Introduction
The Greek
word angelia means message. We use the word angel with regard
to
a divine messenger. There is an old theological tradition dealing with
the study of such messengers, namely angelology. Angeletics is
different
from angelology as it is concerned with the study of natural and
particularly
of human messages and messengers. This does not mean that the analysis
of the religious phenomenon is irrelevant (Serres 1993). Quite the
contrary,
it is a contribution to the study of production, distribution,
interpretation,
storage, and control of messages and messengers in pre-modern
societies.
Angeletics in a narrow sense belongs to the Humanities and
Social
Sciences and is closely related to rhetoric (McElholm 2001; Capurro
1992).
In a wider sense it deals with the study of messages as a
natural
phenomenon.
In
the first part of this paper I will briefly refer to angeletics as an
interdisciplinary
theory (Capurro 2003). The second part deals with some questions
concerning
the difference between messages at the organic and the human level.
Some
insights are based on the online discussions at the "Electronic
Conference
on the Foundations of Information Science" (FIS 2002). The concepts of
message and information are closely related (Capurro/Hjørland
2003).
The twofold meaning of the Latin term informatio as 'moulding
matter'
and 'moulding the mind', i.e., the ontological meaning and today's
prevailing
epistemological use of information as message communication gives prima
facie rise to an analogy between human communication and the
question
of message transmission at the sub-human level. I will argue that the
interpretation
of life processes as angeletic ones can be considered in its
own
right, i.e., beyond the realm of an analogy. An interdisciplinary
message
theory can become the basis of a complex, non-reductive view of the
manifold
hierarchies of communication.
I.
Angeletics as an Interdisciplinary Theory
Claude
Shannon's theory of communication (Shannon 1948) is not a theory about
information transmission but about message transmission. Shannon uses
the
term 'message' instead of 'information' in its usual meaning as
'knowledge
communicated'. The concept of information within this theory refers to
the number of binary choices in order to create or codify – a message.
In reality – as it was conceived an applied – the theory is about
signal
transmission and the ways in which to make it more reliable. Shannon
correlates
information and uncertainty, as opposed to the everyday meaning of
information.
The semantic and pragmatic aspects are excluded from this engineering
perspective
of communication. Warren Weaver found Shannon's definition of
information
as counterintuitive (Shannon/Weaver 1972). But Shannon had indeed
substituted
the everyday meaning by using the word message.
Message
and information are related but not identical concepts:
- a message
is sender-dependent, i.e. it is based on a heteronomic or asymmetric
structure.
This is not the case of information: we receive a message, but we ask
for
information,
- a message
is supposed to bring something new and/or relevant to the receiver.
This
is also the case of information,
- a message
can be coded and transmitted through different media or messengers.
This
is also the case of information,
- a message
is an utterance that gives rise to the receiver's selection through a
release
mechanism or interpretation.
Following
Luhmann we make a difference between message ("Mitteilung") i.e., the
action
of offering something (potentially) meaningful to a social system
("Sinnangebot"),
information ("Information") i.e. the process of selecting meaning from
different possibilities offered by a message, and understanding
("Verstehen")
i.e., the integration of the selected meaning within the system, as the
three dimensions of communication within social systems (Luhmann 1987:
196).
Messages
can be of imperative, indicative or optional nature. A human sender, an
individual or a group, may believe to have a message for everybody and
for all times and vice versa, someone may think everything is a
message to him/her. Between these two poles there are several possible
hierarchies. In order to select or interpret a message the receiver
must
have some kind of common pre-understanding with the sender of the
message,
for instance a similar form or (linguistic) code.
What
kind of specific criteria can be postulated by a message theory
concerning
the way a sender, a medium and a receiver of messages should act in
order
to be successful under finite conditions? By finite conditions I mean
that
neither the sender, nor the messenger, nor the receiver have any kind
of
certainty that their actions will fit the ideal situation in which:
- a sender
addresses a receiver, sending him/her a message that is new and
relevant
for him/her, i.e., he/she follows the principle of respect,
- a messenger
brings the message undistorted to the receiver, i.e., he/she follows
the principle of faithfulness,
- a receiver
reserves judgement, based on a process of interpretation, about whether
that the message is true or not, i.e., he/she follows the principle
of reservation.
