Arthur
Koestler
JANUS
A
Summing Up
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JANUS
A SUMMING UP
No man is an island; he is a 'holon'. Like Janus, the two-faced Roman
god, holons have a dual tendency to behave as quasi-independent wholes,
asserting their individualities, but at the same time as integrated parts
of larger wholes in the multi-levelled hierarchies of existence. Thus a
man is both a unique individual but also part of a social group, which
itself is a part of a larger group, and so on. Koestler shows that this
polarity between the self-assertive and integrative tendencies is a
universal characteristic of life. Order and stability can prevail only
when the two tendencies are in equilibrium. If one of them dominates the
other, this delicate balance is disturbed, and pathological conditions of
various types make their appearance. These seemingly abstract considerations
turn out to be of prime importance when applied to emotive behaviour --
the 'paranoid streak' in our species which has played such havoc with its
history and now threatens it with extinction. Yet Koestler believes that
the two-faced god may guide us to a proper diagnosis and thus provide an
'alternative to despair'.
JANUS is both a summing up and a continuation of Koestler's work over the
past twenty-five years, since he turned from politics to the sciences of
life -- or, more precisely, to the 'evolution, creativity and pathology
of the human mind'. The insights gained on that long journey are here
assembled in a coherent and comprehensive synthesis, and in the last part
of the book, he offers us a tantalizing 'glance through the key-hole'
from subatomic physics to metaphysics. He shows that in the light of the
new cosmology, the strictly deterministic, mechanistic world-view of the
last century, which still dominates many fields of contemporary science,
has become a Victorian anachronism. The nineteenth-century clockwork
model of the universe is in shambles, and since matter itself has been
de-materialized by the physicists, materialism can no longer claim to
be a scientific philosophy.
JANUS
JANUS
A Summing Up
Arthur Koestler
Vintage Books
A Division of Random House
New York
I am indebted to the Editors of the Encyclopaedia Brittannica (15th edition,
1974) for permission to quote substantial extracts from my article
'Humour and Wit' in that edition.
I wish to thank the Editors of Mind in Nature: Essays on the interface
of Science and Philosophy, J. B. Cobb,Jr, and D. R. Griffin (University
Press of America, Washington, 1977) for permission to quote passages from
my paper, 'Free Will in a Hierarchic Context' which appeared in that book.
I also wish to thank the following for permission to quote extracts from
their work: Professor Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, and Keeper Emeritus, Victoria and Albert Museum, London,
in Flying Saucer Review (July/August, 1970); Professor Holger Hyden,
University of Gothenburg, in Control of the Mind (McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1961); Professor Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority:
An Experimental View (Harper and Row, New York, and Tavistock, London,
1974) and in Dialogue (Washington, 1975); Dr Lewis Thomas, The Lives
of a Cell (Viking Press, New York, 1974).
Lastly, I am grateful to Mrs Joan St George Saunders of Writer's and
Speaker's Research for giving me invaluable help with this book, as she
did with earlier ones.
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, March 1979
Copyright © 1978 by Arthur Koestler
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc.,
New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Hutchinson & Co.
(Publishers) Ltd., London. First American edition published by Random
House in March 1978.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Koestler, Arthur, 1905 --
Janus: a summing up.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Philosophy. I. Title.
[B1646.K773J36 1979] 192 78-23626
ISBN 0-394-72886-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
to Daphne
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This book is a summing up (and also a continuation) of works published
over the last twenty-five years, since I turned from writing political
novels and essays to the sciences of life -- i.e., the evolution,
creativity and pathology of the human mind.
Such a summing up has its difficulties. When the author puts a summary at
the end of a scientific paper or a chapter in a book, he can assume that
its contents are still fresh in the reader's mind. Not so in this case,
where I have tried to distil the essence of a number of books, which
the reader may have read some years ago, if ever at all. Thus I could
never be sure how much to take for granted, and had to repeat myself
to some extent. The reader may occasionally get a feeling of
déjà vu -- or déjà lu -- where I cribbed a
few lines or even entire paragraphs from earlier books.
What I hope to show is that they add up to a comprehensive system, which
rejects materialism and throws some new light on the human condition. In
case this sounds over-ambitious, let me quote from the Preface to The
Act of Creation:
I have no illusions about the prospects of the theory I am proposing;
it will suffer the inevitable fate of being proven wrong in many, or
most, details, by new advances in knowledge. What I am hoping for
is that it will be found to contain a shadowy pattern of truth.
