Koestler, Arthur. The Ghost in the Machine. New York: Random House, 1976.

Complex activities are often dependent on more than one hierarchic order - trees with intertwining branches - each controlled by its own rules and value-criteria: meaning and euphony, form and function, melody and orchestration, and so on. (40)

The first universal characteristic of hierarchies is the relativity, and indeed ambiguity, of the terms ‘part’ and ‘whole’ when applied to any of the sub-assemblies. (47-48)

But ‘wholes’ and ‘parts’ in this absolute sense just do not exist anywhere, either in the domain of living organisms or of social organisations. What we find are intermediary structures on a series of levels in an ascending order of complexity: sub-wholes which display, according to the way you look at them, some of the characteristics commonly attributed to wholes and some of the characteristics commonly attributed to parts. (48)

A skill can be exercised in the service of some larger activity and as part of it; but virtually any skill can also become a habit which brooks no interference and may be pursued for its own sake. In the first case, the functional holon serves the integration of behaviour; in the second case, it can display very marked self-assertive tendencies - the proverbial ‘stubborness of habits’...Habits are behavioural holons, governed by rules which mostly operate unconsciously. Taken together, they constitute what we call personality or style. But each holon also has a margin of strategic choices, and that margin of choice increases in ascending order with the increasing complexity of higher levels. And if we ask what determines the conscious choices at the apex, we again find ourselves in a regressing series. (76)

every skill (or habit) has a fixed and variable aspect. The former is determined by its canon, the ‘rules of the game’, which lend it its characteristic pattern - whether the game is making a spider’s web, constructing a bird’s nest, ice-skating, or playing chess. But the rules permit a certain variety by alternative choices: the web can be suspended from three or four points of attachment, the nest can be adjusted to the angle of the fork in the branch, the chess-player has a vast choice among permissible moves. These choices, having been left open by the rules, depend on the lie of the land, the local environment in which the holon operates - they are a matter of strategy, guided by feedbacks. Put in a different way, the fixed code of rules determines the permissible moves, flexible strategy determines the choice of the actual moves among the permissible ones. The larger the number of alternative choices, the more complex and flexible the skill. Vice versa, if there is no choice at all, we reach the limit case of the specialised reflex. Thus rigidity and flexibility are opposite ends of a scale which applies to every type of hierarchy; and in every case we shall find that flexibility increases, rigidity decreases, as we move upward to higher levels. (105)

If a skill is practised in the same unvarying conditions, following the same unvarying course, it tends to degenerate into stereo-typed routine, and its degrees of freedom freeze up. Monotony accelerates, enslavements to habit; it makes the rigor mortis of mechanisations spread upward in the hierarchy. (111)

However, the challenge of the environment can exceed a critical limit where it can no longer be met by skilled routine, however flexible - because the customary ‘rules of the game’ are no longer adequate to cope with the situation. Then a crisis arises. The outcome is either a breakdown of behaviour - ‘when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout’. The alternative possibility is the sudden emergence of new forms of behaviour, of original solutions - which, as we shall see, play a vital part in both biological evolution and mental progress. (111)

On successively higher levels of the hierarchy we find more complex, flexible and less predictable patterns of activity, while on successively lower levels we find more and more mechanised, stereotyped and predictable patterns. In the language of the physicist, a holon on a higher level of the hierarchy has more degrees of freedom than a holon on a lower level. (112)

All skills, whether derived from instinct or learning, tend with increasing practice to become mechanised routines. Monotonous environments facilitate enslavement to habit; while unexpected contingencies reverse the trend, and may result in ingenious improvisations. Critical challenges may lead to a break-down of behaviour or to the creation of new forms of behaviour. (112)

The phenomena of homology implied in fact the hierarchic principle in phylogeny as well as in ontogeny. (139)

the evolution of life is a game played according to fixed rules which limit its possibilities but leave sufficient scope for a limitless number of variations. The rules are inherent in the basic structure of living matter; the variations derive from adaptive strategies. (148)

The principle cause of stagnation and extinction is over-specialisation. (161)

Other things being equal, a monotonous environment leads to the mechanisation of habits, to stereotyped routines which, repeated under the same unvarying conditions, follow the same rigid, unvarying course. (172)