Messages
can be studied according to their form, content, goal, producers, and
recipients.
In his theory of communication or "communicology" Vilem Flusser makes a
basic distinction concerning two goals of communication:
- the dialogical
goal, aiming at the creation of new information,
- the discursive
goal, aiming at the distribution of information (Flusser 1996).
According
to Flusser the age of mass media with their hierarchical one-to-many
structure
of information distributors -- we could call this the CNN-principle --
would finally dominate all forms of information creation. In other
words,
the possibility for a receiver to become a sender of messages within a
dialogical system remains a subordinate option. Since the rise of the
Internet
things started to change, at least concerning the easier and cheaper
possibility
for many receivers to become senders, including such hierarchical
distribution
options as one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many and many-to-one. There
is an ongoing debate on the future structure of the Internet. The
pressure
of established information oligopoles (= concentration of power
in few hands) will not vanish although it may decrease. At the
same
time new forms of domination and exclusion arise (ICIE 2004).
Digital
messages have a deep impact on cultural, political, and economic
activities
leading to what can be called a message society. In other words,
angeletics
or the study of messages plays a paradigmatic role in 21st century
science
and society. The social issues concern different aspects such as
origin,
purpose, and content of messages, power structures, techniques and
means
of diffusion, history of messages and messengers, coding and
interpreting
messages, as well as psychological, political, economic, aesthetic,
ethical
and religious aspects. A scientific cosmos that can be explored only
through
a patient and long-term interdisciplinary effort.
The
question, 'what is a message?' opens a new perspective not only with
regard
to media studies but also to the study of signs and their
interpretation.
Angeletics is a research field at the crossroad of media studies,
semiotics,
and hermeneutics. Each interpretation presupposes a process of message
transmission. Hermes is the messenger of the gods, not just an
interpreter
of these messages. The message-bearing nature of communication is what
angeletics aims to analyse. But any process of message transmission
presupposes
indeed a hermeneutic situation in which sender and receiver have some
common
basis of understanding. In other words, angeletics operates with the
sender/receiver
difference based on the belief that understanding or, more generally,
that
a selection process between two systems is possible. Hermeneutics
operates
with the difference between pre-understanding and interpretation based
on the belief that what is object of the process of interpretation has
been successfully transmitted, i.e., offered to the receiver as an
object
of selection. Semiotics is concerned with the whole process by which a
sign, what it intends to signify and what the interpreter is supposed
to
select are viewed as a dynamic, self-organising structure.
Peter
Sloterdijk has pointed out that we live in a “time of empty angels” or
“mediatic nihilism”, in which we forget what message is to be sent
while
the messengers multiply: “This is the very disangelium of
current
times” (Sloterdijk 1997). Nietzsche's word Disangelium
(Nietzsche
1999, 211) in contrast to evangelium, points in this case to
the
empty nature of the messages disseminated by the mass media,
culminating
in Marshall McLuhan's dictum: "The medium is the message." The question
now is to what extent the internet creates a new angeletic space
producing
new synergies of messages and messengers without the hierarchical
one-to-many
structure of mass media, i.e. giving the receiver the opportunity to
become
a sender. Information ethics deals with these new forms of human
communication
in a world where the classic local parameters for the creation and
distribution
of messages are more and more dependent on the global digital network
--
and vice versa (Capurro 2003).
II.
Angeletics at the Crossroad of Hermeneutics and Biology
How
do
we distinguish messages at the human level from messages, say, at the
DNA-level?
I call the view of natural processes as angeletic processes the postal
paradigm. Taking into consideration the original twofold meaning of
the term 'information' as 'moulding matter' and as 'knowledge
communicated'
we can say that a cell or, more generally, a living system, is
in-formed
on the basis of message selection in order to satisfy its constraints.
The physicist Carl-Friedrich von Weiszäcker remarks that the
modern
concept of information is a new way of asking for what Plato and
Aristotle
called idea or morphe (Weizsäcker 1974). But what
is
the main difference between Plato's concept of participation (methexis)
as in-formation and today's view of communication? Answer: the
inversion
of the relation between time and form. According to today's
evolutionary
perspective forms evolve within the horizon of time not the other way
round.
