Abstract
Abstract This paper discusses the novelty of Aleksandr Bogdanov’s approach, which combines the systemic perspectives employed in his Tektology, the general science of organization (1913–1922). In this work, Bogdanov places particular emphasis on the concept of the environment and situates the process of ‘organization’ in a shared social context. The interaction among social agents, and between them and their contextual surroundings, implies a cybernetic relationship. The environment is, in fact, regarded in terms of both its influence in shaping human living conditions and its plasticity in being transformed by human labour for specific purposes. Likewise, in Tektology, Bogdanov considers not only the social context but also biological and ecological systems that foster an emergent relationship between organisms and their environments. On the one hand, the environment favours biological organisms best adapted to its conditions; on the other hand, the environment is seen as a portion of space (ecosystem) in which populations live and continuously modify the biogeochemical conditions of that system. By referring to biological, ecological and cognitive levels of cybernetic organization, I argue that Bogdanov’s tektological polymorphic idea of the environment embraces different dimensions of the systemic discourse, and can also be useful in understanding the process of knowledge creation underlying the idea of a proletarian culture.
Highlights
Contemporary interpretations of Bogdanov as a pioneer of cybernetics and systems theory see his contributions only as precursors to later perspectives
As James White and Vadim Sadovskiy pointed out, Bogdanov’s early thinking, and in particular his epistemology, deeply influenced the rise of the general science of organization and his Empiriomonism should be considered the philosophical foundation of Tektology (White 1998; Sadovskiy 1992)
By reversing the perspective that sees Bogdanov’s empiriomonistic ideas as the theoretical ground for tektology, I will use, instead, the biological and ecological concepts described in his later work on the universal science of organization to shed some light on his earlier discourse about the production of knowledge in a social context
Summary
Contemporary interpretations of Bogdanov as a pioneer of cybernetics and systems theory see his contributions only as precursors to later perspectives. The process of knowledge creation is not a passive recording of external phenomena but an active behaviour aimed at understanding and grasping ‘facts’ of nature that belong to the group and are collectively learned In this respect, Avenarius and Mach share the assumption, later endorsed by Bertrand Russell, that knowledge is primarily a biological adaptation. Avenarius seems to regard the process of active ‘communication’ as being prior to the process of ‘adaptation’ to the environment In his view, the possibility of knowing implies a process of assimilation of the spatial and social environment through inter-communication of individual experiences. A sensation, which is a product of biological evolution, is not just about individual sentient beings and their psycho-cognitive structures; rather, it is a global process that affects the whole body It occurs in less complex elementary organisms in which cognitive structures are almost absent. We shall consider the process of knowledge in Bogdanov’s view and conclude with his idea of culture as living experience
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