London, September 1977
CONTENTS
Author's Note
Prologue: The New Calendar
PART ONE: OUTLINE OF A SYSTEM
I The Holarchy
II Beyond Eros and Thanatos
III The Three Dimensions of Emotion
IV Ad Majorem Gloriam ...
V An Alternative to Despair
PART TWO: THE CREATIVE MIND
VI Humour and Wit
VII The Art of Discovery
VIII The Discoveries of Art
PART THREE: CREATIVE EVOLUTION
IX Crumbling Citadels
X Lamarck Revisited
XI Strategies and Purpose in Evolution
PART FOUR: NEW HORIZONS
XII Free Will in a Hierarchic Context
XIII Physics and Metaphysics
XIV A Glance through the Keyhole
APPENDICES
Appendix I: Beyond Atomism and Holism -- The Concept of the Holon
Appendix II: An Experiment in Perception
Appendix III: Notes on the Autonomic Nervous S
ystem
Appendix IV: UFOs: A Festival of Absurdity
References
Bibliography
Index
CONTENTS
Author's Note
Prologue: The New Calendar 1
PART ONE: OUTLINE OF A SYSTEM
I The Holarchy 23
II Beyond Eros and Thanatos 57
III The Three Dimensions of Emotion 70
IV Ad Majorem Gloriam ... 77
V An Alternative to Despair 98
PART TWO: THE CREATIVE MIND
VI Humour and Wit 109
VII The Art of Discovery 131
VIII The Discoveries of Art
PART THREE: CREATIVE EVOLUTION
IX Crumbling Citadels 165
X Lamarck Revisited 193
XI Strategies and Purpose in Evolution 205
PART FOUR: NEW HORIZONS
XII Free Will in a Hierarchic Context 229
XIII Physics and Metaphysics 242
XIV A Glance through the Keyhole 274
APPENDICES
Appendix I
Beyond Atomism and Holism -- The Concept of the Holon 289
Appendix II An Experiment in Perception 312
Appendix III Notes on the Autonomic Nervous System 317
Appendix IV UFOs: A Festival of Absurdity 319
References 326
Bibliography 335
Index 343
PROLOGUE: THE NEW CALENDAR
1
If I were asked to name the most important date in the history and prehistory of the human race, I would answer without hesitation, 6 August 1945. The reason is simple. From the dawn of consciousness until 6 August 1945, man had to live with the prospect of his death as an individual; since the day when the first atomic bomb outshone the sun over Hiroshima, mankind as a whole has had to live with the prospect of its extinction as a species.
We have been taught to accept the transitoriness of personal existence, while taking the potential immortality of the human race for granted. This belief has ceased to be valid. We have to revise our axioms.
It is not an easy task. There are periods of incubation before a new idea takes hold of the mind; the Copernican doctrine which so radically downgraded man's status in the universe took nearly a century until it penetrated European consciousness. The new downgrading of our species to the status of mortality is even more difficult to digest.
It actually looks as if the novelty of this outlook had worn off even before it had properly sunk in. Already the name Hiroshima has become a historical cliché like the Boston Tea Party. We have returned to a state of pseudo-normality. Only a small minority is conscious of the fact that ever since it unlocked the nuclear Pandora's Box, our species has been living on borrowed time.
Every age had its Cassandras, yet mankind managed to survive their sinister prophecies. However, this comforting reflection is no longer valid, for in no earlier age did a tribe or nation possess the necessary equipment to make this planet unfit for life. They could inflict only limited damage on their adversaries -- and did so, whenever given a chance. Now they can hold the entire biosphere to ransom. A Hitler, born twenty years later, would probably have done so, provoking a nuclear Götterdämmerung.
The trouble is that an invention, once made, cannot be disinvented. The nuclear weapon has come to stay; it has become part of the human condition. Man will have to live with it permanently: not only through the next confrontation-crisis and the one after that; not only through the next decade or century, but forever -- that is, as long as mankind survives. The indications are that it will not be for very long.
There are two main reasons which point to this conclusion. The first is technical: as the devices of nuclear warfare become more potent and easier to make, their spreading to young and immature as well as old and arrogant nations becomes inevitable, and global control of their manufacture impracticable. Within the foreseeable future they will be made and stored in large quantities all over the globe among nations of all colours and ideologies, and the probability that a spark which initiates the chain-reaction will be ignited sooner or later, deliberately or by accident, will increase accordingly, until, in the long run, it approaches certainty. One might compare the situation to a gathering of delinquent youths locked in a room full of inflammable material who are given a box of matches -- with the pious warning not to use it.
