Shovel Testing and Pragmatism

I have been thinking about pragmatism as a philosophy for archaeology. Let’s work through an example of how a pragmatist views their work. We will focus on a common practice in America, shovel testing

Hypothetically, we have a project to do. You and I own an archaeological consulting firm working in the southeastern United States and are awarded a contract by the US Army Corps of Engineers. We are tasked to do a “cultural resource inventory” of a forested 100-acre parcel of Army land that is planned for new developments. Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) applies, as does the whole process of quality review that goes with it. Our objective as consultants is to conduct archaeological and historical research on and about the property, and produce a synthesizing report, all of which meets the minimum requirements that the Corps and the state historic preservation office (SHPO), the “regulator”, have previously established for conducting such studies.

The Corp’s goal is to get through the compliance process as efficiently as possible and, under the NHPA, they are required to make a “good faith effort” at identifying “historic properties” (a technical term referring to important, “significant”, archaeological and/or historical resources) that may be affected by the proposed land development. The SHPO’s role is to review the report for conformity with their research protocols, review the development proposal, assess the consultation letter the Corps provides, and then to agree (concur) or disagree with whatever claim the Corps makes about the project’s affects to historic properties. Archaeological work is thus part of a much larger effort at complying with the NHPA.

We assign the project to Jane, an experienced archaeologist, giving her the role of principal investigator. She is knowledgeable about the archaeology and history of the region surrounding the project area, and of the research protocols of SHPO, and of the section 106 process. She has twenty years of work experience and five as being a project manager, leading numerous projects. She has available to her the necessary budget, time and staff to get the work done, including other archaeologists, archaeological technicians, laboratory (lab) staff, a GIS technician, a historian and a architectural historian. She implements the project as a multi-pronged research program. The historical background research is delegated to a historian and is done to ascertain prior land use (who owned the land previously, who lived there and where, and what was the land used for, and if important events, such as battles, occurred there. Local archives, Army records, local histories, land records, historical maps, aerial photographs will be reviewed; prior tenants or landowners may be interviewed. That research could take six weeks. She assigns a separate task to the architectural historian to visit the project area and record four old military buildings; additionally, that person assesses if the project area can be conceived of as a possible cultural landscape, especially, a military one. Meanwhile, two archaeological technicians visit the parcel and do a quick walk over to identify any obvious sites that may there and to discern areas that can be excluded from the more intensive site discovery process known as shovel testing.

Jane had been informed by the Corps archaeologist, Consuelo, that two archaeological sites have been previously recorded within the project area: a “lithic” scatter of stone debris, flakes and other sharp stones, and ground stones, all of unknown age but presumed to be prehistoric; and, a mid nineteenth century farmstead, the main feature of which is a stone foundation. She receives the site forms. From the visual inspection and review of topographic maps, Jane decides that 75 acres are level and dry enough for the shovel-testing program; the other 25 acres are too steep or are wetlands, so they will be investigated through a systematic walk over.

Shovel testing is a technique to discover new sites and to determine the boundaries of known sites. It is typically done when surface vegetation is too thick such that the surface of ground soils is not visible. It is a simple process. The shovel test pit (STP) is similar to a post hole. You dig a round hole, maybe 30 centimeters in diameter, to a depth of 40 or 50 centimeters (deeper if necessary). The removed soil is pushed through a screen, artifacts are collected, and soil types and soil changes are documented. The equipment used includes simple shovels, mason trowels and box screens (a shallow wooden frame with, usually, ¼-inch wire mesh as a bottom). The soil is described in terms of loam, silt, sand, or clay; its color is matched to a Munsell Color chart. GPS coordinates are taken to document the STP location, usually with a device that is accurate to one meter. Photographs of the STP and its soil profile (how it looks from a side view), may be taken. The profile description and all the other information are recorded on standardized field forms (in paper form or digitally). The STP is back-filled to a level grade such that it is not a safety problem for humans or other animals that could walk over the location. Any artifacts found are put in a labeled bag and brought back to the lab for cleaning and cataloging; (it is also possible to be required by contract to do “field identification” and rebury the artifacts in the STP when it is back-filled). One or two people typically do these tasks per hole. Of course, one hole does not provide much information. Thus, many STPs will have to be dug across a project area. Conceptually, you impose a grid over the project area composed of numerous rows, “transects”. The rows will be a standard distance from each other, and within each row, the holes will be a standard distance from each other. The distance in between rows and STPs is called the interval. The maximum interval that can be used is often dictated by SHPO protocol. Tighter intervals are at the discretion of the project manager. A shovel-testing program is labor intensive and time consuming.

