THE SINGULARITY HAS COME AND GONE

Abstract

This paper reflects on a genesis that seems inseparable from that of the human, namely, the coming into being of social organization. It seems impossible to think of a time when humans were not embedded in some social configuration, but it is equally impossible to think of the human species evolving complete with sociocultural formations attached. Even deciding on the word for the beginning of organization prejudges the issue: are we speaking of an emergence, a development, a making, or a virgin birth? Calling on three authors – Giambattista Vico, Michel Serres, and Paolo Virno – I present three kinds of processes of becoming: one as a directional sequence of interlocking steps, one as the fertility of unintended consequences, and one as the creativity of linguistic ruse. Glancing at these different versions sideways one can make out some universal features of the genesis of organization: a self-referential circularity at its inception which hides the starting point, a unique engagement with language and the symbolic, and an intentional act that creates the possibility of a new and different future.

Keywords:

• genesis
• innovation
• organization
• genesis of organization
• Vico
• Virno
• Serres

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In most of the organizational literature organization and system are treated as synonyms and a system requires the observer to delimit its boundary. See Coase, “The economic system works itself” (34), Penrose 15, Drucker 130, Ramos 102.

2 “[A]bout the year 1680 began the art and mystery of projecting to creep into the world” (Defoe 3).

3 Compare also projective in the geometric sense: it similarly determines a (generative) method, which creates a range of similar – similar since generated by specified transformations – figures. “From the beginning we do not consider the metrical and projective relations in the manner in which they are embodied in any particular figure, but take them with a certain breadth and indefiniteness, which gives them room for development” (Poncelet qtd in Cassirer 81).

4 Bank of England Act 1694 (c.20) p. 1. <http://www.statuelaw.gov.ukcontent.aspn?legType=All-Primary&page Number=1>.

5 Emergence has a naturalistic flavor, which is how Serres prefers to cast the issue. He is the detached observer, who notes, but does not participate in the making.

6 Pāgus, the Roman word for field, derives from the Latin root pāg-, a lengthened grade of Indo-European *pag-, a verbal root, “fasten” (English peg), which in the word may be translated as “boundary staked out on the ground.”^[2] In semantics, *pag- used in pāgus is a stative verb with an unmarked lexical aspect of state resulting from completed action: “it is having been staked out” […] In classical Latin, pagus referred to a country district or to a community within a larger polity. <https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/pagus>.

7 In ancient Egypt, a rope-stretcher (or harpedonaptai) was a surveyor who measured real property demarcations and foundations using knotted cords, stretched so the rope did not sag. The practice is depicted in tomb paintings of the Theban Necropolis. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/>.

8 The mechanism is revealed in the analysis of jokes. The joke is the “black box of innovative action,” says Virno (Multitude 124). It goes behind or beneath habitual praxis to enable and enact “alternative combinations and deviated trajectories” (Virno, Multitude 139) and teaches how new behavior comes into being.

9 Some examples of the logical principles deliberately violated in jokes:

Ambiguity: “Did you take a bath today?” – Answer: “Why? Has one gone missing?”Ignorance of the law of the excluded middle: “I never borrowed your pot, and it had no hole, when I returned it” (Lyotard 15).

Making a contingent feature into an essential one: “You recognize the snark by its habit of getting up late!” (The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll).

10 Lyotard’s phrase regimen also considers the possibility that people are being placed at a disadvantage by it (28).

11 “Fichte taking geometrical intuition as the model of a pure (non-sensible) intuition” (Wood 269).