spring quarter 2006 jeff glassman/arun chandrapsychiatry (1951–68, norton), with jurgen ruesch,...

Inventing Systems: ToMaTo

Spring Quarter 2006

Jeff Glassman/Arun Chandra

Contents

Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead:For God’s Sake, Margaret! 1

Gregory Bateson:The Position of Humor in Human Communication 15

Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow: Behavior, Purpose and Teleology 40

Heinz von Foerster:On Constructing a Reality 44

Invitation to Dance: A Conversation with Heinz von Foerster 53

Ernst von Glasersfeld:Distinguishing the Observer 57

William S. Condon: Communication: Rhythm and Structure 63

Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness 75

Herbert Brun: Declarations 81

Marianne Brun: Designing Society 83

Mark Enslin: Teaching Composition: Facing the Power of the Respondent 871 Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 872 The Power of the Respondent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 873 Images of Teacher and of Composer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 914 Composing the Performance of Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 935 What Do I Teach such that I Teach Composition? . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996 Compositions that Teach: Open Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Fredrick Engels: The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man 108

Fredrick Engels: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific 1141 The Development of Utopian Socialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1142 The Science of Dialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1193 Historical Materialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Karl Marx: The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof 132

Mark Sullivan: The Performance of Gesture: Musical Gesture, Then, And Now 139Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 1391. Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 1392. A Medium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 1413. Formulation: The Procedure of Distinguishing . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1464. Contextual History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1475. Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 1486. Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . 1497. Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . 1528. One or Another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . 1549. Processes of Invention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15510. Posture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 15611. Musical Gestures and Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15912. A Vignette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . 16213. Acoustic Gesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 16314. Linguistic Gesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16415. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

SPRING QUARTER 2006 ii Inventing Systems: ToMaTo

16. Movement, Speech and Musical Gesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18017. Musical Gesture and Musical Gesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18018. Musical Gesture, Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 180Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

SPRING QUARTER 2006 iii Inventing Systems: ToMaTo

For God’s Sake, Margaret!Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead

Stewart Brand, CoEvolutionary Quarterly, June 1976

Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were married in1936. They had met and fallen in love in 1932 whileboth were doing anthropological fieldwork on the SepikRiver in New Guinea (Margaret was at the same timewith her second husband, Reo Fortune). In New GuineaGregory’s unusual sense of theory met Margaret’s im-proved field methodology and sparked much of the qual-ity in Gregory’s opus on the latmul tribeNaven.

Newly-wed in Bali, they spent two collaborative yearsin the most intense and productive fieldwork of theirlives, developing, among other things, a still unmatchedphotographic analysis of the culture.

Their daughter Mary Catherine, Margaret’s only child,was born in 1939 in the United States. Gregory and Mar-garet worked together on the result of their Bali field-work, Balinese Character — A Photographic Analysis,and then were separated increasingly by World War IIand their own diverging interests.

After the war they both were involved in starting thesomewhat famous Macy Conferences (1947–53) that in-vented cybernetics. This interview begins with their jointrecollection of that critical period.

Margaret Mead is one of the world’s most remarkablewomen. She got a full mixture of praise and notori-ety (notorious in that day because women weren’t sup-posed to talk about sex) with her first book,Coming ofAge in Samoa(1928). Since then there have been tenother books and numerous honors and positions, includ-ing President of the American Anthropological Associa-tion (1960), and of Scientists’ Institute on Public Infor-

mation, and (this year) the American Association for theAdvancement of Science, and a Curator of the Ameri-can Museum of Natural History, which continues as herheadquarters. In public affairs she seems to have takenover the Eleanor Roosevelt niche.

After Bali and the Macy Conferences Gregory Batesonwent on to work with schizophrenics, alcoholics, artists,dolphins, students, and a steadily more general set ofunderstandings of what they have in common. He co-authored a book,Communication: The Social Matrix ofPsychiatry(1951–68, Norton), with Jurgen Ruesch, andeditedPerceval’s Narrative — A Patient’s Account of hisPsychosis, 1830–1832(1961, Stanford). Mary Cather-ine, his and Margaret’s daughter, wrote a book about oneof Gregory’s conferences,Our Own Metaphor(1972,Knopf). His collected papers appear inSteps to an Ecol-ogy of Mind(1972, Ballantine), a book that wowed meout of my shoes. If Gregory lives long enough he will gethis Nobel for the Double Bind Theory of Schizophrenia.

Margaret is now 75, Gregory 72. They meet seldomthough always affectionately. Gregory has a son John,23, by his second wife, and a daughter Nora, 9, by LoisBateson his present wife. This meeting with Margarettook place at Gregory’s home near Santa Cruz, Califor-nia, in March of this year [1976].

Stewart Brand:I need a little background, if it’s all right,on how this whole Macy thing got rolling, why, andwhen, and what the sequence was.

Gregory Bateson:There was this Macy meeting in what,’42?1

1The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, 1930–1955.New York: The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, 1955, p.20

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 1 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND

Brand: Who started it, and what was it about?

Bateson:This was a meeting called “Cerebral Inhibi-tion,” which in fact was a meeting on hypnosis.2 “Cere-bral inhibition” was a respectable word for hypnosis.Most of what was said about ‘feedback’ was said overlunch.

Margaret Mead: Well, I know that’s what you alwaystell people, but I didn’t sit at the same place at lunch, andI heard what was said at that conference. But at that con-ference, which is the one where Milton Erickson hyp-notised that Yale psychologist, it was at the end of thatconference that you really had the design of what neededto be done. And then you were caught up in war workand went overseas and there was that long period.

I think that you actually have to go back to that earliermeeting that was held in the basement of the old Psycho-Analytic building on the West Side the day of Pearl Har-bor.

Bateson:They didn’t go on from year to year, thoseearly ones. Larry Frank was chairman I bet.

Mead: No, Larry never was chairman, you know. He al-ways sat on the sidelines and made somebody else bechairman. Kubie was a very important person at thatpoint.

Bateson:Yes. Kubie was an important bridge becauseKubie had respectable-ized Milton. There’s a wholeseries of papers which are jointly Kubie and Erickson.Now, in fact, they were Erickson’s papers.

Mead: And Kubie didn’t know what was in them. That’sthe truth.

Bateson:But Kubie did get right the energy problem.He was the first person that really took Freud’s ‘energy’and said, “Look, look, look, it makes no sense.” There isa very good paper by Kubie on the errors of Freudian en-ergy theory. [Goes to find the references] Huh. Kubie,“Fallacious Use of Quantitative Concepts in DynamicPsychology.”

Mead: Now when was that?

Bateson:That was . . . guess.

Mead: No, I don’t guess that one.

Bateson:Published in ’47. Psychoanalytic Quarterly.For which I suspect he very nearly got read out of thechurch. He never said it again.

Mead: It was very hard to read Kubie out of the churchbecause he had once been a neurologist, and that wasthe thing that they were all scared of. Now, where is theRosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow paper? The first great

paper on cybernetics.3

Bateson:Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow. ‘Behavior,Purpose and Teleology,’Philosophy of Science,1943.4

Mead: That’s it, you see.

Bateson:It could just have been published at the time ofthe Cerebral Inhibition conference.

Mead: It was just coming out or just had come out.

Brand: What was the experiment that that paperrecorded?

Bateson:It didn’t record an experiment, it reported onthe formal character of seeking mechanisms, essentially.Self-corrective mechanisms such as missiles. The mis-sile measures the angle between its direction and the tar-get it’s seeking, and uses that measure to correct itself.

Mead: But using some very simple psychological exper-iments that Rosenblueth had been doing at the Universityof Mexico.

Brand: Do you recall what they were saying that youoverheard that got you excited?

Bateson:It was a solution to the problem of purpose.From Aristotle on, the final cause has always been themystery. This came out then. We didn’t realize then (atleast I didn’t realize it, though McCulloch might have)that the whole of logic would have to be reconstructedfor recursiveness. When I came in from overseas in ’45 Iwent within the first two or three days to Frank Fremont-Smith, and said, “Let’s have a Macy Conference on thatstuff.”

Mead: You and Warren McCulloch had an exchange ofletters when you were in Ceylon.

Bateson:We did?

Mead: Yes. You told me enough about it in some way.I talked to Fremont-Smith. McCulloch had talked toFremont-Smith.

Bateson:Fremont-Smith told me, “Yes, we’ve just ar-ranged to have one, McCulloch is the chairman, go talkto McCulloch.”

Mead: And McCulloch had a grand design in his mind.He got people into that conference, who he then keptfrom talking.

Bateson:Yes, he had a design on how the shape of theconversation would run over five years — what had to besaid before what else had to be said.

Mead: He wouldn’t let Ralph Gerard talk. He said, “Youcan talk next year.” He was very autocratic.

Bateson:Yes, but an awfully good chairman in many

2The twenty participants included representatives of anthropology, psychobiology, physiology, psychiatry, neurology, psychology, medicine,anatomy and electronics. Among those present were Gregory Bateson, Lawrence K. Frank, Frank Fremont-Smith, Lawrence Kubie, Warren Mc-Culloch, Margaret Mead, Arthur Rosenblueth.

3I am told a paper by W. Ross Ashby predated this by a year but we didn’t know it. — Mead4Rosenblueth, Arturo, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow. ‘Behavior, Purpose and Teleology,’Philosophy of Science. Vol. 10, 1942, 18.


ways. It’s very rare to have a chairman who knows whatit’s about at all.

Brand: What was his grand design?

Bateson:Who knows?

Mead: Well, I think more or less what happened was.

Bateson:How did the first meeting differ from the sec-ond meeting?

Mead: There wasn’t even any usable terminology. Atfirst we called the thing ‘feedback,’ and the models thatwe were presented with at that point were the guidedmissile, targetseeking. Now there had been another eventhat’s worth considering here. That is that Wiener hadwritten an article in theAtlantic, orHarper’s, refusing togive the war data on guided missiles. Remember that?

Bateson:Oh, yes.

Mead: He’d worked on them all through the war, and ofcourse they had the material if they had hunted for it, butthey made the mistake of asking him for some, and atthat point he said that he would not give it to them, thewar was over, and this was data that could only be usedfor war-like purposes. He would not give it to them.

Bateson:That’s right, it was theAtlantic.

Mead: They were talking almost entirely of negativefeedback. By this time, Wiener and Bigelow and Johnnyvon Neumann of course, were members of the group,and Rosenblueth, Kurt Lewin, Molly Harrower, Eve-lyn Hutchinson, Leonard Savage, Henry Brosin and thatHungarian who always knew who was sleeping with whoand it was the only thing he was interested in, I’ve for-gotten his name. Well, the lists survive all right.

There were three groups of people. There were themathematicians and physicists — people trained in thephysical sciences, who were very, very precise in whatthey wanted to think about. There was a small group ofus, anthropologists and psychiatrists, who were trainedto know enough about psychology in groups so we knewwhat was happening, and could use it, and disallow it.And then there were two or three gossips in the middle,who were very simple people who had a lot of loose in-tuition and no discipline to what they were doing. Ina sense it was the most interesting conference I’ve everbeen in, because nobody knew how to manage this thingsyet.

Brand: So you had one group of people that was to an-other group on a level they were not used to.

Mead: Yes, and shifting back and forth between theselevels and keeping everything straight was very interest-ing. So we used the model, ‘feedback,’ and Kurt Lewin— who didn’t understand any known language, but al-

ways had to reduce them to concepts — he went awaywith the idea of feedback as something that when youdid anything with a group you went back and told themlater what had happened. And he died before anythingmuch else happened. So the word ‘feedback’ got intro-duced incorrectly into the international UNESCO typeconferences where it’s been ever since.

Bateson:In the small group cult, feedback now meanseither telling people what they did, or answering.

Mead: Yes. “I don’t get any feedback from you,” or“I can’t go on with this without some feedback.” Itwouldn’t have survived if Kurt had lived. He would un-doubtedly have got it right.

Brand: I would like a little more detail back at the initialtime when you knew you had hit something.

Bateson:We knew we had, well, for me, I had analysedthe latmul of Sepik River inNaven5 and I had analysedout the fact there were interactions which must stockpile.

Brand: This was your schismogenesis?

Bateson:This was schismogenesis, yes. We named it in’36.

Mead: It hadn’t been named yet. You’re starting backbefore you named it schismogenesis.

Bateson:Well, Navenwas published. I’m talking aboutthe state I was in when this stuff appeared.

Mead: In ’43.

Bateson:Yes. The next thing that followed that was‘Generalised Foreign Policies.’ L.F. Richardson.6 I wentback to England in ’39. Hitler had invaded Poland.Bartlett said, “You might be interested inthat,” throw-ing it across the room in contempt.

Mead: I’m glad I have another count against Bartlett, Ididn’t know he had contempt for Richardson.

Bateson:For Richardson and for me, you see. It wascontemptible that I would be interested in the con-temptible. So I ran off with that and kept it (probablyit’s Bartlett’s copy of his files that we now have), andbrought it back to this country.

Brand: What was in that paper?

Bateson:This is the mathematics of armaments races.How do you build the mathematics of a system in whichwhat I do depends upon what you do, and what youdo depends upon what I do, and we get into a thing.Richardson set a limit by invoking ‘fatigue.’ He startedwith a simple pair of differential equations in the premisethat my rate of armament could be a linear function ofyour strength; andvice versa. That led immediately to anexponential runaway. He added a ‘fatigue’ factor repre-senting the drain on your and my resources. The question

5Bateson, Gregory.Naven. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936. 2nd edition, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.6L.R. Richardson. “Generalized Foreign Policies,”British Journal of Psychology, Monography Supplement XXIII, 1939.


then was whether the system could settle. Are we goingto settle a mutual . . . there’s a word in international rela-tions for slapping the other people’s aggression back bythreat . . .

Mead: You mean deterrence?

Bateson:Yes, mutual deterrence. That word hadn’t beeninvented then. Then in the appendix, he had some re-vised equations in terms of what is your strength andwhat is my strength, but what is the difference betweenour strengths. He worked it out in terms of the relation oftwo nations where each is stimulated by the amount theother side is ahead. This was obviously symmetrical —latmul Sepik River schismogenesis — right?

I then wrote to him at that stage, and said, “What aboutthe other case, when you are stimulated to aggression bythe weaknessof the other side?” Which is the comple-mentary schismogenesis, right? He worked out the al-gebra for that, and said, “It’s very unpromising. I don’trecommend nations to get into that all. The orders ofinstability they get into are then very serious.”

Brand: Because that one would accelerate the differencerather than reduce the difference?

Bateson:Accelerate the difference, yes.

Brand: A large amount of this strikes me as being thewar. Would cybernetics have begun without the war?Richardson’s armaments race, and Wiener’s missiles . . .

Bateson:Wiener without a biologist wouldn’t have doneit.

Mead: Wiener was working on Rosenblueth’s stuff.Now Richardson is a very peculiar character. He wasa Quaker school teacher of mathematics. He did all thebasic work on weather prediction. It was used in WorldWar II and he was never told how it worked, because ofsecurity. He died without knowing about it.

Bateson:Richardson was responding to World War I. Asa Quaker he refused to bear arms in World War I, and hebecame an ambulance man. He sat in the trenches wait-ing for the next call for the ambulance working out themathematics of armaments races. Because he was surethat if only this could be got straight, the whole messwouldn’t have to happen, which indeed might be true.

Mead: Now, there were some other things like this thatwere being talked about, and one was what was called avicious circle. Milton Erickson had written a paper on agirl who quarrelled and had headaches and got alienatedfrom people, which led to further quarrels, and so on.

Bateson:Yes, all the positive feedback stuff was ready.And that presented the problem: why don’t these sys-tems blow their tops? And the moment they came outwith negative feedback, then one was able to say why

they don’t blow their tops.

Brand: This was a word and an idea you heard about in’43?

Bateson:That’s whennegative feedbackcame in.

Mead: We had things about reversals of sign . . .

Bateson:That was another story, that’s before Richard-son, even, and way before feedback. Already inNaventhere is a statement that complementary schismogenesisneutralises symmetrical, and vice-versa. If you get intotoo-long a contrast between the bosses and the workers(which is complementary schismogenesis), you put themall out on the cricket field and make them play cricket,which puts them in a symmetrical situation. And itdoesn’t matter who wins the game of cricket, you know.

Brand: As long as they’re in that mode . . .

Bateson:Or if they’re too far in symmetrical rivalry,such as a quarrelling husband and wife, when one ofthem sprains in his ankle, in comes them complementarywith dependency. They suddenly feel much better.

Brand: It doesn’t matter who sprains?

Bateson:It doesn’t matter who sprains his ankle, ofcourse not.

Brand: So you had some notion that all of these variouspathologies were structurally the same?

Bateson:No, structurally related, that there was a sub-ject matter of inquiry defined by all these. You see thefantastic thing is that in 1856, before the publication oftheOrigin of Species, Wallace in Ternate, Indonesia, hada psychedelic spell following his malaria in which he in-vented the principle of natural selection. He wrote toDarwin and he said, “Look, natural selection is just likea steam engine with a governor.” The first cyberneticmodel. But then he only thought he had an illustration,he didn’t think he’d really said probably the most power-ful thing that’d been said in the 19th Century.

Mead: Only nobody knew it.

Bateson:Nobody knew it. And there it is, still in thetext. Nobody picked it up. Well, there was the machin-ery, the governor itself. There was the mathematics ofthe machine with the governor, which was done by ClerkMaxwell in 1868, because nobody knew how to writea blueprint for these bloody things — they would gointo oscillation. Then there’s Claude Bernard about 1890with themilieu interne— the internal matrix of the body,control of temperature, control of sugar, and all that.7

Brand: Which later became homeostasis?

Bateson:Which later became homeostasis in Cannon.8

But nobody put the stuff together to say these are the for-mal relations which go for natural selection, which go

7Claude Bernard.Le cons sur les Phenomenes de la Vie Communes aux Animaux et aux Vegetaux.2 vols. Paris: J.B. Bailliere, 1878–1879.8W.B. Cannon.The wisdom of the Body.New York: Norton, 1932.


for internal physiology, which go for purpose, which gofor a cat trying to catch a mouse, which go for me pick-ing up the salt cellar. This was really done by Wiener,and Rosenblueth and McCulloch and Bigelow. And whoreally put the truth through, I don’t know, do you?

Mead: No. Wiener and McCulloch were first partners inthis thinking, and then became rivals when McCullochwent to MIT. As long as McCulloch stayed at Illinois andWiener at MIT they were working right together. Withboth of them at the MIT they became totally alienated,and then Walter Pitts got involved. He was the youngestmember of the group.

Bateson:Oh god, he was so clever. You’d set him aproblem, you know, and he would reach up to his hairand take a couple of strands, and he would say, “Well,now, if you say that, you see, um, no then, you see,” andhe’d work it all out with his hair.

Mead: He was a very odd boy. Now, one of the im-portant points at this stage was one that Gregory keptmaking, that a possible cross-disciplinary mathematicallanguage was available. We never got very far with thatbecause all you could ever get out of people like Wienerwas, “You need a longer run.” We used to drive them ab-solutely out of their minds because they were not willingto look at pattern, really. What they wanted was a terriblylong run of data.

Bateson:Of quantitative data, essentially.

Mead: Quantitative data, and we never got them reallyto look at the problem of pattern. Von Neumann camethe closest to it.

Bateson:Yes, he was in games theory, you see.

Brand: How many of you were thinking you had somekind of a general solution?

Mead: Gregory thought so, and Larry Frank thought so,Evelyn Hutchinson; we had Ross Ashby over, how aboutSavage?

Bateson: I don’t think so, no. You see, one of the es-sentials, Stewart, for understanding it, was to have beenbrought up in the age when it wasn’t there, when purposewas a total mystery.Navenis a disciplined book, writtenwithout teleology. The rule was that you must not invoketeleology. Now, people like Savage, who was a math-ematician, for one thing he never faced biological data,you see. He didn’t know what a mystery it is that youhave a nose between two eyes, and you don’t have noseson the outside here, you know. All that sort of mysterywasn’t a question for him. Now, if you say to somebodylike that, “Why is the trunk of an elephant a nose?” theycan’t tell you without an awful sweat that it’s becauseit’s between two eyes. The formal-puzzle has never beenpresented to them.

Mead: I remember Robert Merton saying once thatthere wasn’t a person in the country who was thinkinghard about problems who didn’t have a folder some-where marked something like “circular systems.” Hor-ney’s book,The Neurotic Personality of Our Times9 dis-cusses the vicious circle, and interventions in the circle,and the effect of intervention. Milton’s paper on thatgirl with migraine headaches and quarrelling with herfriends, there was lots of stuff around . . .

Bateson:On positive feedback.

Mead: But also about possible intervention.

Bateson:But the essence of the other thing is that it’snot an intervention.

Mead: Yes, but an intervention is a precursor of thinkingof . . .

Bateson:Yes, yes. All cybernetic entities are displacedsmall boys.

Mead: Displaced small what?

Bateson:Boys. They’re jacks. You know what a jack is?A jack is an instrument to displace a small boy. A bootjack is a thing for pulling off boots ’cause you haven’t asmall boy to pull it off for you.

Mead: I’ll remember that next time. This is an Englishjoke that no one will understand.

Bateson:I can’t help it. On the first steam engines,you’ve got a pair of cylinders and you’ve got valves, andyou pull this valve to run the steam into this one, close it,let it drive the piston, pull it — this is done by hand. Thenthey invented the idea of having the flywheel control thevalves. This displaced a small boy.

Brand: The governor displaced another one?

Bateson:And the governor displaced another small boy,who was to keep the engine going at a constant rate,that’s right. Now then, the John Stroud stuff is the studyof the psychology of the human being between two ma-chines.

In any device such as an ack-ack gun you’ve got awhole series of small boys in the situation of beingbetween a machine and another machine. What JohnStroud worked on was the psychology of that situation.He found what I still think are some very interestingthings, namely that the orders of equations (you know,equations inX, or in X2, or X3 ,or whatever) are discon-tinuous in the human mind, as well as being discontinu-ous in mathematical paper work. Where is John Stroudnow, do you ever see him?

Mead: He is retired, teaching at Simon Fraser some-what, and he’s been brought back by Gerry O’Neill intodiscussions of space colonies.

Brand: Good lord.

9Karen Horney:The Neurotic Personality of Our Time.New York: Norton, 1937.


Mead: He was very much interested in space colonies.He told me all about them twenty-five years ago, and Iwas interested in all the problems then, the selection ofpeople, and what not.

Bateson:Stewart, you should get hold of John Stroud.

Mead: Now Gerry has John Stroud’s manuscript andhe’s not going to read it until he’s finished his own. Isaid, “I think that’s unscientific and childish.”

Bateson:He wants credit for inventing anything thatJohn Stroud had invented.

Mead: Well, he did invent it separately, that’s true, andhe wants to prove it, because after all, what does a phys-ical science have in the world except priority? I don’tblame them you know, because they haven’t got anythingelse. All they’re interested in is priority. They spendweeks and months discussing priority. It’s so boring.Somebody mailed a letter three days before somebodyelse did, and they made a whole meeting about it.

Brand: Margaret, what was your perception at the timeof the early Macy meetings as to what was going on?

Mead: The thing that cybernetics made the most differ-ence to me, aside from all the things that you know, in thesocial organisation field, was the interaction between themother and child. There had been too much emphasisthat there were temperamental differences among chil-dren, so that you responded differently to a hyperactivebaby than you did to a quiet baby. But the extent to whichthere was a system in which the mother was dependenton what the child had learned as the stimulus for the nextposition wasn’t well articulated until we got the cyber-netics conferences going.

Bateson:The link-up between the behavioral sciencesspread very slowly and hasn’t really spread yet. The cy-berneticians in the narrow sense of the word went off intoinput-output.

Brand: They went off into computer science.

Bateson:Computer science is input-output. You’ve gota box, and you’ve got this line enclosing the box, and thescience is the science of these boxes. Now, the essence ofWiener’s cybernetics was that the science is the scienceof the whole circuit. You see, the diagram. . .

Mead: You’d better verbalize this diagram if it’s goingto be on the tape.

Bateson:Well, you can carry a piece of paper all the wayhome with you. The electric boys have a circuit like that,and an event here is reported by a sense organ of somekind, and affects something that puts in here. Then younow cut off there and there, then you say there’s an inputand an output. Then you work on the box. What Wienersays is that you work on the whole picture and its prop-erties. Now, there may be boxes inside here, like this ofall sorts, but essentially your ecosystem, your organism-plus-environment, is to be considered as a single circuit.

Brand: The bigger circle there . . .

Bateson:And you’re not really concerned with an input-output, but with the events within the bigger circuit, andyou arepart of the bigger circuit. It’s these lines aroundthe box (which are just conceptual lines after all) whichmark the difference between the engineers and . . .

Mead: . . . and between the systems people and generalsystems theory, too.

Bateson:Yes.

Brand: A kind of a Martin Buber-ish breakdown, “I —it”, where they are trying to keep themselves out of thatwhich they’re studying. The engineer is outside the box. . . and Wiener is inside the box.

Bateson:And Wiener is inside the box; I’m inside thebox . . .

Mead: I’m inside the box. You see, Wiener named thething, and of course the word “cybernetics” comes fromthe Greek word for helmsman.

Bateson:It actually existed as a word before Wiener —it’s a nineteenth century word.

Mead: Yes, but he wrote the bookCybernetics10 and sortof patented the idea to that extent. And then he wentto Russia, and was very well received. The Russianswere crazy about this right away — it fit right to theirlives. But one of the big difficulties in Russian psy-chology is that they have great difficulty learning thatanything’s irreversible. So cybernetics spread all overthe Soviet Union very rapidly, and in Czechoslovakia,whereas what spread here was systems theory instead ofcybernetics.

Brand: How did that happen? It seems like somethingwent kind of awry.

Mead: Americans like mechanical machines.

Bateson:They like tools.

Brand: Material tools more than conceptual tools.

Bateson:No, because conceptual tools aren’t conceptualtools in America, they’re not part ofyou.

10Norbert Wiener,Cybernetics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Technology Press, 1948.


Brand: How about McCulloch? He loved machinery.Did he also see himself as inside the box?

Mead: Well, one of the things he spent a great deal oftime on was perception machines, separate sensory ap-paratus for the deaf or the blind.[After reminiscence about other meetings following theMacy period the subject ‘feed forward’ comes up.]

Bateson:As far as I was ever able to make out ‘feedforward’ was implicit and more or less explicit in theoriginal Wiener paper. The feed forward process is whatyou get by using not the primary variable, but the deriva-tive of the variable. You’ve got a machine for steering aship, an automatic steerer, and you set her loose in theAtlantic, and you want her to go to London or some suchplace: she’s to sail east. You have a compass card, andyou measure the error between the compass card and thedirection the ship’s pointing, and you use that angle tocontrol the steering machine, which pulls a rudder thisway and that, right? Depending on the error. So, whenthe error is northward, the machine tells the rudder toswing it across southward, right? When it is going dueeast, the ship has way on, rotational momentum, and isgoing to go way over to the south of east, and now it’sgoing to yawing all across the Atlantic, right?

Brand: This is hunting, technically.

Bateson:This is technically hunting, and if you want tocut that down, what you’ve got to do is to have a machineon top of that machine, another machine which measuresthe rate at which the ship is correcting its error. Thefaster it is correcting its error, the slower you have it cor-rect its error. It will then, you see, actually hold itselfbefore it gets to due east. If you’ve ever handled the tillerof a small boat, you know the problem.

Brand: It’s a double layer in other words. The first ma-chine is treating the boat as something which needs to begiven negative feedback, and then the second machine istreating the first machine as something which needs to begiven negative feedback.

Bateson:That’s right. You’ve got a hierarchy of logicaltypes there, and their various complexities.

Brand: Is feed forward a kind of a discounting of part ofthe corrective signal?

Bateson: It’s a discounting of the corrective signal interms of the error which the corrective signal will gen-erate if allowed to continue.

Mead: Now, Stewart, what we thought we were goingto talk about, but you didn’t let us say what we wantedto talk about, you started something else under the pre-tense that you wanted to start the tape recorder (I want topoint out I followed all those manoeuvers) what we hadsaid we were going to talk about was the need of having‘some data flowing through the system.’

Brand: Some data flowing through the system?

Bateson:Yes. I set my classes an assignment. If theycan, they will handle it purely abstractly. And theythen get off into an awful mess of ill-drawn abstractionswhich act upon other ill-drawn abstractions. But if youcan make them fool around with data of any sort, whilethey’re playing with the abstractions, then you get some-thing. I keep a fish tank going there, because a fish tankis a nice thing, really, to have in the back of your mindwhile you’re thinking about ever it might be. NorbertWiener, when he had a problem, used to sit with the windblowing on a curtain.

Mead: I thought that was von Neumann.

Bateson:It could have been von Neumann. Pitts did itby disturbing his hair.

Now, this goes along with: ‘always the multiple ap-proach.’ Any Hebrew poetry is like this. ‘The candlesare white, as translucent fishes,’ you know. ‘Lilies forjoy, and lilies for funerals.’; ‘How are the mighty fallenand the weapons of war perished.’ You get away fromthe pure verbalism by double-phrasing.

You make two statements, and what is true of both ofthem is the formal truth. This is what is called explana-tion.

Brand: It’s not that it’s a repetition of the message, it’sdifferent derivations of the same message from differentsources.

Bateson:Often. In psychoanalysis if you can recognizethe same formal pattern in a dream and in a childhoodmemory and in how you’re treating your analyst, you willsay, “Aha, it’s true.” You’ve got it.

Mead: And when your studying a culture.

Brand: What would be an example there?

Mead: Well, you find the same pattern recurring in dif-ferent aspects of the culture. You find, for instance, ahouse in which there’s no ornamentation inside, all theornamentation’s on the gate. You find a people who arepreoccupied with the external aspects of their skin andbelieve that any breakage will impair them so that they’reimperfect for something else, and so forth. With that kindof understanding, if you’re told something, you can tellwhether it fits or not.

For instance, the Balinese told us that they had mar-riage by capture, which didn’t suit anything we’d under-stood about their culture. Our cook was going to carry offa girl by capture, so Gregory went outside the gate withhim early in the morning, and the girl was there waiting.They looked around and there was nobody else there,so she trotted off with him. If there had been anothergroup there, she would have pretended, she would havescreamed and been carried off, because that was correctetiquette.


Then we had the case of a very stupid boy who thoughtit was true. He carried off a girl who had already plannedto elope with somebody else. It took the society monthsto sort that out.

From a complex culture like Bali you take a lot ofchunks — birthday ceremonies and funeral ceremonies,children’s games, and a whole series of things, and thenyou analyze them for the patterns that are there.

Bateson: In latmul they have flutes. The flutes are longhollow bamboo, an inch and a half thick, five feet long,and one hole here, which you blow across. And from thatyou can get about five notes by overblowing, by harmon-ics. All right. You have a flute, you’re blowing with me,and yours is tuned one tone higher than mine. So yourharmonics fit between mine, right? Between us we’vegot quite a bit of scale. If we blow alternatively we canmake a tune. Well, now this is how the generations are ar-ranged. The grandparents go with the grandchildren, andthe initiation grades are like seniors — juniors — sopho-mores — freshmen, in which when you get a fight overinitiation, the seniors and the sophomores go together,and the juniors and the freshmen go together. And so on.

Brand: So what is the truth?

Bateson:The truth is that latmul like to make this pat-tern. This is a pattern of organization that they think isnice.

Mead: When Gregory and Waddington talked to eachother, I learned what I know about the way English biol-ogists think, by listening to the two of them. They wouldpick their illustrations right across the field. One minutefrom embryology, the next from geology, the next fromanthropology, back and forth, very freely, so that the il-lustrations from one spot illuminated, corrected and ex-panded the one from another. This is the thing that Amer-icans are not taught to do. In our school system you haveone year of chemistry, then you’re through with chem-istry probably, and then you have one year of physics.Whereas in the English system they took all of them atonce in smaller doses that went along.

Nora Bateson:Goodbye.

Mead: Goodbye. Are you going to school now?

Nora: Yes.

Mead: Well, it’s been lovely to see you, Nora.

Nora: It’s been lovely to see you, too. Bye bye.

Bateson:Goodbye.

Nora: Bye Daddy.

Brand: Margaret, an old student of yours told me youhave a list of reliable sources of insight. What’s the list?

Mead: I used to say to my classes that the ways to getinsight are: to study infants; to study animals; to studyprimitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a re-

ligious conversion and get over it; to have a psychoticepisode and get over it; or to have a love affair with anOld Russian. And I stopped saying that when a littledancer in the front row put up her hand and said, “Doeshe have to be old?”

Brand: How many of those have you done?[Blank here while cassette was changed. Dr. Mead saidshe had studied infants and primitive people. When shegot to animals in the list, the conversation swerved toKonrad Lorenz.]

Mead: Watching Konrad Lorenz be simultaneously abird and a worm, is one of the really magnificent thingsin the world. You’ve seen that, haven’t you, when he’sdescribing a bird catching a worm, and he’s both? Talkabout the whole system, there it is.

Bateson:One of the things I’ve already regretted is thatI didn’t film him lecturing in Hawaii. One could’ve, Ithink. Lorenz is an Aurignacian.

Brand: How do you mean?

Bateson:I mean that he is identified with animals. Au-rignacians are the people who did the cave paintings, thegood ones. Lorenz goes to the blackboard and there is alive dog, hesitating between attacking and retreating. Hetakes the eraser, and he wipes the tail off, changes the an-gle by ten degrees, and flattens out the hair on the backof the neck, and he says, “That dog’s going to run.” Hesticks it the other way, and “That dog’s going to attack.”And he is the dog while he’s talking about it. And thisgoes for cichlid fishes, bees, any goddamn thing. Andthen, in the final lecture he gave in Hawaii, he got allmixed up, you know, the way scientists do, with physicsand the Einsteinian universe, and his body got twisted,as he started to talk about the Einsteinian universe wherethe straight lines are not straight anymore. That’s what Iwish I had on the camera. The others all think that this isvery unfair you know, he has all of this information thatthey simply don’t have.

Mead: He contributes tremendous zest. If Lorenz is in ameeting, I can retire and take notes and think and have noresponsibility to keep it going; whereas if he isn’t there,I very often have to keep it awake . . .

Gregory, have you any ideas on the subject of theharm that is done by television because of the rigidityof the body of people watching TV? Sartre discussed atone point what happened when you peek into a keyhole.When you look through a keyhole, the whole body isfocussed to try to use this very small aperture, and hedescribed what happens if you touch somebody who islooking through a keyhole. They jump. I have a bigset, now, of comparative pictures of family groups (theyweren’t taken for this, they were taken for family al-bums) reading and looking at TV. When the family is


reading, they’re a thousand years away from each other,their eyes are all down, but you get a sense of communityand relaxation. Their bodies are very loose, and undoubt-edly there’s movement going on as they read. But whenthey’re watching television, the same people sit like this,they don’t touch each other, and they’re very rigid.

We have lots of material that if you move in your mind,your muscles don’t get stiff. For years we had this veryfunny problem with catatonics, such as a man who wouldstand all day long in a ward with his eyes up and hishands together in prayer, never moving. They’d pick himup at night, tip him into a bed, feed him artificially, andthen after five years or something, there’s be a fire. He’dwalk across the ward, pick up a telephone, report, “Firein ward five,” help get all patients out, and then when thefire was out, back he went to his position. But he wasnot stiff. Whereas if you take the ordinary person andput them in bed for three months, they have to relearnhow to walk. All the data we now have on monitoringmuscles with tiny transistor monitors shows, if you thinkabout skiing or exercising, the muscles that you use toski will respond.

If you inhibit movement, as one does watching TV,with no empathy, no muscular involvement at all, I thinkthis is the thing that’s doing harm.

Bateson: I was wondering about looking through, forexample, a camera.

Mead: Remember Clara Lambert and when you weretrying to teach her? That woman who was making pho-tographic studies of play schools, but she was using thecamera as a telescope instead of as a camera. You said,“She’ll never be a photographer. She keeps using thecamera to look at things.” But you didn’t. You alwaysused a camera to take a picture, which is a different ac-tivity.

Bateson:Yes. By the way, I don’t like camerason tripods, just grinding. In the latter part of theschizophrenic project, we had cameras on tripods justgrinding.

Mead: And you don’t like that?

Bateson:Disastrous.

Mead: Why?

Bateson:Because I think the photographic recordshould be an art form.

Mead: Oh why? Why shouldn’t you have some recordsthat aren’t art forms? Because if it’s an art form, it hasbeen altered.

Bateson: It’s undoubtedly been altered. I don’t think itexists unaltered.

Mead: I think it’s very important, if you’re going to bescientific about behavior, to give other people access tothe material, as comparable as possible to the access you

had. You don’t, then, alter the material. There’s a bunchof film makers now that are saying, “It should be art,”and wrecking everything that we’re trying to do. Whythe hell should it be art?

Bateson:Well, it should be off the tripod.

Mead: So you run around.

Bateson:Yes.

Mead: And therefore you’ve introduced a variation intoit that is unnecessary.

Bateson:I therefore got the information out that Ithought was relevant at the time.

Mead: That’s right. And therefore what do you seelater?

Bateson:If you put the damn thing on a tripod, you don’tget any relevance.

Mead: No, you get what happened

Bateson:It isn’t what happened.

Mead: I don’t want people leaping around thinking thata profile at this moment would be beautiful.

Bateson:I wouldn’t want beautiful.

Mead: Well, what’s the leaping around for?

Bateson:To get what’s happening.

Mead: What you think is happening.

Bateson:If Stewart reached behind his back to scratchhimself, I would like to be over there at that moment.

Mead: If you were over there at that moment youwouldn’t see him kicking the cat under the table. So thatjust doesn’t hold as an argument.

Bateson:Of the things that happen the camera is onlygoing to record one percent anyway.

Mead: That’s right.

Bateson:I want one percent on the whole to tell.

Mead: Look, I’ve worked with these things that weredone by artistic film makers, and the result is you can’tdo anything with them.

Bateson:They’re bad artists, then.

Mead: No, they’re not. I mean an artistic film maker canmake a beautiful notion of what he thinks is there, andyou can’t do any subsequent analysis with it of any kind.That’s been the trouble with anthropology, because theyhad to trust us. If we were good enough instruments, andwe said the people in this culture did something morethan the ones in that, if they trusted us, they used it. Butthere was no way of probing further material. So wegradually developed the idea of film and tapes.

Bateson:There’s never going to be any way of probingfurther into the material.

Mead: What are you talking about, Gregory? I don’tknow what you’re talking about. Certainly, when we


showed that Balinese stuff that first summer there weredifferent things identified — the limpness that MarionStranahan identified, the place on the chest and its pointin child development that Erik Erikson identified. I cango back over it, and show you what they got out of thosefilms. They didn,t get it out of your head, and they didn,tget it out of the way you were pointing the camera. Theygot it because it was a long enough run so they could seewhat was happening.

Brand: What about something like that Navajo film,In-trepid Shadows?11

Mead: Well, that is a beautiful, an artistic productionthat tells you something about a Navajo artist.

Bateson:This is different, it’s a native work of art.

Mead: Yes, and a beautiful native work of art. But theonly thing you can do more with that is analyze the filmmaker, which I did. I figured out how he got the anima-tion into the trees.

Bateson:Oh yes? What do you get out of that one?

Mead: He picked windy days, he walked as he pho-tographed, and he moved the camera independently ofthe movement of his own body. And that gives you thateffect. Well, are you going to say, following what allthose other people have been able to get out of those filmsof yours, that you should have just been artistic?

Brand: He’s saying hewasartistic.

Mead: No, he wasn’t. I mean, he’s a good film maker,and Balinese can pose very nicely, but his effort was tohold the camera steady enough long enough to get a se-quence of behavior.

Bateson:To find out what’s happening, yes.

Mead: When you’re jumping around taking pictures . . .

Bateson:Nobody’s talking about that, Margaret, forGod’s sake.

Mead: Well.

Bateson: I’m talking about having control of a camera.You’re talking about putting a dead camera on top of abloody tripod. It sees nothing.

Mead: Well, I think it sees a great deal. I’ve worked withthese pictures taken by artists, and really good ones . . .

Bateson: I’m sorry I said artists; all I meant was artists.I mean, artist is not a term of abuse in my vocabulary.

Mead: It isn.t in mine either, but I . . .

Bateson:Well, in this conversation, it’s become one.

Mead: Well, I’m sorry. It just produces something dif-ferent. I’ve tried to useDead Birds,12 for instance . . .

Bateson:I don’t understandDead Birds at all. I’velooked atDead Birds, and it makes no sense.

Mead: I think it makes plenty of sense.

Bateson:But how it was made I have no idea at all.

Mead: Well, there is never a long-enough sequence ofanything, and you said absolutely that what one neededwas long, long sequences from one position in the direc-tion of two people. You’ve said that in print. Are yougoing to take it back?

Bateson:Yes, well, a long sequence in my vocabulary istwenty seconds.

Mead: Well, it wasn’t when you were writing about Ba-linese films. It was three minutes. It was the longest thatyou could wind the camera at that point.

Bateson:A very few sequences ran to the length of thewinding of the camera.

Mead: But if at that point you had a camera that wouldrun twelve hundred feet, you’d have run it.

Bateson:I would have and I’d have been wrong.

Mead: I don’t think so for one minute.

Bateson:The Balinese film wouldn’t be worth one quar-ter.

Mead: All right. That’s a point where I totally disagree.It’s not science.

Bateson:I don’t know what science is, I don’t knowwhat art is.

Mead: That’s all right. If you don’t, that’s quite simple.I do. [To Stewart] With the films that Gregory’s now re-pudiating that he took, we have had twenty-five years ofre-examination of the material.

Bateson:It’s pretty rich material.

Mead: It’s rich, because they’re long sequences, andthat’s what you need.

Bateson:There are no long sequences.

Mead: Oh, compared with anything anybody else does,Gregory.

Bateson:But they’re trained not to.

Mead: There are sequences that are long enough to ana-lyze . . .

Bateson:Taken from the right place!

Mead: Taken from one place.

Bateson:Taken from the place that averaged better thanother places

Mead: Well, you put your camera there.

Bateson:You can’t do that without a tripod. You’restuck. The thing grinds for twelve hundred feet. It’s a

11Sol Worth and John Adair.Through Navajo Eyes. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972.Intrepid Shadowswas made by AlClah, a 19-year old Navajo painter and sculptor.

12Dead Birds. Directed by Robert Gardner for the Peabody Museum, HarvardUniversity, color, 83 minutes, 1964. Available through NewYorkPublic Library.


bore.

Mead: Well, you prefer twenty seconds to twelve hun-dred feet.

Bateson: Indeed, I do.

Mead: Which shows you get bored very easily.

Bateson:Yes, I do.

Mead: Well, there are other people who don’t, do youknow? Take the films that Betty Thompson studied.13

That Karbo sequence — it’s beautiful — she was willingto work on it for six months. You’ve never been willingto work on things that length of time, but you shouldn’tobject to other people who can do it, and giving them thematerial to do it.

There were times in the field when I worked with peo-ple without filming, and therefore have not been able tosubject the material to changing theory, as we were ableto do with the Balinese stuff. So when I went back to BaliI didn’t see new things. When I went back to Manus, Idid, where I had only still photographs. If you have film,as your own perception develops, you can re-examine itin the light of the material to same extent. One of thethings, Gregory, that we examined in the stills, was theextent to which people, if they leaned against other peo-ple, let their mouths fall slack. We got that out of exam-ining lots and lots of stills. It’s the same principle. It’squite different if you have a thesis and have the camerain your hand, the chances of influencing the material aregreater. When you don’t have the camera in your hand,you can look at the things in the background.

Bateson:There are three ends to this discussion. There’sthe sort of film I want to make, there’s the sort of film thatthey want to make in New Mexico (which isDead Birds,substantially), and there is the sort of film that is made byleaving the camera on a tripod and not paying attentionto it.

Mead: Who does that?

Bateson:Oh, psychiatrists do that. Albert Scheflen14

leaves a video camera in somebody’s house and goeshome. It’s stuck in the wall.

Mead: Well, I thoroughly disapprove of the people thatwant video so they won’t have to look. They hand it overto an unfortunate student who then does the rest of thework and adds up the figures, and they write a book. Weboth object to this. But I do think if you look at your longsequence of stills, leave out the film for a minute, thatthose long, very rapid sequences, Koewat Raoeh, those

stills, they’re magnificent, and you can do a great dealwith them. And if you hadn’t stayed in the same place,you wouldn’t have those sequences.

Brand: Has anybody else done that since?

Mead: Nobody has been as good photographer as Gre-gory at this sort of thing. People are very unwilling to doit, very unwilling.

Brand: I haven’t seen any books that come even close toBalinese Character.15

Mead: That’s right, they never have. And now Gregoryis saying it was wrong to do what he did in Bali. Gregorywas the only person who was ever successful at takingstills and film at the same time, which you did by puttingone on a tripod, and having both at the same focal length.

Bateson:It was having one in my hand and the otherround my neck.

Mead: Some of the time, and some not.

Bateson:We used the tripod occasionally when we wereusing long telephoto lenses.

Mead: We used it for the bathing babies. I think the dif-ference between art and science is that each artistic eventis unique, whereas in science sooner or later once you getsome kind of theory going somebody or other will makethe same discovery.16 The principal point is access, sothat other people can look at your material, and cometo understand it and share it. The only real informationthat Dead Birdsgives anybody are things like the thingthat my imagination had never really encompassed, andthat’s the effect of cutting off joints of fingers. You re-member? The women cut off a joint for every death thatthey mourn for, and they start when they’re little girls,so that by the time they’re grown women, they have nofingers. All the fine work is done by men in that soci-ety, the crocheting and what not, because the men havefingers to do it with, and the women have these stumpsof hands. I knew about it, I had read about it, it had nomeaning to me until I saw those pictures. There are lotsof things that can be conveyed by this quasi-artistic film,but when we want to suggest to people that it’s a goodidea to know what goes on between people, which is wasyou’ve always stressed, we still have to show your films,because there aren’t any others that are anything like asgood.

Brand: Isn’t that a little shocking? It’s been, what,years?

Mead: Very shocking.13Betty Thompson.Development and Trial Applications of Method for Identifying Non-Vocal Parent-Child Communications in Research Film,

(Teachers College, New York, 1970, PhD thesis).14Albert E. Scheflen.Body Language and the Social Order: Communication as Behavioral Control. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-

Hall, 1973.15M. Mead and G. Bateson.Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, Special Publica-

tions, II, 1942; reissued 1962.16M. Mead. “Towards a Human Science,’Science, vol. 191 (March 1976), pp. 903–909.


Bateson: It’s because people are getting good at puttingcameras in tripods. It isn’t what happens between people.

Mead: Nobody’s put any cameras on tripods in thosetwenty-five years that looked at anything that mattered.

Bateson:They haven’t looked at anything that mattered,anyway. All right.

Brand: I have a question that maybe relates to that,maybe not. What about field workers that join the tribe?Frank Cushing with the Zuni, and Carlos Castaneda, andsuch.

Mead: Castaneda hasn’t joined the tribe.

Brand: He hasn’t joined the tribe, he’s tried to join thepractice.

Mead: No, only intermittently. We have examples. Ed-mund Carpenter’s been making a study of these people.

Brand: I’ve got some, too. Everyone that knows anthro-pologists knows someone who’s a little wiggy becauseof some overzealous participation in something. And Iwonder about that.

Mead: It’s the temptation for another culture. We alsohave a case of a man who was studying the Chinese,and he married a Chinese girl. Which he then thoughtwas enough anthropology; for quite a while he couldn’tdo anything else. It’s a lot easier to study the culturewhere you can’t marry people, where there’s such a gulfthat that kind of over-identification doesn’t occur. Theminute you study a culture where you might marry them,or adopt their children, or be adopted by them, you getcomplications. Extreme ones.

Brand: Sometimes the ones who lose track of wherethey are, they find a place to be confused between, andproceed to be confused between it.

Mead: I think that’s a function of people who are con-fused wherever they are, anyway. One difference be-tween pre-World War II anthropology and post-WorldWar II is that most of us who did the pre-war work grewup in reasonably coherent cultures, and we knew what apattern was when we saw one.17 Remember that paperthat I wrote that you invented the word “quizbits” for?(But the paper is called “Customs and Mores.’18) It wasa discussion of the extent to which information was be-ing broken up into meaningless bits and fed to people.All your experience is chopped, everything out of scale.The news over the radio — one event is of world signif-icance, the next is nothing. Contemporary young peoplehave had the things that are presented to them so choppedup.

Brand: You mean just the speed with which they change,or the lack of integration?

Mead: The lack of integration. You get it on radio inNew Guinea: “Kruschev has been deposed, there was ajewel robbery in the American Museum of National His-tory, two small boats off Port Moresby have sunk,” that’sthe news.[Lois Bateson leans in on her way to an errand. Mar-garet will be gone by the time she returns. “OK, youpeople. See you in a while. I’m really glad you came,Margaret. Come again.”]

Mead: Well, it’s been lovely to see you.

Brand: You mentioned Gerry O’Neill a while ago, asthough you’re somewhat involved in the space colonybusiness.

Mead: Well, I’ve been interested in them, because of thepossibilities of diversity. You see, I’ve always lived thePacific islands, because they have such high degrees ofdiversity. When John Stroud first told me about spacecolonies, the picture was that you could have an areaabout the size of Los Angeles, and they would be undis-turbed for 1500 years, so they could vary.

Brand: I have a question that goes back to the Macy con-ferences, and it also relates to projects that Gregory’s get-ting interested in now. What is the history of the failureof conceptual cybernetics to become public knowledge?You said that the later Macy meetings were starting to geta sense that you had something that everybody ought toknow.

Mead: It wasn’t quite as deep as that. We thoughtwe had something that would be cross-disciplinary lan-guage. The meeting we had with the Academy of Sci-ences was to include more of the scientific community.Now, I worked a lot on that idea.Continuities in Cul-tural Evolutiondeals with the fact that in social science,unless you can carry the public with you, you can’t useyour findings. I think that we could trace part of thelack of response to the American preference for linearsequences, which is very high. It’s like the Manus, too.They’re both moral cause-and-effect societies. You dothis, andthathappens.

A problem I was going to raise, to Gregory, is why doyou think the United States has more run-away positivefeedback than most cultures?

Brand: Such as?

Mead: Such as, gasoline taxes that can only be used onroads. With the tax you build more roads, which makesit possible to have more cars, which uses more gasoline.It’s a perfect endless runaway. We have hundreds of themin this country.

Bateson:I think one of the things that’s serious in thiscountry is using the value one can catch hold of, rather

17M. Mead. “From Intuition to Analysis in Communication Research,” Semiotica,Vol. 1 (1969), pp. 13–25.18M. Mead. “Customs and Mores,”American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 47 (1942), pp. 971–980.


than the real value. Such as, catching gangsters for theirincome tax returns. I had a whole series of examples ofthis at one stage. The actual feedback circuit runs upona collateral variable and you don’t, from the circuit, getinsight into the whole structure.

Brand: Still, you say that’s good when it comes to some-thing like oxygen or carbon dioxide being the controllerof breathing rates.

Bateson:This is exactly the problem. When do youwant to do this, and where do you want not to do it? Atone stage I was saying, the thing to do is never to use thelethal variable to control the feedback.

Brand: The lethal variable?

Bateson:This was in asphyxia. The rate of breathing isnot affected by the lack of oxygen but by the surplus ofcarbon dioxide in the blood. If you try to regulate by thelack of oxygen, it’s already too late.

Mead: Well, we said the same thing, that if you’re teach-ing children nutritional habits, don’t do it with somethingthat’s related to nutrition. It’s much safer to say, “We’lltake you to a circus if you eat your spinach,” than to say,“If you eat your spinach, you can have ice cream.”

Brand: Safer means?

Mead: Safer socially when you’re bringing up childrenand you want them to learn to eat nutritionally good dietseffortlessly. When you tie the eating to the food itself, ifa child wants to fight about it, they fight about it by noteating the right food. So that you put all the trouble in thesystem. The Balinese say to a child when dressing a cut,“Listen to the gong, listen to the orchestra, go and seean orchestra!” There’s no orchestra. She’s just present-ing something pleasant. Italian mothers do that. Theysay, “Ice cream! Ice cream! Lovely ice cream! Lovelyice cream!” while the child’s having a cut fixed. Amer-icans say, “But she didn’t mean it, she didn’t give himany ice cream.” Watergate, of course, was an outstandingexample. We didn’t have to get Nixon because of Wa-tergate. We were using Watergate because he was takingthe country apart and had delusions of grandeur. I think ifwe’d known about the income tax, that would have doneit.

I’ve wondered, Gregory, whether all of these thingsgo together — the non-recognition of cybernetics in thiscountry, as compared with the Soviet Union. I figure thatthey have about a hundred times as many people that un-derstand the whole thing.

Brand: Understanding it creatively and coming up withnew thoughts?

Mead: That one doesn’t know. We do know that they areusing it for purposes of social organization, especially inCzechoslovakia.

Bateson:At that first cybernetic meeting we had a Rus-sian talk. He hadn’t much idea what it was all about, Ithought.

Mead: I don’t remember what he said at all.

Bateson:He had fifteen slides of circuit structures thatwould do various sorts of things like pattern recognition,or control temperature, or something. It was a sort ofabout the level of the McCulloch and Pitts papers. With-out, as far as I could make out, the enormous theoreticalspin-off that those papers had.

Mead: And evidently I wrote him off so I can’t remem-ber.

Bateson:I think you wrote him off. I wrote him off veryquickly.

Mead: Well, we had a period where I thought we couldtake cybernetics and use it as a language for communicat-ing with the Russians, and then somebody in this countrydecided that the Russian cybernetic were very danger-ous, and we had a big intelligence report on cybernetics.It ceased to be politics-free and was no longer useful.I wrote a discussion to that, and decided anyway, thatinstead of having a methodology or conceptual schemefor communication, it was much better to have agreed-on sub goals for communication between two systems asantithetical as the Soviet and U.S.19

Brand: Well then something funny seemed to happenwith the whole general systems bunch. I’ve never un-derstood that.

Mead: Well, there are a dreadful lot of systems peoplein the Society for General Systems Research. Then vonBertalanffy died. Anatol Rappaport runs a very isolatedgroup. Now, when the Society for General Systems Re-search was formed in Atlanta, and Anatol was in the chair(I had never met him), and Ross Ashby was there on thefront row, and there were about twenty people there, Iwent back to the correspondence, Gregory, where youhad proposed that we plan an organization in relation toits purposes. This was before the cybernetics meetings,while you went overseas. When the Society for GeneralSystems Research was formed, I proposed that we applygeneral systems to our society. Nobody knew who I wasand I was feeling like the little old lady in tennis shoes. Iwent up at the end of it and talked to Ashby, and he said,“You mean we should apply our principles to ourselves”?

Bateson:In what tone of voice?

Mead: He was repudiating it, in a light playful voice thatwas appropriate, but he was repudiating it.

Brand: So it was stillborn.

Mead: So now, the Society for General Systems Re-search, which is proliferating, is proliferating by the stan-

19M. Mead. “Crossing Boundaries in Social Science Communication,” Social Science Information, vol. 8 (1969), pp. 7–15.


dard methods that are used in this country — regionalchapters. I said to Dick Erickson, “I don’t think weshould be so conventional, we ought to think of some-thing better.” We can’t get anybody to use any kind ofconstructive thinking on the problems of organization.And, of course, there’s no place where you can get a wellrounded degree in General System Theory. Rand has aschool that is almost entirely military.

One of the most crazy situations — I was asked tospeak at a dinner of the Air Force celebrating their fifthdecade of Air Force intelligence. I talked about the factthat they weren’t paying attention to the whole; the AirForce was modeling the Soviet Union as a system, andthe Army was modeling the United States as a system,

using different units, and they were both ignoring the factthat China existed, and therefore were making hopelessmess when you knew you had a universe to deal with.What I was telling them was to use cybernetic thinkingas it had developed into general systems theory. The nextmorning I was on a chartered plane bringing me back,and there was a man on it who said, “You left me waybehind. I couldn’t understand a word you said.” I said,“What are you?” He said, “I’m an electronic specialist.”

Americans are always solving problems piece-meal.They’re always solving themde nouveauand artificiallybecause they’re all newcomers and they don’t have deci-sions grounded in a culture.


The Position of Humor in Human CommunicationGregory Bateson

MacyConferences 1952

Participants: Gregory Bateson (presenter), Lawrence S. Kubie, W. Ross Ashby, J. Z. Young, John R.Bowman, Ralph W. Gerard, G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Walter Pitts, Henry Quastler, Margaret Mead, WarrenMcCullough.

To discuss the position of humor in the equilibrationof human relationship, I shall build up from things thathave previously been talked about in this room.

Consider a message of a very simple kind, such as,“The cat is on the mat.” That message contains, as hasbeen emphasized here, many other things besides thepiece of information which may be defined as the “Yes”or “No” answer to the question which would be createdby inverting the same words and adding an interrogationmark. It contains a series of things of which one setwould be answers to other informational questions. Notonly does it give the answer to: “Is the cat on the mat?”,but also to “Where is the cat?”, which is a much widerquestion. The message also contains, as McCulloch hasstressed, something in addition to a report about the cat,namely, a mandatory aspect; it urges the recipient of themessage to pick the cat up, to kick the cat, feed it, ignoreit, put it out, according to taste, purpose, and so forth.The message is a command or stimulus as well as beinga report.

There is a further range of implicit communication inthis message, two additional categories of implicit con-tent. One category includes the implicit communicationbetween A and B that the word “cat” shall stand for aparticular furry, four-footed thing or for a category offurry, four-footed things. People are not necessarily inclear agreement about what their messages mean. Thesenders have their rules or habits in constructing mes-sages; the recipients have their rules and habits in inter-preting them; and there is not always agreement betweenthe rules of the sender and the rules of the recipient. Oneof the most important uses of messages, and especiallyof their interchange — the single message doesn’t meanmuch or do much in this respect — is to bring the twopersons or the many persons together into an implicitagreement as to what the words are to mean. That isone of the most important social functions of talking. Itis not that we want to know where the cat is, but that weterribly want it to be true that both persons are talking thesame “language” in the widest sense of the word. If we

discover that we are not communicating in the same way,we become anxious, unhappy, angry; we find ourselvesat cross-purposes.

Ongoing interchanges are very useful in building upamong a group of persons the conventions of communi-cation. These conventions range from vocabulary and therules of grammar and syntax to much more abstract con-ventions of category formation, such as the conventionsfor structuring the universe and the conventions of epis-temology. The conventions of communication includethe material of linguistics at the simplest level, but alsounder this heading comes material which is the field ofstudy of psychiatry and of cultural anthropology. WhenI, as an anthropologist, say there is something differentabout those English or those Balinese, I don’t only meanthat they eat their vegetables in a rather uncooked formor that they go to boarding schools. I do not refer to aset of simple descriptive statements of action or a set ofdescriptive statements at the vocabulary level. I meanalso that their actual conventions of communication aredifferent from those of some other culture1.

I classify together the simplest conventions of com-munication and the most abstract cultural and psychiatricpremises, and insist that a vast range of premises of thissort are implicit in every message. For example, I be-lieve that the world is “agin” me and I am in commu-nication with some other person, the premise about theworld being “agin” me is going to be built into the wayin which I structure my messages and interpret his. In asense, a philosophy of life is describable as a set of rulesfor constructing messages, and the individual’s cultureor Weltanschauung, call it what you will, is built into hisconventions of communication.

There is another set of implicit contents in such amessage as: “The cat is on the mat,” namely, implicitstatements about relationship. We are trying to tell eachother that we love each other, that we hate each other,that we are in communication, that we are not in com-munication, and so on. The implicit statements about theconventions of communication are messages about the

1Ruesch, J., and Bateson, G.: Communication.The Social Matrix of Psychiatry. New York, Norton, 1951 (See:The Conventions of Communi-cation, p. 212).

GREGORYBATESON 15 Humor in Human Communication

“how” of communication, but these (about relationship)are messages about the fact of communication. “We arecommunicating” is a statement by two persons.

You meet somebody in the street and he turns andlooks into a shop window. You noticed that he saw youcoming; you observed that he turned and looked into theshop window. He may be transmitting the very peculiarmessage: “We are not communicating.” Whether he is oris not communicating is a question which brings us toEpimenides’ paradoxes.

One of the rather curious things abouthomo sapiensis laughter, one of the three common convulsive behav-iors of people in daily life, the others being grief andorgasm. I don’t want to say that they do not occur atanimal levels, partly because I am not competent to saysuch a thing, partly because I suspect that there are pre-figurations in certain mammals but all three phenomenacertainly are not developed among mammals to the ex-tent that they are amonghomo sapiens. Because they areinvoluntary, or partially so, one tends to think of thesephenomena as lower functions, animalish functions, butsince the full development of these phenomena is char-acteristically human, it seems that laughter, sobbing, andorgasm are perhaps not lower functions in a simple neu-rophysiologic sense but have evolved because of the hy-pertrophy of the upper levels and the resulting peculiarrelationship between the cortical-intellectual processesand those which go on below.

These three phenomena, and also the convulsions ofepilepsy and shock therapy, have the characteristic thatthere is a build-up, a so-called tonic phase, in whichsomething called “tension” — which it certainly is not— builds up for a period; then something happens, andthe organism begins quaking, heaving, oscillating, espe-cially about the diaphragm. I leave it to the physiologiststo discuss what happens.

These three convulsive phenomena are subject to im-pairment in mental illness. The inability to weep, the im-pairment of orgasm, and the impairment of laughter areamong the indices of illness that the psychiatrist looksfor. If those three things are functioning nicely, the indi-vidual probably is not doing so badly. If one of them ishypertrophied, or two or three impaired or absent, thenthe psychiatrist knows that something is not functioningright.

Of the three types of convulsion, laughter is the onefor which there is the clearest ideational content. It isrelatively easy to discuss what is a joke, what are thecharacteristics that make a joke, what is the point of ajoke. The sort of analysis that I want to propose assumesthat the messages in the first phase of telling the jokeare such that while the informational content is, so tospeak, on the surface, the other content types in various

forms are implicit in the background. When the point ofa joke is reached, suddenly this background material isbrought into attention and a paradox, or something likeit is touched off. A circuit of contradictory notions iscompleted.

There is a very simple and not very good joke go-ing around — for some reason, those who discuss hu-mor from the scientific point of view always use ratherdull jokes: A man working in an atomic plant knew theguard at the gate slightly, and one day he comes out witha wheel-barrow full of excelsior. When the guard says,“Say, Bill, you can’t take that out,” he says, “It’s onlyexcelsior, they throw the stuff away, anyway.” The guardsays, “What do you want it for?” Well, he said he wantedto dig it into his garden because the soil was a bit heavy,and the guard let him go. The next day he comes outagain with a wheelbarrow full of excelsior. This goes onday after day, and the gateman is increasingly worried.Finally, he says, “Bill, look, I’m going to have to put youon the suspect list. If you tell me what it is you’re steal-ing from this place, maybe we can keep it quiet betweenus, but I’m perfectly sure you’re stealing something.” Billsays, “No, it’s only excelsior. You’ve looked through itevery day and dug to the bottom of it. There’s nothingthere.” But the guard says, “Bill, I’m not satisfied. I’mgoing to have to protect myself by putting you on the listif you won’t tell me what this is all about.” Finally, Billsays, “Well maybe we can get together on this. I’ve gota dozen wheelbarrows at home now.”

We have talked a good deal at these Conferencesabout figure-ground relations. If we name something asa person, a face, or a table, or whatever, by the fact ofnaming it, we have defined the existence of a universeof not-this, a ground. We have also discussed, althoughnot, I think, as much as we should have, the Russellianparadoxes, especially the class of classes which are notmembers of themselves. These paradoxes arise when amessage about the message is contained in the message.The man who says, “I am lying,” is also implicitly say-ing, “The statement which I now make is untrue.” Thosetwo statements, the message and the message about themessage crisscross each other to complete an oscillatingsystem of notions: if he is lying, then he is telling thetruth; but if he is telling the truth, then he is not lying;and so on.

The paradox of the class of classes which are notmembers of themselves arises similarly from examiningthe implicit message. The first step toward building theparadox is to say that the man who speaks of elephantsis thereby defining the class of non-elephants. The pos-sibility of the class being a member of itself is then in-troduced via the class of non-elephants, which class isevidently not an elephant and therefore is a member of


itself. The circuit of ideas which is the paradox is closedor completed by treating seriously the background: thenon-table, the non-elephant. The ground is a part of theimplicit information. It just is. You can’t ever really getaway from it.

The hypothesis that I am presenting is that the para-doxes are the prototypic paradigm for humor, and thatlaughter occurs at the moment when a circuit of that kindis completed. This hypothesis could be followed up withan analysis of jokes, but rather than do that, I shouldlike to present to you the notion that these paradoxes arethe stuff of human communication. As scientists, we tryvery hard to keep our levels of abstraction straight; forinstance, in these conferences we have gotten into verygreat trouble when the levels of abstraction became tan-gled and the theory of types showed itself. In ordinarylife, as distinct from scientific talk, we continually acceptthe implicit paradoxes. If the psychiatric patient says, “Idreamed,” and then narrates his dream, he is making a setof statements within a framework not unrelated to that ofEpimenides. If an artist paints a picture and says, eitherimplicitly or explicitly, “This picture is a truth, this pic-ture is an attempt to convince you,” he is, if I may say so,probably not an artist but a scientist or a propagandist.If he says, “This picture is in an Epimenides frame,” heis a “real” artist. Or consider the old difference betweenRuskin’s true and false grotesque2. The true grotesqueis, I suggest, created by the man who says frankly, “I amlying,” and who goes on to create a thing whose truth isthat it is created. The man who says, “This is a horribledragon,” and tries to make his work of art into a factualstatement is the one who produces the false grotesque.He is the propagandist.

The setting of the psychotherapeutic interview hasa peculiar relationship to reality. Is it real or is it not?The fantastic exchanges that go on within it are paradox-ical. The patient who says, “I walked around the groundsthis morning and I said, ’I will be honest. I am going toget something straight,’ ” fairly certainly will not achievemuch that day. The likelihood of his making an advancedepends much more on his ability to say to himself, “Letme freely imagine what I want to imagine and see whatcomes up.” Indeed, the whole free association techniqueis an attempt to give that freedom.

But the therapy situation is not unique. It is, perhaps,a specialized version of what, after all, goes on betweenus all the time. The therapy situation is a place wherethe freedom to admit paradox has been cultivated as atechnique, but on the whole this flexibility exists betweentwo people whenever, God willing, they succeed in giv-ing each other a freedom of discussion. That freedom,the freedom to talk nonsense, the freedom to entertain il-

logical alternatives, the freedom to ignore the theory oftypes, is probably essential to comfortable human rela-tions.

In sum, I am arguing that there is an important in-gredient common to comfortable human relations, hu-mor, and psychotherapeutic change, and that this in-gredient is the implicit presence and acceptance of theparadoxes. It appears that the patient (especially theFreudian analysand) makes progress via the mental flux,confusion, or entropy stirred up by paradox, that, pass-ing through this state of inner disorder, he is partly freeto achieve a new affective organization of experience ornew premises for the codification of his thoughts.

The alternative to the freedoms introduced by para-dox is the rigidity of logic. Logic is a very peculiar hu-man invention, more or less timeless. We say, “If A, thenB,” but in logic, the word, “then” does not mean “at alater time.” It means that statement B is synchronouslyimplicit in statement A. But when we speak of causes andsay, “If I drop the glass, then it will fall,” the words “if . . .then” refer to a sequence in time and are quite differentfrom the “if . . . then” of logic. When logic encountersthe theory of types and paradox is generated, its wholeexposition breaks down — “Poof!” It is perhaps someterror that mental process may go “poof” which compelsmany patients and persons at large to cling to logic. Butcasual systems do not go “poof” in this way. As in anelectric buzzer, there is sequential contradiction, and thesystem merely oscillates.

One of the hypotheses in this group is that men-tal processes can appropriately be described in terms ofcausal hypothesis with all due qualification of the word“cause.” I would suggest that these processes absolutelycannot be described in terms of timeless logic. The studyof mind through the causal approach, however, will leadus into accepting the paradoxes of thinking, which are re-lated to humor, which are related to a freedom to changethe system of thought related to humor, and in generalare related to mental health and human amenity.

I think that opens enough subjects for discussion, butthere is just one other thing I should like to speak of.I want to refer back to some talk which we have hadin the past over the words, “unconscious” and “the un-conscious.” Conventional theories about humor usuallyrefer to repression, release of repression,Schadenfreude— the pleasure which we feel in somebody else’s pain— and so on. I want to say that the various types ofimplicit content of messages constitute what I person-ally would understand by the content of the unconscious.Those are the items which, when we think only of the catand its location, we are likely not to notice as messageswhich we have received. It seems to me that theSchaden-

2Ruskin, J.:The Stones of Venice. London, Smith, 1853, and New York, Dutton, 1907 (Vol. III).


freudetheory, which, after all, is classic for this subject,arises because the implicit enjoyment of another’s painis among those things which we prefer not to notice. Itis a premise which we leave implicit among those mes-sages which we receive without noticing that we receivedthem. All or most of the cultures of the world have somedegree of restriction and taboo upon hostile expressionsand hostile actions, and, therefore, in all cultures of theworld that type of material is likely to be sidetracked intothe implicit and to be unnoticed until a joke is completed.And that is as near as I can get to an explanation of whypeople makeSchadenfreudetheories about humor.

Frank: Gregory Bateson referred very briefly to thefigure-ground concept. We could further our thinking byemphasizing the selective awareness and patterned per-ception of each person, and some of the problems whichseem to be involved. For example, we were talking inthis room earlier this week3 about the primary discrimi-nation of self and nonself in the child, discussing the factthat primary discrimination is not to an outside objectivereality but is always to an idiomatically highly-patternednonself. Later on, the child may have to learn to modifythat objective nonself and accept the social-cultural def-initions of the environing world. Some children do notwholly accept these cultural definitions, as we know, andperhaps that is how psychiatric patients develop, fromthose who have not made the transition from the purelyidiomatic to the public world.

The figure-ground concept is further illuminated ifthe joke is thought of as involving a shift between the fig-ure and ground, where the figure is altered or the groundis reconstituted or a reversal of the figure-ground situa-tion takes place.

Another aspect that may be worth examining is tothink of the figure-ground in these terms: that the figureis a cognitive pattern perception, selectively chosen be-cause of learning, constitutional susceptibility, and so on,while the ground is that to which an affective responseis made. In all experience, we selectively perceive, de-fine, and impute meanings to the different figures that arelargely personal, idiomatic versions of socially and cul-turally patterned ideas and beliefs. Concurrently, in ev-ery situation we respond affectively without being awareof it. If we can use the concept of people growing up withhighly conflicting responses, one, a cognitive, meaning-ful one to the figure, the other an affective response tothe ground situation, which is in conflict to the first, wemight get a chance to make some kind of an interpreta-tion of what we call “emotional conflicts” and the “un-conscious” bias in perception.

Bateson: I think I am responsible for a possible misun-derstanding at this point. There is a danger which one has

to be aware of all the time in the psychological sciences,namely, the danger of taking a dichotomy, such as figure-ground, and equating it with every other dichotomy, suchas affect-cognition or consciousness-unconsciousness. Iset the stage by, using the yes-or-no answer to the ques-tion, “Is the cat on the mat?” as in some sense a primarilyconscious, figure-ish item, and I defined the other thingsas background items. But it is important to insist that thatwas a purely arbitrary selection on my part.

In talking about the character structure of a certainindividual or about the thought habits or the communica-tion habits distinguishing a certain culture, it may be im-portant to say which categories of content appear in theforefront of consciousness. There are, certainly, manypeople who are enormously more conscious of some ofthe items which I labeled as “implicit” than they are ofthe concrete information. After the conversation, theydon’t know whether the cat was on the mat but they doknow whether somebody loves or hates them, and so on.I don’t think it can be said that affect is necessarily themore unconscious component.

Frank: I didn’t want to separate affect and cognition. Imerely wanted to point out, in discussing and conceptu-alizing the picture, that the affective reaction might belooked upon as analogous to the way we adjust to thetemperature and barometric pressure in this room with-out being aware of it, that is, they are part of the groundin which this meeting is taking place.

May I make just one other point? I think you wouldagree, wouldn’t you, Gregory, that the individual is notonly communicating to somebody else but at the sametime he is trying to reaffirm and re-establish his own id-iomatic version of the word?

Bateson:Surely.

Frank: There is, then, the problem of whether the indi-vidual is consciously aware of trying to communicate orof his attempt to reassure himself as I suggested at one ofour earlier meetings, we should discuss internal speechbecause that is a highly significant aspect of this prob-lem.

von Bonin: In the joke that was told, all of a suddenthe figure-ground relationship switched over into anotherconstellation. The wheelbarrow was background andwas not noticed, but I don’t think it had any affectivetone. I can’t see that the background was anything towhich we reacted emotionally.

Bateson:I cut down the affective tension of that joke, ifI may use the word tension, knowing that I don’t mean it,by saying that the man with the wheelbarrow and the gateguard were friends. By making it obvious that they weregoing to get in cahoots, there was no serious danger in

3Conference on Problems of Infancy and Childhood, sponsoredby the Josiah Macy, Jr.] Foundation.


the situation. There would have been more laughter afterthat joke had I not said that.

von Bonin: I don’t think it matters much whether yousay that or not. I heard the joke before in a slightly differ-ent version, and it evoked the same laughter because onesimply does not think of the wheelbarrow and it makes acompletely different structure of the whole situation.

As you told that, I thought of another. It is not a goodone. We were in the north woods and a man drove intothe camp with a huge, sixteen-cylinder Cadillac. The In-dian guide said, “Big car.” The man said, “Yes, very bigcar; sixteen-cylinders.” The guide said, “Can go fast?”and the man said, “Yes.” The guide spit on the groundand said to me, “Every time a cylinder misses he saves adollar.”

Again, the point can be made that what one first hasin view is a battery of cylinders as a complete whole,doing certain things. Then, all of a sudden, attention isdirected to an individual cylinder. You’ve never thoughtof sixteen cylinders as sixteen individuals, so the situa-tion becomes completely restructured. The man on thebanana peel is the same sort of thing, although I thinkBergson makes the point that the essence of a joke iswhen the laws of gravity or the laws of the inert universesuddenly apply to something that lives and topple it over.

Young: Couldn’t laughter be defined as the sign of sud-den agreement? A smile is the sign of agreement. Laugh-ter appears when there is sudden agreement, for a varietyof reasons. It may be recognition of a nonmember ofthe group, for example. It may be reversal of figure andground, as mentioned. But it is a communication sign; itis the sign of a sudden achievement of communication.

Bateson: I would agree, but I would narrow it to say thatlaughter is the sign of agreement that X is both equal toY and not equal to Y. It is agreement in a field in whichparadox has been presented.

Quastler: Isn’t it true that you have introduced, surpris-ingly, a new dichotomy between Z and non-Z, with noreference to the Y and non-Y dichotomy? It turns outthat X is equal to Z, but it still is equal to Y; the man stillhas the excelsior.

Bateson:Yes, he’s still got the excelsior. The previousfigure is not denied; only its relevance is. We know thatthe figure is the excelsior. Suddenly, we are told, no, itis the wheelbarrow. But it is still the excelsior, too. Theoriginal figure survives, and it is that doubling, I think,which promotes laughter.

Pitts: One of the essences of humor consists in the re-structuring or reversal of the figure-ground relationship,but, of course, there is a great difficulty in explainingwhy not all of these cases are jokes. It is one of the mostfrequent components of our experience that what we did

not attend to, we now attend to, and what was not impor-tant becomes important. But, certainly, the vast majorityof these transitions are not regarded as humorous by us;thus, there must be something else which is a commoncharacteristic of humor beyond the reconstructing of thefigure-ground relationship or the distribution of tension.

Bateson:There is a rather poor joke going round theWest Coast about two men playing golf. A couple ofwomen are on the course ahead of them, playing veryslowly. The men want to pass, and one fellow says tothe other, “You go forward and talk to those gals and askpermission to pass them.” He goes forward, returns andsays, “Gee, I can’t talk to them. One of them is my wifeand the other is my mistress. You do it.” So the other guygoes forward and he comes back and says, “It’s a smallworld.” Now, it is practically impossible to tell that jokewithout somebody guessing that that particular reversalis going to occur, and it is less of a joke because it hasthat leak in it.

McCulloch: There is no surprise.

Bateson:The surprise of the point is lost. I have nowheard it told twice and I have told it twice, and none ofthose four tellings has taken place without leakage.

Gerard: There is a joke which exemplifies all the pointsmade so far, except for Walter’s question of why the shiftis not always humorous, which I think is a critical one. Afellow says to his friend, “Do you know these ice cubeswith the hole in them?”; and the reply, “Know them?Hell, I’m married to one.” That has the sudden inversion,the carrying of the inanimate to the human, the problemof tensions and expression and suppression.

I told this joke deliberately to raise the question ofthe difference between ordinary jokes and so-called dirtyones. There is a very real difference in the kinds of thingsthat elicit laughter and the kind of laughter that is eliciteddepending upon the setting, the group, and so on. The re-action of this group is illustrative. I have told that storytwice to small groups this morning and they laughed up-roariously, right here in this room. I have now told itpublicly, in the presence of a woman, and the guilt feel-ings almost suppressed any laughter.

Klver: What about the relationship between humor andirony?

Bateson:Do you mean irony in the classical sense, suchas occurs in Greek tragedy when the final disaster isimplicitly or explicitly predicted in the beginning by aspeaker who doesn’t know what he is predicting? Or doyou mean irony in the sense of saying the opposite ofwhat is meant?

Teuber: One would be the irony of the situation of Oedi-pus who does not know what everybody else knows, andthe other would be the Socratic irony. Socrates insists he


doesn’t know what everybody else presumes to know . . .

Pitts: No, he doesn’t want to say he does, but the otherperson doesn’t, either.

Teuber: He knows one thing that the other fellowdoesn’t: he knows that he doesn’t know.

Pitts: And the other man supposes he does, and the ironyis directly implicit in the fact that the other man doesn’t,either.

von Bonin: May we know how the Greeks definedirony? They talked a lot about it.

Pitts: In relation to the tragedy.

von Bonin: Yes.

Mead: Just a moment. Why are we getting so literary?

Pitts: Well, who started it?

Mead: I am just raising it as a question. Why this out-crop of literary-historical erudition here?

Gerard: Maybe we haven’t anything constructive to say.

Monnier: Why does laughter not exist in animals?Laughter implies a comparison of the code of one in-dividual with the code adopted by the group. Laughterarises, for instance, when the individual observed doesnot behave according to the code of the observers. A manwalking on a curb is expected to see the edge and to stepto the street properly. If he behaves like an automaton,does not see the edge of the curb, and falls, the observerlaughs. Bergson pointed out the biological function oflaughter, that it tends to protect society against egocen-tric mechanical behavior of individuals at variance withouter reality.

Mead: I would be willing to accept that laughter can oc-cur when there is a contrast between the code of the col-lectivity and the individual event or remark, but not thatit necessarily requires that something has gone wrong;there is also the laughter when something goes right.Laughter is one of the easiest human responses to evokeby someone saying what everybody is feeling but nobodyhas expressed it or is quite willing to say it in that way. Itisn’t that the remark is wrong to make, but that there is adiscrepancy between what is correct to express and whateverybody feels. The discrepancy is the thing that pro-duces the laughter. People laugh when the cork is pulledfrom the bottle.

Young: Children’s laughter.

Wiesner: People often laugh when they are upset or ner-vous. The situation in itself is not humorous, but whenthe relationship between the external and internal worldis not quite right, laughter is one way of bridging the gap.

Mead: So there is again a discrepancy.

Wiesner: The discrepancy seems to be a common thing.

Young: Humor is only one of the situations that evokelaughter. That is what we want to say.

