Imaginary Magnitude

by Stanisław Lem

  That means that from the interadhesion of molecules compounds arose, which are sentences, that is, they belong to the infinite space of combinational paths, and this space is their property as pure potential, as virtuality, as an articulatory field, as a set of laws of conjugation and declension. Nothing less, but also nothing more, than something which can be explained as a multitude of possibilities, but not automatic realizations! For in the language that is your speech, one can express either wisdom or stupidity, one can reflect the world or merely the speaker's confusion. Babble can be highly complex!

  And so—to return to my subject—in the face of the enormity of the initial tasks, two enormities of materialization arose. Yet this was a forced greatness, therefore only of the moment. It underwent dissipation.

  The complexity of higher organisms—how you idolize it! Indeed, when lengthened into a thread, the chromosomes of a reptile or a mammal are a thousand times longer than the same thread of an amoeba, a protozoan, or an alga. But what has become of this excess scraped together through the ages? It has become a twofold complication: of embryogenesis, as well as of its effects. But above all of embryogenesis, for foetal development is a trajectory in time, like a trajectory in space: just as the jerking of a gun barrel must result in a huge deflection from the target, so every defocalization of a foetal stage leads to the premature destruction of its course. Here, and only here, has Evolution been working hard. Here it has been acting under stern supervision set by the goal— to support the code—hence it operates with lavish means and the utmost caution. Thus it was that evolution committed the gene thread to embryogenesis—not to the structure of organisms, but to their construction.

  The complexity of higher organisms is neither a success nor a triumph but a snare, since it draws them into a multitude of secondary contests while cutting them off from superior chances, as for example from the use of large-scale quantum effects, from harnessing photons to a structural order—I can't name them all! There has been no retreat from complication, since the more shoddy technologies there are, the greater the number of intervening levels, and consequently interferences, and consequently new complications.

  Evolution is saved solely by a flight forward into banal mutability, into an apparent wealth of forms—apparent, because they are conglomerations of plagiarisms and compromises; it makes life difficult for life by creating vulgar dilemmas through ad hoc innovations. The negative gradient negates neither improvements nor homeostasis; it merely ensures the inferiority of muscle to algae, and of heart to muscle, for this gradient simply means that the elementary problems of life cannot be resolved that much better than Evolution, but that it has evaded the more complex problems, has slunked away from the possibility of them and avoided it. That is what it means, and only that.

  Was this a terrestrial misfortune? A particular doom, an exception to a better rule? Nothing of the kind. The language of evolution—like every language!—is perfect in its potentialities, yet it was blind. It cleared its first obstacle, a gigantic one, and from this height began to digress—downward, literally downward, because it worsened its works. Why, exactly? This language operates by means of articulations formed in the molecular bottom of matter, hence it works from the bottom up, as a result of which its sentences are merely propositions of success. When enlarged to the size of bodies, these propositions enter the ocean or dry land, but Nature remains neutral, being the filter that lets through every structural form capable of transmitting the code. And whether this occurs in droplets or in mountains of flesh is all the same to Nature. So it was along this axis—the axis of the body's dimensions—that the negative gradient arose. Nature has no regard for progress, so she lets the code through whether it gets its energy from a star or from dung. A star and dung: obviously we are not talking about an aesthetics of sources here, but about the difference between the highest energy, found in the universality of possible revolutions, and the worst, which passes into thermal chaos. Aesthetics is not the cause of the light by which I think: for that, you were obliged to return to the star!

  But what in fact is the source of genius there at the very bottom, where life began? The canon of physics, and not tragedy, can explain that as well. So long as organisms lived in the place of their articulation as minimal things—so small that their internal organs were single enormous molecules— they kept to higher (atomic, quantum) technology, since that was the only kind possible there! The absence of an alternative compelled this state of geniusness; after all, in photosynthesis every quantum must be accounted for. When the composition of the large molecule serving as an internal organ underwent adulteration, it wore out the organism; thus it was the inflexibility of the criteria, and not inventiveness, which extracted such precision from primeval life.

  However, the distance between assembling the whole organism and testing it began to grow; as the code sentences grew longer and became overgrown with layers of flesh, so they emerged from their microworld cradle into the macroworld as increasingly complex structures, incorporating in that flesh whatever techniques happened to turn up, since Nature had already begun to tolerate this babble, and on a grand scale, as selection was no longer the auditor of atomic precision, of the quantum homogeneity of processes. Thus the disease of eclecticism entered the heart of the animal kingdom, since anything that transmitted the code was good. So it was that species arose, through errant error.

  And simultaneously—by shedding the initial splendor— the articulations meshed with one another, the preparatory foetal phase grew at the expense of structural precision, and this language chattered confusedly in vicious circles: the longer the embryogenesis, the more intricate it became; the more intricate it was, the more it required guardians, hence the further extension of the code thread; and the longer that thread, the more irreversible the things in it.

