Humboldt – Pictures with Everything

It’s long been on my unread library list, in fact it’s one of the books that made me start that list a few years ago. Clearly an important book – but there are a lot of those and I can’t read them all – Andrea Wulf’s “The Invention of Nature – The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science”

One reason I practically stopped reading (books) was because I (now) have 3 (or 4) distinct (but entangled) writing projects and the last thing I need is more material. The prescription of Robert Pirsig’s psychotherapist, “Just write something!” was echoing in my head. But the entanglement has effectively stalled my writing (again) so I needed a break. A good read.

I recalled, as well as the excellent reviews, Wulf’s book had a beautiful cover, so 8 years after publication I got a good used “as new” copy of the original hardback. I’m glad I did.

So this is (as usual) a pre-review at about 1/3 through reading it.

Only negative thought so far is the heroic stylistic aspect. Clearly Wulf and her publisher had a fairly explicit 21st C green environmental political agenda in mind, so a lot of the summary statements are a little breathless hero-worship motivated to that end.

That said, he probably does deserve that valuation. A man ahead of his times. And the story, his story and the history, is full of fascinating detail – Europe before, during and after Napoleon, and the Americas before during and after Jefferson and Bolivar – all well told, readable and unputdownable. It actually has 135 pages of notes, references and index too, but the decision to use the non-intrusive page-numbered end-notes preserves the readability. The kind of book that will deserve multiple reads and referencing.

What do I think of it so far?

Unputdownable, but I’ve gone for the “reading sessions in public bars and cafes” so far. As ever, already three interruptions of the “what are you reading?” followed by “why?”. Two knew they knew the name Humboldt, and one knew his name is associated with several things – the University in Berlin, many biological species and many geographical features and locations. In fact one of the earliest things in the book is that fact, that his name has been given to many more things than any other person.

Mind-boggling list of people influenced by him in person and in his writings. Too many to list. I’ve mentioned politicians – Napoleon, Jefferson and Bolivar – already, but for now let’s add Verne, Goethe, Schelling, Thoreau, Emerson (say) and Darwin, the latter on whom Humboldt’s writings were formative, much referenced before, during and after his Voyages on the Beagle, including natural selection itself.

Empiricism Plus. The sense that knowing something, anything, involved one’s direct emotional subjective reaction to it as well as acquaintance with the objectively observable facts recurs in both Humboldt and his admirers. Count me in. The poetic, romantic language associated with this, together with the Prussian Napoleonic & Parisian people, places & events, put me in mind of the Russian classics, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and more.

One more feature, for this early pre-review, because whilst being a regular theme here, it has become very topical recently. A picture paints ten thousand words, or does it? [from 2002 & 1921]

Most recent example was Alom Shaha explaining that one constraint his publisher imposed on his recent “Why Things Don’t Fall Up” was that it could be read without diagrams nor even pictures of the practical everyday teaching props Alom is famous for. [Also the creativity of constrained freedom.] Before that I was discussing with Ben Taylor the “movement” that suggests systems thinking is – counter-intuitively, after Levenchuk – best described without system / flow diagrams and the problem I was having with re-establishing a systems meta-diagramming language (like IDEF0) which I still believe is valuable. This itself has led to two threads in the meta-dimension, with Gerry Wolff and Jonathan Rowson … but anyway let’s just say it’s topical.

Firstly, Humboldt’s work in several places actually uses “systems” language and the concept of “multiple views” of the same system, ontologies with multiple different kinds of taxonomies rather than a definitive taxonomy. Together with the Latin American revolutionary Bolivar connection this instantly put me in mind of Stafford Beer and his Cybersyn “Santiago Boys” … and I suspect this will become a bigger topic in later reviews.

But for now – the pictures?

Humboldt is famous for his “Naturgemälde” – nature paintings – embodying the alternative view(s) idea above, the most famous version being his placing the different forms of vegetation in zones from fluvial plains to mountain ice-caps, mapping the parallel between the (now) Ecuadorian volcano Chimborazo and other known landscapes around the world. A picture which paints a thousand words you might think?