Working with the GIS technician Jane identifies on maps the 75 acres for shovel testing by outlining transects, and the other 25 acres for systematic pedestrian survey. She expects that a minimum of 1200 STPs will be dug for the basic site discovery process. The two known sites will need to be re-recorded and another 40 STPs will be dug across them in tight intervals. She has allotted five weeks for the fieldwork. With three teams of two people each doing 25 STPs a day, and maybe record one additional site, she hopes the fieldwork completes in 21 workdays. The extra time is buffer for inclement weather and the possibility of additional sites to record. She sends a crew of five technicians and a field director to do the field archeology.

Since her background is in historical archaeology Jane asks you and I for the help of John, another archaeologist, whose background is in regional prehistory. The two of them work together and start building the report with John doing the archaeological research. Jane also is monitoring the progress of the fieldwork, the architectural study, and the historical research. In addition, she is running liaison with Consuelo, who is doing field inspections and needing weekly updates to pass on to the Corps project manager. Then, a week into the fieldwork, the historian informs Jane that he thinks there may be an 18^th century occupation within the project area, in the southeast corner. As luck would have it, the field director had started on the north end, near the lithic scatter, and was working southward. Jane instructed the field director to tighten the STP interval when they got near the southeast corner. Sure enough, they found and recorded a small late 18^th century site, an alleged homestead in the suspected area. The tightening of the STP interval was deemed the “correct decision” as the small site could have “fallen through the cracks,” the intervals. Consuelo was happy about this find and would, months later, write a good evaluation about our consulting firm.

A few weeks later the fieldwork was done. Jane, John, the historian, the architectural historian, and the field director wrote the draft report; and the field director and architectural historian completed the required archaeological site and architectural inventory forms for SHPO. The 19^th and 18^th century sites were recommended as significant and deserving of protection. The lithic scatter was recommended as not significant because no time sensitive tools, “diagnostics”, or features had been recorded. The project report and forms were edited one last time by Jane and delivered to you and me. We reviewed the set and forwarded them to the Corps project manager. The Corps did their review and made a few suggested changes. Jane and john made the changes and we submitted the Final report along with the SHPO forms, original field notes, and bagged and labeled artifacts to the Corps. With the project finished, we invoiced the Corps and received payment. Weeks later, the Corps filed their consultation package with the SHPO in which they determined that the two historic sites were important and will be avoided by the development by being left in “green space”, undeveloped land within the project area. The lithic scatter was deemed not important and a road will be built through it, destroying it. After their review, SHPO concurs.

A year later, and a few other projects behind us, we get a call from the Corps, on a Friday evening. They want to issue us a task order to emergency excavate a Middle Archaic site, five to six thousand years old, and “get it done today”, meaning, as soon as possible. The story is that that during construction of the above project a construction worker, and relic hunter, found several “arrow heads” and other neat stuff not too far from where the lithic scatter had been (it having been scraped away by a dozer). With this find, the construction supervisor stopped work in that area and called the Corps. Consuelo promptly visited the site and had a crisis moment. She recognized the “arrow heads” as being diagnostic of the Middle Archaic and they were likely dart points. She also noticed that at least one fire hearth, and maybe another, had been exposed by the dozer work. In addition, she knew that those features are typically full of important archaeological data. Back in her office, she re-reviewed the shovel-test pit effort and discovered that the STP pattern had just missed the new site by a few meters. A significant site had fallen through the cracks. She hit the panic button and her life would not be easy for several weeks. The Corps contracting officer crammed a Task Order in our hands and we had a crew on site Monday morning with John as principle investigator.

