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TIME AND EVOLUTION
Everything is linked to time, even the full meaning of words. Any vision of nature and society that wants to be comprehensive cannot ignore the vast problem of time; it determines even our manner of thinking. It is difficult and dangerous to tackle the concept of time. Each of us feels deep inside that he must struggle fiercely, step by step, to preserve the concept, to continue to let himself be guided by this vital thread to which we cling as though it held our universe together. To break the thread would be to risk undoing, stitch by stitch, the net woven by preceding generations, the web in which our past is imprinted and our future constructed. Nevertheless we must pull gently on this thread to see where it leads and to learn whether it forms a closed loop. To study the world through the macroscope is to try to perceive, beyond details, the great principles that tie us to the universe. Without the attempt to leave the tunnel that time has drawn us into, there can be no constructive dialogue between the objective and the subjective, between observation and action. The cybernetic feedback loop has many interesting properties, some of which are linked to time. Having discovered them, the first cyberneticians were obliged to introduce finality, or purpose, into the world of machines. In an information/decision/action loop, information on the results of past actions is the basis for the decisions that will correct a present or future action. Because decisions are made to achieve an end, the consequent action is purposeful; such a loop illustrates the occurrence of an intelligent act. Not only men achieve intelligent acts; there are also the cybernetic machines, the servomechanisms. Their "decision" mechanism is also embedded in a feedback loop. Consider the general circuit of any feedback loop and then ask, does cause precede effect or does effect precede cause? It is impossible to say, there appears to be no distinction between them, and they cannot be split apart in time. Causality follows the entire circuit of the loop; so does finality.
[our artist statement is sampled from the theoretical abstract |