Over the course of my sabbatical, I've been doing a lot of reading. I began with The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto by Mikhail Epstein to get a sense of where art theory was with regard to postmodernism. When I finished up my BFA in Albuquerque back in 1996, postmodernism was the umbrella "ism" applied to most contemporary art of that time. Post-postmodernism was already brewing around that time as well (Epstein reference in that Wikipedia page is what lead me to his book), but I had spent my last few years of college trying to wrap my head around postmodernist thinkers from Jean Baudrillard, who was fairly accessible, to Jacques Derrida, who was somewhat impenetrable, and felt like I was just scratching at the surface. Most of what I'd been reading was extolling the intellectual virtues of postmodernism while the few critics I encountered seemed mostly banal.

Epstein is critical of postmodernism as a cultural dead end, and while his book barely covered the art and architecture from my study in college, it did provide me with a broader conception of postmodernism that helped me recontextualize what I already knew. In that light, suddenly Jacques Derrida and his influence on postmodern art was more comprehensible. While literary criticism was the main focus of The Transformative Humanities, science and philosophy made up a large part of the content. I became particularly interested in epistemology, which led me in a round-about way to David Deutsch and his books The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity. In The Beginning of Infinity, Deutsch presents an idea he calls scientific optimism, which originated with Karl Popper, a philosopher that Deutsch derives much of his epistemological viewpoint from, and reading his thoughts on scientific optimism brought me back around to thinking about Mikhail Epstein.

The primary message in Deutsch's second book, The Beginning of Infinity, is that the potential for future knowledge is unlimited. Knowledge is created by the act of solving problems and the solution to any problem will always reveal more problems he says. Deutsch claims that this cycle is simply the state of things and that it will continue to be that way until the big crunch or the heat death of the universe. His conclusion is, as a knowledge creating species, we are at the beginning of infinity and always will be because of the nature of infinity. Even given the finite nature of our universe, Deutsch postulates that in the physics of either end case scenario, the universe collapsing back in on itself or the slow cooling of an ever-expanding universe, there will be sufficient energy for the continued creation of knowledge into the void of infinity due to the strange nature of time. Deutsch presents the mindset of scientific optimism in the face of this infinity of potential knowledge.

In the seventeenth century, the Age of Enlightenment gave rise to the scientific method and required a new openness to change in societies where it took root. Deutsch marks this as a turning point in our cultural evolution. Society up to that point in human history, he claims, had required a governing doctrine that promoted stasis to keep a lid on changes in the cultural worldview. New ideas had the potential to shake civilizations apart and had to be treated with the greatest suspicion. This, Deutsch proposes, required an outlook of pessimism. The pessimistic mindset helped hold civilizations together and could be regarded as a necessary evil, but it was counter to humans natural creativity. With the scientific method, at first came the potential and then the requirement for societies to open themselves to change. Science provides a framework within which new knowledge is rigorously tested and that provides some safeguards against bad knowledge. Additionally, the scientific method requires that all knowledge should regularly be subjected to skepticism and typically when new knowledge is created old knowledge is reevaluated.

It is from the perspective of this emerging open society that Deutsch proposes the optimistic scientific outlook. The following is a quote from Karl Popper used to open Chapter 9 of The Beginning of Infinity titled "Optimism":

The possibilities that lie in the future are infinite. When I say 'It is our duty to remain optimists,' this includes not only the openness of the future but also that which all of us contribute to it by everything we do: we are all responsible for what the future holds in store. Thus it is our duty, not to prophesy evil but, rather, to fight for a better world. (p. 196)

It is my view that this idea of scientific optimism is not meant as a state of hopefulness or wishfulness but rather an act of will—optimism as a requirement of doing science well and as an intrinsic element of the scientific method. In Deutsch's words, it is "a way of explaining failure, not prophesying success (p. 212)". The creation of knowledge as a collective cultural act that is incrementally improving our understanding and our lives. In fact, Deutsch also declares that all evils are simply the result of a lack of knowledge and that the knowledge to dispel it is always available. This is not to say that hopefulness and wishfulness might not be in alignment with scientific optimism but only that the intent of its use here strikes at something much deeper.

Epstein's book is a proclamation for all of those in the humanities to turn and face this bright and infinite future. He illustrates that the decline of the humanities is partially due to its steadfast focus on the past and stresses that it needs to turn toward the future, not only for the good of the humanities itself but as a critically missing component of our technological processes. He suggests abandoning the late 20th-century practice of labeling new genres by appending the prefix "post" to passing genres. This use of "post" girds the new to the old thereby characterizing them with inevitability and putting them forever in the shadow of. Epstein suggests that rather than "post" we begin using the prefix "proto." This act would free cultural critics to address embryonic genres as they emerge and free the genres from the expectation of their predecessors.