Here we must stop the story. Inadvertent discoveries, as these situations are called, are not fun. They often lead to acrimony and hard feelings.

Indeed, our focus here is on pragmatism as a philosophy of archaeology. Pragmatism focuses our attention on the results and consequences of things and events. Therefore, let’s think about Jane and her response to the situation. We know she is competent and practical but we know nothing else about her. She could be a direct and clear-sighted scientist, she could be a social activist and a humanist with ambivalent feelings about science, or she could be a pragmatist. Knowing her philosophy helps to speculate about her response to the above crisis.

Jane is a scientist: Jane does not take the incident personally but she is aggressive at defending the professionalism of her work. Defending the command and control structure of the system, and her status as a subject matter expert, she takes ownership of the project because she was project lead. The project was done very well. She made an important adjustment during fieldwork. She reminds us that all authorities in the quality review chain (you, me, Corps, SHPO) approved the work. She and our company received accolades for the work. The work was scientific and met the standards set by protocols. Making a “good faith effort” does not mean all sites have to be discovered. Shovel testing is a statistical random sampling method widely used by professionals. It is a scientific method providing probabilistic, not absolute, outcomes. She recommends that SHPO consider changing their interval protocol. She thinks that John is the appropriate person to do the follow on work as the subject falls within his area of expertise.

Jane is a social activist humanist: Jane takes the incident personally. She feels awful that this happened; poor John and Consuelo--they must be suffering. John had to delay a vacation because of it. Everyone did their best; it was a great team effort. She loves the collaborative nature of the work. They all worked within the system and the system failed them. She wished archaeology could provide more clear outcomes; often, what it does provide seems just made up. She thinks real science gives more-better outcomes, and archaeology just comes up short. Additionally, she just wants to help people, especially those that are outside of mainstream society. For her master’s thesis, she got to help “people without history” have their voices heard. She hopes this event does not upset local tribes. Shovel testing is such a terrible technique but what are the alternatives? Imagine using a bull dozer to find sites and the destruction it would do to the environment. She’ll help John all she can if “they” (you and me) need her to.

Jane is a pragmatist: Jane has mixed emotions about the events. She does not take the inadvertent discovery personally but the disruption of the routines and schedules of John and Consuelo is concerning. As she focuses on the here and now, and the project was long ago, she reviews the project files. She concludes everyone on the team did good work. She is also reminded, once again, that success and failure often come bundled together, although the revelation of each might be separated in time. She considers cultural resource inventories to be technical projects that, in themselves, are not science; they are data gathering and descriptive efforts and products that often consume, use the results of, prior descriptive and scientific results. Jane thinks science requires high-level comparisons across several studies. Thus, this study could be compared to several others of similar kind and the new generalizations made could be called scientific results. For example, by comparing numerous projects from within the region, one could calculate the average number of sites present per acres shovel tested for that region. That ratio would be a useful--to archaeologists and planning staffs--scientific fact about the region. Moreover, shovel testing is a mediocre method for site discovery but no economical alternative method exists. Jane does have a personal complaint about not leading the follow on work, which she conveys to you and me. She knows John will do a good job; but given her experience, she believes that she could lead this new research effort with a good team composed of many of the same people, John included, that worked the previous project. What truly irks her is the double standard in American archaeology that allows prehistorians to lead research on any kind of archaeology, including historical archaeology, but “never” (rarely) allows historical archaeologists to lead research outside of historical archaeology. She sees herself as an archaeologist first and the division of pre-history/history is a stupid illusion perpetuated by a fallible profession defending an arcane professional legacy and its internal social status quo.

A pragmatist is a blend of the first two perspectives and the blend is qualitatively different from the others. The first is a scientific attitude steeped in command/control hierarchies and the authority of the professional and the profession. For such people, order in the world is paramount. Moreover, this perspective believes in “testing” no matter what the test is. The second perspective is steeped in compassion for and assessing the well-being of other people. One’s life goals are to help people. These two perspectives are the yin and yang of Western Civilization; they are Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian. Biblically, they are, respectively, Old Testament and New.

