hundred years. It represents a way of thinking that was 'long in the making.' Considering it as having a religious  background involves changes in how the agentic properties of complex systems were symbolized in spiritual cultural imagination over two millennia. However, there are aspects of Western philosophy that emerge at a similar time and exert particularly strong influence in the early centuries of modernity. ​
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The Historical Contractions of Spiritual Imagination in Religious Thinking

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Archaic Configurations of Spiritual Agency

Logically, a failure to have a basic understanding of 'how things happen' would seem to be a severe problem for humans. Looking at diverse cultures across history, the language, specific concepts, and imagery used to represent 'how the world works' appear diverse. Nonetheless, societies of very distinctive cultures and beliefs have coped with reality relatively effectively. Indeed, they adapted sustainably for much longer than the modern industrialized societies have existed.

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One basic assumption that pre-modern societies shared was the view that the world is animated by some form of 'spiritual agency,' whether identified as animal spirits, souls, ghosts, monsters, demons, or divinities. These intentional but not normally human 'agents' were associated with phenomena perceived as being 'magical' or 'miraculous,' as if there were some 'force' that could produce 'extraordinary' events. Indeed, for these cultures, spiritual agents and their magical actions were the primary source of life and the world. Nonetheless, those people clearly understood the roles of cause and effect in their practical lives. They managed to adapt to their physical environments sufficiently to survive for millennia. Clearly. they understood the mechanical properties of gravity, mass, and force. They could make arrows fly straight,  build pyramids, and navigate oceans.  They lived pragmatically in the physical world even though they assumed it derived from some more mysterious organizing 'force.'  So, we could say their worldviews somehow included assumptions about 'two ways things happen': a physically predictable way and an unpredictably intentional way.

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The ancients 'saw' the world as an interplay of 'material and spiritual' aspects. The forms, functions, and events of the material world were viewed as the consequence of relationships between 'spiritual actors' -- whether 'of' plants, animals, or gods and goddesses.

they 'saw' and interpreted phenomena in significantly different ways than we moderns do. Those cultures manifested spiritual imaginations characterized as animistic or polytheistic, in which spiritual agency emanated from either the spirits of specific creatures and things or from more the abstract divinities of gods and goddesses. Consequently, there was little sense of any centralized, hierarchically fixed 'control system' in the realm of spiritual agency (or, in the terms of systems science, the self-animating impetus of emergently agentic systems). In these cultural imaginations, spiritual agency had many 'sources,' which were engaged in a constant, unpredictable, often conflicted interplay. Here one can think of the ancient Greek epic of the Trojan War, "The Iliad." In that account of conflict between Greeks and Trojans, the pantheon of Greek divinities 'take sides,' quarreling with each other as they promote and obstruct the human actors.

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The Contraction of Spiritual Imagination in Monotheism

A not so obvious influence upon our modern mechanistic mentality can be found in the advent of monotheist versions of spiritual imagination. In brief, there are two aspects of monotheism that relate to our modern mentality. Firstly, the notion of spiritual agency was effectively contracted into a single, omnipotent, eternal, abstract agent who exits 'outside' of nature, as its creator and controller. That is a profound change in how spiritual agency had been conceived previously.  One can go so far to say that it is, in effect, 'anti-mytho-logical,' in that its 'logic of spirit' differs so markedly from the imminent spiritual agency of animism and pagan polytheism. Secondly, monotheistic traditions promote a kind of 'intellectual belief' in the concept of an all-powerful divinity who dictates 'his' definitions of reality and social morality through 'revelation' to selected humans. That results in religious texts that are regarded as 'literally true' and unquestionably authoritative. It can be argued that these traits pose a kind of 'intellectual model' for a similar 'fundamentalist belief' in the validity of deterministic causality as 'the one and only' source of everything.  The Laws of Physics, after all, appear to be situated 'outside' the natural world, as its creator and controller. That makes them a sort of ultimate source of reality that takes a position in our cultural worldview as a de factor 'god.'