Epstein chooses proto rather than pre because it "indicates a possibility rather than a necessity (p. 26)." He often references the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in the book and here he attributes the idea of proto on Bakhtin's concept of "embryonic genres" in literature.

What we foreground is the ready-made and finalized. Even in antiquity we single out what is ready-made and finalized, and not what has originated and is developing. We do not study literature's pre-literary embryos. (p. 28)

One primary overlap between Epstein & Deutsch is in their coverage of the subject of culture. Deutsch presents a long view of culture that sees it as an emergent property of human intelligence with information storage properties similar to biological genetics. He proposes that it follows similar evolutionary pathways but is a significantly faster mechanism for knowledge acquisition than evolutionary genetics. He also suggests that the piecemeal manner in which new knowledge was incorporated into early societies was volatile and that to limit that volatility most cultures evolved in such a way to limit the growth of knowledge through an enforced state of stasis. Deutsch goes on to explain that the scientific method, which emerged out of the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century, provided society with a mechanism to throttle the creation of knowledge and thus control its volatility to some degree. At our current point in history, Deutsch views the parochial habits of culture mainly as an impediment to scientific progress.

In The Beginning of Infinity, Deutsch doesn't do much more than to simply ask the reader to acknowledge the incompatibility of culture and science. Epstein on the other hand, as a scholar of human culture, acknowledges cultures limitations but suggests that a progressive transcultural mindset can achieve the universality needed to embrace a bolder social culture in harmony with scientific progress. I feel Epstein's book is suggesting a transformation of culture as a vital component of the scientific process. Both authors cover the numerous points in our history where authoritative figures declare that the pace of technological progress is an imminent threat to society and prophesy disaster. These sorts of doomsday prophecy predate the scientific method and can be found in the earliest recorded human history. Deutsch points out in his long view of culture, there are many lessons in history in which rapid changes in human knowledge did lead to the collapse of civilizations. He also references histories where the failure to change cultural practices leads to collapse, making a detailed example of Easter Island. Something as serious as the threat of nuclear war can't simply be glossed over as technophobia. However, since the Enlightenment, scientific progress has regularly brought new knowledge to light to recontextualize the narratives of doom. For example, studies of the prospective effects of nuclear weapons and the global destruction they could wreak lead to limits on the megatonnage of warheads and ultimately to efforts to reduce stockpiles.

Deutsch warns that all prophecy is doomed by its inability to account for unexpected knowledge that will inevitably emerge following such prophecy. This emergent coupling between problems and new knowledge is one of the key components of scientific optimism. However, it is not meant to discount the transformative power of new knowledge will have; new knowledge will create new problems. Deutsch counsels that conjecture is a vital component of the scientific method. That attempting to forecast outcomes is an essential part of science as is the robust criticism of such forecast along with all other emerging knowledge. The optimism expressed by Deutsch and Epstein isn't a faith that technology will save the day, but rather a faith in the scientific method to solve problems. Both authors are promoting a cultural engagement with that process.

Another point of overlap in the books is in the importance of universality. Both authors lament the damage done to universality by postmodern relativism. For Deutsch, universality is at the heart of his theory of infinite knowledge. He tells us that modern computational theory tells scientists that the universe as we know it is computable. That is to say, all of the laws of physics and the material reality they apply to could be simulated on a computer given enough memory and enough time. By this same simulatability, the physical properties of our universe could be modified in simulation to create a fantastically different universe from our own. This capacity in itself opens the door to infinite possibilities.

Epstein's approach to universality is much more pragmatic. Epstein recognizes the utility of universality and proposes pathways by which the humanities can return to universal themes without sacrificing the traditional values of a culture. He makes a case for apophatic, or critical universality.

This raises again the issue of critical universality or, in this case, self-critical universality. Every consensus and every discourse must be critical about its own rules and abandon any hegemonic claims. The ethical motive of new transcultural thinking must be humility and not pride. (pp. 186-187)

In Epstein's formula, critical universality comes precisely from the differences between cultural concepts. His transculturalism is built on the critical analysis of those differences and the formation of universal solutions out of that analysis. Instead of the passive plurality of postmodernism, he suggests a creative pluralism that distinguishes individual cultures internal capacity for pluralism and openness to universal concepts.

One final theme I see tying the two books together and supporting the concept of optimism is their treatment of creativity. The creativity of the humanities is essentially assumed in Epstein's book, and the book as a whole could be seen as turning that creativity toward the expanding future of scientific discovery. Deutsch is much more specific about the role of creativity in society and the sciences: creativity is central to his epistemology. Not only does Deutsch see creativity as being responsible for the creation of new knowledge but he also suggests that it is critical to acquiring new knowledge—that the act of parsing an explanation requires the learner to simulate the very act that created the knowledge using conjecture, criticism and experimentation.