On the other hand, a changing, variable environment presents challenges which can only be met by flexible behaviour, variable strategies, alertness for exploiting favourable opportunities. (172)

However, the challenge may exceed a critical limit, so that it can no longer be met by the organism’s customary skills. In such a major crisis - and both biological evolution and human history are punctuated by such crises - one of two possibilities may occur. The first is degenerative - leading to stagnation, biological senescence, or sudden extinction as the case may be. (172)

The alternative possibility of reacting to a critical challenge is regenerative in a broad sense; it involves major reoorganisations of structure and behaviour, which result in biological or mental progress. (173)

To unlearn is more difficult than to learn; and it seems that the task of breaking up rigid cognitive structures and re-assembling them into a new synthesis cannot, as a rule, be performed in the full daylight of the conscious, rational mind. It can only be done by reverting to those more fluid, less committed and specialised forms of thinking which normally operate in the twilight zones of awareness. (179)

There is a popular superstition, according to which scientists arrive at their discoveries by reasoning in strictly rational, precise, verbal terms. The evidence indicates that they do nothing of the sort. (179-180)

On the testimony of those original thinkers who have taken the trouble to record their methods of work, not only verbal thinking but conscious thinking in general plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive, phase of the creative act itself. (180)

There are always large chunks of irrationality embedded in the creative process, not only in art (where we are ready to accept it) but in the exact sciences as well. (180)

Language can become a screen between thinker and reality; and creativity often starts where language ends, that is, by regressing to pre-verbal levels of mental activity. (180)

“the point to retain is that the creative act in mental evolution again reflects the pattern of…a temporary regression, followed by a forward leap.” (181)

I proposed the term ‘matrix’ as a unifying formula to refer to such cognitive structures, that is to say, to all mental habits and skills governed by a fixed set of rules but capable of varied strategies in attacking a problem. (182)

In other words, matrices are cognitive holons and display all the characteristics of holons discussed in previous chapters. They are controlled by their canons, but guided by feedback from the environment – the distribution of the men on the chessboard, the features of the problem in hand. They range from extremes of pedantic rigidity to liberal open-mindedness – within limits. They are ordered into ‘vertical’ abstractive hierarchies, which interlace in horizontal associative networks and cross-references. (182-183)

Let me repeat: all routine thinking is comparable to playing a game according to fixed rules and more or less flexible strategies. (183)

The history of science is a history of the marriages between ideas which were previously strangers to each other, and frequently considered as incompatible. (184)

From Pythagoras, who combined arithmetic and geometry, to Newton, who combined Galileo’s studies of the motion of projectiles with Kepler’s equations of planetary orbits, to Einstein, who unified energy and matter in a single sinister equation, the pattern is always the same. The creative act does not create something out of nothing, like the God of the Old Testament; it combines, reshuffles and relates already existing but hitherto separate ideas, facts, frame of perception, associative contexts. This act of cross-fertilisation – or self-fertilisation within a single brain – seems to be the essence of creativity, and to justify the term ‘bisociation’. (184)

Take the example of Gutenberg who invented the printing press (or at least invented it independently from others). His first idea was to cast letter-types like signet rings or seals. But how could he assemble thousands of little seals in such a way that they made an even imprint on paper? He struggled with the problem for years, until one day he went to a wine harvest in his native Rhineland, and presumably got drunk. He wrote in a letter: ‘I watched the wine flowing, and going back from the effect to the cause, I studied the power of the wine press which nothing can resist . . .’ At that moment the penny dropped: seals and the wine press combined gave the letter press. (185)

The integrative tendency, which is our present concern, reflects the ‘part-ness’ of a holon, its dependence on, and belonging to, a more complex whole. (190)

We have seen that creative originality in science or art always has a constructive and a destructive side – destructive, that is to say, to established conventions of technique, style, dogma or prejudice. (230-231)

Aberrations of the human mind are to a large extend due to the obsessional pursuit of some part-truth, treated as if it were a whole truth – of a holon masquerading as a whole. (232)

In extreme cases, a cognitive holon which has got out of control can behave like a cancerous tissue invading other mental structures. (232)

“integrative tendencies of the individual are incomparably more dangerous than his self-assertive tendencies.” (233)

