Stanislaw Lem - Microworlds

Hutchinson attempts to formalize this process of slow growth, quickening, peaking, and decay in a logistical curve used in the study of demographic dynamics. The curve resembles a letter 5, the center of which is characterized by exponential inclines, its beginning and ending by slight inclines (the Verhulst-Pearl curve). I will not cite the math with which Hutchinson supports his hypothesis, since it is, in any case, far too simple to grasp the phenomenon — as Hutchinson is well aware. The introduction of only two parameters — the quantity of still exploitable “degrees of freedom” and the quantity of already exploited degrees at time T, when a certain creator X appears in the world -cannot be adequate. The mass statistical (stochastic) nature of the process would certainly require a greater number of variables. But the greatest problem with any attempt to quantify creative phenomena is that, in order to verify the effectiveness of the formal apparatus, the works of certain artistic periods must be enumerated as elemental facts, a process that would unequivocally classify them in terms of their originality, and, coincidentally, in terms of their relative value — a hopeless task.

But we do have at our disposal a unique creative territory where the researcher is spared the problems caused by the subjective nature of any evaluation of cultural products, since, in this case, the evaluation has already been done for him, in an entirely unambiguous and incontestable way: this is the realm of natural development. Every emergent organism — such as the prototypes of “insect,” “fish,” “reptile,” or “mammal” -is generated in a manner equivalent to those structural paradigms within which further evolutionary development “exploited every possible advantage for construction.” In other words, the “insect” or “reptile” represents a certain stabilized “tradition” of creation within the field of variables determined by the given system’s typology. The evolutionary process inexorably strives to exploit every possible organic combination inherent within the given prototype. (We need not puzzle over the quality of the various consecutive solutions that emerged in this way; evolution performs the evaluation of the product “in our stead,” since only the “good” product survives.)

It is worth noting that not all of the prototypes mentioned above have developed an equal, or even a similar, number of variations in the course of their evolution. The structural paradigm of insects, for example, has proved to be an incredibly “fertile creative principle”: at least as many species have developed from it as from all the other prototypes combined. Evolution also has its “creative stages,” and its own “different schools and traditions.” Its first triumphs were the creation of fishes, then it moved on to reptiles, while in our time it is primarily engaged in variations on the “theme” of mammals. Each type has, in its turn, gone through a slow initial stage of specialized differentiation, to arrive at a stage of the maximum richness of possible forms (consider but the variety of evolutionary reptile modifications), and finally to end up in an “age of epigonism” or repetitive fulfillment. Such a correspondence of natural and cultural creativity can hardly be an accident. The hypothesis immediately offers itself that there are, still unknown to us, higher regularities that determine the field of potential structures, regularities moreover that operate universally in the case of every type of material-information creation.

Recently, two English scientists, M. A. Ede and J. T. Law, used a computer to construct models of the embryonic formation process of certain organs, specifically the extremities. They fed the machine five series of data: four had to do with the behavior of embryonic cells, the fifth provided a model of the gene mechanism guiding their growth. In the course of its work, the computer produced only such models of extremity structures as had actually come about in the evolution of the different species of vertebrates, from fish to human. A slightly retrograde modification of the gene program resulted in the transformation of the structure of a leg into the structure of a fin. Neither machines nor programs exist for making models of complete organic systems; nonetheless, as the above example shows, we can already observe in experiments how the initial paradigm “determines” the field of possible constructions.

In order to continue the original creation, we must always introduce new elements into the paradigm’s system. In literature (which is of greater interest to us here than evolution), there is a fairly universal intuition that every “great,” “original” narrative model has already been discovered (and, moreover, quite long ago). But this is only a relative truth. While it is true, with respect to historically known conditions, that the narrative structures have been exhausted, it is equally true that civilization, by creating new problems, also provides new possibilities for literature. Our age, for example, is marked by the decline of conventional structures of ethical judgment all over the planet, since it is now within our power instrumentally to execute the Last Judgment. This fact is lost on the writer who would bring alien visitors to a destroyed earth and have them deliberate among the ruins about “which side was right.” One can speak of one’s rightness, i.e., as representing the correct path, only as long as someone is left behind to evaluate what has happened. It is meaningless to discuss either side’s being right or wrong when total destruction has become possible; the only argument worth articulating on the verge of the ultimate catastrophe is that the catastrophe must be averted. At that point, truth, in the sense of “good” and “bad,” is irrelevant as long as it is not bound up with the only program that has not lost its meaning, namely, the project of preserving humanity. The type of writer referred to above wishes to preserve the traditional standards of judgment of the pre-Atomic Age, but since he is writing in a pseudo-realistic style, he does not want to bring the Good Lord Himself down to the ash-covered earth -and so sends “aliens” instead, to continue the same argument that led to the cataclysm, on behalf of the no longer existing earthlings. This is a classic example of the helplessness of thought when it is shackled by inadequate narrative structures.

Every culture has codes that delineate the phenomena it considers “normal,” and others that “deviate” from these and come into different degrees of conflict with the regulating norms. When phenomena that are predominantly associated with the stock of normal descriptive structures are depicted through discrepant structures, the result is often comic. Indeed, many humorous works owe their existence to this rule of displacement -they are intentionally “erroneous messages,” cast in descriptive structures that are normally inappropriate to the phenomena described (for example, the description of a family quarrel in terms of natural phenomena, such as typhoons and volcanic eruptions; or, inversely, anthropomorphizing the volcano or storm). Generally, comic effects are generated when the use of alien descriptive structures does not quite amount to a fundamental transgression of the given culture’s decrees and prohibitions. Still, the more the described phenomenon’s structure is subject to codification (social ritualization), the stronger the effect; thus, a chase scene presented on speeded-up film is not as comic as a speeded-up funeral.

The simplest procedure, as we know, is simple inversion. What could be simpler than to achieve new effects by inverting the conventional structures petrified by tradition: this is the principle behind Mark Twain’s “antistories.” It would be easy to construct a theory of literature if only the descriptive language did not damage the reality depicted in the work, but simply represented it in a different mode. The problem is that this is not the case at all. Language, the instrument of description, is also the creator of what it describes. (Language can describe itself, as well, thereby becoming an object, and not only in a linguistic sense; for the language that describes language has a different semantic function from the language it describes.)