Bateson:Yes, and the situations should be subject to for-mal analysis. We should be able to say how we wouldconstruct a cybernetic machine of some kind whichwould show this characteristic which would be throwninto some sort of oscillating condition by certain typesof contradiction.

Wiesner: It would laugh whenever the input and the cod-ing did not match properly.

Bowman:There can be a very simple network of twotubes in such form that if one conducts, it cuts off theother. A circuit of that type may have two stable states.If it is put in any state, it will asymptotically approachone of the two stable states and stay there. On the otherhand, with the same components in slightly different val-ues of the circuit constants, it can oscillate.

Bateson:I am always prepared to say that an electricbuzzer is laughing.

Bowman: It has no stable state.

Bigelow: I don’t understand what we are trying to dohere. Are we trying to construct a definition which willbe adequate for all types of humor?

Mead: No; we are not studying humor.

Gerard: We seem to be trying to equate humor andlaughter.

McCulloch: We are trying to study the role of humor incommunication.

von Bonin: I am guilty of this digression, for I wanted tospeak about figure-ground and used a joke as an exam-ple because it seemed to me to illustrate the point moreclearly than the cat on the mat. Throwing in another jokegot the discussion off on a tangent. May I bring it backby bringing up another point. In language, there are notonly the actual words which are announced but there arealso the overtones in the language.

In studies being done in Chicago, the experimentersare putting forward that there is a difference betweenlaryngeal and oral speech. It as been shown that youcan frequently understand the emotional state of a per-son even when you don’t understand a word he says.We have had, for instance, a man talking in Hungarian,which none of us understands, but we have gotten a faintidea of what he said.

Bigelow: What could you tell?

von Bonin: Whether he related a story, whether he wastrying to express his displeasure, whether he approvedheartily — that sort of thing.

Mead: That won’t stand up cross-culturally.

von Bonin: I don’t think it will at all. For instance, youcan’t ask a question in Chinese by raising your voice atthe end of the sentence because the last syllable wouldmean something entirely different.


Mead: What does stand up cross-culturally is that in ev-ery society that has been analyzed so far there seemsto be a tendency to symbolize certain states by cer-tain sounds. The sounds are not constant but they haveenough physiological congruence so they may recur.

Wiesner: May not there be physiological changes in themechanisms of speech which can be universally recog-nized and deciphered? For example, when an individualis angry, his muscles tighten so the format structure isvery different, thus changing his tone.

von Bonin: That is the problem the Chicago group stud-ied, whether his voice can be meaningful without an un-derstanding of the words.

Pitts: That is, do all people in all cultures raise theirvoices when they are angry.

Bigelow: Does the aspect of information content involv-ing emotion remain across cultures?

Mead: No.

Bigelow: Can you enumerate cultures in which theseovertones do not contain, essentially, emotion but someother information?

Wiesner: In other words, do people always talk fasterwhen they get excited?

Mead: As far as is known at present, there are no univer-sals of that order. The universal is that every culture, ifthe language is properly analyzed, includes what Tragerand Smith are coding as superscripts; that is, every lan-guage has a recognizable intonational pattern. Similarly,every culture has a code of emotional expression but thecode differs from one society to another.

Bigelow: But is it emotion in every case?

Mead: The best example I can give are the shouting sig-nals of the Arapesh, in which they use words. The wordsmay be, “Somebody is coming,” but nobody hears thewords. Some words are shouted that nobody can un-derstand, that communicate only a degree of affect bytheir loudness and their frequency. The people hearingthe shouts sit down and figure out what is meant entirelyin terms of their knowledge of the probabilities of thesituation, which are quite reasonable. They translate amessage which has the form of information but whichnever gets across. They sit there and say, “Now, thatcame from there. Who do you think would be there now?Who would be shouting that loud and that often? And ifit were he who is shouting, what does it mean? Does itmean that his mother-in-law who has been quite sick hasdied?” They work up a whole series of probabilities andthen they set out to the funeral.

Bigelow: In such a case as that, then certainly the over-

tones contain something else besides the usual emotion;they contain a lot of information separate from emotion.

Bateson:The tone languages and the use of drum sig-nals should be mentioned. There are languages in whichwords have significance on a flat tone or a rising tone ora falling tone. In Chinese and in many of the Africanlanguages, this occurs. The pitch or pitch structure of aword discriminates that word from others which wouldotherwise be homonyms.

This problem of homonymy arises in reverse inAfrican drum signals4. The Bantu spoken languageshave significant pitch, but in sending messages by drum,only the pitch can be transmitted. This would lead to se-rious homonymy except that it is avoided by transmittingwhole phrases instead of single words. Thus the word“girl” is conventionally replaced in drum messages bythe phrase: “The girl will never go to the linginda fishingnet.” (The use of this type of net is a traditionally mas-culine occupation.) The long tonal sequence provided bythe whole phrase precludes homonymy.

For the purposes of this discussion, the importantthing is to treat the word “language” as including all ofthis. We should drop the idea that language is made up ofwords and that words are toneless sequences of letters onpaper, although even on paper there are possibilities forpoetic overtones. We are dealing here with language ina very general sense, which would include posture, ges-ture, and intonation.

Klver: First, I should like to remind you that Yerkes oncepointed out that the chimpanzee resents being laughed atby man or other animals. Second, I wonder whether whathas been said here should not be related to more generalconsiderations. The factor of discontinuity which hasbeen emphasized in this discussion is, of course, char-acteristic of many psychological phenomena. For exam-ple, all our dealings with inanimate and animate objects,with humans and animals, involve processes of “typifi-cation.” One may doubt whether personality “types” ex-ist, but one cannot doubt that processes of “typification”constantly occur in our response to environmental ob-jects and events. The great psychological and sociolog-ical significance of such “typifications” was recognizedlong ago by philosophers, such as Simmel5.

It seems to be the fate of many “typifications” to suf-fer sudden breaks or reversals. You encounter a man ona beach and after talking to him for a while you learnthat he is, let us say, a priest or a colonel. As a result,the whole field may suddenly become restructured andreorganized. Or let us consider our reactions to objectsof the visual environment. We are in optical contact withan object, and we may go to the trouble of performing

4Carrington, J. F.:The Talking Drums of Africa. London, Carey, Kingsgate, 1949.5Simmel, G.:Soziologie. Untersuchungen fiber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Leipzig, Duncker & Humblot, 1908.


numerous and diverse motor reactions to stay in opticalcontact. However, it happens again and again that thecontact is broken since the appropriate movements ei-ther cannot be performed or cannot be performed quicklyenough. Thus, optically induced behavior constantly in-volves discontinuities and breaks resulting in loss of con-tact or coherence between ourselves and the object.

More generally speaking, life seems to be a sequenceof jokes, the humor of which we often fail to recognize.

Ashby: Perhaps this repeats what has just been said, butthe language is sufficiently different to suggest that theremay be some more general principle behind both. I wantto consider the question of an observer getting informa-tion from some physical system, either an inanimate sys-tem or another human being. Every physical system livesin a physical universe. The system is surrounded or sup-ported by a great number of variables that are in some ef-fective contact with it. The observer can profitably studyonly systems in which these surrounding variables areconstant. If the surrounding variables are held constant,the constancy is sufficient to isolate the system, and theobserver can get useful information out of it. But be-cause the surrounding variables are constant does not inany way prejudge what values they are constant at. Thus,when the observer is studying the system, this is one ofthe first things he must find out. In ordinary language, hemust find out what the person takes for granted.

The number of surrounding variables is usually un-countable. If one started to write down what we are tak-ing for granted this morning, for instance, that we aretalking in 1952 A.D. and not in 1952 B.C., the list wouldget sillier and sillier but it would have no end. Conse-quently, all the information that is coming out of herethis morning is related to these values, even though theycan’t be given explicitly.

What may happen is that the observer, taking forgranted that a surrounding variable has the value of, say,zero, may go on collecting information about the systemuntil suddenly some astonishing event shows him that thevariable must really have been at one all the time. Hesuddenly has to re-interpret all his past information on anew basis. That is the critical moment, when he realizesthat the variable which he had assumed to have one valueevidently must have some other value.

Wiesner: This is the situation you have when somebodytalks at you in a foreign language and you don’t realizeit for a moment; then you suddenly switch. If you goto England and expect an accent that you have to adjustto, and a man talks French to you or German, it some-times takes many words before you realize it and makethe translation and get information.

Bateson:The social scientist is not only in the sort ofposition that Ashby has suggested for his observer but,

worse, he is investigating a dynamic system more orless in the dark with a flexible stick, his own personal-ity, the characteristics of whose flexibility he does notfully know. There is, therefore, a set of unknowns inthe observer, which are also subject to investigation. Ev-ery statement we make about the observed derives frompremises about the self. I say this glass of water is therebecause I can touch it with my hands and feel it therewith my eyes shut. In order to make this statement, “Itis there,” I have to know where my arm is, and, on thepremise that my arm is out in that direction, I concludethat the glass is there. But the premise about myself isbuilt into my conclusion. The whole gamut of projectionphenomena follows.

There are premises about one’s self, in terms ofwhich one understands something else. But the events ininteraction between oneself and the something else maylead to a revision of premises about one’s self. Then, sud-denly, one sees the other thing in a new light. It is thissort of thing that leads to the paradoxes and to a gooddeal of humor, I would suspect.

Ashby: A paradox might start in this way. You begin bythinking that parameter alpha is at zero, but, after youhave gone on for a time, you suddenly realize it must beat one, and you start to re-explore on the assumption it isone. If the system has something rather peculiar in it, itmight force you back to the deduction that alpha is zero.Obviously, if you go on without any further change, youare caught because you will go on changing in opinionbackwards and forwards. What it means is that, simplyfrom the physical point of view, the two, observer andsystem, have gotten into a cycle. There is nothing strangein the physical aspect, although it may be disturbing tothe observer.

Bateson:And if those are two human beings, when thatpoint is reached, laughter is likely to occur.

Ashby: Very likely.

Teuber: Wasn’t it Gregory’s point that it is quite desir-able for the benefit of the process of communication to letjokes, or riddles of a certain sort, point up the schematismthat is shot through all of our communicative processesand without which we could not communicate?

Bateson:A schematism which we cannot communicateby itself.

Teuber: Yes. There have to be schemata; we cannot talkor communicate, even in nonverbal forms, without someschematism. At the same time, I want to point out, andthis, I think, was also Klver’s point, that the schemata arequite limited. We have constantly to pick and choose,shift or be pushed from one to another. Whether the sud-den transitions are frightening or exhilarating probablydepends on very many things that have not been enumer-


ated. But I think it is no accident that jokes and riddlestend to appear together in child development. When thechild begins to make jokes, he usually will ask riddles forthe first time in his life. Similarly, the so-called primitiveriddle seems to lie somewhere between the pun and theprototype of a lyrical metaphor. These riddles exist inall sorts of languages and cultures, although I would notknow whether they are really universal.

Mead: No, these riddles are not universal. Some peopledo not have them.

Teuber: Still, those that do exist are surprisingly simi-lar in structure. For example, “bird without feathers fliesto a tree without leaves.” The answer: “fire consumes alog.” Such a primitive riddle seems to play at making adefinition.

Pitts: Is not the definition of a good riddle that its answeris a good joke?

Teuber: Certainly, or a poem. All these forms of expres-sion have this in common: they point simultaneously atthe value and at the limitations of all schemata. Theyforce us to realize that the communication process iswhat it is — it cannot do without the schemata. Theymake communication, for a moment, about communica-tion.

Young: Laughter is the recognition of the achievementof that communication.

Mead: But Walter made the point that all such occasionsdo not provoke laughter, for instance, Dr. Ashby’s pic-ture of the scientist who has worked for years and thenhe discovers he has made a mistake in attributing a cer-tain value to a variable. The response there might well beconvulsive sobbing instead of laughter. I think if we keeplaughter in the context originally suggested, of a tensionrelease that is related to other tension releases, we shalldo much better. In such a context, laughter has the func-tion of a safety valve.

Remond:That brings up the point of the emotional sta-tus of the individual at the times when humor has a pos-sibility of occurring. For instance, A can say a particularphrase to B, and in a certain emotional state, it will notbe humorous; at another time, because of what has beensaid before or what he has lived through before, B willlaugh uproariously. There is, therefore, a very importantdifference between the reaction of a human being anda machine. Man adapts to the moment and a machineshould be, at all times identical to itself, not changed byemotions built up for a variety of reasons not absolutelyrelevant to the joke being made.

Some people laugh very easily. They see somethingto laugh at immediately in everything. Some people, whoare extremely cold or who are sad for some reason, willnot laugh at anything. But sometimes laughter depends

on things other than the emotional state. For instance, themeaning of some phrase can be well understood but thephrase does not carry the humorous message it should. Iam thinking about the fractured French jokes on napkins.Since I am French, I was interested in them. My emo-tional state at the time I saw them was quite adequate. Iwas at parties; I had been laughing already; I had beendrinking, and I was set to laugh easily. But the fact thatthose jokes were not made for French people and that Ihad to make an effort to understand them put me in anintellectual attitude rather than a humorous one. I hadto be led to understand that in America such and such aphrase was pronounced with such and such an inflectionor such and such an accent so that it could refer to suchand such a situation. But I wasn’t happy with it; it wasn’tfunny.

Wiesner: Well, I, as an American, don’t find them veryfunny, either.

Remond:Sometimes I can see that some are funny, butI have to analyze their positive meaning to understandthem and I don’t feel them really, which is quite differ-ent.

Bateson:The diaphragm is not really involved.

Gerard: And that factor vitiates a great deal of the dis-cussion that has gone on this morning. There is some-thing quite unique and explosive when the diaphragmgets out of control, but most of the discussion has notdealt with that semiphysiological aspect of it. Laughtermay become as uncontrollable as the other two elementsyou mentioned, or as a fourth one that I think is probablyrelated, the yawn.

McCulloch: Domarus worked up a set of jokes rangingfrom those which will make a man laugh under almostany circumstances to those which are so dull and bor-ing that you just don’t see how anybody could laugh atthem. He told these deliberately and systematically topeople in various degrees of fatigue, and found that theease of provoking laughter was dependent in large mea-sure on fatigue. Dusser de Barenne and I were amonghis guinea pigs. He would never forewarn us, of course.He would simply be around while we worked. We werereally horrified that, at the end of seventy-odd hours ofwork without more than a few minutes snatched in sleep,he could tell us that one and one made two and we wouldburst into laughter. We became furious with ourselves atthe ease with which laughter was evoked when we weretired. The physiological state of the organism is crucial,but just how, I don’t know.

Mead: The most laughter I have ever gotten was when Igave the last lecture to a group of social workers who hadhad a week’s conference. They laughed at anything. Itdidn’t make the slightest difference. They laughed virtu-


ally before I opened my mouth. But there was somethingin what I said that gave them permission to laugh, justas when a joke was told to you. All the cue you neededat that state of fatigue was, “It’s all right to laugh.” Acomparable situation is when one has been repressingyawns with a terrific effort. The minute the chairmansays, “Let’s have some coffee,” the yawn will burst outin that same way.

Fremont-Smith:There is another element in Warren’ssituation, that he had been trying for seventy-odd hoursto focus his attention on a problem. He really wanted re-lief from that. The “one and one makes two” provideda situation for a withdrawal of attention and a moment’srelief and relaxation.

One point that seems to me important is suddennessof shift; I don’t know whether there is such a thing asa slow development of a sense of humor. I suspect thatwhat happens is that a series of sudden steps must be in-volved rather than a gradation.

Another thing I should like to bring up is, shall weput a little more attention on the humorless person andon the person who is at a given moment humorless? Ithas seemed to me that the humorless person is the per-son who lacks perspective or lacks the capacity to seesomething in several different perspectives. Isn’t that thefigure-ground situation again? The humorless personssees things only in a very narrow frame of reference, andtherefore he cannot shift.

Teuber: For that reason, if we are working on a difficultexperiment, we ordinarily don’t appreciate any suddenincrease in difficulty as humorous.

McCulloch: If a man already has investigated those pos-sibilities and you bring up one of them, he isn’t likely tolaugh.

Pitts: I should like to say several things, of which a num-ber are meant as a summary. First, I should say that weare probably agreed that, in some sense of the term, arestructuring of the situation is necessary to a joke, andwe should probably also agree that a certain suddennessis required if it is to produce an effect. The restructuringwill explain Dr. Fremont-Smith’s case of the man whois humorless because of his incapacity for restructuringhis point of view, and the suddenness will presumablyexplain Tony’s case of the joke whose point cannot beperceived without a considerable intellectual application,that is to say, not except by a relatively slow process.

In addition, I still maintain, in agreement with Dr.Klver, that some additional quantum is required to makesomething into a joke. I would like to deviate from that,however, for one further point, namely this, that onemust, although this is not the kind of thing I customar-ily say, not suppose that a joke, every time it is said orevery time it is heard by a given person, is necessarily

the same joke. The joke must be considered in the con-text of the person who hears it, and his past. The fifthtime you hear a joke, you rarely laugh. Naturally, the re-constructuring of the situation in your case is in that caseabsent because, well, you can predict the future course ofthe joke, and so, when you begin hearing it, you have thewhole situation in mind and that simply persists withoutany restructuring, all the way to the end.

With respect to the additional quantum, there is onlyone suggestion as far as I can see, namely, Gregory Bate-son’s, that there is a kind of self-reference of the typeseen in the logical or pre-Socratic paradoxes which is su-perimposed on the restructuring of the situation to pro-duce the humorous element. However, that is somethingI can’t easily understand and, consequently, I should liketo ask him how he would apply this additional elementin the case of the joke he gave. I don’t think there is anyprocess of self-reference in the story about the man withthe wheelbarrow and the excelsior.

Bateson:When the story is told, the hearer is invited toidentify himself either with the gate guard or with theman with the excelsior. “If you were in that situation”is the premise which is introduced. That is one part ofthe problem of self-reference. The other part is related,I think, to a peculiarity of human communication, whichI think was implicit in what you said, Dr. Monnier, thatwhen two human beings are talking or communicatingin any form, there is a mutual awareness of the fact thatthey are communicating. It is not clear that similar mu-tual awareness is always present among animals. In thecourtship of sticklebacks, for example, there is an ex-change of signals in quite a complex sequence. The malehas to do A and in reply (as we say) to A, the femaledoes X; and X sets free the next step in the male’s be-havior which is B; which sets off the next step in thefemale’s behavior which is Y; and so on: A–X, B–Y, C–Z; ending with a completion of the driving of the femaleinto a nest which the male has built, where she lays hereggs and he looks after them. A, B, X, and Y are var-ious sorts of perceptible behavior, exhibitionism, as wemight say: raising the spines, exposing the colored belly,etc. But it is fairly doubtful in such sequences how mucheach communicates or is adjusting his communication tothe circumstance of whether it is or is not perceived bythe recipient. The male will, I think, start doing his bellydance in parts of the aquarium where the female can’t seehim.

When human beings try to communicate with eachother, we raise our voices, for example, according to thedistance that the recipient is from us. We modify ourspeech in all sorts of ways and include in our speech allsorts of messages about how the speech is to be inter-preted. At the end of the message, we say, “Over,” in


some form or other. We punctuate. We stop and ask ata given moment, “Have you got me so far?” We watchthe faces of the people we are talking to, to see whetherthe message is getting through, and what they do withtheir faces is a very important contribution to the com-munication because it tells us about the success of thecommunication. The faces give us a message about com-munication at this higher level of abstraction. In humancommunication, the essence of it, almost, is the fact of amutual awareness of the other person’s perception. Of-ten, it gets distorted; often, we don’t behave rationallyin terms of this awareness. We may repeat and repeatwhen we know very well that the other person got themessage. But that mutual awareness seems to me to bevery important in human communication.

Young: Why do you say “awareness” rather than “re-peated exchange of signs”?

Bateson:Because I want to stress again the implicit con-tent. Many of the implicit messages are about that aware-ness.

Pitts: But what about all this as peculiar to a joke?

Bateson:The involvement of self in a joke is the thing Iwas getting to. You can’t stand to hear a joke more thanthree or four times. By the fifth time, you don’t laugh.However, a very large number of people will laugh at ajoke the twentieth time they tell it.

Gerard: Well, that was a shift. Tell it or hear it?

Pitts: There was a shift.

Torre: That is the point now.

Bateson:The teller of the joke is able to be self-involvedin the joke because he can hear it as if it were new.Granted he hears through his Eustachian tubes and notas a simple recipient, but he can identify with the hearerof the joke as a creature who has never heard it beforeand therefore he can laugh.

Fremont-Smith:Two elements come in there. One is thebusiness of contagion; very often, somebody who has notheard the joke or has not understood it at all will laughif the group laughs. But the man hearing a joke for thefifth time does not laugh because the element of surpriseor suddenness is absent.

Mead: But the significant thing still is the conditions un-der which laughter will or will not be evoked as they re-late to the question of identification that Walter broughtup. Humor is a playful change of identification, which issafe. One of the things you communicate to an audience,when you keep them laughing, is, “It is safe to think likethis, it is safe to think like me, it is safe for a minute tosay it like that. Nobody will keep you there. You can getback. You can move around. It is play. It is free.”

Fremont-Smith:And something you wanted to do be-fore.

Mead: As to grief, if one takes Erich Lindemann’s stud-ies of grief6, there is, again, identification involved. Hisstudies, which are the best that I know of, are cases wherethe total identification with the person who was lost wassuch that it was unbearable. Tension was built up to anunbearable point and was released in a different type ofdiaphragmic breakdown. Identification is required be-fore there is grief or laughter, but in one case it may besomething that is terribly dangerous.

Once, I was presiding at a conference of dreadfullysolemn people on family life. It was just before Mother’sDay, and everyone was tired. Our P.T.A. delegate hadannounced she was going home to take up her duties as amother, and I wanted to give the audience a sense of notbeing worried if people went out early on this last morn-ing so I said, as chairman, “Our principal mother has al-ready gone because she wanted to be home on Mother’sDay, and we will all understand that this is the day beforeMother’s Day and anybody who leaves is going home tobe a mother.” And then I thought, well, I have to dealwith the men, and I said, “Or going home to help theirwives be mothers.” The audience roared with delight. IfI had said it knowingly, they would not have laughed be-cause they would have been frightened. You can’t havechairmen, you know, at a conference on family life whomake dirty jokes.

Fremont-Smith:The audience laughed at you. Thereprobably was in that situation a recognition that you hadslipped without meaning to, and they were enjoying yourdiscomfiture.

Mead: No, the essence of it is, surely, a safe recognitionof the communication of sex, which is one of the funniestthings. I think the element of relaxation when it is safe isthe pertinent thing. The release of tension when unsafetyhas built up, ties in with what happens in grief and, in asense, in orgasm, because orgasm is a problem of safety,too, of trust.

Pitts: I will accept that as an explanation rather thanidentification. Many of the most amusing things peoplesay are not said with the intention of being funny.

Bigelow: Isn’t there some element of personal discov-ery?

Young: Or group discovery.

Mead: If it isn’t too painful.

Gerard: To follow up a point that Frank made about thecontagion of laughter, you probably all have heard these“laughing” records. If I hear one by myself, I am quiteable not to laugh; but in a group, when laughing starts, I

6Cobb, S., and Lindemann, E.: Neuropsychiatric observations. Management of the Cocoanut Grove Burns at the MassachusettsGeneral Hospi-tal. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1943 (p. 14–34).


cannot avoid an uncontrollable laughing response. Thisis a case, then, of laughter itself provoking laughter, with-out any symbolic or conscious or logical or other mean-ing.

Mead: Yawning, too, provokes yawning.

Fremont-Smith:Laughter has memory meaning, andtherefore symbolic meaning, I would think.

Gerard: I don’t know that it has to have any memorymeaning.

Fremont-Smith:Would someone who has never laughedgo off that way? I think it almost inevitable that hear-ing laughter and seeing other people laugh would evokememories of laughing situations, unconscious memories.

Gerard: It would be interesting to try it out on somebodywho has never laughed, if such a person could be found.

Fremont-Smith:There is contagious coughing at a con-cert or in a whooping cough ward; if one person starts towhoop, they will all whoop; and if somebody has tearscome to his eyes and you watch him, tears are very likelyto spring to your eyes.

Young: Have we sufficiently recognized the place oflaughter in communication signs? The difference be-tween man and the stickleback is that we have specificsigns to indicate communication in general; a series ofthose, which are very complicated, start on the face. Iwonder if there is any significance in the proximity ofthe face area, the mouth area, and the laryngeal areas ofspeech in the cortex. Is it an accident that the smallestcommunication signs appear in the face and are part, al-most, of the speech mechanism itself? From the face, awhole series of communication signs for use in express-ing more emphatic and sudden achievements of commu-nication spread down. The diaphragm has been men-tioned, but convulsions of the entire organism may beused to indicate sudden and important intercommunica-tion, as, for example, in dancing.

Klver: In connection with Dr. Young’s remarks, it is avery interesting point that many animals communicatewith the face of man instead of some other part of the hu-man anatomy. It may be worth while to study this formof communication and also to get some information onanimals which do not communicate with the face. As faras our own reactions to the human face, it is somewhatsurprising that we speak so often of sweet, sour, and bit-ter faces. There seems to be a strong tendency in man tocommunicate in terms of gustatory qualities.

von Bonin: I think most emotions are contagious,whether they appear in the face or not. If somebody cries,many will start crying. You may not and I may not, butvery many people will.

Gerard: At least you won’t go around giggling, chuck-ling, or laughing.

von Bonin: The question as to how we participate in andhow we perceive the emotional state of another being is alarge problem which I don’t believe anybody has tackledvery clearly.

Bateson:When I was talking of mutual awareness ofperception, I was leading up to empathy.

von Bonin: Mutual awareness of perception?

Bateson:Yes, in human communication.

Pitts: It does not generate laughter.

Wiesner: One does not laugh hard where these is notthe possibility of feedback. If you are listening to theradio by yourself or reading a book, you will chuckle,whereas the same stimulus, in a group, may evoke enor-mous laughter.

Mead: A complete sequence can be proposed from thesmile to the socialized dance or to copulation, but thengrief cannot be handled in it. Grief, in a sense, wouldhave to be regarded as a failure in social interaction. Thesobbing that goes with grief is not dependent on the pres-ence of another person, and yet it has the same convulsiveaspects.

In the conference on “Problems of Consciousness”held last week, one of the problems raised was the pro-tective function of breaks in tension.

Pitts: Does anyone know what the word “tension” is ametaphor for? I think that is the most promising avenueof approach, but this is the difficulty that strikes me first.

Mead: It is an idea that has arisen in the course of stud-ies on epilepsy. If all convulsive states could be regardedas having protective functions in breaking rising tension,then they could be differentiated in terms of how muchneed of protection one has. Laughter protects in a realcommunication system with other people. Grief protectsagainst a moving out of communication, against such anidentification with the dead that one is no longer in com-munication at all. They both are protective and they bothare comments on communication, but one of them oc-curs in a real intercommunication system and one occursoutside it.

Monnier: I have the impression that the physiologicalbasis of these two expressions, laughter and grief, isdifferent. Both these expressions have different physi-ological inductors. There are cases in which paroxysmallaughter leads to loss of tone, patients who, when laugh-ing at a joke, lose their tone and fall prone. This is calledcatalepsy and may be the result of a generalized emotionor tension. In grief, as we know from primitive soci-eties, a generalized emotion may end in rhythmic vocalexpression and not in a collapse of tone. In both cases,relaxation of tension is obtained.

Mead: But either control or loss of control is possible.Grief can be controlled; Mourning can be patterned so


that it is highly stylized and has a rhythmic quality whichis reassuring, or it can be of the type that moves moreand more towards loss of control. One can be helplesswith sobbing or helpless with laughter. There are twopossibilities in the same system, really, either to achieveoscillatory steadiness or to move toward the point wherepeople throw themselves on the ground and no longerhave any control at all.

Fremont-Smith:The small child so frequently goes backand forth between laughter to crying.

McCulloch: Well, isn’t it true that with most people, ifthey get to laughing very hard, are apt to end up weeping,too? I don’t think the two mechanisms are completely in-dependent.

Fremont-Smith:I think it is interesting, after what Dr.Monnier said, to touch on narcolepsy. There are patientswho have a lesion in the hypothalamic area and are con-stantly dropping off to sleep. They are relieved of thissleep tendency by the benzedrine group of drugs but theycannot go to the movies frequently because the comicsthrow them into unconsciousness.

Pitts: Do you know anything of the effect of grief onsuch patients?

Fremont-Smith:No.

McCulloch: I had to go over the literature about fouryears ago. At that time, there was no recorded case inwhich grief precipitated sleep, at least none I could find.On the other hand, I myself have seen cases, and thereare several instances in the literature, in which anger pre-cipitated it.

Fremont-Smith:And conflict. I have seen emotionalconflicts in the narcoleptic precipitate the sleep state inexactly the same way as any other psychosomatic phe-nomenon was precipitated.

Quastler: What happens to the narcoleptic if you makehim laugh just by tickling him, without any humor beinginvolved at all?

Fremont-Smith:I think they lose their tone and may goright into sleep.

Quastler: It is the laughing that causes it?

Fremont-Smith:Yes.

von Bonin: Lachschlag, in German.

Bateson:Tickling for some reason hasn’t been men-tioned, or the relation between laughing and the scratchreflex. I wish somebody who knows about such thingswould speak about them.

Bateson:We use tickling metaphorically; we laughwhen “tickled.”

Klver: So does the chimpanzee.

McCulloch: And the orangutan.

Monnier: The common feature of the two conditionswhich produce the tickling sensation and laughter is therepetitive action of very slight, or even subliminal, stim-uli. This gives rise to a spreading process, which acti-vates consciousness. We spoke, in the meeting on con-sciousness7, of the ascending activating reticular sys-tem, which has been identified by Moruzzi and Magounand which induces the arousal reaction. The mecha-nisms which increase consciousness, pain or laughterproduced by a tickling sensation, have something in com-mon. They are put in action by repetitive stimuli and theyinduce a generalized excitatory state. If the increase intension becomes too great, it may suddenly be cut by aprotective mechanism which produces, in one case, lossof consciousness or tone and, in other cases, rhythmicvocal expression. But these various forms of expressionare always the result of repetitive stimuli, ending in awidespread (irradiated) paroxysmal excitation.

McCulloch: There are two varieties of tickling. We useone word for two entirely different things, I am sure.There is tickling in the sense in which a fly tickles youor a straw up your nose tickles you, and there is the tick-ling produced by a rather strong stimulus of a fluctuatingkind, which results in laughter. That kind of tickling canrarely be done to oneself. The kind with the straw upone’s nose certainly can. They differ in the self-referencecomponent in them. The one that produces laughter losesits effect in many postencephalitic patients, while theother does not. Postencephalitic patients do not laugh,and almost all of them show also a remarkable reductionin sexual activity. Those who have lost laughter have lostsex, for the most part. It is the common mechanism in-volved.

von Bonin: Does the straw ever evoke laughter in any-one?

Pitts: It is rather more like itching than tickling.

Mead: You have a problem here, Warren, if you equaterepetitive tickling with various varieties of sexual fore-play that act as sexual stimulant, for that can be some-thing self-administered or other-person administered.

McCulloch: That’s right, it can be; there is only thequestion of whether it must be brushed off or whether itswitches over to sexual excitement. But the kind of tick-ling that evokes laughter is lost in the postencephaliticwhose sexuality is also down.

Bowman:The straw can cause a sneeze. Is that an alliedeffect?

Mead: Quite.

Bateson:Do you think one could discriminate between

7Monnier, M.: Experimental work on sleep and other variations in consciousness.Problems of Consciousness. Abramson, H. A., Editor. ThirdConf. New York, Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, 1952 (p. 107).


these two sorts of tickling in a dog?

McCulloch: Yes, very decidedly, and in the cat it is eveneasier.

von Bonin: You can tickle the ear of a cat.

McCulloch: Yes, and the ear starts to snap, to get rid ofthe tickle, and then the paw comes up.

Bateson:That is one type. How about the other?

McCulloch: The other type is produced usually by stim-ulation in the small of the back of a rhythmical kind. Thecat will start arching and its tail goes up. The dog is tick-lish in the same region, and it is in this region that man isalso most ticklish.

Pitts: It seems to be wholly pleasant, though, in the caseof the cat or dog, whereas we don’t usually enjoy beingtickled.

Teuber: Oh, it can end by the cat biting. The transitioncan be sudden.

Mead: There are cases where tickling is a definite formof foreplay and other contexts where tickling is regardedas unpleasant. Take the tickling that occurs among ado-lescents, for instance, where it is very common. This isan age that goes in for a great deal of tickling. If it cannotbe allowed to go to a sexual conclusion and it is unpleas-ant, it becomes a rejected activity, but in an approved sit-uation of very rough forms of courtship of certain sorts,tickling goes right into a developing sexual sequence.

Klver: We have discussed a number of situations inwhich a sudden break, reversal, or discontinuity leads toa restructuring or reorganizing of the whole field. Suchsituations occur on all levels of behavior, ranging fromthe perceptual to the emotional. It seems impossible todiscuss all these situations profitably in a general waywithout recourse to a scientific analysis of particular sit-uations. Only such an analysis can specify the proper-ties of a given structure as well as the conditions in theexternal and internal environment related to this struc-ture and governing the transition from one structure toanother. Let us suppose such an analysis of a concretesituation, for example, of a certain phenomenon in thefield of laughter, has been successful in specifying thenumerous psychological, physiological, and other factorsinvolved and let us suppose the results of such a scientificanalysis are handed to Dr. Bateson. The question I wishto raise is whether at this point there are any problemsleft unsolved? And if so, what are these problems?

Bateson:Yes. I opened the discussion with the focus onlaughter and humor, but the thing that I would be inter-ested in from such a study would be to use the occurrenceof laughter as an indicator, a sort of litmus paper. Thiswould be helpful in studying the implicit content of com-munication. It is an extraordinarily hard thing to study,actually, because we do not know what is in the mind

of the communicator or what is aroused in the mind ofthe recipient. It seems to me very, very important for so-ciocultural investigation and for psychologic and physi-ologic investigation to begin from some fairly sharp cri-terion for what is in the message. Dr. Mead told a storyabout herself as a president. Von Bonin said that it wasa Schadenfreudejoke. He heard an overtone which Dr.Mead, so far as consciousness is concerned, is preparedto deny, perhaps correctly. She, after all, was present atthe meeting and von Bonin wasn’t. But it is awfully hardto test any statement of that kind. One uses one’s sensi-tivity and one’s imperfect knowledge of his own commu-nicative habits. One predicts. The question is, if one hada satisfactory working hypothesis, or some idea of thetypes of paradigm which lead to something like laughter— could the occurrence of laughter be used as an indi-cator for what there was implicit in the communication?That is the question in which I would be interested, notso much in the significance of the laughter as in using itsoccurrence as an indicator.

McCulloch: May I say that we have two questions stillbefore us. It is fairly clear that one item of value in jestsleading to laughter is that the joke sets up some kind of arelation in which it is safe to play. The second thing thatis fairly clear is that there is always some re-shuffling orrestating of the problem, which in itself may be valuablein the transfer of information. But it is by no means clearthat these are the only functions that humor may have incommunication. There is the double role of the jest, one,the reorganization within the person, and the other, thereorganization between people, and I don’t believe thishas been sufficiently disclosed. Can we have Bateson sayonce more what he thinks is communicated besides whatformally appears in the jest? Is it the relation of peopleto one another? Is it the relation of people to themselvesin the situation?

Bateson:In human exchange, in general, we deal withmaterial which cannot be overtly communicated: thepremises of how we understand life, how we constructour understandings, and so forth. These are very, verydifficult matters for people to talk about with precision,but if these premises are out of kilter between two peo-ple, the individuals grow anxious or unhappy. Humorseems to me to be important in that it gives the personsan indirect clue to what sort of view of life they share ormight share.

As to the way in which humor does that: Considersome swallows that are migrating, we will say, from Lon-don to New York and suppose that we are scientists whoface the problem of finding out how the swallows knowthe route. We invite the swallows to communicate to ushow their conceptual world is made up: what sense datathey use and how these data are fitted together to enable


them to find their way. If we watch the swallows and wefind, for example, that they travel on a great circle with-out error, it is true we know something about the swal-lows now that we did not know before, but we are leftpretty much in the dark on the question of how they do it.The only way in which we can have the swallows com-municate to us how they know is either by their makingerrors and correcting them or by our performing exper-iments which will put them in error and then observingwhich errors they can correct and which they cannot.

It seems to me that a very important element is addedin human communication when B is able to observe whatcorrections A makes in his (A’s) course. One of thequestions which the young psychiatrist asks is, “Is it abad thing to say such-and-such to a patient in such-and-such a situation?” to which the only answer is, if it be abad thing and the patient react unfavorably to that “bad”thing, and if it be later possible to communicate to thepatient that that was the thing to which he reacted un-favorably, then all may be well. In fact, if the therapistis able to correct his course and thereby communicate tothe patient some hint of how matters appear to the thera-pist, the original error may become a very important anduseful thing in the communication. A great deal of com-munication occurs not directly but by the commission oferror and its later correction.

It seems to me that the nature of a jest is somehowrelated to this point, that when the joke breaks open andthe implicit levels have been touched, have met eachother, and oscillation has occurred, the laughter veri-fies an agreement that this is “unimportant,” it is “play,”and yet, within the very situation which is defined bythe laughter as play, there is a juxtaposition of contrast-ing polarities, which contrast may be compared to thecommission and correction of an error. The laughter letsthose who laugh know that there is a common subsump-tion of how they see the universe. Do I answer the ques-tion that you asked?

McCulloch: Exactly.

Fremont-Smith:I wonder if we don’t have to go backto the earliest development of laughter or smiling in theinfant to get some idea of all the meaning of the sharedexperience? One of the early ways of communication be-tween the mother and the baby is the mother’s smile tothe baby, which a little later is responded to by a smileon the part of the baby. The mother’s smile is one of thebasic means of reassurance to the small child. It seemsto me that when two people are talking and one of themsmiles at the other, the smile contains the element of re-assurance. The person is saying, “I like you, I like whatyou are saying, I understand you,” so that it is a sign ofthe effectiveness of their communication; it is a reassur-ance. A smile is associated with physiological changes,

such as dilatation of the skin vessels, which are opposedto those found in an anxiety reaction. Anxiety is almostalways associated with the absence of a smile and with afall in skin temperature.

Bateson:I think we are clear on the reassurant aspectsof laughter, the in-group statements, the affirmation ofgroup membership which is implied when both individ-uals laugh or smile; and we are clear enough that laugh-ter, especially thoracic rather than belly laughter, is aconventional sign which people use to each other, quiteapart from whether it is the “real thing.” Such laughterbecomes almost a part of the vocabulary and is almostas voluntary as the use of words, not quite but nearlyso. The problem, which I want to push toward, is that ofinvoluntary laughter and its antecedents, rather than theproblem of the function of laughter between two personsin melting the ice.

McCulloch: The latter says, “I got you,” and “I got youat the level of premises.”

Bateson:At the level of premises, and it is indicated thatthe premises are right because there is a crisscross ofthem. We define a point not by drawing a line but bymaking two lines cross.

Kubie: Laughter is in itself a language, and, like all lan-guages, it can say many things. In the rectangle of Figure1 are represented two poles of meaningfulness. At one isthe unchecked or uninhibited belly laugh, and at the otherthe inhibited laughter. The major difference between thetwo poles is that at the one extreme there is a generalsense of group-support and group-acceptance; whereasat the other end, the laughter is group-alien. Group-supported as opposed to “group-alien” refers to the re-lationship that is communicated between the person whostarts the laughter and the group to which he is talking,or the group that is represented, or that he represents. Itmay be a group that is present in the flesh or a groupthat is there only in his thinking and in his own words oractions.

In the unchecked belly laugh, there may be a lovingelement. Therefore, it is guiltless and is not held in checkby guilt feelings; whereas, in the inhibited laughter, aswe all know, it is difficult sometimes to tell whether aperson is laughing or is grimacing with hostility. It car-ries an implication of masked hatred, with an enormous


guilt factor which stifles the laughter even as one laughs.Finally, there is an element of triumph in the uncheckedbelly laugh. The person is unafraid, free of all apprehen-sion of defeat and of the fear that inhibits the ordinarytense laughter, with which, I am afraid, we are far morefamiliar.

One other point: I drew this line slanting in this waypurposely to indicate diagrammatically that these neveroccur in pure culture but that there are always varyingadmixtures of the two components. It must also be addedthat these differences can exist on conscious and/or un-conscious levels of psychological function. We can betriumphant and loving on a conscious level, yet full ofhate and guilt on an unconscious level, or vice versa.This makes the phenomena of laughter as complex asare all other mental acts. Finally, in any considerationof the problems of laughter, as in all emotional prob-lems, we must include a consideration of the role of trig-ger mechanisms. Laughter ispar excellancereleased bysuch mechanisms. In this respect, it is closer to a pho-bic mechanism than is usually realized. This trigger ele-ment, which I plan to discuss in connection with the roleof feedback mechanisms in emotional processes, is oneof the basic elements in laughter which has been over-looked.

Bateson:With shared guilt as a very important element,down in the lower right side of the diagram.

Kubie: When guilt is shared, you receive some degree ofgroup support.

Bateson:Yes. What I was getting at is that these com-ponents of yours keep crisscrossing on each other.

Kubie: They are all mixed together. To represent all pos-sible permutations and combinations diagrammatically,we would need a series of planes in a three dimensionalnomogram8.

McCulloch: Larry, how about attempting to state whatwe are talking about when we speak of the release oftension that comes with laughter? What are we talkingabout?

Kubie: That is Chapter IV of the manuscript I havebrought with me9.

McCulloch: How do we go at it?

Kubie: I hesitate to leap into the middle of an exposi-tion which requires step-by-step logical elaboration, butin essence, my thesis is that the peculiar attribute of emo-tions in psychological affairs is that they impose an au-tomatic value-judgment on experience, which does oneof two things: this creates an impulse, conscious or un-

conscious, either to repeat that experience in the futureor else to avoid it in the future. Emotions give experi-ence either a plus or a negative sign. I believe that onecan group all emotional states in these two categories.Sometimes their influence is relative and the same expe-rience evokes both plus and minus reaction, for specialreasons; but, basically, the emotion always falls on oneside or the other. By and large, anger and elation are theemotional qualities which tend to be repeated, whereasfear and depression are the emotional qualities that weavoid if we can.

The relationship of an affect to a drive of any kindcan, therefore, best be understood in these terms. Toput this succinctly, my thesis about tension is that theword is a figure of speech by which we characterizethat state which arises within us whenever there is somecompelling inner necessity towards some action againstwhich at the same time there are countervailing forces.These countervailing forces can be external or internalor both. They can be conscious or unconscious or both.But where there are no countervailing forces, the mereexistence of an impulse towards something does not giverise to that inner experience which we characterize withthe particular word “tension.” The countervailing forcemay be nothing more important than the unavoidable de-lay which is inherent in the transport of chemicals in anymulticellular organism. Tension, like all psychic phe-nomena, is inconceivable without delay. In human life,one sees this in its simplest form in the infant, where a de-lay of only a few seconds is enough to evoke random dis-charge which is the infantile precursor of the controlledtensions of adult life. Thus, tension, as we know it inadult life, implies an aggregate of forces moving in onedirection opposed by an aggregate of internal and exter-nal forces moving in another.

Bateson:When we say that a man is tense, we mean,I suppose, that while his hand is lying on the table, orwherever it is, there is more muscular activity going onin it than need be; that not only is there the necessarytension in the flexor to support the hand in the positionin which it is, but also some antagonistic contribution inthe extensor. The metaphor of tension is a psychologi-cal metaphor but often it is worked out or exemplified byextensor-flexor opposition in the body.

McCulloch: In other words, it is a rise in tension in themuscle that we are talking about when we say a man isgetting tense?

Bateson:Or it is from that rise of tension that we derivethe psychological metaphor. I don’t want to suggest that

8nomogram: A diagram representing a relationship between three or more variables by means of a number of straight or curved scales,soarranged that the value of one variable corresponding to given values of the others can be found by a simple geometrical construction (e.g. by meansof one or more straight lines drawn to intersect the scales atthe appropriate values). Also calledalignment chart.

9Dr. Kubie refers to Chapter IV of a manuscript on which he draws more extensively in the next section.


language precedes the physiology or vice versa. I don’tknow about that.

Young: Is it physiological? Is the physiology correct? Ithink not. The balance, if you are speaking of a balancebetween antagonists, will not be at different levels, as faras I know.

Gerard: I think what Gregory says is certainly valid inmany cases. I don’t think it is universal.

Young: I don’t think it is the basis of what we mean bytension. It is a false clue, if I may say so.

Bateson:That is the question I was asking. Would it befalse or true?

Young: I would suspect it.

Bateson:There are people whose psychological tensionis expressed with a general limpness.

McCulloch: People complain of a headache when theyreport tension, and tension of the scalp muscles can berecorded. It appears in many EEG tracings.

Young: But that is different from his thesis altogether.Certainly, there would be other somatic manifestationsaccompanying so-called tension.

Gerard: He is equating tension and tonus10. What is itspecifically that you are objecting to, John? I don’t quiteunderstand.

Young: I think the danger is that we should use this rela-tively low-level metaphor for more than a metaphor. Thetension you are speaking of is surely at an altogether dif-ferent level.

Bateson:We don’t know how much the levels echo eachother.

Gerard: What I understand Gregory is asking is whetherthere is a sufficient correlation between this internal stateor emotional state that is called tension and a mani-fest physiological state in terms of muscle tension sothat there could be an etiological11 relationship betweenthem. Now, you feel that is entirely wrong?

Young: I should doubt it.

Gerard: Why do you react so strongly? I would havedoubts about it but, on the whole, I would be inclined tobe hospitable to thinking along those lines.

Kubie: I wonder whether one of the reasons why thisconcept seems so difficult (and I have heard it battedaround a hundred times) is because of the implicit as-sumption that some kind of undifferentiated emotionalstate can form in us which cannot itself properly be calledan emotional state. It might be called a pre-emotionalstate, or a larval emotional state, or a precursor state outof which emotional feelings and actions and expressions

can be precipitated in various directions. Although in it-self it is undifferentiated, out of it can come tears, laugh-ter, anger, elation, depression, fear, and even sleep or anobsessional-compulsive furor. It is this diffuse, undiffer-entiated state for which we seek a name. It is not thesame as alertness, yet it is quite different from a stateof sleep or apathy. We must use some figurative wordto characterize it. The particular example which Gre-gory Bateson used is, in some ways, the simplest, be-cause there the tension is expressed in muscular termsand is related to a close balance between aggression andits withholding. Yet, one can also find its expressionin speech, or in specific somatic language, such as thatof the gastrointestinal tract, among people who, on thesomato-muscular side, are quite relaxed. The particu-lar somatic vehicle which is used varies from individ-ual to individual. Nobody has ever found a satisfactorydefinition of it, but nobody can think in this field with-out accepting the existence of this phenomenon becausesubjectively we are aware that there is something whichwe have to characterize by some such word as tension.Call it “X” if you prefer, as long as we all know thatwe are thinking and talking about a state which arises inhuman beings and which can, under appropriate internaland external circumstances, be channeled into any of var-ious directions. Tension is not a bad word with which tocharacterize it figuratively, and its use crops us again andagain precisely because it gives us a sense of knowingwhat we are communicating about with one another.

Hutchinson: I want to add two points: first, it seems tome that the very fact that some people, as Gregory said,show a sort of limpness suggests that this psychologicaltension can be modified or reversed by a learning pro-cess. If so, this leaves the whole thing wide open, so thatobjections are probably irrelevant until they are furtheranalyzed.

My second point is that, etymologically or semanti-cally, there are probably two things involved: the obviousobservation made in many cultures that there is increasedtension of the fingers, and, something which continuallycrops up even in the most respectable writing on com-parative behavior, a consideration of the discharge as arelease of something like potential energy, so that oneparticular kind of potential energy, and its release, occur-ring, in our example, in the musculature of the fingers,occupies a considerable semantic area in discussions ofthis kind.

Bateson:Would we get on better if, instead of saying wemust conceptualize this state that Kubie has just offeredus, we said that the important thing might be to build aclassification of the resolutions of such states? Later, we

10tonus: The condition or state of muscular tone; the proper elasticity of the organs; tonicity.11etiologist: One who studies etiology or the science of causes.


could ask about the states themselves.

Young: That is rather my objection. From a physiologi-cal point of view, I would say it is dangerous to simplify,as Kubie suggests, by postulating a central reservoir oftension. I would say that was a dangerous approach forthe cerebral physiologist and that, however hard it maybe, we must dissect these individual manifestations thatwe classify as tension and identify their cerebral compo-nents.

Kubie: I am not assuming the existence of a single cen-tral mechanism. I am saying only that clinically an ex-traordinary transmutability among various kinds of ten-sion states is observed. This suggests that there is some-thing which precedes any of the various differentiatedforms of emotional experience, acting almost as a com-mon root out of which all can evolve. This inescapableclinical fact has to be included among the phenomenathat we are trying to understand and explain.

McCulloch: May I put it somewhat differently? Supposea man is tense; in that man is there any place where onecould look and find a particular change?

Kubie: I shall counter the question with a question. Letus picture three youngsters. One has an intense eatingcompulsion. The second has a handwashing compulsion.The third has a counting compulsion. As we have said, ifthe subject does not fight against his own inner drive andif there is no external person or force which acts againstit, the drive will be expressed freely and insatiably. Theone will eat voraciously, even until he vomits and af-ter. The other will wash his hands until soap and towelsand water are exhausted or until the skin peals from hishands, leaving open sores. The third child will count un-til there is nothing around to count. As long as one ofthe individuals is carried on the flood tide of his drive,neither another’s observations of him nor his own self-observation will lead to a state of “tension,” whateverthat may be. On the other hand, if anyone tries to stophim, or if he tries to stop himself, a state arises in him atonce for which the observer, whether he be uneducatedor the most highly trained and sophisticated psycholo-gist, will automatically turn to the word “tension.” Forthis state, we have no other name at present. In this stateof “tension,” many different things can happen. The per-son can have an attack of what the layman calls “hyster-ics,” and laugh and cry. He can become overwhelminglydepressed and morose. He can go into a state of panic orrage or elation. He can get bowel upsets. He can vomit.Or he may even, paradoxically enough, go to sleep. Iam not trying to explain tension. I am trying, rather, tocharacterize it in all of its complexity, to save ourselves

from the seductive tendency to oversimplify nature in theinterests of our theories.

Young: How do you identify the state before it hasreached the extremes you mention?

von Bonin: Being a biologist, I can’t talk in abstractions,so take the example of a man who hears a shoe throwndown by somebody who is undressing above. He ex-pects, of course, the next shoe to be dropped too, but thesound never comes. What happens, as I see it, is thathe forecasts in his mind the noise of the second shoefalling down. I would look in the cerebral cortex forsome configuration which makes that forecast effective,and I would expect that the noise that actually followsdestroys the configuration that is forecasted and lets thenerve cells resume their normal rhythm.

Young: I would accept that.

von Bonin: Whether the thing forecast is a happening inthe outside world or something the individual programsfor himself, as the boy who washes his hands or wantsto count, when something that the brain has made upits mind should happen, either within or without, doesnot come about, then that release of the neuronal patternwhich would come about if the program were carried outis inhibited.

Gerard: Gerhardt, I like that. But why do you call it abiological or physiological explanation?

von Bonin: The two shoes will fit.

Fremont-Smith:From the biological aspect, it is veryconcrete. You said “when the brain had made up itsmind.”

Frank: May I remind you that Howard Liddell has saidthat he can distinguish in his experimental animals be-tween an acute alarm reaction and what he has called thestate of watchfulness? He has various criteria, both phys-iological and motor for doing so. In the experimental an-imal, the expectancy that something is going to happenproduces a sort of subacute12 emotional state, if it can becalled that.

McCulloch: The expectancy is definitely revealed bymotor manifestations.

Frank: But some physiological variables were alsorecorded.

Monnier: It is hardly necessary to recall what happensto the electrical activity of the brain when a subjectsuddenly awakens and become alert or excited. Thereis a real spectrum of changes paralleling the transitionfrom deep sleep to alertness or an excitatory state, orfrom deep narcosis13 to wakefulness. The chief changesare accompanied by electrical activities of increased fre-

12subacute: Between acute and chronic.13narcosis: A state of drowsiness, stupor, or insensibility; dagthe ability to produce such a state (obs.); the production of such astate, esp. by

means of a drug.


quency and lower voltage, the so-called desynchroniza-tion of electrical patterns. At the same time, the cortexbecomes more reactive to afferent stimuli. All organs,including the cortex, which can be considered as a ter-minal organ, simultaneously show a change in reactiv-ity and functional readiness. This shift may be due to agreater generalization of afferent14 stimuli, or to a greaterreactivity of the sensory, cortical, and motor organs tothe same stimuli. On the contrary, in deep sleep thereis a decrease in reactivity on all levels: cortex, muscles,sensory organs. This is particularly obvious of increasedtension, manic excitement or anxiety. In these cases elec-trical fast activities of low voltage are found in increasedproportion in the precentral and postcentral region of thecortex, as a symptom of greater reactivity of the cortexto afferent stimuli.

von Bonin: The precentral gyrus receives radiationswhich come from cerebellum, as I understand. Is thatcorrect?

Monnier: Yes, the whole area, precentral and central,becomes a place for afferent stimulation, not only fromthe primary sensory afferents but also from other parts ofthe brain.

von Bonin: Oh, yes, surely.

McCulloch: Even photic stimulation comes through toprecentral areas, is that right?

Monnier: That’s right.

von Bonin: The afferent activity can be picked up pre-centrally even after the cerebellum has been destroyed.

Bigelow: I understood the question as to what trace canbe found of the existence of tension to be one raised inobjection to the use of concept of “tension,” at least toits use as if it were something centralized or local. Itseems to me that this is a very weak objection becausethere are certainly changes which occur in the neurolog-ical system, which we know must occur because of exte-rior evidence, of which we cannot find any direct trace byanatomical means. For example, if a man is multiplyinga sum in his head, I challenge anyone to find out fromexternal changes whether he is multiplying, and yet itcan be determined that he is multiplying by the answershe gives to questions. There should be no objection toKubie’s using the word tension as he pleases. His ob-servation that tension, in his sense, is something that isprobably widely spread over a number of different loca-tions, of concepts or type situations, is not negated sim-ply by the fact that Kubie can’t put his finger on exactlywhat physiological or neurological change occurs whentension exists.

McCulloch: I am not sure Kubie can’t, sooner or later.

Bigelow: I am not sure, either, but I say this is a very

weak way of objecting to the use of the word tension.

von Bonin: Does anybody object? I thought we hadmade neurologists of the physiologists. I thought we tookit for granted there is such a thing as a brain.

Teuber: It was not Kubie but Bateson who started theargument about physiology. Gregory was the one whosuggested that “tension,” in Kubie’s sense, might be cor-related with some measurable tonus, either postural orcentral. Such correlations have been looked for in manyplaces but, as Dr. Young said, just about every correlationthat has been claimed to exist has turned out to be unre-liable. We certainly can’t expect any simple one-to-onecorrelations, no matter whether we use the electromyo-gram, the galvanic skin response, or even the EEG. TheEEG, though, may be a special case. If worked with onthe head end of the animal, one seems to get fairly goodcorrelations not with tension but, at least, with relaxation.

It has always bothered me that the most reliable thingan EEG can show is that the brain is not doing anythingsignificant at the time of recording. At such times, theEEG shows characteristic regular activity; but as soon asthe brain is doing something (usually it is very difficult tosay what), this regular activity disappears. For that rea-son, I have never been too sure that searching for corre-lations between mental states and EEG signs would leadvery far. But you were challenging people to show someelectrophysiologic correlates of multiplication, perhapswith tongue in cheek, and I want to pick that up.

A young lady, Lila Ghent, has investigated the ef-fects of various types of tasks on the slow-wave activ-ity shown by the EEG of patients who have had elec-troshock. During the rather long periods after the elec-troshock when the EEG showed slow waves, these pa-tients were asked to perform various tasks, for instance,tapping with a stylus on a drum. Such rhythmic tappingabolished the slow-wave activity for a short time; if theywent on tapping, the slow waves reappeared. The picturewas somewhat different with patients who were askedto perform more complex tasks. If they were told to gothrough a reaction time experiment, the slow-wave activ-ity was abolished for quite a long time. Another effectiveway of abolishing the abnormal slow-wave activity wasto ask them to count back from one hundred by sevens.This serial subtraction very markedly reduced their slow-wave activity.

Bigelow: Can you distinguish by that method, say, sub-traction from multiplication?

Teuber: I should suppose not. However, it wasn’t tried.There is no reason to believe that division or multiplica-tion would have effects different from addition or sub-traction. There was something rather odd though: the

14afferent: Bringing or conducting inwards or towards. Chiefly in Phys.as afferent nerves, vessels.


most effective way of getting rid of the slow waves waswhen the patients made errors. When a patient made amistake in counting, his slow waves disappeared for aparticularly long time.

Bigelow: Mental processes may be determined by termi-nal performance only, perhaps.

Teuber: Surely.

Gerard: What happens to the Cheshire cat’s smile whenthe cat disappears, in other words.

Young: The danger is, surely, if terminal effects whichare similar are referred to one postulated central source,which then turns out not to be one.

Bigelow: It depends upon whether the oneness is criti-cal. Is it in this case? It hasn’t been demonstrated yet,so far as I can see. I grant it is a possibility, but it hasn’tbeen shown.

Young: That is what we are asking Dr. Kubie.

Gerard: The only person who has made even a presump-tive attempt so far to give this any kind of an organicmechanism has been Monnier, who tried to tie thesethings up to changes in the measurable behavior of neu-rons, at least through their distant signals of the EEGchanges. Nobody else tried to do it so nobody else shouldbe criticized. That is why I did not think your objection,Dr. Young, to what Gregory said was valid. You werereacting to the kind of dangerous verbal analyzing thatEvelyn Hutchinson was warning against, the idea of thebuilding up of potential energy. It is hard to avoid thisidea. Adrian told me he could not do so. The reason whyone gets a little bit apprehensive about it is that we areperfectly sure that the kind of thing a neurophysiologistmeans when speaking of inhibition and so on — well, weare sure he does not mean “inhibition” in the psycholog-ical sense but perhaps we are not even sure of that! ButGregory’s original question, it seemed to me, did not im-ply a positive answer, merely being an attempt to get atthe origin of the use of the figure. I think it was entirelylegitimate from that point of view.

McCulloch: Well, may I put the question in a slightlydifferent way? Is the word “tension” simply one namefor a host of different affairs or have they some commonfactor in the sense that in all of them there is some partof the nervous system or of the body which is in a givenstate or exhibiting a general pattern of activity? I think,for example, we use the word “memory” altogether tooloosely. We use it often for processes which are inher-ently or essentially dissimilar, and I am not sure we maynot be doing the same with the word “tension.”

Bigelow: Isn’t it essential, if a word is to be useful, thatit cover a class of phenomena which may, in some sense,

be different but have some common property? Isn’t theanswer to the question this: that if “tension” is to be auseful word, it must cover some properties which are insome way different but have a common aspect?

Gerard: I was going to say another word on the physio-logical side. It seems to me that if we substitute the phys-iological term “irradiation,” which is not too well-definedin terms of its mechanisms but is objectively quite mea-surable, and then think of irradiation as increasing inquantity as an excitation state builds up in neuron pools,it will help. Then when we want to ask, “What do wemean by excitation state?”, we shall have to go back tothe concentration of energy-rich phosphates in the mem-brane or the number of potassium ions that have crossedit or something like that, in other words, to perfectly realthings whether or not we know just which they are.

We are not too far away from this general conceptof tension, and that is why I feel there is a good deal ofvalidity in the kind of tie-up Gregory is trying to make.We recognize an increase in tension, subjectively in our-selves and objectively in others, in terms of increasingneuronal irradiation, whether it is increased contractionof antagonist flexors and extensors or whether it is tap-ping the table with the fingers or whether it is shiftingaround restlessly in a chair or whether it is performing aritualistic act or whether it is merely counting mentally aseries of numbers. There is greater activity of some sort,greater neurological discharge, spreading over a widerand wider group of neurons, it seems to me. Do anyof you physiologists take exception to that in biologi-cal terms, and do any of the psychological people feelthat that is too far away from what we really do mean by“tension?”

Klver: From a psychological point of view, it is worthmentioning that tension, whatever it is, and the percep-tion of tension are two different things. The fact that oneis able to perceive tension in the face of a person does notnecessarily imply that the observed person is in a state oftension. Nor does it imply that the observer is tense. Ei-ther the observer or the observed person or both of themmay or may not be in a state of tension. Under patho-logical conditions, there may be an inability to perceivetension, sadness, cheerfulness, etc.; that is, there may bean agnosia15 for physiognomic16 characteristics. A pa-tient may be able to recognize his wife and see that hereyes are blue and that her mouth is red, but he may nolonger be able to recognize tension or sadness in her face.The visibility of emotions is undoubtedly as important aproblem as the visibility of colors.

Pitts: I should doubt whether a satisfactory correlationcan be made between the psychological concept of ten-

15agnosia: Freud’s term (Zur Auffassung der Aphasien, 1891) for loss of perception.16physiognomic: Relating to the a person’s face, physical form, or appearance


sion and the mere number of excited neurons. Considerthe case of a boy with a handwashing compulsion. We sithim in a chair and we don’t allow him to wash his hands.Presumably, his inner tension increases as he sits there.Then we set him free and he promptly goes and washeshis hands. As soon as he washes his hands, allegedly hisinner tension declines very sharply, but a large numberof neurons, namely, those involved in washing his hands,now accelerate, so he may have a greater number of neu-rons dischargingper sethan he had when the state oftension was at its height.

Gerard: Excuse me, but you imply total number, whichI did not. Irradiation is not just a volume-conductor typeof thing. It is usually along a defined path.

Pitts: It is usually along a definite line of activity inwhich the person engages and is accompanied by a re-duction of tension.

Gerard: That can no longer be called irradiation.

Pitts: Then irradiation excludes channelization.

Young: Would it be fair to say that your attempt to usethe concept of irradiation and to give it a quantitativemeaning is the best one can do with physiological terms,but that you would not regard it as a completely satisfac-tory statement of the cerebral process involved?

Gerard: Of course not.

Young: You are putting up a preliminary model.

Pitts: Then you must mean by irradiation somethingmore than the mere engagement of a large number ofneurons in the process.

Kubie: Something akin to the old Pavlovian concept of adiffuse overflowing irradiation of some kind of activatingor inhibiting process.

Young: To my mind, there is a danger there.

Gerard: No, I don’t like that either, Larry.

Monnier: The word irradiation is misleading because ithas been used in many different senses. The process re-sponsible for such changes has something to do with anincreased propagation of impulses; the Germans call thatAusbreitung.

Gerard: Yes, a spread.

Monnier: But it is probably in this meaning that you usethe word irradiation loosely.

Gerard: I was avoiding bringing this down to the indi-vidual neuron because I think that does impinge on thenext level. This is not simply total number of neurons,but number and pattern. If that is your point, Walter, Iagree with you.

Pitts: The spread is perhaps all-important.

Kubie: I have two complications in mind. One concernsthe basic feedback function of emotional processes. Iam thinking of a patient who is an exceptionally effec-tive, competent, and able person, who thinks problemsthrough extremely well, reaches decisions, and then actson them. At present, he is juggling ten different ballsin the air at once and doing it well. But the momentof reaching and implementing a decision precipitates inthis patient an obsessional furor of doubt. Consequently,after a decision is made and after appropriate action istaken, when he reaches the very point at which he shouldbe able to relax, heave a sigh, take a drink, and be com-fortably free from tension, a storm erupts. This stormis a reaction to the fact of having made a decision andacted upon it, which arouses fear and guilt and an obses-sional furor of extraordinary severity. Doubts go roundand round in his mind like squirrels in a cage, with anenormous piling up of something that can be describedonly with this same figurative word. I describe this clin-ical phenomenon as another example of the complexityof the manifestations of the feedback systems in the emo-tional sphere.

The second complication centers around the fact thatthere are such things as chronic emotional states. Up tothe present, our discussion has dealt only with acute emo-tions, as though emotions were always sharp processes.What about those individuals who seem to have a fixedcenter of emotional gravity to which they always return,no matter what forces swing them temporarily away fromit? They function as though some persistent emotionalset or emotional potential formed the center of gravity oftheir emotional lives. Sometimes, this is a pleasant andcomfortable center which they do not want to disturb.The chronic hypomanic17 is an example. (Unfortunately,however, in the end this usually catches up with them;but that is another story.) Sometimes, the emotional cen-ter is a chronic rage state, a disguised temper tantrum.I have known patients who lived out their entire livesin disguised temper tantrums, masking these in a thou-sand different ways. Sometimes, it is chronic depression,which may arise in very early years and last throughoutlife. I know two eighty-year-old patients who face todaythe problems with which they were dealing when theywere four years old. Indeed, they have lived with theirreactions to these problems as their fundamental emo-tional base or potential throughout their lives. Clinically,this is an inescapable, basic, and puzzling fact.

How can we put this in terms which are descriptivelyaccurate? The first requirement for such a term is thatit shall be an adequate representation of observable phe-nomena in nature. The second is that the term should

17hypomania: A minor form of mania, often part of the manic-depressive cycle, characterized by elation and a feeling of well-being together withquickness of thought.


at the same time lead one’s mind to explore possible ex-planations while avoiding figures of speech which beg allessential questions. For me, a term such as “chronic emo-tional potential” or “chronic emotional set” meets theserequirements perhaps a little better than “tension.” Yetit does not help us to escape the word tension, because,although in these particular cases there is a chronic emo-tional set with a specific quality, there are also other clin-ical states in which the emotional set is undifferentiated,with no qualitatively differentiated feeling tone, but outof which the more highly differentiated emotional statescan precipitate. Thus, there would seem to be two con-trasting clinical manifestations: the differentiated andtheundifferentiated chronic emotional tensions.

Young: But these particular words are very valuable,aren’t they, because they give us a picture? One couldimagine that they would equally well describe chronicstates of activity of parts of the nervous system. Youcould really cover everything you said without using theword “emotion.”

Kubie: Only by paraphrasing it with some neologism;and in the end that is no gain.

Young: One could visualize a condition of parts of thebrain being responsible for these states throughout life,by virtue of the particular activity of one or another as-pect of cerebral physiology.

Kubie: Isn’t there a danger that that may also beg thequestion, although it is possible, of course, that an undif-ferentiated tension or potential existed first, subsequentlyand for special reasons acquiring specific coloring.

Young: We do know that local lesions may produce, inboth man and animal, syndromes of that sort. A lesion inthe midbrain of the cat produces the syndrome of obsti-nate progression, as it has been called, in which the catjust walks and walks and walks. That could be describedin terms of an emotional state.

Gerard: This is going back a little bit but I think it maybe useful in pointing up to our friends who deal with themore difficult levels of the brain that we too sometimesrun up against difficult and seemingly insoluble problemsof analysis at a level where we would not expect it. Icould not help but think, as we discussed the building upof tension, of a strict physiological analogy, one whichpoints up the irradiation problem.

Nerve paths descend on each side of the brain stemfrom the respiratory centers in the medulla to the upperspinal cord, from which come the two phrenic nervesthat innervate the diaphragm. If a cut is made halfwayacross the neuraxis on, say, the left side, the correspond-ing half of the diaphragm stops. The right side goes onworking perfectly well. If the right phrenic nerve is thencut, so that the right half of the diaphragm cannot re-

spond, the left half starts again. This is perfectly sim-ple to understand. Because the animal has lost its aer-ation, it becomes progressively asphyxiated, there is achange in the carbon dioxide and oxygen situation in thebrain nourishment, the cells become more irritable, andmessages coming down the brain stem, not quite able tobreak across at the ordinary level of excitability, now dobreak across from right to left, across the midline, andset off the left phrenic. The only trouble with this sim-ple explanation is that it is not true. As shown by ArturoRosenblueth, if the right phrenic is blocked (by a cur-rent, which stops nerve messages as fully as a cut butcan be turned off again and the experiment repeated), thevery next respiration comes through on the left. Thus,the switchover is not due to an accumulation of carbondioxide, or to any other slowly built-up change.

Here, then, is a case of a building of tension until itescapes, if I may use that word, and a case of sudden irra-diation. It would be very nice and very simple to interpretthis in a perfectly mechanistic way, in terms of a changeof threshold of neurons and of the gradual accumulationof summated impulses until they can escape, neuron byneuron. It just happens not to work. If anybody has yetcome up with an explanation of this that is physiologi-cally acceptable, I have not heard of it. It is a mystifying,very real phenomenon that any student can repeat at will.

Bigelow: Are there no local cross fibers there of anysort?

Gerard: No. There are many of these intriguing neuro-physiological paradoxes. For example, after denervatingthe lower cord, changes in the reflexes of the fore limbsare still produced by cutting away some of the denervatedlower cord.

McCulloch: The interesting thing about it is that thishappens in certain animals but not in all. The dog andthe rabbit work one way and the cat the other, or viceversa, which means that there must be either an anatom-ical or physiological substrate which is different in thetwo kinds of animals.

Bigelow: Is there anything else that characterizes thetwo animals?

von Bonin: The cat has much larger cells than the dog orrabbit.

McCulloch: There is a possibility, of course, that we aredealing with some “pup” coming back up the nerve whenthe main impulse goes down, that there is a backfiring,for when we have actual collaterals, it is quite a differentstory. “Pup” is laboratory slang for back impulses overthe motor nerve. If there are axonal collaterals, then, inthe case in which there is a return volley of this kind fromthe muscle, far more impulses in the axonal collateralswould be expected than otherwise.


Gerard: Oh, obviously, it is explicable sooner or later. Itisn’t gremlins.

McCulloch: That’s right, but there must be a new way toattack it.

Gerard: There must be another way of patterning it be-sides the simple interaction of neurons and axons.

McCulloch: I don’t think so.

Fremont-Smith:Would we gain anything by going backto a state of “un-tension,” examining it, and then movingon to consider the state of so-called tension? I should liketo start off by saying I don’t believe there is any state ofabsolute “un-tension” other than death; in other words,the organism is constantly reacting to its internal and ex-ternal environment. The closest it comes to an absence oftension, presumably, is in deep narcosis. From that level,there is a progression through varying states of activity.

McCulloch: May I bring us back for a moment? Thecrucial thing that we are talking about here is tension inthe sense in which it is somehow a trouble in communi-cation between people, directing our attention to our owncarcass or our own brain, making us heed our own effortinstead of heeding what the other man is saying.

Kubie: Because it is relevant, I want to remind you ofthe work of Barach18. It bears directly on this matter oftension, even though his observations were made duringstudies of a quite different problem. He was evaluating amethod of producing complete respiratory rest by plac-ing patients entirely within a chamber in which alternateincreases and decreases of the pressure of the air causesufficient diffusion of O and CO2 between pulmonaryalveoli and the blood stream to maintain respiratory ex-change without any actual motion in the diaphragm orchest wall. For some reason, not all patients can stopbreathing in this chamber, an interesting fact which hasnot yet been explained. What is more important, a largenumber of those who can stop breathing soon enter into acurious state, as close an approximation to a completelyrelaxed hypnoidal state as has ever been achieved with-out hypnosis or drugs. It is even more complete, I think,than are those hypnagogic reveries which Margolin and Iused to induce by having patients listen to their own res-piratory sounds brought back to their ears through throatmicrophones and an amplifier19.

Those of Barach’s patients who achieve this nearlycomplete respiratory rest and who go into the hypnoidal

state also have certain chemical changes (8). In this state,patients lie motionless for long hours, without any senseof the passage of time, without restlessness or movement.Afterwards, they report that little, if anything, was goingon in their thinking processes, although they were notasleep.

Klver: Do these patients, instead of reporting that littleor nothing has happened, ever say that a given period oftime appeared infinitely long, like an eternity?

Kubie: I do not know. They have not been fully exploredpsychologically as yet. This phenomenon calls our atten-tion to the relationship of the central respiratory nuclei tothe level of activity in the nervous system as a whole, andalso to the influence of the ascending reticular substance,which has been studied by Magoun20. These investiga-tions give us clues as to certain processes in the centralnervous system which may influence levels of tension orof activation.

McCulloch: Do you happen to know what the electroen-cephalograms of patients in this state look like, and doyou know whether they are more or less responsive toinformation at the time?

Kubie: There have been technical difficulties about get-ting good electroencephalograms under these circum-stances. It has not been done as yet.

McCulloch: Using earphones or signal boxes to commu-nicate with these patients is their reception better at suchtimes, with the tension down, than it is at a time whenthey are attending to something?

Kubie: They can communicate with you, but I don’tknow the exact answer to that.

Fremont-Smith:Larry, doesn’t it take some time for peo-ple to go into this hypnoidal state?

Kubie: Some go very promptly, some very slowly.

McCulloch: If they have a familiarity with the situation,do they go in much more rapidly?

Kubie: Yes, usually.

Fremont-Smith:I was in it once, and it is a surprisingthing to discover that one doesn’t have to breathe; butnobody told me that I went into a hypnoidal state and Iwasn’t aware of it if I did.

Remond:There may be a state of tension in an individualeven when unconscious, deeply unconscious, in coma.If, while taking the electroencephalogram of a comatose

18Barach, A. L.: Continuous immobilization of the lungs by residence in the equalizing pressure chamber in the treatment of pulmonary tubercu-losis.Dis. of Chest12, 3 (1946).Barach, A. L., Eastlake, C., Jr., and Beck, G. J.: Clinical results and physiological effects of immobilizing lung chamber therapy in chronicpulmonary T.B.Dis. of Chest20, 148 (1951).

19Kubie, L. S., and Margolin, S.: A physiological method for the induction of states of partial sleep and securing free associations and earlymemories in such states.Transactions of the American Neurological Association, Richmond, Va., Byrd, 1942.Kubie, L. S., and Margolin, S.: An acoustic respirograph. A method for the study of respiration through the graphic recording of the breath sounds.J. Clin. Investigation22, 221 (1943).

20Magoun, H. W.: An ascending reticular activating system in the brain stem. (cf. Bibliog.)Arch. Neurol. & Psychiat.67, 145 (1952).


person, some sort of sensory stimulus is produced, anoise, for example, a K complex can be recorded, just asin sleep, a change in the encephalogram which is quiterecognizable. If the stimulus is repeated after a certaintime, the response will be less marked. If repeated athird time, it will be barely apparent. But if, at the timewhen the reaction has become unnoticeable, the stimulusis altered, if, instead of making a noise, there is a sud-den, important change in the lighting of the room, thenonce again there is a strong response in the electroen-cephalogram, which will vanish with repetition of thestimulus. When stimuli have been given with less andless response, and if new kinds of stimuli are no longerefficient even at their first introduction, the name of thepatient pronounced very softly may “awaken” him. Butthat patient is absolutely “unconscious,” and he will notremember at all what happened. Nevertheless, he hassome sort of attention, he is able to be attentive uncon-sciously, and he loses that state of attention when gettingaccustomed to the stimulus.

Wiesner: If a particular stimulus is repeated at a latertime, will there be a response?

Remond:Yes, if there is a wait of a long enough time,say, half an hour, to let the patient lose his adaptation tostimulation.

Pitts: I wonder if anyone would be interested in a some-what frivolous, dynamic analogy to the concept of a stateof tension? It seems to me that the proper correspon-dence to make is not between tension and potential en-ergy but between tension and the second derivative ofthe mean rate of change of potential energy.

When tension reaches a critical degree, apparentlythe state of the organism begins changing in a rather vi-olent way; the actions of the individual change rapidly,but in what way is not determinate from the value ofthe tension. Suppose we consider the simple case of amarble in a cup, a perfect analogy with the most generaldynamic instances. Naturally, if we consider small de-viations from the position of equilibrium at the bottom,the rapidity with which the marble will return to its equi-librium position depends, in essence, upon the curvatureof the cup; the more curved the cup is, the smaller thedeviations produced by any given disturbing force willbe, and the more rapidly the marble will return to equi-librium. But what very often happens with dynamic sys-tems is that their character depends upon some sort ofexternal parameter. We might suppose there was an ex-ternal force, for example, which went through a seriesof fixed values, and this external parameter, as it varied,would change the curvature of the cup, so that, say, whenthe external force, A, was equal to zero, the cup mightpossibly be extremely highly curved. As A vanishes, itvaries between zero and one; the curvature of the cup de-

creases gradually until finally, when it reaches one, it isflat. And, say, when A is greater than one, it even inverts.

As soon as it reaches this point, of course, the situ-ation is quite different from any deviation from equilib-rium. As soon as A reaches the value of one, or possiblyslightly beyond it, then a slight push, of course, is go-ing to send the state of the dynamic system off to a dif-ferent position of equilibrium, or, in any case, to somecompletely different form of behavior. Exactly what willhappen is not determined simply by knowing the valueof A when it approaches one. There are several possibil-ities. But if you know the initial position and you knowthat the disturbing forces are not too great, as long as Ahas values between zero and one, there will be an equi-librium position which can be fixed in advance. It can besaid that if the particle is not there, it will at least be therevery soon, or it will oscillate a small degree about this po-sition, and so forth. But assume, roughly, that, as soon asthe curvature of the pocket in which it is becomes zero,it inverts, then, of course, this system behaves in quite adifferent way.

I suggest that the kind of dynamic variable which ten-sion, in this sense we are using it, is really analogous tois not the value of a potential energy but of somethinglike this curvature. This is a perfectly general sort ofsituation. Consider the case of rotating liquid masses,for example, rotating stars, and assume the velocity ofrotation and the mean angular momentum would con-stantly increase. Up to a certain point, there is a gradu-ally increasing deviation from the spherical shape. But assoon as it reaches a certain point, the rotating liquid massbcomes unstable, and, thereafter, small deviations in itsshape cause it to break up — or to have a furrow whichincreases in size, and one can no longer say, from merelyknowing its angular velocity, what its subsequent historywill be. As long as the velocity of rotation is smaller thanthe critical amount, then, if one knew nothing else aboutthat sphere of liquid except that it was rotating with thatangular velocity, it could be said it would have a certainshape and would stay very nearly about that shape.

The critical parameter there would be what corre-sponds to the curvature of the cup in the example of themarble, namely, those coefficients of the second deriva-tives of potential energy that determine the stability incharacteristic grooves. I should say the tension in thiscase is really something like the reciprocal of the abso-lute magnitude of the real part of the largest characteristicgroove; that is, it is a number which measures the ten-dency of the system to return to equilibrium after a smalldisturbance, and when the tension becomes too large, itcorresponds essentially to an inversion, to the case wherethere is instability because the curvature turns out nega-tive. I would say that tension is essentially a measure


of the rate of return to an equilibrium after small distur-bances rather than potential energy itself. If this analogyis exact, potential energy is a bead sliding on wire. Thepotential energy, of course, is proportional to the heightof the wire from the ground. But what matters in the caseof tension, so to speak, is the curvature of the wire ratherthan its absolute height from the ground.

Bigelow: Walter, you don’t really mean that the rapiditywith which the system returns to equilibrium is a func-tion of the curve, do you? It is not a function of thecoefficient of the second derivative, but a function of thedecrement, of the dissipation factor.

Pitts: In part, naturally; if it is moved to a small degree

and the system is conservative, of course it will keep os-cillating indefinitely.

McCulloch: May we hear from Larry Kubie and then wewill stop.

Kubie: I want to explain why I brought up the exam-ple of the extremely efficient person who becomes upsetprecisely at the point at which, if he was strictly analo-gous to any simple physical system, he ought to achieveequilibrium. At this very point, the unconscious sym-bolic values of his decisive behavior throw into action anew set of forces which disturb the equilibrium all overagain. That is the kind of event which makes life difficultfor the psychologist.


Behavior, Purpose and TeleologyArturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow

in: Philosophy of Science, 10(1943), S. 18–24.