The second main reason which points to a low life-expectancy for homo sapiens in the post-Hiroshima era is the paranoid streak revealed by his past record. A dispassionate observer from a more advanced planet who could take in human history from Cro-Magnon to Auschwitz at a single glance, would no doubt come to the conclusion that our race is in some respects an admirable, in the main, however, a very sick biological product; and that the consequences of its mental sickness far outweigh its cultural achievements when the chances of prolonged survival are considered. The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums. Tribal wars, religious wars, civil wars, dynastic wars, national wars, revolutionary wars, colonial wars, wars of conquest and of liberation, wars to prevent and to end all wars, follow each other in a chain of compulsive repetitiveness as far as man can remember his past, and there is every reason to believe that the chain will extend into the future. In the first twenty years of the post-Hiroshima era, between the years 0 and 20 P.H. -- or 1946-66 according to our outdated calendar -- forty wars fought with conventional weapons were tabulated by the Pentagon [1]; and at least on two occasions -- Berlin 1950 and Cuba 1962 -- we have been on the brink of nuclear war. If we discard the comforts of wishful thinking, we must expect that the focal areas of potential conflict will continue to drift across the globe like high-pressure regions over a meteorological chart. And the only precarious safeguard against the escalating of local into total conflict, mutual deterrence, will, by its very nature, always remain dependent on the restraint or recklessness of fallible key individuals and fanatical regimes. Russian roulette is a game which cannot be played for long.
The most striking indication of the pathology of our species is the contrast between its unique technological achievements and its equally unique incompetence in the conduct of its social affairs. We can control the motions of satellites orbiting distant planets, but cannot control the situation in Northern Ireland. Man can leave the earth and land on the moon, but cannot cross from East to West Berlin. Prometheus reaches out for the stars with an insane grin on his face and a totem-symbol in his hand.
2
I have said nothing about the added terrors of biochemical warfare; nor about the population explosion, pollution, and so forth, which, however threatening in themselves, have unduly distracted the public's awareness from the one central, towering fact: that since the year 1945 our species has acquired the diabolic power to annihilate itself; and that, judging by its past record, the chances are that it will use that power in one of the recurrent crises in the not-too-distant future. The result would be the transformation of space-ship earth into a Flying Dutchman, drifting among the stars with its dead crew.
If this is the probable outlook, what is the point of going on with our piecemeal efforts to save the panda and prevent our rivers from turning into sewers? Or making provisions for our grandchildren? Or, if it comes to that, of going on writing this book? It is not a rhetorical question, as the general mood of disenchantment among the young indicates. But there are at least two good answers to it.
The first is contained in the two words 'as if' which Hans Vaihinger turned into a once-influential philosophical system: 'The Philosophy of As If'.[2] Briefly, it means that man has no choice but to live by 'fictions'; as if the illusory world of the senses represented ultimate Reality; as if he had a free will which made him responsible for his actions; as if there was a God to reward virtuous conduct, and so on. Similarly, the individual must live as if he were not under sentence of death, and humanity must plan for its future as if its days were not counted. It is o
nly by virtue of these fictions that the mind of man fabricated a habitable universe, and endowed it with meaning.*
* Vaihinger's (1852-1933) philosophy should not be confused either with
Phenomenalism or with American Pragmatism, though it has affinities
with both.
The second answer is derived from the simple fact that although our species now lives on borrowed time, from decade to decade as it were, and the signs indicate that it is drifting towards the final catastrophe, we are still dealing in probabilities and not in certainties. There is always a hope of the unexpected and the unforeseen. Since the year zero of the new calendar, man has carried a time-bomb fastened round his neck, and will have to listen to its ticking -- now louder, now softer, now louder again -- until it either blows up, or he succeeds in defusing it. Time is running short, history is accelerating along dizzy exponential curves, and reason tells us that the chances of a successful defusing operation before it is too late are slender. All we can do is to act as if there was still time for such an operation.
But the operation will require a more radical approach than UNO resolutions, disarmament conferences and appeals to sweet reasonableness. Such appeals have always fallen on deaf ears, from the time of the Hebrew prophets, for the simple reason that homo sapiens is not a reasonable being -- for if he were, he would not have made such a bloody mess of his history; nor are there any indications that he is in the process of becoming one.