"Page0020" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bloom Howard - The Lucifer Principle (htm))

14

14

The Whole Is Bigger Than the Sum of Its Parts

There's a strange concept in the philosophy of science called an

"entelechy."  An entelechy is something complex that emerges when you

put a large number of simple objects together.  Examine one molecule of

water in a vacuum, and you'll be utterly bored by the lack of activity in

your vacuum tube.  Pour a bunch of molecules into a glass, and a new

phenomenon crops up--a ring of ripples on the water's surface.

Combine enough glasses of water in a big enough basin and you'll end

up with something entirely different: an ocean.  Take the 26 letters of the

English alphabet, lay them out in front of you, and you'll have a set of

small squiggles, each of which evokes just one or two specific sounds.

String a few million together in precisely the proper order and you'll

have the collected works of Shakespeare.6

These are entelechies.  A city, a town, a culture, a religion, a body

of mythology, a hit record, a dirty joke...these, too, are the results of

entelechies.  Take one human being, isolate him in a room from the time

he's born until the time he dies, and you'll end up with a creature

incapable of using language, with little in the way of imagination--an

emotional and physical wreck.7  But put that baby together with 50

others, and you'll end up with something entirely new--a culture.

Cultures spring into existence only when the crowd is large

enough. They are a phenomenon that sweeps across the face of the

multitude like a wave.  The phenomenon that creates the Beatles, the

phenomenon that makes a Hitler, the phenomenon that launches a new

philosophy like Communism or Christian Fundamentalism, these are all

entelechies at work, waves rolling over the surface of society,

incorporating the minor moves of individual human beings into a

massive force the way swells of the sea orchestrate insignificant twitches

of water molecules into an overwhelming motion.

14

14

The Whole Is Bigger Than the Sum of Its Parts

There's a strange concept in the philosophy of science called an

"entelechy."  An entelechy is something complex that emerges when you

put a large number of simple objects together.  Examine one molecule of

water in a vacuum, and you'll be utterly bored by the lack of activity in

your vacuum tube.  Pour a bunch of molecules into a glass, and a new

phenomenon crops up--a ring of ripples on the water's surface.

Combine enough glasses of water in a big enough basin and you'll end

up with something entirely different: an ocean.  Take the 26 letters of the

English alphabet, lay them out in front of you, and you'll have a set of

small squiggles, each of which evokes just one or two specific sounds.

String a few million together in precisely the proper order and you'll

have the collected works of Shakespeare.6

These are entelechies.  A city, a town, a culture, a religion, a body

of mythology, a hit record, a dirty joke...these, too, are the results of

entelechies.  Take one human being, isolate him in a room from the time

he's born until the time he dies, and you'll end up with a creature

incapable of using language, with little in the way of imagination--an

emotional and physical wreck.7  But put that baby together with 50

others, and you'll end up with something entirely new--a culture.

Cultures spring into existence only when the crowd is large

enough. They are a phenomenon that sweeps across the face of the

multitude like a wave.  The phenomenon that creates the Beatles, the

phenomenon that makes a Hitler, the phenomenon that launches a new

philosophy like Communism or Christian Fundamentalism, these are all

entelechies at work, waves rolling over the surface of society,

incorporating the minor moves of individual human beings into a

massive force the way swells of the sea orchestrate insignificant twitches

of water molecules into an overwhelming motion.