This essay has two goals. The first is to define the be-havioristic study of natural events and to classify behav-ior. The second is to stress the importance of the conceptof purpose.

Given any object, relatively abstracted from its sur-roundings for study, the behavioristic approach consistsin the examination of the output of the object and of therelations of this output to the input. By output is meantany change produced in the surroundings by the object.By input, conversely, is meant any event external to theobject that modifies this object in any manner.

The above statement of what is meant by the be-havioristic method of study omits the specific structureand the instrinsic organization of the object. This omis-sion is fundamental because on it is based the distinctionbetween the behavioristic and the alternative functionalmethod of study. In a functional analysis, as opposedto a behavioristic approach, the main goal is the intrin-sic organization of the entity studied, its structure and itsproperties; the relations between the object and the sur-roundings are relatively incidental.

From this definition of the behavioristic method abroad definition of behavior ensues. By behavior ismeant any change of an entity with respect to its sur-roundings. This change may be largely an output fromthe object, the input being then minimal, remote or irrel-evant; or else the change may be immediately traceableto a certain input. Accordingly, any modification of anobject, detectable externally, may be denoted as behav-ior. The term would be, therefore, too extensive for use-fulness were it not that it may be restricted by appositeadjectives — i.e., that behavior may be classified.

The consideration of the changes of energy involvedin behavior affords a basis for classification. Active be-havior is that in which the object is the source of the out-put energy involved in a given specific reaction. The ob-ject may store energy supplied by a remote or relativelyimmediate input, but the input does not energize the out-put directly. In passive behavior, on the contrary, the ob-ject is not a source of energy; all the energy in the outputcan be traced to the immediate input (e.g., the throwingof an object), or else the object may control energy whichremains external to it throughout the reaction (e.g., thesoaring flight of a bird).

Active behavior may be subdivided into two classes:

purposeless (or random) and purposeful. The term pur-poseful is meant to denote that the act or behavior may beinterpreted as directed to the attainment of a goal — i.e.,to a final condition in which the behaving object reachesa definite correlation in time or in space with respect toanother object or event. Purposeless behavior then is thatwhich is not interpreted as directed to a goal.

The vagueness of the wordsmay be interpretedasused above might be considered so great that the distinc-tion would be useless. Yet the recognition that behaviormay sometimes be purposeful is unavoidable and useful,as follows. — The basis of the concept of purpose isthe awareness ofvoluntary activity. Now, the purpose ofvoluntary acts is not a matter of arbitrary interpretationbut a physiological fact. When we perform a voluntaryaction what we select voluntarily is a specific purpose,not a specific movement. Thus, if we decide to take aglass containing water and carry it to our mouth we donot command certain muscles to contract to a certain de-gree and in a certain sequence; we merely trip the pur-pose and the reaction follows automatically. Indeed, ex-perimental physiology has so far been largely incapableof explaining the mechanism of voluntary activity. Wesubmit that this failure is due to the fact that when an ex-perimenter stimulates the motor regions of the cerebralcortex he does not duplicate a voluntary reaction; he tripsefferent, output pathways, but does not trip a purpose, asis done voluntarily.

The view has often been expressed that all machinesare purposeful. This view is untenable. First may bementioned mechanical devices such as a roulette, de-signed precisely for purposelessness. Then may be con-sidered devices such as a clock, designed, it is true, witha purpose, but having a performance which, although or-derly, is not purposeful — i.e., there is no specific fi-nal condition toward which the movement of the clockstrives. Similarly, although a gun may be used for adefinite purpose, the attainment of a goal is not intrin-sic to the performance of the gun; random shooting canbe made, deliberately purposeless.

Some machines, on the other hand, are intrinsicallypurposeful. A torpedo with a target-seeking mechanismis an example. The term servo-mechanisms has beencoined precisely to designate machines with intrinsicpurposeful behavior.

ROSENBLUETH, WIENER AND BIGELOW 40 Behavior, Purpose and Teleology

It is apparent from these considerations that althoughthe definition of purposeful behavior is relatively vague,and hence operationally largely meaningless, the conceptof purpose is useful and should, therefore, be retained.

Purposeful active behavior may be subdivided intotwo classes:feed-back(or teleological) and non-feed-back (or non-teleological) The expression feed-back isused by engineers in two different senses. In a broadsense it may denote that some of the output energy of anapparatus or machine is returned as input; an example isan electrical amplifier with feed-back. The feed-back isin these cases positive — the fraction of the output whichreenters the object has the same sign as the original in-put signal. Positive feed-back adds to the input signals,it does not correct them. The term feed-back is also em-ployed in a more restricted sense to signify that the be-havior of an object is controlled by the margin of error atwhich the object stands at a given time with reference toa relatively specific goal. The feed-back is then negative,that is, the signals from the goal are used to restrict out-puts which would otherwise go beyond the goal. It is thissecond meaning of the term feed-back that is used here.

All purposeful behavior may be considered to requirenegative feed-back. If a goal is to be attained, some sig-nals from the goal are necessary at some time to directthe behavior. By non-feed-back behavior is meant that inwhich there are no signals from the goal which modifythe activity of the object in the course of the behavior.Thus, a machine may be set to impinge upon a lumi-nous object although the machine may be insensitive tolight. Similarly, a snake may strike at a frog, or a frogat a fly, with no visual or other report from the prey afterthe movement has started. Indeed, the movement is inthese cases so fast that it is not likely that nerve impulseswould have time to arise at the retina, travel to the centralnervous system and set up further impulses which wouldreach the muscles in time to modify the movement effec-tively.

As opposed to the examples considered, the behav-ior of some machines and some reactions of living or-ganisms involve a continuous feed-back from the goalthat modifies and guides the behaving object. This typeof behavior is more effective than that mentioned above,particularly when the goal is not stationary. But contin-uous feedback control may lead to very clumsy behav-ior if the feed-back is inadequately damped and becomestherefore positive instead of negative for certain frequen-cies of oscillation. Suppose, for example, that a machineis designed with the purpose of impinging upon a mov-ing luminous goal; the path followed by the machine iscontrolled by the direction and intensity of the light fromthe goal. Suppose further that the machine overshootsseriously when it follows a movement of the goal in a

certain direction; an even stronger stimulus will then bedelivered which will turn the machine in the opposite di-rection. If that movement again overshoots a series of in-creasingly larger oscillations will ensue and the machinewill miss the goal.

This picture of the consequences of undamped feed-back is strikingly similar to that seen during the perfor-mance of a voluntary act by a cerebellar patient. At restthe subject exhibits no obvious motor disturbance. Ifhe is asked to carry a glass of water from a table to hismouth, however, the hand carrying the glass will executea series of oscillatory motions of increasing amplitudeas the glass approaches his mouth, so that the water willspill and the purpose will not be fulfilled. This test is typ-ical of the disorderly motor performance of patients withcerebellar disease. The analogy with the behavior of amachine with undamped feed-back is so vivid that weventure to suggest that the main function of the cerebel-lum is the control of the feed-back nervous mechanismsinvolved in purposeful motor activity.

Feed-back purposeful behavior may again be subdi-vided. It may be extrapolative (predictive), or it maybe non-extrapolative (non-predictive). The reactions ofunicellular organisms known as tropisms are examplesof nonpredictive performances. The amoeba merely fol-lows the source to which it reacts; there is no evidencethat it extrapolates the path of a moving source. Predic-tive animal behavior, on the other hand, is a common-place. A cat starting to pursue a running mouse does notrun directly toward the region where the mouse is at anygiven time, but moves toward an extrapolated future po-sition. Examples of both predictive and non-predictiveservo-mechanisms may also be found readily.

Predictive behavior may be subdivided into differentorders. The cat chasing the mouse is an instance of first-order prediction; the cat merely predicts the path of themouse. Throwing a stone at a moving target requires asecond-order prediction; the paths of the target and ofthe stone should be foreseen. Examples of predictions ofhigher order are shooting with a sling or with a bow andarrow.

Predictive behavior requires the discrimination of atleast two coordinates, a temporal and at least one spatialaxis. Prediction will be more effective and flexible, how-ever, if the behaving object can respond to changes inmore than one spatial coordinate. The sensory receptorsof an organism, or the corresponding elements of a ma-chine, may therefore limit the predictive behavior. Thus,a bloodhound follows a trail, that is, it does not show anypredictive behavior in trailing, because a chemical, olfac-tory input reports only spatial information: distance, asindicated by intensity. The external changes capable ofaffecting auditory, or, even better, visual receptors, per-


mit more accurate spatial localization; hence the possi-bility of more effective predictive reactions when the in-put affects those receptors.

In addition to the limitations imposed by the recep-tors upon the ability to perform extrapolative actions,limitations may also occur that are due to the internalorganization of the behaving object. Thus, a machinewhich is to trail predictively a moving luminous objectshould not only be sensitive to light (e.g., by the pos-session of a photoelectric cell), but should also have thestructure adequate for interpreting the luminous input.It is probable that limitations of internal organization,particularly of the organization of the central nervoussystem, determine the complexity of predictive behav-ior which a mammal may attain. Thus, it is likely thatthe nervous system of a rat or dog is such that it does notpermit the integration of input and output necessary forthe performance of a predictive reaction of the third orfourth order. Indeed, it is possible that one of the fea-tures of the discontinuity of behavior observable whencomparing humans with other high mammals may lie inthat the other mammals are limited to predictive behaviorof a low order, whereas man may be capable potentiallyof quite high orders of prediction.

The classification of behavior suggested so far is tab-ulated here:

It is apparent that each of the dichotomies establishedsingles out arbitrarily one feature, deemed interesting,leaving an amorphous remainder: the non-class. It is alsoapparent that the criteria for the several dichotomies areheterogeneous. It is obvious, therefore, that many otherlines of classification are available, which are indepen-dent of that developed above. Thus, behavior in general,or any of the groups in the table, could be divided intolinear (i.e., output proportional to input) and non-linear.A division into continuous and discontinuous might beuseful for many purposes. The several degrees of free-dom which behavior may exhibit could also be employedas a basis of systematization.

The classification tabulated above was adopted forseveral reasons. It leads to the singling out of the class of

predictive behavior, a class particularly interesting sinceit suggests the possibility of systematizing increasinglymore complex tests of the behavior of organisms. It em-phasizes the concepts of purpose and of teleology, con-cepts which, although rather discredited at present, areshown to be important. Finally, it reveals that a uniformbehavioristic analysis is applicable to both machines andliving organisms, regardless of the complexity of the be-havior.

It has sometimes been stated that the designers of ma-chines merely attempt to duplicate the performances ofliving organisms. This statement is uncritical. That thegross behavior of some machines should be similar tothe reactions of organisms is not surprising. Animal be-havior includes many varieties of all the possible modesof behavior and the machines devised so far have farfrom exhausted all those possible modes. There is, there-fore a considerable overlap of the two realms of behav-ior. Examples, however, are readily found of man-mademachines with behavior that transcends human behavior.A machine with an electrical output is an instance; formen, unlike the electric fishes, are incapable of emittingelectricity. Radio transmission is perhaps an even bet-ter instance, for no animal is known with the ability togenerate short waves, even if so-called experiments ontelepathy are considered seriously.

A further comparison of living organisms and ma-chines leads to the following inferences. The methods ofstudy for the two groups are at present similar. Whetherthey should always be the same may depend on whetheror not there are one or more qualitatively distinct, uniquecharacteristics present in one group and absent in theother. Such qualitative differences have not appeared sofar.

The broad classes of behavior are the same in ma-chines and in living organisms. Specific, narrow classesmay be found exclusively in one or the other. Thus,no machine is available yet that can write a Sanscrit-Mandarin dictionary. Thus, also, no living organism isknown that rolls on wheels — imagine what the resultwould have been if engineers had insisted on copyingliving organisms and had therefore put legs and feet intheir locomotives, instead of wheels.

While the behavioristic analysis of machines andliving organisms is largely uniform, their functionalstudy reveals deep differences. Structurally, organ-isms are mainly colloidal, and include prominently pro-tein molecules, large, — complex and anisotropic; ma-chines are chiefly metallic and include mainly simplemolecules. From the standpoint of their energetics, ma-chines usually exhibit relatively large differences of po-tential, which permit rapid mobilization of energy; in or-ganisms the energy is more uniformly distributed, it is


not very mobile. Thus, in electric machines conduction ismainly electronic, whereas in organisms electric changesare usually ionic.

Scope and flexibility are achieved in machineslargely by temporal multiplication of effects; frequenciesof one million per second or more are readily obtainedand utilized. In organisms, spatial multiplication, ratherthan temporal, is the rule; the temporal achievements arepoor — the fastest nerve fibers can only conduct aboutone thousand impulses per second; spatial multiplicationis on the other hand abundant and admirable in its com-pactness. This difference is well illustrated by the com-parison of a television receiver and the eye. The televi-sion receiver may be described as a single cone retina;the images are formed by scanning — i.e. by orderlysuccessive detection of the signal with a rate of about 20million per second. Scanning is a process which seldomor never occurs in organisms, since it requires fast fre-quencies for effective performance. The eye uses a spa-tial, rather than a temporal multiplier. Instead of the onecone of the television receiver a human eye has about 6.5million cones and about 115 million rods.

If an engineer were to design a robot, roughly simi-lar in behavior to an animal organism, he would not at-tempt at present to make it out of proteins and other col-loids. He would probably build it out of metallic parts,some dielectrics and many vacuum tubes. The move-ments of the robot could readily be much faster and morepowerful than those of the original organism. Learningand memory, however, would be quite rudimentary. Infuture years, as the knowledge of colloids and proteinsincreases, future engineers may attempt the design ofrobots not only with a behavior, but also with a struc-ture similar to that of a mammal. The ultimate model ofa cat is of course another cat, whether it be born of stillanother cat or synthesized in a laboratory.

In classifying behavior the termteleologywas used

as synonymous withpurpose controlled by feed-back.Teleology has been interpreted in the past to imply pur-pose and the vague concept of afinal causehas been of-ten added. This concept of final causes has led to theopposition of teleology to determinism. A discussionof causality, determinism and final causes is beyond thescope of this essay. It may be pointed out, however, thatpurposefulness, as defined here, is quite independent ofcausality, initial or final. Teleology has been discreditedchiefly because it was defined to imply a cause subse-quent in time to a given effect. When this aspect of tele-ology was dismissed, however, the associated recogni-tion of the importance of purpose was also unfortunatelydiscarded. Since we consider purposefulness a conceptnecessary for the understanding of certain modes of be-havior we suggest that a teleological study is useful if itavoids problems of causality and concerns itself merelywith an investigation of purpose.

We have restricted the connotation of teleological be-havior by applying this designation only to purposeful re-actions which are controlled by the error of the reaction— i.e., by the difference between the state of the behav-ing object at any time and the final state interpreted as thepurpose. Teleological behavior thus becomes synony-mous with behavior controlled by negative feedback, andgains therefore in precision by a sufficiently restrictedconnotation.

According to this limited definition, teleology is notopposed to determinism, but to non-teleology. Both tele-ological and non-teleological systems are deterministicwhen the behavior considered belongs to the realm wheredeterminism applies. The concept of teleology sharesonly one thing with the concept of causality: a time axis.But causality implies a one-way, relatively irreversiblefunctional relationship, whereas teleology is concernedwith behavior, not with functional relationships.


On Constructing a RealityHeinz von Foerster

(1973)

Abstract: “Draw a distinction!”1

The Postulate: I am sure you remember the plain cit-izen Jourdain in Moliere’sBourgeois Gentilhommewho,nouveau riche, travels in the sophisticated circles of theFrench aristocracy, and who is eager to learn. On oneoccasion with his new friends they speak about poetryand prose, and Jourdain discovers to his amazement andgreat delight that whenever he speaks, he speaks prose.He is overwhelmed by this discovery: “I am speakingProse! I have always spoken Prose! I have spoken Prosethroughout my whole life!”

A similar discovery has been made not so long ago,but it was neither of poetry nor prose—it was the envi-ronment that was discovered. I remember when, perhapsten or fifteen years ago, some of my American friendscame running to me with the delight and amazement ofhaving just made a great discovery: “I am living in anEnvironment! I have always lived in an Environment! Ihave lived in an Environment throughout my whole life!”

However, neither M. Jourdain nor my friends have asyet made another discovery, and that is when M. Jourdainspeaks, may it be prose or poetry, it is he who invents it,and likewise when we perceive our environment, it is wewho invent it.

Every discovery has a painful and a joyful side:painful, while struggling with a new insight; joyful, whenthis insight is gained. I see the sole purpose of my pre-sentation to minimize the pain and maximize the joy forthose who have not yet made this discovery; and for thosewho have made it, to let them know they are not alone.Again, the discovery we all have to make for ourselves is

the following postulate:the environment as we perceiveit is our invention.

The burden is now upon me to support this outra-geous claim. I shall proceed by first inviting you to par-ticipate in an experiment; then I shall report a clinicalcase and the results of two other experiments. After thisI will give an interpretation, and thereafter a highly com-pressed version of the neurophysiological basis of theseexperiments and my postulate of before. Finally, I shallattempt to suggest the significance of all that to aestheti-cal and ethical considerations.I. Blindspot . Hold [Figure 1] next page with your righthand, close your left eye and fixate asterisk of Fig. 1 withyour right eye. Move the book slowly back and forthalong line of vision until at an appropriate distance, fromabout 12 to 14 inches, the round black spot disappears.Keeping the asterisk well focused, the spot should re-main invisible even if the figure is slowly moved parallelto itself in any direction.

This localized blindness is a direct consequence ofthe absence of photo receptors (rods or cones) at thatpoint of the retina, the “disc”, where all fibers, leadingfrom the eye’s light sensitive surface, converge to formthe optic nerve. Clearly, when the black spot is projectedonto the disc, it cannot be seen. Note that this localizedblindness is not perceived as a dark blotch in our visualfield (seeing a dark blotch would imply “seeing”), butthis blindness is not perceived at all, that, is, neither assomething present, nor as something absent: whatever isperceived is perceived “blotch-less”.

Figure 1

1Brown, G. S.,Laws of Form. New York, Julian Press, page 3, 1972.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 44 On Constructing a Reality

II. Scotoma. Well localized occipital lesions in the brain,e.g., injuries from high velocity projectiles, heal rela-tively fast without the patient’s awareness of any per-ceptible loss in his vision. However, after several weeksmotor dysfunction in the patient becomes apparent, e.g.,loss of control of arm or leg movements of one side orthe other, etc. Clinical tests, however, show that there isnothing wrong with the motor system, but that in somecases there is substantial loss of a large portion of the vi-sual field (scotoma) (Fig. 2)2. A successful therapy con-sists of blindfolding the patient over a period of one totwo months until he regains control over his motor sys-tem by shifting his “attention” from “non-existent” vi-sual clues regarding his posture to “fully operative” chan-nels that give direct postural clues from “Proprioceptive”sensors embedded in muscles and joints. Note again theabsence of perception of “absence of perception”, andalso the emergence of perception through sensor-motorinteraction. This prompts two metaphors: “Perceiving isDoing”; and, “If I don’t see I am blind, I am blind; but ifI see I am blind, I see”.

Figure 2

III. Alternates . A single word is spoken once into a taperecorder and the tape smoothly spliced, without a click,into a loop. The word is repetitively played back with ahigh rather than low volume. After one or two minutesof listening, from 50 to 150 repetitions, the word clearlyperceived so far abruptly changes into another meaning-ful and clearly perceived word: an “alternate”. After 10to 30 repetitions of this first alternate, a sudden switch toa second alternate is perceived, and so on3.

The following is a small selection of the 758 alter-nates reported from a population of about 200 subjects

who were exposed to a repetitive playback of the sin-gle word Cogitate:agitate; annotate; arbitrate; artistry;back and forth; brevity; ca d’etait; candidate; can’t yousee; can’t you stay; cape cod you say; card estate; car-dio tape; car district; catch a tape; cavitate; cha cha che;cogitate; computate; conjugate; conscious state; countertape; count to ten; count to three; count yer tape; cut thesteak; entity; fantasy; God to take; God you say; gota date; got your pay; got your tape; gratitude; grav-ity; guard the tit; gurgitate; had to take; kinds of tape;majesty; marmalade.

Figure 3: Trial 1 (no behavioral evidence of learning)

Figure 4: Trial 13 (begins to wait for tones)

Figure 5: Trial 4/20 (hypothesizes)

Figure 6: Trial 6/9 (understands)2Teuber, H. L., “Neuere Betrachtungen uber Sehstrahlung undSehrinde” in Jung, R., Kornhuber H. (Eds.)Das Visuelle System, Berlin, Springer,

pages 256–274, 1961.3Naeser, M. A., and Lilly, J. C., “The Repeating Word Effect: Phonetic Analysis of Reported Alternates”,Journal of Speech and Hearing

Research, 1971.


IV. Comprehension. Literally defined:con⇒ together;prehendere⇒ to seize, grasp. Into the various sta-tions of the auditory pathways in a cat’s brain, micro-electrodes are implanted which allow a recording, “Elec-troencephalogram”, from the nerve cells first to receiveauditory stimuli, Cochlea Nucleus: CN, up to the Au-ditory Cortex4. The so prepared cat is admitted into acage that contains a food box whose lid can be openedby pressing a lever. However, the lever-lid connection isoperative only when a short single tone (here C6, that isabout 1000 Hz) is repetitively presented5. The cat has tolearn that C6 “means” food. Figures 3 to 6 show thepattern of nervous activity at eight ascending auditorystations, and at four consecutive stages of this learningprocess6 The cat’s behavior associated with the recordedneural activity is for Fig. 3: “Random search”; Fig. 4:“Inspection of lever”; Fig. 5: “Lever pressed at once”;and for Fig. 6: “Walking straight toward lever (full com-prehension)”. Note that no tone is perceived as long asthis tone is uninterpretable (Figs. 3, 4; pure noise), butthe whole system swings into action with the appear-ance of the first “beep” (Figs. 5, 6; noise becomes sig-nal) when sensation becomes comprehensible, when ourperception of ‘’beep”, “beep”, “beep”, is in the cat’s per-ception “food”, “food”, “food”.

Interpretation. In these experiments I have cited in-stances in which we see or hear what is not “there”, or inwhich we do not see or hear what is “there”, unless coor-dination of sensation and movement allows us to “grasp”what appears to be there. Let me strengthen this obser-vation by citing now the, “Principle of UndifferentiatedEncoding”:

The response of a nerve cell does not encodethe physical nature of the agents that causedits response. Encoded is only “how much”at this point on my body, but not “what”.

Take, for instance, a light sensitive receptor cell inthe retina, a “rod”, which absorbs the electro-magneticradiation originating from a distant source. This absorp-tion causes a change in the electrochemical potential inthe rod which will ultimately give rise to a periodic elec-tric discharge of some cells higher up in the post-retinalnetworks with a period that is commensurate with the in-tensity of the radiation absorbed, but without a clue thatit was electro-magnetic radiation that caused the rod todischarge. The same is true for any other sensory recep-tor, may it be the taste buds, the touch receptors, and allthe other receptors that are associated with the sensations

of smell, heat and cold, sound, etc.: they are all “blind”as to the quality of their stimulation, responsive only asto their quantity.

Although surprising, this should not come as a sur-prise, for indeed “out there” there is no light and no color,there are only electro-magnetic waves; “out there” thereis no sound and no music, there are only periodic varia-tions of the air pressure; “out there” there is no heat andno cold, there are only moving molecules with more orless mean kinetic energy, and so on. Finally, for sure,“out there” there is no pain.

Since the physical nature of the stimulus—itsquality—is not encoded into nervous activity, the funda-mental question arises as to how does our brain conjureup the tremendous variety of this colorful world as weexperience it any moment while awake, and sometimesin dreams while asleep. This is the “Problem of Cog-nition”, the search for an understanding of the cognitiveprocesses.

The way in which a question is asked determines theway in which an answer may be found. Thus, it is uponme to paraphrase the “Problem of Cognition” in such away that the conceptual tools that are today at our dis-posal may become fully effective. To this end let meparaphrase (→) “cognition” in the following way:

COGNITION→ computing a reality.

With this I anticipate a storm of objections. First, Iappear to replace one unknown term, “cognition” withthree other terms, two of which, “computing” and “re-ality”, are even more opaque than the definiendum, andwith the only definite word used here being the indefinitearticle “a”. Moreover, the use of the indefinite article im-plies the ridiculous notion of other realities besides “the”only and one reality, our cherished Environment; and fi-nally I seem to suggest by “computing” that everything,from my wristwatch to the Galaxies, is merely computed,and is not “there”. Outrageous!

Let me take up these objections one by one. First,let me remove the semantic sting that the term “comput-ing” may cause in a group of women and men who aremore inclined toward the humanities than to the sciences.Harmlessly enough, computing (fromcom-putare) liter-ally means to reflect, to contemplate (putare) things inconcert (com-), without any explicit reference to numer-ical quantities. Indeed, I shall use this term in this mostgeneral sense to indicate any operation, not necessarilynumerical, that transforms, modifies, re-arranges, or or-ders observed physical entities, “objects”, or their repre-

4Worden, F. G., “EEG Studies and.Conditional Reflexes in Man”, in Brazier, Mary A. B.,The Central Nervous System and Behavior, New York,Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, pages 270–291, 1959.

5“Hz” means 1 cycle per second, is the unit for oscillations named after Heinrich Hertz who generated the first radio signals.6op cit.


sentations, “symbols”. For instance, the simple permuta-tion of the three letters A, B, C, in which the last letternow goes first: C, A, B, I shall call a computation. Sim-ilarly, the operation that obliterates the commas betweenthe letters: CAB; and likewise the semantic transforma-tion that changes CAB into TAXI, and so on.

I shall now turn to the defense of my use of the in-definite article in the noun-phrase “a reality”. I could,of course, shield myself behind the logical argument thatsolving for the general case, implied by the “a”, I wouldalso have solved any specific case denoted by the use of“the”. However, my motivation lies much deeper. In fact,there is a deep hiatus that separates the “The”-school-of-thought from the “A”-school-of-thought in which respec-tively the distinct concepts of “confirmation” and “corre-lation” are taken as explanatory paradigms for percep-tions. The “The-School”: My sensation of touch iscon-firmationfor my visual sensation that here is a table. The“A-School”: My sensation of touch incorrelation withmy visual sensation generate an experience which I maydescribe by “here is a table”.

I am rejecting the THE-position on epistemologicalgrounds, for in this way the whole Problem of Cognitionis safely put away in one’s own cognitive blind spot: evenits absence can no longer be seen.

Finally one may rightly argue that cognitive pro-cesses do not compute wristwatches or galaxies, butcompute at bestdescriptionsof such entities. Thus I amyielding to this objection and replace my former para-phrase by:

COGNITION→ computing descriptions of a reality.

Neurophysiologists, however, will tell us that a de-scription computed on one level of neural activi ty, say aprojected image on the retina, will be operated on againon higher levels, and so on, whereby some motor activ-ity may be taken by an observer as a “terminal descrip-tion”, for instance the utterance: “here is a table”7. Con-sequently, I have to modify this paraphrase again to read:

where the arrow turning back suggests this infinite re-cursion of descriptions of descriptions . . . etc. This for-mulation has the advantage that one unknown, namely,“reality” is successfully eliminated. Reality appears onlyimplicit as the operation of recursive descriptions. More-over, we may take advantage of the notion that comput-ing descriptions is nothing else but computations. Hence:

In summary, I propose to interpret cognitive pro-cesses as never ending recursive processes of computa-tion, and I hope that in the followingtour de forceofneurophysiology I can make this interpretation transpar-ent.

Neurophysiology

I. Evolution . In order that the principle of recursivecomputation is fully appreciated as being the underlyingprinciple of all cognitive processes—even of life itself,as one of the most advanced thinkers in biology assuresme—it may be instructive to go back for a moment tothe most elementary—or as evolutionists would say, tovery “early”—manifestations of this principle(6). Theseare the “independent effectors”, or independent sensory-motor units, found in protozoa and metazoa distributedover the surface of these animals (Fig. 7). The triangu-lar portion of this unit, protruding with its tip from thesurface, is the sensory part, the onion-shaped portion thecontractile motor part. A change in the chemical concen-tration of an agent in the immediate vicinity of the sens-ing tip, and “perceptible” by it, causes an instantaneouscontraction of this unit. The resulting displacement ofthis or any other unit by change of shape of the animalor its location may, in turn, produce perceptible changesin the agent’ s concentration in the vicinity of these unitswhich, in turn, will cause their instantaneous contraction,

7Maturana, H. R., “Neurophysiology of Cognition,” in Garvin, P.,Cognition: A Multiple View,. New York, Spartan Press, pages 3–23, 1970.


etc. Thus, we have the recursion:

Separation of the sites of sensation and action ap-pears to have been the next evolutionary step (Figure 8).The sensory and motor organs are now connected by thinfilaments, the “axons” (in essence degenerated musclefibers having lost their contractility), which transmit thesensor’s perturbations to its effector, thus giving rise tothe concept of a “signal”: see something here, act ac-cordingly there.

The crucial step, however, in the evolution of thecomplex organization of the mammalian central nervoussystem (CNS) appears to be the appearance of an “inter-nuncial neuron”, a cell sandwiched between the sensoryand the motor unit (Fig. 9). It is, in essence, a sensorycell, but specialized so as to respond only to a univer-sal “agent”, namely, the electrical activity of the afferentaxons terminating in its vicinity. Since its present activ-ity may affect its subsequent responsivity, it introducesthe element of computation in the animal kingdom, andgives these organisms the astounding latitude of non triv-ial behaviors. Having once developed the genetic codefor assembling an internuncial neuron, to add the geneticcommand “repeat” is a small burden indeed. Hence, Ibelieve, it is now easy to comprehend the rapid prolif-eration of these neurons along additional vertical layerswith growing horizontal connections to form those com-plex interconnected structures we call “brains”.II. Neuron . The neuron, of which we have more thanten billion in our brain, is a highly specialized singlecell with three anatomically distinct features (Fig. 10):(a) the branch-like ramifications stretching up and to theside, the “dendrites”; (b) the bulb in the center housingthe cell’s nucleus, the “cell body”; and (c), the “axon”,the smooth fiber stretching downward. Its various bi-furcations terminate on dendrites of another (but some-times [recursively] on the same) neuron. The same mem-brane which envelopes the cell body forms also the tubu-lar sheath for dendrites and axon, and causes the insideof the cell to be electrically charged against the outsidewith about one tenth of a volt. If in the dendritic regionthis charge is sufficiently perturbed, the neuron “fires”and sends this perturbation along its axons to their termi-nations, the synapses.

III. Transmission . Since these perturbations are electri-cal, they can be picked up by “microprobes”, amplifiedand recorded. Fig. 11 shows three examples of periodicdischarges from a touch receptor under continuous stim-ulation, the low frequency corresponding to a weak, thehigh frequency to a strong stimulus. The magnitude ofthe discharge is clearly everywhere the same, the pulsefrequency representing the stimulus intensity, but the in-tensity only.IV. Synapse. Fig. 12 sketches a synaptic junction. Theafferent axon (Ax), along which the pulses travel, ter-minates in an end bulb (EB) which is separated fromthe spine (sp) of a dendrite (D) of the target neuron bya minute gap (sy), the “synaptic gap” (Note the manyspines that cause the rugged appearance of the dendritesin Fig. 10). The chemical composition of the “trans-mitter substances” filling the synaptic gap is crucial indetermining the effect an arriving pulse may have on theultimate response of the neuron: under certain circum-stances it may produce an “inhibitory effect” (cancella-tion of another simultaneously arriving pulse); in othersa “facilitory effect”’ (augmenting another pulse to firethe neuron). Consequently, the synaptic gap can be seenas the “micro-environment” of a sensitive tip, the spine,and with this interpretation in mind we may comparethe sensitivity of the CNS to changes of theinternal en-vironment (the sum-total of all micro-environments) tothose of theexternalenvironment (all sensory receptors).Since there are only a hundred million sensory receptors,and about ten-thousand billion synapses in our nervoussystem, we are 100,000 times more receptive to changesin our internal than in our external environment.


Figure 12

Figure 13V. Cortex. In order that one may get at least some per-spective on the organization of the entire machinery thatcomputes all perceptual, intellectual and emotional expe-riences, I have attached Fig. 13 which shows magnified asection of about 2 square millimeters of a cat’s cortex bya staining method which stains only cell body and den-drites, and of those only 1% of all neurons present8.

Although you have to imagine the many connectionsamong these neurons provided by the (invisible) axons,and a density of packing that is a hundred times thatshown, the computational power of even this very smallpart of a brain may be sensed.

Figure 14VI. Descartes. This perspective is a far cry from that be-ing held, say three hundred years ago: “If the fire A isnear the foot B (Fig. 14), the particles of this fire, whichas you know move with great rapidity, have the power tomove the area of the skin of this foot that they touch; andin this way drawing the little thread, c, that you see to beattached at the base of toes and on the nerve, at the sameinstant they open the entrance of the pore, d, e, at whichthis little thread terminates, just as by pulling one end ofa cord, at the same time one causes the bell to sound thathangs at the other end9.

Now the entrance of the pore or little conduit, d, e,being thus opened, the animal spirits of the cavity F, en-ter within and are carried by it, partly into the musclesthat serve to withdraw this foot from the fire, partly intothose that serve to turn the eyes and the head to look at it,and partly into those that serve to advance the hands andto bend the whole body to protect it.”

Note, however, that some behaviorists of today stillcling to the same view with one difference only, namely,that in the meantime Descartes’ “animal spirit” has goneinto oblivion10.VII. Computation . The retina of vertebrates with its as-sociated nervous tissue is a typical case of neural com-putation. Fig. 15 is a schematic representation of a mam-malian retina and its post-retinal network. The layer la-beled #1 represents the array of rods and cones, and layer#2 the bodies and nuclei of these cells. Layer #3 identi-fies the general region where the axons of the receptorssynapse with the dendritic ramifications of the “bipo-

8Sholl, D. A.,The Organization of the Cerebral Cortex, London, Methuen, 1956.9Descartes, R.,L’Homme, Paris, Angot, 1664. Reprinted inOuevres de Descartes, XI, Paris, Adam and Tannery, pages 119-209, 1957.

10Skinner, B. F.,Beyond Freedom and Dignity, New York, Knopf, 1971.


lar cells” (#4) which, in turn, synapse in layer #5 withthe dendrites of the ganglion cells (#6) whose activity istransmitted to deeper regions of the brain via their axonswhich are bundled together to form the optic nerve (#7).Computation takes place within the two layers labeled #3and #5, that is, where the synapses are located.

Figure 15As Maturana has shown, it is there where the sensationof color and some clues as to form are computed11

Form computation: take the two-layered periodicnetwork of Fig. 16, the upper layer representing recep-tor cells sensitive to, say, “light”. Each of these recep-tors is connected to three neurons in the lower (comput-ing) layer, with two excitatory synapses on the neurondirectly below (symbolized by buttons attached to thebody), and with one inhibitory synapse (symbolized by aloop around the tip) attached to each of the two neurons,one to the left and one to the right. It is clear that thecomputing layer will not respond to uniform light pro-jected on the receptive layer, for the two excitatory stim-uli on a computer neuron will be exactly compensated bythe inhibitory signals coming from the two lateral recep-tors. This zero-response will prevail under strongest andweakest stimulation as well as to slow or rapid changesof the illumination. The legitimate question may nowarise—“Why this complex apparatus that doesn’t do athing?”’

Consider now Fig. 17 in which an obstruction isplaced in the light path illuminating the layer of recep-tors. Again all neurons of the lower layer will remainsilent, except the one at the edge of the obstruction, for itreceives two excitatory signals from the receptor above,but only one inhibitory signal from the sensor to the left.We now understand the important function of this net,for it computes any spatial variation in the visual field ofthis “eye”, independent of intensity of the ambient lightand its temporal variations, and independent of place andextension of the obstruction.

Although all operations involved in this computationare elementary, the organization of these operations al-lows us to appreciate a principle of considerable depth,namely, that of the computation of abstracts, here the no-tion of “edge”.

I hope that this simple example is sufficient to sug-gest to you the possibility of generalizing this principle inthe sense that “computation” can be seen on at least twolevels, namely, (a) the operations actually performed, and(b) the organization of these operations represented hereby the structure of the nerve net. In computer language(a) would again be associated with “operations”, but (b)with the “program”. As we shall see later, in “biolog-ical computers” the programs themselves may be com-puted on. This leads to the concepts of “meta-programs”,“meta-meta-programs”, . . . etc. This, of course, is theconsequence of the inherent recursive organization ofthose systems.

Figure 18VIII. Closure . By attending to all the neurophysiolog-ical pieces, we may have lost the perspective that seesan organism as a functioning whole. In Fig. 18 I haveput these pieces together in their functional context. Theblack squares labeled N represent bundles of neurons that

11Maturana, H. R., “A Biological Theory of Relativistic Colour Coding in the Primate Retina”, Arch. Biologia y Medicina Exper., Suppl. No. 1,Soc. Biologia de Chile, Santiago, Universidad de Chile, 1968.


synapse with neurons of other bundles over the (synap-tic) gaps indicated by the spaces between squares. Thesensory surface (SS) of the organism is to the left, itsmotor surface (MS) to the right, and the neuropituitary(NP) the strongly innervated mastergland that regulatedthe entire endocrinal system, is the stippled lower bound-ary of the array of squares. Nerve impulses traveling hor-izontally (from left to right) ultimately act on the motorsurface (MS) whose changes (movements) are immedi-ately sensed by the sensory surface (SS), as suggested bythe “external” pathway following the arrows.

Impulses traveling vertically (from top to bottom)stimulate the neuropituitary (NP) whose activity releasessteroids into the synaptic gaps, as suggested by the wig-gly terminations of the lines following the arrow, andthus modify themodus operandiof all synaptic junctures,hence themodus operandiof the system as a whole. Notethe double closure of the system which now recursivelyoperates not only on what it “sees” but on its opera-tors as well. In order to make this twofold closure evenmore apparent I propose to wrap the diagram of Fig. 18around its two axes of circular symmetry until the arti-ficial boundaries disappear and the torus (doughnut) asin Fig. 19 is obtained. Here the “synaptic gap” betweenthe motor and sensory surfaces is the striated meridian inthe front center, the neuropituitary the stippled equator.This, I submit, is the functional organization of a livingorganism in a (dough)nut shell. (Fig. 19)

Figure 19The computations within this torus are subject to a

non-trivial constraint, and this is expressed in the Postu-late of Cognitive Homeostasis:

The nervous system is organized (or orga-nizes itself) so that it computes a stable real-ity.

This postulate stipulates “autonomy”, i.e., “self reg-ulation”, for every living organism. Since the seman-tic structure of nouns with prefix “self-” becomes more

transparent when this prefix is replaced by the noun, “au-tonomy” becomes synonymous with “regulation of regu-lation”. This is precisely what the doubly closed, recur-sively computing torus does: it regulates its own regula-tion.Significance. It may be strange in times like these to stip-ulate autonomy, for autonomy implies responsibility: If Iam the only one who decides how I act then I am respon-sible for my action. Since the rule of the most populargame played today is to make someone else responsiblefor my acts—the name of the game is “heteronomy”—my arguments make, I understand, a most unpopularclaim. One way of sweeping it under the rug is to dis-miss it as just another attempt to rescue “solipsism”, theview that this world is only in my imagination and theonly reality is the imagining “I”. Indeed, that was pre-cisely what I was saying before, but I was talking onlyabout a single organism. The situation is quite differentwhen there are two, as I shall demonstrate with the aid ofthe gentleman with the bowler hat (Fig. 20).

Figure 20He insists that he is the sole reality, while everything

else appears only in his imagination. How ever, he can-not deny that his imaginary universe is populated with


apparitions that are not unlike himself. Hence, he has toconcede that they themselves may insist that they are thesole reality and everything else is only a concoction oftheir imagination. In that case their imaginary universewill be populated with apparitions, one of which may behe, the gentleman with the bowler hat.

According to the Principle of Relativity which rejectsa hypothesis when it does not hold for two instancestogether, although it holds for each instance separately(Earthlings and Venusians may be consistent in claimingto be in the center of the universe, but their claims fallto pieces if they should, ever get together), the solipsisticclaim falls to pieces when besides me I invent anotherautonomous organism. However, it should be noted thatsince the Principle of Relativity is not a logical necessity,nor is it a proposition that can be proven to be either trueor false, the crucial point to be recognized here is that Iam free to choose either to adopt this principle or to rejectit. If I reject it, I am the center of the universe, my real-ity are my dreams and my nightmares, my language is

monologue, and my logic mono-logic. If I adopt it, nei-ther me nor the other can be the center of the universe.As in the heliocentric system, there must be a third thatis the central reference. It is the relation between Thouand I, and this relation is IDENTITY:

Reality = Community

What are the consequences of all this in ethics andaesthetics?

The Ethical Imperative: Act always so as to increasethe number of choices.

The Aesthetical Imperative: If you desire to see, learnhow to act.

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to Lebbeus Woods, Rodney Clough andGordon Pask for offering their artistic talents to embel-lish this paper with Figs. (7, 8, 9, 16, 17), (18, 19), and(20) respectively.


Invitation to DanceA Conversation with Heinz von Foerster

Christina WatersSanta Cruz, California, November 1999

Meeting with Heinz von Foerster last month at hishome nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains, it was myhope that he discuss some of the premisses that have un-derwritten not just his professional life as a cyberneti-cian, but his personal life extending from youth in Vi-enna to a variety of entrepreneurial adventures in thiscountry. Seated with the 88-year-old physicist—his frailbody somehow persistent, eyes flashing with intellectualvigor—what emerged was a clear commitment to a setof guiding principles. Famed as a robust raconteur, vonFoerster explicated his dedication to the path that hasled him, with characteristic dignity, to these penultimatedays he enjoys at Rattlesnake Hill in coastal California.

Q: Do you think that in the end, from where you areright now, that you’ve been an inventor or a discoverer?

A: Always an inventor. A discovery means, you see, thisis to uncover, to take a blanket away. Discover means youundo a cover from a thing which is already there. Take acoveroff. The inventor is doing something which is new,which is not already there.

And my position is, we create all the time, when we’resitting down and talking with each other. It’s alwayssomething absolutely new, which was never there before.

The discoverer position, which people are very fondto maintain, is in a sense beingnot responsible for thatwhich you are talking about. Because if you are only tak-ing a cover away from something which is already there,then you are only telling how it is. With this, you avoidall the responsibility. This was brought home to me ata class I had at Stanford University Journalism School.There was a banner that said “Tell it Like It is”—so Iwalk into that class and tell them, “my God gentlemen,do you want to get rid of the responsibility of being awriter by telling it like it is?” Nobody knows how itis. Itis how you tell it.

That is very important. Because now you see you cre-ate the reality which all the people take as it is.

It is as you tell it. This point is so important yet mostpeople don’t recognize it.

Q: Do you feel that you’ve helped to create reality bydoing the cybernetics you’ve engaged in?

A: I have no idea whether I have. I’m just saying what I

hope somebody will listen to.

Q: Who is doing the real inventing today?

A: Everybody is, only they want not to recognize that.Everybody who opens his mouth says something, inventssomething that has never been said before—because weare not machines. You say a new thing, even if it’s sim-ply a question that is clumsy, or as silly or as funny asyou wish. There are no stupid questions-there are onlystupid answers.Ja?

Q: Why do we not want to accept responsibility?

A: Because the most horrible thing is to be responsiblefor something. We have invented every trick to avoid re-sponsibility. One way is to invent a hierarchy if you’re aninstitutional organization. In a hierarchy everybody cansay, ‘I didn’t want to do it, I was told to do it.’ That getsrid of responsibility.

Or there are the famous statements from politicians—“I had no choice.;” And the moment somebody says that,they are really saying ‘I refuse the responsibility for whatI’m doing.’ They always have all the choices,Ja?

Q: So it’s hard to accept responsibility.

A: Yes—that’s why we invent things like hierarchy—and objectivity. Objectivity is one of the great tricks toget rid of responsibility.

You know what objectivity is all about—it says thatthe properties of the observer shall not enter a descrip-tion of his observation. Now if that’s so, what remains?No description, no observation. Because these are allproperties of the observer.

Q: Don’t you think that language, however, traps us intoa subject-object orientation?

A: Oh yes, it does that all the time.

Q: How then can we make sense, speak meaningfully toeach other, and yet still avoid reference to objectivity?Don’t we almost have to reinvent language?

A: No. We can use language as a dance. Language forme is an invitation to dance. When we are dancing weare using language to suggest to each other what stepswe would like to do.

Two partners are dancing out on a big floor—and no-body leads. Both lead. Both help the other to make the

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 53 Invitation to Dance

swing to the right, to the left, etc. These steps are notprescribed. Steps are only there as a reference to be ableto use them. When we do a waltz we know how to do awaltz, but whether we do it to the left or the right, for-ward, backward, is a choice of the couple. And not thechoice of he or she.

So when we are talking with each other, we are in di-alogue and invent what we both wish the other wouldinventwith me. Togetherness is the point in a dialogue.And language is an invitation to dialogue and not an in-vitation to monologue.

Q: How can someone in the everyday world see thismost easily, this dance metaphor? In poetry?

A: I think it is played out in every way that anybodytalks to each other. If I buy a ticket for the movie, I havea conversation with the lady behind the window. And Ismile, and she smiles back. And we have become friendsfor two seconds. And we have contacted another humanbeing. And this is probably what makes some people alittle bit queasy about me. This is my personal fun whichI have in life, to contact other people in such a way thatthe other is taking notice of me.

You know my funny statement—the hearer and not thespeaker determines the meaning of an utterance. And ifyou know that, then you need to determine how you mustspeak so that the hearer is dancing with you.

Q: So it makes sense that someone who is a performer—you—would use some of that body language to help thatdance take place.

A: Yes. But I don’t play the tricks. What I do is, I aimthat way. If I step up to the ticket counter, I know I’mspeaking to a human being.

[He conveys an incident in which he was trying onshoes and he sensed immediately that something waswrong with the salesperson.] I said, “What is wrong?”She said she had destroyed her car today, and she begancrying. And you see, this is what happens. I aim at thehuman being.[He relates another story about a huge in-ternational conference in Hamburg in one of the largestconference centers in the world.]

So I came to this huge psychiatric conference with allthe most important, great professors of the field. I wasthere 2 minutes before starting time. I went to a roomwhere I could get a cup of coffee. And here were thesegiantsof social psychiatry, and I started introducing my-self and then began to look for the coffee. It was on a fartable and next to it was a big leather couch. There was awoman sitting on the couch who was clearly in distress.I went over to her and asked if I can help her. No, I havean extraordinary miserable earache, she tells me. I can’teven think, I can’t even see. I offer her my Tylenol. I callsomeone over to ask whether there’s a doctor who canhelp, and ask if he can take the lady to the doctor. As she

went out to see the doctor she thanked me.I thought this was interesting. You need a physicist

from California for the international conference of socialpsychiatrists to find out that the wife of one has earachesand can’t think.

The point is, it was so obvious to me. In a tenth of asecond, I could see this. And here the greatprofessorescould not even tell that one of them was in distress.

Q: You have very strong diagnostic skills.

A: No I’m just feeling my way around. I always ask,Who is the other? I always think about the other. Theother is the one who interprets my experience.

Q: Yes, and that I think is why you tell stories. You tell agreat many stories—but it’s never just to talk about your-self. You are engaging your listener. You have alwaystold stories have you not?

A: Yes—of course. Our family was a story-telling fam-ily. My grandmother was telling stories, my uncle wastelling stories, we were all always telling stories. Perhapsit’s a Viennese habit—it could be a cultural hang-up. [Helaughs.]

Q: It could explain why conversation became so impor-tant to you.

A: My uncle was in Siberia, my father was in Serbia.One of my uncle’s co-prisoners escaped, my uncle toldhim to contact my mother and tell her that he was stillalive. So he left. Six months later, he had walked fromSiberia and popped up in Vienna. Which was possiblein the year 1916, because it was before the collapse ofthe Russian Empire. So he came to my grandmother andsaid I have a letter from your son Ervin in Siberia. Sheinvited him in for a coffee and asked how he had madeit, how he had succeeded in walking for six months fromSiberia to Vienna. And he says, yes it was tough. Andthat was the story. That was an example in our family ofgood story telling.

Very quick and to the point. [He laughs.]

Q: Why didn’t cybernetics become a mainstream en-deavor? Why don’t people all over the United Statesknow what cybernetics is?

A: But look! It is. Cybernetics is in every second word.If you open the newspaper there is cyber space, cybersex, cyber this and cyber that. Everything is cyberized.

Q: That’s not cybernetics, [We’re both laughing.]

A: No, but “cyber” is there. Look at terms like “feed-back. ” Everybody knows what feedback is. Cyberneticsdid that. Things of that sort. I think cybernetics connectsunderneath. It’s implicit. Underneath, it’s completelyalive. But not explicit.

In some cases I find it more important that somethingis acting implicitly, than explicitly. Because the implicithas much more power.


Q: So you think that in a way it has infiltrated the intel-lectual mainstream?

A: Absolutely! Nobody can talk without at least thepresence of cybernetics being operational. The presenceof these notions is absolutely alive, only not explicitlyreferred to.

I find it very powerful that it’s underground. Becausepeople are unaware of it—and therefore don’t reject it.[We laugh.]

Q: It’s gone underground and we in fact use it whetherwe know it or not.

A: Ja, exactly.

Q: Who is furthering cybernetics today?

A: All the internet people, all computer people today.They are all cyberneticians whether they like it or not.

Q: In what sense, Heinz?

A: Because they initiate dialogues. Internet dialoguesare initiated and then they expand over and over. Youexpand the network’s interaction.

Q: So initiating conversations is critical. Why are con-versations so important?

A: It’s the humanness which is expressed in the conver-sation that is so important.

Q: And so conversations multiply the ways in which hu-manness is expressed?

A: Exactly—and so you find your own. Because in thereflection, in the eyes of the other, your own humanitybegins to develop. Which you cannot do in a monologue.

You have to dance with somebody else to recognizewho you are.

Q: So you are a humanist?

A: I don’t know that I’m a humanist—I’m entertainingmyself. I enjoy myself—dancing together with some-body else.

Q: Has this been a goal in your life, this dancing withsomebody else?

A: I don’t know—that I have to leave to my observers.The wonderful thing is that it crept by itself into

the underground—because of its interesting usefulness.Look for instance how and understanding of systems,like teamwork, is used in corporations, teamwork inbuilding a motor car—having teams who make the wholecar. Twenty people build a car and they cooperate witheach other and they feel very creative and not this passivetrivial, mechanical labor.They can go home at the end ofthe day and say, “We built twenty cars.Wedid it.”

Q: And this is the implicit conversation at work.

A: Absolutely—what they do is converse. Everybodygives the other something—to hold, or to put together.So it is a cooperative dance.

Q: Would that apply to making a movie? Or fighting awar?

A: Of course.

Q: Has your life itself evolved utilizing feedback? Haveyou learned, recursively, from the various conversationsand, even mistakes that you made?

A: [He nods his head vigorously] Without them therewouldn’t be any life at all. The whole thing is basedon interaction. A living organism interacts with theuniverse—with every other thing. They are constantlyrolling along and changing each other. And this is howlife can function, because life is indeed a non-trivial sys-tem, Ja? Any action changes itself and changes all therest.

There are two fundamental positions which one cantake when talking about anything. The one is the posi-tion that I can say, I’m sitting here and looking at theworld as through a peephole at what’s going on in thisuniverse.

The other position is, I’m a part of the world. I am amemberof it, not separated from the world. And what-ever I do I change not only myself, I change the world aswell.

But as far as looking back at my own life, funnilyenough, I’m not reflecting about my life. I’m doing it.

Q: Is self-reflection something you’ve never done?

A: I’m always surprised that I’ve never done that. I don’treflect about my life. I can tell you lots of lovely storiesabout my life, but that is not reflecting about my life.

It’s probably a cultural affair. We in my family, andthe climate in Vienna—it was a story-telling climate.

I just don’t reflect upon myself. I don’t even reflectabout whether I reflect or not. It’s not my habit.

Q: Would you say that to be within the dance is better?

A: I’d say that it’s a good thing. I would never say thatanything’s better. Better for whom? No, I don’t see uni-versal values—I don’t like to play that game. Lots ofpeople like to—I don’t. I avoid universal judgments. I’dlike to undermine them as much as possible, wherever Ihear them. I was always like that. Yes, as a boy. I wasalways the worst student in class. I always understandthat it’s mewho sees something a certain way. And thatit’s me who has a responsibility for saying that. I do notwant to drop it and shift to other people. I want to saymy thing and it is my thing.

But I would not make judgments for others. The pointis—and this is a distinction I love to make—in moralsyou always tell the other how he has to act—“Thoushalt not.” It’s always told by someone who’s outside themoral arena, telling someone else how to behave.

But ethics is when you say, “I shall” or “I shall not,”when you make a decision how you want to be. We al-


ways have the freedom to decide what we want to be-come.

We are all free—we are damned to be free, as Ortega yGasset said. I always thought this existential insight wasgreat. Other people might think it’s horrifying to be free.They would like to be told what to do.

I had several fascinating experiences as a child alongwith my cousin Martin—we were always playing to-gether. We both became very interested in magic. Andwe got a gift package bought in one of those fun storeswith lots of wonderful magic tricks for children. So weopened it and wanted to perform these things, and foundthat they were utterly silly. They had nothing to do withmagic—it was just stupidity. So we thought—let’s dosomereal magic. We were about 13 or 14—we observedthat magic is exactly the same thing—the hearer, in thiscase the audience—interprets or makes the meaning ofwhat is being shown or talked about. So we have tothink about what the others are experiencing when wedo magic.

The question is: How do you tell a story so that ittransforms? First to see an elephant on the stage andthen suddenly it’s gone. Of course it’s not gone—theyjust don’t see it. How do you persuade them that theydon’t see the elephant which is on the stage? That is theproblem for the magician. [He grins.]

What it is of course is pure magic. You can’t explainit—but you do it.

Magic can’t be explained—it can just be done.And much of my thinking comes from this period.

Then later on slipping into the Vienna Circle of philoso-phers, particularly with the work of Ludwig WittgensteinwhoseTractatusI knew by heart.

He would even talk to his family in terms of specificpropositions in this work. But fortunately a nephew ofLudwig Wittgenstein was also enamored of this work andwe would test each other about the propositions. So weknew uncle Ludwig very well.

This influences me very much—magic, Uncle Lud-wig, and of course the idealistic school of philosophy,Schopenhauer, Kant, to some extent Nietzsche. Theapriori , what is that except a trick to avoid responsibility.

He admits that he’s still influenced by Wittgenstein and

the rejection ofa prioriknowledge.You cannot explain anything, you can only invite to

dance. You don’t reflect, you just do it.

Q: Is that why you have never written a book?

A: I don’t have the breath for writing a book—I canwrite short stories, or little articles, this idea or that ideais illuminated by me, but I don’t have the gigantic, tak-ing a big breath and exhaling five hundred pages. I canexhale about 20.

Two difficulties which stop me from writing a book-the one was the first motto which Wittgenstein uses inhisTractatus.Everything which you understand you cansay in three words. And the last words of the Tractatus:“Of which you cannot speak, you must pass over in si-lence.”

Q: What do you think of people who do write books?Who go on and on and on?

A: They have never read Wittgenstein. [He laughs.]They are not ashamed to write a sentence which is fourwords long.

Q: You’ve said act so as to always increase choice.You’ve also said that the purpose of the brain is to com-pute a stable reality.

A: Yes, It is the function of the brain. The brain keepsus from exploding—actually I should have long ago ex-ploded.

Q: How do those two statements work together?

A: The one is choice—the other is about reality. Theydon’t conflict.

I have many choices of things even within just this dis-cussion. And every question you ask me is an invitationto increase my number of choices, because I could tellyou this, or that, etc. etc.

And what you do in your interview, is keeping mealive, to maintain the free choice of many other branchesof the stories I’m going to tell you. While we are sittinghere and I’m telling you this story, this reality is abso-lutely stable because you invited me to give you the storyand here comes the stories. The point is to consider whatkind of a cognitive network there must be in order thatthis stability which we experience is maintained.

That is the interesting question.


Distinguishing the ObserverAn Attempt at Interpreting Maturana

Ernst von Glasersfeld

Humberto Maturana is one of the few authors that nowadays engagethe construction of a wide, complete, esplicatory system, comparableto those of Plato or Leibniz. His “autopoietic” approach includes alsothe origin of the observer, meant as a methodologicalprius who pro-vide itself a view of the world. Here I try to follow the way Maturanasees the birth ofres cogitans(entity which gains awareness of whatit’s doing). I try to demonstrate that the basic activity of distinguishingcan certainly lead to the distinction with which the observer is sepa-rated from anything observed. But I conclude that—at least for thisinterpreter—the origin of active consciousness remains obscure, thatis, what works as the agent of distinguishing.

I am indebted to Heinz von Foerster for useful critical comments

on a draft of this paper.

If there is no other, there will be no I.If there is no I, there will be none to make distinctions.

—Chuang-tsu, 4th Cent., B.C.12

“Languaging”, as Maturana occasionally explains,serves, among other things, toorient. By this he meansdirecting the attention and, consequently, the individ-ual experience of others, which is a way to foster thedevelopment of “consensual domains” which, in turn,are the prerequisite for the development of language.—Although the sentence (you might say, the languaging)with which I have here begun is at best a pale imitationof Maturana’s style, it does perhaps represent one impor-tant aspect of Maturana’s system: The circularity which,in one way or another, crops up again and again.

In my interpretation, it is absolutely indispensablethat one diligently repeats to oneself, every time one no-tices circularity in Maturana’s expositions, that this cir-cularity is not the kind of slip it would be in most tra-ditional systems of our Western philosophy. It is, onthe contrary, a deliberately chosen fundamental condi-tion that arises directly out of the autopoietic model. Ac-cording to Maturana, the cognizing organism isinforma-tionally closed. Given that it can, nevertheless, producedescriptions; i.e., concepts, conceptual structures, the-ories, and eventually a picture of its world, it is clearthat it can do this only by using building blocks which

it has gleaned through some process of abstraction fromthe domain of its own experience. This insight, whichMaturana expresses by saying that all cognitive domainsarise exclusively as the result of operations of distinctionwhich are made by the organism itself, was one of thepoints that attracted me to his work the very first time Icame across it13.

On the basis of considerations, far from those thatinduced Maturana to formulate the biological idea of au-topoiesis, I had come to the same conclusion. My ownpath (some-what abbreviated and idealized) led from theearly doubts of the Pre-Socratics via Montaigne, Berke-ley, Vico, and Kant to pragmatism and eventually to Cec-cato’s “Operational School” and Piaget’s “Genetic Epis-temology”14. This might seem irrelevant here, but sinceMaturana’s expositions hardly ever refer to traditionalphilosophy, it seems appropriate to mention that quite afew of his fundamental assertions can be substantiated bytrains of thought which, from time to time, have croppedup in the conventional history of epistemology. Althoughthese trains of thought have occasionally irritated the of-ficial discipline of philosophy, they never had a lastingeffect and remained marginal curiosities. I would sug-gest, that the reason for this neglect is that throughoutthe occidental history of ideas and right down to our owndays, two requisites have been considered fundamentalin any epistemological venture. The first of these requi-sites demands that whatever we would like to call “trueknowledge” has to be independent of the knowing sub-ject. The second requisite is that knowledge is to be takenseriously only if it claims torepresenta world of “things-in-themselves” in a more or less veridical15 fashion.

Although the sceptics of all ages explained with thehelp of logical arguments that both these requisites areunattainable, they limited themselves to observing thatabsolute knowledge was impossible. Only a few of themwent a step further and tried to liberate the concept of

12Fung Yu-lan,Chuang-tzu: A new selected translation. Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1933. Quoted by Alan Wattsin The WatercourseWay, Pantheon Books, New York, 1975, p. 52.

13One difference is that, for me, with the activity of distinguishing, there arises the activity ofrelating, without which there would be nocon-struction of more complex conceptual structures. That all knowing begins with making distinctions, was said not only by the ancient Chinesephilosopher, but in our days also by George Spencer Brown (cfr, hisLaws of Form, London: Allen & Unwin, 1969).

14Cf. my “Wissen ohne Erkenntnis”, in Gerhard Pasternak (Ed.), Philosophie und Wissenschaften: Das Problem des Apriorismus, Frankfurt/Bern:P. Lang, 1987.

15veridical: coinciding with reality.

Distinguishing the Observer 57 ERNST VON GLASERSFELD

knowledge from the impossible constraints so that itmight be freely applied to what is attainable within theacting subject’s experiential world. Those who took thatstep were branded outsiders and could therefore be dis-regarded by professional philosophers.

A Closed Experiential World

It is not my intention here to examine why the philo-sophical climate has changed in the past twenty or thirtyyears. The fact is that today one can defend positions thattake a relativistic view of knowledge without at once be-ing branded a nihilist or dangerous heretic of some otherkind.

It is fortunate for Maturana, and for us, that he sur-vived the last two decades in spite of his opposition to thereactionary Chilean dictator Pinochet. I say fortunate,because Maturana is undoubtedly one of those thinkerswho, in past centuries, would have been led to the pyrewithout recanting.

In philosophy the authoritarian dominance of the re-alist dogma (be it materialistic or metaphysical) has cer-tainly been shaken by the manifested unreliability of po-litical and social “truths” as well as by the revolution inthe views of physics. But the aversion against models ofcognition that explain knowledge as organism-dependentand even as the product of a closed circuit ofinternalop-erations, has by no means disappeared.

The comprehensive conceptual flow-chart that Matu-rana often shows during his lectures, has on the left (fromthe audience’s point of view) the break-down of explana-tion with objectivity, and on the right side, explanationwithout objectivity. Whether, in one’s own describing,one chooses to be on the left or the right side is, accord-ing to Maturana, a matter of emotion. As far as knowl-edge and language are concerned, the left side must clingto the belief that knowledge can capture objective realityand that language can refer to and signify it. The conceptof objectivity that Maturana has in mind, is dependent onthis belief. Maturana himself, if I have understood himcorrectly, does not share it, and places himself unequiv-ocally on the right side, where objectivity is discarded(“put in parentheses”) and the only realities possible arerealitiesbrought forthby an observer’s operations of dis-tinction16.

It seems to me that the left side of the schema wasadded only to explain the misguided paths of conven-tional philosophy and does not have the same didacticfunctions the right. That it is to be understood in thisway, seems unquestionable to me, because the belief in

the possibility of acquiring knowledge about an objectivereality, a world-in-itself, as Kant would have said, can bedemolished without biology or autopoiesis by the argu-ments formulated by the sceptics. What then remains,from my point of view, is the necessity to substitute anew explanation for the relation between our knowledge(i.e. every conceptual structure we use successfully) andthe “medium” in which we find ourselves living. Thisnew explanation must be one that does not rely on theassumption of an isomorphy that can never be demon-strated.

In this context it is crucial to remember that Matu-rana set out to describe and explain all the phenomenathat are called “cognitive”from a biological foundation.Insofar as his project is successful, he can afford to dis-regard the traditional theory of knowledge and to referto it only for the purpose of emphasizing the differenceof his way of thinking. By departing from the history ofphilosophy without entering into it, however, he runs therisk of being misunderstood by all those whose notion ofcognition is still tied to the conventional idea of knowl-edge. Maturana therefore often finds himself having toface misconceptions of the same kind as Piaget had toface, who also reiterated that, in his theory, cognition isnot a means to acquire knowledge of an objective real-ity but serves the active organism in its adaptation to itsexperiential world.

What Murana calls “operational effectiveness” cor-responds, in my constructivist perspective, to “viability”and coincides in the history of philosophy with the slo-gan launched by the Pragmatists at the turn of the cen-tury: “True is what works”. Maturana’s “operational ef-fectiveness”, however, is more successful in its applica-tion than the Pragmatists “functioning”. All operationsand their effectiveness, according to Maturana’s defini-tion, lie and must lie within a domain of description thatis determined by the distinctions the particular observerhas made. The generalized “functioning” of the Pragma-tists, in contrast, fostered the temptation to look for anaccess to an “objective” world, on the basis that certainways of acting “function”, while others do not. Matu-rana’s model thwarts any such temptation in the bud, be-cause it makes clear that “effectiveness” is a judgementmade within a domain of experience which itself wasbrought forthby an observer’s activity of distinguishing.

That experiential worlds and their domains can bebrought forth only by an acting observer is, I believe,the one insight Hans Vaihinger lacked when he wrote hisbrilliant Die Philosophie des Als Ob(The Philosophy ofAs If)—and because of this lack he was unable to close

16Objectivity, in Maturana’s texts, does not indicate the opposite of the “subjectivity” of a single individual, but is used in the sense of clas-sical philosophy, namely to signify the intention or requirement to represent the worldas it is “in itself” , without any additions, subtractions, ordistortions caused by the experiencer.


his system without shifting the theory of evolution intoan ontic17 reality18.

The Birth of the Observer

For me, one of the most difficult points in Maturana’sconceptual edifice was his oft repeated assertion that theobserver, too, could be derived, without further assump-tions, from his formulation of the basic biological con-ditions governing the interactions and the linguistic ac-tivity of autopoietic organisms. It took me more than adecade to construct for myself an interpretation of thisderivation. If I present it here, I do so with the emphaticwarning that it is, indeed, a personal interpretation thatmakes no claim whatever to authenticity.

According to Maturana, all linguistic activity or “lan-guaging” takes place “in the praxis of living: we hu-man beings find ourselves as living systems immersedin it”. Languaging, for Maturana, does not mean con-veying news or any kind of “information”, but refers to asocial activity that arises from a coordination of actionsthat have been tuned by mutual adaptation. Without suchcoordination of acting there would be no possibility ofdescribingand, consequently, no way for the distinctionsmade by an actor to become conscious. To become awareof distinctions, is called observing. To observe oneselfas the maker of distinctions, therefore, is no more and noless than to become conscious of oneself. Maturana hasrecently described this very clearly:

. . . if we accept that what we distinguish depends onwhat we do, as modern physics does, we operate underthe implicit assumption that, as observers, we are endowedwith rationality, and that this need not or cannot be ex-plained. Yet, if we reflect upon our experience as ob-servers, we discover that our experience is that we findourselves observing, talking, or acting, and that any ex-planation or description of what we do is secondary to ourexperience of finding ourselves in the doing of what wedo19.

The salient point in this closed circle is the basic con-dition that Maturana repeats so frequently, namely thatwhat is observed are not things, properties, or relations ofa world that exists “as such”, but rather the results of dis-tinctions made by the observer himself or herself. Con-sequently, these results have no existence whatever with-

out someone’s activity of distinguishing. Just as Vico,the first constructivist thinker, said, the cognitive subjectcan know onlyfacts, andfactsare items the subject itselfhas made (Latin: facere). The observer, thus, arises fromhis or her own ways and means of describing, which isto say, by distinguishing him- or her-self20.

Here, then, Ido see a connection to Descartes, but itis not the connection to Cartesian dualism that was men-tioned by Volker Riegas in his “Conversation with Mat-urana”. Descartes, set out to defeat scepticism by usingdoubt as the tool to separate all that was dubious fromthe certain truths he hoped would be left. He found atthe end of his endeavor that there was only one thing hecould be certain of, namely that it was he himself whowas engaged in the reflective activity of doubting. Sincehis investigation had been motivated by the hope that, inspite of the sceptics’ arguments, a way could be found toreach an ontic reality, he now formulated the certainty ofhis own doubting as an ontological principle:cogito ergosum.

For Maturana this formulation is not acceptable, pre-cisely because the“sum” asserts existence in the onto-logical sense. Had Descartes seen—as Maturana explic-itly does—that the doubting he was so certain of, restednecessarily on distinctions which he himself was makingin hisownexperimental world, and not in any ontic real-ity, then he might have said: “by distinguishing, I createmyself as observer.”—If I have understood Maturana, hecould easily accept this new formulation of the Cartesianprinciple.

From my perspective, Maturana supplies, as it were,the ladder which a consciousness must ascend in orderto become observer. About the origin of that conscious-ness he says nothing. That I, as a living organism, “findmyself immersed in language”, means to me that I havethe capability tofind myself, and this capability, whichinvolves a kind ofreflection, belongs to what I call con-sciousness.

Representation and Memory

In “The bringing forth of pathology”, an article Maturanarecently wrote together with Carmen Luz Mendez andFernando Coddou, there is a section about language and

17ontic: of or relating to entities and the facts about them; relating to real as opposed to phenomenal existence.18Hans Vaihinger,Die Philosophie des Als Ob.Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 2nd edition, 1913. In the “Preliminary Remarks” to the introduction

to his brilliant work, Vaihinger reproaches Pragmatism because, as he says, it sinks to “Utilitarianism of the worst kind” (p. XI), when it callstrue“whatever helps us to put up with life”. Some 300 pages later,however he writes: “. . . today’s set of categories is merely the product of naturalselection and adaption”. He is referring to “categories” inKant’s sense. With this statement he clearly places Darwin’s theory of evolution into anontological reality and turns the “categories”, i.e., the key elements in our conceptualisation of the experiential world, into “utilitaristic” tools ofsurvival.

19Cf. Humberto Maturana. “Ontology of observing: The biological foundations of self-consciousness and the physical domain of existence”.Texts in Cybernetic Theory, American Society for Cybernetics, 1988; p. 36.

20Cf. Humberto Maturana, “Reality: The search for objectivity or the quest for a compelling argument”.The Irish Journal of Psychology, 1988,9 (1), p. 26.


the various forms of conversation. Two of these formsare described in some detail:

The first we shall call conversations of characterisationif they entail expectations that have not been agreed uponabout the characteristics of the participants. The secondwe shall call conversations of unjustified accusations andrecriminations if they entail complaints about unfulfilledexpectations about the behaviors of the participants thatwere not previously agreed upon21. (p. l55)

Given that Maturana, at various places in his writ-ings, makes it very clear that he considers unacceptablethe concept that is usually linked with the word “repre-sentation”, it may surprise one at first that, in the passagequoted here, he bases a discrimination of conversationson “expectations”. In my analysis, to have an expectationis to use one’s imagination in order mentally to composesomething out of distinctions made earlier in the flow ofexperience, but not available in the actual, present per-ceptual field. To imagine such compositions, however,requires the ability torepresentto oneself at least parts ofpast experiences. The apparent contradiction disappears,however, if one considers that the English word “repre-sentation” is used to designate several different concepts,two among which are designated in German by the twowordsDarstellungandVorstellung22. The first comes tothe mind of English-speakers whenever there is no ex-plicit indication that another is intended. This conceptis close to the notion of “picture” and as such involvesthe replication, in a physical or formal way, of some-thing else that is categorized as “original”. The secondconcept is close to the notion of “conceptual construct”,and the German word for it,Vorstellung, is central in thephilosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer.

Maturana’s avversion against the word “representa-tion” springs from the fact that, like Kant and Schopen-hauer, he excludes conceptual pictures or replicationsof an objective, ontic reality in the cognitive domainof organisms. In contrast,re-presentationsin Piaget’ssense are repetitions or reconstructions of items that weredistinguished in previous experience. As Maturana ex-plained in the course of the discussions at the ASC Con-ference in October 1988, such representations are possi-ble also in the autopoietic model. Maturana spoke thereof re-living an experience, and from my perspective thiscoincides with the concept of representation asVorstel-lung, without which there could be no reflection. Fromthat angle, then, it becomes clear that, in the autopoi-etic organism also, “expectations” are nothing but re-

presentations of experiences that are now projected intothe direction of the not-yet-experienced.

This consideration leads to another question that of-ten remains unanswered in the context of Maturana’s the-ory: the question of memory and the mechanism thatmakes it possible to remember. As Maturana reiterates,also in this context everything one can say lies on thelevel of descriptions, a level that is determined by thefact that one makes certain distinctions and not others.Maturana discards—as does Heinz von Foerster—the no-tion of a “storage” in which impressions, experiences,actions, relations, etc., could be deposited and preserved.I fully agree with this. From my point of view, however,it is nevertheless clear that the observer who describessomething as re-living, must have some indication thatthe experience referred to is one that has been lived atleast once before; and this realization of the repetition re-quires a mechanism that plays the role of what one calls“to remember” in ordinary English.

In an autopoietic organism, every perturbation, ev-ery experience, every internal event changes the struc-ture of the network that constitutes the organism. Thesechanges, of course, are not all of the same kind. Somecould be the forming of new connections and thus ofnew pathways in the network; others could be what onemight call “lubricating” or facilitating an already exist-ing path. The observer, who speaks of re-living, must beable to distinguish a path that is being generated for thefirst time, from one that uses connections made at someprior occasion. This would seem necessary, regardlessof whether the description concerns the operations of an-other organism or the observer him- or her-self. But therepetition of an experience can be ascertained only if theobserver is able, at least temporarily, to step out of thestream of experience, in order to distinguish the use ofan already trodden path from the opening of a new one.In my terminology that means the observer must be ca-pable of reflection.

Maturana makes it clear that in his model all act-ing and behavior of an organism is fully determined bythe organism’s structure and organisation; hence it re-quires no reflection. On the level of descriptions, how-ever, where what can be described is brought forth bynothing but the observer’s operations of distinction, onecannot, as far as I can see, manage without reflection. Tomy knowledge, Maturana says nothing about this point.I assume, however, that the observer generates his or her

21Carmen Luz Mendez, Fernando Coddou & Humberto Maturana. “The beginning forth of pathology”,The Irish Journal of Psychology, 1988,9 (1), 144–172.

22Further discussion of the conceptual muddle arising from the word “representation” will be found in my “Preliminaries to any theory orrepresentation”, in C. Janvier (ed.),Problems of representation in the teaching and learning of mathematics.Hillsdale, New Jersey: Earlbaum,1987—Here I would merely mention that it would be quite wrongto conclude from this example that German is a richer or more precise language.Coincidences of different concepts can be found in the otherdirection as well. (e.g., the two English words “to isolate”and “to insulate” areinvariably translated with one and the same German word, in spite of the fact that there is a clearly specifiable conceptual difference).


own ability to reflect simply by distinguishing him- orher-self as the acting, observing, and eventually reflect-ing subject in the particular domain of experience.

The Excluded Reality

The question concerning the origin of the observer inMaturana’s theory is answered for me by continuallykeeping in mind that not only the entire experientialworld must be considered the product of distinctions onemakes oneself, but also that the flow of experience isbrought about by one’s own distinguishing oneself as theobserver. This, of course, is not a metaphysical answerthat purports to explain the genesis of an entity which“exists” as ontic subject capable of “knowing” an on-tic world. Maturana does science and is careful to do itin a scientificmanner. This entails that he refrains fromsmuggling metaphysical assumptions into his model, as-sumptions that cannot be justified because they are log-ically unjustifiable. He has expressed this in variousways:

. . . an observer has no operational basis to make anystatement or claim about objects, entities or relations as ifthey existed independently of what he or she does23.

And in the interview with Riegas he says: “nothingcan be said about a transcendental reality” (p. 53).

This position is by no means new. One cand findit in Vico, Kant, Schopenhauer, and recently in RichardRorty. New, however, is the biological interpretation ofthe experiential world, which lays out the circumstancesunder which an observer can be brought forth. If onetakes this interpretation as working hypothesis, it hasfar-reaching consequences for our conceptual relation tothe experiential world. Like all scientific models, Mat-urana’s “explains” thehow of the phenomenon it dealswith—the genesis of the observer—not thewhy. Thisis par for the scientific course. Physics for example ex-plains how it comes about that heavy objects “fall”, bymeans of the concept of gravity; that heavenly bodiesexert a gravitational pull, can perhaps be reduced to thecurvature of space; butwhyspace should be curved in anontic world is a question to which the physicist neitherhas nor needs an explanatory answer—he may merelyobserve that the assumption of curved space makes pos-sible some useful calculations and predictions. Thosephysicists who have become aware of the epistemolog-ical foundations of their science, have said this quite

clearly, because, like Maturana, they have realized thatit is their own concepts, their own operations of distinc-tion that bring forth the experiential world which theydescribe in their science.

Coherence instead of Foundation

At the beginning I spoke of the circularity in Maturana’stheory, and then I tried to explicate, from my perspective,some sectors of the conceptual circle. If I have been at allsuccessful, it should now be easy to dismantle one of themajor objections that are made from more than one sideagainst Maturana. Gerhard Roth’s precise formulationmay serve as an example.

The conception of such a cyclical theory raises the prob-lem of the foundation and of the beginning. Either one be-gins with the epistemological explication concerning theobserver, the conditions and the objects of his observations(distinction of objects, system-parts, etc.) in order, then, toreach a constructivist theory of living systems; or one be-gins with an objectivist explanation of the organisation ofliving systems which then leads to a theory of the brain,of cognition, and eventually to a theory of the observer.Maturana attempts both simultaneously. . .

This conception must fail, because it gets entangled inthe contradiction between the constructivist and the objec-tivist approach24 (p. 88).

The problem of foundation and the problem of be-ginning, as becomes clear already from this introduc-tory passage of his critique, are in Roth’s view closelyinterwoven with one another. This may be adequate inthe treatment of traditional theories of knowledge, but inthe critique of an epistemology that explicitly excludesknowledge of an objective world-in-itself, such interlink-ing seems to me inadmissible.

This lack of ontological foundation is a criticism thathas been voiced by quite a few readers of Maturana. In-terestingly, it is identical to the main criticism made bythe anonymous reviewer of Vico’sDe antiquissima Italo-rum sapientiain the Giornale de’ letterati in 171125.Vico, the review said, had produced an excellent expo-sition of his philosophy but had not furnished a proof ofits truth. For a constructivist who has deliberately dis-carded the notion that knowledge shouldcorrespondtoan independent ontological“reality” , the request of sucha proof is an absurdity because he could not supply itwithout contradicting the central thesis of his philoso-phy, namely that knowledge cannot andneed notreflectan ontological world but must be judged by its function

23Humberto Maturana, ”Reality: The search for objectivity orthe quest for a compelling argument”.The Irish Journal of Psychology, 1988, 9(1), p. 30.

24Gerhard Roth, “Wissenschaftlicher Rationalismus und holistische Weltdeutung”. In Gerhard Pasternak (Ed.),Rationalitaet und Wissenschaft,(Vol. 6), Bremen: Zentrum Philosophische Grundlagen der Wissenschaften, 1988.

25Vico’s De antiquissimawas published with an excellent Italian translation by Francesco Saverio Pomodoro and the discussion in theVenetianjournal byStamperia de’ Classici Latini,Naples, 1858.


in the experiential world and by its coherence.Maturana, even more explicitly than Vico, says that

knowledge manifests itself in “effective action”. He alsomakes it clear that his theory is deliberately circular.Thus it inappropriate to demand a beginning. A circle ischaracterized by, among other things, the fact that it hasno beginning. In Maturana’s edifice every point arisesout of the preceding one—much as when, in thick fogon an Alpine glacier, one places one foot in front of theother without ever seeing what lies further ahead or fur-ther behind one; and as sometimes happens in such a fog,after hours of walking, one realizes that one is walkingin one’s own footsteps. The fact that one has begun thecircle at a specific place could be perceived only from ahigher vantage point, if the fog had lifted and made possi-ble a comprehensive view. But the fog that obstructs ourview of ontic reality cannot lift, because, as Kant alreadysaw, it is inextricably built into our ways and means ofexperiencing. For that reason, a meticulous investiga-tion such as Maturana’s, can only show that, regardlessof where we step into the circle, we can neither cometo an end of the path, nor, if we retraced our steps, to abeginning. At best we could perhaps recall the point wedistinguished as a presupposition at the beginning of oursearch.