A pragmatist who accepts the Western Tradition tries to avoid committing to one side or the other because each is deemed an exhausted dead end by itself, and they will work the two opposing ends into a newly conceptualized middle. The other option for a pragmatist is to reject the Western Tradition and find solace in some other tradition.

Enchanted America, Enchanted Archaeology

Morris Berman is a disenchanted American studies scholar and social critic.  He thinks America has failed and that there is no hope for a turnaround (Berman 2012).  In a recent essay (2013), he starts by discussing older thinkers who worried about how our “rational” world was non-harmonious and disenchanted:

The notion that there was a way of life characteristic of modern (or industrial) societies that was qualitatively different from the way of life found in pre-modern (or folk) societies goes back, at least, to the German sociologist Max Weber [2009].  Modern societies, said Weber, are governed by bureaucracies; the dominant ethos is one of “rationalization,” whereby everything is mechanized, administered according to the dictates of scientific reason. Weber famously compared this situation to that of an “iron cage”: there was no way the citizens of these societies could break free from their constraints.  Pre-modern societies, on the other hand, were permeated by animism, by a belief in magic and spirits, and governance came not through bureaucracy but through the charisma of gifted leaders. The decline of magic that accompanied the transition to modernity Weber called die Entzauberung der Welt–the disenchantment of the world.

He goes on to mention other thinkers who have made similar distinctions, such as the Gemeinschaft [community based on good social relations] and Gesellschaft [society based on contracts] cultures of Ferdinand Tönnies (2002), the Genuine [contented, satisfied] versus Spurious [frustrated, dysfunctional] cultures of Edward Sapir (1924), and the moral versus technical order of Robert Redfield (1963).  These are all simple, old fashioned, distinctions about modern culture versus “pre-modern” with the emphasis on the non-modern as being a more humane way of life.  It is them looking over the fence and seeing greener pastures.

Of course, he could have added Nietzsche (1872), Ruth Benedict (1934) and E. T. Hall (1976), who also divided cultures into two types, the Apollonian-Low context cultures versus the Dionysian-High context ones. While there is no doubt that Hall’s Low Context Culture resembles a spurious technically ordered society it is hard to say that Dionysian cultures are always moral orders full of community minded folks.  After all, Dionysians can be genuinely nasty.  I, of course, prefer this distinction and emphasize that it does not force a moral valuation of one over the other.  They are good ways to describe cultures without judging them.

To be disenchanted, one must believe the basic premise of modern versus pre-modern, and then draw a moral distinction. One supposedly seems better than the other based on some yardstick of warm, sweet and cuddly versus cold and impersonal.  Certainly, Weber’s work has been debated greatly.  Does rationalism and technological change really disenchant?  Some folks don’t think so (Jenkins 2000; Landy and Saler 2009) and I don’t think so.  When people become enchanted with science and rationality, the magic of it all isn’t called magic but something else, such as “it’s an elegant theory” or “it’s a no-brainer.” 

However, let us suppose that Berman is correct and play along with him.  Is America disenchanted based on the criteria outlined above?  Let’s look at animism, belief in magic and spirits, and governance via the charisma of gifted leaders.  First, we do have a bureaucracy without charismatic leaders.  In my adult lifetime, back to Reagan, I can’t think of a single person in the political realm who inspired me. Martin Luther King was inspiring but he wasn’t a political leader. So chalk one up for being disenchanted with our leaders.

Does American culture have animism, magic and spirits?  They dominate our popular culture.  In the last year, every commercial for Jaguar cars has been animistic; this month, the tag line for the newest commercial is, the car is “Alive as you are.”  Our entertainment is full of wizards (Harry Potter) and ghost hunting (Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Haunted Collector).  Moreover, if ghosts don’t get your attention then vampires, werewolves, zombies, and angels are there to fill the void.  The basketball player called “Magic” Johnson didn’t get his name because he plays like a machine but because his movements are “magic.”  By any standard, American popular culture is as enchanting as any recent Brazilian carnival.