As a follow-up to his chapter on the evolution of culture, Deutsch presents a chapter on the evolution of creativity. He uses Richard Dawkins's conception of memes to represent the simplest unit of knowledge. It is creativity, he says, that differentiates humans from our closest ancestors in the animal kingdom. He cites evidence that primates have the ability to use and manipulate memes but claims humans are the only ones who seek explanations through the creative manipulation of memes. In line with his theories about the emergence of static social cultures, he differentiates memes into two types: anti-rational memes and rational memes. Anti-rational memes in this context are better understood as memes that defy criticism by design—the infallibility of an arbitrary authority for instance. Deutsch claims that they are the mechanisms that create static societies, preserve existing cultural knowledge and limit the creation of new knowledge. He says this explains the lack of innovation in early societies while at the same time creativity itself was being evolutionarily selected for both genetically and memetically.

In these static societies, Deutsch explains, acts of rational creativity would threaten cultural norms and would have been discouraged by cultural taboos; however, displays of exceptional conformity and obedience to anti-rational customs would have been rewarded with social status. This provided a mechanism for evolutionary selection based on creativity and explains how creativity could continue to thrive in static societies. Deutsch goes on to postulate that technological innovations of this period were similar in nature to genetic evolution, mere accidents with positive social outcomes: the results of memetic copying mistakes. These societies' creativity was bound up in anti-rational memes that preserved static societies but it was also tied to the general human objective of explaining the world. Deutsch posits that creativity evolved as a utility function of early humans need to be able to work with and store an ever-increasing number of useful memes.

Thus, as has so often happened in the history of universality, the human capacity for universal explanations did not evolve to have a universal function. It evolved simply to increase the volume of memetic information that our ancestors could acquire, and the speed and accuracy with which they could acquire it. But since the easiest way for evolution to do that was to give us a universal ability to explain, through creativity, that is what it did. This epistemological fact provides not only the solution of the two puzzles I mentioned [What use was creativity & How do you replicate meaning], but also the reason for the evolution of human creativity—and therefore the human species—in the first place. (p. 412)

According to Deutsch, lower primates and other animals acquire memes through imitation but in order for humans to acquire memes, they must first understand them, which requires the same cognitive tools used to create them. He states that creativity is a product of memetics and is thus a property of software, and if we fully understood creativity we would know how to create artificial intelligence. He also speculates that creativity evolved in humans through a combination of genetic and memetic means. The idea that we learn by way of imitation is a mistake of empiricism and inductivism. Instead, the theory goes, we learn by discovering the hidden explanation behind the meme that created the meme in the first place.

In Deutsch's conceptions, a new system of rational memes emerged out of the Enlightenment and the development of modern science. He states that Western civilization is in an unstable state between a stable static society of anti-rational memes and stable dynamic society of rational memes. Pessimism and optimism are simply the operational states these competing societies function under. Ultimately, both David Deutsch and Mikhail Epstein are putting forward their cases for a society built on the foundations of rational and optimistic scientific methodologies. Epstein's approach softens the analytic knife of Deutsch's reasoning and posits numerous practical ideas for moving forward by integrating the humanities into those scientific methodologies. I feel there is a synergy between the ideas put forward by these two authors and hope I was able to convey that here.

A lot of Deutsch's claims sound absurd or a bit overly simplistic at first, but he always takes great care in working through them from many angles until his logic begins to resonate. He seems to take a first principles approach and isn't afraid to tear consensus reality apart and rebuild it in strange new ways. In his first book, The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch lays out the 4 pillars of his philosophy and practice of science and still manages to present a lot of seemingly wild speculation. Whether or not reality as we know it is truly infinite isn't of great concern to me now and unless my consciousness is transposed to silicon in the next 30 years it may never be. What I do get though is that saying that we are near the limit of human understanding is a little like the legendary Bill Gates quote regarding computer RAM: "640K ought to be enough for anybody." The limits of our imagination should never be mistaken for the limits of what is possible.

Epstein is similarly ready to tear apart conventional frameworks and reimagine the world as it could be. He claims The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto comprised 10 years of work on his part and I felt that reflected in the pages. Each sub-chapter of the 4 parts he breaks the book up into is bursting with ideas and seem brand new to me each time I reread them. Epstein is perhaps more precise but less methodical than Deutsch and moves quickly from one idea to the next being more interested in what is possible rather than what is. Also, being a literary theorist and rhetorician his concepts are often densely packed and multi-layer requiring careful reading at times. I began the book looking to update and expand my conception of art theory and finished it wanting to join in on Epstein's humanitarian revolution.