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The Decline of Spiritual Imagination in Cultural Assumptions about Reality

Obviously, our science-based modern worldview differs considerably in its assumptions about 'how things happen' from all those pre-modern ones -- so much so, that contemporary moderns often regard pre-modern cultures as unrealistic or even fundamentally delusional. The conclusion is, those who came before 'us' clearly miss-perceived, or at least misinterpreted, reality, thus failed to understand 'how the world actually works.'

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With the elaboration of Western notions of the reductive scientific method, with its profound accuracy in describing, explaining, and predicting, thus controlling phenomena, we moderns became the 'technological masters of the earth' -- with no help from any 'spirits.' Consequently, those pre-modern assumptions about spiritual influence or magical actions began to loose credulity. In the absence of any   factual evidence for the existence of such 'magical actions,' such were deemed factually impossible according to the "Laws of Physics." Thus, though some people continue to assume 'spiritual phenomena' are actual, overall, the larger systems of contemporary societies tend to operate from the conclusion that there is 'no such thing.' Reality, thus the world and every aspect of it, are assumed to be entirely the consequence of deterministic physical causation -- which, as such, could potentially be manipulated and controlled by humans.  

For we moderns, 'how the world works' is approached as fundamentally deterministic, thus mechanistic. Life itself is defined as the mechanisms of biological chemistry. Even human agency is defined as a mere "epiphenomenon" of causal factors -- meaning a causally insignificant 'side effect.' Again, spiritual and religious ideas do persist as cultural references, but these are typically the basis for institutionalized, hierarchically structured religious systems that exist for the purpose of controlling human behaviors, and the self-perpetuation of the institutions them selves. As "religion," spiritual imagination often becomes a justification for institutionalized authority and a 'political instrument' of competitive advantage-seeking behaviors. It is rarely the actual basis for how we collectively define reality, thus how social, political, and economic systems direct their operations. So, functionally speaking, our modern human systems are reflexively reductive and control-obsessed in their self-assertion.

Philosophical Contributions to Modernist Reduction and Mechanism

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The 'Higher Ordering Power' or 'Absolute Unity' of Philosophical Monism

Notions of philosophical monism have emerged in various cultures. The basic concept is that 'all is one,' in the sense that the world or universe are ultimately indivisible, meaning that variation is an illusion, or that 'all derives from' or is composed by a single substance. In the Western philosophical tradition, it plays a relevant part in ancient Greek thought by posing some ultimate unity of all the seeming variations of reality. It then reappears in various forms among later Western philosophers. So, this can be considered a kind of ultimate reduction of phenomena to some singular state, source, or origin. Arguments for such reduction were posed in a rationalistic fashion, expressing an attempt to establish a singular, irrefutable 'truth.' by way of a sequentially self-consistent argument that necessarily leads to an incontrovertible conclusion. Such a mode of thinking has a rather mathematical, mechanistic, and causally deterministic character to it.  Arguably, that impulse of rationalistic reduction to inevitable certainties plays a profoundly dominant role in Western thinking. It also permeates much of monotheistic Christian theological thinking. These traits of thought also can be seen as expressing a bias toward the reductive modes of attention and thought associated with the left brain hemisphere.

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The Early Modern Rise of Rationalistic Empiricism

Much of the historical scientific revolution in knowledge overlaps what is the philosophical ferment termed the Age of Reason or European Enlightenment, which promoted self-consistent rationalism and empiricism in relation to the new scientific thinking. It became fashionable to assume that human reasoning alone could eventually comprehend all aspects of nature, in ways that could enable these to be controlled, that all phenomena could be described and explained in terms of reductively self-consistent reasoning, or rationalism. In addition, there was an impetus to seek understanding both in materially pragmatic terms and in ways that were conclusive. Among Enlightenment philosophers, many found religious or spiritual thinking to be irrationally inconsistent and contradictory to empirical observation. In addition, many held a deep distrust of religious spirituality because it was associated with so much historical conflict and violence. Consequently, many regarded any spiritual or religious beliefs as irrational superstition and logically delusional.