Well no, firstly a topological / geographical graphic may indeed be better than a taxonomic tree (say) for the classification of vegetation in context. All models are wrong, but some are more useful than others. But secondly, when he came to publish his Naturgemälde in his major work “Views of Nature” which included the essay “On the Geography of Plants“, not only does the picture itself contain many hundreds of small-print words of names within the content and annotations within the geographical / altitudinal / latitudinal keys, it was also:

“underpinned [by thousands more words] with more details and explanations, adding page after page of tables, statistics and sources.”

The picture needed many words to be understood and (as I’ve opined many times before) the picture only symbolically conjures up those thousand words after they’ve been understood. (Equally well the picture conjures up any outstanding misunderstandings too. The picture says what you understand it says.)

Views are about organisation of presentation of information and Humboldt’s work includes many impressive illustrations of many kinds.

Enough for now. Reading on.

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One follow-up – the Maps Rabbit-Hole.

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So What Next?

Some of you will know that a lot of my current writing is directed at framing the “systems thinking” problem / solution as more formal research, but notwithstanding that, the thinking and writing continues.

Recently I framed this as “Where Next With Iain McGilchrist?” Iain has characterised the situation as well as anyone, but stopped frustratingly short of the “so what” does a world-scale solution / improvement look like?

Jonathan Rowson, CEO of Iain’s publisher Perspectiva, has already picked-up that baton a couple of times, with his Systems Souls Society initiative and his “Attention as a Moral Act” series, also with Iain.

Today Jonathan posted on the Perspectiva blog, a long piece with some direct questions about the problem and solutions:

“Prefixing the World –
why the polycrisis is a permacrisis, which is actually a metacrisis, which is not really a crisis at all.”

I’ve not digested the whole, but I did respond to his direct questions:

Q1: Do the world’s problems have an underlying/overarching/inherent cause that we might do something about?

A1: YES, one underlying problem – to do with our (individual and collective) decision-making rationality – but as you suggest more meta than specifically relatable to each “crisis”.

Q2: Do the main ways that those with political and economic power currently try to solve problems (policy, regulation, trade, technology, economic growth) tend to make those problems worse?

A2: YES (and no) – the problem above – we including our political executive peers are held to account by us and by our press suffering the same meta-problem above, it’s the knowledge ecosystem in which we (all) operate. – (even if we / they individually have more creative flair).

Q3: Is there reason to think our historical moment is qualitatively distinct from other historical moments in a way that calls for a fundamental shift in our relationship to reality?

A3: NO – more a matter of degree with the multiplying factor of mass (ubiquitous and instant) electronic communications. Same problem really existed since “the enlightenment” but much slower / mediated dialogue. But YES- we therefore have to take issue with the meta-problem, adopt the better world-view directly, head-on rather than assume / hope common sense will automatically prevail (it won’t).

Q4: Should we take care to ensure that the terminology we choose to distil the essence of our global situation is as accurate and edifying as it possibly can be?

A4: YES – but this is more to do with “care” than tight “definitions” – we won’t simply be able to create neologisms or new definitions of old words that automatically escapes the baggage of old thinking. It’s why I see the solution more like evolving a better knowledge (and communications) ecosystem.

Q5: Is there something about the very idea of crisis that militates against the kinds of transformation we now need?

A5: OH YES! – I think this is key. The reason for Douglas Adams “Don’t Panic”. I’ve made myself unpopular with some “activist” groups by suggesting that their making everything critically urgent is a major part of the problem. If we rush to perceived solutions in this world of here and now, we miss out the meta-level where the real problem lies. And make THAT problem even more intractable.

Although I’ve not digested the whole of Jonathan’s thoughts, do have a read yourself and answer his questions, and give him/us any other feedback.

He does (as he has before) also mention the influence of Robert Pirsig’s thoughts on his work too.

Only this morning I was (a) referring to Iain McGilchrist
And (b) discussing the 50th Anniversary of Pirsig’s ZMM.

Onward and upward.

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Post Note:

I first related Jonathan’s “Meta-Crisis” proposal to my own 20+ year Meta interests a couple of years ago in May 2021: “Meta (Really) is the Word“.

