Chapter 1

Knowledge is never discovered. It is made. Always.

Meaning is a mental construct. Bateson divided the universe into Pleroma and Creatura, and the division explains many of our epistemic struggles. The fact-mongers deny the importance of interpretation. Those who focus on interpretation find themselves denying the physical realities that surround them (deconstruction). Both camps are wrong. Physical realities determine our lives in many important ways. But interpretation and meaning-making are the essential human activities. In fact, they are the activities of all creatura.

The complication comes from the interconnectedness of physical and conceptual systems. The two can be closely aligned, totally misaligned, or connected in a host of interesting ways. Fictions may have no direct bearing on physical systems in existence, but they may still make statements that are true of physical systems. They may also generate states of mind that lead to physical activities which DO have a direct bearing on physical systems in existence. Thus the imagination of a culture can believe a new order into being.

For instance, the body is a physical system. A natural habitat is a physical system. A house is a physical system. All of these physical systems are nested, in that the body exists within a house, which exists within a habitat, which exists within the broader ecosystem, which exists within regional physical systems, and so on.

In like fashion, conceptual systems are nested and interconnected. One person’s worldview is related to, but not the same as, his or her family’s worldview. One person’s beliefs and values are connected to friends, and books, and movies, and family, and social norms, and so on.

Physical and conceptual systems are related in two ways. Creatura is, literally, MADE OF Pleroma. In other words, minds and meanings are emergent qualities of physical systems. On the other hand, data and information are not physical, because they are made of what Bateson called “difference” (and more importantly they are not made at all except when there is a mind to interpret them). Nonetheless, data and information are vital to the management of physical systems. If creatures did not recognize seasonal changes, they would be unprepared and perish. If we did not recognize that we were getting dangerously cold or hot, we would also perish. Of course, this is the problem for us now. We are doing things to the earth that will destroy it—and us—but do not realize yet how hot the water is getting. As Al Gore and others remind us, frogs in lukewarm water may not recognize the problem of gradually increasing temperature until they are boiled alive.

“Knowledge” has many forms, but the most important knowledge has to do with our relationships with the many systems—both physical and conceptual—that we live within and that live within us. This is not mysticism. It is pure science taken to a new level—the level of rhetoric, of meaning, of spirit.

No. Pleroma is physical system. Creatura is mental system. Interpretation and Knowledge are higher levels in the nested structure.

Information flows in all physical systems, yet it is not physical. It is recognized as a meaning-bearing pattern, which requires a meaning-making or meaning-recognizing creature.

KNOWLEDGE IS NOT SIMPLY CATALOGUING AND CONNECTING DATA INTO PRE_EXISTING STRUCTURES. This is the failure of the academy and the sciences. KNOWLEDGE IS NOT SIMPLY PERSONAL AND EMOTIVE. This is the failure of the humanities. KNOWLEDGE IS INTERPRETATION THAT MAKES RELATIONSHIPS BETTER, MORE INTERESTING, MORE FUNCTIONAL. Patterns of meaning matter because they enable life, make life better, more pleasurable, more meaningful. In short, the VALUE of a pattern of meaning or an interpretation or a choice is determined by its QUALITY (which is where Pirsig and I agree).

EXPERIENCE is the matrix of our existence, as illustrated by Damasio. Humans with brain losses have no memory, no long-term vision, no sense of who they are. They simply live in the moment and experience it. This is the primary moment. But our memories, our systems of understanding, our ability to interpret and make meaning, enrich our experience tremendously. They enable us to avoid past mistakes. To find food. To recognize potential dangers in our environment. To treasure that which no longer exists, and learn from it. To hope. To dream. To build and to destroy.

KNOWLEDGE should always begin with these understandings. What good is knowledge that is unconnected from life, from the making of meaning, from the physical systems in which we live? “Pure research” can still maintain this contact, and does when at its best. And in the humanities we desperately need scholars and poets who can help the broader “public” understand why we do what we do and why it can (yes, really) be meaningful and significant for them.

We need to have a knowledge interface that meets the broader public and opens doors of understanding, and helps to generate a vetting system that eliminates unending triviality from the world of scholarly work. What are the qualities of good scholarship in a world ruled by the Internet? They are very different from the medieval qualities once sought. Can someone ever master everything written about an important topic? Should one? Can we write provisionally and yet maintain real authority? Can we make meaning without simply becoming solipsistic? Is the value of scholarship that it fills an intellectual niche that has to date been unfilled? Or that it makes meaning and generates new questions and new ideas of value not only for a handful of specialists but for all those who seek to interpret literature, and life, better and more richly?