There is, however, some continuity between European religious thought and that of the rationalist enlightenment philosophers. Both can be seen as obsessed with 'knowing the absolute truth,' in an utterly conclusive manner that was beyond doubt or contradiction. We could say, that what had been the unquestionable authority of religious truth about reality was being opposed by the formation of an equally certain, rationalistic way of thinking, and a 'belief' in the conclusive accuracy of a materialistic, causally deterministic definition of reality -- meaning one that was entirely human generated and had no place for any 'spiritual phenomena.' That way of knowing was posed antithetically to what was termed "revelation," or knowledge of reality that was 'revealed' to humans by any divine agent, or 'god.'

The resulting tension in European culture is exemplified by a 'religious-philosophical' concept that emerged from the 17th Century intellectual conditions associated with the Scientific Revolution and intellectual enlightenment. "Deism" involved a rejection of many aspects of religious texts as superstitious 'super naturalism' which were deemed rationally and empirically unfounded. Yet it also retained a category for the role of a creator god. A key element here was that such a divinity had created the earth to function according to the Laws of Physics, for the benefit of humans, then withdrawn from any further involvement in the world or human affairs. This formulation of a singular creator divinity is sometimes referred to as the "clock maker god,' or a 'designer god,' in the sense that 'he' in effect 'engineered' reality to be rationally self-consistent and causally deterministic. Deism was never a popular religious phenomena, though it had extensive effects on intellectual elites for some time. However, the notion of a 'designer god' still has considerable appeal to many contemporary people who seek to correlate a sense of 'spiritual creation' with the evidence for a reality otherwise understood to be determined by The Laws of Physics.

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How Did We Arrive at Our Version of Deterministic Causation -- And How Do We Know It is Correct?

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Conceiving and Confirming Deterministic Causality​

The route to our modern assumptions about deterministic causation has important origins in the writings of the  ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He is sometimes considered a source for modern scientific thinking, partly because he posed four causes for 'what is' and 'how it changes':

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• Material cause: The substance or matter from which something is made.

• Formal cause: The structure, form, or design of something.

• Efficient cause: The agent or force that brings about a change.

• Final cause: The purpose or goal of something. ​

That set of categories was a rather novel abstract philosophical summary in Aristotle's time, when cultures still assumed the primary source of the world was 'spiritual agency.'  But his ideas can be associated with most pre-modern cultural worldviews in that he includes a category for 'force of agency' and purposefulness, which resembles mythological concepts of spirits and divinities that influence material reality intentionally.  Aristotle's abstract ideas became prominent in later European thought. Writing in the 17th Century, Francis Bacon offered a more concise model. He proposed that the 'laws of nature,' or natural phenomena, derive only from the "material" and the "efficient" causes.  These he proposed as the basis for physics, or the 'mechanics' of natural phenomena. The "formal" and "final" causes Bacon relegated to "metaphysics" and broadly characterized these as "magic," thus some how 'outside nature.' This division was a profound one, as previously 'spiritual agency' and its purposeful creativeness were typically posed as intrinsic to nature. That distinction played a role in empowering scientific inquiry to focus upon the observable, quantifiable, and calculable aspects of phenomena within what was still a spiritually religious cultural context. The notion of "metaphysics" still provided a category for the existence of 'spiritual phenomena,' or a traditional 'god' factor, that shaped the world 'from outside' it. That allowed science to advance within societies whose worldview still assumed that 'spiritual agency' was the ultimate source of the world because it could, initially, be regarded as not challenging that aspect of European cultural worldviews. In other words, reality could be governed by deterministic physics 'because god made it so.' If 'god' performed miracles, that was because 'god' was 'outside nature,' or 'super natural.'

Through the ensuing so-called scientific revolution, usually considered to begin in the 17th century, then on into the 19th, the elaboration of scientific reduction to fundamental elements and causal processes gained ever greater accuracy and prominence. By the 20th Century, the mechanical model of causation had become relatively dominant and exclusive as the basis for describing 'how things happen.' The evident potency of physical science in describing, explaining, and predicting phenomena promoted its dominance as the most valid description of 'what is actual' or real. The testable evidence for this view, both in science and industrial technology, resulted in the category of "metaphysics" losing factual credulity. That left Aristotle's "formal, efficient, and final" causes with no technically validated status. Even his "material cause" is not considered useful now. In modern physics, it has been concluded that, at the most fundamental level, there are four forces which can be considered as the fundamental "causes" behind all observed phenomena:

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• the strong nuclear force

• the weak nuclear force

• electromagnetism (including both electric and magnetic forces)

• gravity​

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From this view, it has been assumed that all phenomena derive ultimately, and mechanistically, through deterministic physical cause and effect, from these four factors. Absolutely everything derives directly from those 'forces' -- from subatomic to atomic to molecular 'things' then on up through all the phenomena of the macro world we see and inhabit.  This is referred to as "upward causation," in which more basic or "lower level" factors, such as the four forces, predictably cause all more complex "higher level" phenomena. In a strictly deterministic view of causality, there can be no other source of phenomena.  Agency, including mind , free will, and purposefulness, or goal-oriented actions, involve inherent unpredictability and selectivity that are not compatible with deterministic causation. These 'seeming phenomena' thereby came to be regarded as "epiphenomena," meaning secondary effects or byproducts of deterministically causal processes. Which is to say, these 'have no actual influence' upon 'how the world works.' Thus, the only 'way things happen' is by predictably deterministic cause and effect, 'from the bottom up.' From a strictly technical perspective, causality can only be a consistent chain of quantifiably precise sequence of events, of 'actions and reactions,' each determining the next as it was determined by preceding events. This notion characterizes that of 'mechanism': whatever happens, happens as a hierarchical sequence of proportional changes -- like a system of parts acting upon each other to create a machine. In this view, the actions of the parts create the whole, or, 'the whole is the sum of the parts.' All phenomena are reducible to fundamental parts and causal relationships -- all the way 'down' to the 'four fundamental forces.'

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​​We arrived at these assumptions through meticulously reductive scientific analysis. By forming hypothetical explanations, then measuring, quantifying, calculating, we tested those hypotheses to demonstrate the factual basis for deterministic causality in the physical universe. The explanatory and predictive power of this testable method makes it logical to believe that it is correct. Thus, the only way to know realistically is through scientifically proven facts. Such a conclusion seems reasonable -- unless those 'facts' turn out to provide evidence that the conclusion is false. That is where systems science has radically disrupted this primary assumption in our modern worldview.

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Technologies of Manipulation Supercharge the Self-Asserting Impetus of Super Organism Systems

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Science and Industrialization as 'Techniques of Manipulation'

In an historical perspective, scientific reduction of phenomena to physical causation as a technical method of analysis can be seen as predating the Industrial Revolution​. Rene Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made their contributions in the 17th Century. Issac Newton produced his fundamental insights in the 17th and early 18th Centuries. Crucial to these were mathematical innovations that facilitated scientific analysis. The Industrial Revolution is dated to between 1760 and 1840. These two 'revolutions' in thinking about and 'the making' of things can both be understood as 'techniques of manipulation,' in the sense that they enable humans to more precisely direct both 'how we think' and 'how we control' phenomena. Both are fundamental to our mechanistic modern worldview.

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The Mutual Amplifications of Science and Industrial Technology​ 'Power' Our Super Organism Society

The interplay of scientific knowledge and industrialized manufacture, then later electronic technologies, is obvious. Science assists in refining industrial processes and industrialization promotes the importance of science, while also enhancing scientific techniques of analysis and the testing of hypotheses. The historical influences of this mutually amplifying relationship are profound. Modern capitalistic and consumerist economies appear to have been greatly invigorated by it -- particularly in its capacity to convert fossil fuels to usable energy. Thus, the super organism of our globalized industrial economies derives its 'power' to exploit natural resources, thus evade ecological restraints on its system self-assertion, to that feedback between science and industry. Technological modernity would not be possible without it. Compared to pre-modern civilizations, modernity is 'super charged' by this amplifying feedback dynamic. Our society is not just a super organism, it is a fundamentally technological one.