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McGilchrist and Lawson on The Sacred

Wonderful, short dialogue between Iain McGilchrist and Hilary Lawson recorded at the spring 2023 “How The Light Gets In” in Hay on Wye earlier this year. Seen and listened to (and talked with) them both at previous HTLGI’s but was unable to attend this year’s. So glad this 17 minutes was recorded for us all.

In Conversation: Iain McGilchrist and Hilary Lawson – Philosophy of our Time (iai)

So good I don’t want to summarise it, but wonderful honest confluence of what it is that we “know” and the idea of something “sacred” and real beyond naïve – objective reductionist – realism. Wonderful.

Left or right brain, we must be sceptical, but not to the point of paralysis.

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Post Notes:

I should add – “The Sacred” has already become the core new issue in McGilchrist’s recent TMWT, over and above his original hemispheric thesis in TMAHE. I pulled “The Sacred” out of this very explicitly a year ago. As Iain notes early in the dialogue above (and has acknowledged in many conversations since publication) he was advised by his scientific “friends” NOT to include this chapter, but of course chose to retain it precisely because of its central significance. As he says, most pushback has come from Christians, not scientists.

And from the same event above, the 30 minute dialogue between Iain McGilchrist and Rowan Williams. They’ve interacted many times before – on the nature of reality, as the scientist said to the archbishop – also worth a listen, especially if you’re sceptical of the possible presence (or not) of a (Christian) God-shaped hole in proceedings.

Only last week I was musing on “Where Next with Iain McGilchrist?“

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Kevin Mitchell’s Agency

Agency is the subject of this talk by Kevin Mitchell (Trinity, Dublin) outlining the arguments in his upcoming book “Free Agents – How Evolution Gave Us Free Will” (Oct 4th) – already on order on my book list. Been following and plugging his thinking into mine for a couple of years now, since his previous book “Innate“.

Event at Tufts, and co-organised by Michael Levin, another much referenced in recent years.

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Lots of good stuff to note:

“Active” processes and “Inference” in multivariate “systems” context. And “affordances” and “interfaces”. All the words if not the specific “Act-Inf” topic.

“Illusionism” in the “not in this illusory sense” sense. Not suggesting it (free-will, say) is not real, just that some of our perceptions of it are illusory. Exactly like Dennett in fact, Kevin 🙂

“Care” and “Trust”. The former being the topic of this event.

Individual choice as part of wider socio-political cybernetics.

Buddhist parallels.

Processes, relations and relational-properties rather than substance-object metaphysics / ontology. (Mike Levin is a Whiteheadian.)

Flow of time in fuzzy “quantum” in-/under-determinate future and fixed “classical” past – with the present as the just-in-time reality of now in “interaction” – Bergsson and Whitehead  >>> Madness? (In the realisation of none-substance-reality – a pathology – eg in smug / militant atheism. Also – genetics of psychiatric illness related too.)

Reductive, mechanistic, substantive science has held sway 1920’s to 202o’s, but process (holistic systems) view including the “subjectivity” is coming back. Systems level tools and computations now available to scientists.

Excellent stuff.

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Post Note Jan 2024 – A summary of Free Agents in his own words at the Royal Society of Biology. My copy still in the “library of unread books”.

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Where Next with Iain McGilchrist?

I’ve been a fan of Iain’s since his “The Master and His Emissary” (in 2011) and meeting him at How The Light Gets In (in 2014). Weirdly I never actually wrote a review of TMAHE despite frequently referring to his thesis throughout that period until the very useful RSA video summary was created (in 2012). (And there is a full length film of “The Divided Brain”.)

Later when “The Matter With Things” came out (in 2021) there was much more public excitement, not just the book itself, but discussion groups (official and unofficial), and a regular string of speaking (podcast) engagements for Iain, which continues to this day.

What regularly amazes is me is how few of his interviewers have actually read (the whole of) TMWT and yet already feel an affinity with their own agendas. Many have maybe only seen the RSA Animation and not even read TMAHE either? They always start with the obligatory – “Why don’t you give us the elevator pitch version of your thesis, Iain?” So we have many versions of that.