Let me repeat: the crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of self-sacrificing devotion to a flag, a leader, a religious faith or a political conviction. Man has always been prepared not only to kill but also to die for god, bad or completely futile causes. (234)

The integrative tendencies of the individual operate through the mechanisms of empathy, sympathy, projection, introjection, identification, worship – all of which make him feel that he is a part of some larger entity which transcends the boundaries of the individual self. (242)

In a well-balanced hierarchy, the individual retains his character as a social holon, a party-whole, who qua whole, enjoys autonomy within the limits of the restraints imposed by the interests of the community. He remains an individual whole in his own right, and is even expected to assert his holistic character by originality, initiative, and above all, personal responsibility. (247)

Immersion in the group mind is a kind of poor man’s self-transcendence. (248)

In other words, the self-assertive behaviour of its members, which often entails sacrifice of personal interests and even of life in the interest of the group. To put it simply: the egotism of the group feeds on the altruism of its members. (251)

War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. (253)

By a closed system I mean a cognitive matrix, governed by a canon, which has three main peculiarities. Firstly, it claims to represent a truth of universal validity, capable of explaining all phenomena, and to have a cure for all that ails man. In the second place, it is a system which cannot be refuted by evidence, because all potentially damaging data are automatically processed and reinterpreted to make them fit the expected pattern. The processing is done by sophisticated methods of casuistry, centred on axioms of the system itself. (263)

A closed system is a cognitive structure with a distorted, non-Euclidian geometry in curved space, where parallels intersect and straight lines form loops. (264)

Our imagination is willing to accept that things are changing, but unable to accept the rate at which they are changing, and to extrapolate the future. (319)

We dare no longer extrapolate into the future, partly because we are frightened, mainly because of the poverty of our imagination. (319)

As a further illustration of the gulf between our intellectual and emotional-development, take the contrast between communication and co-operation. Progress of the means of communication is again reflected by an exponential curve: crowded within a single century are the invention of steam-ship, railway, motor car, air-ship, aeroplane, rocket, space-ship; of telegraph, telephone, gramophone, radio, radar; of photography, cinematography, television, telstar. (320)

Before the communications-explosion the communications-explosion travel was slow, but there existed no Iron Curtain, no Berlin Wall, no minefields in no-man’s lands, and hardly any restrictions on immigration or emigration; today about one-third of mankind is not permitted to leave its own country. One could almost say that progress in co-operation varied in inverse ratio to progress in communications. (321)

Language, the outstanding achievement of the neocortex, became a more dividing than unifying factor, increasing intra-specific tensions; progress in communications followed a similar trend of turning a blessing into a curse. (321)

It is as if a gang of delinquent children had been locked in a room filled with inflammable material, and provided with match-boxes – accompanied by the warning not to use them. (325)

The conclusions, if we dare to draw them, are quite simple. Our biological evolution to all intents and purposes came to a standstill in Cro-Magnon days. Since we cannot in the foreseeable future expect the necessary change in human nature to arise by way of a spontaneous mutation, that is, by natural means, we must induce it by artificial means. We can only hope to survive as a species by developing techniques which supplant biological evolution. We must search for a cure for the schizophysiology inherent in man’s nature, and the resulting split in our minds, which led to the situation in which we find ourselves. (327)

A mental stabilizer would produce neither euphoria, nor sleep, nor mescalin visions, nor cabbage-like equanimity – it would in fact have no noticeably specific effect, except promoting cerebral coordination and harmonizing thought and emotion; in other words, restore the integrity of the split hierarchy. It would spread because people like feeling healthy rather than unhealthy in body or mind. It would spread as vaccination has spread, and contraception has spread, not by coercion but by enlightened self-interest. (336)

Like the reader, I would prefer to set my hopes on moral persuasion by word and example. But we are a mentally sick race, and as such deaf to persuasion. (338-339)

Nature has let us down, God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out. To hope for salvation to be synthesized in the laboratory may seem materialistic, crankish, or naïve; but, to tell the truth, there is a Jungian twist to it – for it reflects the ancient alchemist’s dream to concoct the elixir vitae. What we expect from it, however, is not external life, nor the transformation of base metal into gold, but the transformation of homo maniacus into homo sapiens. When man decides to take his fate into his own hands, that possibility will be within reach. (339)