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​'Technological Ecologies' and The 'Machine Minding' Worldview of 'Cyborg Society'

The fantastical complexity of our scientifically technologized global system involves innumerable scientific research and industrial production subsystems, ranging from governments to universities, corporations, financial institutions, and communication networks.  These systems are intricately interdependent in ways that compare to the complexity of natural ecosystems. Like species of plants and animals, our systems have interacted to form their own 'technological ecology.' The interactions of these networked systems is primarily technical, it depends literally on quantification and mathematical calculation, and now manifests in the numerical form of computational coding. As a 'relational field' it is fundamentally reductive and mechanistic it in its operations.

The vast majority of human individuals are now utterly dependent on those systems and have no choice but to 'serve its purposes' if they are to survive. Humans have become almost fully subordinated to the impetus of this super organism. It is not possible to prosper within it except by becoming an 'obedient node' it its networks of self-asserting feedback. The mobile phone and computer are virtual necessities to most people. Humans have effectively become 'cyborgs' -- their capacities are extended by mechanical systems that they cannot live without. This term derives from the compounds of 'cyber,' meaning 'relating to electronic communication,' and 'organism.' The term 'cybernetics' associates with technological communications and control systems. 

The very actions of participating in the consumer economy, or the managerial and industrial systems that generate it, is acting for the purposes of the super organism. Those purposes of its agentic self-assertion, of 'infinite economic growth' and unlimited consumption, are reflexively 'psychopathic' -- because the super organism cannot experience empathy. Thus, whatever we humans might assume our values and social purposes are, we have subordinated those to the self-assertion of the super organism 'technological ecology' on which we depend. We prioritize its mechanistic mentality above all else whether we realize that or not. The ultimate subordination of our personal agency to that system makes us a 'society of cyborgs' compelled to behave in accordance with its mechanistic worldview.

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Characterizing the Purposeful Impetus of Thinking in a 'Mechanistic Manner'

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It is important to characterize the qualities of thinking influenced by mechanistic and technological contexts. We are so subsumed in our technologized environment that the traits of thinking it promotes tend to be reflexive. The very notion of 'mechanical' involves parts specifically engineered to act upon each other in predictable ways that produce a specific effect or property (like the transport properties of automobiles) that enhances manipulative control over phenomena. Technically, that involves functional understanding of deterministic causality and an effectively unemotional attitude focused upon how to manipulate 'actions and reactions' to achieve a predictable effect. However, 'thinking in a mechanistic manner' does not necessarily mean one is being scientifically accurate, consistently logical, or expresses no emotional content. It means thinking 'for mechanistic purposes,' even if not doing so accurately or explicitly in regard to physical materials. It involves regarding all phenomena, including emergently self-ordering or agentic systems, as if these were mechanistic -- thus could be directly manipulated and controlled.  A mechanistic mentality perceives and responds to phenomena as if all of these are intrinsically mechanical and the predictable result of deterministic causes. 

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Some terms that apply to 'thinking like a machine' or 'for mechanistic purposes' are:

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Manipulative

Controlling

Quantitative

Calculating

Definitive 

Sequential

Deterministic

Reductive

Rationalistic

Hierarchical

Hegemonic

Managerial

Categorical

Binary

Either/Or

Functionalist

Instrumental

Expedient

Solution-oriented

Prescriptive

Impersonal

Amoral

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​All of these traits of thinking and acting are practically useful, even useful when applied to deterministic phenomena. However, they can 'blind' us to the non-deterministic dynamics of emergent ordering and agentic system properties -- which, systems science demonstrates, are intrinsic to nearly all natural and human systems.

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 How Realistic is Our Contemporary Cultural Worldview -- In Its Own Terms?

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The Insincerity of Our Claim to be Scientifically Realistic

If our worldview is based upon the concept that the most reliable knowledge is derived from quantitative scientific analysis and experimental testing of hypothetical interpretations of 'how the world works,' which thereby provides us with 'factual evidence' for understanding reality, then it follows that it would compel us to take seriously whatever evidence that method provides. However, there are innumerable examples of personal and collective behavior (social, political, economic, corporate, and governmental) which indicate that such an attitude is not particularly prevalent. When seeking acceptance or advantage, to manipulate others or evade blame, a tendency to either 'cherry pick' that evidence, or overtly distort it, is readily and reflexively manifested. Such disregard for 'the testable evidence' indicates our worldview assumptions involve deeply seated priorities for hegemonic competition and the appearance of 'being right' even when we are not. In this regard, our modern worldview presumes to be scientific, but scientific knowledge often becomes one more set of 'justifications' for our pursuit of manipulative control, our preoccupations with seeking social and economic advantage. 