If everything said is said by an observer on the ba-sis of his or her operations of distinction, this must beconsidered valid not only for particular domains of theexperiential world but for everything we do, think, ortalk about. In Maturana’s view of the world, one canrequest neither external ontological foundations nor an“absolute” beginning. Both demands are not only mean-ingless but also superfluous. “Foundation” in the onto-logical sense presupposes that one considers access toan observer-independent world possible. Maturana de-

nies that possibility, and it is therefore quite consistentthat he does not specify an obligatory external starting-point, for this would be equivalent to an “unconditionalmetaphysical principle” which would have to be consid-ered valid without experiential justification. On whichthe theoretical edifice could be erected by pure logic. Thecritics’ misunderstanding may have originated from thefact that Maturana, like the rest of us, is obliged to use alanguage in his expositions that has been shaped and pol-ished by more than two thousand years of realism—naiveor metaphysical—a language that forces him to use theword “to be” which, in all its grammatical forms, impliesthe assumption of an ontic reality. An attentive reader ofMaturana, however, can hardly help noticing that almosteverything he says, is intended to “orient” us away fromthat inevitable implication.

Insofar as my interpretation of Maturana’s autopoi-etic theory is a viable one, I cannot discover any incon-sistencies in it that would destroy its coherence.

From my point of view, however, coherence is a nec-essary but not a sufficient criterion for the evaluationof an all-comprehensive philosophical system. Leibniz’monadology, for example, left nothing to be desired withregard to coherence; nevertheless it did not succed as anapplicable view of the world. In the final analysis, thevalue of Maturana’s work will depend on whether thesuccess, which its applications in the praxis of our expe-rience are having at present, will turn out to be a lastingone. And finally—what to me seems “emotionally” moreimportant—we shall have to see whether the beginningsof an ethic he has recently brought forth will help to ful-fill the hope that a consensual domain can be created onour endangered planet, a domain established around theconsensus on collaboration that might make possible thesurvival of a human culture.


Communication: Rhythm and StructureWilliam S. Condon

Human history demonstrates the fundamental role ofreason in human existence and identity. The universe isordered and the human mind can perceive and know as-pects of that order. Nature’s structure and power becomeavailable for human purposes. That we can know, use,and communicate to each other about the universe im-plies a fundamental participation in the order pervadingthat universe. Observations from the sound-film micro-analysis of human communicational behavior, which willbe the central topic of this chapter, may provide insightinto some aspects of that participation.

Humans evolved in a universe which has optical andacoustic properties. In this process eyes and ears devel-oped. Eyes and ears are one form of Nature’s expressionof her optical and acoustic structure. Ears and hearingwould probably not exist in a universe lacking acousticproperties. The ears and the acoustic properties of natureare distinguishable but not separate aspects of a unitarysystem within which “hearing” activity occurs. Theremust always be continuous and stable natural structuresconstituting and supporting human behavior. Intensivesound-film micro-analysis of human speaking and listen-ing behavior has revealed a linkage or participation of theorganization of human behavior with the structure of na-ture. While speech is emitted by another human beingand, at the present time, can be built into machines, thepoint of actual contact is through sound waves imping-ing on the listener’s ear. This linkage involves forms ofrhythmic synchronization. The present chapter will seekto explore this with observation from the microanalysisof speaking and listening behavior. The following para-graph briefly summarizes the material to be presented inthis chapter1.

A speaker’s body is observed to move in organiza-tions of change which are precisely synchronized withthe articulatory structure of his own speech across mul-tiple levels. This is a unified, rhythmic, and hierarchicorganization of great precision which has been calledself-synchrony. Further, and surprisingly, the body ofa listener moves in organizations of change which areprecisely synchronized with the articulatory structure ofa speaker’s speech, and often with inanimate sounds aswell. This has been called interactional synchrony or en-trainment. It appears to be a universal characteristic of

normal listener behavior and has been observed in manydifferent cultures. It is also a basic characteristic of in-fant behavior and has been observed as early as twentyminutes after birth. The same organizational processeswhich mediate self-synchrony may mediate interactionalsynchrony. The organization of movement of the lis-tener’s body thus is in precise rhythmic synchrony withthe rhythmic pattern of the speech of the person he is lis-tening to. This occurs very rapidly, i.e., within the firstframe following sound onset, which is 42 milliseconds(msec). Similar synchronization with sound has been ob-served in Rhesus monkeys and may exist in most hearingcreatures. The hearing creature reflects the structure ofthe acoustic universe in which it exists. Human behav-ior and communication are also rhythmically organizedand this will be discussed. The parallelism between theacoustic order of nature and that same order revealed re-ceptively in human behavior implies a linkage with na-ture which may be basic to perception and the acqui-sition of knowledge. This would also be fundamentalfor human communication. Sound-film microanalysis ofvarious disorders such as autism, dyslexia, hyperactivity,Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophre-nia, and stuttering has revealed “jumps” and “jerks” inthe body following sounds. This lead to the hypothe-sis of an abnormal multiple entrainment to sound. Thenormal entrainment appears to be out-of-phase in thesedisorders, resulting in one side of the body entrainingin a delayed fashion relative to the other. There are usu-ally four such abnormal entrainments within the first sec-ond following sound onsets, hence the term “multiple en-trainment.” The. existence of abnormal entrainment in-directly supports the general hypothesis of entrainment.

Communication

There is a translation of the order of the universe aroundus into forms of mental order. This seems to be achievedby the passage of forms of order through different kindsof media yet preserving the form of the order. Througha complex and little understood process the order consti-tuting the speaker’s thoughts (which may be microneu-roelectric patterns) is transformed into ordered muscular

1Note: This research was partially supported by BRSG Grant No. RR 05487.

WILLIAM S. CONDON 63 Communication: Rhythm and Structure

operations of breath, vocal cords, tongue, and mouth, re-sulting in ordered vibrations in the air. The vibrationsmay also come from a loud speaker or a recording. In1930 investigators listened in a distant telephone receiverto the output from a cat’s auditory nerve in response towords spoken to the cat’s. ear and could clearly under-stand the speech. The airwaves, in turn, transport thatorder to a listener where forms of re-transformation oc-cur. The listener’s eardrum vibrates in synchrony withthe ordered pattern conducted through the air. This or-der is then mechanically conducted through the ossiclesto the oval window and then into the fluid in the cochleawhich moves the hair cells. The hair cells transform theorder into electrical impulses which are transmitted to thebrain to become thoughts of the listener. This all occursvery rapidly. There is no vacuum between the speakerand the listener or between man and his universe. Thereis a translation of order from one form into another.

Method

The investigator’s method often contains implicit per-spectives which may blind him to many forms of or-der. This interferes with the observation of new forms.He tends to perceive what his own perspectives constrainhim to perceive, obscuring forms which his method doesnot provide for. The viewpoint shapes the categories bywhich the material is analyzed. Many investigators se-lect their units prior to analysis and look for connectionsbetween these a priori units. The experimental paradigmis of this type. The variables are selected in advance andcontrolled so that inferences about the relationships canbe made.

An “intensive analysis” approach, where the data arestudied over and over in the search for natural order andunits (as in the writer’s laboratory), can lead to the obser-vation of new patterns. It cannot replace the experimentalparadigm, but it can be very valuable. The universe is justas ordered outside the laboratory as it is in the laboratory.For example, a few years ago little was known about themicro-organization of natural, everyday human speakerand listener behavior. The first task was to determinethe units and levels of units in that process. The methodused was that of viewing sound films of human interac-tion over and over, often at the frame-by-frame level, forliterally thousands of hours until the nature of the unitsof behavior was discovered. In time it became clear thatit was not the individual body parts per se which con-stituted the units of behavior but characteristic forms oforganization which the body parts seemed constrainedto follow when they moved. These forms of organiza-tion were the only systematic and continuously presentfeatures of behavior at the micro-level which seemed to

constitute units. In time this led to the development ofan organizational view of the structure of human com-munication where forms of organization as organizationwere studied rather than discrete, atomistic items. Thebehavior had to be studied intensively over and over forthe forms of organization which it exhibited. The inves-tigator could not know in advance what they might be orhow they would be manifested.

Speaker and listener behaviors need to be preservedor stored so that these complex and rapid communi-cational events can be studied intensively. The basicmethod used in micro-behavioral analysis is the soundmotion picture film with special analyzing equipment.The films are frame-numbered, thus providing a uniquenumber for each frame. Since there are a given num-ber of frames per second, usually 24, the film also servesas a clock to time the behavior stored on it. The unitsof speech are segmented in relation to frame numbersat the one frame level using an Audio-Visual Analyzer(AVA). This requires linguistic training. The body mo-tion of the interactants can also be analyzed at the sameone frame level with a Time-Motion Analyzer (TMA).This is a 16rnm movie projector which can be operatedmanually to study body motion frame-by-frame. Howthe body parts change in relation to each other and tospeech can be evaluated in relation to the frame numbers(Condon, 1970).

The Micro-Units of Human Behavior

Human speech and body motion are rapid, complicated,and essentially continuous processes. Sound-film micro-analysis, which covers an approximate range from 1/96thof a second up to two-or three-seconds, provides a “mi-croscope” to study the complicated organization of bothnormal and pathological behavior. When a normal per-son speaks there are often many parts of the body mov-ing at the same time. The arms, hands, fingers, head,etc., may be moving together almost constantly in com-plex,’changing patterns. While this is occurring, speechis emerging simultaneously. This ongoing complexity,where several body parts are moving together simultane-ously while speech also is occurring, must be faced byany investigator seeking the micro-units of behavior. Aunit of behavior has to be something in the relationshipsthese changing aspects of behavior have with each othersince they are occurring at the same time. The units ofbehavior are not an arm unit, which is added to a headunit, which is added to a leg unit, etc. The body parts arenot the units of behavior. The organization of the rela-tionships of change of the movements of the body parts(and speech) constitute the units of behavior. A unit ofbehavior is a form of organization, and has been called


a “process unit” to emphasize this (Condon, 1963). Thisis a new hypothesis concerning the nature of units of hu-man body motion at the micro-level. It may also apply tomost animal behavior. In summary, behavior is alreadyorganized at the minimal level and is not composed, ofpieces which are put together to form organized behav-ior.

Figure 1 illustrates units of behavior as forms of or-ganization. It shows the sound-film microanalysis of asegment of a speaker’s speech and body motion from afilm taken at approximately 96 f.p.s. (high speed). It in-dicates the surprising amount of behavioral change thatcan occur within one second. Process units (which seemlike pulses) are characterized by a “sustaining of a rela-tionship together” for a brief period of time by whateverbody parts happen to be moving at that moment. Behav-ior is a serial flow of such pulse-like forms. Body mo-

tion is continuous yet there are “discrete-like” unit forms(process units) within the on-going process.

In Figure 1 a young woman, approximately 25-years-old, is seated talking to a young man of the same age. Aspart of her conversation she rapidly says, “an so I’d getput back in that way.” The process unit at the micro-levelhas the following characteristics, using the movementsco-occurring with the /s/ of “so” to illustrate: there isa synchronous change of the body parts together, i.e.,where they change direction and/or velocity. Not allbody parts need change, some may sustain a given direc-tion for a longer interval, which is part of a longer form(a higher order process unit in a hierarchy of units). Thechanges which initiate the beginning of a process unit al-ways differ from the changes which indicate the endingof that process unit, which is also the beginning point ofa new process unit.

Figure 1: Sound-film microanalysis of the hierarchically synchronized speech and body motion of a woman saying,“an’ so I’d get put back in that way.” Film was taken at approximately 96 f.p.s. The notation is fairly simple. Forexample, E = extend, F = flex, U = up, D = down, AD adduct, AB = abduct, S = Supinate, P = pronate, RO rotate out,Q = incline of the head, etc. The lower case letters refer to speed: f = fast and s = slow.

The sustaining of the same movement by each of thebody parts moving during that brief interval (which isalso the sustaining of a relationship between them) formsthe “content” of the process unit. This “quantum pulse”or “bundle” nature of organization always seem to bethere no matter what body parts happen to be moving sothat forms of organization are the most pervasive struc-tural features of behavior. It seems obligatory that bodymotions follow these organizational forms. At the on-

set of the process unit co-occurring with /s/, for example,there is a change of direction in the head, eyes, fingers1 and 2 of the right hand, and the right shoulder. Thereis a change in velocity of the right wrist and the right el-bow. No change was detected in the extension of the rightthumb which continued to extend. Again, that whichforms the content of the process unit is the sustainingof the same relationship between the moving body parts.That. these quanta or pulses of body motion also co-


occur isomorphically with the units of speech providesadditional support for their existence. Across the emis-sion of /s/ the head sustains a left and up slight move-ment, while the eyes move left, down, and the lids closebeginning a slight blink, while the right thumb continuesto extend, while fingers 1 and 2 of the right hand hold,while there is acceleration in the left wrist and elbow,while the right shoulder rotates out and adducts. One cansweep manually back and forth across these five frameswith the analyzing projector and there is a smooth pulseor flow of motion where all the body parts are sustainingtheir relationship of movement together. No interstitialchanges can be detected in any of the movements.

This “sustaining together” also illustrates another ba-sic principle of the organization of normal behavior, i.e.,interaction across multiple levels. The phones are emer-gently accompanied by a form of body motion (or pro-cess unit), the words are accompanied by other forms ofbody motion, and the phrases and sentences are accom-panied by still other forms of body motion. It is thissustaining together of the units of speech/body motionacross varying temporal durations which character-’ izesthe hierarchic organization of speaker behavior. For ex-ample, fingers 1 and 2 of the right hand ceased moving atthe end of the /n/ of “an,” held their lack of movement ex-actly across the emission of the total word “so” and thenbegan to flex at the beginning of “I’d.” A model wherediscrete lower parts or pieces are put together to formlarger parts which are in turn put together to form stilllarger parts is inadequate to deal with such organization.The process unit sustaining across /s/ differs from thatsustaining across /o/. The /o/ process unit was not addedto the /s/ process unit to create a larger /so/ body mo-tion sustaining unit. There is no way the /o/ unit addedto the /s/ unit could go back in time to create the holdof fingers 1 and 2 which sustained precisely across theentire word “so.” This principle also applies to the largerforms of body motion which accompany speech acrosswider forms such as phrases. We seem to be dealing witha form of hierarchic organization where multiple levelsare emerging together simultaneously. Behavioral orga-nization is not “composed of” or “more than” these mov-ing body parts and speech synchronized together, it is inall of them at all levels simultaneously. The investigatorbegins with organized behavior, the living, talking peo-ple in the film, and discovers their behavior to consist ofmany forms of organization integrated together. All nor-mal behavior studied thus far is similar in organizationalprinciple to that presented in Figure 1.

The precision with which the speaker’s body accom-panies his/her speech in a hierarchically organized fash-ion also can be seen in Figure 1. Most of the phone typeshave co-occurring process units. A speaker’s speech at

the minimal level appears to be formed of an on-goingflow of unified speech and body motion process units.Both seem to be the product of a more basic neurologi-cal organization. The body motion process unit or pulseaccompanying the /n/ of “an” has a sustained organiza-tional integrity which is isomorphic with the articulationof /n/. This is different from a similarly sustained bodymotion organization accompanying /s/ and this, in turn,is different from that accompanying /of, etc. The wordsalso usually have different body motion forms accompa-nying them. Across “an” the head goes left, right finger1 extends and the thumb extends. Across “so” fingers1 and 2 hold, i.e., do not move. Across “I’d” the rightelbow extends and fingers 2, 3, and 4 flex slightly, etc.There are three phrases that have co-occurring but differ-ent body motion forms. Her right arm which is restingin her lap sweeps up and right to shoulder height acrossthe phrase, “an so I’d get.” It sweeps left in front of herbody during “put back” and then directly down to herlap across, “in that way,” reaching her lap just as the ut-terance ends. The utterance, as a totality which lasts ap-proximately one second, is accompanied by the right armleaving and returning to the lap. As will be seen later,such one second movement forms also are characteris-tic of speaker behavior. Thus, normal behavior followsforms of structural organization. The study of pathologi-cal behavior also reveals forms of organization, but formswhich differ from normal structural organization.

There is high reliability between independent judgesin segmenting inanimate sound, speech, and body mo-tion process units at the one frame level (Condon, 1981).For example, Plooij (in press) in speaking about self-synchrony says,

“at certain moments (frames) in time several body seg-ments such as the head, a hand, a finger or a foot changedirection of movement. Condon calls these momentsprocess-unit-boundaries. Personally I verified Condon’sfinding in newborn babies, although my study was not setup with this purpose in mind. Instead, I studied the devel-opment of preverbal communication in the human mother-infant interaction in a face-to-face situation. The mainpart of this study consisted of frame-by-frame analysis offilmed sessions. In doing so, one could not help noticingthe self-synchrony. For instance, the eyes would blink anda foot would bend at the same time.”

While more work needs to be done to demonstratethe ability of independent judges to reliably segment be-havior at the micro-level, the work that has been donesupports the ability to do so.

Behavior as Wave Phenomena

The hypothesis was presented that the normal speaker’sspeech and body motion are forms of organization which


are precisely synchronized across multiple levels simul-taneously. As a person talks he uses small sounds (thephone types) which are integrated together into words,the words into phrases, and phrases into sentences. Thehead, arms, fingers, legs, etc. move in complex patternsof sustaining and changing together which accompanythese units of speech across multiple levels simultane-ously. Speech and body motion also exhibit character-istic periodicities and can be interpreted as wave-like.Thus, the movements, gestures, and speech that one seesand hears when a person speaks can be interpreted aswave forms which are hierarchically organized. This alsosuggests that they may be produced by similarly synchro-nized brain processes.

In one analysis of phone types the mean lengthof 1055 consecutively analyzed phones was 1.61 filmframes (or 15 per second using 24 f.p.s. film). Short,rapidly spoken words would also fit this periodicity attimes, depending upon speed of articulation. In the wordlength analysis the polysyllabic words were divided intotheir component syllables. The mean length of 365 con-secutive words (pauses omitted) from the same film was4.5 frames (5.3 per second). Utterances are seen veryclearly in body motion with a marked one second pe-riodicity observed in one study. In that study 96 con-secutive speech sequences from both speakers in an in-teraction were analyzed. The one second rhythm formwas usually manifested by a head, or arm, or other bodypart sustaining a given direction across an utterance, orsome aspect of the body moving from a given positionthen back to that position. Twelve of the 96 utteranceswere approximately 1/2 second in length and the othersaver-aged 23.9 frames (24 frames equal one second). Therange was from 1929 frames (Condon & Ogston, 1967).

Another study was conducted to further explore theone second rhythm. One-hundred and eighty-eight (188)consecutive natural speech sequences from both speak-ers in another 24 f.p.s. filmed dyadic interaction wereanalyzed. Thirty of the 188 sequences consisted of oneor two word replies to questions with “yes” or “no” or“um hum.” These were excluded so that 158 sequenceswere examined. The major criteria for segmentation atthis level were the sustained body motion forms, as de-scribed above, occurring during a spoken sequence. Themean frame duration of the 158 sequences was 24 with arange from 1930 frames. Among the 158 sequences were48 which occurred in relative isolation, i.e., the speechsequence was preceded and followed by silence. All ofthese fell within the 19-30 frame range, so that study-ing speech length alone (without the accompanying bodymotion forms) also showed a marked one second period-icity. The number of frames per word in the sequencesexamined ranged from 1-8 with a mean of 4.56 frames.

As noted earlier, it is as if there is an on-going, multi-level organizational rhythm hierarchy in terms of whichbehavior behaves. Both speech and body motion obeythis hierarchic rhythm structure and are simultaneouslysynchronized across these multiple levels in their co-occurring. The on-going flowing and changing togetherof the body parts seems to reflect an underlying orga-nizational structure. The characteristic form of order ofthe organizational flow of speaker behavior is thus quiteclearly revealed to be that of an on-going process whichis formed of several levels of waves emerging simulta-neously. The behavior forming the longer wave begins atthe same moment that the smaller wave forms begin. Thesmaller waves are integrated with the longer wave but arenot added together to form it. Metaphorically, it is as ifthe organism were constantly generating an integrated,multi-Ievel wave hierarchy which behavior necessarilyfollowed. All behavior appears to be integrated togetheras a function of a basic, organized rhythm hierarchy, e.g.,the speaker’s eye blinks, which might seem to occur ran-domly, actually occur synchronously with the rest of thebehavior and tend to occur at articulatory change points,primarily at phone boundaries. (This was seen in relationto the word “so” in Figure 1.)

Behavior appears phenomenologically to be bothdiscrete-like and continuous simultaneously, withoutcontradiction, providing all organizational form wherethe discrete-like is fused into the continuous. The smallerwave forms get integrated into the larger wave form. Fur-thermore, the speech/body motion wave hierarchy of nor-mal speaker self-synchrony appears to exhibit periodici-ties similar to the Delta, Theta, Alpha, and Beta (DTAB)waves of the brain revealed by electroencophalography(EEG). This may simply be coincidence, but the similar-ities are striking. The DTAB waves may occur together atthe same time in the brain (Duffy, 1981). This is also trueof the behavioral waves. The brain waves are sequen-tially continuous and so are the behavioral waves. Thebody motion organization accompanies the phone types,while it accompanies the words, while it accompaniesthe phrases and sentences. This simultaneous multi-levelaccompaniment was seen in Figure 1. The present hy-pothesis is that human speech/body motion behavior canbe interpreted as behavioral waves having continuous, hi-erarchically integrated series of waves. The analyses ofbehavior from 1/96th of a second up to one or two sec-onds are revealing forms of order which appear to linkbrain and behavior. If the hierarchic organization of thebehavioral waves is synchronous with, or a reflection of,the brain waves, sound-film microanalysis can contributeto the study of how behavior reflects brain wave pro-cesses. For example, it may suggest that the brain wavesare operating together synchronously and hierarchically


like the behavioral waves. It would also suggest that thebrain wave organization of a listener may entrain with thestructure of the incoming speech of a speaker. This willbe seen below in the discussion of listener behavior. Aview is emerging that multiple aspects of human behav-

ior and communication may be organizationally linkedtogether. Behavior and the brain processes which me-diate it are not separate systems, but may constitute anorganizational integrity in the individual and between in-dividuals.

Figure 2: Illustrative schema of behavioral wave periodicities compared to brain wave periodicities.

Figure 2 presents a speculative schema of behavioralwave periodicities compared to brain wave periodicitiesbased on phone, word, and sentence length analyses. Thesentence length utterances tend to have a periodicity sim-ilar to the Delta waves. Words may have similar periodic-ity as Theta waves. Vowels, rapidly spoken short words,and syllables appear to be of Alpha frequency. Phonetypes seem to exhibit Beta periodicity. There is a greatdeal of flexibility, so that units of varying size can fit intothe hierarchy.

Figure 1 illustrates the rhythmic pattern which ischaracteristic of speaker behavior. Rhythm is not a sep-arate force added to this behavior from outside. It is aform of order or organization discovered in behavior andis an aspect of behavioral organization. Rhythm seemsto provide predictable pulses or points which may facili-tate synchronization of the sustainings and changes of thebody parts which give rise to the process units. Speakerbehavior is rhythmically organized and this appears tofacilitate the emergence of hierarchically synchronizedstructure. In a sense rhythm adds power to behavior.

All aspects of behavior are integrated together andfunction together. Each serves as the context for the otherduring analysis. Rhythm, enabling behavioral changesto occur synchronously, may help link them in an orga-nizational structure. Several levels of behavior seem toemerge simultaneously in terms of a rhythm hierarchy.The phone waves have their characteristic rhythms, the

small words and vowels have their rhythm, the wordshave their rhythm, and the phrases and sentences havetheir rhythm. The body motion also exhibits levelsof rhythms which are synchronized with these speechrhythms. The significant fact, however, is that these lev-els of waves are also hierarchically integrated together.This hierarchic integration, where the different levels aresynchronized, provides a continuous organizational formwhich may contribute to the integration of smaller unitswithin larger units.

Listener Entrainment to SpeakerSpeech

The preceding section concerned the sound-film micro-analysis of speaker behavior. The following sectionwill deal with the synchronization or entrainment ofthe listener’s body motion organization with the artic-ulatory pattern of the speaker’s speech. The listener’sbody moves almost as synchronously with the speaker’sspeech as the speaker’s body does. Entrainment of thelistener’s body motion with the speaker’s speech occurswithin a 42 msec latency, like a car following a continu-ously rapidly curving road. This suggests that there maybe a basic short-latency, auditory-motor (striatal) link-age in the brain stem where the motor processes reflectthe structure of the incoming auditory signals, especially


speech. Figure 3 below illustrates the precision whichis characteristic of entrainment. Two adult males whonever met before are seated and talking. The sound filmwas made at 24 f.p.s. The speaker says, “Put the pres-sure on people on the job market.” The word “pressure,”which will be used to illustrate entrainment, exhibits acontrasting sequence of voiced and unvoiced segments.An oscilloscopic display of the speech is presented toshow that the sound pattern can be displayed visually.The voiced / 5 / sound terminating the word “the” is fol-lowed by the /p/ of “pressure” which is unvoiced andlasts two frames. This is then followed by the voiced /re/also lasting two frames. The /r/ flows smoothly into the/E/, forming a unitary articulatory gesture. The unvoiced

/§/ occurs next and lasts three frames. Finally, the termi-nal, voiced /r/ occurs, lasting four frames. The total wordcovers 11 frames or just slightly under V2 second. Thebody motion of the listener exhibits micro-movement or-ganizations (process units) which occur isomorphicallywith the lengths of the units of the speaker’s speech.This is seen particularly well in the listener’s processunit that occurs with the three frames of /§§§/ in “pres-sure.” Fingers 1 and 2 of the right hand’had been flex-ing. They change direction and extend slightly across thethree frame duration of /§§§/ and then flex again at theend of the segment. The head also moves down slightlyin contrast to a preceeding upward movement and a fol-lowing left movement.

Figure 3: Sound-film microanalysis of speaker and listener body motion during the word “pressure” shows interac-tional synchrony or entrainment. The listener’s process units entrain with the speaker’s speech.

The behavior of the listener in Figure 3 is not likethat of a robot. His process units seen at normal projec-tion speed transform smoothly into each other and cannotbe seen by the naked eye. They are part of the flow of on-going behavior, but they are precisely synchronized withthe articulatory structure of the speaker’s speech. Suchprecise synchrony occurred constantly throughout this12 minute sound-film. It has been observed in all nor-mal interactants studied thus far, including films of manydifferent cultures. The form of organization of the lis-tener’s process units seems to be modulated by the struc-ture of the speaker’s speech. Whatever body parts the

listener happens to be moving at that moment will be or-ganized and will follow the organization of the speaker’sspeech. Further, the listener’s body often speeds up andslows down in relation to the softness or loudness of thespeaker’s speech. For example, there is accelerated lis-tener movement with the voiced /re/ and with the voicedterminal /r/ in contrast to the unvoiced /p/ and /§/. Thisis seen in the subscript f which means “fast.” There is aprecise isomorphism between the flow of the speaker’sspeech and the body motion of the listener. This occursall the time and the illustration of it in Figure 3 is not anisolated instance.


The concept of synchrony is central to the hypothesesof self-synchrony and entrainment. The units of speechand body motion are forms of organization or order. Thepatterns which form the process units of body motionduring speaking behavior are forms of organization andare identified by their ’order and not directly by the spe-cific body parts which happen to be expressing that or-der at a given moment. No matter what body parts maybe,moving during speaking they tend to occur with char-acteristic forms of order which are synchronous with theco-occurring flow of speech. This is also true of listen-ing behavior, but the phone types and word levels are pri-marily entrained with, while larger movements covering

phrases are rarer.A normal infant as young as twenty minutes follow-

ing birth can entrain with adult speech almost as wellas an adult. This suggests a biological preparedness forspeech and human communication. (Entrainment mayeven occur in utero.) An example of the phenomenon ofentrainment in a two-day old infant is shown in Figure4 (based on a 30 fps, 16 mm sound film). The infant isawake and alert lying in a crib. The male physician isstanding to the infant’s left out of view and says, “Lookover here . . . hum . . . not over there.” The infant’s or-ganizations of movement during “not over there” weremicroanalyzed and are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Description of 2-day-old infant’s movements during “not over there” spoken to the infant by a male physicianout of the infant’s range of view.

The first word “not” lasts for seven frames or approx-imately V5 of a second. What can be seen most clearlyis the left arm sweeping up and out through frames013208–013214. The baby had been still and begins toentrain at the onset of the word “not.” The second word“over” takes 10 frames, from 013215–013224. The leftarm now moves back in toward the face and across it.The arms cross each other oveer the baby’s face. As thisis occurring the baby’s left leg sweeps rapidly outwardhorizontally. Across the word “there” the left arm nowmoves back to the left. The word “there” occurs acrossframes 013225–013239. The left leg comes down rapidlytoward the mattress and the fingers of the right hand flex.

The whole phrase lasts 32 frames or just slightly over onesecond and illustrates again how much movement can oc-cur in such a brief period, even in a two-day-old infant.There are three clear process units which occur isomor-phically with the three words uttered by the adult. Thisinfant entrained in this same precise fashion across 89consecutive words (in phrases) spoken by the physician.This infant was among 16 normal 2–4-day-old neonateswho exhibited precise entrainment to adult speech (Con-don & Sander, 1974). A recent intensive analysis of a 48f.p.s. film (high speed) of a two-day-old infant showedmarked entrainment to adult speech. There was preciseentrainment of the organizations of change of the infant’s


body motion with both speech and tap sounds. The in-fant soon habituated to the tap sounds. It was as if theorganization of the infant’s body motion was being gen-erated by the structure of the mother’s speech. The infantexhibited micro-startle movements in response to the tapsounds within the first two frames following sound on-set (within 42 msec). These were quite clear and con-vincing. The sustainings and changes of the articula-tory units of the mother’s speech were paralleled by al-most simultaneous sustainings and changings in the or-ganization of change of the infant’s movements. Theinfant’s movements would also accelerate in synchronywith louder sounds, especially the vowel sounds. (Speak-ers also characteristically accelerate movement with theirown vowel sounds.)

Reliability studies have been conducted on entrain-ment. In an unpublished study, a judge segmented thespeaker’s speech blind from the listener’s body motionusing a film with only numbers and a sound track. Thesame judge then segmented, the listener’s body motionusing. a different frame-numbered film and withoutsound. This blind analysis resulted in an agreement of97%. This procedure has obvious defects but is sugges-tive. In another more rigorous unpublished study 188consecutive frames of two speakers’ speech were seg-mented by one judge and the body motion of two lis-teners’ behavior was segmented by another judge withan agreement of 87%. In a third study two independentjudges analyzed the body motion of six normal childrenin response to 20 sounds for 10 frames following theonset of each sound. A significantly greater number ofprocess unit boundaries occurred in relation to the framefollowing sound onset for both judges for all six subjects.In another study Condon and Ogston (1971) found thatlistener eyeblinks tended to occur at articulatory changepoints in the speaker’s speech, thus further supporting in-teractional entrainment.

There have been a series of studies concerned withreplicating interactional entrainment. McDowall (1978)conducted the first study on adult entrainment. His studyhad several defects. He used the wrong analyzing equip-ment, the wrong criteria for body motion change, and thewrong hypothesis. His study has been criticized by Gate-wood and Rosenwein (1981) and Peery (1980). Austinand Peery (1983) conducted an intensive study of in-fant entrainment with adult speech, spending at least 1/2hour on each of the 2400 frames of mother-infant interac-tion. They state, “This research corroborates the Condonstudies which showed synchrony or entrainment betweenneonates and adults in interactional situations. It is possi-ble that McDowell did not find such levels of synchronybecause, as indicated before, his use of an electronicallyoperated projector did not allow observations meticulous

enough to detect the phenomena.” Peery (1980) exam-ined the facial approach and withdrawal between motherand infant. He states, “The most powerful relation isthe simultaneous one. This simultaneity reflects the syn-chronous coordination of changes in direction of move-ment by the adult-infant dyad.” He later says,

“The same processes that produce interactional syn-chrony may be influencing the simultaneous regulation ofthe facial behavior we observed. In utero the fetus hasconsiderable experience with adult (mother’s) rhythms ofmovement and with the relation between adult speech andmovement. This experience may provide the base for thehigh degree of movement coordination required in both in-teractional synchrony and the simultaneous changes in fa-cial behavior reported here.”

Kato et al. (1983) in Japan conducted an intensivereplication study of infant entrainment to adult speech.His group studied 32 full term healthy infants. Themother, pediatrician, and a nurse were asked to talk to theinfants using a carefully designed paradigm. The infantswere videotaped and the results analyzed through linkageof the TV with a computer. The neonates were found tosynchronize with adult speech but not with white noise,tapping sounds, and non-patterned sounds. They state,“Our work showed that the discrimination of voices wasestablished within only the first week and that a neonatecan correlate his movement with the voice not only fromhis mother but also from a doctor and nurse, who hadbeen taking care of the neonates.” And, further on theysay, “Our results suggest not only that the organizationof the neonate’s motor behavior reacts to and is synchro-nized with the organized speech behavior of adults inhis environment, but that the neonate’s movements in-fluence adult speech.” Szajnberg and Hurt (in press) in arecent study of entrainment state, “These data suggestthat infant’s movements show both quantitative (totalmovements/second) and qualitative (growing and unipo-lar movements/second) changes in response to mother’sspeech.” Kendon (1982) has studied human interactionintensively at the frame-by-frame level and states, “Thephenomenon of synchrony has, in my view, been clearlydemonstrated.” Beebe et al. (1979) have found that moth-ers and infants can follow the movements of each otherat a mean rate of four film frames (100 msec). In someinstances this can occur as rapidly as one film frame.This seems to be visually mediated. Human infants alsoseem to be able to entrain to different languages. A two-day-old,American infant was able to entrain to Chinesespeech (Condon & Sander, 1974).

Entrainment seems to be an involuntary, organizedmotor reflex to sound stimuli, especially to speech in hu-mans. It may exist in all hearing creatures. Entrainmentmay have species specific characteristics such that eachspecies will entrain more readily to its own species vo-


cal patterns. The listening organism clearly reflects theminute patterns of change in the incoming signal in itsown patterns of movement. (There is some evidence thatthis may also be visually mediated and perhaps even me-diated by several sensory processes.) This entrained andorganized response on the part of the auditory-motor sys-tem may reflect the organization of the brain.

The highly speculative nature of the following com-ments on how interactional synchrony might be medi-ated between interactants must be emphasized. Sincethe speaker’s behavior is rhythmic and the listener movesin synchrony with the speaker, the listener’s behavior isalso rhythmic. Human interaction thus appears to be fun-damentally rhythmic in nature. Interactional synchronyhas a dual nature with drive and rhythm aspects workingtogether. The listening organism moves synchronouslywith the rapidly varying speech sounds of the speaker. Itis difficult to imagine how the listening organism couldpredict these changes in advance, e.g., whether a phonetype would last two or five frames or when a new soundmight begin. This would seem to require a drive model.On the other hand, the rhythmic nature of the behavior,by providing expectable periodicities, could enhance theeffectiveness of a drive model. Two organisms, havingsimilar rhythm systems, might find it easier to entrainwith an on-going drive process.

Different cultures exhibit different rhythm patterns.Over time the infant may take on the specific rhythmstyle of its culture. Subtle rhythm differences may causedifficulties when people from different cultures inter-act. In an unpublished study, eight people listening toa speaker were sound-filmed and found to move syn-chronously with the speaker’s speech. This would sug-gest that audiences move in rhythm with the speaker.Each member of the audience would behave as an indi-vidual listener in relation to the speaker’s speech. Sinceall were listening to the same speaker there would alsobe a group synchrony. Such group synchrony may createa new out-of-conscious-awareness phenomenon which isabsent in dyadic interaction. If a listener could see manyothers in the audience they would all be moving, if theymoved, in relation to the sound. This might create aricher participant effect. While it has not been studied,group synchrony may be occurring in situations such asthe movies and watching television. Some speakers canarouse audiences more than others. Hitler, for example,was known for an ability to appeal to audiences. I oncestudied a close-up of a film of Hitler during a speechand at one point (and at the same moment) his right eyemoved right and his left eye moved left.

Abnormal Entrainment to Sound

The existence of a basic auditory-motor reflex systemwhich precisely, rapidly, and organizationally mirrors thepattern of both spoken and heard speech would suggestthat this system might become disordered. This seems tobe the case. An abnormal multiple entrainment to soundwas postulated from an analysis of slight “jumps” and“jerks” observed in the bodies of dysfunctional childrenin relation to sound (Condon, 1974). In some cases ofdyslexia, for example, the right side would entrain withsound within 42 msec as if normal, while the left sidewould entrain with the same sound after a delay whichcould range from 100 to 266 msec depending on thechild. This multiple entraining gave the appearance of“jumps and jerk” in the body. The multiple entrainmentpattern remained stable for a given child. A similar pat-tern was observed in autistic subjects, but the right sidewas delayed behind the left.

Continued intensive analysis revealed that multipleentrainment exhibited a characteristic pattern having fourrepeating entrainments within the first W3 of a secondfollowing sound onsets. Entrainment 1 occurs within thefirst frame following sound onset. Entrainment 2 ranges,as indicated, between 100 msec (3 film frames) and 266msec (8 film frames) following sound onset. Entrainment3 tends to occur at 333 msec (10 film frames) follow-ing sound onset. Entrainment 4 follows entrainment 2 by333 msec (10 film frames). For example, one child mighthave a multiple entrainment of 1–4-10–14 frames and an-other a pattern of 1–6-10–16 frames. Speculatively, itappears as if there is a normal bilaterally synchronized333 msec auditory input cycle from entrainment to ori-enting., The precision of the abnormal 333 msec pattern,where entrainment 4 follows entrainment 2 by 333 msec,suggests this. When a person is called by name his bodybegins to entrain to the sound within the first film framefollowing sound onset (33.33 cosec using 30 fps film).Then, at approximately 10 film frames (333 msec using30 f.p.s. film) from the time of onset of his name hewill begin to turn toward the caller. In multiple entrain-ment it looks as if this input cycle is out of phase, withentrainments 1 and 2 being one 333 cosec cycle and en-trainments 2 and 4 being an out of phase 333 msec cycle.Several studies were conducted which strongly supportthe hypothesis of an abnormal multiple entrainment tosound (Condon, 1975; Condon, 1978). A similar patternhas also been observed in Huntington’s disease, Parkin-son’s disease, cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, and stutter-ing. Multiple entrainment occurs in relation to most ofthe sounds occurring around such persons including theirown voice.

Plooij (in press) studied an 11-year-old dyslexic childand his normal control in response to 58 random sounds


using two TV cameras linked to a computer. At frame1 following sound onset in both the dyslexic and thenormal child there was a sharp increase or decrease ofmovement which supports the hypothesis of normal en-trainment within 42 cosec. The graphs of the dyslexic,however, were quite different from those of the normalcontrol. The computer selected several peaks centeringaround frames 1, 4, 9–10, and 1415 in the dyslexic child.Plooij states, “This is reminiscent of Condon’s multipleentrainment.” That a computer could pick-up an almostidentical multiple entrainment pattern as that predictedis promising. The existence of multiple entrainment alsoprovides strong indirect support for normal entrainmentas a phenomenon.

Summary

An ability to participate within a shared order seems tobe essential for interaction. In perceiving and knowing,the organism participates in the order of the universe inwhich it exists and replicates aspects of that order withinitself. This involves a process of translation of that or-der through different media. “Sharing?’ of many kindsand at many levels between interactants are primary fac-tors in communicational maintenance and transforma-tion. Sustaining movement together and sharing pos-ture are thought to reflect rapport in both humans andlower animals. The courtship dances of the various an-imal species are examples. To speak the same languagemeans to share the same sounds and the same grammar.A rapidly spoken foreign language is incomprehensible.Sharing or “sustaining forms of order together” is a fun-damental principle of the structure of the organization ofbehavior and interaction at the micro-level.

In this chapter I have focused on the nature of thestructure of organization revealed by intensive micro-analyses of behavior. Human existence appears to in-volve a profound synchronization of the organism withthe universe in which it exists and with other human be-ings. A speaker’s body is precisely synchronized withhis own speech across multiple levels. And between hu-man beings there is an exquisite, rhythmic synchroniza-tion. As indicated, the listener’s body moves in rhyth-mic organizations of change which precisely reflect thespeaker’s speech. This is observable even in infants. Hu-man communication is fundamentally synchronous andrhythmic. Synchrony and rhythm are primary aspects ofhuman individual and interactional behavior. They arenot separate forms added to the structure of behavior, butare forms of organization discovered in behavior. Theyare elements in the structure of behavior.

The temporal patterns (process units) of the organi-zation of behavior can be described. Synchronization is

an essential aspect of the determination of the processunits. These units also exhibit a characteristic periodic-ity or rhythm. The boundaries of the higher level units(words, phrases, sentences, and the body motion formaccompanying them) are precisely synchronized with theboundaries of the lower levels, yet they are also rhythmicin nature. Synchronization tends to relate to the determi-nation of the unit boundaries and the sustaining of thesame relationship between the body parts (i.e., the con-tent of the unit). Rhythm relates to the length of timethese relationships are sustained. A boundary is the pointat which a relational sustaining begins and is not separatefrom it. Figure 1 illustrates this hierarchic organizationalprocess. What is revealed is a form of organization hav-ing multiple levels of rhythms (where each level can varyslightly) which are, however, synchronized together in acontinuous, on-going fashion.

REFERENCESAustin, A. M. and Peery, J. C. Analysis of adult-neonate synchrony

during speech and nonspeech.Perceptual and Motors Skills,1983, 57, 455–459.

Beebe, B. , Stern, D. , and Jaffe, J. The kinesic rhythm of mother-infant interactions. In Siegman, A. and Feldstein, S. (Eds.), OfSpeech and Time. Hillsdale, N. J. : Erlbaum Associatesr 1979.

Condon, W. S. Synchrony units and the communicational hierarchy.Paper presented at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic,Pittsburgh, Pa.: 1963.

Condon, W. S. Method of micro-analysis of sound films of behav-ior. Behavioral Research Methods and Instruments, 1970, 2,51–54.

Condon, W. S. Multiple response to sound in autistic-like children.Proceedings of the National Society for Autistic Children Con-ference, Washington, D. C. : June 1974.

Condon, W. S. Multiple response to sound in dysfunctional children.Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 1975, 5, 37–56.

Condon, W. S. Asynchrony and communicational disorders. InPro-ceedings of Symposium on Research in Autism. Canada Soci-ety for Autistic Children. Vancouver: 1978.

Condon, W. S. Sound-film microanalysis: A means for correlatingbrain and behavior. Paper presented at Institute for Child De-velopment Research Symposium. Philadelphia, Pa.: 1981.

Condon, W. S. , and Ogston, W. D. A segmentation of behavior.Jour-nal of Psychiatric Research, 1967, 5, 221–235.

Condon, W. S. , and Ogston, W. D. Speech and body motion syn-chrony of the speaker-hearer. In D. L. Horton, and J. J. Jenkins(Eds.),Perception of Language. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E.Merrill, 1971.

Condon, W. S. and Sander, L. W. Neonate movement is synchronizedwith adult speech: Interactional participation and language ac-quisition. Science, 1974,183, 99–101.

Duffy, F. Personal Communication, 1981.Gatewood, J. and Rosenwein, R. Interactional synchrony: Genuine or

spurious? A critique of recent research.Journal of NonverbalBehavior, 1981, 6.

Kato, T. , Takahashi, E. , Sawada, K. , Kobayashi, N. , Watanabe, T. ,& Ishii, T. A computer analysis of infant movements synchro-nized with adult speech.Pediatric Research, 1983, 17, 625–628.


Kendon, A. Coordination of action and framing in face-to-face in-teraction. In M. Davis (Ed.)Interaction rhythms. New York:Human Sciences Press, 1982.

McDowell, J. Interactional synchrony: A reappraisal.Journal of Per-sonality and Social Psychology, 1978, 36, 963–975.

Peery, J. C. Neonate-adult head movement: No and yes revisited. De-

velopmental Psychology, 1980, 16, 245–250.Plooij, F. The relationships between ethology and paedology. Ams-

terdam, Netherlands, In press.Szajnberg, N. & Hurt, S. Infant cross modal movement response to

maternal speech. (in press).


In Praise of IdlenessBertrand Russell

(1932)

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on thesaying: “Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.”Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I wastold, and acquired a conscience which has kept me work-ing hard down to the present moment. But although myconscience has controlled my actions, my opinions haveundergone a revolution. I think that there is far too muchwork done in the world, that immense harm is causedby the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needsto be preached in modern industrial countries is quitedifferent from what always has been preached. Every-one knows the story of the traveler in Naples who sawtwelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the daysof Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them.Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to thetwelfth. This traveler was on the right lines. But in coun-tries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idlenessis more difficult, and a great public propaganda will berequired to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading thefollowing pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start acampaign to induce good young men to do nothing. Ifso, I shall not have lived in vain.

Before advancing my own arguments for laziness, Imust dispose of one which I cannot accept. Whenevera person who already has enough to live on proposes toengage in some everyday kind of job, such as school-teaching or typing, he or she is told that such conducttakes the bread out of other people’s mouths, and is there-fore wicked. If this argument were valid, it would onlybe necessary for us all to be idle in order that we shouldall have our mouths full of bread. What people who saysuch things forget is that what a man earns he usuallyspends, and in spending he gives employment. As longas a man spends his income, he puts just as much breadinto people’s mouths in spending as he takes out of otherpeople’s mouths in earning. The real villain, from thispoint of view, is the man who saves. If he merely puts hissavings in a stocking, like the proverbial French peasant,it is obvious that they do not give employment. If he in-vests his savings, the matter is less obvious, and differentcases arise.

One of the commonest things to do with savings isto lend them to some Government. In view of the factthat the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilizedGovernments consists in payment for past wars or prepa-ration for future wars, the man who lends his money to

a Government is in the same position as the bad men inShakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of theman’s economical habits is to increase the armed forcesof the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously itwould be better if he spent the money, even if he spent itin drink or gambling.

But, I shall be told, the case is quite different whensavings are invested in industrial enterprises. When suchenterprises succeed, and produce something useful, thismay be conceded. In these days, however, no one willdeny that most enterprises fail. That means that a largeamount of human labor, which might have been devotedto producing something that could be enjoyed, was ex-pended on producing machines which, when produced,lay idle and did no good to anyone. The man who investshis savings in a concern that goes bankrupt is thereforeinjuring others as well as himself. If he spent his money,say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope)would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whomhe spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and thebootlegger. But if he spends it (let us say) upon layingdown rails for surface cars in some place where surfacecars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a massof labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one.Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure ofhis investment he will be regarded as a victim of unde-served misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who hasspent his money philanthropically, will be despised as afool and a frivolous person.

All this is only preliminary. I want to say, in all se-riousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in themodern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, andthat the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an orga-nized diminution of work.

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds:first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’ssurface relatively to other such matter; second, tellingother people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant andill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The sec-ond kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are notonly those who give orders, but those who give adviceas to what orders should be given. Usually two oppositekinds of advice are given simultaneously by two orga-nized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skillrequired for this kind of work is not knowledge of thesubjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of

BERTRAND RUSSELL 75 In Praise of Idleness

the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e., of adver-tising.

Throughout Europe, though not in America, there isa third class of men, more respected than either of theclasses of workers. There are men who, through owner-ship of land, are able to make others pay for the privilegeof being allowed to exist and to work. These landownersare idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them.Unfortunately, their idleness is only rendered possible bythe industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortableidleness is historically the source of the whole gospel ofwork. The last thing they have ever wished is that othersshould follow their example.

From the beginning of civilization until the IndustrialRevolution, a man could, as a rule, produce by hard worklittle more than was required for the subsistence of him-self and his family, although his wife worked at least ashard as he did, and his children added their labor as soonas they were old enough to do so. The small surplusabove bare necessaries was not left to those who pro-duced it, but was appropriated by warriors and priests.In times of famine there was no surplus; the warriorsand priests, however, still secured as much as at othertimes, with the result that many of the workers died ofhunger. This system persisted in Russia until 1917,1 andstill persists in the East; in England, in spite of the In-dustrial Revolution, it remained in full force through-out the Napoleonic wars, and until a hundred years ago,when the new class of manufacturers acquired power. InAmerica, the system came to an end with the Revolu-tion, except in the South, where it persisted until the CivilWar. A system which lasted so long and ended so re-cently has naturally left a profound impress upon men’sthoughts and opinions. Much that we take for grantedabout the desirability of work is derived from this sys-tem, and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the mod-ern world. Modern technique has made it possible forleisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of smallprivileged classes, but a right evenly distributed through-out the community. The morality of work is the moralityof slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

It is obvious that, in primitive communities, peasants,left to themselves, would not have parted with the slendersurplus upon which the warriors and priests subsisted,but would have either produced less or consumed more.At first, sheer force compelled them to produce and partwith the surplus. Gradually, however, it was found pos-sible to induce many of them to accept an ethic accord-ing to which it was their duty to work hard, althoughpart of their work went to support others in idleness. Bythis means the amount of compulsion required was less-ened, and the expenses of government were diminished.

To this day, 99 per cent of British wage-earners wouldbe genuinely shocked if it were proposed that the Kingshould not have a larger income than a working man.The conception of duty, speaking historically, has beena means used by the holders of power to induce others tolive for the interests of their masters rather than for theirown. Of course the holders of power conceal this factfrom themselves by managing to believe that their inter-ests are identical with the larger interests of humanity.Sometimes this is true; Athenian slave-owners, for in-stance, employed part of their leisure in making a perma-nent contribution to civilization which would have beenimpossible under a just economic system. Leisure is es-sential to civilization, and in former times leisure for thefew was only rendered possible by the labors of the many.But their labors were valuable, not because work is good,but because leisure is good. And with modern techniqueit would be possible to distribute leisure justly withoutinjury to civilization.

Modern technique has made it possible to diminishenormously the amount of labor required to secure thenecessaries of life for everyone. This was made obviousduring the war. At that time all the men in the armedforces, and all the men and women engaged in the pro-duction of munitions, all the men and women engagedin spying, war propaganda, or Government offices con-nected with the war, were withdrawn from productive oc-cupations. In spite of this, the general level of well-beingamong unskilled wage-earners on the side of the Allieswas higher than before or since. The significance of thisfact was concealed by finance: borrowing made it appearas if the future was nourishing the present. But that, ofcourse, would have been impossible; a man cannot eata loaf of bread that does not yet exist. The war showedconclusively that, by the scientific organization of pro-duction, it is possible to keep modern populations in faircomfort on a small part of the working capacity of themodern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientificorganization, which had been created in order to liberatemen for fighting and munition work, had been preserved,and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, allwould have been well. Instead of that the old chaos wasrestored, those whose work was demanded were made towork long hours, and the rest were left to starve as un-employed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a manshould not receive wages in proportion to what he hasproduced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplifiedby his industry.

This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in cir-cumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. Nowonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take anillustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain

1Since then, members of the Communist Party have succeeded tothis privilege of the warriors and priests.


number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins.They make as many pins as the world needs, working(say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an inventionby which the same number of men can make twice asmany pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly anymore will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world,everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins wouldtake to working four hours instead of eight, and every-thing else would go on as before. But in the actual worldthis would be thought demoralizing. The men still workeight hours, there are too many pins, some employers gobankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in mak-ing pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, justas much leisure as on the other plan, but half the menare totally idle while half are still overworked. In thisway, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall causemisery all round instead of being a universal source ofhappiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

The idea that the poor should have leisure has al-ways been shocking to the rich. In England, in the earlynineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day’swork for a man; children sometimes did as much, andvery commonly did twelve hours a day. When med-dlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hourswere rather long, they were told that work kept adultsfrom drink and children from mischief. When I was achild, shortly after urban working men had acquired thevote, certain public holidays were established by law, tothe great indignation of the upper classes. I rememberhearing an old Duchess say: “What do the poor wantwith holidays? They ought to work.” People nowadaysare less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the sourceof much of our economic confusion.

Let us, for a moment, consider the ethics of workfrankly, without superstition. Every human being, ofnecessity, consumes, in the course of his life, a certainamount of the produce of human labor. Assuming, as wemay, that labor is on the whole disagreeable, it is unjustthat a man should consume more than he produces. Ofcourse he may provide services rather than commodities,like a medical man, for example; but he should providesomething in return for his board and lodging. To this ex-tent, the duty of work must be admitted, but to this extentonly.

I shall not dwell upon the fact that, in all modern so-cieties outside the USSR, many people escape even thisminimum amount of work, namely all those who inheritmoney and all those who marry money. I do not thinkthe fact that these people are allowed to be idle is nearlyso harmful as the fact that wage-earners are expected tooverwork or starve.

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hoursa day, there would be enough for everybody and

no unemployment—assuming a certain very moderateamount of sensible organization. This idea shocks thewell-to-do, because they are convinced that the poorwould not know how to use so much leisure. In Americamen often work long hours even when they are well off;such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisurefor wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of un-employment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for theirsons. Oddly enough, while they wish their sons to workso hard as to have no time to be civilized, they do notmind their wives and daughters having no work at all.The snobbish admiration of uselessness, which, in anaristocratic society, extends to both sexes, is, under aplutocracy, confined to women; this, however, does notmake it any more in agreement with common sense.

The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is aproduct of civilization and education. A man who hasworked long hours all his life will become bored if he be-comes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amountof leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things.There is no longer any reason why the bulk of the popula-tion should suffer this deprivation; only a foolish asceti-cism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist onwork in excessive quantities now that the need no longerexists.

In the new creed which controls the government ofRussia, while there is much that is very different fromthe traditional teaching of the West, there are some thingsthat are quite unchanged. The attitude of the govern-ing classes, and especially of those who conduct edu-cational propaganda, on the subject of the dignity of la-bor, is almost exactly that which the governing classes ofthe world have always preached to what were called the“honest poor”. Industry, sobriety, willingness to worklong hours for distant advantages, even submissivenessto authority, all these reappear; moreover authority stillrepresents the will of the Ruler of the Universe, Who,however, is now called by a new name, Dialectical Ma-terialism.

The victory of the proletariat in Russia has somepoints in common with the victory of the feminists insome other countries. For ages, men had conceded thesuperior saintliness of women, and had consoled womenfor their inferiority by maintaining that saintliness ismore desirable than power. At last the feminists decidedthat they would have both, since the pioneers amongthem believed all that the men had told them about thedesirability of virtue, but not what they had told themabout the worthlessness of political power. A similarthing has happened in Russia as regards manual work.For ages, the rich and their sycophants have written inpraise of “honest toil”, have praised the simple life, haveprofessed a religion which teaches that the poor are much


more likely to go to heaven than the rich, and in generalhave tried to make manual workers believe that there issome special nobility about altering the position of mat-ter in space, just as men tried to make women believethat they derived some special nobility from their sexualenslavement. In Russia, all this teaching about the ex-cellence of manual work has been taken seriously, withthe result that the manual worker is more honored thananyone else. What are, in essence, revivalist appeals aremade, but not for the old purposes: they are made to se-cure shock workers for special tasks. Manual work is theideal which is held before the young, and is the basis ofall ethical teaching.

For the present, possibly, this is all to the good. Alarge country, full of natural resources, awaits develop-ment, and has has to be developed with very little use ofcredit. In these circumstances, hard work is necessary,and is likely to bring a great reward. But what will hap-pen when the point has been reached where everybodycould be comfortable without working long hours?

In the West, we have various ways of dealing withthis problem. We have no attempt at economic justice,so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to asmall minority of the population, many of whom do nowork at all. Owing to the absence of any central con-trol over production, we produce hosts of things that arenot wanted. We keep a large percentage of the workingpopulation idle, because we can dispense with their laborby making the others overwork. When all these methodsprove inadequate, we have a war: we cause a number ofpeople to manufacture high explosives, and a number ofothers to explode them, as if we were children who hadjust discovered fireworks. By a combination of all thesedevices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alivethe notion that a great deal of severe manual work mustbe the lot of the average man.

In Russia, owing to more economic justice and cen-tral control over production, the problem will have to bedifferently solved. The rational solution would be, assoon as the necessaries and elementary comforts can beprovided for all, to reduce the hours of labor gradually,allowing a popular vote to decide, at each stage, whethermore leisure or more goods were to be preferred. But,having taught the supreme virtue of hard work, it is dif-ficult to see how the authorities can aim at a paradisein which there will be much leisure and little work. Itseems more likely that they will find continually freshschemes, by which present leisure is to be sacrificed tofuture productivity. I read recently of an ingenious planput forward by Russian engineers, for making the WhiteSea and the northern coasts of Siberia warm, by puttinga dam across the Kara Sea. An admirable project, butliable to postpone proletarian comfort for a generation,

while the nobility of toil is being displayed amid the ice-fields and snowstorms of the Arctic Ocean. This sort ofthing, if it happens, will be the result of regarding thevirtue of hard work as an end in itself, rather than as ameans to a state of affairs in which it is no longer needed.

The fact is that moving matter about, while a certainamount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphaticallynot one of the ends of human life. If it were, we shouldhave to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare.We have been misled in this matter by two causes. Oneis the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which hasled the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignityof labor, while taking care themselves to remain undig-nified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure inmechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishinglyclever changes that we can produce on the earth’s sur-face. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal tothe actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the bestpart of his life, he is not likely to say: “I enjoy manualwork because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’snoblest task, and because I like to think how much mancan transform his planet. It is true that my body demandsperiods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but Iam never so happy as when the morning comes and I canreturn to the toil from which my contentment springs.”I have never heard working men say this sort of thing.They consider work, as it should be considered, a nec-essary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisurethat they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.

It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant,men would not know how to fill their days if they hadonly four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so faras this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnationof our civilization; it would not have been true at anyearlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent in-hibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinksthat everything ought to be done for the sake of some-thing else, and never for its own sake. Serious-mindedpersons, for example, are continually condemning thehabit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leadsthe young into crime. But all the work that goes to pro-ducing a cinema is respectable, because it is work, andbecause it brings a money profit. The notion that the de-sirable activities are those that bring a profit has madeeverything topsy-turvy. The butcher who provides youwith meat and the baker who provides you with bread arepraiseworthy, because they are making money; but whenyou enjoy the food they have provided, you are merelyfrivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for yourwork. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money isgood and spending money is bad. Seeing that they aretwo sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as


well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad.Whatever merit there may be in the production of goodsmust be entirely derivative from the advantage to be ob-tained by consuming them. The individual, in our soci-ety, works for profit; but the social purpose of his worklies in the consumption of what he produces. It is thisdivorce between the individual and the social purposeof production that makes it so difficult for men to thinkclearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentiveto industry. We think too much of production, and too lit-tle of consumption. One result is that we attach too littleimportance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and thatwe do not judge production by the pleasure that it givesto the consumer.

When I suggest that working hours should be reducedto four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remainingtime should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I meanthat four hours work a day should entitle a man to thenecessities and elementary comforts of life, and that therest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. Itis an essential part of any such social system that educa-tion should be carried further than it usually is at present,and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which wouldenable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not think-ing mainly of the sort of things that would be considered“highbrow”. Peasant dances have died out except in re-mote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them tobe cultivated must still exist in human nature. The plea-sures of urban populations have become mainly passive:seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening tothe radio, and so on. This results from the fact that theiractive energies are fully taken up with work; if they hadmore leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in whichthey took an active part.

In the past, there was a small leisure class and a largerworking class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages forwhich there was no basis in social justice; this neces-sarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, andcaused it to invent theories by which to justify its priv-ileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, butin spite of this drawback it contributed nearly the wholeof what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts anddiscovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented thephilosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liber-ation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated fromabove. Without the leisure class, mankind would neverhave emerged from barbarism.

The method of a leisure class without duties was,however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the mem-bers of the class had to be taught to be industrious, andthe class as a whole was not exceptionally intelligent.The class might produce one Darwin, but against himhad to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen

who never thought of anything more intelligent than fox-hunting and punishing poachers. At present, the univer-sities are supposed to provide, in a more systematic way,what the leisure class provided accidentally and as a by-product. This is a great improvement, but it has certaindrawbacks. University life is so different from life inthe world at large that men who live in academic milieutend to be unaware of the preoccupations and problemsof ordinary men and women; moreover their ways of ex-pressing themselves are usually such as to rob their opin-ions of the influence that they ought to have upon thegeneral public. Another disadvantage is that in univer-sities studies are organized, and the man who thinks ofsome original line of research is likely to be discouraged.Academic institutions, therefore, useful as they are, arenot adequate guardians of the interests of civilization in aworld where everyone outside their walls is too busy forunutilitarian pursuits.

In a world where no one is compelled to work morethan four hours a day, every person possessed of scien-tific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painterwill be able to paint without starving, however excellenthis pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged todraw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers,with a view to acquiring the economic independenceneeded for monumental works, for which, when the timeat last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity.Men who, in their professional work, have become inter-ested in some phase of economics or government, will beable to develop their ideas without the academic detach-ment that makes the work of university economists oftenseem lacking in reality. Medical men will have the timeto learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will notbe exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methodsthings which they learnt in their youth, which may, in theinterval, have been proved to be untrue.

Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, in-stead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. Thework exacted will be enough to make leisure delight-ful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since menwill not be tired in their spare time, they will not de-mand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. Atleast one per cent will probably devote the time not spentin professional work to pursuits of some public impor-tance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuitsfor their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered,and there will be no need to conform to the standards setby elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptionalcases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinarymen and women, having the opportunity of a happy life,will become more kindly and less persecuting and lessinclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for warwill die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it


will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is,of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most,and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of alife of arduous struggle. Modern methods of productionhave given us the possibility of ease and security for all;

we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some andstarvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to beas energetic as we were before there were machines; inthis we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go onbeing foolish forever.


DeclarationsHerbert Br un

(1974–78)

need:

I use the wordneedwhenever I wish to speak of condi-tions which must be met continuously and uncondition-ally if living organisms are to be motivated to maintainthemselves, their identities, their existence.

Continuously: because the conditions continue inconsequence of having been met.

Unconditionally: because without the conditionscalledneedhaving been met, no other conditions ex-ist.

necessity:

I use the wordnecessitywhenever I wish to speak ofsomething which is to meet the conditions calledneed,or whenever I wish to emphasize, by metaphorical anal-ogy, the urgency with which I wish to establish a relationor a connection found missing.

evidence:

I use the wordevidencewhenever I wish to speak of aconfiguration (= human made image) of reality used asan argumentin support of the reality of this configura-tion.

I use the wordevidenceonly rarely, and then withembarrassment. Shamefacedly I am forced to admit thatI am a member, and speak the languages, of such soci-eties as must not yet be encouraged to waive theargu-mentand to deal directly with the configuration as theonly reality worth dealing with.

Not yet: becauseevidence, now, is reality againstchange, and change, now, reality againstevidence.

Shamefacedly: because, as long as the word whichI wish to define defines me, I can not define it with-out defining myself, whom Idesireto be defined quitedifferently.

I wish to use the wordevidencewhenever I wish tospeak ofdesiresfulfilled, and the consequences, as be-ing argumentsfor or against the desirability of the ful-fillment.

argument:

I use the wordargumentwhenever I wish to speak of adeliberately stipulated premise to whose consequences Iwish to attribute the status ofnecessityexplicitly in orderto confirm the validity of all theevidencewhich supportsthe attribution.

Deliberately stipulated premise: because its beingitself a consequence is to be considered irrelevant.

Attribute: because I know that I do not speak of aneed, but of a want for consistency.

To confirm the validity of supportingevidence: be-cause anargumentmust become itself validevidencebefore the status ofnecessitycan be attributed to itsconsequences.

I use the wordargumentwhenever I wish to speak ofthe consistency of just thatevidencewhose consistencyraises mydesirefor changing theevidence; and when-ever I wish to demonstrate the contradiction in which Ihave to argue:

theevidencewhich raises mydesirefor change isalways a subset of theevidencewhich supports everyargumentagainst change.

desire:

I use the worddesirewhenever I wish to speak of a delib-erately stipulated premise to whose consequences I wishto attribute the status ofnecessityexplicitly in order toquestion the validity of all theevidencewhich fails tosupport the attribution.

Deliberately stipulated premise: because its rea-sonability, that is, its being a consequence itself, is tobe considered irrelevant.

Attribute: because I do not know whether I am, oram not, speaking of aneed; and because I know that Iam speaking of an urgency.

To question the validity of non-supportingevi-dence: because the same configuration of reality whichallows us to correctly state the impossibility of the ful-fillment of adesire, may prevent us from recognizingourneedfor a different configuration of reality.

HERBERT BRUN 81 Declarations

truth:

I use the wordtruth whenever I wish to speak of thetime during which the intent and content of a person’sstatement can not and will not be accidentally in con-flict or accidentally in contradiction with the intent andcontent of any other statement which this person wouldmake in response to any situation, question, or statementpresented.

The time: because I refer to the passing presenceof a relational event rather than to the value of time-less forms in formalized logics.

Not: because were I to writeonly instead, I shoulduse the wordsknowledge and errorinstead of the wordtruth; and were I to writenot only instead, I shoulduse the wordbelief instead oftruth and instead of thewordsknowledge and error.

communication:

I use the wordcommunicationwhenever I wish to speakof a human relation between persons and things whichemerges and is maintained through messages requiredand permitted by already available systems or mecha-nisms.

I use the wordanticommunicationwhenever I wishto speak of a human relation between persons and thingswhich emerges and is maintained through messages re-quiring and permitting not yet available encoding and de-coding systems or mechanisms.

communicationfeeds on, and speeds, the decay of in-formation in systems on which depends the significanceof human relations.

anticommunicationnot only retards this decay, buteven creates systems whose significance depends on hu-man relations.

Insistence oncommunicationultimately leads to so-cial and physical violence.

anticommunicationultimately leads to the insistenceoncompositionand peace.

composition:

I use the wordcompositionwhenever I wish to speak ofthe composer’s activity and the traces left by it. The com-poser is motivated by a wish of bringing about that whichwithout him and human intent would not happen. In par-ticular, the composer’s activity consists in constructingcontents, systems, stipulated universes, wherein objectsand statements, selected by the composer, not only man-ifest more than their mere existence, but have a functionor value or sense or meaning which without his construc-tion they would not have.

Occasionally the composer’s activity brings aboutthat which without him and without human intent couldnot have happened, leaving traces which nothing elsecould have left.

The wish which motivates the composer’s activityis motivated by an exclusively human property, whichthus exhaustively and sufficiently defines the termhu-man: a needwhich is generated by a want. Amongall biological systems only the human system containsthat self-observing dimension whence comes, beyond thesystem’sneed, the system’s want to survive. Thence thewant, beyond theneed, of survival, and thus the exclu-sively human concept of an intent that would or will re-tard decay; in particular the decay of information, theordering of a system, any system, stipulated, discovered,or dreamed of.

freedom:

Every social system we know till now grants its membersits freedom. Its freedom consists in the kind and numberof alternatives open for choice to its members.

In all known systems, however, every choice madeleads to a loss of freedom:

the structure of these systems tends, in conse-quence of the choice made, to render at least some notchosen alternatives, from then on, inaccessible to themembers who made the choice.

The freedom granted by these systems, therefore, re-duces the freedom of those of its members who use it.

Choice results in loss of freedom.Loss of freedom can only be prevented by a society

so structured, that it would remain desirable to its mem-bers, even if, therein, the freedom of choice were neverto reduce, at least to preserve, and often to increase, thenumber of alternatives open for choice.

HERBERT BRUN 82 Declarations

Designing SocietyMarianne Br un

(1984)

IIn 1981 and 1984, I offered a class I called “Design-

ing Society” at Unit One (an experimental program forundergraduate students at the University of Illinois). Iknow of no other place where such a course is being of-fered, although I think it should be part of every curricu-lum.

Except in utopian and science fiction novels, littlehas been written about a future society radically differ-ent from our own. Even the societies depicted in thosenovels, and in the writings of the great socialist vision-aries of the 19th century, still are based on many of thesame premises and beliefs as is the society in which welive. And, despite everything we hear from those whohave never read Marx and Engels, neither of them everwrote a prescription or left us a blueprint for the societyto come; they devoted their work to an analysis of societyas it was and is, of capitalistic society. Their referencesto a future society were fragmentary, except, of course,to the extent that negation implies also assertion.

When I studied Marx and Engels, and a number ofthe political thinkers and economic theorists who fol-lowed, modified, and newly applied their analysis, I wasunable to comprehend why those analyses, why the un-derstanding of the structure and functioning of the soci-ety we live in, did not, and does not, suffice to impel usto intervene in our collective destiny and to change it.Is it that fear of the unknown, fear of any change thatdeserves that name, even the change of something recog-nized as disastrous, is so immense that most of us wouldrather cynically and despairingly accept society’s returnto barbarism than take a single decisive step toward theyet untried?

I am sure that it is our moral, ethical and religiousupbringing that stands in our way as well: the glorifica-tion of poverty and suffering, of hard work, and, aboveall, the glorification of renunciation, leads most peopleto envision a “just society” as being bleak and gray, asmerely distributing poverty equally among us, requiringhard labor and a spartanic life style. That image wouldnot entice me either.

Unfortunately, that image has seemingly been cor-roborated by the post-capitalist societies that we collo-quially call “socialist”, although that word can, at bestbe used to refer to the socialist origin of the revolutions

that brought them into existence.The attempts thus far, in the 20th century, to cre-

ate a desirable socialist society have taken place underimpossible circumstances, and have been made by sin-gle countries in which there existed extreme poverty, andthus a backwardness in industry, education, technology,science, and almost everything else. Whether or not theycould have succeeded despite those extreme difficulties,we will never know, for each revolution, each new soci-ety, has been attacked at every level, subverted, stifled,hindered and scorned by just those who now gloat overthe failures they caused.

There is another, an older problem: through all of his-tory, and up to the present, those ideas for revolutionarychange, for new societies, that were implemented, havebeen based on the plans and initiatives of one man, ora small group of men. And when they died or becamecorrupted by power, the whole edifice of the new society,the ideas of the revolution, and everybody’s hopes anddreams, crumbled. This story is so old that it can only befittingly told in the form of a folk ballad. I am no longerinterested, therefore, in any social structure, however at-tractive it may sound, that requires, or even allows for,leaders or permanent hierarchies or, worse, that requiresa reward oriented hierarchy, as we now have it.

The society I want needs every person everywhereto design it. The “Designing Society” class was a verysmall, but not modest, step in that direction.

It began with the assignment:

Under the title “Right or Wrong: My Desires”, and us-ing the word “desire” to mean something wanted with themomentary urgency of a need, write a list of statements ofwhich you would say: “While it is not the case, I desire itto be the case.”

List the statements in such an order that the fulfillmentof desires earlier in the list may include or, at least, implythe fulfillment of desires later on the list, but not vice versa.

When the students arrived with a list of desire inhand, at the beginning of the second class, we formedfive groups of five to six people each. The assignmentthen was that each group integrate the desire of all itsmembers. The discussions that took place in the groupof which I was a member were some of the most ex-citing, and most encouraging, in which I have been in-volved anywhere: nobody wanted to leave a meeting, no-body minded coming to yet another one. The reports and

MARIANNE BRUN 83 Designing Society

results from the other groups indicated they must havebeen similarly exciting. I think the impact of the firstassignment fully manifested itself only during these dis-cussions: the students realized they had really been askedabout their desires, and that they were really spendinga whole two hours in a university class discussing theirdesires with one another. I do not think I have seen stu-dents so intensely and enthusiastically involved in any-thing. The meetings went on all week and even thensome groups needed more time to come to an agreementon the formulation and sequence of their integrated de-sires.

We never made one list out of the five that were com-pleted, and I am not going to read all those desire on thefive lists here now. There are, however, a few desiresthat appear in some form on all of the five lists from bothclasses. I will read just those desires, in one of their for-mulations:

1. We desire the immediate, continuing, and un-questioned satisfaction of all human needs, where“need” refers to conditions which must be met foran organism to be able, and motivated, to maintainits existence.

2. We desire to live in a world community in whicheach person shares in the significant decision-making processes of the society.

3. We desire that no status and no taboos be attachedto sexual preferences, to forms of relationships, toliving arrangements, and that interaction be basedon an ever increasing abundance of alternatives.

4. We desire that the family be eliminated, at least asan economic unit.

5. We desire that people develop an affection for, andcompetence in, language.

6. We desire that arts as well as science be understoodas essential.

7. We desire that competition be abolished.

8. We desire the end of all violence and violence-producing behaviors (including, of course, allforms of sexism, racism, ageism, and all argu-ments based on biological distinctions).

9. We desire the elimination of the nation state.

10. We desire that belief be distinguished fromthought, arguments be distinguished from report,and that belief not be used as an argument.

After all five lists had be read and discussed, every-one in the class wanted to proceed with the designingof a new society immediately. At that point, however, Ichanged the course of events abruptly and, instead, weembarked on the study and analysis of our present soci-ety, with the help of the bookThe Capitalist SystembyEdwards, Reich, and Weisskopf.

I did not present the material; the students did. Itwas agreed that while everyone in the class would readthe whole book, each chapter would be the particular re-sponsibility of a group of 3–4 students. These groupsprepared and delivered: 1) a brief written summary oftheir chapter; 2) a presentation of whatever in the chap-ter they wanted to stress (these presentations could be inthe form of skits, stories, songs, lectures, paintings, po-ems, or whatever means considered appropriate); and, 3)a discussion with the class about the chapter and abouttheir presentation of it. We had a wide variety of ex-cellent, informative, and very entertaining presentations.While the students were learning about the capitalist sys-tem, they were also learning how to teach one another,slowly making me superfluous in my role as a teacher—at the same time I did not become superfluous at all as amember of the class.

When we were at last through with the capitalist sys-tem (it had lasted much too long), we moved briefly onto utopias. Each of the students read one book dealingwith a utopia from a list I had prepared. Our discussionsof these writings showed that students did not find muchin these utopias that they considered desirable for the so-ciety they wanted to design.

By this time the semester was almost at an end andwe still had not designed our new society. We hurriedlyformed committees, each of which took on the design ofa specific part of the society. The following categorieswere, with some difficulty, agreed upon:

constraintscultureeducationtown and country planningdistribution and transportationscience, technology, and researchindustrial and agricultural productionhealth care

As work on designing the new society got underway,we decided that, in addition to the lists of desires, whichwe had made at the beginning of the class, we now alsoneeded a list of needs. It was not easy to reach agreementon this list. The following, although possibly containingsome redundancies, was finally approved by all:

need of food (nourishment)need of water (for drinking and irrigation, etc.)need of restneed of shelter (from exposure, weather, noise)need of protective clothing (exposure, weather, safety, san-


itation)need of care (and health care)need of access to fresh air and sunlightneed of interactionneed of mental stimulationneed of retardation of decayneed of peace and securityneed of pleasure (joy, eros, or whatever you prefer to callit)

The remaining few weeks of the semester were con-sumed by committee meetings and committees meetingcommittees. Our final two classes were devoted to shortpapers, from each committee, “statements toward a newsociety”, and long discussions. The title “Traces of a Be-ginning Made by the Designing Society Class.”

The introduction reads:“The premise of the society shall be the continual

and unconditional satisfaction of all human needs; itspurpose shall be the development of ever more satisfac-tory means of producing the necessities that will meetthese needs; the development and use of the freedomfrom need for the enjoyment of diversity and difference;the invitation and implementation of ideas and inventionswhich provide new procedures for the solution of old andrecurrent problems.

The purpose of the society, thus, shall be the justifi-ably hopeful pursuit of all those alternative paths of con-sequences, which, be they ever so audacious, unheardof, unspeakable, do not interfere with their indispensablepremise: the satisfaction of all human needs.

The society of which we speak is a global society inwhich there are no nation states or entities that wouldtake on the function of the nation state. A great varietyof communities, large and small, will be established, ac-cording to people’s needs and desires. It is hoped, by us,that these communities will develop in ways that makethem significantly distinct from one another. The priori-ties of a community, its organization, the ways of livingthere, the design, planning, architecture and landscap-ing, the kind of work done, the things planted and energyused, will be decided upon by the members of the com-munity.

There will be no world government, in the usualsense of that term; instead there will be a “socially ben-eficial information processor” to which every person ev-erywhere will have equal access, thus, having equal ac-cess to all human knowledge and to the decision-makingprocess of the entire world system. Never, in this way,will the world system be maintained at the expense of itsmembers. The members will be maintained, even at theexpense of the system: that is, whenever the system nolonger meets the needs of all the people, the system willbe changed.”

The term “socially beneficial information processor”

was derived from a presentation I had made at a timewhen all the committees designing our society broughtup the need for some kind of computer system, proces-sor, or similar electronic device. I took that as a cue toread to the class a two-page description, I had written, ofa processor that Herbert Brun and I had long been dis-cussing. I will read these same two pages now, to endthis presentation. It is in connection with the computersystem therein described that I am turning to cyberneti-cians for help. For I suspect that even though the tasksof this device are described, its realization might requirethe invention and generation of hitherto untried methodsand techniques. I understand the proposition of cyber-netics to be the attempt at solving this class of non-trivialproblems.

IIIf I were invited to participate in serious deliberations

meant to arrive at the “Design of a Society” that wouldembody an implementable alternative to our present soci-ety, my initial contribution would consist of the descrip-tion of a “Computer System” which is so programmedthat its response to any and every user’s input will bebased on the current network generated by all and anyprevious users’ inputs.

Temporarily, I will call the computer system a “So-cially Beneficial Information Processor” or “SBIP”; andI stipulate that it consists of a large number of intercon-nected, technically equal components distributed all overthe world, wherever there are people, and that it be ac-cessible to anyone and everyone who wants to use it.

When first offered to the world, the system if virtu-ally “empty”: it requires input of various kinds before itcan begin to become responsive and deliver output. Thismay take hours or days. Once started, however, its re-sponsiveness grows rapidly.

An input may be a statement, a question, a piece ofprose or poetry, a set of rules for a game, a logic, a theory,a computer-program, a spoken sentence, music, a photo-graph, a film, and so on. Some of the input will be dataand some will be programs, rules, algorithms, and proce-dures. The data are entered by users so that they be avail-able either for retrieval and inspection or for processing.As the number and variety of entered data increases, theresponsive flexibility of the system also increases. Ev-ery user can use what all previous users have entered:a user can ask the system for the solution of a problemand receive a positive response only if a previous usershas entered, a minute ago or a year ago, a procedure orprogram or algorithm which is capable of solving thatkind of problem. Otherwise it will now be the task of theasking users to create and enter such a procedure. Ev-ery time someone enters new data or a new procedure,in short, new input, the system changes. Significant in-


put, thus, enables the system to change its responses, toupdate them, and to better serve all users.

I estimate that with intensive user participation fromall walks of life, all fields of interest, all age-groups, allpossible regions of preferred preoccupation, and all pos-sible regions of the globe, it will take less than a year forthe system to present a more than mere equivalent to cur-rently available “best” human knowledge, and to serveas such in all its capacities. If a users wishes to accessthe information processor, the users goes to the nearestterminal space; it may be in the users’ home, or in thelocal community center. The terminal space contains in-teractive audio-visual devices which allow the users tobe heard and seen by SBIP and, in turn, to hear and seeresponses from SBIP.

The user now writes and speaks to the processor. Ifthe input is a question, SBIP responds either by answer-ing the question, or by modestly stating something like:“Could not yet find an answer to your question. Can youhelp? Can you reformulate? Or, would you rather wait,while I search and you think, and come back in an houror a day?”

If the input is an independent statement (to show orto tell)—a report, neither demonstrating nor reasoning—then the response will be: “Thank you. This statementhas been input 732 times verbatim, and 8933 times ap-proximately containing its sense and intent, the first timeJanuary 1, 1985.”

If the input is a dependent statement (to demon-strate or to reason)—an argument, formulated whetheras a premise pointing at its consequences, or as aconsequence pointing at its premise and its furtherconsequences—then SBIP will respond by saying: “Thisstatement has been argued, consistent with the way youargue (Logic 5), seven times since 1702, not consistent(Logic 3, Logic 11, Logic 17) thirty-eight times since1820. The complete and detailed response requires 12minutes speaking time, 2 minutes printing time. Pleaserequest: Speak on! or Print! or Cancel!” If the users re-quest Print!, the answer is printed in the terminal spacefor the user to read at leisure (Speak on! will call forth aspoken response).