Despite / except for the efforts of Perspectiva, the publishers of TMWT, to host creative sessions – “attention as a moral act” & “the McGilchrist manoeuvre” for example – so few activities around Iain’s work get to the so what … should we doing differently in the wider real world? Simply lots of reinforcement of Iain’s problem description converging with the agendas and analyses of so many others. #NothingNewUnderTheSun as I often disparagingly remark – this is ancient wisdom backed by modern neuroscience. We know already – but so what – is the frustration. Mine anyway.

This latest podcast from Nate Hagans is no different. I haven’t captured many others in the past year or so, for the reasons above, but it serves to illustrate the genre – illustration, notice, not a recommendation.

[Hold that thought – If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the sacred / god bit that has stalled things. There’s an American religious conservatism that is simply comfortable with the fit between their religious sensitivities – a magisterium – and a distinct, otherwise scientific, worldview. I still see natural philosophy unifying the whole, with the magisteria simply being views. Stalled because generally  scientists without that religious or theological sensibility are steering clear of the so-what.]

The Pillowman

We saw The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh on Friday night at the Duke of York in London’s West End. Was originally intrigued by the plaudits (*) that Lily Allen was getting – already a long-term fan of hers – and noted Steve Pemberton and Paul Kaye in the cast. What’s not to like?

Tweeted these two thoughts so far:

“Saw this at the weekend. Fantastic production, dynamic sets, light and sound. Enormous role for @lilyallen on stage throughout, narrating other parts as well as her own, written originally for male lead. Gruesome plot played for laughs. Awesome.”

“Only criticism – of the play itself – long final scene of the first half, as dialogue between the lead and brother to fill the audience in on the real back-story felt a bit clumsy, unnecessarily explicit and shouty. But overall plenty of twists between good and evil.”

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Spoilers Alert:

This (spoiler) review in Theatre News also picks-up on that long dialogue with the disabled brother scene.

And the “horror B-movie” aesthetic is obviously complemented by the “Number 9” allusion of having Steve Pemberton playing the least deranged cast member (or is he?), as well as the set, sound & light design.

The exaggeration for laughs includes Lily / K.K.Katurian very obviously stressing “little boy” when narrating her own earlier life scenes, a child cast tableau member made-up to look like a grinning, early blonde version of Lily. Full of knowing references – the good-cop / bad-cop routine, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, etc, some more explicit than others.

And more spoiler, as that review suggests, the exaggerated non-PC stereo-typing includes references to “jew-boy” and “spastic / retard” and the like in the authoritarian police-state context. All adds to the discomfort of what is already a disturbing multiple child-abuse and murder story line. Well done, but not for the faint-hearted.

Not just the obvious life imitating art thread, but being able to distinguish between the point, the moral, the author’s intention in any given tale and the evil content explicitly depicted and described, and the fact that children, police and dimwits (and theatre critics) might not spot the difference. (Topical in our times of woke cancellation et al?)

Run ends in about a week, but worth looking out for in future.

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(*) I say personal “plaudits” because that’s what I saw, but it’s clear some of the negative press reaction was to the play itself – per Theatre News above – and to the whole “cynical” idea of a production with a “pop-star” instead of a “qualified” actress. Not perfect, but very good, I say. I admire Lily for her smarts – I barely knew her as an artist until after I’d heard her speak.

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Link Round Up

I have a zillion browser windows open on the laptop and phone, and after being away last week and being away this coming weekend I need to tidy-up, so I’ll capture a few here before I shut them all down.

The links to AII are built into this morning’s post already.

A fair review (?) of Jordan Peterson’s latest book “Beyond Order” by Suzanne Moore. Don’t think  I’ll be needing to read it? [Fascinating side issue is the number of reviewers apoplectic at their words being quoted selectively as cover blurbs. Almost everyone’s reviews are negatively critical, but even they include positive statements when extracted.]

Transcendent Naturalism I already linked last week. Don’t think I’ll be watching right through unless someone recommends?

Is atheism destroying the moral fabric of society?
The debate goes back at least 400 years. I don’t think that’s the problem, but the problem is a scientistic atheism?