Some critics might say that popular culture doesn’t reveal the “real” culture.  This is foolishness, typically coming from older modernists who still glorify intellectualism and “high” culture.  Pop culture is our folklore, our mythology, our soul.

To make this point a little deeper, let’s look at a subset of American culture, the profession of American archaeology.  Do archaeologists believe in ghosts and spirits?  Some of them do.  Most of them do not have cold-blooded clinical mentalities.  Archaeologists go into strange unusual places and they tend to find ones that were once sacred.  They are human, all too human, and many of them are susceptible to their emotions, their imagination, and the heebie-jeebies.  Many will tell stories of places that spooked them so much they had to leave; others talk of having nightmares while excavating graves. Many a lab technician has heard things go bump in the night and day, especially when human remains are on tables or in boxes nearby.  Spookiness and archaeology go together.

Does archaeology have animism? Very much so, it’s everywhere.  Whenever archaeologists discuss artifact assemblages you will likely hear phrases such as “these are objects of change” or “vectors of change” or “this artifact symbolizes.”  Archaeologists reify and animate objects with regularity because it’s the way Americans communicate.  Animistic statements are complex metaphors that tie us to our natural world.  Objects and technology are part of our natural environment.  Tools, all material culture, are extensions of us.  There is no difference between a cyborg and a robot.  Why shouldn’t we talk about them and interact with them as if they were alive? Likewise, we talk about abstractions as if they were alive:  statistics “speak for themselves,” cultures "move" from one place to another, and America is said to “fail”.  How can America “fail”; is it alive with agency?  Just as in “pre-modern” cultures, it is customary for Americans to communicate in this way. 

For archaeologists artifacts have magical powers.  Not every artifact or site does, but some do.  If you dig a hundred shovel tests and find only one arrowhead then that moment of discovery may be magical, special. Most archaeologists are connected to the tools of the trade.  Many have their special trowel that symbolizes their professionalism, like a red badge of courage.  Field vehicles are old friends, held onto for many years.  Just as the cable show Warehouse 13 demonstrates, some artifacts are imbued with meaning and power such that they can be transformative.  Find the right type of site or artifact and it can change your life, your career, no different from winning a large lottery.  Ideas are also magical.  Coming up with a new and compelling interpretation or explanation can be career enhancing.

Moreover, many archaeological ideas are coyote tales, full of trickery and suspension of disbelief.  Given a couple hundred artifacts and a few radiocarbon dates, an archaeologist can reconstruct the life way of a culture.  Do you believe it?  Archaeologists have also held many debates over the “realness” of their artifact typologies.  It doesn’t matter that sand tempered cord marked pottery from Virginia likely resembles sand tempered cord marked pottery from Nebraska; they have to be different based on the archaeological mentality.  Many a thesis or dissertation has been written based on the analysis of a few ceramic shards or a shoebox of “projectile points” (many of which were likely knives or scrappers).  Nevertheless, who cares?  A compelling statement is what matters.  Archaeologists are sometimes magicians.

Currently, there are a few charismatic characters in archaeology.  However, none of them is leading the profession.  In the recent past, there were charismatic leaders, especially in the 1960s and 1970s.  In those years, America was transforming from an Apollonian culture steeped in rationalism into a Dionysian one based on intuition.  This transformation was the Fourth Awakening (McLoughlin, 1978) that was a revitalization movement (Wallace 1956).  It was a frenetic era with social unrest and an unpopular war. These years are marked in archaeology as the New Archaeology era.  During this time, Louis Binford introduced a narrow form of positivism into the profession, the idea caught fire in popularity with minimal disbelievers, and the profession rode the wave of “rational” ecstasy for twenty years, until it burned out.  It also coincided with the broader love fest for science that was underway in the social sciences at that time, such as the New Ethnography, Enthnoscience, the New History, the New Geography, and monetarism in economics.