To any response that SBIP delivers, the user is invitedin turn to respond, by criticizing the response received,by reformulating the initial input, by requesting that theinput not be stored yet, and so on. The mutually respon-sive interaction between the users and the computer sys-

tem is bound to raise issues of concern to the users, and toenrich (educate) SBIP’s network, so that, gradually, theuser acquires an awareness of the fact that she or he is sit-ting in the very midst of all current human knowledge, isa part of it, is having a dialog with it and making a differ-ence to it. To the extent that SBIP can assist in designinga society, the user becomes conscious and aware of beinga welcome, needed, yes, an indispensable participant.

If a user’s input is a proposition, a theory, a plan ofsolving a stated problem, a suggested way of thinking, ora suggested strategy for action, then SBIP will respondby using the entire current network in constructing a fic-tional prediction of what would ensue, if the input weretrue or accurate or implemented, and then present thisconstruction to the users. If technology will serve, I en-vision this response to sometimes come in form of a film,in which the user’s likeness is shown, not so much asthe initiator of the input, but rather as one of the peopleto whom the consequences of the input are happening.I assume that many users, having seen the film, wouldmodify, qualify, or even withdraw the input in its presentform.

To summarize: Every person everywhere is a poten-tial user; by logging into the network a person becomesan active user. The user’s input not onlyusesthe net-work, it alsochangesthe network. Unless a users with-draws the input, it is stored in one of the network’s nodesand there becomes active in SBIP’s construction of itsresponse. It can happen, and in the beginning will fre-quently happen, that due to some user’s input on Tues-day, SBIP’s response to a question posed on Wednesdayis quite different than its response to the same questionon Monday. Thus it can be understood, that both, SBIPand the user, are always an continuously parts of any cur-rent human knowledge, both using and changing one an-other, and that they are actively integrated componentsof a self-referentially self-organizing system: a humansociety, in which every living person is a member, andwhose structural constraints are continuously influenced,established, and again changed by the integrated input ofall its members.

While, as would be the case with any suggestion, myproposition and its description and promise invite cri-tique and criticism, I claim, for once, a significant dis-tinction: all comments can be input to SBIP and thus, re-gardless of my opinions, will become its content, namelyactive components of current human knowledge.


Teaching CompositionFacing the Power of the Respondent

Mark Enslin(1989)

Acknowledgments

The participants in a discussion in May 1987 of someof the ideas and texts of this paper—Jeff Gibbens, Su-san Parenti, William Brooks, Herbert Brun, Ja’acov Ziso,Lesley Olson, and Candace Walworth—were, throughtheir responses that afternoon, helpful at several stagesof the writing process. Several brief excerpts from thetranscript of that discussion are included in the text. Thespeakers are identified by their initials.

Conversations with others also played a role: DrewKrause, Sever Tipei, Arun Chandra, Mark Sullivan, Bar-bara Freeman, Larry Ende, Kenneth Gaburo, Mark Free-man, Chou Long, David Kelley, Larry Richards, TuckerRobison, to name a few.

Thanks to Keith Johnson for suggestions of sequenceand layout.

Many of the concepts herein developed and con-nected, including that of the power of the respondent, Ilearned in classes and conversations with Herbert Brun.

1. Preface

The initial interest in the subject of this paper came fromconversations with students of composition about the de-sirable situation for continuing to be composers whenwe would no longer be students. We wanted to com-pose. However, the degree toward which we were work-ing was preparing us to take faculty positions in theory-composition departments: we were to become teachers.

Noticing this fact caused us some unease, for our re-ceived images of what it means to be a teacher (thoughoccasionally contradicted by particular teachers) clashedwith both our received and developing images of what itmeans to be a composer.

In this paper I present the outline of an alternativeview, which requires reformulation of the received im-ages of both teacher and composer. In the exploratorytinkering with received images, I became intrigued bythe possibility that the teaching situation offers to a com-poser something which can’t be found elsewhere. Theteaching situation allows speculation about the idea that a

composer need not assume helplessness in the face of thedynamics of reception. If such speculation is taken seri-ously, then experiments in the composition of the condi-tions of reception become necessary. Though other ex-isting forums for this experimentation ought not to bedismissed, one can distinguish those forums by their con-straints. Some of the constraints peculiar to the teachingsituation, for instance the regularity of meetings and thusthe potential for follow-up, offer distinct possibilitiesfora beneficial tampering with the dynamics of reception. Inthe paper, I refer most often to that aspect of the dynam-ics of reception which goes by the name: The Power ofthe Respondent.

The disjunctness of the writing style results mainlyfrom choices guided by several negative criteria: to avoidtruism; to avoid the tone of giving advice (while retainingthe option of imperative syntax); to avoid the impressionof a single line of argument where the subject appears tocall for several intersecting consistencies or lines of argu-ment. The style also reflects positive attempts to have thewriting illustrate some of the ideas put forward: the em-phasis on formulation; the preference for suggestivenessover exhaustiveness; the interest in pieces which make aproduction of eliciting from their respondents an aware-ness of the possibility of composed interpretation, com-posed response.

If one approaches this paper looking for practicalsuggestions for teaching composition, a few can befound; the overall aim, however, is to construct imagesof teaching and composition which could orient or pro-voke one to invent answers to the how-to questions.

2. The Power of the Respondent

The respondent to a statement, coming after the state-ment, determines how the statement is spoken about, de-termines in which context the statement is placed, andthus what it meant. To the extent that every statementmakes an appeal to the respondent to give the state-ment a social life, to show changes attributable to thestatement—to that extent statements submit to the powerof the respondent.

MARK ENSLIN 87 Teaching Composition

A respondent has the power to declare an utteranceto be a response.

If you say “it is”, then it’s as good as is; in the socialworld, the validity of the assertion is of no consequence.What is crucial is the fact that you say it is.

The often-heard complaint that a person “always hasto have the last word” is a commonplace acknowledg-ment of the respondent’s power. The respondent alwayshas the last word.

A respondent is a respondentto a statementonlywhen showing traces in the respondent’s language whichwould not have been left but for that statement—so saysa respondent.

The respondent has the power to determine how therespondent’s listeners label, describe, conceive, remem-ber, judge—the responded-to. That the respondent’s lis-teners could themselves subsequently become respon-dents and so have the power to contest the labeling, de-scription, conception, memory, and verdict determinedby the first respondent does not diminish the power ofthat response while it holds sway.

What makes the ability of a respondent to determinethe social life of the responded-to a power is the preva-lence of misrepresentation, falsification, slander of vari-ous sorts, and dismissal.

The power of the respondent is frequently amalga-mated with other sources of power: the power of posi-tion, the power of authority, the power in numbers, thepower of technical reproducibility.

2.1 In the Face of

It is easy to learn to recognize the power of the respon-dent, difficult to learn how to behave facing it.

“The power of the respondent must be recognized, mod-erated, and if necessary, temporarily suspended. Not theresponse, but its falsification of the responded to, must benoted and rejected. Again, any violent manifestation of therespondent’s power must be boldly testified to by an alertwitness.”

(Brun,My Words and Where I Want Them, 99)

I speak of the power of the respondent when I wantsomeone to ‘bear witness’ to a speaker’s exercise ofpower to dismiss. Learning about composition, learningto compose, learning to be a composer, learning to de-sire a social role for composition would include learninghow the composer’s composition is dismissed, how thecomposer is dismissed, how dismissal takes place, andlearning to become a witness (loudly!) to dismissals.

“. . . Some have described a composition they wouldhave preferred to make . . . some have simply mapped ontothe given work, words drawn from bags of accumulated‘music language’, learned who knows where, and regardedas a kind of general-purpose tote bag whose words, (so itseems), can be pulled out without notice, and applied to

any given;—(the given, not being able to talk back, so-to-speak, therefore, de facto, allows the pollution to con-tinue). . . ”

(Gaburo,LA)

I can tell the difference between a tangent, a changeof subject which has the effect of erasing the previoussubject, and a leap of thought which transforms the sub-ject under discussion.

The composer’s imaginary respondent is partly con-structed by the composer and partly collected from ob-servations of people, texts, behaviors (choice of the poolin which one would like to make a splash, in which onewishes to be celebrated and admired, but wants also toupset, to confound, to cause controversy, to have oppo-nents and partisans).

The composer’s image of the respondent: not only interms of that to which the composer responds, but alsoin terms of the play of predicting how the addressee willrespond.

“A hybrid medium [gesture] limits the field of responsewith the consistency of its constraints. The composerchooses to preserve one set of borrowed characteristics in-stead of another. The significance of the choice is a func-tion of the chosen set’s power to limit the interpretationsavailable to the respondent. If a change of the set of bor-rowed characteristics would elicit a change of interpreta-tion, the gesture has the power required to limit the field ofresponse. . . . Gesture limits the interpretations available toa respondent.”

(SullivanThe Performance of Gesture, 29)

A composition’s limiting of the availability of inter-pretations requires a respondent who acts as a witnessspeaking up for the composition against its falsification.

“In discourse or in a composed work, gestures are madein anticipation of response. Unless the addressee gatherssomething that requires interpretation, the gesture will notfunction. An addressee has to gather something that re-quires interpretation before [the addressee] can become arespondent.”

(Sullivan, 29)

If a speaker, having the power of response by sheerdint of following an event with an utterance, is to becalled the respondent, then it is up to the respondent tofeel addressed, to become the addressee.

2.2 Audience

“We discovered that what induces even more resentmentthan taking music seriously is taking talking about musicseriously . . . Music is talked about before it is listened to,while it’s listened to, and instead of being listened to. Andwho does this talking about the music which determineswhat is the little bit that’s recorded, the tiny bit that ispublished, and, therefore, what can be heard, and there-fore what is listened to, and therefore what is learned andeventually, therefore, what is composed? Well, this talkingis done mainly by a group of past and present masters of


the detached normative, the dangling evaluative, those whohave created an epistemological situation which is usuallysatisfied by a self-comforting tautology: ‘If I don’t under-stand it, it’s not worth understanding; therefore I under-stand everything worth understanding.”’

(Babbit,Words about Music, 174–5)

“A reminder: as described earlier, a listener brings tomusic an image which he has created of it, this image con-sisting of wishes and desires for what he wants music to be,articulated in the language available to him, and he will re-act to what he hears within the context of those wishes. Forhim, the music will appear as a kind of ’candidate’ for thefulfillment of those wishes and desires, and its suitabilityfor that candidacy will determine the listener’s response tothe music. Thus the capabilities of the listener’s languagewill interview what he is perceiving, and act as a measur-ing standard to the perceived.”

(Brun, “The Political Significance of Composition”)

“Language cannot change itself. It will continue to in-terrogate any acoustical event which comes its way in theterms it has learned from past music. The presence of newmusic, then, not only confronts what music has been, italso confronts present-day language and its capabilities.(We could say that the music ’perturbs’ the language.)”

(Parenti, “Self-Reference and the Language about NewMusic, 42)

“If the respondent neglects to search for an address[address], or assumes that the composition has no intendedaddress when it does not articulate its address the waycompositions did in the past, then the composition will befalsified by the respondent.”

(Sullivan, 40)

The composition’s gesture limits the field of non-falsifying response; or puts obstacles in the path of arespondent to speak uncontested by other respondents.Otherwise the description, verdict, interpretation—theresponse—remains undisturbed.

Notice the difference between having the power ofthe respondent and being aware of the power of the re-spondent.

2.3 Performer

The performer acts as a respondent to the composer’sscore on the basis of an image of the composer:the not-quite-competent composer,who produces writing which doesn’t fit the instrument,which is unreasonably difficult to play on the instrument,which is impossible to play on the instrument,which damages the instrument,which hurts or the strains the player,which is not fun to play . . .

“Those who have seen how orchestra players, who per-form only reluctantly an advanced modern work under aconductor unsympathetic to and intellectually suspiciousof modern music, change their attitude the moment theyrealize that another conductor knows the score and han-

dles it with the same precision as a traditional one, and thatit has meaning in his hands, know where the opportunitylies for an uncompromising composer in motion pictures.Masterful handling of resources carries a certain weight ofits own, even when it is directed against every idea toler-ated by the industry. Orchestra players are in spite of ev-erything most sensitive to it, and their confidence spreads,under certain circumstances, to everyone concerned withthe production of the picture.”

(Eisler and Adorno,Composing for the Film126)

. . . versus an image of the composer who is not inno-cent,who wants the manifest level of difficultyor:who wants to estrange music from the conventions of fit-ting with the instrument,who wants to change the current status of what is consid-ered possible,who wants to entice those interpreters who will bringabout the necessary changes in order to perform the com-poser’s work, and create a music which couldbecomefunto play.

2.4 Composer

Composition as Reply: “Brahms is lost on you becauseyou don’t know that to which he responds.” Anotherframing of the problem of reference: not to know thequotations only, but know the sense of the composer’s re-sponse. “You can’t understand Berio and Boulez if youdon’t know Schonberg and Webern; and you can’t under-stand Schonberg and Webern if you don’t know Wagnerand Brahms”—and so on. “Where do you start?”

Composers make reference not only to what precedesthem but also to that which is contemporaneous withthem. Thus it is more difficult to understand the com-posers of 200 years ago than it is to understand new mu-sic.

Dialectics of response: being able to appoint one’steachers; being able to respond to one’s contemporaries,current trends, and that which is held to be true—but hav-ing only one’s contemporaries, only the current trends,and only that which is held to be true, to respond to.

2.5 Student

A respondent to a composer makes a contribution onlyif the respondent succeeds not merely in challenging thecomposer to defend the composer’s preferences, but inoffering a new defense of the composer’s preferences.

Transformations of the adage ‘We learn from ourmistakes’:

We declare our deeds to be mistakes in order not tolearn from them.We learn to declare our deeds mistakes in order to justify


our repeating them.We declare our deeds mistakes and do not realize that“success in an undesirable social system is social fail-ure”.We declare our deeds mistakes, vacillating in the deci-sion where to draw the line between consequences of ourchoices and consequences of our respondent’s choices.We declare our deeds mistakes before the correctness ofour deeds has emerged.

To the category of unintended message might cor-respond a category of “unintended teaching”, such thatsomeone might say “I learned this from you” aboutsomething the teacher never intended to teach. To be ableto tell you what you taught: this is within the power ofthe respondent.

2.6 Teacher

“A ‘difficult’ student tries to make a new start and is quietand obedient. His teacher responds to this behavior by say-ing, ‘You’re off to a good start this year,’ and so informsthe student that a bad start was expected of him. The stu-dent becomes angry and defiant. A supposedly dull studentgives a correct answer in class and is praised excessively.He is embarrassed and becomes withdrawn.”

(Kohl, The Open Classroom, 19)

Kohl focuses on the expectations which are the cri-teria for the teacher’s choice of response. The teacher’sresponse, “You’re off to a good start this year”, declaresan expectation whether the teacher holds that expectationor not. From what field of alternatives could a responsebe chosen?

One kind of power: to be able to deliver someonefrom something to which that person would otherwise behelplessly delivered; not necessarily able to ‘control’ orcoerce, but able to rescue.

“Power is a problem for all of us. The developmentof open, democratic modes of existence is essentially theproblem of abandoning the authoritarian use of power andof providing workable alternatives. That is a problem thatmust be faced by all individuals and institutions that pre-sume to teach.”

(Kohl, 16)

A teacher offers a new image of the composer’s re-spondent. The teacher manifests this image through theteacher’s (composed) performance.

2.7 Yielding

Out of desperation, having faced the power of the respon-dent in the concert hall, the commercial world, the “pub-lic sphere”, the composer turns to teaching. When teach-ing, the composer still faces the power of the respondent,but in a new context. In this context, a composer can asklisteners (students, respondents) to yield some of their

power as respondents to a composition: the composercan ask them to imagine that the composition respondsto them.

HB . . . No I don’t think so. I think the only questionof the power of the respondent is whether the per-son who has that power, namely the respondent,is knowing, conscious of what he’s doing, of hispower or not. So the consciousness of that power. . . enormous . . . Only then if you have a con-sciousness of the power can you follow the nextinstruction namely—what is the word? to . . .

ME Yield.

HB . . . yield some of that power to the composition,either to the composition you have heard or thecomposition you are in the process of writing inthe hope that you can turn it into the respondentwith all the power. This is what you are saying,that’s what I understand. However, if it is not up toa respondent whether to have that power, then allthat one can ask of respondents is that they changetheir way of exercising that power. Then the invita-tion to respondents would be that they—with theirpower as respondents—grant the power of respon-dent to a composition.

JG That’s what I asked: what is the power . . .

HB The power is afterwards, afterwards.

LO That’s what I was getting at, I think. I’m not sure.How much . . . How is someone aware that they arecoming after something? A lot of times you maynot even know that you are coming after some-thing, and only after coming after something, hav-ing seen something happen, you realize that youcame in the middle of something, that you deter-mined the direction of something.

HB It is a tragedy.

LO Yeah.

HB Yeah, there’s nothing you can do except conscious-ness and administration of that power. You can-not measure it, you cannot decide anything aboutit except be aware of the power. When you use theword “power”, please be aware that there is noth-ing to substitute for that term. Power is that whichyou can’t budge. Otherwise it’s not power.

‘Yielding’? Conferring, conceding, abdicating, abro-gating . . . sharing ?

Three notions of sharing:

1. When that which is offered is given up to the re-ceiver (donation);

2. When part of that which is offered is given up andpart is kept (parceling out);


3. When that which is offered is still retained by theone who makes the offer (sharing with).

These notions can be applied to time as well as to things.The teacher, having the power of position within an

institution, the power of knowledge, and the power ofthe respondent to boot, will be frustrated in the attemptto give up these powers by the necessity of giving upposition, knowledge, and response (as if that were possi-ble!). Since a teacher cannot get rid of these powers (atleast the last two) and remain a teacher, “power sharing”in the teaching situation refers to the notion of “sharingwith”, where that which is offered is still retained by theone who makes the offer.

So it is with the respondent who might wish to “yieldpower to a composition”. The respondent who attemptsnot to falsify the composition, volunteers to be vulnera-ble to a composition’s input.

Good teacher: good respondent—i.e., the proposalput forward by the student’s network of connections istaken by the teacher and tied in (preferably with many fil-aments) with the teacher’s network of connections. Thefriction generated by the two networks intersecting in theshared proposition is teaching.

From this experience the student might learn to takethis structure from the student- teacher relationship andapply it by analogy to the piece-listener relationship. Inthe analogy, the piece would have to be so interrogatedthat the answers of the piece can be taken by the listenerand given the form of a proposed network of connections.The listener could probe the piece’s network of connec-tions for moments of friction with the listener’s networkof connections.

. . . so having fled the audience and become a teacher,the composer finds another audience: the students. Inthat new context, facing the students, the composer dis-covers that there are certain things that can be asked ofthem that cannot be asked, so far, in the concert hall.

3. Images of Teacher and of Com-poser

3.1 Two Incompatibilities

Many composers who teach, grumble about having toteach. Though the particular grumblings express dissat-isfaction with the working conditions which “take timeaway from composing”, the grumblings also express dis-satisfaction withhavingto teach. This stress could mean“I would enjoy teaching if I didn’t have to teach”. Whatis usually meant, however, is: “I wouldn’t teach if I didn’thave to.” This last statement, the underlying enduringgrumble, can be understood to point to at least one of

the two incompatibilities: 1) between the composer’sconcept of teaching and the composer’s concept of ‘I’;2) between the composer’s concept of teaching and thecomposer’s concept of composition. The second incom-patibility, between teaching and composition, and morespecifically the incompatibility between teaching com-position and composing, raises my curiosity: to investi-gate whether a concept of teaching and a concept of com-position can be so formulated that teaching—contrary tothe grumble and yet no consolation—might be consid-ered indispensable for composition.

Not teaching, but the argument for teaching has tochange; then teaching will change as a consequence.

Ambivalent attitudes toward teaching compositionreflect two clashing images of the composer: indepen-dent, feisty rugged individualist and socially responsivecontributor to a discourse, participant in debate. Therugged individualist doesn’t need to be taught and fearsfollowers; the participant in debate finds school to be al-most the only, though insufficient, public forum avail-able.

The teacher (at least as currently conceived) assumesthat a description of what is and has been provides in-struction for what is to be. The composer asserts that adescription of what is and has been shows what is to beno longer.

The teacher (at least as currently conceived) and thecomposer conflict in their treatments of standards: for ateacher, standards are to uphold, hand down, judge by;for a composer, a standard is to challenge, to make moot.

For a composer to consider composed teaching indis-pensable, this composer would have to cherish an imageof social consequences of compositions, either in termsof a goal, statement, protest desired by the composer to‘come across’ to addressees, or in terms of a level of(public?) discourse which would detect, describe, admireand criticize the particular contribution of a composition:the discourse of a community of thinking people who areeager for change, who welcome the new.

So long as society maintains a profit-oriented cultureindustry, it will remain inimical to composition (compo-sition is inimical to it) and this situation requires of thecomposer the generation of an enclave, letting composi-tion guide the generation of its social context, against thesocial context it was born into. Teaching in the educa-tional system is at best a band-aid attempting to supplysomething which is missing from the society at large:intelligent, caringly critical discussion of the work onewants to contribute.

Obedience, also inimical to composition, is tacitlydemanded by current teaching situations. The composerwho proposes to teach composition thus stands betweenthe teaching situation and the desire to compose. The


composition teacher’s desire to teach composers, and toteach composition, calls for ideas which undermine theimplicit demand for obedience in the teaching situation.Since the problem appears as a dilemma it requires com-position to approach a solution.

3.2 Arguments Against?

“It has often been said that composition cannot be taught,and though this statement, like many generalizations, is toosweeping, it contains a good deal of truth.”

(JacobThe Composer and his Art, 1)

“For all practical purposes you can learn all there is tobe learned from someone in the space of six months, andeven that would be slow: sometimes a week is enough.”

(Boulez,Conversations with Deliege)

Since the composer’s activity is to make music whichhas not been before, the composer can be taught, at most,what has been music before, but not what music is to benext, for deciding what is to be music next is the activityof the composer.

“Deliberately self-taught [vs. ‘accidentally self-taught’]. . . that is, those who have the strength of will to have donewith models that existed before them.”

(Boulez, 36)

“This does not mean that the study of the theoryof composition is superfluous or even harmful. Atall times composers—even the great masters—learnedthrough study to express their musical thoughts morepointedly, fluently, and clearly. In order to fulfill its roleproperly, the teaching of composition must keep two pointsin view. By abstracting general principles from the worksof the great masters, it enables the average musical personwith no special gift for composition to ‘compose’ music,i.e. to put it together. This happens every day in musi-cal academies, where the students write fugues, canons,rondos and so on. But there is one thing which the mostconscientious pursuit of the study of composition cannotdo—that is, replace inspiration, through which alone musicbecomes the immediate creative expression of thoughts.”

(Rufer,Composing with Twelve Tones, 3)

A teacher who would teach composition can thinkthat the student composer may come up with the ideas,and then may learn from the teacher how to realize, de-velop, or embed the ideas. But the realization, develop-ment or embedding of an idea must be determined ac-cording to the idea, not according to the teacher.

Originality, spontaneity, insight, irony, sense of hu-mor, tactical ingenuity, serendipity might be learned,but cannot be taught. Teaching concerns itself withmethod, while the attributes of a good composer (orig-inality, spontaneity, insight, etc.) circumvent method;they are, possibly, anti-method. Every pedagogy, evenwhen aimed at liberation, is composed of precepts andgeneralizations. Composers, themselves wanting to setup each particular composition as though it were a pre-

cept and a generalization of what is to follow, will actinconsistently with the pedagogies they know.

Formulation

Two sources of the aversion to teaching are (1) the attackon hierarchy, and (2) the neglect of formulation. Someare averse to teaching because they dislike the visibilityof hierarchy; others are averse to teaching only becausethey have neglected formulation.

If the activity of formulating ideas—taking care in‘putting them into words’– were seen as crucial, indis-pensable for composition, that is, if composition weretaken to imply radical thinking, then one would need thepesky insistence of a curious person, a person who sus-pects that one’s ideas might be needed, not as a help butas an ally.

A teacher can offer the formulation of a thoughtwhich might provoke a student to engage in a new pro-cess of thinking, and to apply the new process of thinkingin a process of composition which will give rise to a per-sonal style and perhaps a new thought, distinct from theteacher’s thinking, composition, style, and thought. Ifthis were to happen, it might provoke a student to engagein a process of composing based not on the wish to adopta style, to do something liked, to conform to the taste andsense of reasonability of society as it is, but on the wishto explore the consequences of the thought in a thinkingprocess, with ideas and ways of composing which couldpropose the style, liking, taste, and sense for society notyet existing.

3.3 Desired Consequences I

A teacher makes the audacious claim that the goal ofteaching is the obsolescence of the teacher.A composer makes the equally audacious claim that thegoal of composing is the indispensability of the com-poser.To draw this distinction links the contradictions to to-day’s society which teacher and composer find them-selves in: current society denies teachers their obsoles-cence and composers their indispensability.

An imaginatively composed teaching is indispens-able for having one’s contemporaries enter into the con-versations with compositions (what has been referred toas the desired consequences for a composition).

The discussion of criteria consulted by a composertouches on the potential significance of the composition,its input, contribution, social consequences, its ‘mes-sage’; this discussion also holds the potential to teachcomposition to those who would be its students.

“When asking students the question: ‘Why do you wantto compose?’,


the best answer given to me thus far has been:‘I HAVE NO CHOICE!’ ”

(Gaburo,Collaboration One: The Beauty of IrrelevantMusic)

Gaburo’s glee on hearing this answer—bad news thatit is—must have come not only from the linking of com-position with a sense of necessity, but also from the dou-ble entendre: composition does something about the sit-uation of having no alternative, where ‘to do somethingabout it’ in this case means response to a lack of choiceas a problem provoking creation. Composition createsalternatives.

To the extent that a composition shows how alterna-tives were chosen according to criteria, it teaches. Thusa teacher who asks students to compose thereby invitesthose students to become teachers. The teacher whowould make such an invitation confronts three compo-sitional problems: formulating alternatives and criteria,creating the context of sharing, and the performance ofoffer and response. Teaching must then be approachedas composition, and the teaching situation is then a placewhere the function of teacher and the function of com-poser overlap.

“To the extent that a composition shows how alterna-tives were chosen according to criteria, it teaches.” Thisextent might equal zero, for a composition shows crite-ria only to a person who has inferred the criteria; thatis, only a person who has inferred the criteria will saythat a composition ‘showed’ the criteria. Under currentconditions, it is already a feat if a composition has suc-ceeded in signaling to the listener that something waschosen. The audience which understands that somethingwas chosen must hold some image—even if not the com-poser’s image—of a set of alternatives from which thecomposer chose.

Criteria, then, are a matter of discussion, and the dis-cussion must have a context, a time and a space and a cer-tain level of discourse, in which it can take place. Whereelse is such a context to be made if not in a ‘teachingsituation’?

I am aware that education is not a miraculous processcapable by itself of effecting the changes necessary tomove a nation from one epoch to another. Indeed, it istrue that by itself education can do nothing, because thevery fact of being ‘by itself’ (i.e., superimposed on itscontext) nullifies its undeniable power as an instrument ofchange . . . Precisely because education is not the lever forthe transformation of society, we are in danger of despairand of cynicism if we limit our struggle to the classroom.

(Schor and Freire,A Pedagogy for Liberation, 129)

Since the context (the time, the space and especiallythe level of discourse) for the discussion of criteria can-not simply be found, it must be created. The creation ofa context, if not to be thought of as composition, at leastrequires the thinking of a composer.

The purpose of teaching composition , of learningskill in composing, is to prevent squandering good ideasin bad pieces: where the idea is not only wasted in a con-text that doesn’t need it, but is also spoiled for a contextthat might need it.

4. Composing the Performance ofTeaching

If teaching is to be understood as responding to studentsby sharing power and offering alternatives and criteria, acomposer who would teach composition confronts threecompositional problems: formulating alternatives andcriteria, couching the offer and response, and creatingthe context of sharing power. Teaching must then be ap-proached as composition, and the teaching situation isthen a place where the function of teacher overlaps withthe function of composer.

The composing teacher tries to get students to grap-ple with issues which the teaching composer does notoutgrow: the current constitution of ‘I’, the descriptionof the current epoch, and the selection of strategies forI’s confrontation with the epoch.

Composition of performance—composition, that is,taken to be the synthesis, according to socially condi-tioned and society-conditioning preferences, of the con-sequences of a premise established by human (anti-natural) fiat—is an attempt indispensable to the perfor-mance of compositions.

4.1 Environment of Discourse

A composition can assert its distinction, its provocation,its statement only if it is treated as though it wants to bedistinguished, as though it aims to provoke, as though itwishes to make a statement. Listeners (students?) willdistinguish, respond to provocation, and formulate state-ments only if they are treated as though they want to de-scribe, as though they want to respond, as though theywant to formulate.

Ideas are welcome, but they are not what a studentof composition needs from a teacher. The contributionurgently needed from a teacher is increased sensitivity,and sensitivity increases when a distinction is introduced.Distinctions might be introduced with hints, gestures, ex-amples, but not without formulations. The formulationof a distinction establishes a moment of increased free-dom.

Waive the privilege of access to the absolute truth,and a kind of discussion is then possible which wouldnot be possible without waiving the privilege of accessto absolute truth.


The premise of teaching has been that better knowl-edge leads to better actions, that is, to actions chosen af-ter consulting better knowledge as criterion. Teachersknow better than to rely on this premise. Teachers couldbegin to look at the environmental conditions in which aperson will consult better knowledge in choosing actions.

Teaching: when I bring about an environment of dis-course in which those whom I claim to teach learn whatI would have them know. I may not know afterwardswhether I taught, or the environment of discourse taught.

In a social world which responds to the manifestationof desire with contempt, apathy, oblivion, preaching, andderision, a teacher not only asks for the manifestation ofdesire, but also asks for allies in the attack on contempt,apathy, oblivion, preaching, and derision.

If hierarchy is inherent in the teaching situation, thena project for the composing teacher would be to exposeit, to undermine it, to jostle it.

If the concept of composition excludes imitation ofmodels, and models are not to be done away with, thenhow else to treat a model? (Problem for a respondent)“. . . the pupil would have to gather from them thefactthat one must come to grips with all the problems—nothowto.” (Schonberg,Style and Idea)

I construct the consistency which connects the con-sistency of one composer with the consistency of an-other composer. In presenting a composer’s work andviews, I distinguish the consistency of the views investi-gated, written about, presented, from the consistency ofmy viewing the consistencies.

Two teachers:

1. “I have to prepare!”

2. “I have to prepare the first sentence of a class; thefirst sentence has to be composed. From there Ihave to provoke, respond, demonstrate the devel-opment of an idea.”

First statements apply leverage to the level of dis-course.

Carefully chosen first statements can protect the dis-cussion at the outset against the avalanche of agreement.

“The choice is gloomy: conscientious functionary orfree artist, the teacher escapes neither the theater of speechnor the Law played out on its stage: the Law appears notin what is said but in the very fact of speech. In order tosubvert the Law (and not simply get around it), the teacherwould have to undermine voice delivery, word speed, andrhythm to the point of another intelligibility.”

(Barthes, “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers”)

“In the teaching situation, no one should anywherebe in his place.” (Barthes) The fall-back phrases whichoil the usual discourse with unreflected-upon agreementare to be made out of place. Teaching could change thestate of knowledge by changing the state of language,

such that phrases that once allowed one to “get by” nolonger pass unchallenged. One of the performances thatbecomes available when phrases fall under suspicion isthat of catching oneself. If, for example, I am one of theparticipants in a discussion in which we have decided todispense with all phrases that imply faith in objectivity,and unwittingly I begin the next sentence with “It seemsto me. . . ”, and stop, this performance shows the momentin which usage clashes with thought.

I also learned how to give up my power as a teacher (notdelegate it but abrogate it) and how to help my pupils aswell as become someone they could talk with. I learned tolisten to them, to be led by their interests and needs. In turnI became involved in creating things in the classroom—indoing research on myths and numbers, in learning fromthe experience of the students. My students and I resem-bled a community much more than a class, and I enjoyedbeing with them. We worked together in an open environ-ment which often spilled out of the school building into thestreets, the neighborhood, the city itself.

(Kohl, 14)

As teaching situations necessarily involve im-promptu moments, casual conversation, banter, “ice-breaking”, one could let compositional thinking andplayfulness reach into these preludes and postludes togetting down to business.

4.2 Witness

JZ . . . I not only say ‘that’s what I saw’, but ‘given thiscontext, that’s what I saw’, and would call that awitness. I’m checking. Is this what you wanted?

ME I was thinking of situations, for instance, a lecturein which some lecturer has given a presentationand then there’s a question-answer period, and ayoung student raises a hand and asks a questionof the lecturer that perhaps questions one of thepremises of this person’s lecture. Instead of ad-dressing the question, the lecturer will find one ofnumerous ways of saying ‘Yeah yeah, that’s verynice. I’m always glad to get a question like that.Now are there any other questions?’ [laughter] andthis happens so frequently that nobody even findsit funny anymore.

JG It’s not funny. [laughter] I’m laughing but thatdoesn’t mean it’s funny. [laughter]

CW That’s one of Lesley’s tragedies.

SP So in that situation you’re putting what?

ME In that situation what’s missing is someone to wit-ness the interaction between the lecturer and thestudent.

HB Witness would be a whole roomful of lecture atten-dants getting up and leaving upon that.


CW Mm hm.

ME Mm hm.

HB That would be a demonstration of witnesship. Thisis so ridiculous if such a thing happens everybodymust leave. Just go. But it doesn’t happen. Be-cause witnessing does not seem to be an instruc-tion to action. It seems to be an instruction to doc-umentation. It is absorbed by research.

The concept of ‘witness’, as distinguished from‘observer’, ‘spectator’; from ‘advocate’, ‘judge’,‘recorder’, and ‘reporter’, indicates that a personsees, hears, and speaks publicly about what shesees and hears. A witness is called for whena doubt has been raised—publicly—whether anevent has taken place, or not. The concept of wit-ness admits of a variety of motivations, guided,however by the motivation to make public a so-cially functioning statement of what has takenplace.

WB Not that anyone would care but that term has a longhistory that way going back at least to the . . .

SP Which word has a long history to it? Witness?

WB To witness in that capacity. To witness as in togive, to bear testimony to, rather than to witnessas in to passively observe. The witness to an ac-cident does not bear testimony to it. That’s what’sbecoming the law, in the eyes of the law. In thehistory of social protest to witness means indeedto bear testimony to that which occurred, but withthe implication that the testimony which is born isan action rather than simply a relation, a report.

A listenerwill not become a witnesswithout having had one.

The current state of listening—to music and to talk—suffers from lack of witness.

We in music seem to be the only ones who are living inthat impossible world in which unjustified, false belief notonly parades as but is published as knowledge. We havea very serious situation in that regard. Music has becomethe final resting place for all of those hoary psychophysi-cal dualisms such as heart and brain, the cognitive and thesentient. Well, we’re having a problem and that is part ofour problem. The notion of serious discourse about musicis a concern to me not because I have to be concerned es-sentially about the state and fate of discourse, but becauseI’m concerned about the state and fate of music.

(Milton Babbit,Words about Music, 175)

A teacher of composition must be two witnesses:a witness to the student and a witness to what the studentdid.

I learn how to witness what that which I do, does.The fulfillment of a desire has consequences. This idea

is expressed in several fairy tales, but there the moral ofthe story condemns desire—which it equates with over-reaching ambition and acquisitiveness. On the contrary,to favor desire and fulfillment while maintaining criticalscrutiny is what a composer teaches—to support desireso that one may scrutinize the consequences of desiresfulfilled rather than the consequences of obligations met.

Paraphrase is incorrectly assumed to be the mostcredible form of receipt that one has understood—or hasbeen understood. Paraphrase is often accompanied bythe phrase “Do you mean . . . ?”, which shows the re-spondent to be overlooking the fact that a paraphrase is atransformation of the initial statement. Verbatim repeat isunderestimated as a credible receipt. A respondent whochecks by verbatim repeat gives a sign that this respon-dent considers the formulation to be of significance.

Paraphrase has other functions besides conveying afalsely reassuring “I know what you mean”. It can func-tion as correction or refusal. It plays a role in brain-storming, in the attempt to develop an answer to an unan-swered question, where the aspect of transformation isprecisely what is wanted.

To respond with a paraphrase is different from re-sponding with an analogy, so long as analogy is under-stood as the attempt to point at a structure applied in twodistinct systems. The colloquial threat to analogy is “It’slike . . . ”; contrary to this usage, response by analogy em-phasizes the difference between the two systems.

4.3 Criticism, Dismissal, Correction

Dismissal need not result from malice; casual remarksand attempts to compliment easily exhibit the featuresand serve the function of an effective put-down. The aimof the dismissal—intended or not—is to banish a prob-lem, issue, or offer from public discourse, and so denythem a social function.

“All student input needs to be appreciated and re-sponded to: ‘Nice question’, ‘Good point’, ‘Thanks forthe clarification’.” (Thomas Benjamin, “The LearningProcess and Teaching”) Hear, hear! All input needs tobe appreciated and responded to—or: on the contrary, allinput needs to be appreciated and responded to.

Speech is irreversible: a word cannot be retracted, ex-cept precisely by saying one retracts it. To cross out ishere to add: if I want to erase what I have just said, I can-not do it without showing the eraser itself (I must say: ‘orrather . . . ’ ‘I expressed myself badly . . . ’); paradoxicallyit is ephemeral speech which is indelible, not monumentalwriting.

(Barthes, “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers”)

Dismissal wishes to act as such an eraser for theresponded-to.

When a composer has the reputation of being a bad


teacher and yet is known as someone from whom one canlearn, the conflict in reputations could be due to a failureto distinguish between criticism and dismissal, but alsoto the appearance of criticisms among the dismissals.

The word ‘correction’ conceals, under the one notionof static hierarchy, a variety of behaviors: correction ac-cording to the consistency toward which the student wasaiming; correction according to a criterion not yet con-sulted by the student; correction according to a set ofrules to which the student tried to conform; correctionaccording to a set of rules to which the work generallyconforms, unbeknownst to the student; ‘correction’ ac-cording to rules which are appropriate neither to the stu-dent nor to the work.

Implicit invitation by the student affects the gestureof correction:

1. invitation to regard and admire;

2. invitation to check for self-consistency (immanentcritique);

3. invitation to check for consistency with a set ofrules;

4. invitation to brainstorm on continuation of work inprogress;

5. invitation to discuss the desirability of the conse-quences of desired choices.

A teacher can offer alternatives to the invitation as-sumed by the student. Uninvited correction, when notitself an invitation, dismisses an offer.

4.4 Instruction and Orientation

Within the power of the respondent, i.e., among thechoices open to the respondent is the choice to respondby instruction or by orientation. Instruction tells you ex-plicitly what to do. Orientation makes a change in theenvironment according to which you tell yourself whatto do. An instruction would be when I say, “Please, turnup the heat”; you obey or don’t. Orientation would bewhen I hunch my shoulders, rub my arms, breathe on myhands, and shiver, and you, detecting that the tempera-ture of the room makes me uncomfortable and acting onyour sense of hospitality, decide to turn up the heat.

I could instruct a person who wishes to write for thetrumpet to avoid the low range, especially in muted pas-sages, to be sparing of the high range, to make sure thathigh notes are prepared, to take advantage of the trum-pet’s agility, incisive attack, large dynamic range, etc.Or: I could orient a person who wishes to write for thetrumpet to the phenomenon of the trumpet and trumpetplayers. I could invite a trumpet player to meet with us,try out a few exercises, show mutes. The person who

wishes to write for the trumpet could be asked to watchthe player’s neck while high and low notes are attempted,to see what a pianissimo attack looks like, to sit in on arehearsal and watch what the players do when they haveto change mutes, etc.

To give instructions when an orientation would suffice,and to persist with orientation when instruction is needed,both are condescending.

(Humberto Maturana visiting Brun’s seminar)

To show an alternative orients a respondent tochoose.

To offer several instructions can function as orienta-tion. (Alternative instructions, or a compound or constel-lation of instructions)

4.5 Gesture

Gestures of scolding,warning,holdingforth,reminding,teasing, indicting, bantering,looking askance,confiding,confessing,prescribing,pleading,

Gesture: not to ‘do’, but to ‘perform’. Sullivan’sdescription of gesture as a hybrid medium wherein onemedium borrows distinctions from another, could be ap-plied to the performance of teaching.

To be able to imagine and perform, with attentionto voice, vocabulary, and gesture, the most insidious ofslanderers and flatterers.

If all teaching is also a performance (and not the otherway around), then when does a performance teach? For aperformance to succeed in entertaining is not sufficient—most successful entertainments confirm only the alreadybelieved, and stave off reflection. Neither will an un-entertaining performance suffice. One requirement mostlikely is that the performance include an element of self-reference.

Gestures of being astonished,calling a bluff,conceding a point,bragging, boasting,burlesquing . . .

Giving advice grates for want of variety of gesture.To be able to imagine and perform, with attention

to voice, vocabulary, and gesture, the most insidious ofslanderers and flatterers could help to remove hope fromits favored status as criterion for making decisions.


It is in the power of the respondent to disregard thegesture with which a remark is made, by taking it at itsword—that is, responding to the sentence as though itwere spoken within another gesture. In this way an at-tempt at dismissal by sarcasm, taken as a proposal, canbecome unexpectedly a contribution.

“Showing a painting of a white area [I said] ‘MasterKandinsky, I have finally succeeded in painting an absolutepicture of absolutely nothing.’ Kandinsky took my picturecompletely seriously. He set it up right in front of us andsaid: ‘The dimensions of the picture are right. You are aim-ing for earthliness. The earthly color is red. Why did youchoose white?’ I replied ‘because the white plane repre-sents nothingness.’ ‘Nothingness is a great ideal,’ Kandin-sky said. ‘God created the world from nothingness.’ Hetook brush and paint, set down on the white plane a red,a yellow, and a blue spot and glazed on a bright greenshadow by the side. Suddenly a picture was there, a properpicture, a magnificent picture.”

(A student of Kandinsky, quoted in Frank Whitford,Bauhaus, 98)

. . . disputing,bemoaning,mocking,exhorting,venturing a suggestion, harping on something,applauding,shutting up,commiserating . . .

Suggestion for a director—also appropriate for ateacher?—create a distinct style of address for each actor,for each student: speed, humor, level of friction, in-joke,goal, vocabulary, tones of voice, gestures.

4.6 The Performance of Being a Student

“Lessons, then, where advanced students of compositionare concerned, should be in the nature of friendly discus-sions illustrated if necessary by master and pupil with rele-vant quotations from the works of composers of excellenceof all periods, and the pupil should state clearly what hisdifficulties and problems are . . . A pupil who puts his workin front of his master and then sits like an oyster, mum anddull, is really more of a cross than one who is too talkative,severe trial though the latter can be.”

(Jacob, 6)

And if a pupil does not, or can not, or will not stateclearly what the difficulties and problems are?

Five initial poses of a student meeting a teacher:

1. tolerant (knowing it all)

2. reveling in contrariness

3. unable to begin, not knowing how to choose, stuck

4. secure, but interested, that is, not completely se-cure

5. playing by the rules rather than playing along:obedient

Two contemporary performances of being a student:(1) the student knows it already, and therefore it is oflittle interest; (2) the student is not interested in it, andtherefore knows it already. How to perform facing sucha performance?

“In an open situation the teacher tries . . . to deal witheach situation as a communal problem.”

(Kohl, 16)

4.7 Question

Sometimes an offered question is sufficient impetus forthose who have learned the question to supply the in-sights necessary to invent answers. Sometimes an of-fered question conveys the sufficient insight for thosewho know the question to invent answers.

If the teacher poses legitimate questions (that is,questions to which the answers are not known by theteacher), then the teacher and student are, or become—vis-a-vis the question—colleagues.

1. The teacher addresses problems of the studentwhich the teacher has already mastered (‘Illegiti-mate questions’).

2. The teacher’s mastery of approach emerges whileoffering the student a problem which the teacherhas not mastered (‘Legitimate questions’). Inthis instance the teacher shares power, but not di-rectly with the student; rather indirectly throughthe problem.

Socrates’ every response is a question. Most of thequestions are placed as open moments within a chain ofargumentation, wherein he seeks assent to those com-ponents of the argument which he thinks unlikely to becontested. Since the initial assertion of his conversationpartner is contradicted by the culmination of concededpoints, Socrates’ process of questioning appears not to‘make an argument of his own’ but to dismantle the ar-gument of his partner in conversation.

Socrates satirizes his conversation-partners’ assump-tion of reductionist logic: that the whole argument (towhich Socrates’ addressees disagree) is the sum of itsparts (to each of which his addressees almost cannot butagree). Since they agreed to the parts, they swallow thewhole.

A question and the way it is asked lead a respondentby pointing at a range of answers it considers admissible.The respondent need not remain in thrall to the question’srange of admissible answers.


4.8 Assignment

ME . . . You said you would want to find out a lot of dif-ferent things about this student, where this personhad been, what they were thinking of, and whatthey wanted to do. What would you do with thatdescription of the student?

JG Make an assignment.

ME Hm.

SP Hm.

HB That’s what it’s for.

Josephus comes up with ideas for fulfillments of assign-ments not given by Aloysius; that is, both Aloysius andJosephus are busy generating assignments.

(Fux,Gradus ad Parnassum, 29ff, for example)

Formulate an assignment such that it creates a con-text in which a student wants you to teach. Let the as-signment create the context.

4.9 Face to Face

A composer is most likely to consult another when feel-ing stuck on a problem, at an impasse (thus the dispar-agement of composition teaching as ‘therapy’). Since thecompositional problem is concocted by the composer, anoutsider might be puzzled that the composer doesn’t de-cide to drop it and move to some other. The puzzledoutsider would be missing several points: that a stuckmoment might be a sign of potential breakthrough; thatit is the difficulty of the posed problem that is seductive;that the posed problem is likely of interest for its links toa problem not posed by the composer; and that the im-passe might derive from a lack of problem: the composermight be mistakenly inspecting the ideas that are there inthe posed problem instead of looking for an additionalidea which is not there.

4.10 Vocabulary

Artists use and hear jargon terms of which understand-ing is assumed precisely because the terms are jargon.Upon examination, often the assumption is seen to beunfounded, if not also the confidence in the usefulness ofthe terms.

Some terms which have acquired a precise technicalmeaning serve the development of thinking about com-posing (and thus also of composing) when these termsare temporarily uncoupled from their technical meaning.

In the performance of teaching, a decision is to bemade regarding vocabulary: whether to renew the vo-cabulary of discourse frequently, rapidly changing the

images referred to in discussing a problem or to intro-duce and explore a few terms so that a shared vocabularycan become the means for generating new ideas—fromwhich a usage develops.

“After three or four years of working together, we havedeveloped a shared vocabulary which allows explorations,conjectures, and formulations to be discussed on a highlevel. Then new people come in and don’t know whatwe’re talking about.”

(Gaburo in a conversation)

The generation of an enclave affords one the luxuryof such problems.

4.11 Sharing Power

Those who contemplate pedagogy assume a dichotomy:either encouragement through ‘being nice’, positivestatements, rewards, etc., or encouragement through be-ing ‘tough’, enforcing discipline, administering punish-ment. If contemplation of pedagogy were coupled withcritical observation of the (discouraging) social environ-ment against which teaching labors, then both policieswould be seen as standing among the generators of dis-couragement.

“One of the basic elements of the relationship betweenoppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescrip-tion represents the imposition of one man’s choice uponanother, transforming the consciousness of the man pre-scribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s con-sciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a pre-scribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines ofthe oppressor . . . pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogywhich must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whetherpeoples or individuals) in the incessant struggle to regaintheir humanity . . . How can the oppressed, as divided, in-authentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy oftheir liberation?”

(Freire,Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 31)

“I learn by teaching.” (Thomas Benjamin, On Teach-ing Composition) Lacking committed stress, this sen-tence would convey the unintended message that you(and everyone but I) don’t learn by teaching. Use of thethird-person I (Brun)—‘I learns by teaching’—could fer-ret out an insight about learning: that everyone who says‘I’ learns by teaching, including students.

“In order to elicit the current self-description of a sys-tem I wish to understand, I have to grant it the power of therespondent.”

(Brun,My Words and Where I Want Them, 111)

The teacher is a respondent; the student is a respon-dent; the phenomenology of these two respondents de-pends, in part, on whether the teaching situation is treatedas a one-way medium, a two-way medium, or a more-than-two-way medium.


5. What Do I Teach such that ITeach Composition?

The question “what do I teach?” points at the not-yet-known alternatives and not-yet-consulted criteria whichthe teacher would like to present to, or investigate with,students. Under the image of teaching I would like tosupport, however, these alternatives and criteria formonly part of the subject matter. The other part is to bederived from the teaching situation: who is present, whathas been brought; local trends, hot topics, and simmeringcontroversies.

For the situation to be a teaching situation theparticipants—students and teachers—must attempt toconnect the subject matter which they constitute with thetitle under which they meet.

The following list of answers to the question “whatdo I teach such that I teach composition?” represents anetwork of ways to approach, work on, think about whatI have learned to call—and currently prefer to call—composition.

What do I teach?The desirability of . . .

Fear of. . .Aversion to. . .The abundance of. . .Preference for. . .To ask when. . .The difference between. . .The dialectics of. . .The ability to discern between. . .The necessity of . . .Attention to. . .

The desirability of coming up with an idea whichrequires the medium chosen, the structure chosen;the requirements of an idea.

Experience with the technique of ‘brainstorming’ illus-trates how widespread is the ability to come up with ideas.Scarcity is introduced by qualifications: new ideas, reallynew ideas, good ideas, very good ideas, lots of ideas, theright idea. Thus the problem is not having ideas but havingan idea of what to do with ideas such that they play a role,fulfill a need or desire, solve a problem.

The composer asks questions of the initial idea and the pro-posed medium regarding the traces which the idea requiresto have left and the traces which the medium is capable ofpreserving. (Sullivan, “The Performance of Gesture”))

In the process of composing, the idea acts as a pretext. Thecomposer forms a web of consistencies around this idea,which becomes a pretext for the statement that emerges.That a respondent may later discover this idea and attachsignificance to it, does not deny that the idea was a pretextfor the composition and statement which emerged from it.

In the notes on the first production of the lehrstuckTheMother, Brecht says of the set that only those props wereused without which the play could not happen.

“ . . . the stage . . . was not meant to simulate an actuallocality. Instead the stage itself assumed a position, as itwere, in regard to the events: it quoted, recounted, antic-ipated, and reminded. With its sparse indications of fur-niture, doors and the like, it was kept to the objects thatplayed a role; objects, that is, which, were they missing,would require the action to proceed differently or not atall.”

(Brecht, performance notes forThe Mother, 133–4)

The purpose of teaching composition, of learning skill incomposing, is to prevent squandering good ideas in badpieces: where the idea is not only wasted in a context thatdoesn’t need it, but is also spoiled for a context that mightneed it.

“A compositional method exists to write pieces. It is notsacred, and when the piece has reached through applicationof the method a sufficient degree of completeness, it willbegin to assert its own rights and needs. These may oftenseem to contradict the original method or call for changesin the work’s design. Do not hesitate when such a situationarises. If the method has served long enough to allow thework it has produced to contradict it, it has more than ful-filled its function.”

(Wuorinen,Simple Composition, 164)

This paragraph could have been the first of a book whichwould bracket the notion of method, and change it frombeing the tool for making acceptable products efficiently,to being a probe where the method is half object of interestand half pretext for serendipity. (Composition as plannedserendipity.)

The synthesizer teaches a readiness for ready-mades. Thecounter move will have to be made by composers, whetherby turning away from the synthesizer, or subverting thesynthesizer, or thinking of an idea which requires the syn-thesizer.

Fear of the decay of information

I distinguish between tendencies which can be avoided,which must be ‘guarded against’, which can only be re-tarded.That which I can avoid will not happen unless I do it.That which I must guard against will visit uninvited unlessI take precautions.That which takes its course sooner or later according towhat we currently know as laws of nature, namely: decay,as in “decay of information” (Shannon and Weaver), canonly be retarded. (Brun)

Facing the one-way inexorable process of the decay ofinformation, I am loath to try to exhaust all the possibilitiesof an idea.

A teacher’s response to a student’s work in progresscould point out repeats, constancies, and periodicities(which speed the loss of information) that the student over-looked.

In some cases, a drone-like constancy results from toolittle redundancy.


Variations on ‘simple’:A listener apprehends components without yet compre-hending the arrangement.A listener perceives the simplicity of an arrangement onwhich complexity has been conferred by complex compo-nents.A listener is subjected to a simple arrangement of simplecomponents (leaving open only the question of why it wasdone).

Ongoing projects:composition of prose: prevention of metercomposition of atonality: prevention of tonalitycomposition of dramaturgy: prevention of drone.

Instruments and instrumental combinations are subjectto the dynamics of decay. They have heydays, becomeused up, suffer entire epochs in which their social functionrenders them untouchable, even when a compositional ideacalls for them. The pipe organ, for example, still resists allattempts to disentangle it from the church.

A person who would compose expects, correctly, thatthis person’s first act as composer would confront the per-son as an interesting and admirable stranger. The person is,however, incorrectly preoccupied with inherited standardsof interest and admirability, and neglects the technical re-quirements of estrangement.

The subjection of an initially interesting idea to in-versions, reversals, disguises, twists, deletions, exagger-ations, condensations,—focusing on the hitherto taken-for-granted, specifying what has hitherto been left toaccident—such that it is no longer interesting in the wayit was initially, opens the possibility that it could becomeinteresting.

Aversion to imitation.The ideology which presumes the uniqueness of the in-

dividual hinders the teaching of composition. (The patternof the presumption: “Every person is unique. Thereforeevery product of that person’s activity is unique.” A varia-tion on this ideology assumes that nothing new, original, orunique is ever to be expected or desired.) The thought thatmakes uniqueness into a problem which requires experi-mentation and construction, and risks error and failure—this thought helps create a social context wherein compo-sition is needed. Thus technique can be judged accordingto its adequacy in meeting the criterion of distinguishabil-ity.

Good improvisers panic at the claustrophobia inducedby the repertory under the fingertips; the sensitivity re-mains a reflex, in contrast to a composer, who reflects onthe claustrophobia-inducing situation and thus can chooseto preserve the moment panic, or discard it in favor of an-other situation, or disguise it as a deliberate set-up and soinvite witnesses to the situation rather than spectators ofthe improviser’s predicament.

Contributing to a general attempt: I make my predeces-sor my ally. Respect for the composer to whom I wish topay homage rules out imitation; on the contrary, it requiresthe distinctness of my offer, temporarily linked to the otherby the description of a shared attempt.

The abundance of unintended messages; protectionagainst unintended messages.

A composer follows a line of thought in realizing anidea. In concentrating on the line of thought, the composer

might neglect to foresee the undesirable interpretations towhich the work is prey. A teacher can orient a student tothe negative thinking necessary for taking protective mea-sures. Better that the piece remain an unsolved puzzle thanleave itself open to unwanted easy understanding.

Choose such consistencies as will help a witness defendthe composition against its unintended messages.

Find the threshold between 1) a structure which has ac-cumulated a history of meanings and can still be alienatedfrom its accumulated history of meanings in the creationof a new meaning; and 2) a structure which has accumu-lated a history of meanings and can no longer admit newmeanings.

“ . . . this return of the tabooed should not take the formof a harking back to unproblematic categories and solu-tions; rather, what may legitimately return are past prob-lems.”

(Adorno,Aesthetic Theory, 53–4)

To compose a consistency which is inconsistent with allmessages unwanted by the composer opens the possibilitythat even unintended messages might become wanted.

Preference for creating the illusion of something, theeffect of something, over the reproduction of the realthing.

Compositions partake of the power of the respondentin the nesting of events which can be spoken of as ‘ref-erences’. The reference names the statement or event towhich the composition responds.

Contrary to common practice, however, ‘reference’need not mean ‘quotation’. Instead of lifting directly fromthat to which it responds, a composition could quote itselfin the name of the other.

The antagonism of composition toward facts suggeststhat quotation be turned to reluctantly. A more sophisti-cated procedure would be to invent one’s quotations. Inthe process one might identify what it was in the struc-ture of the quoted which prompted one initially to quote it.Since quotation links the present work to the context whichoriginally gave the quoted item meaning, the variety of thequoted and its original context drowns out the quality onewanted to emphasize in quoting it.

Two assumptions made regarding the practice of quot-ing: (1) that the item (and not its context) generated themeaning apparently conveyed by the item; (2) that thequoted item somehow acts as a representative of the con-text it came from.

To ask whenrepetition is not repetitionactivity becomes stasisa step is seen to have been a leapa simple process yields a complex resulta small change gives rise to a large change.

“Consistent and nothing but” (Adorno) describes frac-tals and the delusion that they are the meeting place of sci-ence and art. Likewise symmetry, since it can integrateanything into an aesthetic whole, meets no resistance andtherefore accomplishes nothing.

Technique: Learn technique as a solution to a particu-lar problem, but also as a solution of a set of problems, towhich, through an act of creation, a problem can be added,thus requiring a change of the technique, and contributingto its evolution.


Ambiguity: when an element is understood as capableof functioning in more than one consistency. ‘Clarifica-tion’ of an ambiguity: when the functions suggested byan ambiguity are reflected unambiguously elsewhere, thusconnecting the several possible consistencies in one con-sistency.

The difference between element and function, and inter-est in preserving the identity of an element under changeof function.

Function: what an element does in the system whichgives it a function. (In a tonal piece, an F# might be anelement; surrounded by a D and an A the F# might func-tion as the third of a triad; within a harmonic progressionthe triad might function as dominant and the F# functionas leading tone.)

Preserving an element under change of function: the el-ement F#, having functioned as the third of a D major triadand as a leading tone in G, becomes surrounded by a D anda B, in the company of which it now functions as the 5th ofa b minor triad: the pitch is preserved; the function givenit by the harmony changes.

A function might be treated as an element which canpreserve its identity and acquire other functions.

The aversion to ornament might be temporarily sus-pended when the composer hits on an idea which givesto an ostensible ornament a structural function required bythe whole in formation.

The ability to discern between the significance of anevent for a composed system and the significance of anevent for perception.

A compositional idea might call for 20 gradations of anattribute where perception can barely discern 20; a com-positional idea might call for 20 gradations of an attributewhere perception can discern 5 or 6.

A transposition of a pitch might also transpose its tim-bre.

Two notations of one sequence of durations might eachcall forth from a performer a distinct performance.

Sophistication in teaching composition would includesophistication of insight into perception. Aside from thesometimes surprising ability to ‘learn’ new psychoacousti-cal boundaries, ambiguities arise in the boundary between‘just noticeable difference’ and significant difference.

One index of such changes is the attribution of unplaya-bility to a piece of music. Compositions once declared un-playable are now included in instrumental repertoire.

The dialectics of significance: when an increase inthe number of alternatives increases, and when it de-creases, the significance of a choice.

If a piece for piano is inadvertently confined to the mid-dle registers, then a reminder of the possibility of high andlow increases the significance of the time during which thepiece stays in the middle. The middle register appears cho-sen; the piece performs confinement to the middle ratherthan simply being it.

Instances in which an increase of the number of alterna-tives flips from raising the level of significance over to low-ering the level of significance: the expansion of possibil-ities for rapid modulation allowed by the diminished sev-enth chord; change in the significance of dynamic changeswhen each note has a new dynamic marking; the entranceof the second voice as opposed to the entrance of the thirdvoice as opposed to the entrance of the sixth voice.

The necessity of having something preserve its iden-tity so that change may be known (to have change theremust be something which undergoes change)—the ne-cessity of a carrier for modulation.

‘Having something . . . ’ could mean something imme-diately recognized, or something conjectured, imputed, in-ferred, pieced together, discovered, revised . . . in each casesome of the features of the ‘something’ are to remain con-stant in order for it to show change.

Attention to dramaturgy, emphasis, upbeat anddownbeat, speech behavior, gesture . . .

Here the list of answers breaks off; the question“what do I teach such that I teach composition” is oneof the open questions, that is, questions which remainlegitimate even after having been answered.

6. Compositions that Teach: OpenForm

6.1 ‘Open’ and ‘Didactic’

There exist pieces about which it is said that they werecomposed for didactic purposes. Those pieces remainof interest to the extent that the pieces exceed didacticpurposes, or to the extent that the pieces dignify didacticpurposes (against the pejorative sense given to ‘didac-tic’), or to the extent that the pieces and didacticism areat cross-purposes.

Instances: The books of preludes and fugues byBach,Die Kunst der Fuge; Chopin Etudes and Preludes;Debussy Etudes—but with ‘etudes’, ‘studies’, the ques-tion arises whether these are studies for their composers,or studies for their students? Etude books for instrumen-talists could, while ostensibly posing problems for play-ing technique, also address problems of composition.

Bartok and Ravel took the assignment to write easy-to-play pieces as an opportunity to create effects theywould not have been able to achieve without this con-straint. Ravel’sMother Goose Suitecould almost be con-sidered didactic in two directions, in that one could learnfrom inexperienced pianists the potential for expressive-ness of “non-expressive” playing technique.

The first of Debussy’s Etudes distances itself frompedagogy with the rhythmic and harmonic pranks it playson the Czerny five-finger exercise. In literature, Que-neau’sExercises de Styleshows what happens when ananecdote is told ninety-nine times, each time with a dis-tinct rhetorical or narrative style. One would not studythis work in order to master the ninety-nine styles; ratherone would study the composition of its way of callinginto question the importance of plot to narration.

Brecht’s lehrstucke are examples of compositionswhich show alternatives and criteria. Brecht attempted in


these “teaching pieces” to show an unresolved dilemmain a context of descriptions of the dilemma which couldmake it appear as a solvable problem.

Brecht, after all . . . wished not to dispense words of wis-dom and pithy slogans, but to activate thought processes inthe audience . . . Brecht’s attempts to kill subjective nu-ances with the aid of a blunt instrument, and to do so con-ceptually as well, are technical means of his art. In his bestworks, they are a principle of stylization, far removed fromany pedagogical fabula docet [the story teaches].

(Adorno,Aesthetic Theory, 47)

There exist pieces about which it is said that theirform or structure is “open”.

Usage varies.Some have used the term in the attempt to distinguish

compositional experiments in variability of form.“Aleatorio can be played several times in succession,

provided that the interpreters change the character of par-ticular parts . . . These possibilities for change are notchance—they present only a field of possibilities—andask of the interpreters to make an arrangement of them.Aleatorio is an open composition. . . ”

(Evangelisti, performance notes forAleatorio)

“For many listeners one of the clear experiences of ascore of this kind . . . [is that] there is a definite perceptionthat this structure is only one of a constellation of possiblestructures.”

(Fuller, 187)

“This search for ‘suggestiveness’ is a deliberate moveto ‘open’ the work to the free response of the addressee.”

(Eco,The Role of the Reader, 53)

“Today’s artists would rather do away with unity alto-gether, producing open, unfinished works, or so they think.The problem is that in planning openness they necessarilyimpart another kind of unity unbeknown to themselves.”

(Adorno,Aesthetic Theory, 204))

Some have responded to the fact that many of thedescriptions which purport to distinguish open works ap-ply to other works as well. Two strategies are adoptedin these responses. One strategy is to retain the distinc-tion open/closed, and introduce a new formulation of thedistinction.

“For musicians the term ‘open structure’ has curiousand rather limiting connotations. It has been associated al-most exclusively with various random procedures of com-position, the use of which may, in fact, just as readily yielda closed structure as an open one. In its most characteris-tic manifestation, the open work seems to be one in whichperception replaces object. In other words, the focus of theopen composition seems to be not so much upon the objectof perception but rather upon the process of perception . . .form becomes a model of the self as it first encounters theworld . . . ”

(Delio, Circumscribing the Open Universe, 2)

“What I call open texts, are, rather, reducing . . . indeter-minacy, whereas closed texts, even though aiming at elicit-ing a sort of ‘obedient’ cooperation, are in the last analysis

randomly open to every pragmatic accident.”(Eco 7))

“The sonata movement of Viennese classicism was aclosed form despite its dynamic quality, and no matterhow precarious the closure might have been. By contrast,the rondo, with its deliberate vagueness and oscillation be-tween refrain and ‘couplets’, is a decidedly open form.”

(AdornoAesthetic Theory, 314))

The other strategy is to is to admit that all works areopen, and retain the distinction as one of degree ratherthan kind.

What you [G. M. Koenig] said now about the score—in some sense all scores are open. I would subscribe to itcompletely. It’s a question of degree then. Something likeVariations II or Variations Iof Cage is open in a way thatDebussy’sJeuxis not. And yet both of them are still openin the sense that they’re waiting for some kind of realiza-tion which we know will vary depending on who does it,how they interpret it and so forth. So there’s always somemargin of openness in any text before it is rendered intosound.”

(Christian Wolff, quoted in Fuller, panel discusssion)

“So called open texts are only the extreme and mostprovocative exploitation—for poetic purposes—of a prin-ciple which rules both the generation and the interpretationof texts in general.”

(Eco)

“Every work of art, even though it is produced by fol-lowing an explicit or implicit poetics of necessity, is effec-tively open to a virtually unlimited range of possible read-ings, each of which causes the work to acquire new vitalityin terms of one particular taste, or perspective, or personalperformance.”

(Eco)

“A work of art therefore, is a complete and closed formin its uniqueness as a balanced organic whole, while at thesame time constituting an open product on account of itssusceptibility to countless different interpretations whichdo not impinge on its unadulterable specificity. Hence, ev-ery reception of a work of art is both an interpretations anda performance of it, because in every reception the worktakes on a fresh perspective for itself.”

(Eco)

The controversy over when to call a work ‘open’ and‘indeterminate’ has survived several versions of an answerwhich should have settled it.

(Eco, Brun)

“Every score is determinate and specific in that it de-fines the finite set of questions to which it offers answers.”

(Brun,My Words and Where I Want Them)

open form, open structure,open ended,open society,open book,open classroom,opening,


gala opening,opening to democracy,open door, open air, open field,open spaces,open-and-shut case,open mind,open face,open heart, open person, open wound:the word ‘open’ has a rich contextual history.

There exist pieces about which it is said that theopenness of their forms links them to didactic purposes.

“This music is drawn from the interaction of the peo-ple playing it. It requires for its performance independentself-discipline (unpoliced by a score defining fixed rela-tionships and timings) and a capacity and special alertnessfor responding to what one’s fellow performers are doing,the sounds they are making or changing and their silences.The responding can be variously deliberate (there is timeand you are free) or must be quick and sudden (there areprecise requirements which appear unpredictably). . . In themeantime others pointed out the pedagogical character ofthis activity and some social implications (for instance, akind of democratic interdependence).”

(Wolff, liner notes the Opus One recording ofFor 1, 2,or 3 Peopleby the Percussion Group of Cincinnati)

“The one merit of such a purely formal score [Cage’sVariations I] is that it releases the initiative of theperformer—it gives participation in the act of compositionand hence a genuinely educative experience.”

(Cardew 37)

“ . . . the score and its requirements for making this mu-sic is such that anyone seriously wishing to, whether or notmusically trained or professional, can read and use it; themusic might be an incentive to do that, that is, to make oflisteners performers.”

(Wolff)

“Brecht’s plays also end in a situation of ambiguity . . .the specific concreteness of an ambiguity in social inter-course, a conflict of unresolved problems taxing the inge-nuity of the playwright, actors and audience alike. Here thework is ‘open’ in the same sense that a debate is ‘open’. Asolution is seen as desirable and is actually anticipated, butit must come from the collective enterprise of the audience.In this case the ‘openness’ is converted into an instrumentof revolutionary pedagogics.”

(Eco 55)

The ‘open form’ score offers alternatives; the per-former must appoint the criteria—however the mannerin which the open-form work offers alternatives may in-vite the performer to draw distinctions which could thenbecome criteria.

An exception is Cage’sVariations II, which asks thatthe performer put those questions which may arise into aform such that they can be answered by the ‘score’ (mea-surements of the distances of five points to six lines).This instruction would indicate that the score provides asort of generalized set of criteria (an oracle) for choosing

among alternatives which the performer must generate.The difference between a row and an oracle is the

placement of artifice.Boulez promotes the idea of the deliberately self-

taught composer.From whom does the self-taught composer learn?From himself. Herself.From what does the self-taught composer learn?From compositions.Under what circumstances would one learn from a com-position?When one asks it questions.Is that all?When the composition offers alternatives.And?And criteria.

The ability of an audience member to elevate the mereexistence of hearing to a level of listening, must come froma desire to do so. If composers prefer an audience educatedto listen, composers must assist in that educational processby composing works which help bridge the gap betweenhearing and listening. It seems self-evident that a signifi-cant percentage of music does not promote listening at all.

(Udow)

Every composition bridges a gap between some hear-ing and its listening. A composition can help teacherswho are capable of listening to raise the desire of studentsfor the listening which that composition promotes. Acomposer would assist this process by composing workswhich offer a gap to be bridged.

(A distinction between hearing and listening: the lis-tener’s awareness of what the listener’s language does towhat is heard.)

“An author who teaches writers nothing, teaches no one.What matters therefore is the exemplary character of pro-duction, which is able first to induce other producers toproduce, and second to put an improved apparatus at theirdisposal. And this apparatus is better the more consumersit is able to turn into producers, that is, readers or specta-tors into collaborators.”

(Walter Benjamin,The Author as Producer, 233)

One learns from the ‘closedness’ of a good composi-tion. One observes how its ambiguities are pinned downon both sides by consistencies. One observes how thatwhich we know from inherited aesthetics to be wrong,bad, risky, tasteless, ugly, weak, unheard-of is nested insuch a context as makes it a necessary consequence of aquasi-axiomatic construction.

The difference between the composer as teacher andthe composition as teacher is that the composer beginswith the power of a respondent; the composition beginsbereft of this power—which it acquires only through an‘as-if’: it is treated as if it had the power of response byits respondent.

If a composition is new and experimental, it is pos-


sible that the performer of such a piece undertakes ac-tions the significance of which the performer does notyet know.

Is the composition then to be thought of as incapableof showing? No, but the composition, in order to realizeits potential for showing, relies on the presence of some-one speaking up for it: a respondent.

The desire to open possibilities is haunted by the ten-dency to exhaust all possibilities. The opening of possi-bilities risks usurping possibilities; thus ‘openness’ and‘exhaustive’ must be faked in order to function as pointerrather than as usurper.

What von Foerster says about the concept of informa-tion reflected in the use of ‘audio-visual aids’ in teachingcould also apply to the presentation of a composition, forpedagogical purposes or not.

We only have to perceive lectures, books, slides andfilms, etc., not as information but as vehicles for poten-tial information. Then we shall see that in giving lectures,writing books, showing slides and films, etc., we have notsolved a problem, we just created one, namely, to find inwhich context can these things be seen so that they createin their perceivers new insights, thoughts, and actions.

(von Foerster, “The Perception of the Future and theFuture of Perception”, 91)

6.2 Obedience

The performers who have decided to perform a piecewhich explicitly asks them to take initiative and makedecisions do what they are told. One shouldn’t be sur-prised if the conscientious performers, having been toldto take initiative and make decisions, attempt to second-guess the decisions the composer would have made.

Let’s go back toVariations I (1958) which I regard asa key work in Cage’s output. UnlikeCheap Imitation, thescore ofVariations Iemphasizes the total interdependenceof all the attributes of sound. Transparent sheets of linesand dots make up the score. The dots (sound events) areread in relation to a number of lines representing variousaspects of sounds . . . The one merit of such a purely for-mal score is that it releases the initiative of the performer—it gives participation in the act of composition and hencea genuinely educative experience. In the balance on theother side is the total indifference (implicitly representedby such a formalistic score) to the seriousness of the worldsituation in which it occurs. Can that one merit tip thescales?

(Cardew, 37)

The gesture with which an assignment is givenprompts the respondent in the way to receive the assign-ment. (The respondent, though, retains the power to fol-low the prompting or not.) Many works which have madeexplicit that they are giving an assignment to the per-former, do so by attaching the word ‘any’. Though ‘any’seems at first to be a generous offer; soon the absenceof constraint or preference can be detected to represent a

withholding of potential criteria, and a withdrawal fromdialogue by the dialogue partner. An astronomical num-ber of alternatives with few limiting criteria brings onparalysis or obedience. The history of new, experimentalcompositions that have been treated by performers withresentful obedience is well known. Under what circum-stances would I say that the piece elicited resentful obe-dience?

The reason for that multiplicity is that you would notthen be able to exercise choice. If you’re making eighty-eight loops, very quickly you get uninterested in what it isyou are doing.

(John Cage, quoted in Kostelanetz, 118)

The mix of instruction and orientation peculiar to ascore, meeting the requirements for mix of instructionand orientation peculiar to a player, determines, in part,the kind of initiative the score is able to elicit.

Some would say that that was a lot of trouble to gothrough just to get at some cookies. And it was. Otherswould say that that was just some trick to take up spacewith something other than cookies. And it probably was.Yet others would say that I was the very sucker for whichthat was designed. And I am. There is another view. I seethe care with which the packaging was done as an invita-tion to enjoy what I found there, to take this perhaps firstchance the whole day to unravel something, to speculateon the kind of person who might have designed that pack-aging of those contents, to do almost anything but gobbleup the contents

(HarlockVerkade: 1969, 2)

I can imagine a context in which to utter the word‘any’ has a liberating effect, and I can imagine a con-text in which to utter the word ‘any’ discourages, disap-points, provokes resentment. It is hoped that a performerof a score which uses the word ‘any’ feels called uponto compose, in that it is up to the performer to create thecontext wherein the word ‘any’ has a liberating effect,since the composer did not.

If I emphasize ‘you may’, I point to a backdrop ofexpectations which assumes ‘you may not’ (I dare not?).

Eco shows the corollary, that works which aim at“eliciting a sort of ‘obedient’ cooperation”, which herefers to as ‘closed’, are the ones most ‘open’ to inter-pretation.

Open form scores rarely distinguish between instruc-tion, invitation, and assignment.

Open-form orchestral works show the current con-tradiction between the concert situation and the teachingsituation in that these works require the technical accom-plishment of a top-notch professional orchestra whosemembers have the spirit of adventure of a group of stu-dents.


6.3 A Composition’s Assignment

The openness of a work of art can be taken by a respon-dent as that work’s assignment.

The pieces composed under the assignment: Openform! began to make explicit the possibility that a workof art (with its degree and kind of openness) could beaccepted by its respondents as an assignment. Its re-spondents (listener and performer) are asked to imagina-tively reconstruct the alternatives from which the com-poser chose and the criteria consulted while choosing.The respondent might in some cases possess more thanone imaginative reconstruction, and thus be able to exer-cise choice of interpretation.

A composition’s assignment to a listener is differentfrom the composition’s assignment to a performer inso-far as listener and performer exist in differing situationsin which to try out their constructions.

The idea of versions relies on hearing the variedagainst the repeat: varied repeat. The first condition ofsignificant alteration is the declaration by the ‘altered’ ofits antecedent (though error, doubt, change of mind, illu-sion may be involved in the declaration).

That which Evangelisti asks explicitly of the playersof Aleatoriofor string quartet—that they agree on a ver-sion among the numerous possible versions, and that ifthe piece is done more than once on a program, each per-formance should be a distinct version—this is an assign-ment ideally given by every piece. Chamber music posesproblems of group decision-making. What distinguishesa piece in this respect is its degrees and kinds of variabil-ity. In the case ofAleatorio, for instance, the assortmentof alternate playing techniques and ossiae provide toolswith which to tackle one of the main problems posed bythe piece: the problem of giving a distinct “character” toeach of the three sections.

“In other words the author offers the interpreter, the per-former, the addressee a work to be completed.”

(Eco 62)

The respondent who takes up an assignment may beinterested in the assignment for reasons other than thoseof the respondent who gave the assignment.

When does the assignment given by a work requirecomposition to fulfill it?(When is an assignment a composition assignment?)

6.4 Desired Consequences II

Occasionally one hears musicians report about the re-hearsing of a piece in which they had no initial interestthat they were beginning to “hear things”, which theyhadn’t expected to find in the piece. Such reports hintat the significance of the situation of rehearsal for thepossibility of letting a composition have a function akin

to teaching. The tradition of open rehearsal retains apromise of the bridging of the gap between the concertsituation and the teaching situation.

Missing from both the musician’s rehearsal and thelistener’s rehearsal is a forum for speaking about theperceptions and connections which the rehearsal situa-tion made possible. Conversation—as yet—rarely in-vites pursuing in detail what were the “things” that themusician took such pleasure in hearing.

“To compose, at least by propensity, is to give to do, notto give to hear but to give to write. The modern locationfor music is not the concert hall, but the stage on which themusicians pass, in what is often a dazzling display, fromone source of sound to another. It is we who are playing,though still it is true by proxy; but one can imagine theconcert—later on?—as exclusively a workshop . . . whereall the musical art is absorbed in a praxis . . . Such is theutopia that a certain Beethoven, who is not played, teachesus to formulate—which is why it is possible now to feel inhim a musician with a future.”

(Barthes, “Musica Practica”)

The workshop-concert would have to have those as-pects of a class that allow the sustaining of an environ-ment of discourse, for instance the possibility of follow-up. The concert-workshop would differ from a lecture-demonstration in that, instead of reporting about the an-swering of a legitimate question, the workshop wouldinvite the assembled participants to address legitimatequestions.

SP How does this fit—witness and now dismissal—intoteaching composition? I’ve been evading . . . Youhave the composition of teaching. When peopleask ‘How can you teach young students composi-tion? Don’t you brainwash them? You tell themyour style?’ That’s what my father said, ‘How do,you know, how does one guy teach another personhow to be creative?’ It seems like it’s, you know, afallacy.

LO It seems similar to problems we’ve talked about inrelation to designing society which is that if youstipulate the structure under which something isgoing to take place, take shape, have existence,then you will prevent exactly that which you wantto have happen, which is a living, growing, andchanging-itself, designing-itself society. And sothe difficulty is to raise the awareness of the prob-lems and of how to solve problems I think on thelevel of, in that particular area of designing societyand in teaching composition.

SP Mm hm, good point.

LO This doesn’t answer what you brought up which is. . . connects . . .

SP Well, it does bring up this notion of self-organizing,


self-designing. What would you have to teach,or how would we speak of teaching such that itdoesn’t take out the very vital thing which is theperson wants to self-organize, self-design, self-compose.

“The Song of Art” and “The Nest of the Song”(1979), two titles for one experiment designed and insti-gated by Patrick Daugherty (in collaboration with manyothers), made a contribution to the idea of composinga process of eliciting. The structure of the experimentwas as follows. “The Song of Art” (“an interaction be-tween the work of artists and the work of other commu-nity groups”) consisted of two events: (1) a workshopto which some twenty artists and representatives fromsome twenty community advocacy groups were invited,and (2) a concert the next evening. The group representa-tives were asked to prepare for the workshop by writinga statement of the “desired consequences” of the group’sactivity. At the workshop, the statements were read, andthen the representatives of each group wrote a statementof the desired consequences of a piece which they hadnever seen or heard, and would have liked to. The state-ments were then taken by the artists as points of depar-ture for the composition of pieces to be presented twomonths later. The next evening after the workshop was aconcert of compositions of music and theater by Daugh-erty, interspersed with readings of statements of the de-sired consequences of each piece written by the partici-pating artists; the concert was open to the public.

“The Nest of the Song” was the name given to thefollow-up event two months later. During that time theartists had composed and rehearsed pieces filling threeprograms—performed at the public library and two com-munity centers—keeping in mind the descriptions of de-sired consequences written by the community group rep-resentatives.