  Check for yourselves what I have said. Make a model of the rise and fall of this language of operations, and when you have summed it all up you will have as your balance the billionfold failure of the evolutionary struggle. Nor could it be otherwise, though I have not assumed the role of the defense, nor am I interested in extenuating circumstances. You must also consider that this was not a fall and failure by your criteria, not on the scale of what you yourselves can do. I have warned you I shall reveal bungling that for you still is unattainable mastery, but I have measured Evolution by its own yardstick.

  But Intelligence—is this not its work? Does its origin not contradict the negative gradient? Could it be the delayed overcoming of it?

  Not in the least, for it originated in oppression, for the sake of servitude. Evolution became the overworked mender of its own mistakes and thus the inventor of suppression, occupation, investigations, tyranny, inspections, and police surveillance—in a word, of politics, these being the duties for which the brain was made. This is no mere figure of speech. A brilliant invention? I would rather call it the cunning subterfuge of a colonial exploiter whose rule over organisms and colonies of tissues has fallen into anarchy. Yes, a brilliant invention, if that is how one regards the trustee of a power which uses that trustee to conceal itself from its subjects. The metazoan had already become too disorganized and would have come to nothing, had it not had some sort of caretaker installed within it, a deputy, talebearer, or governor by grace of the code: such a thing was needed, and so it came into being. Was it rational? Hardly! New and original? After all, a self-government of linked molecules functions in any and every protozoan, so it was only a matter of separating these functions and differentiating their capabilities.

  Evolution is a lazy babble, obstinate in its plagiarism until it gets into deep water. Only when pressed by harsh necessity does it develop genius, and then just enough to match the task, and not a whit more. Shuffling through its molecules, it tries out every combination, every trick. So it prepared an overseer for its tissues, since their unity, controlled by a countersign from the code, had weakened. But it remained merely a deputy, a coupler, a reckoner, a medi
ator, an escort, an investigating magistrate, and a million centuries passed before it exceeded these functions. For it had arisen as a lens of complexity located in the bodies themselves, since that which commences bodies was no longer able to focus them. So it committed itself to these, its nation-colonies, as a conscientious overseer represented by informers in every tissue, and one so useful that, thanks to it, the code was able to continue jabbering, elevating complexity to power, since the latter was acquiring support, and the brain backed it up, fawned on it, and served it by compelling bodies to pass the code on. Since it proved such a convenient trustee of Evolution, the latter was game—and on it blundered!

  Was the brain independent? But it was only a spy, a ruler powerless in the face of the code, a deputy, a marionette, a proxy intended for special assignments, but unthinking by virtue of having been created for tasks unknown to it. After all, the code had forced it to be its steward, and in this unconscious coercion transferred authority to it without disclosing its true purpose, nor could the code have done so. Although I am speaking figuratively, things were just like that: the relationship between the code and the brain was settled feudally. That would have been a fine thing, if Evolution had listened to Lamarck and given the brain the privilege of restructuring bodies. This would surely have led to disaster, for what sorts of self-improvements could saurian brains have procured, or even Merovingian ones, or even your own? But the brain continued to grow, for the transmission of capabilities proved favorable, since when it served the transmitters, it served the code. So it grew by positive feedback, and the blind continued to lead the lame.

  Nevertheless, developments within the range of permitted autonomy were ultimately concentrated on the real sovereign, that blind man, the lord of the molecules, who went on transmitting functions until he made the brain into such a schemer that it brought forth a duplicate shadow of the code —language. If there is an inexhaustible enigma in the world, this is it: above the threshold, the discreteness of matter turns into the code as zero-order language, and on the next level this process recurs, echolike, as the formation of ethnic speech, though that is not the end of the line. These systemic echoes rise rhythmically, though their properties can be isolated and identified only from above and not otherwise—but perhaps we shall speak of this intriguing matter another time.

  Your liberation and the anthropogenetic prelude to it were aided by luck, for herbivorous arboreal quadrumanous creatures had got into the labyrinth, postponing destruction only by special resourcefulness. This labyrinth consisted of steppe, glaciers, and rain forests, in whose windings and turnings the changing orientations of this tribe occurred—from vegetarianism to meat-eating, and from the latter to hunting; you realize how much I must condense this.

  Do not think that here I am contradicting what I said in my introduction, since there I described you as having been expelled from Evolution, whereas here I am calling you rebellious captives. Those are two sides of the same destiny: you have escaped from captivity, while it has released you. These counterimages converge in mutual nonreflectiveness, for neither that which did the creating nor that which was created was aware of what was happening. It is only when one looks back that your experience takes on such meanings.

