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Ulf Skirke Technologie und Selbstorganisation Zum Problem eines zukunftsfähigen Fortschrittsbegriffs

Technology and Selforganization

On the Question of a Definition of Sustainable Progress

by Ulf Skirke

Summary

This study presents new and sustainable options for the development of the relationship between humanity and technology, demonstrated in models and following the approach and knowledge of recent research on selforganization and chaos. The study proceeds form the fundamental questions of contemporary philosophy of nature and philosophy of technology. As their conventional answers appear unsatisfactory, they are challenged. The study attempts to establish a new understanding of nature by bringing together the reflections of science, system theory, philosophy of technology and ontology. In a paradigmatic context, such an understanding is identified as a concept of selforganization.

In search of a limited and yet open pattern of technological progress, the study follows the approach of nonlinear models of complex and dynamic systems and self-organized processes.

Such an approach requires a change to a new, more complex definition of time. In order to characterise "sustainability", it is helpful to study the fundamental relationship between modality of potentiality and the future time mode. In this context, the ontological concepts of Heidegger and Picht are further developed, which leads to the disclosure of the relationship between finiteness and technology on the one hand and to answers regarding the fundamental conditions for a possible progressive type of technology. In order to analyse progress as a creative process, the study includes a discursive reflection of the process philosophy of Whitehead and the paradigm of selforganization.

This approach results in the modelling of the sphere of technology of the future as a complex adaptive system or new autonomous technological evolution within a restrictive "channel of development" respectively. The resulting type of technology is therefore identified as "symbiotic" as it should have positive effects on both mankind and nature in order to serve as a "partner in a dialogue". Its aim is to furnish autonomous contributions for a co-evolutionary and compatible progress within the framework of humanity, nature and technology.
In this context, the study presents suggestions and potential solutions regarding the interdisciplinary study of complexity, the problematic area of metabolism between humanity, nature and technology as well as the question of control and anticipation of technological developments.

The conclusion consist of the basic elements of a new definition of sustainable development in a cultural-philosophical as well as technological-philosophical sense. The modelling is carried out by means of a generalizing meta-system of control, known as 'self-organized criticality'; it is defined as an "supercritical" iteration process including continuous self-reflection and self-correction.