The didactic intention of the project was to havethe term ‘desired consequence’ enter the vocabularies ofthe participants, so that: one would have an alternativeto ‘goal’ and ‘activity’, and, as I now say, the frictiongenerated by the networks of connections of composersand activists working under one proposal would elicit achange of image from both.

Selected BibliographyAdorno, T. W.Aesthetic Theory. Trans., C. Lenhardt. London: Rout-

ledge and Kegan Paul,1984.

. Philosophy of Modern Music. Trans., Anne G. Mitchell andWesley V. Blomster. New York: The Seabury Press, 1973.

Milton Babbit. Words about Music. Ed., Stephen Dembski andJoseph N. Straus. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press,1987.

Barthes, Roland. “Writer, Intellectuals, Teachers” inImage—Music—Text. Selected and Trans., Stephen Heath. New York: Hill andWang, 1977.

Benjamin, Thomas. “The Learning Process and Teaching.” Paper(typewritten. revised 1981)

. “On Teaching Composition.” Paper (typewritten)

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. Conversations with Celestin Deliege. London: EulenbergBooks, 1975.

Bourdieu, Pierre.Outline of a Theory of Practise. Ed., Jack Goody.Trans., Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1977.

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Brun, Herbert.My Words and Where I Want Them. Urbana: PrinceletEditions, 1986.

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Brun, Marianne, and Respondents.Designing Society. Urbana:Princelet Editions, 1983.

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The Part Played by Laborin the Transition from Ape to Man

Fredrick Engels

Labour is the source of all wealth, the politicaleconomists assert. And it really is the source—next tonature, which supplies it with the material that it con-verts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this.It is the prime basic condition for all human existence,and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to saythat labour created man himself.

Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, during anepoch, not yet definitely determinable, of that period ofthe earth’s history known to geologists as the Tertiaryperiod, most likely towards the end of it, a particularlyhighly-developed race of anthropoid apes lived some-where in the tropical zone—probably on a great con-tinent that has now sunk to the bottom of the IndianOcean.1 Darwin has given us an approximate descrip-tion of these ancestors of ours. They were completelycovered with hair, they had beards and pointed ears, andthey lived in bands in the trees.

First, owing to their way of living which meant thatthe hands had different functions than the feet whenclimbing, these apes began to lose the habit of using theirhands to walk and adopted a more and more erect pos-ture. This wasthe decisive step in the transition fromape to man.

All extant anthropoid apes can stand erect and moveabout on their feet alone, but only in case of urgent needand in a very clumsy way. Their natural gait is in a half-erect posture and includes the use of the hands. The ma-jority rest the knuckles of the fist on the ground and, withlegs drawn up, swing the body through their long arms,much as a cripple moves on crutches. In general, all thetransition stages from walking on all fours to walking ontwo legs are still to be observed among the apes today.The latter gait, however, has never become more than amakeshift for any of them.

It stands to reason that if erect gait among our hairyancestors became first the rule and then, in time, a ne-cessity, other diverse functions must, in the meantime,have devolved upon the hands. Already among the apesthere is some difference in the way the hands and thefeet are employed. In climbing, as mentioned above, thehands and feet have different uses. The hands are used

mainly for gathering and holding food in the same wayas the fore paws of the lower mammals are used. Manyapes use their hands to build themselves nests in the treesor even to construct roofs between the branches to pro-tect themselves against the weather, as the chimpanzee,for example, does. With their hands they grasp sticks todefend themselves against enemies, or bombard their en-emies with fruits and stones. In captivity they use theirhands for a number of simple operations copied from hu-man beings. It is in this that one sees the great gulf be-tween the undeveloped hand of even the most man-likeapes and the human hand that has been highly perfectedby hundreds of thousands of years of labour. The numberand general arrangement of the bones and muscles arethe same in both hands, but the hand of the lowest savagecan perform hundreds of operations that no simian handcan imitate—no simian hand has ever fashioned even thecrudest stone knife.

The first operations for which our ancestors graduallylearned to adapt their hands during the many thousandsof years of transition from ape to man could have beenonly very simple ones. The lowest savages, even those inwhom regression to a more animal-like condition with asimultaneous physical degeneration can be assumed, arenevertheless far superior to these transitional beings. Be-fore the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by hu-man hands, a period of time probably elapsed in compari-son with which the historical period known to us appearsinsignificant. But the decisive step had been taken,thehand had become freeand could henceforth attain evergreater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired wasinherited and increased from generation to generation.

Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour,it isalso the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptationto ever new operations, through the inheritance of mus-cles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bonesthat had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new,more and more complicated operations, have given thehuman hand the high degree of perfection required toconjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statuesof a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.

1In the 1870s, when this was written, British zoogeographer Philip Lutley Sclater put forth the theory that a continent (he called “Lemuria”)existed which reached from modern Madagascar to India and Sumatra—and this continent has since submerged beneath the Indian Ocean.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 108 The Part Played by Labor. . .

But the hand did not exist alone, it was only onemember of an integral, highly complex organism. Andwhat benefited the hand, benefited also the whole body itserved; and this in two ways.

In the first place, the body benefited from the law ofcorrelation of growth, as Darwin called it. This law statesthat the specialised forms of separate parts of an organicbeing are always bound up with certain forms of otherparts that apparently have no connection with them. Thusall animals that have red blood cells without cell nuclei,and in which the head is attached to the first vertebra bymeans of a double articulation (condyles), also withoutexception possess lacteal glands for suckling their young.Similarly, cloven hoofs in mammals are regularly asso-ciated with the possession of a multiple stomach for ru-mination. Changes in certain forms involve changes inthe form of other parts of the body, although we cannotexplain the connection. Perfectly white cats with blueeyes are always, or almost always, deaf. The graduallyincreasing perfection of the human hand, and the com-mensurate adaptation of the feet for erect gait, have un-doubtedly, by virtue of such correlation, reacted on otherparts of the organism. However, this action has not as yetbeen sufficiently investigated for us to be able to do morehere than to state the fact in general terms.

Much more important is the direct, demonstrable in-fluence of the development of the hand on the rest ofthe organism. It has already been noted that our simianancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible toseek the derivation of man, the most social of all ani-mals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mas-tery over nature began with the development of the hand,with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new ad-vance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto un-known properties in natural objects. On the other hand,the development of labour necessarily helped to bring themembers of society closer together by increasing casesof mutual support and joint activity, and by making clearthe advantage of this joint activity to each individual. Inshort, men in the making arrived at the point wheretheyhad something to sayto each other. Necessity created theorgan; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly butsurely transformed by modulation to produce constantlymore developed modulation, and the organs of the mouthgradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound afteranother.

Comparison with animals proves that this explana-tion of the origin of language from and in the process oflabour is the only correct one. The little that even themost highly-developed animals need to communicate toeach other does not require articulate speech. In its nat-ural state, no animal feels handicapped by its inability tospeak or to understand human speech. It is quite different

when it has been tamed by man. The dog and the horse,by association with man, have developed such a good earfor articulate speech that they easily learn to understandany language within their range of concept. Moreoverthey have acquired the capacity for feelings such as af-fection for man, gratitude, etc., which were previouslyforeign to them. Anyone who has had much to do withsuch animals will hardly be able to escape the convictionthat in many cases they now feel their inability to speakas a defect, although, unfortunately, it is one that can nolonger be remedied because their vocal organs are toospecialised in a definite direction. However, where vo-cal organs exist, within certain limits even this inabilitydisappears. The buccal organs of birds are as differentfrom those of man as they can be, yet birds are the onlyanimals that can learn to speak; and it is the bird with themost hideous voice, the parrot, that speaks best of all. Letno one object that the parrot does not understand what itsays. It is true that for the sheer pleasure of talking andassociating with human beings, the parrot will chatter forhours at a stretch, continually repeating its whole vocab-ulary. But within the limits of its range of concepts it canalso learn to understand what it is saying. Teach a parrotswear words in such a way that it gets an idea of theirmeaning (one of the great amusements of sailors return-ing from the tropics); tease it and you will soon discoverthat it knows how to use its swear words just as correctlyas a Berlin costermonger. The same is true of beggingfor titbits.

First labour, after it and then with it speech—thesewere the two most essential stimuli under the influenceof which the brain of the ape gradually changed intothat of man, which’for all its similarity is far larger andmore perfect. Hand in hand with the development ofthe brain went the development of its most immediateinstruments—the senses. Just as the gradual develop-ment of speech is inevitably accompanied by a corre-sponding refinement of the organ of hearing, so the de-velopment of the brain as a whole is accompanied by arefinement of all the senses. The eagle sees much fartherthan man, but the human eye discerns considerably morein things than does the eye of the eagle. The dog has afar keener sense of smell than man, but it does not dis-tinguish a hundredth part of the odours that for man aredefinite signs denoting different things. And the senseof touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudestinitial form, has been developed only side by side withthe development of the human hand itself, through themedium of labour.

The reaction on labour and speech of the develop-ment of the brain and its attendant senses, of the in-creasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstractionand of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever-


renewed impulse to further development. This develop-ment did not reach its conclusion when man finally be-came distinct from the ape, but on the whole made fur-ther powerful progress, its degree and direction varyingamong different peoples and at different times, and hereand there even being interrupted by local or temporaryregression. This further development has been stronglyurged forward, on the one hand, and guided along moredefinite directions, on the other, by a new element whichcame into play with the appearance of fully-fledged man,namely,society.

Hundreds of thousands of years—of no greater sig-nificance in the history of the earth than one second inthe life of man2—certainly elapsed before human soci-ety arose out of a troupe of tree-climbing monkeys. Yet itdid finally appear. And what do we find once more as thecharacteristic difference between the troupe of monkeysand human society? Labour. The ape herd was satisfiedto browse over the feeding area determined for it by ge-ographical conditions or the resistance of neighbouringherds; it undertook migrations and struggles to win newfeeding grounds, but it was incapable of extracting fromthem more than they offered in their natural state, exceptthat it unconsciously fertilised the soil with its own ex-crement. As soon as all possible feeding grounds wereoccupied, there could be no further increase in the apepopulation; the number of animals could at best remainstationary. But all animals waste a great deal of food,and, in addition, destroy in the germ the next generationof the food supply. Unlike the hunter, the wolf does notspare the doe which would provide it with the young thenext year; the goats in Greece, that eat away the youngbushes before they grow to maturity, have eaten bare allthe mountains of the country. This “predatory economy”of animals plays an important part in the gradual trans-formation of species by forcing them to adapt themselvesto other than the usual food, thanks to which their bloodacquires a different chemical composition and the wholephysical constitution gradually alters, while species thathave remained unadapted die out. There is no doubtthat this predatory economy contributed powerfully tothe transition of our ancestors from ape to man. In a raceof apes that far surpassed all others in intelligence andadaptability, this predatory economy must have led to acontinual increase in the number of plants used for foodand the consumption of more and more edible parts offood plants. In short, food became more and more var-ied, as did also the substances entering the body with it,substances that were the chemical premises for the transi-tion to man. But all that was not yet labour in the propersense of the word. Labour begins with the making of

tools. And what are the most ancient tools that we find—the most ancient judging by the heirlooms of prehistoricman that have been discovered, and by the mode of lifeof the earliest historical peoples and of the rawest of con-temporary savages? They are hunting and fishing imple-ments, the former at the same time serving as weapons.But hunting and fishing presuppose the transition froman exclusively vegetable diet to the concomitant use ofmeat, and this is another important step in the processof transition from ape to man. Ameat dietcontainedin an almost ready state the most essential ingredientsrequired by the organism for its metabolism. By short-ening the time required for digestion, it also shortenedthe other vegetative bodily processes that correspond tothose of plant life, and thus gained further time, mate-rial and desire for the active manifestation of animal lifeproper. And the farther man in the making moved fromthe vegetable kingdom the higher he rose above the an-imal. Just as becoming accustomed to a vegetable dietside by side with meat converted wild cats and dogs intothe servants of man, so also adaptation to a meat diet,side by side with a vegetable diet, greatly contributed to-wards giving bodily strength and independence to man inthe making. The meat diet, however, had its greatest ef-fect on the brain, which now received a far richer flow ofthe materials necessary for its nourishment and develop-ment, and which, therefore, could develop more rapidlyand perfectly from generation to generation. With all duerespect to the vegetarians man did not come into exis-tence without a meat diet, and if the latter, among allpeoples known to us, has led to cannibalism at some timeor other (the forefathers of the Berliners, the Weletabiansor Wilzians, used to eat their parents as late as the tenthcentury), that is of no consequence to us today.

The meat diet led to two new advances of decisiveimportancethe harnessing of fire and the domesticationof animals. The first still further shortened the digestiveprocess, as it provided the mouth with food already, asit were, half-digested; the second made meat more copi-ous by opening up a new, more regular source of supplyin addition to hunting, and moreover provided, in milkand its products, a new article of food at least as valuableas meat in its composition. Thus both these advanceswere, in themselves, new means for the emancipation ofman. It would lead us too far afield to dwell here in de-tail on their indirect effects notwithstanding the great im-portance they have had for the development of man andsociety.

Just as man learned to consume everything edible,he also learned to live in any climate. He spread overthe whole of the habitable world, being the only animal

2A leading authority in this respect, Sir William Thomson, has calculated thatlittle more than a hundred million years could have elapsed sincethe time when the earth had cooled sufficiently for plants andanimals to be able to live on it.


fully able to do so of its own accord. The other animalsthat have become accustomed to all climates—domesticanimals and vermin—did not become so independently,but only in the wake of man. And the transition fromthe uniformly hot climate of the original home of man tocolder regions, where the year was divided into summerand winter, created new requirements—shelter and cloth-ing as protection against cold and damp, and hence newspheres of labour, new forms of activity, which furtherand further separated man from the animal.

By the combined functioning of hand, speech organsand brain, not only in each individual but also in society,men became capable of executing more and more com-plicated operations, and were able to set themselves, andachieve, higher and higher aims. The work of each gen-eration itself became different, more perfect and morediversified. Agriculture was added to hunting and cat-tle raising; then came spinning, weaving, metalworking,pottery and navigation. Along with trade and industry,art and science finally appeared. Tribes developed intonations and states. Law and politics arose, and with themthat fantastic reflection of human things in the humanmind—religion. In the face of all these images, whichappeared in the first place to be products of the mindand seemed to dominate human societies, the more mod-est productions of the working hand retreated into thebackground, the more so since the mind that planned thelabour was able, at a very early stage in the developmentof society (for example, already in the primitive family),to have the labour that had been planned carried out byother hands than its own. All merit for the swift advanceof civilisation was ascribed to the mind, to the develop-ment and activity of the brain. Men became accustomedto explain their actions as arising out of thought insteadof their needs (which in any case are reflected and per-ceived in the mind); and so in the course of time thereemerged that idealistic world outlook which, especiallysince the fall of the world of antiquity, has dominatedmen’s minds. It still rules them to such a degree thateven the most materialistic natural scientists of the Dar-winian school are still unable to form any clear idea ofthe origin of man, because under this ideological influ-ence they do not recognise the part that has been playedtherein by labour.

Animals, as has already been pointed out, change theenvironment by their activities in the same way, even ifnot to the same extent, as man does, and these changes,as we have seen, in turn react upon and change thosewho made them. In nature nothing takes place in isola-tion. Everything affects and is affected by every otherthing, and it is mostly because this manifold motionand interaction is forgotten that our natural scientists areprevented from gaining a clear insight into the simplest

things. We have seen how goats have prevented the re-generation of forests in Greece; on the island of St. He-lena, goats and pigs brought by the first arrivals have suc-ceeded in exterminating its old vegetation almost com-pletely, and so have prepared the ground for the spread-ing of plants brought by later sailors and colonists. Butanimals exert a lasting effect on their environment un-intentionally and, as far as the animals themselves areconcerned, accidentally. The further removed men arefrom animals, however, the more their effect on natureassumes the character of premeditated, planned actiondirected towards definite preconceived ends. The ani-mal destroys the vegetation of a locality without realis-ing what it is doing. Man destroys it in order to sowfield crops on the soil thus released, or to plant trees orvines which he knows will yield many times the amountplanted. He transfers useful plants and domestic animalsfrom one country to another and thus changes the floraand fauna of whole continents. More than this. Throughartificial breeding both plants and animals are so changedby the hand of man that they become unrecognisable.The wild plants from which our grain varieties origi-nated are still being sought in vain. There is still somedispute about the wild animals from which our very dif-ferent breeds of dogs or our equally numerous breeds ofhorses are descended .

It goes without saying that it would not occur to usto dispute the ability of animals to act in a planned, pre-meditated fashion. On the contrary, a planned mode ofaction exists in embryo wherever protoplasm, living al-bumen, exists and reacts, that is, carries out definite, evenif extremely simple, movements as a result of definiteexternal stimuli. Such reaction takes place even wherethere is yet no cell at all, far less a nerve cell. There issomething of the planned action in the way insect-eatingplants capture their prey, although they do it quite uncon-sciously. In animals the capacity for conscious, plannedaction is proportional to the development of the nervoussystem, and among mammals it attains a fairly high level.While fox-hunting in England one can daily observe howunerringly the fox makes use of its excellent knowledgeof the locality in order to elude its pursuers, and how wellit knows and turns to account all favourable features ofthe ground that cause the scent to be lost. Among ourdomestic animals, more highly developed thanks to as-sociation with man, one can constantly observe acts ofcunning on exactly the same level as those of children.For, just as the development history of the human em-bryo in the mother’s womb is only an abbreviated repe-tition of the history, extending over millions of years, ofthe bodily development of our animal ancestors, startingfrom the worm, so the mental development of the hu-man child is only a still more abbreviated repetition of


the intellectual development of these same ancestors, atleast of the later ones. But all the planned action of allanimals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp oftheir will upon the earth. That was left for man.

In short, the animal merelyusesits environment, andbrings about changes in it simply by its presence; manby his changes makes it serve his ends,mastersit. Thisis the final, essential distinction between man and otheranimals, and once again it is labour that brings about thisdistinction.

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch onaccount of our human victories over nature. For eachsuch victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory,it is true, in the first place brings about the results weexpected, but in the second and third places it has quitedifferent, unforeseen effects which only too often can-cel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece,Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtaincultivable land, never dreamed that by removing alongwith the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs ofmoisture they were laying the basis for the present for-lorn state of those countries. When the Italians of theAlps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, socarefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had noinkling that by doing so they were cutting at the rootsof the dairy industry in their region; they had still lessinkling that they were thereby depriving their mountainsprings of water for the greater part of the year, and mak-ing it possible for them to pour still more furious torrentson the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spreadthe potato in Europe were not aware that with these fari-naceous tubers they were at the same time spreadingscrofula3. Thus at every step we are reminded that weby no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a for-eign people, like someone standing outside nature—butthat we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature,and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it con-sists in the fact that we have the advantage over all othercreatures of being able to learn its laws and apply themcorrectly.

And, in fact, with every day that passes we are ac-quiring a better understanding of these laws and gettingto perceive both the more immediate and the more re-mote consequences of our interference with the tradi-tional course of nature. In particular, after the mightyadvances made by the natural sciences in the presentcentury, we are more than ever in a position to realise,and hence to control, also the more remote natural con-sequences of at least our day-to-day production activi-ties. But the more this progresses the more will men notonly feel but also know their oneness with nature, andthe more impossible will become the senseless and un-

natural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, manand nature, soul and body, such as arose after the declineof classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highestelaboration in Christianity.

It required the labour of thousands of years for us tolearn a little of how to calculate the more remote natu-ral effects of our actions in the field of production, butit has been still more difficult in regard to the more re-mote social effects of these actions. We mentioned thepotato and the resulting spread of scrofula. But whatis scrofula compared to the effects which the reductionof the workers to a potato diet had on the living condi-tions of the popular masses in whole countries, or com-pared to the famine the potato blight brought to Irelandin 1847, which consigned to the grave a million Irish-men, nourished solely or almost exclusively on potatoes,and forced the emigration overseas of two million more?When the Arabs learned to distil spirits, it never enteredtheir heads that by so doing they were creating one ofthe chief weapons for the annihilation of the aboriginesof the then still undiscovered American continent. Andwhen afterwards Columbus discovered this America, hedid not know that by doing so he was giving a new leaseof life to slavery, which in Europe had long ago beendone away with, and laying the basis for the Negro slavetrade. The men who in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies laboured to create the steam-engine had no ideathat they were preparing the instrument which more thanany other was to revolutionise social relations throughoutthe world. Especially in Europe, by concentrating wealthin the hands of a minority and dispossessing the huge ma-jority, this instrument was destined at first to give socialand political domination to the bourgeoisie, but later, togive rise to a class struggle between bourgeoisie and pro-letariat which can end only in the overthrow of the bour-geoisie and the abolition of all class antagonisms. But inthis sphere too, by long and often cruel experience and bycollecting and analysing historical material, we are grad-ually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, moreremote social effects of our production activity, and soare afforded an opportunity to control and regulate theseeffects as well.

This regulation, however, requires something morethan mere knowledge. It requires a complete revolutionin our hitherto existing mode of production, and simul-taneously a revolution in our whole contemporary socialorder.

All hitherto existing modes of production have aimedmerely at achieving the most immediately and directlyuseful effect of labour. The further consequences, whichappear only later and become effective through gradualrepetition and accumulation, were totally neglected. The

3scrofula: tuberculosis of lymph nodes especially in the neck.


original common ownership of land corresponded, on theone hand, to a level of development of human beingsin which their horizon was restricted in general to whatlay immediately available, and presupposed, on the otherhand, a certain superfluity of land that would allow somelatitude for correcting the possible bad results of thisprimeval type of economy. When this surplus land wasexhausted, common ownership also declined. All higherforms of production, however, led to the division of thepopulation into different classes and thereby to the antag-onism of ruling and oppressed classes. Thus the interestsof the ruling class became the driving factor of produc-tion, since production was no longer restricted to pro-viding the barest means of subsistence for the oppressedpeople. This has been put into effect most completelyin the capitalist mode of production prevailing today inWestern Europe. The individual capitalists, who domi-nate production and exchange, are able to concern them-selves only with the most immediate useful effect of theiractions. Indeed, even this useful effect—inasmuch as itis a question of the usefulness of the article that is pro-duced or exchanged—retreats far into the background,and the sole incentive becomes the profit to be made onselling.

Classical political economy, the social science of thebourgeoisie, in the main examines only social effects ofhuman actions in the fields of production and exchangethat are actually intended. This fully corresponds to thesocial organisation of which it is the theoretical expres-

sion. As individual capitalists are engaged in productionand exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, onlythe nearest, most immediate results must first be takeninto account. As long as the individual manufacturer ormerchant sells a manufactured or purchased commoditywith the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does notconcern himself with what afterwards becomes of thecommodity and its purchasers. The same thing appliesto the natural effects of the same actions. What cared theSpanish planters in Cuba, who burned down forests onthe slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashessufficient fertiliser for one generation of very highly prof-itable coffee trees—what cared they that the heavy trop-ical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected up-per stratum of the soil, leaving behind only bare rock! Inrelation to nature, as to society, the present mode of pro-duction is predominantly concerned only about the im-mediate, the most tangible result; and then surprise is ex-pressed that the more remote effects of actions directedto this end turn out to be quite different, are mostly quitethe opposite in character; that the harmony of supply anddemand is transformed into the very reverse opposite, asshown by the course of each ten years’ industrial cycle—even Germany has had a little preliminary experience ofit in the “crash”; that private ownership based on one’sown labour must of necessity develop into the expropri-ation of the workers, while all wealth becomes more andmore concentrated in the hands of non-workers; that . . .the manuscript breaks off here.


Socialism: Utopian and ScientificFredrick Engels

1880

1. The Development of Utopian So-cialism

Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct productof the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antag-onisms existing in the society of today between propri-etors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing inproduction. But, in its theoretical form, modern Social-ism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical ex-tension of the principles laid down by the great Frenchphilosophers of the 18th century. Like every new the-ory, modern Socialism had, at first, to connect itself withthe intellectual stock-in-trade ready to its hand, howeverdeeply its roots lay in material economic facts.

The great men, who in France prepared men’s mindsfor the coming revolution, were themselves extreme rev-olutionists. They recognized no external authority of anykind whatever. Religion, natural science, society, polit-ical institutions—everything was subjected to the mostunsparing criticism: everything must justify its existencebefore the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence.Reason became the sole measure of everything. It wasthe time when, as Hegel says, the world stood upon itshead1; first in the sense that the human head, and theprinciples arrived at by its thought, claimed to be the ba-sis of all human action and association; but by and by,also, in the wider sense that the reality which was in con-tradiction to these principles had, in fact, to be turnedupside down. Every form of society and governmentthen existing, every old traditional notion, was flung intothe lumber-room as irrational; the world had hitherto al-lowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everythingin the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, forthe first time, appeared the light of day, the kingdom ofreason; henceforth superstition, injustice, privilege, op-pression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternalRight, equality based on Nature and the inalienable rightsof man.

We know today that this kingdom of reason was noth-ing more than the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie;that this eternal Right found its realization in bourgeoisjustice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeoisequality before the law; that bourgeois property was pro-claimed as one of the essential rights of man; and that the

government of reason, theContrat Socialof Rousseau,came into being, and only could come into being, as ademocratic bourgeois republic. The great thinkers of the18th century could, no more than their predecessors, gobeyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch.

But, side by side with the antagonisms of the feu-dal nobility and the burghers, who claimed to representall the rest of society, was the general antagonism of ex-ploiters and exploited, of rich idlers and poor workers. Itwas this very circumstance that made it possible for therepresentatives of the bourgeoisie to put themselves for-ward as representing not one special class, but the wholeof suffering humanity. Still further. From its origin thebourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalistscannot exist without wage-workers, and, in the same pro-portion as the mediaeval burgher of the guild developedinto the modern bourgeois, the guild journeyman andthe day-laborer, outside the guilds, developed into theproletarian. And although, upon the whole, the bour-geoisie, in their struggle with the nobility, could claimto represent at the same time the interests of the differentworking-classes of that period, yet in every great bour-geois movement there were independent outbursts of thatclass which was the forerunner, more or less developed,of the modern proletariat. For example, at the time ofthe German Reformation and the Peasants’ War, the An-abaptists and Thomas Munzer; in the great English Rev-olution, the Levellers; in the great French Revolution,Babeuf.

These were theoretical enunciations, correspondingwith these revolutionary uprisings of a class not yet de-veloped; in the 16th and 17th centuries, Utopian picturesof ideal social conditions2; in the 18th century, actualcommunistic theories (Morelly and Mably). The demandfor equality was no longer limited to political rights; itwas extended also to the social conditions of individuals.It was not simply class privileges that were to be abol-ished, but class distinctions themselves. A Communism,ascetic, denouncing all the pleasures of life, Spartan, wasthe first form of the new teaching. Then came the threegreat Utopians: Saint-Simon, to whom the middle-classmovement, side by side with the proletarian, still had acertain significance; Fourier and Owen, who in the coun-try where capitalist production was most developed, andunder the influence of the antagonisms begotten of this,

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 114 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

worked out his proposals for the removal of class dis-tinction systematically and in direct relation to Frenchmaterialism.

One thing is common to all three. Not one of themappears as a representative of the interests of that pro-letariat which historical development had, in the mean-time, produced. Like the French philosophers, they donot claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with,but all humanity at once. Like them, they wish to bring inthe kingdom of reason and eternal justice, but this king-dom, as they see it, is as far as Heaven from Earth, fromthat of the French philosophers.

For, to our three social reformers, the bourgeoisworld, based upon the principles of these philosophers,is quite as irrational and unjust, and, therefore, finds itsway to the dust-hole quite as readily as feudalism andall the earlier stages of society. If pure reason and jus-tice have not, hitherto, ruled the world, this has been thecase only because men have not rightly understood them.What was wanted was the individual man of genius, whohas now arisen and who understands the truth. That hehas now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly under-stood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessityin the chains of historical development, but a mere happyaccident. He might just as well have been born 500 yearsearlier, and might then have spared humanity 500 yearsof error, strife, and suffering.

We saw how the French philosophers of the 18th cen-tury, the forerunners of the Revolution, appealed to rea-son as the sole judge of all that is. A rational government,rational society, were to be founded; everything that rancounter to eternal reasons was to be remorselessly doneaway with. We saw also that this eternal reason was in re-ality nothing but the idealized understand of the 18th cen-tury citizen, just then evolving into the bourgeois. TheFrench Revolution had realized this rational society andgovernment.

But the new order of things, rational enough as com-pared with earlier conditions, turned out to be by nomeans absolutely rational. The state based upon reasoncompletely collapsed. Rousseau’sContrat Socialhadfound its realization in the Reign of Terror, from whichthe bourgeoisie, who had lost confidence in their ownpolitical capacity, had taken refuge first in the corrup-tion of the Directorate, and, finally, under the wing ofthe Napoleonic despotism. The promised eternal peacewas turned into an endless war of conquest. The societybased upon reason had fared no better. The antagonismbetween rich and poor, instead of dissolving into gen-eral prosperity, had become intensified by the removalof the guild and other privileges, which had to some ex-tent bridged it over, and by the removal of the charitableinstitutions of the Church. The “freedom of property”

from feudal fetters, now veritably accomplished, turnedout to be, for the small capitalists and small proprietors,the freedom to sell their small property, crushed underthe overmastering competition of the large capitalists andlandlords, to these great lords, and thus, as far as thesmall capitalists and peasant proprietors were concerned,became “freedomfrom property”. The development ofindustry upon a capitalistic basis made poverty and mis-ery of the working masses conditions of existence of so-ciety. Cash payment became more and more, in Car-lyle’s phrase, the sole nexus between man and man. Thenumber of crimes increased from year to year. Formerly,the feudal vices had openly stalked about in broad day-light; though not eradicated, they were now at any ratethrust into the background. In their stead, the bourgeoisvices, hitherto practiced in secret, began to blossom allthe more luxuriantly. Trade became to a greater andgreater extent cheating. The “fraternity” of the revolu-tionary motto was realized in the chicanery and rivalriesof the battle of competition. Oppression by force was re-placed by corruption; the sword, as the first social lever,by gold. The right of the first night was transferred fromthe feudal lords to the bourgeois manufacturers. Prosti-tution increased to an extent never head of. Marriage it-self remained, as before, the legally recognized form, theofficial cloak of prostitution, and, moreover, was supple-mented by rich crops of adultery.

In a word, compared with the splendid promises ofthe philosophers, the social and political institutions bornof the “triumph of reason” were bitterly disappointingcaricatures. All that was wanting was the men to formu-late this disappointment, and they came with the turn ofthe century. In 1802, Saint-Simon’s Geneva letters ap-peared; in 1808 appeared Fourier’s first work, althoughthe groundwork of his theory dated from 1799; on Jan-uary 1, 1800, Robert Owen undertook the direction ofNew Lanark.

At this time, however, the capitalist mode of produc-tion, and with it the antagonism between the bourgeoisieand the proletariat, was still very incompletely devel-oped. Modern Industry, which had just arisen in Eng-land, was still unknown in France. But Modern Indus-try develops, on the one hand, the conflicts which makeabsolutely necessary a revolution in the mode of produc-tion, and the doing away with its capitalistic character—conflicts not only between the classes begotten of it, butalso between the very productive forces and the forms ofexchange created by it. And, on the other hand, it devel-ops, in these very gigantic productive forces, the meansof ending these conflicts. If, therefore, about the year1800, the conflicts arising from the new social order wereonly just beginning to take shape, this holds still morefully as to the means of ending them. The “have-nothing”


masses of Paris, during the Reign of Terror, were ablefor a moment to gain the mastery, and thus to lead thebourgeois revolution to victory in spite of the bourgeoisiethemselves. But, in doing so, they only proved how im-possible it was for their domination to last under the con-ditions then obtaining. The proletariat, which then forthe first time evolved itself from these “have-nothing”masses as the nucleus of a new class, as yet quite in-capable of independent political action, appeared as anoppressed, suffering order, to whom, in its incapacity tohelp itself, help could, at best, be brought in from withoutor down from above.

This historical situation also dominated the foundersof Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic pro-duction and the crude class conditions correspond crudetheories. The solution of the social problems, which asyet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, theUtopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. So-ciety presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these wasthe task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover anew and more perfect system of social order and to im-pose this upon society from without by propaganda, and,wherever it was possible, by the example of model ex-periments. These new social systems were foredoomedas Utopian; the more completely they were worked outin detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off intopure phantasies.

These facts once established, we need not dwella moment longer upon this side of the question, nowwholly belonging to the past. We can leave it to the liter-ary small fry to solemnly quibble over these phantasies,which today only make us smile, and to crow over the su-periority of their own bald reasoning, as compared withsuch “insanity”. For ourselves, we delight in the stupen-dously grand thoughts and germs of thought that every-where break out through their phantastic covering, and towhich these Philistines are blind.

Saint-Simon was a son of the great French Revo-

Figure 5: Saint-Simon

lution, at the outbreak of which hewas not yet 30. The Revolution wasthe victory of the 3rd estate—i.e., ofthe great masses of the nation,work-ing in production and in trade, overthe privilegedidle classes, the no-bles and the priests. But the vic-tory of the 3rd estate soon revealeditself as exclusively the victory of asmaller part of this “estate”, as the

conquest of political power by the socially privilegedsection of it ? i.e., the propertied bourgeoisie. Andthe bourgeoisie had certainly developed rapidly duringthe Revolution, partly by speculation in the lands of thenobility and of the Church, confiscated and afterwards

put up for sale, and partly by frauds upon the nation bymeans of army contracts. It was the domination of theseswindlers that, under the Directorate, brought France tothe verge of ruin, and thus gave Napoleon the pretext forhis coup d’etat.

Hence, to Saint-Simon the antagonism between the3rd Estate and the privileged classes took the form of anantagonism between “workers” and “idlers”. The idlerswere not merely the old privileged classes, but also allwho, without taking any part in production or distribu-tion, lived on their incomes. And the workers were notonly the wage-workers, but also the manufacturers, themerchants, the bankers. That the idlers had lost the ca-pacity for intellectual leadership and political supremacyhad been proved, and was by the Revolution finally set-tled. That the non-possessing classes had not this capac-ity seemed to Saint-Simon proved by the experiences ofthe Reign of Terror. Then, who was to lead and com-mand? According to Saint-Simon, science and indus-try, both united by a new religious bond, destined to re-store that unity of religious ideas which had been lostsince the time of the Reformation ? a necessarily mysticand rigidly hierarchic “new Christianity”. But science,that was the scholars; and industry, that was, in the firstplace, the working bourgeois, manufacturers, merchants,bankers. These bourgeois were, certainly, intended bySaint-Simon to transform themselves into a kind of pub-lic officials, of social trustees; but they were still to hold,vis-a-vis of the workers, a commanding and economi-cally privileged position. The bankers especially wereto be called upon to direct the whole of social produc-tion by the regulation of credit. This conception was inexact keeping with a time in which Modern Industry inFrance and, with it, the chasm between bourgeoisie andproletariat was only just coming into existence. But whatSaint-Simon especially lays stress upon is this: what in-terests him first, and above all other things, is the lot ofthe class that is the most numerous and the most poor(“la classe la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre”).

Already in his Geneva letters, Saint-Simon lays downthe proposition that “all men ought to work”. In the samework he recognizes also that the Reign of Terror was thereign of the non-possessing masses.

“See,” says he to them, “what happened in France at thetime when your comrades held sway there; they broughtabout a famine.”

But to recognize the French Revolution as a classwar, and not simply one between nobility and bour-geoisie, but between nobility, bourgeoisie, and the non-possessors, was, in the year 1802, a most pregnant dis-covery. In 1816, he declares that politics is the science ofproduction, and foretells the complete absorption of pol-itics by economics. The knowledge that economic con-


ditions are the basis of political institutions appears hereonly in embryo. Yet what is here already very plainlyexpressed is the idea of the future conversion of politi-cal rule over men into an administration of things and adirection of processes of production—that is to say, the“abolition of the state”, about which recently there hasbeen so much noise.

Saint-Simon shows the same superiority over hiscontemporaries, when in 1814, immediately after the en-try of the allies into Paris, and again in 1815, during theHundred Days’ War, he proclaims the alliance of Franceand England, and then of both of these countries, withGermany, as the only guarantee for the prosperous de-velopment and peace of Europe. To preach to the Frenchin 1815 an alliance with the victors of Waterloo requiredas much courage as historical foresight.

If in Saint-Simon we find a comprehensive breadth

Figure 6: Fourier

of view, by virtue of which al-most all the ideas of later So-cialists that are not strictly eco-nomic are found in him in em-bryo, we find in Fourier a criti-cism of the existing conditionsof society, genuinely Frenchand witty, but not upon thataccount any the less thorough.Fourier takes the bourgeoisie,

their inspired prophets before the Revolution, and theirinterested eulogists after it, at their own word. He laysbare remorselessly the material and moral misery of thebourgeois world. He confronts it with the earlier philoso-phers’ dazzling promises of a society in which reasonalone should reign, of a civilization in which happinessshould be universal, of an illimitable human perfectibil-ity, and with the rose-colored phraseology of the bour-geois ideologists of his time. He points out how every-where the most pitiful reality corresponds with the mosthigh-sounding phrases, and he overwhelms this hopelessfiasco of phrases with his mordant sarcasm.

Fourier is not only a critic, his imperturbably serenenature makes him a satirist, and assuredly one of thegreatest satirists of all time. He depicts, with equal powerand charm, the swindling speculations that blossomedout upon the downfall of the Revolution, and the shop-keeping spirit prevalent in, and characteristic of, Frenchcommerce at that time. Still more masterly is his crit-icism of the bourgeois form of the relations betweensexes, and the position of woman in bourgeois society.He was the first to declare that in any given society thedegree of woman’s emancipation is the natural measureof the general emancipation.

But Fourier is at his greatest in his conception of thehistory of society. He divides its whole course, thus far,

into four stages of evolution—savagery, barbarism, thepatriarchate, civilization. This last is identical with theso-called civil, or bourgeois, society of today—i.e., withthe social order that came in with the 16th century. Heproves “that the civilized stage raises every vice prac-ticed by barbarism in a simple fashion into a form of ex-istence, complex, ambiguous, equivocal, hypocritical”—that civilization moves “in a vicious circle”, in contradic-tions which it constantly reproduces without being ableto solve them; hence it constantly arrives at the very op-posite to that which it wants to attain, or pretends to wantto attain, so that, e.g., “under civilization poverty is bornof superabundance itself”.

Fourier, as we see, uses the dialectic method in thesame masterly way as his contemporary, Hegel. Usingthese same dialectics, he argues against talk about illim-itable human perfectibility, that every historical phasehas its period of ascent and also its period of descent,and he applies this observation to the future of the wholehuman race. As Kant introduced into natural science theidea of the ultimate destruction of the Earth, Fourier in-troduced into historical science that of the ultimate de-struction of the human race.

Whilst in France the hurricane of the Revolutionswept over the land, in England a quieter, but not onthat account less tremendous, revolution was going on.Steam and the new tool-making machinery were trans-forming manufacture into modern industry, and thus rev-olutionizing the whole foundation of bourgeois society.The sluggish march of development of the manufactur-ing period changed into a veritable storm and stress pe-riod of production. With constantly increasing swiftnessthe splitting-up into large capitalists and non-possessingproletarians went on. Between these, instead of the for-mer stable middle-class, an unstable mass of artisans andsmall shopkeepers, the most fluctuating portion of thepopulation, now led a precarious existence.

The new mode of production was, as yet, only at thebeginning of its period of ascent; as yet it was the nor-mal, regular method of production—the only one possi-ble under existing conditions. Nevertheless, even thenit was producing crying social abuses—the herding to-gether of a homeless population in the worst quartersof the large towns; the loosening of all traditional moralbonds, of patriarchal subordination, of family relations;overwork, especially of women and children, to a fright-ful extent; complete demoralization of the working-class,suddenly flung into altogether new conditions, from thecountry into the town, from agriculture into modern in-dustry, from stable conditions of existence into insecureones that change from day to day.

At this juncture, there came forward as a reformer a


Figure 7: Owen

manufacturer 29-years-old—aman of almost sublime, child-like simplicity of character,and at the same time one ofthe few born leaders of men.Robert Owen had adopted theteaching of the materialisticphilosophers: that man’s char-acter is the product, on the onehand, of heredity; on the other,of the environment of the indi-

vidual during his lifetime, and especially during his pe-riod of development. In the industrial revolution most ofhis class saw only chaos and confusion, and the opportu-nity of fishing in these troubled waters and making largefortunes quickly. He saw in it the opportunity of puttinginto practice his favorite theory, and so of bringing orderout of chaos. He had already tried it with success, assuperintendent of more than 500 men in a Manchesterfactory. From 1800 to 1829, he directed the great cottonmill at New Lanark, in Scotland, as managing partner,along the same lines, but with greater freedom of actionand with a success that made him a European reputation.A population, originally consisting of the most diverseand, for the most part, very demoralized elements, apopulation that gradually grew to 2,500, he turned into amodel colony, in which drunkenness, police, magistrates,lawsuits, poor laws, charity, were unknown. And all thissimply by placing the people in conditions worthy of hu-man beings, and especially by carefully bringing up therising generation. He was the founder of infant schools,and introduced them first at New Lanark. At the age oftwo, the children came to school, where they enjoyedthemselves so much that they could scarely be got homeagain. Whilst his competitors worked their people 13or 14 hours a day, in New Lanark the working-day wasonly 10 and a half hours. When a crisis in cotton stoppedwork for four months, his workers received their fullwages all the time. And with all this the business morethan doubled in value, and to the last yielded large profitsto its proprietors.

In spite of all this, Owen was not content. The exis-tence which he secured for his workers was, in his eyes,still far from being worthy of human beings. “The peoplewere slaves at my mercy.” The relatively favorable con-ditions in which he had placed them were still far fromallowing a rational development of the character and ofthe intellect in all directions, much less of the free exer-cise of all their faculties.

“And yet, the working part of this population of 2,500persons was daily producing as much real wealth for so-ciety as, less than half a century before, it would haverequired the working part of a population of 600,000 tocreate. I asked myself, what became of the difference

between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and thatwhich would have been consumed by 600,000?”3

The answer was clear. It had been used to pay theproprietors of the establishment 5 per cent on the capi-tal they had laid out, in addition to over £300,000 clearprofit. And that which held for New Lanark held to a stillgreater extent for all the factories in England.

“If this new wealth had not been created by machin-ery, imperfectly as it has been applied, the wars of Eu-rope, in opposition to Napoleon, and to support the aris-tocratic principles of society, could not have been main-tained. And yet this new power was the creation of theworking-classes.”

To them, therefore, the fruits of this new power be-longed. The newly-created gigantic productive forces,hitherto used only to enrich individuals and to enslavethe masses, offered to Owen the foundations for a recon-struction of society; they were destined, as the commonproperty of all, to be worked for the common good of all.

Owen’s communism was based upon this purelybusiness foundation, the outcome, so to say, of commer-cial calculation. Throughout, it maintained this practicalcharacter. Thus, in 1823, Owen proposed the relief ofthe distress in Ireland by Communist colonies, and drewup complete estimates of costs of founding them, yearlyexpenditure, and probably revenue. And in his definiteplan for the future, the technical working out of details ismanaged with such practical knowledge—ground plan,front and side and bird’s-eye views all included—that theOwen method of social reform once accepted, there isfrom the practical point of view little to be said againstthe actual arrangement of details.

His advance in the direction of Communism was theturning-point in Owen’s life. As long as he was simply aphilanthropist, he was rewarded with nothing but wealth,applause, honor, and glory. He was the most popular manin Europe. Not only men of his own class, but states-men and prince listened to him approvingly. But whenhe came out with his Communist theories that was quiteanother thing. Three great obstacles seemed to him espe-cially to block the path to social reform: private property,religion, the present form of marriage.

He knew what confronted him if he attacked these—outlawry, excommunication from official society, theloss of his whole social position. But nothing of this pre-vented him from attacking them without fear of conse-quences, and what he had foreseen happened. Banishedfrom official society, with a conspiracy of silence againsthim in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful Communistexperiments in America, in which he sacrificed all hisfortune, he turned directly to the working-class and con-tinued working in their midst for 30 years. Every socialmovement, every real advance in England on behalf ofthe workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen.


He forced through in 1819, after five years’ fighting, thefirst law limiting the hours of labor of women and chil-dren in factories. He was president of the first Congressat which all the Trade Unions of England united in a sin-gle great trade association. He introduced as transitionmeasures to the complete communistic organization ofsociety, on the one hand, cooperative societies for retailtrade and production. These have since that time, at least,given practical proof that the merchant and the manufac-turer are socially quite unnecessary. On the other hand,he introduced labor bazaars for the exchange of the prod-ucts of labor through the medium of labor-notes, whoseunit was a single hour of work; institutions necessarilydoomed to failure, but completely anticipating Proud-hon’s bank of exchange of a much later period, and dif-fering entirely from this in that it did not claim to be thepanacea for all social ills, but only a first step towards amuch more radical revolution of society.

The Utopians’ mode of thought has for a long timegoverned the Socialist ideas of the 19th century, and stillgoverns some of them. Until very recently, all Frenchand English Socialists did homage to it. The earlier Ger-man Communism, including that of Weitling, was of thesame school. To all these, Socialism is the expressionof absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to bediscovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its ownpower. And as an absolute truth is independent of time,space, and of the historical development of man, it is amere accident when and where it is discovered. Withall this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are differentwith the founder of each different school. And as eachone’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justiceis again conditioned by his subjective understanding, hisconditions of existence, the measure of his knowledgeand his intellectual training, there is no other ending pos-sible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shallbe mutually exclusive of one another. Hence, from thisnothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average So-cialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the presenttime dominated the minds of most of the socialist work-ers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowingof the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash ofsuch critical statements, economic theories, pictures offuture society by the founders of different sects, as ex-cite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is themore easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of theindividual constituents are rubbed down in the stream ofdebate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

To make a science of Socialism, it had first to beplaced upon a real basis.

2. The Science of Dialectics

In the meantime, along with and after the French phi-losophy of the 18th century, had arisen the new Germanphilosophy, culminating in Hegel.

Its greatest merit was the taking up again of dialecticsas the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philoso-phers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle,the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzedthe most essential forms of dialectic thought. The newerphilosophy, on the other hand, although in it also dialec-tics had brilliant exponents (e.g. Descartes and Spinoza),had, especially through English influence, become moreand more rigidly fixed in the so-called metaphysicalmode of reasoning, by which also the French of the 18thcentury were almost wholly dominated, at all events intheir special philosophical work. Outside philosophy inthe restricted sense, the French nevertheless producedmasterpieces of dialectic. We need only call to mindDiderot’sLe Neveu de Rameau, and Rousseau’sDiscourssur l’origine et les fondements de l’inegalite parmi lesshommes. We give here, in brief, the essential characterof these two modes of thought.

When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large,or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activ-ity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglementof relations and reactions, permutations and combina-tions, in which nothing remains what, where and as itwas, but everything moves, changes, comes into beingand passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture asa whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept inthe background; we observe the movements, transitions,connections, rather than the things that move, combine,and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsicallycorrect conception of the world is that of ancient Greekphilosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heracli-tus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, isconstantly changing, constantly coming into being andpassing away.

But this conception, correctly as it expresses the gen-eral character of the picture of appearances as a whole,does not suffice to explain the details of which this pic-ture is made up, and so long as we do not understandthese, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. Inorder to understand these details, we must detach themfrom their natural, special causes, effects, etc. This is,primarily, the task of natural science and historical re-search: branches of science which the Greek of classicaltimes, on very good grounds, relegated to a subordinateposition, because they had first of all to collect materi-als for these sciences to work upon. A certain amountof natural and historical material must be collected be-fore there can be any critical analysis, comparison, andarrangement in classes, orders, and species. The founda-


tions of the exact natural sciences were, therefore, firstworked out by the Greeks of the Alexandrian period4,and later on, in the Middle Ages, by the Arabs. Realnatural science dates from the second half of the 15thcentury, and thence onward it had advanced with con-stantly increasing rapidity. The analysis of Nature intoits individual parts, the grouping of the different naturalprocesses and objects in definite classes, the study of theinternal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifoldforms—these were the fundamental conditions of the gi-gantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have beenmade during the last 400 years. But this method of workhas also left us as legacy the habit of observing naturalobjects and processes in isolation, apart from their con-nection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose,not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables;in their death, not in their life. And when this way oflooking at things was transferred by Bacon and Lockefrom natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow,metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last cen-tury.

To the metaphysician, things and their mental re-flexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be be considered oneafter the other and apart from each other, are objects ofinvestigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks inabsolutely irreconcilable antitheses. His communicationis ’yea, yea; nay, nay’; for whatsoever is more than thesecometh of evil.” For him, a thing either exists or does notexist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and some-thing else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude onanother; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis, oneto the other.

At first sight, this mode of thinking seems to us veryluminous, because it is that of so-called sound common-sense. Only sound commonsense, respectable fellow thathe is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, hasvery wonderful adventures directly he ventures out intothe wide world of research. And the metaphysical modeof thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a numberof domains whose extent varies according to the natureof the particular object of investigation, sooner or laterreaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, re-stricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In thecontemplation of individual things, it forgets the connec-tion between them; in the contemplation of their exis-tence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence;of their repose, if forgets their motion. It cannot see thewoods for the trees.

For everyday purposes, we know and can say, e.g.,whether an animal is alive or not. But, upon closer in-quiry, we find that his is, in many cases, a very complexquestion, as the jurists know very well. They have cud-gelled their brains in vain to discover a rational limit be-

yond which the killing of the child in its mother’s wombis murder. It is just as impossible to determine absolutelythe moment of death, for physiology proves that deathis not an instantaneous, momentary phenomenon, but avery protracted process.

In like manner, every organized being is every mo-ment the same and not the same; every moment, it as-similates matter supplied from without, and gets rid ofother matter; every moment, some cells of its body dieand others build themselves anew; in a longer or shortertime, the matter of its body is completely renewed, andis replaced by other molecules of matter, so that everyorganized being is always itself, and yet something otherthan itself.

Further, we find upon closer investigation that thetwo poles of an antithesis, positive and negative, e.g., areas inseparable as they are opposed, and that despite alltheir opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And wefind, in like manner, that cause and effect are concep-tions which only hold good in their application to indi-vidual cases; but as soon as we consider the individualcases in their general connection with the universe as awhole, they run into each other, and they become con-founded when we contemplate that universal action andreaction in which causes and effects are eternally chang-ing places, so that what is effect here and now will because there and then, and vice versa.

None of these processes and modes of thought en-ters into the framework of metaphysical reasoning. Di-alectics, on the other hand, comprehends things and theirrepresentations, ideas, in their essential connection, con-catenation, motion, origin and ending. Such processes asthose mentioned above are, therefore, so many corrobo-rations of its own method of procedure.

Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must besaid for modern science that it has furnished this proofwith very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus hasshown that, in the last resort, Nature works dialecticallyand not metaphysically; that she does not move in theeternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goesthrough a real historical evolution. In this connection,Darwin must be named before all others. He dealt themetaphysical conception of Nature the heaviest blow byhis proof that all organic beings, plants, animals, and manhimself, are the products of a process of evolution goingon through millions of years. But, the naturalists, whohave learned to think dialectically, are few and far be-tween, and this conflict of the results of discovery withpreconceived modes of thinking, explains the endlessconfusion now reigning in theoretical natural science, thedespair of teachers as well as learners, of authors andreaders alike.

An exact representation of the universe, of its evolu-


tion, of the development of mankind, and of the reflectionof this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore onlybe obtained by the methods of dialectics with its constantregard to the innumerable actions and reactions of lifeand death, of progressive or retrogressive changes. Andin this spirit, the new German philosophy has worked.Kant began his career by resolving the stable Solar sys-tem of Newton and its eternal duration, after the famousinitial impulse had once been given, into the result of ahistorical process, the formation of the Sun and all theplanets out of a rotating, nebulous mass. From this, heat the same time drew the conclusion that, given this ori-gin of the Solar system, its future death followed of ne-cessity. His theory, half a century later, was establishedmathematically by Laplace, and half a century after that,the spectroscope proved the existence in space of suchincandescent masses of gas in various stages of conden-sation.

This new German philosophy culminated in the

Figure 8: Hegel

Hegelian system. In this system—andherein is its great merit—for the firsttime the whole world, natural, histor-ical, intellectual, is represented as aprocess—i.e., as in constant motion,change, transformation, development;and the attempt is made to trace outthe internal connection that makes a

continuous whole of all this movement and develop-ment. From this point of view, the history of mankindno longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds ofviolence, all equally condemnable at the judgment seatof mature philosophic reason and which are best forgot-ten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolutionof man himself. It was now the task of the intellect tofollow the gradual march of this process through all itsdevious ways, and to trace out the inner law runningthrough all its apparently accidental phenomena.

That the Hegelian system did not solve the problem itpropounded is here immaterial. Its epoch-making meritwas that it propounded the problem. This problem is onethat no single individual will ever be able to solve. Al-though Hegel was—with Saint-Simon—the most ency-clopaedic mind of his time, yet he was limited, first, bythe necessary limited extent of his own knowledge and,second, by the limited extent and depth of the knowl-edge and conceptions of his age. to these limits, a thirdmust be added. Hegel was an idealist. To him, thethoughts within his brain were not the more or less ab-stract pictures of actual things and processes, but, con-versely, things and their evolution were only the realizedpictures of the “Idea”, existing somewhere from eternitybefore the world was. This way of thinking turned ev-erything upside down, and completely reversed the ac-

tual connection of things in the world. Correctly andingeniously as many groups of facts were grasped byHegel, yet, for the reasons just given, there is much thatis botched, artificial, labored, in a word, wrong in pointof detail. The Hegelian system, in itself, was a colossalmiscarriage—but it was also the last of its kind.

It was suffering, in fact, from an internal and in-curable contradiction. Upon the one hand, its essentialproposition was the conception that human history is aprocess of evolution, which, by its very nature, cannotfind its intellectual final term in the discovery of any so-called absolute truth. But, on the other hand, it laid claimto being the very essence of this absolute truth. A sys-tem of natural and historical knowledge, embracing ev-erything, and final for all time, is a contradiction to thefundamental law of dialectic reasoning.

This law, indeed, by no means excludes, but, on thecontrary, includes the idea that the systematic knowledgeof the external universe can make giant strides from ageto age.

The perception of the the fundamental contradictionin German idealism led necessarily back to materialism,but—nota bene—not to the simply metaphysical, exclu-sively mechanical materialism of the 18th century. Oldmaterialism looked upon all previous history as a crudeheap of irrationality and violence; modern materialismsees in it the process of evolution of humanity, and aimsat discovering the laws thereof. With the French of the18th century, and even with Hegel, the conception ob-tained of Nature as a whole—moving in narrow circles,and forever immutable, with its eternal celestial bodies,as Newton, and unalterable organic species, as Linnaeus,taught. Modern materialism embraces the more recentdiscoveries of natural science, according to which Na-ture also has its history in time, the celestial bodies, likethe organic species that, under favorable conditions, peo-ple them, being born and perishing. And even if Nature,as a whole, must still be said to move in recurrent cy-cles, these cycles assume infinitely larger dimensions. Inboth aspects, modern materialism is essentially dialectic,and no longer requires the assistance of that sort of phi-losophy which, queen-like, pretended to rule the remain-ing mob of sciences. As soon as each special science isbound to make clear its position in the great totality ofthings and of our knowledge of things, a special sciencedealing with this totality is superfluous or unnecessary.That which still survives of all earlier philosophy is thescience of thought and its law—formal logic and dialec-tics. Everything else is subsumed in the positive scienceof Nature and history.

Whilst, however, the revolution in the conception ofNature could only be made in proportion to the corre-sponding positive materials furnished by research, al-


ready much earlier certain historical facts had occurredwhich led to a decisive change in the conception of his-tory. In 1831, the first working-class rising took placein Lyons; between 1838 and 1842, the first nationalworking-class movement, that of the English Chartists,reached its height. The class struggle between prole-tariat and bourgeoisie came to the front in the historyof the most advanced countries in Europe, in propor-tion to the development, upon the one hand, of modernindustry, upon the other, of the newly-acquired politi-cal supremacy of the bourgeoisie. facts more and morestrenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeoiseconomy as to the identity of the interests of capital andlabor, as to the universal harmony and universal prosper-ity that would be the consequence of unbridled compe-tition. All these things could no longer be ignored, anymore than the French and English Socialism, which wastheir theoretical, though very imperfect, expression. Butthe old idealist conception of history, which was not yetdislodged, knew nothing of class struggles based uponeconomic interests, knew nothing of economic interests;production and all economic relations appeared in it onlyas incidental, subordinate elements in the “history of civ-ilization”.

The new facts made imperative a new examination ofall past history. Then it was seen thatall past history,with the exception of its primitive stages, was the his-tory of class struggles; that these warring classes of so-ciety are always the products of the modes of productionand of exchange—in a word, of theeconomicconditionsof their time; that the economic structure of society al-ways furnishes the real basis, starting from which we canalone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole su-perstructure of juridical and political institutions as wellas of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of agiven historical period. Hegel has freed history frommetaphysics—he made it dialectic; but his conceptionof history was essentially idealistic. But now idealismwas driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history;now a materialistic treatment of history was propounded,and a method found of explaining man’s “knowing” byhis “being”, instead of, as heretofore, his “being” by his“knowing”.

From that time forward, Socialism was no longeran accidental discovery of this or that ingeniousbrain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle be-tween two historically developed classes—the prole-tariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer tomanufacture a system of society as perfect as possi-ble, but to examine the historico-economic succes-sion of events from which these classes and their an-tagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discoverin the economic conditions thus created the means

of ending the conflict. But the Socialism of earlierdays was as incompatible with this materialist con-ception as the conception of Nature of the Frenchmaterialists was with dialectics and modern naturalscience. The Socialism of earlier days certainly criti-cized the existing capitalistic mode of production andits consequences. But it could not explain them, and,therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It couldonly simply reject them as bad. The more stronglythis earlier Socialism denounced the exploitations ofthe working-class, inevitable under Capitalism, theless able was it clearly to show in what this exploita-tion consisted and how it arose. but for this it wasnecessary—

to present the capitalistic mode of production in its his-torical connection and its inevitableness during a particu-lar historical period, and therefore, also, to present its in-evitable downfall; and

to lay bare its essential character, which was still a se-cret. This was done by the discovery ofsurplus-value.

It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid laboris the basis of the capitalist mode of production and ofthe exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; thateven if the capitalist buys the labor power of his laborerat its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet ex-tracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in theultimate analysis, this surplus-value forms those sums ofvalue from which are heaped up constantly increasingmasses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes.The genesis of capitalist production and the productionof capital were both explained.

These two great discoveries, the materialistic concep-tion of history and the revelation of the secret of capital-istic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx.With these discoveries, Socialism became a science. Thenext thing was to work out all its details and relations.

3. Historical Materialism

The materialist conception of history starts from theproposition that the production of the means to sup-port human life and, next to production, the exchange ofthings produced, is the basis of all social structure; thatin every society that has appeared in history, the mannerin which wealth is distributed and society divided intoclasses or orders is dependent upon what is produced,how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.From this point of view, the final causes of all socialchanges and political revolutions are to be sought, notin men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternaltruth and justice, but in changes in the modes of produc-tion and exchange. They are to be sought, not in thephi-losophy, but in theeconomicsof each particular epoch.


The growing perception that existing social institutionsare unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become un-reason, and right wrong5, is only proof that in the modesof production and exchange changes have silently takenplace with which the social order, adapted to earlier eco-nomic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From thisit also follows that the means of getting rid of the in-congruities that have been brought to light must also bepresent, in a more or less developed condition, within thechanged modes of production themselves. These meansare not to be invented by deduction from fundamentalprinciples, but are to be discovered in the stubborn factsof the existing system of production.

What is, then, the position of modern Socialism inthis connection?

The present situation of society—this is now prettygenerally conceded ? is the creation of the ruling classof today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of productionpeculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as thecapitalist mode of production, was incompatible with thefeudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon in-dividuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, aswell as with the hereditary ties of subordination whichconstituted the framework of its social organization. Thebourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon itsruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of freecompetition, of personal liberty, of the equality, beforethe law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of thecapitalist blessings. Thenceforward, the capitalist modeof production could develop in freedom. Since steam,machinery, and the making of machines by machinerytransformed the older manufacture into modern industry,the productive forces, evolved under the guidance of thebourgeoisie, developed with a rapidity and in a degreeunheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, inits time, and handicraft, becoming more developed un-der its influence, had come into collision with the feu-dal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, inits complete development, comes into collision with thebounds within which the capitalist mode of productionholds it confined. The new productive forces have al-ready outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. Andthis conflict between productive forces and modes of pro-duction is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man,like that between original sin and divine justice. It ex-ists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of thewill and actions even of the men that have brought it on.Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought,of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds,first, of the class directly suffering under it, the workingclass.

Now, in what does this conflict consist?Before capitalist production—i.e., in the Middle

Ages—the system of petty industry obtained generally,based upon the private property of the laborers in theirmeans of production; in the country, the agriculture ofthe small peasant, freeman, or serf; in the towns, thehandicrafts organized in guilds. The instruments oflabor—land, agricultural implements, the workshop, thetool—were the instruments of labor of single individu-als, adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, ofnecessity, small, dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for thisvery reason, they belonged as a rule to the producer him-self. To concentrate these scattered, limited means ofproduction, to enlarge them, to turn them into the pow-erful levers of production of the present day—this wasprecisely the historic role of capitalist production and ofits upholder, the bourgeoisie. In the fourth section ofCapital, Marx has explained in detail how since the 15thcentury this has been historically worked out through thethree phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, andmodern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there,could not transform these puny means of production intomighty productive forces without transforming them, atthe same time, from means of production of the individ-ual into social means of production only workable bya collectivity of men. The spinning wheel, the hand-loom, the blacksmith’s hammer, were replaced by thespinning-machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer;the individual workshop, by the factory implying the co-operation of hundreds and thousands of workmen. Inlike manner, production itself changed from a series ofindividual into a series of social acts, and the productionfrom individual to social products. The yarn, the cloth,the metal articles that now come out of the factory werethe joint product of many workers, through whose handsthey had successively to pass before they were ready. Noone person could say of them: “I made that; this ismyproduct.”

But where, in a given society, the fundamental formof production is that spontaneous division of labor whichcreeps in gradually and not upon any preconceived plan,there the products take on the form ofcommodities,whose mutual exchange, buying and selling, enable theindividual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. Andthis was the case in the Middle Ages. The peasant, e.g.,sold to the artisan agricultural products and bought fromhim the products of handicraft. Into this society of in-dividual producers, of commodity producers, the newmode of production thrust itself. In the midst of the olddivision of labor, grown up spontaneously and uponnodefinite plan, which had governed the whole of society,now arose division of labor upona definite plan, as orga-nized in the factory; side by side withindividualproduc-tion appearedsocial production. The products of bothwere sold in the same market, and, therefore, at prices at


least approximately equal. But organization upon a defi-nite plan was stronger than spontaneous division of labor.The factories working with the combined social forcesof a collectivity of individuals produced their commodi-ties far more cheaply than the individual small producers.Individual producers succumbed in one department afteranother. Socialized production revolutionized all the oldmethods of production. But its revolutionary characterwas, at the same time, so little recognized that it was, onthe contrary, introduced as a means of increasing and de-veloping the production of commodities. When it arose,it found ready-made, and made liberal use of, certain ma-chinery for the production and exchange of commodities:merchants’ capital, handicraft, wage-labor. Socializedproduction thus introducing itself as a new form of theproduction of commodities, it was a matter of course thatunder it the old forms of appropriation remained in fullswing, and were applied to its products as well.

In the medieval stage of evolution of the productionof commodities, the question as to the owner of the prod-uct of labor could not arise. The individual producer,as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself,and generally his own handiwork, produced it with hisown tools, by the labor of his own hands or of his family.There was no need for him to appropriate the new prod-uct. It belonged wholly to him, as a matter of course.His property in the product was, therefore, baseduponhis own labor. Even where external help was used, thiswas, as a rule, of little importance, and very generallywas compensated by something other than wages. Theapprentices and journeymen of the guilds worked less forboard and wages than for education, in order that theymight become master craftsmen themselves.

Then came the concentration of the means of pro-duction and of the producers in large workshops andmanufactories, their transformation into actual socializedmeans of production and socialized producers. But thesocialized producers and means of production and theirproducts were still treated, after this change, just as theyhad been before—i.e., as the means of production andthe products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of theinstruments of labor had himself appropriated the prod-uct, because, as a rule, it was his own product and theassistance of others was the exception. Now, the ownerof the instruments of labor always appropriated to him-self the product, although it was no longerhisproduct butexclusively the product of thelabor of others. Thus, theproducts now produced socially were not appropriatedby those who had actually set in motion the means ofproduction and actually produced the commodities, butby thecapitalists. The means of production, and produc-tion itself, had become in essence socialized. But theywere subjected to a form of appropriation which presup-

poses the private production of individuals, under which,therefore, every one owns his own product and brings itto market. The mode of production is subjected to thisform of appropriation, although it abolishes the condi-tions upon which the latter rests.6

This contradiction, which gives to the new mode ofproduction its capitalistic character,contains the germof the whole of the social antagonisms of today. Thegreater the mastery obtained by the new mode of pro-duction over all important fields of production and in allmanufacturing countries, the more it reduced individualproduction to an insignificant residuum,the more clearlywas brought out the incompatibility of socialized produc-tion with capitalistic appropriation.

The first capitalists found, as we have said, along-side of other forms of labor, wage-labor ready-made forthem on the market. But it was exceptional, complemen-tary, accessory, transitory wage-labor. The agriculturallaborer, though, upon occassion, he hired himself out bythe day, had a few acres of his own land on which hecould at all events live at a pinch. The guilds were so or-ganized that the journeyman of today became the masterof tomorrow. But all this changed, as soon as the meansof production became socialized and concentrated in thehands of capitalists. The means of production, as well asthe product, of the individual producer became more andmore worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turnwage-worker under the capitalist. Wage-labor, aforetimethe exception and accessory, now became the rule andbasis of all production; aforetime complementary, it nowbecame the sole remaining function of the worker. Thewage-worker for a time became a wage-worker for life.The number of these permanent was further enormouslyincreased by the breaking-up of the feudal system thatoccurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the re-tainers of the feudal lords, the eviction of the peasantsfrom their homesteads, etc. The separation was madecomplete between the means of production concentratedin the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and theproducers, possessing nothing but their labor-power, onthe other.The contradiction between socialized produc-tion and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself asthe antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.

We have seen that the capitalistic mode of productionthrust its way into a society of commodity-producers,of individual producers, whose social bond was the ex-change of their products. But every society based uponthe production of commodities has this peculiarity: thatthe producers have lost control over their own socialinter-relations. Each man produces for himself with suchmeans of production as he may happen to have, and forsuch exchange as he may require to satisfy his remain-ing wants. No one knows how much of his particular


article is coming on the market, nor how much of it willbe wanted. No one knows whether his individual prod-uct will meet an actual demand, whether he will be ableto make good his costs of production or even to sell hiscommodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized produc-tion.

But the production of commodities, like every otherform of production, has it peculiar, inherent laws in-separable from it; and these laws work, despite anar-chy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves inthe only persistent form of social inter-relations—i.e., inexchange—and here they affect the individual producersas compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first,unknown to these producers themselves, and have to bediscovered by them gradually and as the result of expe-rience. They work themselves out, therefore, indepen-dently of the producers, and in antagonism to them, asinexorable natural laws of their particular form of pro-duction. The product governs the producers.

In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier cen-turies, production was essentially directed toward satis-fying the wants of the individual. It satisfied, in the main,only the wants of the producer and his family. Where re-lations of personal dependence existed, as in the country,it also helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lord. In allthis there was, therefore, no exchange; the products, con-sequently, did not assume the character of commodities.The family of the peasant produced almost everythingthey wanted: clothes and furniture, as well as the meansof subsistence. Only when it began to produce more thanwas sufficient to supply its own wants and the paymentsin kind to the feudal lords, only then did it also producecommodities. This surplus, thrown into socialized ex-change and offered for sale, became commodities.

The artisan in the towns, it is true, had from the firstto produce for exchange. But they, also, themselves sup-plied the greatest part of their individual wants. Theyhad gardens and plots of land. They turned their cattleout into the communal forest, which, also, yielded themtimber and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and soforth. Production for the purpose of exchange, produc-tion of commodities, was only in its infancy. Hence, ex-change was restricted, the market narrow, the methods ofproduction stable; there was local exclusiveness without,local unity within; the mark in the country; in the town,the guild.

But with the extension of the production of com-modities, and especially with the introduction of thecapitalist mode of production, the laws of commodity-production, hitherto latent, came into action more openlyand with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, theold exclusive limits broken through, the producers weremore and more turned into independent, isolated produc-

ers of commodities. It became apparent that the produc-tion of society at large was ruled by absence of plan, byaccident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greaterand greater height. But the chief means by aid of whichthe capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchyof socialized production was the exact opposite of an-archy. It was the increasing organization of production,upon a social basis, in every individual productive estab-lishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition ofthings was ended. Wherever this organization of produc-tion was introduced into a branch of industry, it brookedno other method of production by its side. The field oflabor became a battle-ground. The great geographicaldiscoveries, and the colonization following them, multi-plied markets and quickened the transformation of handi-craft into manufacture. The war did not simply break outbetween the individual producers of particular localities.The local struggles begat, in their turn, national conflicts,the commercial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Finally, modern industry and the opening of theworld-market made the struggle universal, and at thesame time gave it an unheard-of virulence. Advantagesin natural or artificial conditions of production now de-cide the existence or non-existence of individual capital-ists, as well as of whole industries and countries. Hethat falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinianstruggle of the individual for existence transferred fromNature to society with intensified violence. The condi-tions of existence natural to the animal appear as the finalterm of human development. The contradiction betweensocialized production and capitalistic appropriation nowpresents itself asan antagonism between the organiza-tion of production in the individual workshop and theanarchy of production in society generally.

The capitalistic mode of production moves in thesetwo forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its veryorigin. It is never able to get out of that “vicious cir-cle” which Fourier had already discovered. What Fouriercould not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is grad-ually narrowing; that the movement becomes more andmore a spiral, and must come to an end, like the move-ment of planets, by collision with the centre. It is thecompelling force of anarchy in the production of societyat large that more and more completely turns the greatmajority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses ofthe proletariat again who will finally put an end to anar-chy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchyin social production that turns the limitless perfectibilityof machinery under modern industry into a compulsorylaw by which every individual industrial capitalist mustperfect his machinery more and more, under penalty ofruin.

But the perfecting of machinery is making human


labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase ofmachinery means the displacement of millions of man-ual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machin-ery means the displacement of more and more of themachine-workers themselves. It means, in the last in-stance, the production of a number of available wageworkers in excess of the average needs of capital, the for-mation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I calledit in 18457, available at the times when industry is work-ing at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street whenthe inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight uponthe limbs of the working-class in its struggle for exis-tence with capital, a regulator for keeping of wages downto the low level that suits the interests of capital.

Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinerybecomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capi-tal against the working-class; that the instruments of laborconstantly tear the means of subsistence out of the handsof the laborer; that the very product of the worker is turnedinto an instrument for his subjugation.

Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instru-ments of labor becomes at the same time, from the outset,the most reckless waste of labor-power, and robbery basedupon the normal conditions under which labor functions;that machinery,

“the most powerful instrument for shortening labortime, becomes the most unfailing means for placing ev-ery moment of the laborer’s time and that of his family atthe disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expandingthe value of his capital.” (Capital, English edition, p. 406)

Thus it comes about that the overwork of some be-comes the preliminary condition for the idleness of oth-ers, and that modern industry, which hunts after new con-sumers over the whole world, forces the consumption ofthe masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and indoing thus destroys its own home market.

“The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus-population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent andenergy of accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capi-tal more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheusto the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, cor-responding with the accumulation of capital. Accumula-tion of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same timeaccumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance,brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e.,onthe side of the class that producesits own product in theform of capital(Marx’s Capital, p. 661)

And to expect any other division of the products fromthe capitalist mode of production is the same as expectingthe electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulatedwater, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen atthe negative pole, so long as they are connected with thebattery.

We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibilityof modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social pro-duction, turned into a compulsory law that forces the in-dividual industrial capitalist always to improve his ma-chinery, always to increase its productive force. The bare

possibility of extending the field of production is trans-formed for him into a similarly compulsory law. Theenormous expansive force of modern industry, comparedwith which that of gases is mere child’s play, appears tous now as anecessityfor expansion, both qualitative andquantative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistanceis offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets forthe products of modern industry. But the capacity forextension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is pri-marily governed by quite different laws that work muchless energetically. The extension of the markets cannotkeep pace with the extension of production. The colli-sion becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce anyreal solution so long as it does not break in pieces thecapitalist mode of production, the collisions become pe-riodic. Capitalist production has begotten another “vi-cious circle”.

As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first gen-eral crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commer-cial world, production and exchange among all civi-lized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every 10 years.Commerce is at a stand-still, the markets are glutted,products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are un-saleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factoriesare closed, the mass of the workers are in want of themeans of subsistence, because they have produced toomuch of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy followsupon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stag-nation last for years; productive forces and products arewasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulatedmass of commodities finally filter off, more or less de-preciated in value, until production and exchange gradu-ally begin to move again. Little by little, the pace quick-ens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into acanter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallopof a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit,and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps,ends where it began—in the ditch of a crisis. And soover and over again. We have now, since the year 1825,gone through this five times, and at the present moment(1877), we are going through it for the sixth time. Andthe character of these crises is so clearly defined thatFourier hit all of them off when he described the first“crise plethorique”, a crisis from plethora.

In these crises, the contradiction between socializedproduction and capitalist appropriation ends in a violentexplosion. The circulation of commodities is, for thetime being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation,becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of pro-duction and circulation of commodities are turned upsidedown. The economic collision has reached its apogee.The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode


of exchange.The fact that the socialized organization of produc-

tion within the factory has developed so far that it hasbecome incompatible with the anarchy of production insociety, which exists side by side with and dominates it,is brought home to the capitalist themselves by the vi-olent concentration of capital that occurs during crises,through the ruin of many large, and a still greater numberof small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the cap-italist mode of production breaks down under the pres-sure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is nolonger able to turn all this mass of means of productioninto capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reasonthe industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Meansof production, means of subsistence, available laborers,all the elements of production and of general wealth,are present in abundance. But “abundance becomes thesource of distress and want” (Fourier), because it is thevery thing that prevents the transformation of the meansof production and subsistence into capital. For in capital-istic society, the means of production can only functionwhen they have undergone a preliminary transformationinto capital, into the means of exploiting human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into capitalof the means of production and subsistence stands likea ghost between these and the workers. It alone pre-vents the coming together of the material and personallevers of production; it alone forbids the means of pro-duction to function, the workers to work and live. On theone hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of productionstands convicted of its own incapacity to further directthese productive forces. On the other, these productiveforces themselves, with increasing energy, press forwardto the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abo-lition of their quality as capital, to thepractical recogni-tion of their character as social production forces.

This rebellion of the productive forces, as they growmore and more powerful, against their quality as capi-tal, this stronger and stronger command that their socialcharacter shall be recognized, forces the capital class it-self to treat them more and more as social productiveforces, so far as this is possible under capitalist condi-tions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its un-bounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself,by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends tobring about that form of the socialization of great massesof the means of production which we meet with in thedifferent kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of thesemeans of production and of distribution are, from the out-set, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude allother forms of capitalistic expansion. At a further stageof evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. Theproducers on a large scale in a particular branch of an in-

dustry in a particular country unite in a “Trust”, a unionfor the purpose of regulating production. They determinethe total amount to be produced, parcel it out amongthemselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed be-forehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business be-comes bad, are generally liable to break up, and on thisvery account compel a yet greater concentration of asso-ciation. The whole of a particular industry is turned intoone gigantic joint-stock company; internal competitiongives place to the internal monopoly of this one com-pany. This has happened in 1890 with the English alkaliproduction, which is now, after the fusion of 48 largeworks, in the hands of one company, conducted upon asingle plan, and with a capital of £6,000,000.

In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into itsvery opposite—into monopoly; and the production with-out any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates tothe production upon a definite plan of the invading so-cialistic society. Certainly, this is so far still to the bene-fit and advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, theexploitation is so palpable, that it must break down. Nonation will put up with production conducted by trusts,with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by asmall band of dividend-mongers.

In any case, with trusts or without, the officialrepresentative of capitalist society—the state—will ul-timately have to undertake the direction of produc-tion8. This necessity for conversion into State propertyis felt first in the great institutions for intercourse andcommunication—the post office, the telegraphs, the rail-ways.

If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bour-geoisie for managing any longer modern productiveforces, the transformation of the great establishments forproduction and distribution into joint-stock companies,trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary thebourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functionsof the capitalist have no further social function than thatof pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gam-bling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capi-talists despoil one another of their capital. At first, thecapitalistic mode of production forces out the workers.Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, justas it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of theindustrial reserve army.

But, the transformation—either into joint-stock com-panies and trusts, or into State-ownership—does not doaway with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces.In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious.And the modern State, again, is only the organizationthat bourgeois society takes on in order to support theexternal conditions of the capitalist mode of production


against the encroachments as well of the workers as ofindividual capitalists. The modern state, no matter whatits form, is essentially a capitalist machine—the state ofthe capitalists, the ideal personification of the total na-tional capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over ofproductive forces, the more does it actually become thenational capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. Theworkers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capi-talist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, broughtto a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution ofthe conflict, but concealed within it are the technical con-ditions that form the elements of that solution.

This solution can only consist in the practical recog-nition of the social nature of the modern forces of pro-duction, and therefore in the harmonizing with the so-cialized character of the means of production. And thiscan only come about by society openly and directly tak-ing possession of the productive forces which have out-grown all control, except that of society as a whole. Thesocial character of the means of production and of theproducts today reacts against the producers, periodicallydisrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a lawof Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But,with the taking over by society of the productive forces,the social character of the means of production and of theproducts will be utilized by the producers with a perfectunderstanding of its nature, and instead of being a sourceof disturbance and periodical collapse, will become themost powerful lever of production itself.

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces:blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not un-derstand, and reckon with, them. But, when once weunderstand them, when once we grasp their action, theirdirection, their effects, it depends only upon ourselvesto subject them more and more to our own will, and, bymeans of them, to reach our own ends. And this holdsquite especially of the mighty productive forces of today.As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the natureand the character of these social means of action ? andthis understanding goes against the grain of the capital-ist mode of production, and its defenders—so long theseforces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, solong they master us, as we have shown above in detail.

But when once their nature is understood, they can, inthe hand working together, be transformed from masterdemons into willing servants. The difference is as thatbetween the destructive force of electricity in the light-ning in the storm, and electricity under command in thetelegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between aconflagration, and fire working in the service of man.With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of theproductive forces of today, the social anarchy of produc-

tion gives place to a social regulation of production upona definite plan, according to the needs of the communityand of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of ap-propriation, in which the product enslaves first the pro-ducer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the modeof appropriation of the products that is based upon thenature of the modern means of production; upon the onehand, direct social appropriation, as means to the mainte-nance and extension of production—on the other, directindividual appropriation, as means of subsistence and ofenjoyment.

Whilst the capitalist mode of production more andmore completely transforms the great majority of thepopulation into proletarians, it creates the power which,under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accom-plish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and moreof the transformation of the vast means of production, al-ready socialized, into State property, it shows itself theway to accomplishing this revolution.The proletariatseizes political power and turns the means of productioninto State property.

