Neologistics

Conceiving of etymology as an evolutionary science it may be possible to determine how a system of signification demonstrates principles of adaptation and differentiation that are in many ways analogous to those seen in living systems. In developing the idea of reflective consciousness Matturana and Varela posit that “language enables those who operate in it to describe themselves and their circumstances through the linguistic distinction of linguistic distinctions.”[1] The evolution of a mode of description, its variations, and its internal dynamics, reveal much about the circumstances it is describing and moreover about the historical phenomenon resulting from the structural coupling between autonomous systems. However this system that describes and creates meaning is, much like the nervous system, neither representational nor solipsistic. It is structurally determined by its own internal configuration and dynamics but also interacts with other systems in such a way that certain adaptational requirements are triggered from within. Indeed, these variations are preserved in the semantic drift and “meaning becomes part of our domain of conservation of adaptation.”[2] Etymology concerns itself with meaning’s fossil record and discerning how the distinctions made by the linguistic domain change over time.

In The Control Revolution, James Beniger subjects the evolution of information technology in the late 19th and 20th centuries to his analytic model that shows systems responding to ‘crises of control’ by asserting a more rigorous control over energy and information. Addressing language as means of description demanded by new forms of control technology, Beniger somewhat fails to account for the technology of signification systems to assimilate new phenomena into an existing épistémè. Nonetheless, in his study of information technology Beniger asserts that “the crucial aspect of a definition is exposed by etymology.”[3] Etymology does not provide a mere genealogy of words and the history of their circulation, dissemination and use. It also presents us with more complex image of the dynamics and exchanges of energy (information) that results from the structural coupling of systems. This correspondence between the linguistic domain and the domain of actions is of primary concern to Matturana and Varela: “the linguistic domain becomes part of the environment in which linguistic coordination’s of actions take place.”[4]

Although Beniger excludes “those capabilities that occur naturally in living systems” from his treatment of control technology, he points to language as an exception given that it purposively “defines the limits on what a society can do” by setting the parameters of what can be said or otherwise located within a linguistic domain of meaning.[5] While industrial technologies may indicate an historical expansion of societies capabilities, it is the linguistic system that provides the ‘knowing how we know’—the reflection upon historical phenomena—that Matturana and Varela see as quintessential to the self-reflexive cognitive act. Beniger captures the “co-ontogenic structural drift” that “occurs as the members of a social system live together,” but he never critically apprehends the linguistic domain as its own form of control technology the co-evolves with other systems be them technological, economic, or social.

Neologisms, literally ‘new words,’ exemplify how the informatics of control technology can react to environmental perturbations triggering variations in the evolution of a system of signification. The semantic drift occurring in the phylogenetic evolution of a language over time demonstrates languages capacity for “continual readjustment to environmental variation and change over successive generations.”[6] This response to various crises fits into Benigers model of ‘crisis of control’; that is, when there is a disjuncture between material conditions and the second order system that accounts for these systems (social, technological, etc.) with reference to its own evolutionary dynamics and organization. The necessity of such a tendency in evolutionary drift—the for new modes of reflexivity—is provided for by the condition that “each new technological innovation extends the processes that sustain life, thereby increasing the need for control and hence for improved control technology.”[7] A similar pattern is easily recognizable in the continual delineations taking place in linguistic domains; the observers “linguistic distinctions of linguistic distinctions” that reflects a tendency of complexification and differentiation within the circumstances it is describing. As technological forms diversify and increase in complexity the need for language as control technology demands greater differentiation within the linguistic domain.

This need for control correlates to a more general imperative of control that demands counter-entropic responses to movements towards disorder. The word entropy as we are to understand it first appeared in 1868 in Peter G. Tait’s Sketch Thermodynamics wherein he revised and reversed German physicists Clausius’ earlier conception of the term; however, the concept does not limit itself to its original application of studying the tendencies of molecular energy in closed systems. As Beniger demonstrates, information processing as a historical phenomenon is closely related to energy processing and the control of information corresponds to “the synthesis of matter and energy into more organized forms…the organization and support of these processes in well-integrated systems.”[8] If entropy is to be conceived of as the energy in a system that is lost to increasing disorder, its application for information systems seems to be that entropy indicates a failure of information to account for the increasing complexity in the dynamics of historical phenomena. Beniger cites Ludwig Boltzmann’s idea that “entropy is related to ‘missing information’,” conceptually linking the organization of organic and meta-discursive unities.[9] A word that is more precise or more specifically captures the idea of its corresponding material reality is a stronger and more adaptogenic form of control technology. On the contrary a word that leaves more mystery about its correspondence to historical phenomena will ultimately prove insufficient to control the crisis of complexification. Whether avoiding heat death, the Big Chill, or the destabilization of linguistic signification, control technologies are all purposively organized counter to entropic movement and helps narrow the distance that maintains the distinction between living and non-living systems.
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1. Humberto Matturana and Francisco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge, 210.
2. Matturana and Varela, 211.
3. James Beniger, The Control Revolution, 48.
4. Matturana and Varela, 211.
5. Beniger, 9.
6. Beniger, 108-109.
7. Beniger, 10.
8. Beniger, 38.
9. Beniger, 47.