Friston and Psychedelics – a paper by Peter Sjostedt-Hughes someone I find very interesting, that I noticed had made a connection to Karl Friston?

Giving AI direct control over anything is a bad idea – well who could argue? So I didn’t read it (yet).

Still holding out hope for Philip Goff maturing, but he currently appears content with all the usual rabbit holes. This dialogue sounded interesting? I was with him on “blaming” scientism when I first read him, hopefully this is him coming back to the core problem?

Can’t recall where this link came from – it has some Templeton funding – but an Essay Prize – on Panentheism and Fundamental Consciousness – seemed maybe worth having a go at whilst I’m writing my research proposal? Kill two birds, etc.

Prompted by The Santiago Boys (which I still have a couple of episodes to finish) I was digging into Stafford Beer references and his “5 Principles” (for people and good government). Still pretty central to my agenda, even if Beer was ultimately too naive? And Ben Taylor shared this “This Machine Kills” piece involving Morozov, the creator of The Santiago Boys.

This link from Ben Taylor also rang a bell. I keep talking in terms of a “Systems Thinking Ecosystem” but maybe instead of “an ecosystem” it’s really just “a lens” – either way, any world-view is a (subjective) frame of reference?

The Best Systems Thinkers – in two parts – another one from Ben Taylor.

No idea how I came to have this one open. Semantics in Protein Folding?

Following Dave Snowden fairly closely on LinkedIn these days and occasionally capture a specific link, like this one “more things in heaven and earth”. Dave has been a source for over 20 years, with interest rekindled this year at Hull Uni CSS – and that quote is one I’ve used. The dreams that stuff are made on?

Part of my research proposal meta-research, noticed Amanda Gregory was editor of Systems Research and Behavioural Science and noted this paper co-authored by her in the latest edition. And this earlier one by Mike Jackson (on Beer and Bogdanov), which I have actually quoted from quite recently.

And, as if to demonstrate how “fashionable” the ecosystem idea is, this paper from Friston, Ramstead, Albarracin and others.

To ‘see’, or not to ‘see’:  that is the question. Moving on from a half-brained system of economic governance. McGilchrist-informed critique of “autistic economics”.

HSE Researchers Question the Correctness of (Libet) Experiments Denying Free Will. Old news from a new source. And another on the same dead-and-buried old research. Wonder why? I really do.

The Ghost of Classics by Stephen Fry in the Antigone Journal from 2021

And one more from “the AII Movement” – I’m often pointing out compressible-fluid-flow (Navier-Stokes and CFD analyses) analogies with physical processes at a wide range of scales (a la Verlinde, and others) – but here working the other way. Getting to understand compressible flow dynamics starting from quantum information theories. It really is all happening?

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Chris Fields – Physics as Information Processing

I’ve considered the idea of Physics as Information Processing as central to my work for as long as I can remember [As early as Jan 2002 this post on “Quantum Computing” makes reference to information processing as fundamental.]. The last few years, my “Systems Thinking” – thinking of anything as a system, in terms of functional relations with its internal parts and external environment – has become focussed on the Active Inference / Free Energy Principle work associated with Karl Friston. Having noticed so many other systems thinkers I’ve had time for in these past two decades (eg Solms / Dennett) also converging on this view, and my understanding of other non-systems thinkers (eg McGilchrist) similarly converging, I’ve been digging into the Active Inference Institute resources ever more deeply.

It’s an exciting time. A recent paper in Nature declared important because of empirical support for the FEP at a molecular biology level and even jokey memes noticing that the FEP / Active-Inference / Systems-Thinking “movement” is becoming the explanation for anything (a ToE) in direct competition with all the other big ideas out there.

[Interesting that a new (completely unrelated) ambient-super-conductivity material went from zero to hero to zero in barely two weeks recently. Not all big ideas are created equal – some / one will become the next Kuhnian paradigm.]

Explanation for anything and everything?

Chris Fields has given / is giving a series of  lectures to the AII with the title above “Physics as Information Processing” essentially starting with FEPAI as a reformulation of the whole of quantum physics – aspects that were already there – holography and black-hole event horizons (a la Hawking). (Staring here in May 2023 and ending in October. There’s a good summary page too.)