But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat,abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms,abolishes also the State as State. Society, thus far, basedupon class antagonisms, had need of the State. That is,of an organization of the particular class which was, protempore, the exploiting class, an organization for the pur-pose of preventing any interference from without withthe existing conditions of production, and, therefore, es-pecially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploitedclasses in the condition of oppression corresponding withthe given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). The State was the official representative of soci-ety as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visibleembodiment. But, it was this only in so far as it was theState of that class which itself represented, for the timebeing, society as a whole:

in ancient times, the State of slave-owning citizens;in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords;in our own times, the bourgeoisie.

When, at last, it becomes the real representative ofthe whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. Assoon as there is no longer any social class to be heldin subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individualstruggle for existence based upon our present anarchyin production, with the collisions and excesses arisingfrom these, are removed, nothing more remains to berepressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is nolonger necessary. The first act by virtue of which theState really constitutes itself the representative of thewhole of society—the taking possession of the means ofproduction in the name of society—this is, at the sametime, its last independent act as a State. State interfer-


ence in social relations becomes, in one domain after an-other, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the gov-ernment of persons is replaced by the administration ofthings, and by the conduct of processes of production.The State is not “abolished”.It dies out. This gives themeasure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, bothas to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to itsultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demandsof the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the Stateout of hand.

Since the historical appearance of the capitalist modeof production, the appropriation by society of all themeans of production has often been dreamed of, moreor less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, asthe ideal of the future. But it could become possible,could become a historical necessity, only when the ac-tual conditions for its realization were there. Like everyother social advance, it becomes practicable, not by menunderstanding that the existence of classes is in contra-diction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere will-ingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certainnew economic conditions. The separation of society intoan exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an op-pressed class, was the necessary consequences of the de-ficient and restricted development of production in for-mer times. So long as the total social labor only yieldsa produce which but slightly exceeds that barely neces-sary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as laborengages all or almost all the time of the great majority ofthe members of society—so long, of necessity, this so-ciety is divided into classes. Side by side with the greatmajority, exclusively bond slaves to labor, arises a classfreed from directly productive labor, which looks afterthe general affairs of society: the direction of labor, Statebusiness, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the lawof division of labor that lies at the basis of the divisioninto classes. But this does not prevent this division intoclasses from being carried out by means of violence androbbery, trickery and fraud. it does not prevent the rulingclass, once having the upper hand, from consolidating itspower at the expense of the working-class, from turningits social leadership into an intensified exploitation of themasses.

But if, upon this showing, division into classes has acertain historical justification, it has this only for a givenperiod, only under given social conditions. It was basedupon the insufficiency of production. It will be sweptaway by the complete development of modern produc-tive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in soci-ety presupposes a degree of historical evolution at whichthe existence, not simply of this or that particular rulingclass, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the ex-istence of class distinction itself, has become a obsolete

anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the developmentof production carried out to a degree at which appropri-ation of the means of production and of the products,and, with this, of political domination, of the monopolyof culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particularclass of society, has become not only superfluous buteconomically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance todevelopment.

This point is now reached. Their political and in-tellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret tothe bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcyrecurs regularly every 10 years. In every crisis, soci-ety is suffocated beneath the weight of its own produc-tive forces and products, which it cannot use, and standshelpless, face-to-face with the absurd contradiction thatthe producers have nothing to consume, because con-sumers are wanting. The expansive force of the meansof production burst the bonds that the capitalist mode ofproduction had imposed upon them. Their deliverancefrom these bonds is the one precondition for an unbro-ken, constantly-accelerated development of the produc-tive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited in-crease of production itself. Nor is this all. The social-ized appropriation of the means of production does away,not only with the present artificial restrictions upon pro-duction, but also with the positive waste and devastationof productive forces and products that are at the presenttime the inevitable concomitants of production, and thatreach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for thecommunity at large a mass of means of production and ofproducts, by doing away with the senseless extravaganceof the ruling classes of today, and their political repre-sentatives. The possibility of securing for every memberof society, by means of socialized production, an exis-tence not only fully sufficient materially, and becomingday-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing toall the free development and exercise of their physicaland mental faculties—this possibility is now, for the firsttime, here, butit is here9.

With the seizing of the means of production by soci-ety, production of commodities is done away with, and,simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the pro-ducer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by sys-tematic, definite organization. The struggle for individ-ual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man,in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest ofthe animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal con-ditions of existence into really human ones. The wholesphere of the conditions of life which environ man, andwhich have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the do-minion and control of man, who for the first time be-comes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he hasnow become master of his own social organization. The


laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dom-inating him, will then be used with full understanding,and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organiza-tion, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed byNature and history, now becomes the result of his ownfree action. The extraneous objective forces that have,hitherto, governed history, pass under the control of manhimself. Only from that time will man himself, more andmore consciously, make his own history—only from thattime will the social causes set in movement by him have,in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the re-sults intended by him. It is the ascent of man from thekingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolu-tion.

I. Mediaeval Society—Individual production on asmall scale. Means of production adapted forindividual use; hence primitive, ungainly, petty,dwarfed in action. Production for immediate con-sumption, either of the producer himself or his feu-dal lord. Only where an excess of production overthis consumption occurs is such excess offered forsale, enters into exchange. Production of com-modities, therefore, only in its infancy. But alreadyit contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in theproduction of society at large.

II. Capitalist Revolution—transformation of industry,at first be means of simple cooperation and man-ufacture. Concentration of the means of produc-tion, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As aconsequence, their transformation from individualto social means of production—a transformationwhich does not, on the whole, affect the form ofexchange. The old forms of appropriation remainin force. The capitalist appears. In his capacityas owner of the means of production, he also ap-propriates the products and turns them into com-modities. Production has become asocialact. Ex-change and appropriation continue to beindividualacts, the acts of individuals. The social product isappropriated by the individual capitalist. Funda-mental contradiction, whence arise all the contra-dictions in which our present-day society moves,and which modern industry brings to light.

A. Severance of the producer from the means ofproduction. Condemnation of the worker towage-labor for life. Antagonism between theproletariat and the bourgeoisie.

B. Growing predominance and increasing effec-tiveness of the laws governing the produc-tion of commodities. Unbridled competition.

Contradiction between socialized organiza-tion in the individual factory and social an-archy in the production as a whole.

C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery,made by competition compulsory for eachindividual manufacturer, and complementedby a constantly growing displacement of la-borers. Industrial reserve-army. On theother hand, unlimited extension of produc-tion, also compulsory under competition, forevery manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excessof supply over demand, over-production andproducts—excess there, of laborers, withoutemployment and without means of existence.But these two levers of production and of so-cial well-being are unable to work together,because the capitalist form of production pre-vents the productive forces from working andthe products from circulating, unless they arefirst turned into capital—which their very su-perabundance prevents. The contradictionhas grown into an absurdity. The mode ofproduction rises in rebellion against the formof exchange.

D. Partial recognition of the social character ofthe productive forces forced upon the capi-talists themselves. Taking over of the greatinstitutions for production and communica-tion, first by joint-stock companies, later inby trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisiedemonstrated to be a superfluous class. Allits social functions are now performed bysalaried employees.

III. Proletarian Revolution—Solution of the contradic-tions. The proletariat seizes the public power, andby means of this transforms the socialized meansof production, slipping from the hands of the bour-geoisie, into public property. By this act, the pro-letariat frees the means of production from thecharacter of capital they have thus far borne, andgives their socialized character complete freedomto work itself out. Socialized production upon apredetermined plan becomes henceforth possible.The development of production makes the exis-tence of different classes of society thenceforth ananachronism. In proportion as anarchy in socialproduction vanishes, the political authority of theState dies out. Man, at last the master of his ownform of social organization, becomes at the sametime the lord over Nature, his own master—free.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation isthe historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thor-


oughly comprehend the historical conditions and this thevery nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressedproletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions andof the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon toaccomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expressionof the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.

Notes

1This is the passage of the French Revolution:

“Thought, the concept of law, all at once made itself felt,and against this the old scaffolding of wrong could makeno stand. In this conception of law, therefore, a constitu-tion has now been established, and henceforth everythingmust be cased upon this. Since the Sun had been in the fir-mament, and the planets circled around him, the sight hadnever been seen of man standing upon his head—i.e., onthe Idea—and building reality after this image. Anaxago-ras first said that the Nous, reason, rules the world; butnow, for the first time, had men come to recognize that theIdea must rule the mental reality. And this was a magnifi-cent sunrise. All thinking Beings have participated in cel-ebrating this holy day. A sublime emotion swayed men atthat time, an enthusiasm of reason pervaded the world, asif now had come the reconciliation of the Divine Principlewith the world.”

[Hegel: The Philosophy of history, 1840, p.535]

Is it not high time to set the anti-Socialist law in action against suchteachings, subversive and to the common danger, by the late ProfessorHegel?

2Engels refers here to the works of the utopian Socialists ThomasMore (16th century) and Tommaso Campanella (17th century).

3FromThe Revolution in Mind and Practice, p.21, a memorial ad-dressed to all the “red Republicans, Communists and Socialists of Eu-rope”, and sent to the provisional government of France, 1848, and also“to Queen Victoria and her responsible advisers.”

4 The Alexandrian period of the development of science comprisesthe period extending from the 3rd century B.C. to the 17th centuryA.D. It derives its name from the town of Alexandria in Egypt,whichwas one of the most important centres of international economic inter-courses at that time. In the Alexandrian period, mathematics (Euclidand Archimedes), geography, astronomy, anatomy, physiology, etc., at-tained considerable development.

5Mephistopheles in Goethe’sFaust

6It is hardly necessary in this connection to point out that, even ifthe form of appropriation remains the same, thecharacterof the appro-priation is just as much revolutionized as production is by the changesdescribed above. It is, of course, a very different matter whether I ap-propriate to myself my own product or that of another. Note inpassingthat wage-labor, which contains the whole capitalist mode of produc-tion in embryo, is very ancient; in a sporadic, scattered form, it existedfor centuries alongside slave-labor. But the embryo could duly developinto the capitalistic mode of production only when the necessary his-torical pre-conditions had been furnished.

7“The Conditions of the Working-Class in England”—Sonnenschein & Co., p.84.

8I say “have to”. For only when the means of production and distri-bution haveactually outgrown the form of management by joint-stockcompanies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the State hasbecomeeconomicallyinevitable, only then—even if it is the State of to-day that effects this—is there an economic advance, the attainment ofanother step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces bysociety itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownershipof industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialismhas arisen,degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that with-out more ado declaresall State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort,to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the Stateof the to-bacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must benumbered among the founders of Socialism.

If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial rea-sons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not underany economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussianlines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in caseof war,to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government,and especially to create for himself a new source of income indepen-dent of parliamentary votes—this was, in no sense, a socialistic mea-sure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise,the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, andeven the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic insti-tutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in FrederickWilliam III’s reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.

9A few figures may serve to give an approximate idea of theenormous expansive force of the modern means of production,even under capitalist pressure. According to Mr. Giffen, the totalwealth of Great Britain and Ireland amounted, in round numbersin

1814 to £2,200,000,000,1865 to £6,100,000,000,1875 to £8,500,000,000.

As an instance of the squandering of means of production and ofproducts during a crisis, the total loss in the German iron industry alone,in the crisis of 1873–78, was given at the second German IndustrialCongress (Berlin, February 21, 1878), as £22,750,000.


The Fetishism of Commoditiesand the Secret Thereof

Karl Marx

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivialthing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is,in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysicalsubtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a valuein use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether weconsider it from the point of view that by its properties itis capable of satisfying human wants, or from the pointthat those properties are the product of human labour. Itis as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changesthe forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such away as to make them useful to him. The form of wood,for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet,for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a com-modity, it is changed into something transcendent. It notonly stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation toall other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolvesout of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more won-derful than “table-turning” ever was10.

The mystical character of commodities does not orig-inate, therefore, in their use value. Just as little does itproceed from the nature of the determining factors ofvalue. For, in the first place, however varied the usefulkinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, it is aphysiological fact, that they are functions of the humanorganism, and that each such function, whatever may beits nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of hu-man brain, nerves, muscles, etc. Secondly, with regardto that which forms the ground-work for the quantitativedetermination of value, namely, the duration of that ex-penditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear thatthere is a palpable difference between its quantity andquality. In all states of society, the labour time that itcosts to produce the means of subsistence, must neces-sarily be an object of interest to mankind, though not ofequal interest in different stages of development11. Andlastly, from the moment that men in any way work forone another, their labour assumes a social form.

Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of theproduct of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of com-modities? Clearly from this form itself. The equalityof all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively bytheir products all being equally values; the measure ofthe expenditure of labour power by the duration of thatexpenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of

the products of labour; and finally the mutual relations ofthe producers, within which the social character of theirlabour affirms itself, take the form of a social relationbetween the products.

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simplybecause in it the social character of men’s labour appearsto them as an objective character stamped upon the prod-uct of that labour; because the relation of the producersto the sum total of their own labour is presented to themas a social relation, existing not between themselves, butbetween the products of their labour. This is the reasonwhy the products of labour become commodities, socialthings whose qualities are at the same time perceptibleand imperceptible by the senses. In the same way thelight from an object is perceived by us not as the sub-jective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objectiveform of something outside the eye itself. But, in the actof seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of lightfrom one thing to another, from the external object to theeye. There is a physical relation between physical things.But it is different with commodities. There, the existenceof the thingsqua12 commodities, and the value relationbetween the products of labour which stamps them ascommodities, have absolutely no connection with theirphysical properties and with the material relations arisingtherefrom. There it is a definite social relation betweenmen, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of arelation between things. In order, therefore, to find ananalogy, we must have recourse to the mist-envelopedregions of the religious world. In that world the produc-tions of the human brain appear as independent beingsendowed with life, and entering into relation both withone another and the human race. So it is in the worldof commodities with the products of men’s hands. ThisI call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the productsof labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities,and which is therefore inseparable from the productionof commodities.

This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as theforegoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar so-cial character of the labour that produces them.

As a general rule, articles of utility become com-modities, only because they are products of the labourof private individuals or groups of individuals who carryon their work independently of each other. The sum to-

KARL MARX 132 The Fetishism of Commodities

tal of the labour of all these private individuals formsthe aggregate labour of society. Since the producers donot come into social contact with each other until theyexchange their products, the specific social character ofeach producer’s labour does not show itself except inthe act of exchange. In other words, the labour of theindividual asserts itself as a part of the labour of soci-ety, only by means of the relations which the act of ex-change establishes directly between the products, and in-directly, through them, between the producers. To thelatter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour ofone individual with that of the rest appear, not as di-rect social relations between individuals at work, but aswhat they really are, material relations between personsand social relations between things. It is only by beingexchanged that the products of labour acquire, as val-ues, one uniform social status, distinct from their variedforms of existence as objects of utility. This division ofa product into a useful thing and a value becomes prac-tically important, only when exchange has acquired suchan extension that useful articles are produced for the pur-pose of being exchanged, and their character as valueshas therefore to be taken into account, beforehand, dur-ing production. From this moment the labour of the indi-vidual producer acquires socially a twofold character. Onthe one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour,satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place aspart and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branchof a social division of labour that has sprung up spon-taneously. On the other hand, it can satisfy the manifoldwants of the individual producer himself, only in so far asthe mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful privatelabour is an established social fact, and therefore the pri-vate useful labour of each producer ranks on an equalitywith that of all others. The equalisation of the most dif-ferent kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstrac-tion from their inequalities, or of reducing them to theircommon denominator, viz. expenditure of human labourpower or human labour in the abstract. The twofold so-cial character of the labour of the individual appears tohim, when reflected in his brain, only under those formswhich are impressed upon that labour in every-day prac-tice by the exchange of products. In this way, the charac-ter that his own labour possesses of being socially usefultakes the form of the condition, that the product must benot only useful, but useful for others, and the social char-acter that his particular labour has of being the equal ofall other particular kinds of labour, takes the form thatall the physically different articles that are the productsof labour, have one common quality, viz., that of havingvalue.

Hence, when we bring the products of our labour intorelation with each other as values, it is not because we see

in these articles the material receptacles of homogeneoushuman labour. Quite the contrary: whenever, by an ex-change, we equate as values our different products, bythat very act, we also equate, as human labour, the dif-ferent kinds of labour expended upon them. We are notaware of this, nevertheless we do it13. Value, therefore,does not stalk about with a label describing what it is.It is value, rather, that converts every product into a so-cial hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hiero-glyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social prod-ucts; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just asmuch a social product as language. The recent scientificdiscovery, that the products of labour, so far as they arevalues, are but material expressions of the human labourspent in their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in thehistory of the development of the human race, but, by nomeans, dissipates the mist through which the social char-acter of labour appears to us to be an objective characterof the products themselves. The fact, that in the partic-ular form of production with which we are dealing, viz.,the production of commodities, the specific social char-acter of private labour carried on independently, consistsin the equality of every kind of that labour, by virtue of itsbeing human labour, which character, therefore, assumesin the product the form of value — this fact appears to theproducers, notwithstanding the discovery above referredto, to be just as real and final, as the fact, that, after thediscovery by science of the component gases of air, theatmosphere itself remained unaltered.

What, first of all, practically concerns producerswhen they make an exchange, is the question, how muchof some other product they get for their own? in whatproportions the products are exchangeable? When theseproportions have, by custom, attained a certain stability,they appear to result from the nature of the products, sothat, for instance, one ton of iron and two ounces of goldappear as naturally to be of equal value as a pound ofgold and a pound of iron in spite of their different phys-ical and chemical qualities appear to be of equal weight.The character of having value, when once impressedupon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their act-ing and re-acting upon each other as quantities of value.These quantities vary continually, independently of thewill, foresight and action of the producers. To them, theirown social action takes the form of the action of objects,which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them.It requires a fully developed production of commoditiesbefore, from accumulated experience alone, the scientificconviction springs up, that all the different kinds of pri-vate labour, which are carried on independently of eachother, and yet as spontaneously developed branches ofthe social division of labour, are continually being re-duced to the quantitative proportions in which society


requires them. And why? Because, in the midst of allthe accidental and ever fluctuating exchange relations be-tween the products, the labour time socially necessary fortheir production forcibly asserts itself like an over-ridinglaw of Nature. The law of gravity thus asserts itself whena house falls about our ears14. The determination of themagnitude of value by labour time is therefore a secret,hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the relative val-ues of commodities. Its discovery, while removing allappearance of mere accidentality from the determinationof the magnitude of the values of products, yet in no wayalters the mode in which that determination takes place.

Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and con-sequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms,take a course directly opposite to that of their actual his-torical development. He begins,post festum15, with theresults of the process of development ready to hand be-fore him. The characters that stamp products as com-modities, and whose establishment is a necessary pre-liminary to the circulation of commodities, have alreadyacquired the stability of natural, self-understood formsof social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their his-torical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, buttheir meaning. Consequently it was the analysis of theprices of commodities that alone led to the determina-tion of the magnitude of value, and it was the commonexpression of all commodities in money that alone ledto the establishment of their characters as values. It is,however, just this ultimate money form of the world ofcommodities that actually conceals, instead of disclos-ing, the social character of private labour, and the socialrelations between the individual producers. When I statethat coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, because itis the universal incarnation of abstract human labour, theabsurdity of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless,when the producers of coats and boots compare those ar-ticles with linen, or, what is the same thing, with gold orsilver, as the universal equivalent, they express the rela-tion between their own private labour and the collectivelabour of society in the same absurd form.

The categories of bourgeois economy consist of suchlike forms. They are forms of thought expressing withsocial validity the conditions and relations of a definite,historically determined mode of production, viz., theproduction of commodities. The whole mystery of com-modities, all the magic and necromancy that surroundsthe products of labour as long as they take the form ofcommodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come toother forms of production.

Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favouritetheme with political economists16, let us take a look athim on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some fewwants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little use-

ful work of various sorts, such as making tools and fur-niture, taming goats, fishing and hunting. Of his prayersand the like we take no account, since they are a sourceof pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so muchrecreation. In spite of the variety of his work, he knowsthat his labour, whatever its form, is but the activity ofone and the same Robinson, and consequently, that itconsists of nothing but different modes of human labour.Necessity itself compels him to apportion his time accu-rately between his different kinds of work. Whether onekind occupies a greater space in his general activity thananother, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as thecase may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effectaimed at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by expe-rience, and having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen andink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton,to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list ofthe objects of utility that belong to him, of the operationsnecessary for their production; and lastly, of the labourtime that definite quantities of those objects have, on anaverage, cost him. All the relations between Robinsonand the objects that form this wealth of his own creation,are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible withoutexertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those rela-tions contain all that is essential to the determination ofvalue.

Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson’sisland bathed in light to the European middle agesshrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independentman, we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vas-sals and suzerains, laymen and clergy. Personal depen-dence here characterises the social relations of produc-tion just as much as it does the other spheres of lifeorganised on the basis of that production. But for thevery reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and itsproducts to assume a fantastic form different from theirreality. They take the shape, in the transactions of so-ciety, of services in kind and payments in kind. Herethe particular and natural form of labour, and not, as ina society based on production of commodities, its gen-eral abstract form is the immediate social form of labour.Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time,as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knowsthat what he expends in the service of his lord, is a defi-nite quantity of his own personal labour power. The titheto be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact thanhis blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of theparts played by the different classes of people themselvesin this society, the social relations between individualsin the performance of their labour, appear at all eventsas their own mutual personal relations, and are not dis-guised under the shape of social relations between the


products of labour.For an example of labour in common or directly

associated labour, we have no occasion to go back tothat spontaneously developed form which we find on thethreshold of the history of all civilised races17. We haveone close at hand in the patriarchal industries of a peas-ant family, that produces corn, cattle, yarn, linen, andclothing for home use. These different articles are, asregards the family, so many products of its labour, butas between themselves, they are not commodities. Thedifferent kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle tending,spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result inthe various products, are in themselves, and such as theyare, direct social functions, because functions of the fam-ily, which, just as much as a society based on the produc-tion of commodities, possesses a spontaneously devel-oped system of division of labour. The distribution of thework within the family, and the regulation of the labourtime of the several members, depend as well upon differ-ences of age and sex as upon natural conditions varyingwith the seasons. The labour power of each individual,by its very nature, operates in this case merely as a defi-nite portion of the whole labour power of the family, andtherefore, the measure of the expenditure of individuallabour power by its duration, appears here by its very na-ture as a social character of their labour.

Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, acommunity of free individuals, carrying on their workwith the means of production in common, in whichthe labour power of all the different individuals is con-sciously applied as the combined labour power of thecommunity. All the characteristics of Robinson’s labourare here repeated, but with this difference, that theyare social, instead of individual. Everything producedby him was exclusively the result of his own personallabour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself.The total product of our community is a social product.One portion serves as fresh means of production and re-mains social. But another portion is consumed by themembers as means of subsistence. A distribution of thisportion amongst them is consequently necessary. Themode of this distribution will vary with the productive or-ganisation of the community, and the degree of historicaldevelopment attained by the producers. We will assume,but merely for the sake of a parallel with the productionof commodities, that the share of each individual pro-ducer in the means of subsistence is determined by hislabour time. Labour time would, in that case, play a dou-ble part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definitesocial plan maintains the proper proportion between thedifferent kinds of work to be done and the various wantsof the community. On the other hand, it also serves as ameasure of the portion of the common labour borne by

each individual, and of his share in the part of the totalproduct destined for individual consumption. The socialrelations of the individual producers, with regard both totheir labour and to its products, are in this case perfectlysimple and intelligible, and that with regard not only toproduction but also to distribution.

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.And for a society based upon the production of com-modities, in which the producers in general enter into so-cial relations with one another by treating their productsas commodities and values, whereby they reduce theirindividual private labour to the standard of homogeneoushuman labour ? for such a society, Christianity with itscultus18 of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeoisdevelopments, Protestantism, Deism, etc., is the most fit-ting form of religion. In the ancient Asiatic and otherancient modes of production, we find that the conversionof products into commodities, and therefore the conver-sion of men into producers of commodities, holds a sub-ordinate place, which, however, increases in importanceas the primitive communities approach nearer and nearerto their dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called,exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like thegods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like Jews in thepores of Polish society. Those ancient social organismsof production are, as compared with bourgeois society,extremely simple and transparent. But they are foundedeither on the immature development of man individually,who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that uniteshim with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal community,or upon direct relations of subjection. They can ariseand exist only when the development of the productivepower of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, andwhen, therefore, the social relations within the sphere ofmaterial life, between man and man, and between manand Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrow-ness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and inthe other elements of the popular religions. The religiousreflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finallyvanish, when the practical relations of every-day life of-fer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonablerelations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature.

The life-process of society, which is based on the pro-cess of material production, does not strip off its mysticalveil until it is treated as production by freely associatedmen, and is consciously regulated by them in accordancewith a settled plan. This, however, demands for society acertain material ground-work or set of conditions of ex-istence which in their turn are the spontaneous productof a long and painful process of development.

Political Economy has indeed analysed, however in-completely19, value and its magnitude, and has discov-ered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never


once asked the question why labour is represented by thevalue of its product and labour time by the magnitudeof that value20. These formulæ, which bear it stampedupon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to astate of society, in which the process of production hasthe mastery over man, instead of being controlled byhim, such formulæ appear to the bourgeois intellect tobe as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Natureas productive labour itself. Hence forms of social pro-duction that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated bythe bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers ofthe Church treated pre-Christian religions21.

To what extent some economists are misled by theFetishism inherent in commodities, or by the objec-tive appearance of the social characteristics of labour,is shown, amongst other ways, by the dull and tediousquarrel over the part played by Nature in the formationof exchange value. Since exchange value is a definite so-cial manner of expressing the amount of labour bestowedupon an object, Nature has no more to do with it, than ithas in fixing the course of exchange.

The mode of production in which the product takesthe form of a commodity, or is produced directly for ex-change, is the most general and most embryonic formof bourgeois production. It therefore makes its ap-pearance at an early date in history, though not in thesame predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easyto be seen through. But when we come to more con-crete forms, even this appearance of simplicity vanishes.Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? Toit gold and silver, when serving as money, did not repre-sent a social relation between producers, but were naturalobjects with strange social properties. And modern econ-omy, which looks down with such disdain on the mone-tary system, does not its superstition come out as clearas noon-day, whenever it treats of capital? How long isit since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion, thatrents grow out of the soil and not out of society?

But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves withyet another example relating to the commodity form.Could commodities themselves speak, they would say:Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It isno part of us as objects. What, however, does belongto us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourseas commodities proves it. In the eyes of each other weare nothing but exchange values. Now listen how thosecommodities speak through the mouth of the economist.

“Value” — (i.e., exchange value) “is a property ofthings, riches” — (i.e., use value) “of man. Value, in thissense, necessarily implies exchanges, riches do not.”22

“Riches” (use value) “are the attribute of men, value isthe attribute of commodities. A man or a community is

rich, a pearl or a diamond is valuable . . . ” A pearl or adiamond is valuable as a pearl or a diamond23.

So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange valueeither in a pearl or a diamond. The economic discover-ers of this chemical element, who by-the-bye lay spe-cial claim to critical acumen, find however that the usevalue of objects belongs to them independently of theirmaterial properties, while their value, on the other hand,forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them inthis view, is the peculiar circumstance that the use valueof objects is realised without exchange, by means of a di-rect relation between the objects and man, while, on theother hand, their value is realised only by exchange, thatis, by means of a social process. Who fails here to call tomind our good friend, Dogberry, who informs neighbourSeacoal, that, “To be a well-favoured man is the gift offortune; but reading and writing comes by Nature.”24

Notes

10It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and uni-versal exchangeability is, so to speak, a polar one, and as intimatelyconnected with its opposite pole, the absence of direct exchangeabil-ity, as the positive pole of the magnet is with its negative counterpart.It may therefore be imagined that all commodities can simultaneouslyhave this character impressed upon them, just as it can be imaginedthat all Catholics can be popes together. It is, of course, highly de-sirable in the eyes of the petit bourgeois, for whom the productionof commodities is thenec plus ultraof human freedom and individ-ual independence, that the inconveniences resulting from this characterof commodities not being directly exchangeable, should be removed.Proudhon’s socialism is a working out of this Philistine Utopia, a formof socialism which, as I have elsewhere shown, does not possess eventhe merit of originality. Long before his time, the task was attemptedwith much better success by Gray, Bray, and others. But, for all that,wisdom of this kind flourishes even now in certain circles under thename of “science.” Never has any school played more tricks with theword science, than that of Proudhon, forwo Begriffe fehlen, Da stelltzur rechten Zeit ein Wort sich ein. [“Where thoughts are absent, Wordsare brought in as convenient replacements,” Goethe’sFaust, See Proud-hon’sPhilosophy of Poverty.

11Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was whatcould be harvested in a day, and was calledTagwerk, Tagwanne(ju-rnale, or terra jurnalis, or diornalis), Mannsmaad, etc. (See G. L.von Maurer,Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark, etc. Verfassung,Munchen, 1854, p. 129 sq.)

12qua: in so far as; in the capacity of.13When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between per-

sons —La Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone— he ought tohave added: a relation between persons expressed as a relation betweenthings. (Galiani:Della Moneta, p. 221, V. III. of Custodi’s collection ofScrittori Classici Italiani di Economia Politica. Parte Moderna, Milano1803.)

14What are we to think of a law that asserts itself only by periodi-cal revolutions? It is just nothing but a law of Nature, founded on thewant of knowledge of those whose action is the subject of it? (FriedrichEngels:Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalokonomie, in theDeutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher, edited by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris.1844.)


15post festum: after the festival.16Even Ricardo has his storiesla Robinson. “He makes the primitive

hunter and the primitive fisher straightway, as owners of commodities,exchange fish and game in the proportion in which labour time is in-corporated in these exchange values. On this occasion he commits theanachronism of making these men apply to the calculation, sofar astheir implements have to be taken into account, the annuity tables incurrent use on the London Exchange in the year 1817. The parallel-ograms of Mr. Owen appear to be the only form of society, besidesthe bourgeois form, with which he was acquainted.” (Karl Marx: ZurKritik , etc. pp. 38, 39)

17“A ridiculous presumption has latterly got abroad that commonproperty in its primitive form is specifically a Slavonian, or even ex-clusively Russian form. It is the primitive form that we can prove tohave existed amongst Romans, Teutons, and Celts, and even tothis daywe find numerous examples, ruins though they be, in India. A moreexhaustive study of Asiatic, and especially of Indian formsof commonproperty, would show how from the different forms of primitive com-mon property, different forms of its dissolution have been developed.Thus, for instance, the various original types of Roman and Teutonicprivate property are deducible from different forms of Indian commonproperty.” (Karl Marx,Zur Kritik, etc. p. 10.)

18cultus: worship.19The insufficiency of Ricardo’s analysis of the magnitude of value,

and his analysis is by far the best, will appear from the 3rd and 4thbooks of this work. As regards value in general, it is the weakpoint ofthe classical school of Political Economy that it nowhere expressly andwith full consciousness, distinguishes between labour, asit appears inthe value of a product, and the same labour, as it appears in the use valueof that product. Of course the distinction is practically made, since thisschool treats labour, at one time under its quantitative aspect, at anotherunder its qualitative aspect. But it has not the least idea, that when thedifference between various kinds of labour is treated as purely quantita-tive, their qualitative unity or equality, and therefore their reduction toabstract human labour, is implied. For instance, Ricardo declares thathe agrees with Destutt de Tracy in this proposition: “As it iscertain thatour physical and moral faculties are alone our original riches, the em-ployment of those faculties, labour of some kind, is our onlyoriginaltreasure, and it is always from this employment that all those things arecreated which we call riches . . . It is certain, too, that all those thingsonly represent the labour which has created them, and if theyhave avalue, or even two distinct values, they can only derive themfrom that(the value) of the labour from which they emanate.” (Ricardo, The Prin-ciples of Pol. Econ.3 Ed. Lond. 1821, p. 334.) We would here onlypoint out, that Ricardo puts his own more profound interpretation uponthe words of Destutt. What the latter really says is, that on the onehand all things which constitute wealth represent the labour that cre-ates them, but that on the other hand, they acquire their “twodifferentvalues” (use value and exchange value) from “the value of labour.” Hethus falls into the commonplace error of the vulgar economists, whoassume the value of one commodity (in this case labour) in order to de-termine the values of the rest. But Ricardo reads him as if he had said,that labour (not the value of labour) is embodied both in use value andexchange value. Nevertheless, Ricardo himself pays so little attentionto the twofold character of the labour which has a twofold embodiment,that he devotes the whole of his chapter on “Value and Riches,TheirDistinctive Properties,” to a laborious examination of thetrivialities ofa J.B. Say. And at the finish he is quite astonished to find that Destutton the one hand agrees with him as to labour being the source ofvalue,and on the other hand with J.B. Say as to the notion of value.

20It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has neversucceeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular,of their value, in discovering that form under which value becomes ex-change value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representativesof the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, ashaving no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The

reason for this is not solely because their attention is entirely absorbedin the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. Thevalueform of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is alsothe most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois productionand stamps that production as a particular species of socialproduction,and thereby gives it its special historical character. If then we treat thismode of production as one eternally fixed by Nature for every state ofsociety, we necessarily overlook that which is thedifferentia specificaof the value form, and consequently of the commodity form, and of itsfurther developments, money orm, capital form, etc. We consequentlyfind that economists, who are thoroughly agreed as to labour time be-ing the measure of the magnitude of value, have the most strange andcontradictory ideas of money, the perfected form of the general equiv-alent. This is seen in a striking manner when they treat of banking,where the commonplace definitions of money will no longer hold wa-ter. This led to the rise of a restored mercantile system (Ganilh, etc.),which sees in value nothing but a social form, or rather the unsubstan-tial ghost of that form. Once for all I may here state, that by classicalPolitical Economy, I understand that economy which, since the time ofW. Petty, has investigated the real relations of productionin bourgeoissociety in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with ap-pearances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materialslong sinceprovided by scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanationsof the most obtrusive phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for therest, confines itself to systematising in a pedantic way, andproclaimingfor everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self-complacent bour-geoisie with regard to their own world, to them the best of allpossibleworlds.

21“Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are onlytwo kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institu-tions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of thebourgeoisie arenatural institutions. In this they resemble the theologians, who like-wise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirsis an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. . . .Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any”] (Karl Marx.The Poverty of Philosophy. A Response to the Philosophy of M.Proud-hon. 1847, p. 113.) Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who imagines thatthe ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But when peo-ple plunder for centuries, there must always be something athand forthem to seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. Itwould thus appear that even Greeks and Romans had some process ofproduction, consequently, an economy, which just as much constitutedthe material basis of their world, as bourgeois economy constitutes thatof our modern world. Or perhaps Bastiat means, that a mode of pro-duction based on slavery is based on a system of plunder. In that casehe treads on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle erredin his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist likeBastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labour? I seize this oppor-tunity of shortly answering an objection taken by a German paper inAmerica, to my work,Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekonomie, 1859. In the es-timation of that paper, my view that each special mode of productionand the social relations corresponding to it, in short, thatthe economicstructure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical and politicalsuperstructure is raised and to which definite social forms of thoughtcorrespond; that the mode of production determines the character ofthe social, political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very truefor our own times, in which material interests preponderate, but notfor the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens andRome,where politics, reigned supreme. In the first place it strikes one as anodd thing for any one to suppose that these well-worn phrasesaboutthe middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to anyone else.This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live onCatholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is themode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why herepolitics,and there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requiresbut a slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, forexample, to be aware that its secret history is the history ofits landed


property. On the other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty forwrongly imagining that knight errantry was compatible withall eco-nomic forms of society.

22“Observations on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ., particularlyrelating to value and to demand and supply” Lond., 1821, p. 16.

23S. Bailey,l.c., p. 165.24The author of “Observations” and S. Bailey accuse Ricardo ofcon-

verting exchange value from something relative into something abso-

lute. The opposite is the fact. He has explained the apparentrelationbetween objects, such as diamonds and pearls, in which relation theyappear as exchange values, and disclosed the true relation hidden be-hind the appearances, namely, their relation to each other as mere ex-pressions of human labour. If the followers of Ricardo answer Baileysomewhat rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason isto besought in this, that they were unable to find in Ricardo’s own worksany key to the hidden relations existing between value and its form,exchange value.


The Performance of GestureMusical Gesture, Then, And Now

Mark Sullivan(1984)

Preface

During the last ten years, I have read numerous arti-cles, essays, and books that treated as their subject mat-ter some aspect of composing, performing, or listen-ing to music. The majority of these writings dealt withpitch relations. A few dealt with notation, with perfor-mance problems and interpretation, and even fewer withrhythm, musical dynamics, or timbre, and the list dwin-dles on.

Lots of the writing, even that which was comprehensive,dealt separately with each parameter of music. Very littleof the writing made any attempt to deal with the structureof relationships created by interacting parameters. Thatwriting which did make an attempt usually resorted toclumsy phrases and an abundance of hyphenated adjec-tives. Only after searching for better terminology did Idevelop an understanding of the predicament: an actuallack of terminology useful for speaking of relationshipsbetween parameters. That prodded me to investigate oneI had occasionally come across in my reading and in dis-cussion: the term ’musical gesture.’

Whenever I encountered the term, I figured out somemeaning for it that, at least in the context, fit. Havingcollected various meanings, each context-bound and dif-ferent, I began to wonder how they could be reconciledwith one another. At the same time, I noticed the term’gesture’ popping up with increasing frequency, partic-ularly in discussions of new music, where, however, itstill seemed stuck in a region of fuzziness. I wonderedwhether I had understood the term too soon, and whetherit could be given its distinction at all: that is, I won-dered whether the term ’musical gesture’ might be usedto find or make a distinction or distinctions, which, hith-erto nameless, escaped analytical attention.

This paper presents an initial report on my attempt toshow those distinctions that I think can be made onlywith the term ’musical gesture’. I now think the term canserve, both in my composing and in my attempts to re-spond to the work of other composers, as a required termthat can be used to speak of relationships created by in-teracting parameters and to speak of the relationship be-

tween events in different media, a term that makes a dis-tinction which shall become indispensable to me and, Ithink, to other listeners, performers, and composers. Theterm ’musical gesture’ is meant to be taken as an offer.

1. Prologue

”One of the functions of gesture is to point at something.If, like a pointing finger, one looks at the gesture, insteadof what it’s pointing at, then it loses the function whichdistinguishes it. Analyzing gesture, in this sense, is relatedto another problem: Looking in a mirror to find out howone looks with one’s eyes closed.”

Mark Sullivan ”Gesture and Music”

Everyday usage links gesture with bodily movement, notwith acoustic events. Usage has it that gesture occurs inmovement–only in movement. The tag phrase ”only inmovement” underlines the assumption behind most at-tempts to come to grips with the concept and the phe-nomenon of gesture: each of them takes for granted, ortries to show, that gesture is something which can happenonly in movement. I shall neither take this for granted,nor try to show it. I no longer reserve the word gestureonly for those times when I wish to refer to those move-ments that people make instead of, or while, speaking.Nor do I anymore reserve it only for events in those com-posed works that make use of movement. Instead, I nowreserve it for events that are given a certain function, acertain role to play, both in discourse and in composedworks: I look at gesture as something that happens inmovement, in speech, and in music.

Unheeded Precedents

I do not claim to make this turn in usage without anyprecedents. Precedents for the use of the term ’musi-cal gesture’ can be found scattered throughout the writ-ings of several composers. These precedents do not com-pletely agree with one another, nor are they all consistentwith one another. But each has found it necessary to in-troduce and apply a concept of gesture to music.

MARK SULLIVAN 139 1. Prologue

“. . . Now, as is well-known, music lacks all capacity forpsychological or characterizing effect. Instead, music pos-sesses one capability which is of decisive significance forthe representation of man in the theater: it can reproducethe gesture which elucidates the events on stage. It caneven create a type of fundamental gesture which prescribesa definite attitude for the actor and which eliminates anydoubt or misunderstanding about the respective incident.In the ideal case, it can fix this gesture so powerfully that afalse representation of the relevant action is no longer pos-sible . . . Music has the potential to define the basic toneand fundamental gesture of an event to the extent that atleast an incorrect interpretation will be avoided, while itstill allows the actor abundant opportunity for deploymentof his own individuality of style. Naturally, gestural musicis in no way bound to a text, and if, in general, we per-ceive Mozart’s music, even the non-operatic compositions,as “dramatic,” we do so because it never abandons its ges-tural character.”

Kurt Weill Concerning the Gestural Character ofMusic

“Manner is the scar which expression leaves behindin a language that is no longer sufficient for expression.Mahler’s deviations are speech gesture’s next of kin: hisidiosyncracies cramp themselves together, like in jargon.In the major key section of the fifth symphony, many ofthe repetitions of motives are paradigmatic, moving con-vulsively back and forth, at the same time vehement andrestrained. Sometimes — by no means merely in recitative— Mahler’s music has made itself resemble the speakinggesture so thoroughly that the music sounds as if it liter-ally speaks, as was once promised by Mendelssohn’s title’Songs Without Words’.”

T.W. Adorno,Gustav Mahler — A MusicalPhysiognomy

“With the gesture of the coda, the chorus mysticus turnsas if backwards. The characteristic of the movement isthe combination of intentionally simple harmonic relationswith voice leadings disassociated from those relations.”

T.W. AdornoGustav Mahler — A MusicalPhysiognomy

“The reign of a time beating image can be sustainedonly over partial contents lacking autonomy and profile,and Wagner’s melodic weakness, often complained about,does not have its foundation in the simple lack of “a strik-ing idea” but in the beating gesture that dominates hiswork.”

T.W. Adorno,About Hauer

“Of the ’themes’ in Schoenberg’s final tonal works —and these were the last in which it is possible to speak ofthemes at all — only the gesture of those themes has sur-vived, and even then, they have been detached from thematerial prerequisites of the gesture. This gestural forceisallegorically charged with the realization of that which isdenied them within the tonal structure: stress and direction,the very image of eruption. This is indicated in the desig-nations ’driving’ (schwungvoll), ’with energy’ (energico),’impetuously’ (irrpetuoso), and ’lovingly’ (amabile).”

T.W. AdornoThe Philosophy of New Music

“Stravinsky is drawn in that direction where music —in its retarded state, far behind the fully developed bour-geois subject — functions as an element lacking intention,arousing only bodily animation instead of offering mean-ing. He is attracted to that sphere in which meaning hasbecome so ritualized that it cannot be experienced as thespecific meaning of the musical act. The aesthetic ideal isthat of unquestioned fulfillment. For Stravinsky — as forFrank Wedekind in his circus plays — bodily art’ becomesthe watchword. Stravinsky begins as the staff composer ofthe Russian ballet. Since Petrouchka, his scores prefiguregesture and step, thus. . . ”

T.W. Adorno,The Philosophy of New Music

“If played and heard often enough, every musical ges-ture is prone to be interpreted, by musicians and listeners,as a gesture of musical speech.

As the gesture becomes familiar, and thus recognizedby society, the composed structure, in which the contextgenerates the meaning of its components, will be misun-derstood, instead, as one in which the components givemeaning to their context.

In order to retard this development, this visitation ofcommunicative familiarity, for as long as possible, I haveattempted, in several of my compositions, to anticipate thegesture-forming tendencies within the composed structureand to reduce each of themad absurdumby way of anonsequitur. I wanted, thereby, to rob trivial perception andpartial recognition of the paralyzing effect that all too com-monly is mistaken for the understanding of music.”

Herbert Brun, “Program Note for String Quartet No. 3”

“The category of gesture is bounded on the one side bythe category of signal and on another side by the one ofcharacter. Signal is pre-gestural, that is, the concept andcategory of gesture is derivable from the concept and cate-gory of signal. Character is post-gestural, derivative of ges-ture conceptually and categorically. Characters are devel-opmental complexes of gestures just as in theater, mime, orreadings. Gesture, loosely speaking, is the musical equiva-lent of such bodily and vocal gestures . . . it is more closelyrelated to the bodily gestures that accompany speech thanto speech gestures themselves, except as these latter are un-derstood as referring, to the inflections of the voice ratherthan to the words and sentences vocally articulated. . . ”

Richard Herbert Howe, “Gesture”

“Strict or varied repetition of a rhythmic gesture tendsto establish the identity of the gesture. The use of similardurations, pitches, textures, timbres, etc., tends to establishthe cohesiveness and unity of a rhythmic gesture; the useof strong contrast in any musical aspect tends to establishthe separation of one rhythmic gesture from another.”

Alan Winold, “Rhythm in 20th Century Music”

“. . . a melodic motif is in essence and origin a vocalgesture; it is a vocal movement with a clearly defined andtherefore clearly expressed profile. And . . . it too is sensi-tive to initially delicate nuances of tension and relaxation,

MARK SULLIVAN 140 1. Prologue

as these are embodied in the breathing which animates thevocal gesture and shapes its contours.”

Roger Sessions,The Musical Experience of ComposersPerformer, Listener

“In music, the gesture and the inflection are definite; thesense in terms of images and associations is free; the in-flection and gesture are perhaps the more definite for beinggiven the full weight of the expression.”

Roger Sessions,The Musical Experience of ComposersPerformer, Listener

“Since Ph. E. Bach, gesture has come to the forefrontof music. Gesture loans music the context which musichas been able to bring into actuality by itself less and less.Thereby it becomes understandable that since 1750 musichas been notated more and more precisely. Every legatobowing signifies a gesture. It is as if the bowing must holdtogether tones that by themselves no longer hold together.”

Dieter Schnebel,Studies of the Dynamics of ArnoldSchoenberg’s

Although these statements have yet to budge usage, theyprovide precedents that I shall take as points of departure.

No Precedents?

Although most literature requires a reading informed bya specific acoustic image of the writing, there has as ofyet been no treatment of the relationship between linguis-tic gesture and literature. For the term ’linguistic ges-ture,’ there are few precedents. In the field of linguistics,a basis for creating a precedent can be found in workdone on the prosodic and paralinguistic features of lan-guage. But even there, the term ’linguistic gesture’ hasas of yet been provided no explicit precedents.

Reorientation

Much of the writing which treats gesture as somethingthat happens only in movement itself provides precedentsfor speaking of acoustic gesture. If the reader reorientssome part of a passage, it often reveals a compatibilitywith concepts of linguistic and musical gesture.

“Gestures of the head can indicate humility, haughti-ness, languor or rudeness . . . The face can be suppliant,menacing, soothing, sad, cheerful, proud, humble . . . Withyour arms and hands: ask, promise, threaten, supplicate;show fear, joy, grief, doubt, acknowledgement, penitence;indicate measure, quantity, number, time . . . ”

Quintillian, Institutio Oratio

“. . . with your hands, plead. . . ” is a phrase that has twoinstructions embedded in it: Use the medium of move-ment. Evoke a connection with an acoustic medium —

in this case, the voice — and one of its distinct acts —pleading.

The reader could reorient these instructions by imagin-ing how they could be used to tell someone, not how tomake movement gestures, but how to make linguistic ges-tures:

With your voice, shrug; use loudness and the contourof your pitches to indicate astonishment, doubt, dejection,disgust, elation, surprise; with your rhythm jump or glide,rush, snap to a halt.

Thus might a reader orient the passage to linguistic ges-ture. The phrase “. . . with your voice, shrug” reorientsthe embedded instructions: Use an acoustic medium —in this case, the voice.

Evoke a connection with the medium of movement andone of its distinct acts — shrugging.

Along these lines, a reader could orient the passage tomusical gesture, imagining instructions given to a per-former by a conductor:

Make your phrase dance a bit, come to a halt, and thentrudge off. Those notes are just a cough. It has to be ashout — use the crescendo to make it a shout. The flutehere has to imitate the attack of a trumpet — play it as theopening to a fanfare.

To show that gesture happens only in movement, onemust show that a movement becomes a gesture underconditions not applicable to acoustic events.

I have not found any such conditions: Each formulationof the conditions under which a movement becomes agesture turns out to be a formulation of conditions appli-cable to acoustic events.

2. A Medium

It preserves traces. It wipes out traces. A composer turnsto a medium with an idea, and wants the idea to leavetraces in it. The composer wants the traces preserved.Not wiped out. The composer turns to a medium thatboth preserves and wipes out traces. But the traces itpreserves are not those it wipes out.

A composer wants to know whether a medium will wipeout the traces an idea leaves or preserve them.

Each medium, in relation to others, has its order, its or-dering behavior. Distinguished by the kinds of tracesit preserves and wipes out, distinguished by the waysit wipes out or preserves them, a medium shows theconsistency of its constraints. The idea that leaves thetraces and the traces left neither budge the constraintsof a medium nor change its consistency. A medium is

MARK SULLIVAN 141 2. A Medium

a resistant whole: it provides the perfect resistance to acomposer’s intentions. Not the complete resistance, theperfect resistance.

One From the Other

A medium limits the field of response with the consis-tency of its constraints.

Obviously, one medium wipes out and preserves tracesin sounds; another, traces in movement and sound; andso on. A respondent will not confuse one medium withanother. A medium created by combining media willnot have two consistencies but rather one: Theater doesnot have at the same time the consistency of a mediumthat preserves and wipes out traces in movements andthe consistency of a medium that preserves and wipesout traces in sound; it has the single consistency of amedium that preserves and wipes out traces in movementand sound.

There are traces that a medium cannot preserve. Thereare traces that a medium can preserve but, under cer-tain conditions, won’t. A medium is distinguished by thekind of phenomena it offers to the composer who wantsto create an order in it and by the way it prevents thecomposer from creating some orders.

Traces

A choice creates an order. In a medium, a composer,by choosing, tries to create an order that does not coin-cide with the order offered by the medium’s behavior. Ifthe choice doesn’t, then the order created by the com-poser is indistinguishable from that which the mediumoffers anyway: all traces left by the composer’s choiceare wiped out; if the choice does, then traces of the com-poser’s choice are preserved in the order created whichis distinguishable from that offered by the medium any-way. Were it not for the medium’s ordering behavior,there would be no way to detect the order created by thechoices of the composer. A medium preserves its orderwithin that which it offers to be ordered.

A composer turns to a medium if its constraints and itsconsistency appear, to the composer, as an offer.

A composer wants an idea to leave traces that can be pre-served in one medium and not in any other and wants thetraces preserved to be required by an idea that could notleave traces in another medium.

One idea requires that there be music sounding. Another,that there be someone moving. Another, that there besomeone speaking while moving. And so on.

The Second-Nature of a Medium

But the offer made by a medium draws the composerinto a confrontation not only with nature, but also withhistory and society. In a medium, a composer confrontsnature’s devastating impact on traces and the historicalconsequences of the orders composers have already cre-ated to thwart the devastation of traces, historical conse-quences that stem from the history of practices that havegrafted a second-nature onto nature and have created yetanother trap through which no trace can now pass with-out being caught up in the affirmation of what’s alreadybeen done.

“The supposition of a historical tendency of musicalmeans contradicts the traditional conception of the ma-terial of music. This material is traditionally defined —in terms of physics, or in any case, in terms of the psy-chology of sound — as the very substance of each of thesounds at the composer’s disposal. But the compositionalmaterial is as different from that as the language is fromthe stock of its sounds. It doesn’t only increase and de-crease in the course of history. All of its specific char-acteristics are marks of the historical process . . . Musicrecognizes no laws of nature and that is why all psychol-ogy of music is so questionable. This psychology — inits efforts to establish an invariant “Understanding” of themusic of all times — assumes from the beginning a con-stancy of the musical subject. This supposition is moreclosely related to that of the constancy of the material ofnature than psychological differentiation would like to sayis the case. What this insufficiently and inadequately de-scribes is to be sought in the knowledge of material’s ownlaws of motion. Following these laws, everything is notpossible at all times . . . The requirements placed on thesubject by the material are a consequence of the fact thatthe “Material” itself is sedimented intellect, something so-cially preformed throughout by human consciousness. Asthe subjectivity of a previous time — now forgetful of it-self — such an objective intellect of material has its ownlaws of motion. Of the same origin as the social processand continuously penetrated by its traces, what appears tobe mere self-propulsion of the material runs its course, inthe same sense as the real society, even where the two nolonger know about one another and oppose one another.Hence, the composer’s dispute with the material is the dis-pute with society precisely insofar as this dispute migratesinto the work and does not stand in opposition to the pro-duction as something merely external, heteronomous, asa consumer or opponent. In immanent reciprocal actionthe instructions constitute themselves: the material givesto the composer instructions which he, in that he followsthem, transforms.”

Theodor W. Adorno,The Philosophy of New Music

The composer has to create, by choosing, an order ina medium that coincides neither with the order offeredby the medium anyway nor with the orders that have al-ready been created by other composers. The second na-ture of a medium is the historical residue that effectivelysimulates the ordering behavior of a medium by wiping


out traces, unless a composer’s choice leaves traces thatcreate an order which neither coincides with that of themedium nor with that of its second-nature.

The Power of a Parameter

When some trace is not left which a composer thoughtwould be, the trace has often been wiped out by the or-dering behavior of the medium (or its second-nature).

In music, this happens, for instance, when traces arewiped out by some property of an instrument:

Each sustained note on the piano has the dynamic shape:

The dynamic shape of sustained notes on the piano can-not change, and thus, cannot be composed. The notesdo not have that dynamic shape if the composer sochooses, but have it already, whether the composer sochooses or not. The composer cannot, even if he sochooses, give the sustained notes any other dynamic

shape

and where the composer cannot choose, he leaves notraces.

Of course, the traces that can’t be left are not a problem,if the composer’s idea does not require that traces be leftin the dynamic shape of sustained notes. And the tracesthat can’t be left may be a solution, if the composer’sidea requires that traces not be left in the dynamic shapeof sustained notes.

But, if the composer’s idea requires that traces be left inthe dynamic shape of sustained notes, and the composerturns to the piano (or, in a more complex case, is told tochoose the piano by a set of rules governing the selectionof instruments in an ensemble, a set of rules which priorto that point had always delivered for his selection in-struments that were able to change their dynamic shape)then the composer confronts a medium that wipes out therequired traces.

A composer might place one ordering behavior in con-flict with another. Noticing that within a periodic struc-ture an emphasis is placed on the first duration of agroup, the composer might place the upward peak of a

contour on the last duration of the group, thus placingthe ordering behavior that assigns emphasis within pe-riodicities in conflict with the ordering behavior that as-signs emphasis within a contour.

What the result will be, and whether one ordering be-havior overrides another, depends not only on the lawsof nature that affect the medium. It is also dependent onthe power of the second-nature that has attached itself tothe medium. The power of each parameter in relation toall the other parameters has not been constant throughoutthe history of music, and the powers of all parameters arenot equally distributed now.

Turning to a Medium

To acquire an image of how his idea would be affectedby a medium and an image of how his idea requires amedium, the composer answers a group of questions:

Of all the traces that an idea can leave, which can amedium preserve? None? Some? All? Which?

Of all the traces that a medium can preserve which arerequired by the idea? All? Some? None? Which?

Are there traces among those that a medium can preservewhich are reguired by an idea that could not leave tracesin any other medium?

Is there an idea that can leave traces which can be pre-served in one medium and not in any other?

Are there traces that a medium has not preserved beforethat are required by an idea? Is there an idea that hasnot left traces in a medium before which requires onemedium and not any other?

These questions are representative of those faced by thecomposer who has an image of how an idea can requirea medium and of how the ordering behavior of a medium(and its second-nature) can interfere with the leaving oftraces.

A Problem

Under certain conditions, choosing a medium presents aproblem.

It is a problem that confronts a composer who has not yetformed a distinct image of a medium’s resistance, of itsordering behavior. It is a problem that plagues the earlystages of a search for a formulation which would showthat a composer’s idea requires a specific medium — aproblem in the application of what the composer knowsof the relationship between a specific idea and a medium.And, it is a problem that confronts a composer who needsto gain information about how his idea will be affected


by a medium — for a composer who has a concept ofwhat is experimental now. Either the composer can notyet make relevant the criteria he has or the composer hasno criteria to help him choose one medium rather thanany other.

But a composer might not treat any of these conditions asa problem: they might all be considered desired states. Acomposer might like to think that an idea is new enough,or powerful enough, or general enough, to render thechoice of medium trivial.

Once a composer ignores the medium’s interference withthe leaving of traces, then be has no further choice: Hecan not choose the turn to a medium. He just turns,and no matter to which he turns, he just turns to anymedium. The turn is insignificant, even if some of itsconsequences gain significance only later.

A Hybrid Medium

If a composer has a formulation of an idea that shows thata specific medium is required by it — either a mediumcreated by combining media (such as opera) or not — aformulation that shows the idea can govern the makingof choices which create an order that does not coincidewith the orders that composers have already created, thenno further decisions about the medium must be made. Ifthe order created by the composer in the chosen mediumturns out to have a relationship with parts of an order thatcan be created in another medium, then the composer canonly in vain deny that the relationship exists, or admitthat it exists and insist that it was not intended.

If, while investigating the requirements of an idea, acomposer finds that nothing speaks for a required rela-tionship between the characteristics of the events that thecomposer needs to create part of the order in the requiredmedium chosen and the characteristics of events that cre-ate part of the order in other media or in another medium,then the idea as formulated either requires no relation-ship, or does not require a relationship, and whateverrelationship is created is unintended, even if not incon-sequential.

If the composer finds that something does speak for a re-quired relationship, then the medium required by the ideais a hybrid.

The kind of phenomena in which a medium manifestsits ordering behavior determines what traces can be leftin events. The kind of ordering behavior that a mediummanifests determines what traces can be left of events.In the events that can be created in a medium can bepreserved traces of events that can not be created in themedium.

Movements can not be created in music, but traces of thecharacteristics of movements, under certain conditions,can be preserved in musical events. Thus, for instance,composing for an acoustic medium does not ensure thatthe medium (and its second-nature) will not preserve thetraces of the characteristics of events that occur in themedium of movement, even though events that occur inthe medium of movement do not occur in an acousticmedium.

Each medium is distinguished as a whole. Some charac-teristics of the phenomena in which a medium manifestsits ordering behavior and some characteristics of the or-dering behavior which it manifests can be found in, trans-ferred to, or shared with other media. But no medium canbe preserved whole as traces left in another.

A hybrid medium does not combine two orders aswholes, creating another, new whole, one that is notequivalent to the two that combined to produce it. Ahybrid medium creates its wholeness from those parts ofsome order that another order cannot preserve as a whole.

A hybrid medium has a name: gesture.

Gesture is a hybrid medium. It takes two media to makeone gesture.

Even if one medium is present only in the memory, orin the cognitive behavior, or in the imagination, of therespondent.

Gesture

I turn to it when I want an idea to leave traces in a hybridmedium — traces that will be distinct from those left inthe medium of gesture by any other idea.

When composing gesture, I create intended links. Byway of a configuration embedded in an event in onemedium, I link it to a configuration in another medium,and thus, to the characteristics of an event in anothermedium, the characteristics of a class of events in an-other medium, or the characteristics of a class of eventsthat span several media.

The establishment of a hybrid medium’s consistency ofconstraints requires the collaboration of the composer.The composer’s idea and the hybrid medium are not sim-ply compatible. They are made compatible: Accord-ing to the requirements of an idea, the composer createslinks between one medium and others. When the com-poser creates a new domain of gesture, he creates a newmedium.

Instead of combining media, to make a medium, thecomposer combines configurations shared between me-dia.


Borrowed Distinctions

Gesture works with borrowed distinctions, with distinc-tions on loan.

Under certain conditions, an event in one medium lendssome, or at least one, of its distinctions to an event in an-other medium. If the composer wants to choose the timeof those conditions, and thus, the distinctions lent, thenthe composer faces a group of questions:

Which characteristics of one medium can be preservedin another medium? Of the characteristics that can bepreserved, which do I want to preserve? Are there char-acteristics which can be preserved in a medium that indi-cate not only the medium from which they are borrowedbut also the event in that medium from which they areborrowed? Which characteristics of an event must bepreservable and preserved in another medium so that thegesture be the gesture of that event and not of any other?

These questions are representative of those faced by acomposer who wants to compose a hybrid medium, inorder to compose gesture.

The Relationship Between One Medium andAnother

The composition of gesture is inextricably bound upwith the creation of intended relationships between onemedium and another. A medium can be looked at as asystem. Thus, it is possible to look at the relationship be-tween one medium and another as a relationship betweentwo systems, and to look at the composition of gesture asthe creation of intended relationships between two sys-tems. In the case of gesture, the intended relationshipsare varieties of the relationship of analogy.

A System

When, in accordance with some set of purposes, I canconceptually separate some whole from an environment— when I can describe the whole’s consistency of be-havior by referring to a set of states of the whole thatare created by a set of interacting elements — when Ican describe each state of the whole as a consequenceof the configuration of states attained by each element— when I can describe what each element preserves un-der the change from one of its states to another and howeach of its states is different in relation to its other states,in short, the kind and number of states attainable to eachelement — when I can describe the relationship betweenthe states of the whole and the states attainable to eachelement so that no change of state of the whole occurs

without a change of state of at least one element and nochange of an element’s state occurs without a change ofstate in the whole — when I can describe what the inter-action of the elements does, how it functions, then I willspeak of a system.

I use the term ’element’ when referring to something asa whole, which I do not consider something as made upof a set of elements. It depends on my purpose whetherI regard something as an element or system: At one timeI regard pitch contour as a system which can adopt asmany states as its elements allow, each of which can be“on” or “off” at least. At another time, I regard pitchcontour as an element which changes the state of a sys-tem called ’gesture.’

Dependent on the number of elements in a system and onthe number of states which each of these elements can at-tain, each system has a definite number of states in whichit can appear.

A system is defined by the number of possible states itcan be in and by the sets of instructions that will con-trol the changes of state in the system. Two systems arecompatible with each other when they are similarly de-fined. The degree of compatibility of two systems is thedegree to which they can simulate each other, the degreeto which one system may behave in analogy to another.

Analogy

One relationship that can hold between two systems isthat of analogy. I speak of analogy when an event in onesystem is equivalent to an event in another system, eventhough the two systems are not equivalent.

A rising pitch contour might be treated as an event anal-ogous to the raising of a limb of the body, even thoughthe system of movement is not equivalent to the system ofsound.

The speed of successive pitches might correspond to thespeed of the movement, the distance between pitchesmight correspond to the size of change from one posi-tion of the body to another, the degree of loudness mightcorrespond to the force of movement, and so on.

It may turn out that the movement is produced in a systemwith only two perceptible differences of speed whereasthe musical event is produced in a system with six per-ceptible changes of speed. In this case, several of thestates of the element speed in music can be in relation toone state of the element of speed in movement.


Intended and Unintended Gestures

Since gesture is a hybrid medium, it is a medium, andthus, gesture can wipe out traces.

The composer has to figure out how the traces left bythe required idea are to be protected from the orderingbehavior adopted by the chosen medium of gesture — ahybrid medium created to leave traces in configurationsthat preserve the characteristics of events in other media.

The preservation of the characteristics of the events ofone system in the events of another system (and thus, inthis case, a medium) is dependent on the degree to whichthe number and kinds of states of the one system can bein the relationship to those of the other system.

All the states of system A may be placed in the relation-ship of analogy to all the states of system B, and the otherway around; all the states of system A may be placed inthe relationship of analogy to all the states of system B,but only a few of the states of system B can be placed inthe relationship of analogy to the states of system A; andso forth.

Applying these notions to that of a medium renders: Onemedium can preserve all, or some, or none of the charac-teristics of another medium.

A specific movement may be looked at as one state in thesystem of movement which is brought about by the in-teraction and current state of a number of elements thatinclude speed, size of change, force of movement, and soon. Characteristics of this movement might be preservedin music by establishing correspondences between thestates its elements are in and the states into which ele-ments of the musical system will be brought.

Turning To A Hybrid Medium

The composer faces a problem: The very medium of ges-ture required to leave traces of an idea in configurationsmay wipe out other traces that have been left.

Again it may be a problem of criteria: it may be that Ihave no criteria to consult when deciding which hybridmedium to choose. Maybe I have no distinct image ofgesture’s resistance to my idea, and maybe I just haven’treached that state yet where I can formulate the require-ments of my idea so that I can see that it requires a spe-cific hybrid medium. And, of course, I might like to thinkI don’t have a problem. I might like to think that myidea is new enough, powerful enough, or general enoughto make trivial the choice of a hybrid medium, to maketrivial the choice of gesture.

Nothing prevents gestures from making it appear that thecomposer had an intention even though he didn’t. Noth-

ing prevents the gestures from creating the impressionthat the composer had an intention that required the ges-tures he in actuality just got. Thus, the composer mayhave the liberty of not choosing the gestures he gets, buthe does not have the liberty of not getting any.

It may be difficult to get the gestures I want, but next toimpossible to get none.

The composer who constructs a piece according to a setof rules (using algorithms) may wind up with gestures hedoesn’t want — even though his wanted rules deliveredthem.

The performer may wind up playing gestures he doesn’twant — gestures which are not required by the composi-tion — even though he is following the score.

The listener may wind up listening to and following un-intended gestures, even though this activity was initiatedby questions formulated in relation to answers that thecomposition provides.

These are the sorts of problems that can befall the com-poser, or performer, or listener who neglects the treat-ment of gesture.

A hybrid medium limits the field of response with theconsistency of its constraints. The composer chooses topreserve one set of borrowed characteristics instead ofanother. The significance of the choice is a function ofthe chosen set’s power to limit the interpretations avail-able to the respondent. If a change of the set of borrowedcharacteristics would elicit a change of interpretation, thegesture has the power required to limit the field of re-sponse.

Gesture limits the interpretations available to a respon-dent.

In discourse or in a composed work, gestures are madein anticipation of response. Unless the addressee gatherssomething that requires interpretation, the gesture willnot function. An addressee has to gather something thatrequires interpretation before he can become a respon-dent.

3. Formulation: The Procedure ofDistinguishing

It is indispensable to gesture. It does not just put intowords what gesture does anyway. It carries out the cog-nitive mapping initiated by gesture.

Formulation is part of what gesture does.

Seeing or hearing a gesture, we start and carry out asearch for a memory, for some image of a correspon-

MARK SULLIVAN 146 3.Formulation: The Procedure of Distinguishing

dence, for the distinguishing description of a set of dy-namics. Without formulation, gesture doesn’t happen.

We try out terms and concepts, and we transform them:Terms are proposed, discarded, combined, rearranged;concepts are bent, refigured, extended, translated, imi-tated. It is at the same time the search for a concept andthe search for a name.

In one passage of Theodor Adorno’s writings about Wag-ner’s music, he uses a phrase that can be rendered inEnglish as “the gesture of striking a blow.” The phrasepoints at something important — characteristics of anaction without an agent — autonomy of agency. Alongwith other formulations found in the literature that treatsthe subject of musical gesture, this formulation helps un-derstand how a gesture can be given a name: A statementabout gesture cites a characteristic of an action withoutnaming the agent. Looking closely at these other pas-sages, it becomes possible to extend the formulation.This yields: A statement about gesture cites a charac-teristic of an action without naming the agent, a charac-teristic of an event without naming the medium, a char-acteristic of a way of doing something without namingthe one who does it. A formulation about gesture, thus,stops short of description, supplying neither motivationnor detail. It leaves out all traces of plot.

The Term ’Musical Gesture’

The term ’musical gesture’ is relatively new. The phe-nomenon is not. Gesture in music has no history. Onlya past. Its history has not been documented; the re-lationships in its past that bear on its present have yetto be articulated. In many passages that employ otherterms — terms like motive, gestalt, leitmotif, cell, eachof which can be given its precise distinction, a distinc-tion that would not be equivalent to that made with theterm ’musical gesture’ — one can find observations andinsights that apply to musical gesture. In some cases, onewould now prefer to substitute the term ’musical gesture’for the term used.

Thus, I prefer to reserve a term like ’melodic motive’, ormore precisely, ’pitch motive’, for the time during whichI do not want to speak of any corresponding ordering ofrhythm, of loudness, and so forth. It is a term I reservefor the order created in one parameter.

Gesture, in contradistinction, I reserve for the time inwhich I wish to speak of configurations, that is, an order-ing that cannot be found by examining each parameter,one at a time.

Musical gesture cannot be found by looking at pitch se-quences alone, or by looking at dynamic constellations

or timbral groupings in isolation. It is found in configu-rations created jointly between parameters.

“. . . Thus we see that the old Italian terms seemed toBeethoven ’nonsensical’; they now indicate only a tempoand no longer the ’character’ of a piece. The categoriesare separated . . . The discrepancy between the sense ofthe Italian terms and the new ’character’ of the pieces forwhich they are still used as tempo indications is clearly felt.This discrepancy sometimes becomes an actual contradic-tion. But the metronome has made these old ’barbarous’signs superfluous. The categories of tempo and charac-ter may be expressed independently of each other; tempoabsolutely and exactly by a metronome figure; characterthrough the really adequate and discriminating terms of thevernacular . . . We see that Beethoven felt the existence ofthe problem very clearly and drew the necessary conclu-sions from it. He was conscious of tempo as an essen-tial part of his language, co-ordinated with that mysteriouscategory which he himself termed ’character’. A wrongtempo would change the character, and for each characterthere is an appropriate tempo. . . ”

Rudolph Kolisch, “Tempo and Character inBeethoven’s Music”

One can read in the literature and know for every state-ment about character that gesture is included: couchedwithin comments about character, one finds implicationsthat bear on gesture.

Two Phrases

If a gesture seems to be embedded in an event, then Isay that the event has a gesture. There are aspects of theevent, details, that are not part of the configuration of dis-tinguishing components. If a gesture becomes identicalwith an event, then I say that the event is a gesture. Allother aspects of the event seem to have been minimizedso that its gesturality can become the message: the ges-ture becomes the event.

4. Contextual History

In a context, there may be a continuous stream of gesture,a stream of different kinds of gestures, movement ges-tures and acoustic gestures, gestures with different func-tions, gestures that establish an emphasis or that mark anemphasis, that interrupt, that set the field of meaning forsomething that follows, or that retroactively modify themeaning of a previously made movement or phrase, ges-tures that point or that help make a pointed address, ges-tures that mark the opening or the closing or that makethe link, gestures that emphasize an articulation or thatarticulate a relation, gestures that overlap with one an-other, that interrupt, complete, close or initiate one an-other.

MARK SULLIVAN 147 4.Contextual History

In discourse, the continuity of a spoken utterance may bedeftly torn by a series of articulating movements, or bya long drawn-out “er”, or the noise of a purring buzz ofthe lips; a movement gesture may prolong the durationof something that would have passed quickly had it beenspoken; the noise of an exaggerated sigh or a quickly saidphrase or sentence might attach a significance to the un-folding of a movement gesture, creating a meaning thatthe movement gesture could not create alone (since theperformer cannot make two movement gestures at onceand cannot interrupt the one movement gesture with an-other and then complete the first).

In a music composition (or, the necessary changes beingmade, in a movement composition), there might be dif-ferent kinds of musical gestures, some that preserve char-acteristics of movements, some that preserve characteris-tics of speech gestures, some that preserve characteristicsof musical events; there might be sequences where ges-tures that refer to movement follow gestures that refer tolinguistic situations, linguistic gestures and behaviorsofspeech; various kinds of musical gestures may alternatewith one another or several musical gestures may worktogether to form the musical gesture of a whole seriesof events; a musical event which has a gesture may bepunctuated by something that is a musical gesture; a mu-sical gesture might be repeated to show how its contextchanges. Or, to the contrary, a context may hold still sothat changes in musical gesture come to the fore.

Looking at the roles played by any one musical gesture ina context, it may be transitory, breaking the continuity ofsomething else, coming and going, changing slightly butnever losing its identity; it may undergo a developmentand be subjected to a process of transformation that turnsit eventually into another musical gesture; or it may, inone form or another, always be present, functioning aspart of the noise factor of the composition, that is, thatwhich does not change so that the changes in somethingelse can be noticed; at one point it may stand alone as agesture, at another it may become part of a musical ges-ture.

Contexts left, approached, and present are pointed at bygesture. Context refers to the conditions under whichsomething will manifest more than its mere sequence, itsmere syntax. Without the clues provided by the context,the respondent would be unable to determine the functionof gesture; without the clues provided by gestures the re-spondent would be unable to determine the context.

Gesture creates the context that creates it.

With gesture, from case to case, the generalities hold,even though the specifics don’t. Context is the situationin which specifics arise to confront their partnership withgeneralities.

None of the forms of gesture are mere illustration. Norare they mere creators of redundancy, although some-times they may provide the indispensable degree of re-dundancy.

Two Histories

Two histories are linked in the formation of a gesture:one is the history of contexts in which a gesture has beenmade, the other is the history of gestures made in a con-text.

I notice a specific configuration and remember the stringof contexts in which it has appeared. I notice a spe-cific context and remember the string of configurationswhich have appeared in it. These two strings and theirrelations to one another constitute the contextual historywhich along with the specific configuration and contextnoticed establish a gesture.

I shrug in various contexts: Someone has made a state-ment to which I am indifferent — I shrug; I want to indi-cate that something was so ridiculous that I was helpless— I shrug; I don’t know any answers to a question — Ishrug.

In a context, I make various gestures: Asked about some-thing — I shrug; asked about something — I nod ’yes’;asked about something — I stare away, feigning bore-dom; asked about something — I throw up my hands,eyelids, and brows in exasperation.

5. Address

(Throughout this passage, the intended emphasis is ad-dress.)

Among the limitations created by the medium of gesturecan be found the limitations placed on an address: an ad-dress that can be created in one medium may not be onethat can be created in another.

Address refers to dynamics which issue from processesthat relate two images: the image of the message and theimage of the intended recipient. The recipient, either aperson or a group, is indicated by a mark on the mes-sage. A mark is that trace left on a message to indicatethe intended recipient.

In discourse, imagine that three people face each other,momentarily silent. Slowly one leans his body towards,raises his arm and points at, one of the other two. Withhesitant accusation, he begins speaking of . . . This is asketch of a moment in which an address is created. Botha movement and a linguistic gesture help establish it: the

MARK SULLIVAN 148 5. Address

lean forward marks the message and the tone of hesitantaccusation marks the message.

Place the sketched scene on stage in a play and the au-dience will be addressed. But not by a finger pointingat them, not by a tone of hesitant accusation directed tothem.

Initially, an audience member enters into an agreementthat he will be addressed by a composition. In the courseof a composition, a composer can attempt to turn thatgeneral address into one made to that specific audiencemember.

Gesture is one way of pointing an address: By compos-ing gesture, the composer can create a pointed address.

A viewer or listener is the intended addressee of a move-ment or music composition. The composer can choosethe address she wants a piece to make. A composed workcan be made to imply an image of an addressee: some-one to whom the piece would now have something to say,to show, to hear, in short, something to offer now. Ges-ture helps draw the respondent’s attention to some thingsand away from others. The composer anticipates whichconfigurations will seduce the listener into glossing overcomponents and which will draw the listener into think-ing about the components, into grouping some eventswith others into configurations, into looking for empha-sis within one set of bounds instead of others, and so on.Through the composition of gesture, the composer inter-feres with the respondent’s inclination to recognize someconfigurations and provokes the respondent to cognizeother configurations that cannot be recognized since theyappear for the first time. By avoiding affirmative ges-ture, recognizable configurations or configurations thathave not been changed by the composer, the composeraddresses the respondent, insisting that thought be givento the naming of configurations, to the relationship ofconfigurations in two different media, and to the rolesthat the piece has created for the configurations to play.

No Address

If the composer forgets to include an address, the resultsare usually disastrous. The respondent flounders around,picking up on whatever unintended address happens toattach itself to the composition. The composition with-out an intended address cannot articulate or convey itsintentions.

The performer shapes the address of a composition bychoosing, from the intended addresses that a piece cancreate, the address to make now. If a performer neglectsto shape the address created by the piece, the composi-tion will be opened up to the unintended address from

which it was protected, and thus, the composition will befalsified.

If the respondent neglects to search for an address, orassumes that the composition has no intended addresswhen it does not articulate its address the way compo-sitions did in the past, then the composition will be falsi-fied by the respondent.

The Means of Address

The means of address that can be created in composedworks are relatives, not copies, of the means of addressthat can be created in discourse. Even though the addressstarts with the composer, in composed works, it is medi-ated by the composition, by the score (if there is one), bythe performer, and by the listener.

In a musical composition, many things allow the listenerto make inferences from which he constructs an image ofthe listener addressed. The gestures of the compositionshape these inferences. From the restrictions a composerplaces on a respondent’s interpretations, the listener caninfer the respondent the composer anticipated.

At any time, from the beginning of the performance of acomposition to some subsequent moment of reflection onthe performance, I can figure out that it offers me some-thing, and thus, find it directed particularly at me. Find-ing my response has been anticipated, and restricted, Ihave to make another response. If the network of restric-tions has been carefully laid out, I eventually find that Ihave to make a response I have not made before. I decidethat I correspond to my image of the listener addressed.

The perception of address is the first moment in the pro-cess of becoming a respondent: It is the prereguisite ofany search for formulations that correspond to what hasbeen said to me, formulations that could not have beenmade without what was said to me.

The perception of address turns me, the addressee, into arespondent.

Responding to a composition, I shape the image of theaddress made by articulating the address taken.

In that I correspond to an image of the listener ad-dressed, I am a correspondent, in that I respond to a com-position which itself is a response, I am a co-respondent.

6. Performance

The time of no gesture is noise.

Biological existence. Merely. Or necessary movements:made just to get somewhere or to do something else.

MARK SULLIVAN 149 6. Performance

Accidentally made sounds: Chairs squeaking. A musicstand clanging. Coughs. Prerequisite movements: Thebow has to be lifted. A breath has to be taken.

Such noise is not the composition’s noise. It is not thecomposed noise factor of a piece, a factor required sothat a signal be noticed. Nor is it a part of a carrier-and-signal relationship. It is environmental noise, to be keptbelow the threshold of the piece’s significance. In thisenvironmental noise, there is no gesture.

Within a composition, there is never no gesture. Gestureis either intended or not. There is no keeping it out. Forthe performer, this means that there is no getting aroundit or out of it: gesture has to be performed.

For the performer, the question is whether or not thetreatment and performance of gesture bears out tracesof the composer’s intent, is required by the composition,and leaves traces of the performer’s intent in interpreta-tion. An intent in interpretation — an interpretation, notjust one of submissively obedient execution’s mere re-sults — provokes the performer to search for and find atleast one interpretation which allows the composition tobe performed with a minimum of falsification.

Performance articulates intent and the relationship be-tween the significant and the insignificant: doing thisrequires that a performance articulate the relationshipbetween one gesture and another, between gesture andwhatever is not only gesture, and between gesture andwhatever is not gesture.

Gesture is not notated by the composer separately: thereare no specific notational elements reserved for musicalgesture. Musical gesture in a score is implicit.

Implicit and Explicit

What the composer makes explicit while composing apiece becomes implicit in the score. Going on what ismade explicit in the score, the performer decides whatis implicit. No matter whether the performer faces de-scriptive or prescriptive notation or a combination of thetwo, the performer has to interpret. What the performermakes explicit for herself while rehearsing a composi-tion and while developing standards for a performance,becomes for the listener, implicit. In the process of prac-ticing and rehearsing a composition, the performer mustmake explicit for herself the gestures implied in the ex-plicit notation of the score. In the performance, then,and implicit in the performer’s treatment of gesture, thelistener can find and discover what the gestures have ren-dered explicit.

Since the composer wants to limit the listener’s interpre-tation, that is, what the listener can find implicit in the

performance of a composition, the composer has to limitwhat the performer (or a score-reading listener imagininga performance) can find implicit in the score.

Notation

It has often been observed that for the last two hun-dred years musical notation has become increasinglyspecific: more and more explicit instructions have beengiven to performers about how to treat loudness, stressand rhythmic functions, phrasing, articulation, and tim-bre. This tendency reflects the composers’ desires to pro-tect their compositions from commercial performancepractices, from unwanted understandings and unintendedmessages, and it reflects the desire of composers whowanted to choose the gesture. Conversely, it reflects eachparameter’s loss of the power to imply gesture. Lessand less have composers been able to treat gesture as aconcomitant of pitch, rhythm, or of any other parameter,even articulation.