In effect, we use science, primarily for its deterministic implications, to promote our self-assertion, rather than to understand realistically. Thus, we can be insincere about our claims to 'being scientific' yet readily employ its deterministic interpretations for the purposes of our self-assertion. That behavior is not only evident in individual persons or social groups, but also in the behaviors of the agentic systems of our technologized super organism society. The reflexive self-assertion of those systems has no capacity for regarding scientific accuracy as a priority. 

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​We Not Understand the Purposes that Arise from Our Worldview and Actually Impel Our Behaviors

Many assert that modern society and culture are a triumph of human intelligence and ingenuity. Industrial technology has given us extraordinary influence over the material world. However, the consequences of that influence have been shown to include effects that both contradict our supposed values for human well being (vast inequality, genocide, industrial warfare) and pose existential risks to the survival of our species. On the larger scale, these effects involve catastrophic disruptions of global ecologies and climate systems. It is clear that our behaviors are neither 'in our own best interests,' nor in those of the biosphere. Some conclude that these effects result from not acting in accordance to our proclaimed values for equity and human rights, or not in logical response to our scientific knowledge -- that selfishness, greed, and ignorance are the 'problem.' 

However, it is worth considering that our relentless pursuit of industrial exploitation of nature, and personal consumption of the commodities it generates, our mania for more and more technology, are 'driven' by some basic, if not so obvious, aspects of our underlying worldview -- of assumptions which are so reflexive we are not able to actually reflect upon these. It is possible that we are not able to effectively experience the evidence for our disastrous behaviors because we lack ways to to even think about these. Perhaps we operate from priorities for 'how things should be' that overwhelm our awareness of 'how things actually are.' If control is what we seek, yet elaborating it brings inequality and ecosystems destruction, are our behaviors serving our prosperity as intended?

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If modernity is in existential trouble after a few hundred years, and pre-modern worldviews adapted sustainably for thousands to tens of thousands of years, perhaps we lost awareness of something essential to our survival. Perhaps our predecessors 'saw' aspects of 'how the world actually works' that we do not.

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​The De Facto 'Theism' of an Exclusively Deterministic Worldview

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In so far as modernity has dispensed with any collectively validated status for 'spiritual agency' (or, the agentic properties of complex adaptive systems) there appears a void in human understanding of 'how the world works,' at least relative to all pre-modern cultures. How then does human nature respond to this exceptional change? It can be argued that as a species, we evolved to generate some sense of 'creation' that 'gives the world meaning,' that there is some 'intrinsic purpose' or 'directedness' to manifest existence. That results in an attitude of 'the sacred,' through which human agency is  experienced as 'of' a larger world-making agentic field.  -- whether conceived as animistic or theistic.  

By claiming to have 'proved' the very impossibility of an such agentic purposefulness, either in 'acts of creation' or on-going phenomena, the exclusively deterministic assumption has effectively enshrined itself as the 'origin and purpose of all things.' The world is blind causality.  Thus, that is its 'function and purpose' -- such as it is. In this view, history and human striving have no 'meaningful purpose.' These are simply mechanistic events that are all predetermined. Agency then is an illusion, if not a delusion. That situation can be understood as a kind of 'negative theism,' in which the human mind reflexively valorizes determinism 'as god.' And, indeed, many who claim to be 'scientific anti-theists' behave like fundamentalist theists in their tirades against there being any validity to 'spiritual notions,' insisting that such are not simply factually incorrect, but virtually 'evil.'  In this condition, the Laws of Physics become a kind of 'sacred text' that 'sanctify' a version of 'how the world works,' thereby establishing the basis for a cultural worldview and the purposefulness of social behaviors.

For more on complex systems and networks see these websites:
Systems Innovation ,  Complexity Labs, Complexity Explained , and
The Complexity Explorer