What does it mean for angeletic processes to be in time?
The
biologist Koichiro Matsuno puts it this way creating implicitly a
hierarchy
between human and non-human communication:
"Folks,
Ted's crisp summary reminds me once again of one recurring theme
surrounding
the sturdy issue on the difference between dynamics in time and
dynamics
of time. Recently, I had an opportunity to spend some time with a young
fellow just 1 year and 2 months old both in the morning and in the
evening
for about a month. Of course, she does not speak, but is very sharp in
pointing to what she would like to do. She likes to eat pear much more
than apple. She never fails in pointing to a piece of peeled pear when
both pear and apple are on the plate. When her mouth is full of juicy
pear,
she does not care even if I have eaten up all pieces of peeled pear on
the plate. But, she got angry to find no pear to take when she was
ready
for another piece. This incidence has again waken[ed] me up to the
simple
fact that dynamics of time is more basic empirically. Even if one does
not have a clear perception of what time looks like, experiencing
time-phenomena
or dynamics of time can proceed as facing no obstacles. A
difficult
problem, however, arises to those who can speak. Those who take framing
whatever statements in present tense for granted has to have some
preconception
of time as a criterion of what present tense is all about. One popular
vehicle for this objective is space-time continuum. Theoretically, it
may
be okay. Empirically, it is not. My young fellow has been quite
sensitive
to the discontinuity between the movement in progress (pear in her
mouth)
and the movement perfected (ready for another piece) without being
bothered
by the global context referred to in the present tense (somebody eats
up
all the pieces on the plate)." (Koichiro Matsuno, FIS 2002, 17.01.03)
When we
observe dynamics in time, i.e. from the point of view of a neutral or
objective
observer, we do it methodologically in the same way in the case
when, say, a DNA-messenger intends to in-form a cell or when we
observe how this young fellow eats pears. Such an observation concerns,
as Koichiro remarks, what is going on within the objective framework of
a "space-time continuum". It is a view from nowhere. There is a leap if
we switch to the internal perspective, the view from "now-here". Of
course
neither the young fellow nor the cell have a "preconception of time as
a criterion of what present tense is all about". As far as we are using
an objective methodology we neither understand the internal perspective
nor can we understand how far the internal perspective of our young
fellow
is different from the one of a cell. Of course, when we take the
internal
or hermeneutic perspective in order to see these differences
from
the inner perspective we are indeed also taking a distance from life
itself.
This tension between life and our explicit explanations or
interpretations,
is inherent to both methodologies. What I am developing right now is a
second order hermeneutics.
What
happens if we, as Koichiro does, interpret this process of our young
fellow
in an effort to reconstruct what is going on during the present
progressive
tense i.e. within the framework of a specific situation? Answer: We see
an implicit process in which something is being grasped AS different
from
something else -- pear instead of apple -- and we see that there is a
choice
between several possibilities. This is a very accurate example of
Martin
Heidegger's (1889-1976) existential hermeneutics, who follows the paths
opened by Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911). The young fellow has a key
hermeneutic
or practical capability, namely the one of being able to choose between
several possibilities without an explicit linguistic reflection about
what
she is de facto doing. This is exactly the structure described
by
Heidegger in his seminal work "Being and Time" (Heidegger 1987). He
stresses
that before we start with a theoretical and objective interpretation of
human knowledge, human existence is characterised by the fact of being
already practically concerned with specific situations within a horizon
of choices. Heidegger argues in favour of a pragmatic turn in
epistemology
and against cognitivism. Our choices rest upon a pragmatic
pre-understanding
of our existential needs such as the need of eating and the choice of
eating
something more pleasant than apple.
