Organic mechanics

In the following two lines the left end is mechanical and the right end is organic.

(1) Technical – cultural - political - economic – ethical – spiritual
(2) Classical physics – chemistry – biology – psychology – sociology – anthropology – philosophy

The box lists pairs of ideas. This dramatizes a common either/or where, depending on your point of view, disciplined scientists are pitted against indisciplined wafflers OR creative artists and social reformers are pitted against pedantic and narrow-minded, old paradigm ‘experts’.

I was educated (indoctrinated) as a Zoologist. This put me on the soft end of the hard sciences and their technologies. But much of it is a mystery to me!

Thus I applaud, and stand in awe of, the clever stuff invented and maintained by the mechanicals. The list is endless. There are houses that are wind and water tight with hot and cold running water and indoor toilets, and with electricity and electronic gadgets. There are roads and bridges for cars, buses and monster trucks. There is a huge range of foodstuffs prepared by a global system of farmers and factory workers and distributed to nearby supermarkets. And of course there are computers and the internet.

My appreciation grew through working in hardship posts in various parts of the tropics where the invisible hand of modernity had not yet become a living presence. For example, in the S Sudan I organized a Technological and Industrial Studies Group (TISG) where, amongst other things we worked on more fuel efficient charcoal stoves, on solar food dryers, and on Ventilated Improved Pit Latrines. This was by way of adding a practical aspect to a science curriculum that was too academic.

But I always had an artistic, creative streak and I applaud those brave souls who do their best to tie down the organic socio-cultural side of things. Myth and magic. Hierarchy and status. Academia and the media. Politics and religion. Politics and the globalizing economy. The welfare state. The United Nations. And populist bread and circuses so that the elite keeps the peasants elegantly biddable.

But, arguably, such simple them v us thinking is going the way of the dinosaurs. It is old paradigm. Contemporary thinkers work in multidisciplinary teams and take a holistic view of problem areas. The hard stuff and the soft stuff need each other if they are to make effective and sustainable changes to the way that we live on the planet.

I am particularly chuft to note that the biological and social sciences are working together in increasingly fruitful ways. The paradigm is shifting and I find joy and hope in the synthesis of neurology, evolutionary psychology and meditation; in the growing numbers of people with a globalised and cosmopolitan world view; and in the flourishing of harmonious organic mechanics.