Is it even doable?

[Bruce Nevin (950810 19:07 EDT)]

I asked about the viability of a science about "social" structures that are
in principle imperceptible to us in the way that our perceptual universe is
beyond the ken of our cells and vice versa. I should have asked a bit
more.

Is such a science even doable?

Unlike cells, we are able to infer and model what we cannot directly perceive.

What basis can we have?

We can look at what might be reorganization in process (lots of candidates
these days!). We can get at maybe what kinds of error instigate social
change and occasion its cessation, from the point of the human
participants, but that's not the point. (That's the sort of question we
need to ask about why cells bother to do the things that amount to
reorganization, however.) We can look at the social arrangments themselves
and see how they more or less support their participants' attainment of
their autonomous goals, but that again is from the cell's point of view.
The hypothesis is that what implements higher-level control, analogous to
spikes and firing rates, is not noticed by us, and may even be inaccessible
to our biological senses. However, unlike cells, we have instrumental means
of extending the scope of our senses.

The hypothesis, then, suggests that we look for some coin of transaction in
human interactions, of no value to us but present incidentally (as we see
it) in our relations with one another. The time scale of transaction is
likely to be much slower than that of events of multicellular animal order.

Not much to go on. Can it be made more specific?

And of course, it goes without saying (and is therefore all the more
important to ask): Is there some reason this notion can be dismissed out of
hand?

Interesting basis for science fiction plots, anyway. Quite different from
the usual take, neither the warm fuzzy bland-out of Asimov's notions of
group-mind in the last of the Foundation "trilogy" nor the regulation
spooky body-snatch zombie riff.

        Bruce

Bruce E. Nevin Cisco Systems, Inc.
+1-508-262-1120 ATM Business Unit
+1-508-262-1039 (FAX) 1100 Technology Park Drive
bnevin@cisco.com Billerica MA USA 01821