Understanding
means originally this very fact of being able to answer to
possibilities
or, as we could also say, to messages. In other words, the capability
of being addressed by something gives us the opportunity to
produce
and not just to reproduce life creating a specific network -- Heidegger
calls this network "world" --, according to our needs (Jung 2002). Our
young fellow is not just eating a piece of pear but has made her
choices
considering pear much better than apple. She is in the process of
pragmatic
understanding i.e. not in the position of a neutral observer but in the
condition of constructing her life. Of course, she will be (later on)
able
of an explicit (linguistic) interpretation of such a pragmatic
understanding,
as we are doing it right now. Heidegger postulates the primacy of
hermeneutic
or pragmatic understanding over theoretical interpretation. Our young
fellow
does not need words, as Koichiro remarks, in order to understand. But
why
does such explicit interpretation arise at all? Answer: Because we many
times deal with situations of breakdown in which our expectations are
not
fulfilled or something goes wrong. In our case: our young fellow got
angry
as she saw no pear -- or even apple. This is a strong feeling that
gives
rise to utterances and (later on) questions about why this is the case.
In other words, there is a change-over from the know-how
into
the know-that perspective:
(1)
situation -> pre-understanding (need) -> choice ->
->
situation ->...
->...
Or, in
a more general way and modifying the stimulus/response scheme:
(2)
message -> release mechanism -> response ->
->
message -> ...
->...
into:
(3)
know-how -> breakdown -> interpretation -> know-that ->
->
know-how -> ...
->...
When needs
and release mechanisms are more or less fixed as in the case of
non-human
organisms -- with a great variety of possibilities concerning this
'more
or less' -- we deal with different kinds of responses to messages on
the
basis of, for instance, the genetic code aiming at the literal
construction
of form or at the in-formation of an organism. Weizsäcker
calls
this process of form generation "objectivised semantics"
(Weizsäcker
1974).
There
is another difference between the pre-spoken experience of this young
fellow
and the one of a cell as she can refer to what is not there. In order
to
do this she must have an implicit pre-understanding of time that allows
her to make a pre-verbal difference between what she sees and what she
wants and what she does not see. In other words, our young fellow must
be able to make a difference not just between beings but also between
being
and not being. We, as hermeneutic observers, may be able to understand
not only the information processes as selective ones but also to make
explicit
the basic difference allowing our young fellow to refer to what is not
there and to analyse the implicit ontology. We may consider that
for our young fellow the difference between things that can be eaten
and
things that cannot is also a very basic one. We may infer that what
cannot
be eaten is of less importance and has therefore a less degree of
being.
In a more fundamental sense it seems as if the meaning of 'to be' is
being
grasped as the difference between 'to be there' and 'not to be there'.
But in some way 'not to be there' is for our young fellow also a way of
being, otherwise she would not be able to relate to things that have
only
the possibility of being there.
With
such pre-understanding she is probably not far from Aristotelian
ontology!
What we do, when we try to interpret hermeneutically this pre-verbal
situation
is thus not just an objective description of dynamics in time but an
interpretation
of what we suppose to be the case within a dynamics of time which is
indeed
also our own. To take such an explicit interpretative position means
thus
becoming involved in the process itself. Implicit and explicit
interpretations,
to choose between several meaningful messages and to be able to reflect
on this process, is the very essence of our own being. We may even
start
thinking about being itself as a message and on the different
possibilities
to interpret it. We then become philosophers!
Koichiro
is perfectly right when he points that in a pre-verbal situation the
global
context of the present tense, i.e., the viewpoint from 'nowhere' is
irrelevant
and that there is no bridge -- just a leap -- between dynamics in time
and dynamics of time. Also the hermeneutic path of interpretation is
not
a bridge in the sense that we may be able to switch into another
subjectivity.
This would presuppose not only a kind of magic identification but would
lead into another paradox. In order to understand this fusion we should
be able to interpret it once again, creating another fusion and so
forth.
We may conclude that this tension is specific, as far as we know, to
human
life and human knowledge. But we may say that understanding creates
links
between networks of interpretation.
Heidegger's
formula "being-in-the-world" means to be pragmatically embedded in a
network
of relations and being able to answer to the messages things offer to
us
within specific situations and according to our specific needs.
Heidegger
calls this way of being "world forming" ("weltbildend") in contrast to
the world of non-human living beings as "world-poor" ("weltarm"), and
to
non-living beings as "worldless" ("weltlos") (Heidegger 1983, Capurro
2002).