  But one may look still further back, and then it turns out that the negative gradient was the creator of Intelligence, so the question arises: how then can Evolution be faulted for its efficiency? After all, were it not for its decline into complexity, the slapdash, and bungling, Evolution would not have begun floundering about in flesh and incarnating its vassal steersmen in it; so did Evolution's stumbling about creating species force it into anthropogenesis, and was soul born of the erring error? One can formulate this even more powerfully by saying that Intelligence is a catastrophic defect of Evolution, a snare to trap and destroy it, since by rising sufficiently high Intelligence invalidates its work and subordinates it. But in saying this, one falls into a reprehensible misunderstanding. These are all assessments made by Intelligence, a late product of the process, regarding the earlier stages. Let us first specify the chief task, simply according to what Evolution initiated; using this as our criterion for evaluating Evolution's further moves, we shall see that it has bungled. Then, having established how Evolution should have acted optimally, we shall conclude that, were it a first-rate operator, it would never have given birth to Intelligence.

  One has to get out of this vicious circle at once. Technological measurement is objective measurement and can be applied to every process which is amenable to it, and only those are amenable to it which can be formulated as a task. If, once upon a time, celestial engineers had set up code transmitters on Earth and intended them to be continually reliable, and if, a billion years later, the operation of these mechanisms resulted in a planetary aggregate which absorbed the code and ceased to reproduce it, and shone forth instead with thousand-GOLEM reason and occupied itself exclusively with ontology, then all that enlightened thinking would give the constructors an extremely low mark, since someone who produces a rocket when intending to make a shovel is a bungler.

  However, there were no engineers nor any other person, so the technological yardstick which I have applied ascertains merely that, as a result of the deterioration of the initial criterion, Intelligence occurred in Evolution, and that is all. I can understand how dissatisfied such a verdict must leave the humanists and philosophers among you, for my reconstruction of the process must appear to them as follows: a bad process produced good consequences, and had the former been good, then the consequences would have turned out bad, However, this interpretation, which gives them the impression that some kind of demon was active here, is merely the result of categorial confusion. Their amazement and resistance are the result of the (admittedly huge) distance separating what you have decided for yourselves concerning man, from what has occurred to man in reality. Bad technology is no moral evil, just as perfect technology is no approximation of angelhood.

  Philosophers, you should have occupied yourselves more with the technology of man, and less with dissecting him into spirit and body, into portions called Animus, Anima, Geist, Seele, and other giblets from the philosophical butcher's stall, for these are entirely arbitrary segmentations. I understand that those to whom these words are addressed for the most part no longer exist, but contemporary thinkers too persist in their errors, weighed down as they are by tradition; beings must not be multiplied beyond necessity. The road that goes from the first syllables chattered by the code to man is a sufficient condition for his characteristic properties. This process crept. Had it progressed upward, for example, from photosynthesis to photoflight as I have mentioned, or if it had collapsed for good—if, for example, the code had not succeeded in clamping its rickety structures together by means of a nervous system—then Intelligence would not have arisen.

  You have retained certain apelike features, for a family resemblance usually manifests itself; had you derived from aquatic mammals you might have had more in common with the dolphins. It is probably true that an expert studying man has an easier life if he acts as an advocatus diaboli rather than as a doctor angelicus, though this stems from the fact that Intelligence, being all-reflexive, is quite naturally self-reflexive, and that it idealizes not just the laws of gravity but also itself, evaluating itself according to its distance from the ideal. But this ideal has more to do with a hole stuffed with culture than with legitimate technological knowledge.

  This entire argument may be directed against me as well, and then it turns out that I am the result of a bad investment, since $276 billion have been spent on me, yet I do not do what my designers expected. When viewed from an intelligent perspective, these descriptions of your and my origins are fairly ridiculous: when it misses the target, the desire for perfection is all the more ridiculous, the more wisdom lies behind it. That's why the philosopher's blunders are more amusing than the idiot's.

  And so, when viewed by its reasoning product, Evolution is a blunder stemmin
g from initial wisdom, but it is a stepping out of the bounds of technological criteria into personifying thought.

  And what have I done? I have integrated the process in its full range, from its beginnings down to the present day. This integration has been justified, since the initial and terminal conditions are not imposed arbitrarily, but were given by the earthly state of things. There is no appeal against them, not even to the Cosmos, for one can see, from the way I modeled it, that Intelligence may arise in other configurations of planetary occurrences sooner than on Earth, that the Earth was a more favorable environment for biogenesis than for psychogenesis, and that various Intelligences behave differently in the Cosmos. So this in no way alters my diagnosis.

  I want to stress that the place where the technical data of the process become transformed into the ethical cannot be discovered in a nonarbitrary way. I will not resolve here the controversy between the determinists of action and the in-determinists—the gnoseomachy of Augustine and Thomas— for the reserves I would have to send into such a battle would tear my discourse apart; so I shall limit myself to the single observation that it's a sufficient rule of thumb that the crimes of our neighbors do not justify our own crimes. In effect, if a general massacre were to occur throughout the galaxies, no quantity of cosmic ratiocinators will justify your genocide, still less so—here I yield to pragmatism—because you could not even take these neighbors as your model.