The history of the philosophy of science is the history of the way we relate to our symbols. At the center of all of our complex, intertwined, inconsistent ideas about knowledge and materiality is a basic faith in a fundamental nature of things. We must assume there is a knowable relationship between theory and practice; we must have faith in the universality of physical laws; and we must know that logical relationships mirror, to the finest detail, the relationships between things in the real world.
When we study media, science, and culture, our real goal is not to just sit and think about them. Ultimately, we want to use the understanding we have reached through our analyses, criticisms, ethnographies, and experiments to produce a change in the way we develop and deploy our technologies. The real goal of work in the humanities is to effect a slow–but lucidly self-conscious–revolution of consciousness.
So what is the role of the prophet in a technologically deterministic history? Where is there space in the machinations of capitalism for genius and ahistorical epiphany? How do we get true revolution from endless cycles of oppression and submission?
Sociologists of science and knowledge from Marx to Merton have ranted and raved about the power of material technology to change social and individual reality. Marshall McLuhan, Norbert Wiener, Buckminster Fuller, Pierre Levy, Hakim Bey, Gregory Bateson, Ted Roszak, Abbie Hoffman, Immanuel Kant, and countless others all spoke the language of myth and prophecy. For the intellectual prophet, the form is at least as important as the content.
Were Kepler, Aristotle, Marx, and Einstein geniuses descended from above, or were they mere products of their time and children of their class who lived in the right places at the right times? I think to any sane person the answer is obvious: a little of both, depending on how you slice it. But many accounts of technological determinism completely relegate the individual to the domain of the technocultural.
The modern human condition is mythical. The omnipresence of symbols means that everything around us is imbued with mythical–magical, universal, totemic–power that extends beyond our immediate senses through time and space. It is time to speak the language of prophets, because the semiotic revolution offers the chance of a world of freedom and magic.
Flowery language? Who wants to read something that doesn’t have a soul?
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