This means that we can only make hermeneutic interpretations ex
negativo
about, say, the present progressive tense situation of a cell. But, on
the other hand, "world-poor" does not mean, as Heidegger remarks,
"that
life ("Leben") with regard to human existence ("Dasein") is of poorer
quality
or a lower level. Rather is life a field with an own richness of
openness
that probably the human world does not know about." (Heidegger 1983,
371-372)
Heidegger
describes this peculiar openness of animal life as a drive ("Trieb") to
lose its inhibition remaining basically in a dazed state
("Benommenheit").
In other words, animals and, more generally, organisms are primarily
characterised
neither by a multiplicity of parts or organs (Greek organon =
instrument)
nor of isolated drives, but by the unity of a "ring-like" structure.
"World-poor"
means that organisms do have an openness or a horizon of choices
but that this openness is not of the kind of human world-openness. Poor
means this 'not having' a world on the basis of having their own kind
of
dazed ring-like openness. On this premises we can say that the meaning
of a message for a living organism and, consequently, for human beings,
is basically dependent of the range of choices as well as on the
release
mechanisms.
The
biologist Jerry Chandler remarks:
"The
process of organic communication in natural systems admits multiple
dynamics
to form (biological plasticity or adaptability or flexibility). One
type
of dynamic can be called "error" if one has created a norm that admits
a variance from that norm. Thus, organic communication can admit error
in the process of generating a message, in the process of
transmitting
the message or in the process of responding to the message. (...)
The natural history of living systems created an efficient form of
message
transmission. The generating function is one set of organic components.
The transmitted message is another organic component. The response
generating
function is still another set of organic components. All of these
functional
components collaborate (work together in a thermodynamic sense). The
system
functions locally. This internal collaboration negates the need for a
separate
system to generate errors. (From a cynical perspective, one could say
modern
management methods are foreign to biological design)." (Jerry LR
Chandler,
FIS 2002, contribution from 6.07.02)
Life proceeds
symptomatically on an in-formational and on an angeletical
basis.
It transforms given forms following rules or by making a difference
through
abduction. A cell constructs itself through angeletic processes that
may
make possible for an information or, sit venia verbo, for a form-as-message
to inform it in both original senses of the word, namely the
ontological
(moulding matter) and the epistemological (moulding of the mind) ones.
In other words, message phenomena at the biological level are processes
of form production (Andrade 2002).
Conclusion
These
few remarks on the concept of message in the social and natural
sciences
make us aware about the possible road ahead towards an
interdisciplinary
message theory that takes seriously the hierarchical differences and
similarities
of communication at different levels. The basic questions of such a
theory
are not new, at least since the rise of cybernetics and system theory.
But the main stream discussions so far have dealt mainly with the
concept
of information and they were often biased by the computer analogy and
the
digital paradigm (Capurro 2003). If we take the concept of message as a
second-order category we may be able to avoid reductionism and to look
for the complexity of the message phenomenon.
The
key question is to know, why, when and how some form-as-messages are
accepted
or denied by a receiver and how the receiver mutates into a sender. The
metaphor of the hermeneutic circle is indeed, as Wolfgang
Stegmüller
with regard to the development of scientific theories in the sciences
and
the humanities once remarked, an expression that embraces "a whole
conceptual
family of problems" (Stegmüller 1979, 82). If all our observations
are theory-laden this is not less the case with regard to all our
actions,
and not only of our actions. This hermeneutic insight seems to be also
the core question when we try to understand the hierarchies of
communication
at the human and the non-human level from an endo-perspective
(Diebner
2003).
The postal
paradigm conveyed by a message theory or
angeletics should
not be misunderstood as an anthropomorphic theory of living beings or
even
of human beings as merely signal systems. It is just a marker for a
network
of questions and theories whose family resemblance can help us to
become
more acquainted of the fact that the phenomenon of communication
implies
at least a sender, a receiver, a medium and -- a message. If "the
medium
is the message" (McLuhan), what is a message?
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Thomas
J. Froehlich
(Kent State University, USA) and Hans H. Diebner (ZKM) for critical
reading
of this paper.
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Last
update: February 18, 2012