Unwarranted treatment of gesture, once invited by thelack of explicit instructions, by now ever so often ap-pears invited by the abundance of explicit instructions.No notation can prevent treatments that knowingly aban-don gesture to accident.

Part of a performer’s interpretation involves decidinghow the composer wanted the notation in a score treated.There are two kinds of notation, descriptive and prescrip-tive: the former is analog to the desired result (and onlyimplies how to get it); the latter is analog to the desiredexecution (and only implies the result). Either or both, ofcourse, may occur within any single composition. Bothkinds of notation can be so densely loaded with instruc-tions that they obscure the configurations embedded inthem.

If the notation is required and desired, then it presents aproblem to be solved, not eliminated, and makes up partof the offer made by the composer to the performer: anoffer to collaborate in finding a solution for a problem.The performer’s interpretation of the notation becomesan indispensable part of the composition’s social func-tion.

If the composer, working with algorithms, finds that hiswanted rules deliver unwanted gestures, then the prob-lem is not for the performer, but is the composer’s. Inthis case, it may be necessary for the composer to addto his set of rules those which will not deliver unwantedgestures, or maybe even to add to his set of rules thosewhich would deliver the gestures desired.


Carrier or Signal

Both the performer and the listener make a decision: Onepart of interpretation involves deciding what is carrierand what is signal.

A carrier is something composed that does not changeso that the changes of something else can be noticed(through it) — namely, the signal, that is, that which isto be noticed changing.

Whenever changes in that which the performer has de-cided to treat as a carrier must occur, the performer hasto keep them below the threshold of significance, in thiscase, the threshold of significant change established bythe composition.

Whenever the performer turns the carriers of a piece intosignals, this disturbs the intended relationship betweencarrier and signal, and thus, falsifies the piece.

Gesture gets involved in the relation between carrier andsignal. To avoid playing unintended gestures, the per-former must decide how the gestures of the piece are tobe treated: Is gesture a carrier or a signal? Does gesturechange from being a carrier to being a signal, or vice-versa? Are there some gestures that function as carriersand others that function as signals? These questions arerepresentative of those a performer must answer.

Disfigured Gestures, Withered Gestures

In performance, how close one gesture is to another andwhat kinds of gestures there are depends on the numberand kind of distinctions the performer makes availableto the listener. The perceptible differences generated inperformance lead or mislead the listener as he infers thenetwork of distinguishing components from which con-figurations are created.

The configurations embedded in events, the configu-rations in which distinguishing components show thetraces of the network of distinctions from which theywere created, have consequences on the respondent’sperception of events, of configurations, components, andall details. Decisions taken in relation to configurationscarry over into all other decisions. If no decisions aretaken, that carries over. Conversely, decisions taken inrelation to details affect configurations. Performancesbased on standards that were not developed for the com-position frequently generate perceptible differences thattake no heed of the role those differences play in creatingconfigurations, and thus, the performance of standardsleads to the disfiguring of gesture.

“Performance standards are to be created in order tohelp achieve a goal for a performance. Every consideration

of performance standards must begin by considering theperformance in question. — The goal of the performance,not the goal of performance. When consideration is givento performance standards as if there were a goal for (all)performances, there the performance will be a performanceof standards rather than a performance of the piece. . .

There is not one single aspect of musical performancethat can be elevated to a “standard of performance” with-out danger to the music. Even the most common and rudi-mentary: intonation, tone, and the right notes are suspect. . . And this is no matter of bargaining, of trading off some“polish” of performance for the sake of other virtues, suchas excitement, profundity, and what not . . . A dynamicrange from ppppp to fffff may be absolutely essential forone performance of a piece and just so much trashy embel-lishment for a different performance of the same piece,”

Richard Herbert Howe, “Standards For Performanceand The Performance of Standards”

Every decision that takes into account the consequencesof performance on detail must at the same time take intoaccount the consequences of performance on the config-uration. Otherwise, gestures will be disfigured or wither.

Slowing down at the end of each phrase does not simplymark out the phrases, it invites in an unrequired familyof gestures that have as their distinguishing componentthe retarded end.

Unrequired changes of tempo destroy the proportionsthat are one component of gesture.

An unrequired crescendo gets rid of two composed ges-tures and replaces it with one that wasn’t even wantedby the composer; or one composed gesture is turned intolots of precious fragments by dynamic changes intendedto “bring out” certain notes, and to wipe out the com-posed gesture of an outburst by replacing it with severalgestures of hesitation.

Unrequired restraint of dynamic levels that protects”good tone” and unrequired uniformity of timbre sup-plies, instead of the intended gesture, a range ofcramped, awkward gestures — gestures of restraint orgestures of stifled impulses; just as a mean average dy-namic level will easily turn into gestures of stasis, of in-activity, of muffled articulation.

The Listener’s Performance of Gesture

It is the listener’s interpretations that the composer wantsto limit when she composes gesture: the listener is the re-spondent anticipated by the composer. As Herbert Brunhas shown, the listener’s interpretation is an experiencebetween cause and effect. The composer provides thelistener with an offer — the musical composition. Thelistener creates an image of the music and responds tothe created image, creating its effect. The listener cre-


ates the cause and the listener creates the effect.

The listener becomes the medium for the event to whichhe responds.

In the formulation of the image of the composition, theoffer, the listener shows intent. Traces of the listener’sintent are left in his response to a composition, traces inhis formulations: they are left in the names a respondentgives to configurations. They are left in the concept ofthe preserved characteristics implied in the names. Andthey are left in the limits he, in collaboration with thecomposer, placed on his interpretation. Through thesetraces the respondent reveals what he sought and met forthe first time.

7. Configurations

Noticing the gesture of an event, a respondent does notregister each component separately, but rather registersthe components’ relationship to one another. The config-uration registered is in an event.

Noticing a gesture, a respondent registers its distinguish-ing components in configuration. The distinguishingcomponents cling to the minimum event required topresent their configuration. The configuration registeredis the event.

In both cases, the respondent gives the relationship oflinked distinguishing components a name. The namecorresponds to a single set of linked distinguishing com-ponents.

Creating a configuration requires the linking of selectedcomponents of different sets: the configuration must beartraces of the sets linked.

In an acoustic medium, several configurations could bemade from the following sets of distinguishing compo-nents: a set that governs the contour created by the suc-cession of pitches (steady upward rise to a peak or steadydownward fall to a trough); a set that governs the kind ofpitch movement (movement by equal increments or move-ment by unequal increments); a set that governs loudness(soft or loud); a set that governs changes of loudness (nochange of loudness or getting louder or getting softer); aset that governs speed (slow or fast); a set that governschange of speed (no change of speed or getting faster orgetting slower); a set that governs placement of a changeof loudness (early in the event or late in the event); a setthat governs placement of a change of speed (early in theevent or late in the event.

One configuration could be made by linking the follow-ing distinguishing components: Steady upward rise toa peak; movement by equal increments; soft; getting

louder; getting louder late in the event; slow; gettingfaster; getting faster late in the event.

Another configuration could be made from the sameset by linking the following distinguishing components:Steady downward fall to a trough; movement by equal in-crements; soft; getting louder; getting louder late in theevent; slow; getting faster; getting faster late in the event.

Obviously, the structuring of the set of distinguishingcomponents assumes several things: there must be a suc-cession of pitches (a single sustained pitch will not gener-ate a contour); the pitches must be able to move by equalincrements (an ordering of the pitches beforehand intoa sequence of pitches that move in unequal incrementswould preclude creating a set that governs whether thekind of movements are equal or unequal) ; somewheresomething loud would have to ’ happen so that therecould be soft and something fast would have to happenso that there could be slow, and so forth.

When structuring a set of distinguishing components, thecomposer can take into account the consequences of thatstructuring on the structure of other sets: It could be thatpitches that get steadily higher seem to a listener to getsteadily louder or that pitches that move by equal incre-ments (the composer knows) even though it takes themless and less time to make their moves near the end ofan event (the composer knows that the speed is gettingfaster) seem to a listener to move through greater dis-tance at the end than at the beginning of the event (if apulse measured the time it took to move, the distance tra-versed by the tones in the time of a pulse is greater).

All these kinds of considerations must be taken into ac-count when the composer creates sets of distinguishingcomponents, lest the composer wind up with unintendedconfigurations.)

A Set of Distinguishing Components

Creating a distinguishing component requires the makingof a set of interconnected components. Each component

MARK SULLIVAN 152 7.Configurations

must be made dependent on each of the other compo-nents for its identity, that is, for its ability to contributeto the production of a configuration that can be given aunique name. If the speed of succession of pitches is notincreasing then it must decrease or stay (the same); if thecontour created by the succession of pitches is not risingsteadily then it must be falling steadily, and so on. In aconfiguration of linked distinguishing components, eachcomponent must bear some trace of its place in the struc-ture of the set of components from which it was chosen.After being chosen, it has to stand out as one componentselected from a set of components from which any of theother components could have been chosen instead of it.A respondent should eventually be able to infer the in-terconnected net of components from which the one wasdrawn.

In discourse, to the extent that it is not composed, aspeaker creates the configurations of movement gestureand of acoustic gesture with distinguishing componentsdrawn from the existing sets made available to perform-ers and respondents in the society; in a composition, tothe extent that it does not draw only on existing sets, andto the extent that it attempts to create new gestures, anexposition is required that establishes the structured setand the interconnections of components, that is, eachcomponent’s place in the set, so that the componentswhen chosen may function as distinguishing componentsdrawn from created sets linked in the configurations ofmovement and acoustic gesture that can to performersand respondents be offered for the first time.

Each component of a set of distinguishing componentsmust be able to link up with each component of each setthat contributes to the production of the configuration.

The component of the set that governs the contour cre-ated by the succession of pitches, the steady upward rise,can occur in an event at the same time as the event issoft or loud and at the same time that the event is stayingthe same speed or getting slower or getting faster and soforth.

Each structured set of components is distinguished fromthe other sets by the aspect of events that its componentsgovern; when it is chosen, each component of a set ofdistinguishing components is distinguished by the char-acteristics it creates in the aspect of events governed bythe set.

To some extent, the choice of components that governcontour does not determine which choices of componentsthat govern loudness are available to the composer; asteadily upward rising contour will not be confused witha steadily falling contour.

The Borrowed Distinctions of a Configura-tion

There are yet other requirements placed on configura-tions and distinguishing components if they are to be-come gesture. To create a hybrid medium, they must beloaned a significance by their relationship to the distin-guishing components of configurations in other media.

The respondent who takes in the configuration of a ges-ture’s distinguishing components takes in a relationshipbetween one set of components and another, between oneconfiguration and another. Some, or all, of the distin-guishing components of a gesture come from a networkof components shared by two media.

Gesture works with borrowed distinctions.

The configuration bears, at least in part, distinctions cre-ated by components that can be drawn from sets that gov-ern aspects of events that occur in at least two media.

Both a sequence of tones and a sequence of movementscan get faster. In movement, the gesture of a certain wayof walking will not be confused with the gestures of anyother way of walking or any of the gestures of other typesof locomotion. If a composer of music were to limit hischoice of musical events to those which share some of thedistinguishing components of that way of walking, andif the response to that musical event were not confusedwith any other musical event that shared some of the dis-tinguishing components of some other way of walking orof moving, then I would speak of distinctions on loan andof gesture.

For a gesture to happen, a respondent has to be able toanswer the question: Which configuration made fromwhich sets of components is it? Which interconnectednetwork of sets shares which distinguishing componentsof which configurations? Answers to these questions de-termine the limits established by a gesture.

Affirmative Gestures, New Gestures

Gesture initiates cognition or recognition in severalways: It may initiate recognition by referring to sets ofdistinguishing components in the respondent’s repertorywithout changing them, that is, by referring to sets cre-ated in other contexts. It may initiate cognition by re-structuring sets (by calling on sets in the respondent’srepertory but changing them), by adding a new compo-nent to a set, or by adding a new set to a network ofdistinguishing components.

Since gesture is a hybrid medium, it is a medium, andthus, gesture can wipe out traces.

MARK SULLIVAN 153 7.Configurations

Affirmative gestures attempt to conceal the illusions theycreate by limiting their calling to what can be found in therespondent’s repertory. The affirmative gesture deliber-ately tries to make gesture seem like the second-nature ofmusic. By exercising the power of repetition, they try todisguise their illusion as nature. The affirmative gestureis an attempt to keep cognition to a minimum.

A new gesture presents the respondent with a configu-ration that links a hybrid set of distinguishing compo-nents. The configuration is shaped by the composer’s in-tent. The intent aims at shaping the respondent’s imageof what the piece offers to see or hear for the first time. Anew gesture limits calls to the respondent’s repertory tothe minimum required to keep cognition going as long aspossible. The composer decides how the configurationsof linked distinguishing components in one medium shallfertilize, shape, form, or seed those of another mediumso that the respondent can encounter a configuration, agesture, for the first time.

8. One or Another

If the composer has a choice, he has to create the ges-tures he wants. Otherwise, the whole composition maybe marred by accidents that wipe out traces the composerwanted left, by unintended messages that suffocate in-tended ones, or by a range of reference that prevents thecomposition from addressing anyone with anything forthe first time.

Under certain conditions, a gesture can preserve itselfunder change; under other conditions, it can’t. The com-poser has several things to figure out: what parts of agesture can change, and how much, and when, before agesture begins to be confused with, or becomes identicalwith, its closest neighbors. Along with these questions,goes another: How can the composer prevent a gesturefrom sharing characteristics of events to which the com-poser does not want the gesture to refer? Even when thecomposer deliberately seeks out ambiguity, control of thedistinguishing components is required to create it.

A Grid of Distinctions

A grid of distinctions establishes, in conjunction withperceptual thresholds, the conceptual thresholds of sig-nificant difference. It establishes the kind and number ofimportant differences. Gesture has to establish its gridof distinctions. Otherwise its grid will be articulated bysomething else’s. The number of sets of distinguishingcomponents, and the number of components in each set,and the time it takes a respondent to tune to the grid, to

infer the interconnected network of distinguishing com-ponents, determines the kind of grid. One piece mightrequire configurations created from two sets, each withtwo components. Another piece might require configu-rations created from thirteen sets, each with a differentnumber of components. The latter case would require afiner grid of distinctions: in performance, the distinctionsthat would have to be made so that a respondent couldinfer the distinguishing components would be nearer oneanother. It would take the respondent longer to tune tothe grid.

Based on my description of the grid of distinctions I wantthe piece to establish, based on my description of howlong it takes a respondent to tune to the grid, and basedon my description of the limitations placed on the re-spondent by the thresholds of perception, I articulate twoforms of conjecture about limits: one has to do with thelimits within which each gesture can vary; the other hasto do with the limits that each gesture will place on therespondents interpretations — especially with regard tolimits on the kind and number of events in other media towhich a gesture points.

The Limits Established by Gestures

The first form of conjecture is inseparably related to thesecond: The composer faces different cases dependingon what she wants. She may have to prevent a gesturefrom borrowing distinctions from one medium insteadof another. Or, from borrowing distinctions from onemedium and from another. Or, from one medium but notanother. Or yes, maybe even from either or both of twomedia instead of from neither or some other medium.

Depending on what she’s after, a composer of musicmight face the following cases: She might have to pre-vent the musical event from being lent the distinctionsof a movement, instead of the distinctions of an event inspeech. Or, from being lent the distinctions of an eventin speech. Or, from being lent the distinctions of a move-ment, but not the distinctions of an event in speech. Oryes, again, maybe the composer has to prevent the musi-cal event from being lent the distinctions of another mu-sical event or from being lent no distinctions whatsoever,instead of being lent at least the distinctions of an eventin speech or at least the distinctions of a movement or inthe best case of both a movement and an event in speech.

Suppose the composer wants the musical event to bor-row the distinctions of a movement, and not those of anevent in speech (or those of an event from another mu-sical composition). Suppose that the event is a leap fol-lowed by stumbling, and that the composer has decidedwhat characteristics of the movement can be preserved in

MARK SULLIVAN 154 8.One or Another

music and which characteristics she wants to preserve.

The characteristics of the movement are to be preservedin a configuration with three parts created from the fol-lowing sets:

a set that governs speed (fast, slow); a set that governsthe kind of movement (step, glide, leap) ; a set that governsdirection (straight, changing directions)

Any change which disturbs the configuration changes thegesture. So long as the configuration is preserved, any-thing can change. A change which moves away from oneand towards another distinguishing component progres-sively weakens the gesture: the substitution of a singledistinguishing component changes the gesture, and thus,changes the distinction shared with an event in someother medium. As long as a distinguishing componentis preserved, the gesture will be preserved, and the rela-tion with the event in the other medium.

If the distinguishing component is an upward leap, thenthe size of the interval can vary. With regard to the con-figuration, it is more important that it is a leap upwards,rather than which leap upwards it is.

Response

Since the composer wants to choose a gesture and wantsa gesture to carry traces of the intent with which it waschosen, he concerns himself with the conditions underwhich the respondent interprets.

Response is a historical concept. So is interpretation.The composer’s knowledge and awareness of the his-tory of compositional efforts — the composer’s knowl-edge and awareness of the dynamics and history of re-sponse — the composer’s description of the respondent’srepertory and desire for connection making — the com-poser’s estimate of the extent of exposition and the de-gree of redundancy required so that the interpreting re-spondent can infer the network of distinguishing com-ponents that the composer requires — all of these fac-tors condition the composer’s formulation of what canbe presented for the first time. Collectively, these factorscondition the composer’s image of gestures which can-not now be created without being merely affirmative ofwhat already just happens to be the case, they conditionthe composer’s image of gestures which can now for awhile tease or just now cannot tease, of gestures whichjust now for once can appear for the first time, and espe-cially, the composer’s image of which intervention mightonly just now again for a while retard the decay of ges-tures thought helplessly lost or old.

9. Processes of Invention

Gesture has been, and can be, invented with several pro-cesses: imitation, translation, and extension. Lookingat the history of a single gesture, I may find that theseprocesses mingle and overlap in successive applicationsto movements or acoustic events that never were before,that are already, that next will be gestures.

Imitation

Imitation is one way of making an analogy. Imitating fol-lows the example of something; it is copying but allowsa margin of incongruity.

Imitation coaxes one event into the manner of another,into the behavior of another: it makes something a close,not a distant, relative.

Wheedling is a way of saying a set of statements. It canbe imitated in movement. Take the instruction: Wheedlewith your hands.

Pounding or shrivelling up are movements. They can beimitated in speech behaviors. Take the odd instruction:Pound on the table or shrivel up to nothing with yourvoice.

One movement can copy another. Take the instruction:Imitate the movement of a talking mouth with a hand.Preserved under change are the opening and closing mo-tion and the periodic rhythm. Lost are the syllables, theresonance — the entire production of structures createdin sound, the facial expressions. A linguistic gesture thatpreserves the characteristics of a yapping mouth can befound in the complaint: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

A composer of music might imitate the yapping gestureof a speaker by asking a trumpet to play:

Or, take the phrase: “Aw, come on.” How could move-ments be used to create an imitative analogy to the se-mantically charged sounds of this utterance? The size ofmovements could correspond to the degree of change ofloudness; changes of direction of movement could corre-spond to the rhythm; a slap of the palm on the foreheadcould correspond to the “Aw”; two bobbing shakes ofthe palm could correspond to the “come on”. Music?

MARK SULLIVAN 155 9.Processes of Invention

Take bragging or interrupting. Or winking. What if theconductor said that the flute has to play its part as themusical gesture of one of these?

Imitation covers the ground between the unsettlingly un-canny and the elusively faint resemblance.

Translation

Translation seeks equivalent consequences without pre-serving the behavior. It does not copy. Translation com-pletes a transfer, getting one event to speak in the termsof another. It has more to do with the preservation ofneighborhoods of relations than with items.

Translation makes no attempt to correspond in perfor-mance; it only tries to correspond in consequences. Itgives up the specifics of performance, foregoing the at-tempt to copy, foregoing the performance itself.

Extension

Extension is a form of close analogy. Imitation tries topreserve characteristics of something the way it is; ex-

tension tries to preserve characteristics of something theway it could be, if it kept going.

Extension requires creating something that can be re-ferred to another phase of the process of which itsanalagon is an output. It demonstrates the applicationof a procedure in a region that carries further the rangeof its previous applications, it stretches the scope.

Extension creates a continuum of gesture. It doesn’t copythe event as it is, but as it could be extended. It works outa next-stepness in relation to something.

Movements of the arm, hand, and finger used for hailingsomeone, performed forcefully, can be used to distractsomeone from what he’s doing, indicating “Come now.”This indication can be transformed into figures of voice:“Hey” is used to hail someone, but can be used to stopsomeone from doing something, to indicate dismay, or toindicate both.

Extension: totter the head, totter the eyes, totter the pitchof a statement to indicate indecisiveness; tapping on thetable moves to pounding a fist on the table to a gruff-toned voice that heavily emphasizes each word — pound-ing it out word by word.

Extension often mixes with imitation, both push trans-lation, and all three can mingle to create movement andacoustic gestures.

10. Posture

Historically, the concept of posture has been hound tomovement. When set off from gesticulation and gesture,posture refers to the general configuration of the bodyand its parts. Sticking to usage or not, one thing mustbe added: posture is a general configuration of the bodythat nests the production of other configurations. Ges-ticulatory movements and the configurations of gestureare produced within the embracing configurations of pos-ture. A posture can encompass a range of gesticulationand gesture.

MARK SULLIVAN 156 10. Posture

Gesticulation

Gesticulation seems to approach a configuration eventhough it does not reach one, seems to have departedfrom a configuration even though it never reached one.Gesticulation often seems close to gesture; it seems asif it could become gesture. But it never establishes itsconsistency through constraints that establish a configu-ration. Thus, it does not limit the interpretations availableto a respondent. A respondent can not detect the intendedlimit placed on his interpretations, and thus, the respon-dent is left with nothing but the awareness that an attemptto limit his interpretations was made. Gesticulation failsto articulate intended limits.

Still, that which can be changed can be composed. Whencomposed, both gesticulation and posture become, intheir moments of change, components of gesture (a sud-den start and stop of gesticulations, a mighty stretch fromcowering to monumental uprightness).

Body Gestures, Movement Gestures

In various forms of discourse, in movement and mimecompositions, and in compositions for the theater andopera, gesture in movement flourishes, leaving and wip-ing out traces. Except in discourse — where they may ormay not be marked by the intent of a composing speaker— these traces are marked by the intent of a composer.

The composer can work from two distinct orientations:a body gesture is a body configuration with a contextualhistory that is not the contextual history of the body; amovement gesture is a configuration of movements witha contextual history that is not the contextual history ofthe movements.

Working within one, from one or both, or between thesetwo orientations, the composer can emphasize the con-figurations reached, the ways of reaching the configu-rations, or a relationship between the two. The com-poser configures movements so that they articulate ges-


tures that articulate the desired relations between move-ments. Thus a change of articulation frequently resultsin a change of movement gesture.

“. . . the movement notation system arose from thesearch for the formulation of the world of movement; thisquest was primarily for a way of composing in movement. . . This aim implied the overthrow of prevailing assump-tions about movement; not through startling innovations,but by a radical change of concept which would makemovement a material in which choices could be made with-out relating them to irrelevant frames of reference . . . whatis important is to do things which are and can be seen tohave been deliberately and consciously chosen.”

Noa Eshkol, Foreword to “Language, Shape, andMovement”

Applications

Alongside the application of concepts of posture, gestic-ulation, and gesture to movement runs the potential ap-plication of those concepts to sound, to the acoustic uni-verse. Although such an application produces phrasesthat sound ungainly in relation to usage, there is no lossof accuracy: one component of what is called ’a tone ofvoice’ is ’acoustic posture’, or ’the posture of the voice’(just as a specific body posture could be called ’a tone ofbody’).

Acoustic posture refers to a general acoustic configura-tion that nests the production of other acoustic config-urations. Gesticulatory sounds and the configurationsof acoustic gesture are produced vithin the embracingconfigurations of acoustic posture. An acoustic posturecan encompass a range of acoustic gesticulation and ges-ture. Acoustic gesticulation seems to approach but neverreaches a configuration of sounds. And so through theformulations that apply to movement up to acoustic ges-ture: A configuration of sounds with a contextual historythat is not the contextual history of the sounds.

Left Out

What has been, and will be, left out are the connectionsbetween configurations in movement and the preservedcharacteristics of events in other media — particularlyspeech and music. In short, the distinctions loaned tomovements. Thus, the whole process of creating new

gestures in movement has been left out. Other things,too: How movement gestures work their way into lit-erature and the visual arts; a presentation of the differ-ences between the way movement gestures function indiscourse, in mime and movement compositions, and intheater, as well as how new gestures are created in eachof these media. There is no investigation of how a com-poser of movement notates movement gesture, nor anylook at how movement gestures become the basis forother movement gestures.

11. Musical Gestures and Move-ments

Movements and movement in discourse and in compo-sitions are events with characteristics that the composercan preserve in musical gesture. Even though the num-ber of distinguishing components that make up move-ment gestures is much smaller than the total number ofdistinct movements that can be made — again, differ-ences between movements are pushed toward one struc-tural type or another, and several movements that differfrom one another (in ways that are considered insignifi-cant by the viewer) are treated as one kind of movement,as insignificant variations of one structural type of move-ment — the number and kind of distinguishing compo-nents of movements and the configurations they createstill provide a staggering number of characteristics whichthe composer could try to preserve in musical gestures.But this is not what may make the composer pause. Itis rather that the components and their functions seemto be tied to the specific nature of the body and its partsas a moving system. The entire differentiated networkof movement gesture seems to require the differentiatednetwork of the body’s parts and the kinds of movementsthey make as its prerequisite.

The Sample as An Example

Taking movements only of the head and face region, aninventory of at least thirty or so distinguishing compo-nents is required to make a model of the system of move-ment gestures made with the head and face:

MARK SULLIVAN 159 11.Musical Gestures and Movements

three ways of nodding the head one nod, two nods, three nods; four speeds (extremely slow, slow, fast,extremely fast); articulation (smooth, jerky)

two ways of sweeping the headfrom side to side one sweep, two sweeps; four speeds (extremely slow, slow, fast, ex-

tremely fast); articulation (smooth, jerky)one way of cocking the headone way of tilting the headfour ways of moving the brow lift, lower, knit, move a single browfour ways to close the eyelids maximally open, slit, closed,squeezedfour ways of shaping the nose wrinkling the nose, compressing the nostrils, flaring both nostrils, flaring

one nostrilseven ways of shaping the mouth compressed lips, protruded lips, retracted lips, apically withdrawn lips,

snarl, lax open mouth, mouth maximally openedtwo ways of thrusting the chin forward, to the sidetwo ways of shaping the cheeks puffed, sucked

Music has no eyebrows, no limbs, no torso, no physicalbody to move; it cannot stare, roll its eyes, shift them up-ward or jerk them from left to right, nor can it glare oreven close its eyes.

Characteristics Movement Loans MusicalEvents

All this means is that music can not make movement ges-tures. Something is always given up in making an anal-ogy. Obviously, music does not order the movements ofthe face, of the torso and limbs. It does not shape theexternal form and configurations of a moving body andits parts for a viewer. But music can shape the exter-nal form and configuration of a moving body of soundand its parts for the listener. Two questions become rel-evant: What characteristics of movement and movementgestures can be preserved in music? With what degree ofspecificity can musical gesture point to the distinctionsloaned it by movement?

It has often been pointed out that music and movementapproach one another by way of their relationship totime. Physical bodies are said to move through space andtime, whereas music is said to move only through time.Music, in short, is said to have a temporal dimension andno spatial dimension.

But speech too moves through time and not space.Speech shares a temporal dimension with music andmovement and both speech and music are cut off fromthe spatial dimension of movement. One consequenceof this is found in a required transformation: any char-acteristic of a movement that is distinguished by its spa-tial orientation has to be mapped, when it is preserved inspeech or music, into a non-spatial dimension. Thus the

composer must decide into what characteristics of speechor music the spatial characteristics are to be mapped, ifthe composer wants any mapped, if any can be mappedat all.

A composer might decide that changes of size of move-ment or changes in the distance traversed by a movinglimb are to be mapped into musical dynamics, shapingthe contour of the changes in loudness. Some character-istics are either lost or mapped into other kinds of char-acteristics — the necessary changes have to be made —or are given up by the composer.

Although they could be, the temporally-oriented charac-teristics of movement do not have to be mapped in mu-sic or speech into a non-temporal dimension. Movementalong with speech and music moves towards and awayfrom points of emphasis, creating proportions that gen-erate a sense of timing and redundancy which creates theappearance that events move towards emphasized mo-ments and away from them, giving some events or mo-ments a prominence that other events and moments don’thave.

Shifts of weight initiate movements, emphasize move-ments and phases of movements, moving in and out,from and towards various configurations that can be dis-tinguished by the way weight is distributed in the bodyand its parts. The amount of weight shifted and the wayit is shifted, and the directions in which it is shifted, themotion and energy thereby generated and the way it isstopped, repelled, thwarted or redirected provide charac-teristics from which music can create its mock momentsof movement.

If a movement begins with a sudden and maximal shift ofweight from one limb to another, a musical event can pre-serve the maximal change but not the sense of the limb’s


location in relation to the other limb (the limb to whichthe weight is shifted). The maximal change could be pre-served in musical dynamics again, for instance. If thatmaximal shift of weight produced a change of configu-ration in several limbs, then that change of configurationcould be preserved in the configurations of pitch. If theshift had two distinct phases, each with a noticeable du-ration, and if the beginning phase had an emphasis thatthe ending phase moved away from, then these character-istics might be preserved in the duration and proportionsof the pitch configurations and their placement within theframework of time. In such a way, a musical gesturemight preserve the characteristics of a movement gesture.

Using such operations, the composer can preserve char-acteristics in musical gestures of movements that be-gin by transferring weight gradually and almost imper-ceptibly to some other part of the body, characteristicsof movements that lurch and teeter through a series ofasymmetrical and non-periodic shifts of weight, to move-ments that disturb the overall distribution of weight aslittle as possible while transferring weight from one limbto another, characteristics of movements that end withthe weight of the body lifted or of movements that gen-erate an impetus toward motion only to rapidly thwart it.

Configurations of body parts that emerge in relation toother configurations in a periodic framework of time gen-erated by their seguential appearance, their durations rel-ative to one another, and by the way they are articulatedcan be preserved in musical configurations that governproportion and time.

Through all these means, music approaches movement.Musical gestures can be created that preserve character-istics of running, grinding to a halt, stumbling, unhur-ried walking, tottering, dancing, characteristics of a slowwalk, pacing, treading lightly, stomping, and of trudging— in short, to different kinds of locomotion. Charac-teristics of degrees of movement can be preserved: still,frantic, crowding around, thinning out. Characteristics ofthe degree of change of distance: inching along, leaping,lurching, grabbing. Characteristics of the forcefulness ofa movement or of the pressure it exerts on something.Characteristics of ways of starting and ways of comingto a halt. Music never reaches movement, deliberately.

These are the kinds of answers a composer gets when sheasks: What characteristics of movement gestures can beused to generate, form, shape, or seed a gesture in music?

But with what degree of specificity will these gesturesrefer to movement gestures? A composer might want tocreate a musical gesture that is analog to a lurch. If so,the composer would not want that event to be confusedwith musical events that preserve characteristics of anyother kinds of movements (a slow gradual bend or trudg-

ing). Nor would the composer want that event to be con-fused with musical gestures that preserve characteristicsof any kind of speech events (a hesitantly asked questionor a statement that is punched out) — except perhaps forlinguistic gestures that themselves preserve characteris-tics of a lurching movement, but maybe not.

Not the Movements of Performance

At no point have I been referring to the movements madeby performers of music. I am not speaking of what iscalled expressive movements, those ornamental bits ofsalesmanship wholly superfluous to the execution of themusical event which are the performance of the reactionthe performer is trying to elicit. Nor am I speaking ofmovements that may be required to shape the sound of amusical event. As fascinating as it is to watch the move-ments of a performer whose every shift of weight is care-fully chosen for the traces it will leave on the acousticevent, this is not what I am speaking of when I referto musical gestures that preserve the characteristics ofa movement — although without doubt these requiredmovements may help the listener gather questions andformulations that apply to the acoustic events heard.

When the clarinetist leans quickly forward to begin apitch and just as quickly pulls back as she releases thenote, creating an abruptly beginning and abruptly endingsound — when the percussionist only seems to lift thefalling mallets from the bars of the marimba or lets themdrop deadly onto the bars, stopping all reverberation —when the string player leans all of his weight on to thebow bringing it to an abrupt halt, producing a swellingthat ends in a hollow crunch — these movements are re-quired to shape the acoustic event; they are not necessar-ily related to the characteristics of movement preservedin the musical gesture.

Dance Music?

There is no natural union between music and dance, al-though the two were already closely connected even inthe most ancient times. The closeness of the connectionand the resilient second-nature attached to it testify tothe strength of the social forces that brought the two to-gether to keep them together. It embodies one of the mostpersistent attempts to overcome the unconnectedness oftones and the unbrokenness of movements: the two aresimply combined so that the unconnected tones can breakup the movement and so that the unbroken movement canconnect the tones.

Within the history of dance, clues can be found that helplocate movements that have left their mark on musical


gesture: the leap, the lift, and the glide; the step andthe stretch; the throw, the skip, the lunge, and the whirl;the wrench. Each of these movements has characteristicswhich have been preserved in musical gestures: the skiphas its set of rhythms, the lift its contours and suspendedforward motion on a melodic peak, the glide its articula-tion and freedom from downbeats, the step its pace anddegree of pitch movement, the whirl its dynamic wavesand repetitions, the wrench its displacement of the pulseand dynamic surges, and so on.

Obviously, the placement of a leap within a sequence ofpitches can correspond to the moment in time when adancer makes a leaping movement, the size of the inter-val to the size of the leap, the dynamic shape to the de-gree of force with which the leap was made. But it wasjust this tendency towards obviousness that drove com-posers to protect the correspondences they invented fromit. The composer’s struggle against the second-naturewas a struggle against correspondences that already seemto be there.

Composers did not want to preserve easily recognizedcharacteristics of movement but characteristics whichcould be observed for the first time. They began to cre-ate tension between music and dance, composing musicwhich no longer supported the dancer, abandoning thephysical constraints of the moving body, creating mu-sic which itself seemed to dance, but not according torules that would have produced plausible or implausi-ble sequences of movement. They rather produced musi-cal gestures that followed the stipulated laws of musicalcomposition. The song was separated from the dancer,the music was separated from the dancer. The preservedcharacteristics of movement began to serve musical ends.

By now, music’s power to measure movement, generat-ing discrete bits that cut up the continuity of movementinto music’s grid and the power of the second-naturalnessattached to the relationship by its historical developmentin spite of the extraneousness of music to movement ofthe human body has created a situation in which it is nec-essary to supply music with continuity taken from move-ment and to avoid providing movement with a sense oftimedness taken from music.

From the time in which an entire composition couldbe based on musical gestures that preserved the char-acteristics of a single kind of dance through periods inwhich the characteristics of several kinds of dances werepreserved in the gestures of a single musical composi-tion, through times in which the preserved characteris-tics might change from phrase to phrase, or later, evenwithin a phrase, it is possible to discern a tendency topresent less and less of more and more preserved charac-teristics. In between the time when it took the course of

a whole composition to call up the relationship betweena movement and a musical event and the time when evena small slice of a musical event could call up the rela-tionship to a movement, musical gestures emerged thatwere related to movement, specifically to dance, musicalgestures which were fleeing the devastation wrought ontraces by the affirmative gesture.

The Offer

Music does not sacrifice any of its autonomy by preserv-ing characteristics of movements in musical gestures. Inmusic, the characteristics are part of musical events thattake their logic and their sequitorness from the require-ments of the musical composition, not from the require-ments of a composition in movement.

In music these characteristics go through changes thatthey could never undergo in a movement composition(changes from characteristics of one kind of movementto characteristics of another kind of movement are notbound by the physical constraints of the human body —that is, by the constraints of physical congruity and spa-tial proximity).

Musical gesture shows what movement could never showabout itself.

12. A Vignette

The First: “Well?”

Head, tilting a little to the side. Pitch, gliding brieflydownward and then upward quickly. Loudness, increas-ing slightly, gradually. Eyebrows, holding their upwardarch, even after the abrupt cutoff of sound. Gaze, eagerlyfixed. All signifying impatient expectancy. This one haddecided to seek positive confirmation of something, afternervously deciding that it may never come if it hasn’t bynow.

The Second: “Well.”

Said by the one on whom the first’s gaze had fastened,but only after allowing a few seconds of silence to inter-vene between the previous question and the tightening ofthe corners of the lips, the light popping of the tongueoff of the upper teeth, and the quick sigh which precededthe response, itself accompanied by the raising of theeyes which had been cast to the side and down. Pitch,gliding upward briefly and then quickly downward. A

MARK SULLIVAN 162 12. A Vignette

gliss smaller, a duration shorter than the first’s. Loud-ness, quickly decreasing. The sound ending with thehead shaking back and forth in negation. All signify-ing reluctant annoyance. This one hovered between notmentioning it and giving the other what he asked for.

The Third: “Well.”

A response, again after a few seconds of intervening si-lence, during which the mouth opened and the eyebrowsarched upwards as far as possible. Pitch, without the ini-tial upward turn, gliding downward. It was the smallestgliss, the shortest duration of the three. Breathy noisedistorting the sound of the vowel. Loudness: a pop fol-lowed by the rapid dissipation of sound. All signifyingastonished exasperation. This one wheeled and stalkedoff.

The Fourth: “Well.”

Up to this point, the fourth had been silent. Another up-ward glide, this time without the initial downward turn, alittle longer than the first’s, but in all other respects sim-ilar to it. All signifying, not expectancy, but amused res-ignation. This one emphasized his shrug with extendedarms, upturned palms, raised eyebrows, and a closed-lipsmile, all to indicate how comfortably he was lodged be-tween the sentences “Don’t ask me” and “What can youdo?”

The First Again: “Well, well, well.”

Imitating the diminishing series of an echo with the loud-ness of his response and with the rhythmic shaking of hishead in negation. Pitch, gliding downward only on thefirst word; on the next two, it continued downward, butby steps not glides. Gaze, moving back and forth be-tween the fourth and the second. Now signifying not re-luctant annoyance, but incredulous disappointment. Hisface arranged the display of his dismay.

The Second Again: “Well. Wha’d’you expect?”

A quick, long, downward gliss followed by a long butslower, upward one on the first word. Blasting the lastfive syllables with a glare. The loudest yet.

The First Again: “Well. Certainly not that.”

Breathy noise on the vowel again, after a short, down-ward gliss on the first word again. Contemptuously siz-zling the ’s’ sound of ’certainly’.

The Second Again: “Well.”

His throat straining. A sort of mild growl on the vowel.The outer edge of the eyebrows pulled down slightly intoa stare, a dare.

The Fourth Again: “Well, now, hold on.”

Breaking the tempo by lengthening the duration of eachsucceeding word. The distance between each successivepitch increasing. Loudness unchanging. Arms extended,with the palms down, not in a shrug, but bobbing in con-ciliation.

13. Acoustic Gesture

A configuration of sound in sounds. Initially, a respon-dent registers, not the distinguishing components sepa-rately, one at a time, but their relations in configuration.The acoustic configuration is a structured set of acousticrelations that can infest different swathes of sound.

From case to case, some details and relations change,but the relations of the configurations do not. A changeof the acoustic relations between distinguishing compo-nents would bring about a change from one configurationto another, and thus, the one listening would be requiredto interpret within another distinct set of limits. Detect-ing another set of borrowed distinctions and assigninganother corresponding significance to the configuration,the listener would confront another acoustic gesture.

When I speak of acoustic gesture, I speak of two kinds:linguistic and musical.

I find the configurations of linguistic gesture within tem-porarily adopted tones of voice, that is, within temporar-ily adopted ways of saying something. Depending onhow it is said, an utterance takes on specific functions:

Ways of saying something are required to push a state-ment towards one of its meanings and away from others (tobelligerently state something, instead of stating it timidlyor patiently);

they are required to say one thing and convey another(to say “What are you doing?” and convey “Stop that rightnow.”);

they are required to indicate the speaker’s attitude to-wards an addressee, towards an event, towards himself, oreven towards the utterance itself (of contempt or indiffer-ence or enthusiasm);

just as they are required to sound surprised, bossy, orimpatient, to sound rushed, to sound confused or disap-pointed.

The configurations of musical gesture are to be found

MARK SULLIVAN 163 13.Acoustic Gesture

within a temporarily adopted way of performing some-thing. Depending on how it is performed, a musical eventtakes on specific functions:

Ways of performing something are required so thatsomething seem to come grinding to a halt instead of glid-ing to a halt;

they are required so that something seem to shout in-stead of cough or sing;

they are required so that a musical event seem to hover,to plunge, climb, or stretch, to wind upwards or stumble;

just as they are required so that a musical event seemto grumble, stutter, blare, or whisper, to boom, to call orlaugh.

Linguistic gesture and musical gesture are the performeddistinctions of acoustic configurations that allow the lis-tener to infer the distinctions borrowed by the configura-tion from an event in another medium.

14. Linguistic Gesture

“What I have tried to do is rather ambitious — namely, toregenerate the Italian opera-bouffe: I mean only the princi-ple. This work is not conceived in the traditional form, likeits ancestor — Mussorgskii’sMarriage, which is a faith-ful interpretation of Gogol’s play.L’Heure Espagnoleis amusical comedy; apart from a few cuts, I have not alteredanything in Franc-Nohain’s text. Only the quintet at theend might, by its general “layout,” its vocalises and vocaleffects, recall the typical repertory “ensemble.” But exceptfor this quintet, it is mostly ordinary declamation ratherthan singing; for the French language, like any other, hasits own accents and musical inflections. And I do not seewhy one should not take advantage of these qualities inorder to arrive at correct prosody. The spirit of the workis frankly humoristic. It is through the music above all— the harmony, rhythm, and orchestration — that I havetried to express irony, and not, as in operetta, by an arbi-trary and comical accumulation of words. I have long beendreaming of a humorous musical work, and the modernorchestra seemed perfectly adapted to underline and exag-gerate comic effects. On reading Franc-Nohain’sL’HeureEspagnole, I formed the opinion that this droll fantasy wasjust what I was looking for. A whole lot of things in thiswork attracted me — the mixture of familiar conversationand intentionally absurd lyricism, and the atmosphere ofunusual and amusing noises by which the characters aresurrounded in this clockmaker’s shop. Also, the opportu-nities for making use of the picturesque rhythms of Spanishmusic.”

Maurice Ravel, letter to Jean Godebski

“. . . On the whole, this first act might serve as an essayin opera dialogue. . . Throughout I try as hard as I can tonote down clearly those changes in intonation which cropup in human conversation for the most futile causes, on themost insignificant words, changes in which lies the secretof Gogol’s humor . . . ”

“I have been surveying my first act . . . If you forget

all operatic traditions and admit the principle of musicaldiscourse carried out in all simplicity,The Marriageis anopera. If I have managed to render the straightforward ex-pression of thoughts. . . ”

Modest Mussorgskii, letter to Rimsky-Korsakov

“I am thinking of the second act . . . and observing thepeasants around me. This may come in useful later. Howmany fresh, racy aspects, hitherto overlooked by art, in theRussian people! A few scraps of what life brought to weI have turned into musical imagery for the benefit of thosewhom I love and who love me, that is, in the songs . . .What I should like to do is to make my characters speak onthe stage exactly as people speak in everyday life, withoutexaggeration or distortion, and yet write music which willbe thoroughly artistic.”

Modest Mussorgskii, letter to Lulmilla Shestakova

“I am at work on human speech. With great pains Ihave achieved a type of melody evolved from it. I havesucceeded in incorporating the recitative into melody (ex-cept, of course, for dramatic movements, when anything,even interjection, may be used) . . . There are foretastes inMarfa confiding her grief to Dosifey, and also inThe Fair.”

Modest Mussorgskii, letter to Stassov

Within a tone of voice, when is gesture?

Within a way of saying it, when is gesture?

Every utterance can be delivered in a number of ways.When it’s being said, a way of saying something takespart of its meaning from the way it is being said and partfrom the ways it is not being said.

A Way of Saying Something

Choosing a way of saying something creates an order inthe sounds. A choice creates an order. Within the orderof the sounds of a way of saying something, there aresounds of the words and their parts; and there are soundsthat distinguish a speaker and groups of speakers: bothof these become a noise factor when someone speaks —a personalized acoustic habit or the acoustic quirks of amere group, they are the constants of a way of speaking— and have little to do with linguistic gesture. A speakercan not choose them. But within a way of saying some-thing, there is an order of sounds that is not required tobuild up words, to break off sequences of words, to in-dicate the sounds of an utterance, to establish syntacticrelations, and so on; there is an order of sounds that isnot required to identify the speaker with a group, or evento identify the speaker.

These sounds stretch across words and are ordered by thespeaker’s choice. They are built up in the midst of the or-der of the sounds required by everything else — words,syntax, and so on. They are distinct configurations ofsound in the sounds of a spoken utterance.

MARK SULLIVAN 164 14.Linguistic Gesture

A way of saying something is distinguished by the con-figuration it creates. The configuration emerges in astretch of sound and attaches a significance to what issaid that modifies, or changes — in short, that transformsit. The configuration indicates which transformation is tobe carried out by the listener who is trying to determinewhich interpretations are available to him. By indicatingthe required transformation, the configuration limits thelistener’s interpretations, and thus, the correspondenceshe can create with events in other media.

One Distinguishing Component

Some contours have a function reserved for them withinthe language: the tiered, slowly rising contour used to in-dicate a list, the descending contour of the statement and

the rising contour of the question, and contours like theone that belongs to “on the one hand . . . , but on the otherhand. . . ” Other contours can be assigned a function bythe speaker.

As a component of a configuration, a contour can be as-signed a function: It becomes a part of a linguistic ges-ture, and specifies a transformation that the respondentshould make.

Several Sentences, One Gesture

A long, rising contour at the beginning of an utterance,in conjunction with other components, marks out one lin-guistic gesture that can be performed. Several sentencescan be performed with this one linguistic gesture:

Tempo: slow Accel.

I did it al-read-y

Tempo: slow Accel.

You can’t do that

Tempo: slow Accel.

(But I didn’t) see that it was there

Tempo: slow Accel.

What are you doing?

The configuration points toward a transformation thatwould move in the direction of exasperation, anger, im-patience, and defiance. The listening respondent cer-tainly would not think that the configuration points to-ward a required transformation that would lead in the di-rection of a meek request or of an indifferent dismissal.

The configuration can be performed with various com-ponents added without losing its identity: it can be per-formed with various degrees of whisper, breathiness,huskiness, creak or falsetto, with various degrees of res-onance; it can be performed through laughing, giggling,sobbing or crying — that is, the utterance can be modu-lated by laughing, for instance (the utterance can be per-formed with traces of these events in it). None of thesecomponents, however, are required by the configurationto establish its limits and none of them prevent it fromestablishing its limits. They may add additional limits,but their presence would not change the configuration,and thus, would not change the gesture.

But the distinguishing components of the configurationcannot be changed without destroying the identity of thelinguistic gesture: If the tempo is changed from slowto fast, if the speeding up is removed or replaced withslowing down, if the initial rising glissando is removedor replaced with a descending glissando or even with aglissando that descends and then rises, if the crescendois removed or replaced with a decrescendo, then the ges-ture turns into another; it becomes a gesture that limitsthe interpretations of the listener in another way.

The characteristics preserved in this linguistic gesture arethose of a rebounding whack or of a rebounding jolt.

Several Gestures, One Sentence

None of the sentences must each time it is said be per-formed with this linguistic gesture so that the sentencebe understood. Each of the sentences can be performedas other linguistic gestures. Take one:


Tempo: fast Accel.

What are you do-ing?

Tempo: extremely slow Accel.


Tempo: slow


Tempo: extremely fast


Tempo: fast

(breathy)What are you doing?

Within Limits

Any one of these linguistic gestures can vary within itslimits and still preserve its identity. Take for example, the

change of emphasis within the gesture required so that adifferent question result:

Tempo: slow Accel.


Tempo: slow Accel.


Tempo: slow Accel.


There are no neutral spoken utterances with respect tolinguistic gesture.

The Gesture of the Marginal Event

In some contexts, even the single word — since it canhouse configurations — can be performed with differ-ent gestures. Any marginal event of speech — smack-ing noises, air exhaled forcefully through the teeth — ifit can function as a configuration with only one distin-guishing component) can in at least one context becomea linguistic gesture.

The little phrases, the almost meaningless phrases are es-pecially susceptible to the configuring that becomes lin-guistic gesture:

“By the way. . . ” “. . . but. . . ”“I don’t care. . . ” “I can’t tell you. . . ”“Naturally. . . ” “It’s not that. . . ”“Of course. . . ” “It goes without saying. . . ”“Certainly. . . ” “As usual. . . ”“Hummmmm. . . ” “In a way. . . ”“I think. . . ” “Well. . . ”“You see. . . ” “It seems to me. . . ”“In my opinion. . . ” “What if. . . ”“I disagree. . . ” “If you’d just. . . ”“Usually. . . ” “The fact that. . . ”


The System of Distinguishing Components

The structured sets of distinguishing components fromwhich linguistic gestures are created can be looked atas components that are created in different systems. Inmany ways these systems resemble the systems availableto the composer of music, but, in general, the grid ofdistinctions is not so fine: Speaking out of tune wouldmean something quite different from playing out of tune.Still, the speaker who consistently misplaces emphasiscan create as much havoc for a listener as can a performerwho consistently drags or drops a beat. The grids of dis-tinction are different, not unrelated.

A speaker creates the configurations of linguistic gestureusing distinguishing components drawn from sets thatinclude articulation and loudness, pitch relations of ad-jacency, range, and contour, rhythm, stress, tempo, andpause.

A speaker sometimes uses components drawn from othersets: one set — breathiness, whisper, huskiness, creak,falsetto, and resonance — includes distinctions that alsoindicate the acoustic constants of a group of speakers,the acoustic markers of a dialect, or of a single speaker,the acoustic markers of “his voice.” Under certain con-ditions, these distinctions can be chosen by a speaker sothat timbal components shape the listener’s interpreta-tion of the configuration.

Another set — laughing, giggling, trembling, sobbing,or crying (or even modifications of these such as half-hearted laughter or feigned laughter) — includes compo-nents that usually exist sequentially with speech, that is,we usually stop talking to produce them. Under certainconditions, these events can also become timbal compo-nents that contribute to the formation of a distinct acous-tic configuration.

Thus there can be linguistic gestures related to the blast,to the giggle, the grumble, and the snarl, to the wheezeand the whimper; linguistic gestures related to dragging,to pulling and stretching, to picking at something, tocoaxing, pounding, and tapping; linguistic gestures ofblabbing, whining, and ho-humming. And yes, even lin-guistic gestures that seem to march, or dance, or sing.

In spoken language, acoustic indication allows a listenerto figure out what a tone of voice is pointing at. Thevoice, self-referentially, creates a kind of acoustic point-ing: it refers the listener to a part of its own productionand uses that part to point at something else. In visual in-dication, the body or one of its parts points; in the acous-tic indication of speech, it is the voice that points.

Left Out

Again, things have been, and will be, left out of this pa-per: the way linguistic gesture preserves characteristicsof movements and music in its configurations; the waylinguistic gesture works its way into representations inlinguistic media and visual media. There has been notreatment of the ways in which new linguistic gesturesare created. Nor has there been any treatment of thedifferent ways linguistic gesture functions in prose andpoetry, when read aloud, in discourse, or in works fortheater.

15. Musical Gesture and LinguisticGesture

“Music resembles language. Expressions like musical id-iom and musical inflection are no metaphors. But musicis not language . . . Whoever takes music literally as a lan-guage is led astray by it . . . The traditional textbook onform shows an awareness of the sentence, phrase, period,interjection, question, exclamation (or call), and paren-theses; subordinate phrases are found all over the place,voices rise and fall, and in all of this the gesture of musicis borrowed from the voice, it speaks.”

Theodor W. Adorno, “Music, Language, and TheirRelationship in Contemporary Composing”

Speech and music share some structured sets and evensome of the distinguishing components that can be drawnfrom those sets and linked to create acoustic configu-rations: While tempo is created by durations, rhythms,and proportions unfolding in movements away from andtoward moments of emphasis, loudness shapes the con-toured succession of pitches grouped by caesuras andsilences into phrases of timbrally marked sound. Butspeech and music are kept apart by the components, sets,and linkages that are not shared, as well as by the func-tions given the configurations: Speech acquires its mate-rial, its order, its distinctions, logics, and functions. Onlyby way of analogy can music take hold of the distinctcharacteristics of speech, of the characteristics it does notshare with music.

By way of analogy, however, music shows somethingabout speech, about linguistic gesture, that it cannotshow about itself.

The Second-Nature of a Relationship

Still, this mutually transforming reflection supplied bymusic which contributes to the distinction of both speechand music is created within a historical context. A

MARK SULLIVAN 167 15.Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture

new musical composition cannot show something aboutspeech that it cannot show about itself if another com-position has already shown what the new one wants toshow. If the new composition tried that, it would onlywind up affirming what has already been shown, show-ing it again. The new composition has to show somethingelse, something that has not yet been shown.

What speech cannot show about itself, and what musicalcompositions have already shown, together establish thehistorical context that faces a composer who wants bydrawing on linguistic gestures to create a new musicalgesture.

In the process of making an analogy, something is lost.The necessary changes have to be made. Even if mu-sic doesn’t give up anything to be like speech, it wouldnot do to omit all restrictions. Some restrictions mustbe placed on musical events to preserve the character-istics of a linguistic gesture. For an intended composi-tion, there must be some restrictions. The only questionis which, and how to mark the restrictions with intent.From all the restrictions available to him, the composerchooses those that will allow him to preserve in musi-cal gestures the characteristics of speech required by hisidea,

Some ways of preserving characteristics of linguisticgesture and some of the characteristics preserved have,as a consequence of affirmative practices, developed apower to override the composer’s intentions. The rela-tionship between music and speech which they embodyseems to have become part of music’s second-nature:They do not call attention to the differences between mu-sic and speech, but suppress attention to them, and leadto the closeness between music and speech being takenfor granted.

For the composer, this second-nature presents a problem:Since the closeness seems to be there already, the com-poser cannot distinguish himself by putting it there.

A composer does not want to create a closeness betweenmusic and speech that exists already. That would not becreation, but mere affirmative reproduction, re-creation.A composer wants to create a closeness of relationshipthat without the composer’s intention would not be. Sothe problem of the second-nature of the relationship isone of distance. The composer has to create a distance inthe articulated difference between linguistic and musicalgesture so that the closeness be the one he wants, so thatthe closeness be one that would not just be there anyway,so that the characteristics of speech gesture preserved inthe musical gesture present a relationship that appears for

the first time.

Since it establishes its consistency in music, the morerigorously the musical gesture adheres to the rules stipu-lated by the composer, to the specifically musical logicand requirements of the chosen musical material, themore the difference is articulated between the musicalgesture and the speech gesture whose characteristics itpreserves, and thus, the more sharply defined is the dis-tance and thereby the distinct closeness of the relation-ship. The articulated difference makes the distance.

Musical gesture is not a mere acoustic mirror of speech;it is reflective only in the most general and futile sense:the distance is created to transform what is reflected andthat on which it reflects. It is not a playback. The firstmoment of noticing something about a configuration ofspeech cannot be played back.

Borrowed distinctions are characteristics transformed bythe events that preserve them. At the same time, theyare characteristics that transform the respondent’s under-standing of the events from which they are derived andthe events in which they are preserved. In a composi-tion, borrowed characteristics become instances of mu-tual transformation.

Lost and Preserved

Answers to two questions delineate the history of musi-cal gestures related to linguistic gesture: What charac-teristics of speech, of linguistic gesture, can be preservedin music? Which of the characteristics that can be pre-served did the composer choose to preserve?

Both questions can apply to musical compositions thatrequire language and those that do not.

The first question determines what must be left out, ifthe composer creates a musical gesture that preserves thecharacteristics of a linguistic event; the second questiondetermines what the composer chose to leave out.

In instrumental works, the treatment of musical gesturethat preserves characteristics of linguistic gesture is fre-quently close to its treatment in works that use the voiceand language. Or rather one extended period in the de-velopment of the relationship between musical gesturesand speech gestures is distinguished by this kind of treat-ment. There are answers to the question: What charac-teristics of linguistic gesture did the composer choose topreserve? Within them, the history of the relationshipcan be found.


The Gesture of Breaking Off

The chorales of J.S. Bach’sSaint Mathew’s Passionpreserve the characteristics of the linguistic gesture of readingsomething aloud. They are oriented, not to the prayer, but tothe behavior of the praying person — specifically, toa group of people reading, or reciting, a text out loud. The contours of the highest placed voice preserve those thatwould be used by someone speaking the text.

Er ken ne mich, mein Hu ter

Er ken ne mich, mein Hu terNot:

Er ken ne mich, mein Hu terNot:

The other three voices do not preserve this contour. Nor is the tempo of speech preserved. The tempo is that whichwould be used by a group of people reading or reciting together. In the highest placed voice, the placement of peaks inthe contour of pitches gives emphasis to those words that would be deemed important by a person reading or recitingthe prayer. Not so in all the other voices. Within the highestplaced voice, each syllable is generally sung to a singlepitch (three exceptions in each of the first four chorales, six in the fifth, as compared to a range from eight to elevenin the other three voices). In spite of the deviations of the other three voices, the musical gesture of the highest placedvoice overrides them, and the gesture of the whole preservesthat of the linguistic gesture. The final chord of the lastchorale which occurs after the text has mentioned that Jesushas died, is a dominant chord without resolution and thusa musical gesture wherein the gesture of a reader is preserved who stops reading without making an end — a musicalgesture which preserves the linguistic gesture of breakingoff.

8

8

8

Wenn ich ein mal soll schei den,so schei de nicht von mir!Wenn ich den Tod soll lei den,so tritt du dannher für!

Wenn ich ein mal soll schei den,so schei de nicht von mir!Wenn ich den Tod soll lei den,so tritt du dann her für!

Wenn mir am al ler bäng stenwird um das Her ze sein, so

Wenn mir am al ler bäng stenwird um das Her ze sein, so

reiß mich aus den Äng stenkraft dei nerAngst und Pein!

reiß mich aus den Äng stenkraft dei nerAngst und Pein!


The Gesture of A Propulsive Sputter

In two parts of Bartolo’s song ’The Vendetta’ inThe Marriage of Figaro, Mozart has preserved the characteristicsof the linguistic gesture of a propulsive sputter. The configuration is marked by a rebounding through a string ofalternating pitches (in the first) and a string of repeating pitches (in the second).

The first string compresses into its rebounding pulse parts of the text that before were said separated from one anotherby ) and two intervals (the octave and the minor second)).


The first time the text is sung, the rebound clings to two pitches; the second time, when it is repeated in its entirety, therebounding pulse moves through a melodic sequence.

Each configuration is marked by a propulsive rebounding effect created by the repeating attacks on each pitch (twoattacks per note in the first configuration, three attacks pernote in the second). Each word becomes just so manypulsed syllables rebounding through the repetition of pitches in the sequence. The effect, dramatically, is that of aspeaker seduced by the drive of a pulse into ignoring the way it robs what he is saying of the emphasis it requires tohave an impact.

Gesture As An Attack

In Wagner’sDie Meistersinger von Nurnberg, one character, as is well known, was constructed to represent the critic.Beckmesser, while marking Walter’s song, sings about how a song should be made, or rather the faults he finds inWalter’s song imply what he thinks a song should be. He uses phrases that can be rendered in English as “(the song)defied the laws of metric accent,” “too short, too long, neveran end,” “not one full stop, no coloratura, and not a traceof melody,” “here, the breath’s ill-managed; there, a sudden start,” “completely incomprehensible melody,” “a brewmixed from all tunes,” “faulty verse,” “clipped syllables,” “rhymes in false places,” “a patchwork song between theverses.” The text of Beckmesser’s marking ensures that whatWagner wanted to attack with the composition was inthe composition, and could be recognized as the object of theattack. Wagner even went so far as to preserve — in thecontour of Beckmesser’s melodic phrases — the peaks that mark the phrases with the linguistic gestures of indignationthat might have been used by a critic wielding those phrases.


Later in the composition, in Beckmesser’s song, Wagner has composed a musical satire of the rules and practicesthat Beckmesser used to judge Walter’s song. In the song, Wagner composed those linguistic gestures, those musicalgestures that would show in music Wagner’s image of the affirmative practices he bitterly opposed: In the song, hecomposed the musical and linguistic gestures of awkward pomp and elevated clumsiness, he made gestures of theutterly predictable rhyme and the endless melodic sequence, he made a gesture of the inanely repeated ornament, andeven, by way of the lute, poked at the gestures of folksy accompaniment. The commentary which would explain thefaults in Beckmesser’s song marked by Sach’s tapping with the hammer, he leaves to the listener.

Perhaps to make the point unmistakeably clear, that the requirements of the composer’s idea determine what is appro-priate for song, Wagner has a finale follow Beckmesser’s songthat takes as its subject something which Beckmesser’srules would utterly condemn: In the finale, the musical and linguistic gestures preserve the characteristics of a situa-tion in which the dissemination of gossip relentlessly lashes a crowd into an uproar. The accumulation of musical andlinguistic gestures contribute to the composed gesture of the whole finale: the gesture of a riot.


The Gesture of Calling a Name

In the first of theChanson Madecasses, Ravel composed musical gestures that mark the passing of time with therepeated calling of a name.

a Tempo (Andante)

Andante quasi allegretto

Piu Lento

Piu animato

Andante quasi allegretto

= 138

Each time the name returns, the musical gesture preserves the characteristics of another linguistic gesture: the first issimply that of saying a word, and then, in succession, the linguistic gesture of an impatient sigh, of something saidin affectionate homage, of exasperating expectation, of a tenderly asked question, of a directed address, and of ananticipating reflection.

The Gesture of a Grumbling Pout

In the opening part ofL’Enfant et les Sortileges, Ravel creates a musical gesture that preserves characteristics of botha linguistic gesture and another musical gesture, and thereby articulates in music an ironic critique of exoticism. Thecomposition begins with a deliberately simple tune, a fake oriental tune. It is of the sort that any listener of his daywould have recognized and understood as a reference to the music of places considered to have an exotic charm. what


placid song does this pseudo-exotic music introduce? The pouting grumbling of a boy who does not want to do hislessons, a boy who would rather go for a walk, eat up all the cakes, and pull the cat’s tail. The linguistic gesture ofthe grumbling pout is preserved in the musical gesture of thefake exotic tune. Through the coupling of the musicalgesture with the preserved characteristics of the linguistic gesture, Ravel brings the listener into a confrontation withthe associations attached to music considered exotic.


Later in the composition, in the Clock’s song, Ravel preserves some characteristics of the linguistic and musicalgestures of the pop singer and of the pop song. The clock’s predicament is paralleled to that of the music which clingsto its beat, unable to tear itself away for long from the pressing task of pounding out the beat. The Clock complainsthat since the boy has broken it, it can do nothing but go off again and again — a comment on the gestures of the popmusic. Through his choice of musical gesture, Ravel allows the text to become a commentary, not only on the Clock’sown condition, but also on the condition of the music whose gestures house the singing of the text.


16. Movement, Speech and MusicalGesture

In discourse, movement gestures and linguistic gesturesinteract. They modify one another, jointly establishinglimits on the interpretations available to a respondent.Theater makes a medium of the interactions of this duo.Opera introduces music into the interaction — both in theform of the singing voice and in the form of instrumen-tal music — and makes a medium of the interacting trio.Thus, there is a difference between a theatrical gestureand an operatic gesture.

They preserve characteristics that come from events inother media in two distinct media: A theatrical gesturepreserves characteristics of events from other media ina medium that emphasizes relationships between move-ment and speech; an operatic gesture preserves character-istics of events from other media in a medium that em-phasizes relationships between movement, speech, andmusic. Both the theatrical gesture and the operatic ges-ture can loan distinctions to musical gesture.

In some musical contexts, the listener detects a counter-point of gesture in the music that is analog to the coun-terpoint created between speech and movement gestures.

A movement gesture, or a sequence of movement ges-tures that modify one another, sometimes prepares thefield of significance for an utterance that follows — lim-iting it in advance. Sometimes a movement gesture,retroactively, shifts the significance of something that’sjust been said — it does not take back meanings buttakes away some interpretations of what came before it.Linguistic gesture also has its ways of modifying thesignificance of movement gestures which preceded theutterance and of preparing the field of significance formovement gestures, or a sequence of movement gestures,which follow the utterance.

Both linguistic and movement gestures can interrupt oneanother, attaching limits to the significance that contin-ues to unfold as the interrupted gesture completes itself.

17. Musical Gesture and MusicalGesture

A composer may create a new musical gesture by pre-serving some characteristics of an existing gesture in anew musical configuration. In this case, the listener’sinterpretations are limited by distinctions on loan fromanother musical event.

The new musical gesture elicits a memory that it doesn’t

match.

The memory elicited is not only, if necessarily at leastto some extent, the memory of an event in movementor in speech triggered by the presence of its preservedcharacteristics (at some time it became a musical gestureby preserving characteristics of speech or movement). Itmust also carry some preserved trace of the way some-thing happens in a musical event.

18. Musical Gesture, Now

Gesture emerges between source and decay. in music,gesture plays its roles before the desire for detail hasarisen and after the desire has been turned into a fulfill-ment: The sources of gesture are to be sought in the timebefore it can play any role at all; its decay can be foundin the time in which it no longer seems to play any rolewhatsoever.

Between source and decay, a gesture has its history, andits history is interconnected with the history of response.Until it decays, a gesture helps the composer to elicit de-sired and prevent undesired responses.

In the historical development of the systems of tonalityand periodic rhythm, some gestures came to seem likethey belonged to the system, that is, they did not have tobe created by the composer. Not only these systems, butthe gestures that had been created in the systems, reachedtheir point of decay.

The idea of parameters was introduced to composition inan attempt to construct a framework in which the com-poser could take decisions. The framework was set up sothat composers could avoid creating structures that werehelplessly delivered to tonality and periodicity and thegestures which these two bad made their own.

The parametric approach separated musical events intoparameters for the purpose of taking decisions. The mostpowerful attack directed at this deliberately stipulated ap-proach to decision-taking was not an attack on the ap-proach but an attack on an argument that had been at-tached to the approach. This attack was based on thereadily-observable fact that, in a performance, one pa-rameter could never be separated from any of the otherparameters. The parametric approach, an approach de-veloped to organize the context in which the composermade decisions, was attacked as if it had been developedto describe the results generated by the decisions taken,as if it had argued that parameters were perceptual factsthat were separated from one another.

Two tendencies developed in the works of composerswho adopted the parametric approach, by composers

MARK SULLIVAN 180 18.Musical Gesture, Now

who shared the desire to leave tonality and periodicity:one tendency, roughly, became an attempt to escape allgesture, and the other became an attempt to create newgestures, non- affirmative gestures. Both of these tenden-cies emerged in opposition to the overwhelmingly dom-inant tendency then, and ever more so now, namely, thatof affirming what has already been created. Those whoattempted to create new gestures, by using the parametricapproach to composition, were accused by composers ofthe other tendency, of abandoning tonality and periodic-ity, but not its gestures. The only way out, they accus-ingly proposed, was to eliminate gesture.

The attempt to escape a history of response, that is, theattempt to eliminate gesture, wound up affirming what-ever prevented response, and thus, left the making of thehistory of response, insofar as this was connected withthe history of gesture, to those who would eliminate itshistorical aspect through affirmative practices that arelimited to reproduction. The impasse reached by com-posers who neither wanted to eliminate gestures, nor re-produce them, was concerned with the problem of creat-ing gestures that would limit the response in an unprece-dented way while maintaining the parametric approach— an approach designed to avoid tonality, periodicityand their gestures but not to create intended gestures.With regard to gesture, the impasse implies the neces-sity of shift from one framework in which decisions aretaken to another: a shift from a concentration on singleparameters to a concentration on configurations.

An approach which organizes the context in which thecomposer takes decisions that bear on configurations,takes gesture to be part of the listener’s understandingresponse and not a mere perceptual fact. I am not join-ing the attack on parametric approach. It was not insuf-ficient, but sufficient. It made no provisions for treat-ing configurations, and thus, was designed to help avoidthe gestures of tonality and periodicity, but not to helpcreate desired gestures. If an approach would take theparametric approach as one of its points of departure, butwould make the dynamics of configuration the point oforientation of the decision-taking process, this might beone way out of the impasse in which the parametric ap-proach finds itself, a way that does force a return to thegestures of tonality and periodicity, gestures that by nowhave only contempt for the composer. The conscious anddeliberate creation of configurations, of a hybrid mediumthat preserves distinctions on loan, would become part ofthe socially concerned behavior of the composer who re-fuses to affirm things the way they are, such a shift ofapproach would allow the composer to stand in directopposition to all attempts to limit the power of gestureto the affirmation of things the way they are, and would,at the same time, allow the composer to oppose all at-

tempts that would rather eliminate gesture than see itspower contribute to change.

Selected Bibliography

Movement and GestureAustin, Gilbert. Chironomia or a Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery.

Comprehending Many Precepts, Both Ancient and Modern, Forthe Proper Regulation of the voice, the Countenance. and Ges-ture, Together With an Investigation of the Elements of Ges-tures and a New Method for the Notation Thereof: Illustratedby May Figures. (1806). Carbondale: Southern Illinois Uni-versity Press, (Reprinted) 1966.

Birdwhistell, Ray L.Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body-MotionCommunication. Middlesex, England: Allan Lane, The Pen-guin Press, 1971.

“Kinesics,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. vol.VIII, Collier-Macmillan, 1972; Macmillan, New York and FreePress, Glencoe, 1968, pp. 379–85.

Bouissac, Paul.La Mesure des gestes Prolgomenes a la semiotiguegestuelle. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1973.

Dejorio, A. La Mimica Degli Antichi Investigata Nel Gestire Napo-lentana. Napoli, 1832.

Eshkol, Noa and Wachman, Abraham.Movement Notation. London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1958.

Gaburo, Kenneth.Privacy Two: . . . My My My What A WonderfulFall. . . , Ramona: Lingua Press, 1976.

Hewes, Gordon A. “World Distribution of Certain Postural Habits,”American Anthropologist. vol. 57, No. 2, Part 1. April 1955,pp. 231–244.

Kordick, Elizabeth Ann. “Pointing and the Acquisition of Language,”Ph.D. Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,1975.

Kristeva, Julia. “Gesture: Practice or Communication,” InThe BodyReader: Social Aspects of the Human Body. Ed. Ted Polhemus(in association with the institute of Contemporary Arts, Lon-don),. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Motyka, Susan. “The Art of the False Move,”Allosh. Ramona: Lin-gua Press, 1980, pp. 365–369.

Quintillian. Institutio Oratio. Trans. H.E. Butler. London: WilliamHeinemann, 1961.

Wundt, Wilhelm. The Language of Gestures. Trans. by J.S. Thayer,C.M. Greenleaf, and M.D. Silberman (Indiana University). TheHague, Paris: Mouton, 1973.

Linguistic gestureCrystal, David.The English Tone of Voice. London, England: Edward

Arnold, 1975.Crystal, David and Davy, Derek.Investigating English Style. Bloom-

ington and London: Indiana University Press, 1969.Crystal, David and Quirk, Randolph.Systems of Prosodic and Paral-

inquistic Features in English. London, Paris, The Hague: Mou-ton and Co., 1964.

Feldman, Sandor S.Mannerisms of Speech and Gestures in EverydayLife. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1959.

Jakobson, Roman.Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning. Trans. JohnMepham. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England:The MIT Press, 1978.

“Language in Relation to Other Communication Systems.” Lec-ture delivered in Milan at the International Symposium “Lan-guages in Society and in Technique,” 1968. (typewritten)

MARK SULLIVAN 181 Selected Bibliography

Jakobson, Roman and Waugh, Linda.The Sound Shape of Language.Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1979.

Lyons, John.Semantics. Volume 1. Cambridge, London, New York,Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Semantics. Volume 2. Cambridge, London, New York, Mel-bourne: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Gesture and TheaterBrecht, Bertolt. Schriften/Uber Theater. Berlin: Henschelverlag

Kunst and Gesellschaft, 1977.Brecht On Theatre: The Development Of An Aesthetic. Ed. and

trans. John Willett. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.Elam, Keir. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London and New

York: Methuen, 1980.Pavis, Patrice.Languages of the Stage/Essays in the Semiology of

Theatre. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications,1982.

Musical GestureAdorno, Theodor W.Philosophie der neuen Musik. (1949) Gesam-

melte Schriften 12. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,1975.

The Philosophy of Modern Music. Trans. Anne G. Mitchell andWesley V. Blomster. New York: The Seabury Press, 1980.

Versuch uber Wagner. (1952) Gesammelte Schriften 13. Frank-furt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977.

In Search of Wagner. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. London: NLB,1981.

Mahler: Eine musikalische Physiognomik. (1960) (Mahler/AMusical Physiognomy) Gesammelte Schriften 13. Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978.

Asthetische Theorie. (Aesthetic Theory). Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp, 1970.

“Musik, Sprache and ihr Verhaltnis im gegenwartigen Kom-ponieren.” (1956)Gesammelte Schriften16. Frankfurt ammain: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978.

“Zu einer imaginaren Aus Wahl von Liedern Gustav Mahlers.”(On an Imaginary Selection from Gustav Mahler’s Songs).Gesammelte Schriften17. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Ver-lag, 1982.

Barthes, Roland. Has Sing t, Mir. Der Ich Hore, InMeihem Korperdas Leid. Berlin: Nerve Verlag, 1979.

Bierwisch, Manfred. “Musik and Sprache/Uberlegungen zu ihrerStruktur and Funktionweise,”Jahrbuch Peters1978. Leipzig:Edition Peters, 1978.

Brun, Herbert. “Geste Unter Zwang,”Herausforderung Schonberg.Hrsg. Ulrich Dibelius. Munchen: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1974.

“From Musical Ideas to Computers and Back,”The Computerand Music. Ed. Harry B. Lincoln. Ithaca and London: CornellUniversity Press, 1970.

“Aus den Bagatellen Op. 119 and Op. 126 von L. v. Beethoven.”Paper (manuscript).

“On Symphony #9 by Gustav Mahler.” (paper manuscript).“The Function of Time in Art.” Paper (typewritten).“Teaching the Function of Time in Art.” Paper (typewritten).“Die sechs Klavier Partiten, Op. 1 von J.S. Bach.” Paper(manuscript).

“Die sechs Sonaten and Partiten fur Solo Violine von J.S. Bach.”Paper (manuscript).

“Instrumentalmusik der Romantic/Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdi:Oktett fur Streicher, Op. 20 (1825).” Paper (typewritten).

“Das Schaffen Gustav Mahlers/I. Exposition eines Materials.”Paper (manuscript).

“Das Schaffen Gustav Mahlers/IV. Die Kunst der Steinerung.”Paper (manuscript).

“Das Schaffer Gustav Mahlers/VI. Dialektik der Vieldeutigkeit.11 Paper (manuscript).

“Das Schaffen Gustav Mahlers/VIII. Zum Anfang der NeuenMusik.“ Paper (manuscript).

“The Listener’s Interpretation of Music: An Experience BetweenCause and Effect.” Paper (typewritten) .

“Composer’s Input Outputs Music.”“ . . . to hold discourse at least with a computer. . . ”

Cogan, Robert and Escot, Pozzi.Sonic Design/The Nature of Soundand Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,1976.

Cone, Edward T.The Composer’s Voice. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Lon-don: University of California Press, 1974.

Cooper, Paul.Perspectives in Music Theory/An Historical AnalyticalApproach. New York: Dodd, Mead E Company, 1974.

Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich.Die Musik Gustav MahlersMunchen,Zurich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1982.

Gaburo, Elizabeth. “Vocal Composition and a Knowledge of the Au-ditory and Timbral Aspects of Vocal Production.” D.M.A. dis-sertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1983.

Gaburo, Virginia.Notation. LaJolla: Lingua Press, 1977.Helms, Hans G. “Suppositions for modern Musical Theater.” Lecture

delivered to the congress on ’Music and Theater’ at the ’Inter-national Summer-Courses for modern Music,’ Darmstadt, 1966(typewritten).

Hennenberg, Fritz.Dessau Brecht Musikalische Arbeiten. Berlin:Henschelverlag, 1963.

Howe, Richard Herbert. “Gesture.” Paper (manuscript).“Exposition/Development.” Paper (typewritten).“On The Ninth Symphony of Gustav Mahler.” Paper (typewrit-

ten).“Standards For Performance And The Performance Of Stan-

dards.” Paper (typewritten).“Sentence, Statement, Period, Phrase.” Paper (typewritten).“Tendency.” Paper (typewritten).“Uber den Aufbau eines Liedes vom Klagen.” Paper (typewrit-

ten).Kolisch, Rudolph. “Tempo and Character in Beethoven’s Music,” Part

I. Trans. Arthur Mendel.Musical Quarterly. April 1943, pp.169–187.

“Tempo and Character in Beethoven’s Music,” Part II. Trans.Arthur Mendel.Musical Quarterly. July 1943, pp. 291–312.

Kolwalke, Kim H.Kurt Weill in Europe. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMIResearch Press, 1979.

Levy, Edward. ”Motivic Development Is How a Piece Moves,”MusicEducators Journal. October 19, 1969, pp. 30–34.

Metzger, Heinz-Klaus.Musik wozu Literatur zu Noten. (Music forwhat/Literature on Notes). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Ver-lag, 1980.

Rosenberg, Wolf. ”Avantgardistischer Vokalstil Und SeineWurzeln.”Manuscript (typewritten): Westdeutscher Rundfunk: Sendung:15.3.1972.

”Leiden — beim Wort genommen/Anmerkungen zu GustavMahlers ’Wunderhorn’ — Gesangen.” Bayerischer Rundfunk:Sendung: 30. Juli. 1972.

Die Krise der Gesanaskunst. Karlsruhe: Verlag G. Braun, 1968.”Mahler and die Avantgarde: Kompositionstechnisches Vorbild

oder geistige Sympathie?” Manuscript (typewritten): Mahler-Symposium, Graz.

”Vortklang and Wortsemantik bei Mahler.” Hessischer Rundfunk:Sendung: 20. Januar. 1966.

Scherchen, Hermann.The Nature of Music. Trans. from the German’Vom Wesen der Musik’ by William Mann. London: HenryRegnery Company, 1950.


Schnebel, Dieter. ”Studien zur Dynamik Arnold Schonbergs.” Dis-sertation, Tubingen, 1955.

”Auf der Suche nach der befreiten Zeit/ Erster VersuchUber Schubert.” (On the Lookout for Freed Time).Musik-Konzepte/Sondetband: Franz Schubert. December 1979, pp.69–88.

”Klanraume — Zeitklange/Zweiter Versuch uber Schubert.”(Soundspace — Sounds of Time).Musik-Konzepte: Sonder-band/Schubert. December, 1979, pp. 89–106.

”Das spate Neue/Versuch uber Janaceks Werke von 1918–1928.”Musik-Konzepte: Leos Janacek.

”Die schwierige Wahrheit des Lebens — zu Verdis musikalis-chem Realismus.” (The Difficult Truth of Life — about Verdi’s

Musical Realism).Musik-Konzepte 10/Guiseppe Verdi. Octo-ber, 1979, pp. 51–111.

Schonberg, Arnold.Style and Idea. Ed. Leonard Stein. Trans. LeoBlack. New York: St. Martins Press, 1975.

Winold, Allen. ”Rhythm in Twentieth-Century Music,” inAspects ofTwentieth-Century Music. Ed. Gary E. Wittlich. EnglewoodCliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975.

GeneralBeishon, John. ”Learning About Systems,”Cybernetics and Systems:

An International Journal, Volume 11, 1980, p. 297–316.


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