We’re about half-way through as I type.

With anything as comprehensively multi-discipline as this – a ToE – the hubris sensors ring constant alarm bells. I can’t understand all of this and probably neither can Chris, the person giving the lecture. As ever it’s about the right level of abstraction and the place of specialists and generalists. No doubt quantum physics specialists will find fault – even I can detect statements that might not be entirely true as stated – and yet, and yet, it’s very good. Chris has a gentle relaxed delivery, and there’s plenty of space for re-iteration and consideration across multiple sessions. Also notes where decisions within quantum physics were not science but entirely philosophical (as Max Born had warned “theoretical fundamental physics is actual metaphysics”).

As well as the history:

We have the scope – from the most fundamental Qubits to individual cells, whole-brains and electro-mechanical devices and arbitrarily complex systems.

So much more and more names, Bateson again (and for me Verlinde) and more. And great Q&A’s again.

Chris even uses the “shut up and calculate” Copenhagen-jibe as I do, to point out why so much physics has failed to concern itself with reality for so long. Great focus on Topology over Geometry – Geometry IS the queen of sciences, but it’s the topological aspect that really matters – the relative-relations, not the specific dimensions in space and time which are both emergent. It’s why my preferred level of abstraction is architectural.

The quantisation of time as quantum clock ticks, with experienced time emergent in each frame of reference.

Man, isn’t it wonderful when a plan comes together?

(Aside – the Ontolog Forum is in a debate dissing emergence again!)

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Post Notes:

I should add – the scope of AII has been (is) mind-boggling, and with my deliberate choice to keep my involvement at “the right level of abstraction” – I struggle to find value-adding inward engagement. So much good stuff – detailed stuff – I can barely contribute to. Massive applause to Daniel Friedman for his curation of the whole shebang. Took me a while to warm to Dan’s style, but as well as his light-touch in nudging activities along he also clearly has all of the philosophical and physical dots joined-up in his own mind and asks some of the best questions, makes some great “aha” points for the rest of us.

Did I say “exciting times”?


And … AII really is Daniel’s baby.

Measured Testimony

Watched the famous 15 minutes of Carl Sagan’s 1985 testimony to US Congress on the Greenhouse Gases effect of Global Warming / Climate Change.

Everything is there from ~40 years ago – well calibrated evidence by concensus – and we see Al Gore, of later “Inconvenient Truth” fame, listening intently. I would maintain that the developed west has responded massively in terms of our own consumptions and emissions (ref Lomborg?) and that further unilateral reduction has diminishing returns and significant downsides. As Sagan points out the real problem is fragility and sustaining efforts over long time-scales and in partnership with the other global players.

This has been the focus for me on governance (cybernetics) and the scalability & stability of “conservative” democratic institutions, like the UN. Every divisive, anti-establishment or economically-competitive move, even well-meaning ones, increases the downside risks.

[Hat tip to someone on my LinkedIn timeline, which moved-on too fast for me to capture.]

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Transcendent Naturalism?

Just another holding post – John Vervaeke is doing a lot of stuff and getting a lot of traction in areas of my interest. That’s good in itself, even though so far I’ve not seen anything radically new (have I looked hard enough? are there enough hours in the day?)

This link is to a new YouTube venture of his with Gregg Henriques called “Transcendent Naturalism”, shared by the latter on Twitter.

Rang an immediate bell since I was just editing a “world-view” summary of mine, where I’ve previously nailed my colours to the “Sacred Naturalism” mast – that post and additional links in the main comment below it.

Not watched it yet, but looks like more parallel thinking? And lots of things to notice already: These forms of words in the notes:

“metaphysical-onto-epistemological” – I often need the same words “my metaphysics is an epistemological-ontology” to quote myself.

And – the preceding “Consilience Conference”. Just used the word “consilience” as recently as less than a week ago.

And “nature comes in levels” (Henriques UToK parallel to Pirsig MoQ) one of which is “the ontic-real world”. Ontological commitment.

(Still a sense that Christian / Neo-Platonism has to remain central to this particular ecosystem – when talking about transcendence and spiritualism in relation to “the hard sciences” … )

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