Les Echos, a French financial newspaper did a great interview of philosopher Michel Serres on topics related to money, governance and institutions. The automated translation is poor so I decided to translate some excerpts.
Society prefers money to its children
[…] This financial crisis is just one of several lights that turned red […] I don’t see any place in our living space that isn’t in a crisis as deep as the one you mention in the financial and economic world.
[…] Are you aware of the collapse of knowledge. We don’t teach latin or greek, poetry or literature. The teaching of science is collapsing everywhere.
[…] Philosophers are guilty. They have missed the magnitude of changes in the world. […] I see all institutions are true dinosaurs.
[…] Our relation to our planet is a one of terrorism. We are currently winning this war against the world, that is to say that we are losing it.
[…] I’d like to talk to you about why dinosaurs disappeared. We love to discuss the reasons why they died. But it’s very simple: they disappeared because they were growing. It’s their size that killed them. Life cannot exceed a certain size. We die of growth. […] Romans were victim of their greatness. The size of the Roman empire had become so big that it could only collapse. […] In the history of sciences, we see that there are topics that are a center of gravity at a given time. Before it was mechanics, tomorrow it will be life sciences. Tomorrow, the economy will be centered around life sciences, not mechanics.
[…] All the laws that we want to do with copyrights on the Internet are a joke. The Internet is a space without any Law. In this space without Law, a new kind of Law must emerge. In the world of tomorrow, a new type of Law must emerge. If you want to regulate the world of today with old Law, you will fail, just like we did on the Internet.
[…] (We need a contract with Earth) That’s what I meant when I wrote Le Contrat Naturel. (I cannnot imagine an international organization writing this new Law). I remember a discussion with the previous UN Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He was telling me that every time he talks about water, everyone tells me that they are not here to talk about water but to fight for the interests of the country they represent. As long as there will be intergovernmental organizations, the Earth will not be represented. […] We discuss fishing quotas while fishes are disappearing. Fishes do not have the right to speak. I am for this utopia that fishes would have a right to speak. I want a world institution that represent water, earth, fire… life. We need scientists who swear not to represent a country, an ideology, a corporation… and who represent fishes, air and water. International institutions are populated with dinosaurs.
“Are you aware of the collapse of knowledge.” Scientific knowledge grows exponentially.
“We don’t teach latin or greek” How self serving, elitist, western egotistical and impractical (for the same reason: knowledge grows exponentially, not our capacity to learn).
“Our relation to our planet is a one of terrorism.” Why use the present tense, except to suggest a reactionary bent (usually comes with age)? The industrial revolution dates back to the 18th century. The agricultural revolution 10,000 years. Same motives at play.
“I remember a discussion with the previous UN Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali” Talk about a helpless world figure.
Although Serres's apparently extreme reactions often provoke equally strong reactions, my reading of his work thus far would suggest that he is articulating ideas that transcend linear, mechanistic views of life and progress. As a synthesizer of ideas, a philosopher of patterns, communication and folded time, Serres will invoke the displeasure of those who believe that what is currenlty the case is necessarily the best we can do. As far as the collapse of knowledge, in the quotes above it would seem he is concerned with the loss of history, of memory, of collective misdeeds and successes. Serres is rather far from elitist, as his own history reveals. He has long been an outsider in terms of the academy, choosing instead to take seriously his own working-man experiences from earlier in his life. Proliferation of information is exponential – integration of information into knowledge leading to an improvement of our common lot is not exponential. Thanks, Guillaume, for translating these parts of the interview.
Milton, when a leading figure speaks or writes, there is going to be a group of people whose evolutionary instinct to ingratiate themselves with that figure -sadly, we're an imitative species- turns off their critical thinking ability. In the case of Serres this is rather fortunate, for the reasons given in your praising paragraph, 99% of the time. Serres himself, though, would probably advocate an ounce of self introspection to recognize that cognitive bias in ourselves and try to correct it, for example by not letting him get away with the 1%, particularly given his implicit high esteem of greco-roman philosophy. I can hear the professor saying “don't take my word for granted!”. Some of the thoughts of Serres in that article strike me as a bit of a cliche so I'd hope -which should accommodate your sympathy for Serres- that they fall under the 1% cutoff.
When you are talking about the “Proliferation of information”, and in other places, you are actually going off on a tangent relative to my position. That's fine with me so long as I'm not being mis-represented/interpreted. I said explicitly scientific knowledge i.e. the 0.1% of information that is not junk is expanding faster than ever. Serres worries about the collapse of knowledge when in his youth 50% of the population were peasants with a bible in lieu of a lifetime book collection, and much of city-dwellers didn't fare much better anyway. Moreover, we are at the dawn of an explosion in alphabetization, higher education etc. worldwide, albeit quite far from France.
Good thoughts and helpful clarification. I suppose that our praise or dispute of a particular thinker and set of ideas depends on many factors. For myself, Serres has served as an interesting jousting partner and I value him for that rather than looking to him for a complete intellectual breakfast. He worries, at some points in his writing, that the gap between rich and poor, literate and illiterate, technology rich/technology poor is growing. That is not true everywhere, of course, and we must recognize that our global landscape is highly complex and never static. However, within the space of our rapidly expanding interconnections some things are being lost even as we make gains. I maintain that Serres is trying to point that out, that an uncritical acceptance of scientific progress and knowledge growth has its price. Some things that are lost are a gain – superstitions of all kinds, bizarre viewpoints on life/people/social order, racial, gender, and economic oppressions, these we can do with less of. We need to wisely sort through the wider implications of scientific knowledge and the various technologies these give rise to. The Manhattan Project is a good example of the ethical/social dimensions of discovery – the idea of scientists operating in an objective, detached space across all fronts just isn't tenable anymore. We need to work hard at integrating and connecting the fruit of specialized research. Serres does help us think about that.
“He worries, at some points in his writing, that the gap between rich and poor, literate and illiterate, technology rich/technology poor is growing.” How morally comfortable to lament these problems… Yet they are old cliches, Disneyland for philosophers.
“I suppose that our praise or dispute of a particular thinker and set of ideas depends on many factors.” How about a data check as a common factor? http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_at_state…. and googling Emanuel Todd + civilization.
A recent reference nicely illustrates my previous comment that “The industrial revolution dates back to the 18th century. The agricultural revolution 10,000 years. Same motives at play.”:
http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2009/09/1…
“Scientific knowledge grows exponentially.” But it is not learned and a c c u m u l a t e d indefinitely.
“How self serving, elitist, western egotistical and impractical (for the same reason: knowledge grows exponentially, not our capacity to learn).” Nonetheless it is a collapse of knowledge of these fields.
> “”Scientific knowledge grows exponentially.” But it is not learned and a c c u m u l a t e d indefinitely.”
Hence my point, that education must be prioritized, and
>”Nonetheless it is a collapse of knowledge of these fields.”,
reflects exactly that. You don't need to speak ancient greek to read Plato and Aristotle, a translation suffices. Greek for greek's sake has a very high opportunity cost in a general education curriculum.
> “”Scientific knowledge grows exponentially.” But it is not learned and a c c u m u l a t e d indefinitely.”
Hence my point, that education must be prioritized, and
>”Nonetheless it is a collapse of knowledge of these fields.”,
reflects exactly that. You don't need to speak ancient greek to read Plato and Aristotle, a translation suffices. Greek for greek's sake has a very high opportunity cost in a general education curriculum.
Interesting article. I appreciate the large print.