In AQAL integral theory, there is an unstated assumption (it seems to me) that culture can continue to evolve seemingly without limit. Although Wilber has been clear that there always will be a stratified society, with all levels of development represented, all the talk of evolutionary enlightenment and evolutionary consciousness by various "teachers" and "gurus" seems to neglect this important detail.
Essentially, AQAL proposes an idea from evolutionary biology that has been largely discredited - that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (ORP theory) - often known as the biogenetic law. It was originally proposed by Ernst Haeckel (1866), stating that an organism's embryonic development follows the same general form as its evolutionary history.
In a recent paper at PLoS ONE, Alex Mesoudi (University of London), discusses ORP theory briefly as it relates to cultural complexity. This may be a realm where the theory still has some use, but if it holds true there, it may also impose limits on knowledge.
As summarized by
Mesoudi’s paper, entitled Variable Cultural Acquisition Costs Constrain Cumulative Cultural Evolution, explores how to model the exponential increase in cultural complexity, whether scientific knowledge, technological innovation, or other cultural products. Mesoudi argues that in order to create any new innovation that builds on previous knowledge, an individual must first learn and master all the innovations that came before it. In other words, cultural ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.Here is the abstract to the paper:
Variable Cultural Acquisition Costs Constrain Cumulative Cultural Evolution
Biological and Experimental Psychology Group, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom
Abstract
One of the hallmarks of the human species is our capacity for cumulative culture, in which beneficial knowledge and technology is accumulated over successive generations. Yet previous analyses of cumulative cultural change have failed to consider the possibility that as cultural complexity accumulates, it becomes increasingly costly for each new generation to acquire from the previous generation. In principle this may result in an upper limit on the cultural complexity that can be accumulated, at which point accumulated knowledge is so costly and time-consuming to acquire that further innovation is not possible. In this paper I first review existing empirical analyses of the history of science and technology that support the possibility that cultural acquisition costs may constrain cumulative cultural evolution. I then present macroscopic and individual-based models of cumulative cultural evolution that explore the consequences of this assumption of variable cultural acquisition costs, showing that making acquisition costs vary with cultural complexity causes the latter to reach an upper limit above which no further innovation can occur. These models further explore the consequences of different cultural transmission rules (directly biased, indirectly biased and unbiased transmission), population size, and cultural innovations that themselves reduce innovation or acquisition costs.
In this excerpt, Mesoudi shows how learning of mathematics retraces its historical pattern of discovery, but that it leaves out the false steps along the way.
It seems reasonable to assume that more-complex knowledge, such as knowledge of quantum physics or the knowledge required to construct computers and space shuttles, takes longer to acquire and has greater scope for copying error than earlier knowledge, such as knowledge of Newtonian physics or the knowledge required to construct stone tools. Indeed, this would seem to be inherent in the very definition of cumulative culture: if beneficial modifications are successively built up over time, then people in later generations will, by definition, have more accumulated knowledge to acquire than people in earlier generations. Assuming that people have a limited, finite amount of time in their lives to devote to acquiring previously accumulated knowledge, there would theoretically come a point at which so much has to be learned that there is no time remaining for innovation, and accumulation will cease.
This prediction rests partly on the assumption that individual learning recapitulates history, in other words, that people learn during their lifetimes a sequence of concepts or skills that have previously been accumulated historically. While this assumption may not apply to all cultural domains, certain domains of scientific knowledge do appear to show this recapitulation. Figure 2A shows how present-day mathematics education during a single lifetime recapitulates the order in which concepts were discovered in human history, from basic counting and arithmetic (invented by Babylonian scholars in approximately 2000 BC and learned at age 5–7 in the UK) to algebra (formulated most extensively by Arab scholars such as Al-Khwarizmi and learned at age 11–14) to calculus and mechanics (invented by Newton and others in the late 1680s and learned at age 16–18) to measure theory (developed at the turn of the 20th century by Lebesgue, and learned at Masters level at a minimum age of 22). Each stage is cumulative: Newtonian mechanics could not have been invented (and cannot be learned) until algebra had been invented (learned), which in turn could not have been invented (learned) without knowledge of basic counting and arithmetic. Figure 2A shows how mathematics appears to be particularly subject to constraints due to increasing complexity: UK Masters-level students do not learn anything that was originally discovered after around 1900. Note, however, that this historical/educational sequence omits suboptimal knowledge that temporarily hindered historical accumulation, such as the Babylonian base-60 system (rather than the currently used base-10 decimal system), which are not learned by present-day schoolchildren.
Offering a series of equations, Mesoudi suggests that as more knowledge (and more complex knowledge) is accumulated over time, it becomes increasingly time-consuming and difficult for new generations to learn the acquired and necessary knowledge.
In principal, there may come a point at which acquisition is so costly that no time is left for innovation, and accumulation ceases. Evidence was reviewed from quantitative analyses of the history of science and technology to support the potential existence of such increasing acquisition costs: first, the acquisition of accumulated knowledge by an individual was shown to recapitulate the historical accumulation of that knowledge, such that later generations have more to acquire than earlier generations; second, while scientific and technological knowledge is known to have increased exponentially over time, certain domains have shown recent slowdowns in the rate of innovation; and third, the mean age at which scientists and inventors make significant contributions to their fields has increased over the last century and this increase can be directly attributed to a longer training period, supporting the assumption that acquisition of prior knowledge is becoming increasingly difficult and time-consuming.One can see how this applies to the sciences, but I contend that it can equally apply to all fields of human knowledge acquisition. One cannot possibly understand that workings of the human mind without years of study and even more years of experience working with clients.
An important corollary here - also from Wilber, based on biological as well as psychological science - is that stages cannot be skipped for full development to occur. As much as there is any usefulness in the ORP theory, this element holds. A child does not reach formal stages of cognition without having navigated concrete operations. Nor does a culture reach post-conventional level of care (not that any culture has) without having successfully navigated conventional forms of care (and even then, there will still individuals operate at pre-conventional and conventional stages).
But Mesoudi is talking about knowledge more than he is talking about development, so there are differences. Perhaps we can develop beyond the four postformal stages Michael Commons, Sara Ross, and others have identified, but can our brain circuitry handle that level of information?
Accepting that the thesis of the paper is correct, acquiring enough knowledge to hold an integral stage perspective (postformal cognition, post-conventional morality, and so on) may be beyond the time and talents of most people. As cultural knowledge continues to expand exponentially (as Ray Kurzweil as suggested), the degree of knowledge acquisition necessary to be "integral" becomes harder and harder to attain.
It may be fair to assume, again supposing Mesoudi is correct (if for no other reason than the sake of argument), there may be a maximum upper limit for cultural evolution - there may be a point at which individuals can no longer devote any more time or energy to knowledge acquisition - and if individuals reach a maximum threshold, than the culture will as well.
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What a strange idea to equate cultural evolution with knowledge acquisition!
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary enlightenment has nothing to do with the volume of knowledge we can absorb but the moral development of staying unconditionally open to the evolutionary impulse in/as us.