 The New Archaeology had all the traits of an old-fashioned religious revival movement (McLoughlin, 1978).  Led by a charismatic leader, it used something old and abandoned, positivism, to make corrective changes within the profession, to make it more scientific.  In the face of rising intuitive processes and complex metaphors it was a retro, conservative, effort to continue rationalism that ultimately failed, as all revivals do, because it didn’t instill long term change.  When the New Archaeology flame burned out scientism crashed in American archaeology, as it did in all of American culture in the late 1980s and 1990s.

The irony is that the New Archaeology was a Dionysian process, a slight of the hand, or the brain, if you will.  It is well known that left hemisphere processes (McGilchrist 2009) direct Apollonian cultures; the control, order, hierarchy, and temporal aspects of life are emphasized over their opposites.  Rationalism is a left hemisphere complex metaphor.  But, what happens when the right hemisphere plays with it? You get eye dazzlers.  

Apollonian artifacts usually have geometric designs and they are simple and elegant—think of the popular late modernist corporate buildings from 1970s with all the rectangular glass. Next, take all those rectangles and compound them so much that the positive and negative fields are blurred.  You get a design that shimmers as patterns go back and forth.  It becomes an eye dazzler.  The same thing happens with our concepts and ideas. Take conceptual linearity too far and you get conceptual bedazzlement.  The New Archaeology, with its hypothetical deductive argumentation, was a coyote tale of bedazzlement, enchanted by its supposed rationalism.

Today, American archaeology is fully Dionysian.  There are a few elder modernists holding on to their left brained science but they live at the margins.  Right-brained science and non-science are in control; Post Modernism and Romanticism are the buzzwords of the day.  Other warm and fuzzy concepts are widely used such as collaboration and “community archaeology.”  The preference is Gemeinschaft as a way of approaching archaeology, a desire for a moral order that is genuine and democratic, leaving everyone satisfied and fulfilled. It is enchanted archaeology. 

There are problems within archaeology.  While many likely believe that historic preservation compliance is the redeeming feature of the profession, because it drives the majority of work, it actually is a vampire sucking the soul from the profession by reducing the total number of excavations done every year.  Digging is the true life-blood of the profession.  It is what the majority of the public wants from us; not site preservation. Archaeologists can break free of this cage if they choose.  But since they have not done so, the need is not dire enough for it to happen.

Maybe the troubles of America that Berman documents so well in his books could compel archaeologists to switch gears and go another direction.  I’m all in favor of it.  However, an “iron cage of rationality” is not one of those troubles.  America is fully Dionysian and enchanted; its troubles stem from the wild impulses emanating from our right hemispheres.  This will continue until the next Awakening, some forty years hence.  Meanwhile, resolving immediate problems will have to be done by tickling the right hemisphere, and the solutions will be based in reciprocity and reflexivity, not cause and effect.

There is no reason to be disenchanted when life is such a wonderful carnival.

References

Benedict, Ruth

1934  Patterns of Culture. Houghton Mifflin, New York.

Berman, Morris

2012 Why America Failed:  The Roots of Imperial Decline.  John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ

2013  The Moral Order:  A Dying Civilization.  CounterPunch, February 8, 2013; (http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/08/the-moral-order/, accessed February 22, 2013)

Hall, Edward T.

1976  Beyond Culture.  Doubleday, New York, NY.

Jenkins, Richard

2000  Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-Enchantment: Max Weber at the Millennium.  Max Weber Studies 1: 11-32.

McGilchrist, Iain

2009  The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.  Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

McLoughlin, William G.

1978  Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Nietzsche, Friedrich,

1967 [1872]  The Birth of Tragedy, in the Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated and edited by Walter Kaufman, pp. 1-144.  The Modern Library, New York.

Landy, Joshua and Michael Saler, eds.

2009  The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age.  Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.

Redfield, Robert

1963[1953]  The Primitive World and Its Transformation.  Cornell University Press.

Sapir, Edward

1924  Culture, Genuine and Spurious. The American Journal of Sociology 29 (4): 401–429.

Ferdinand Tönnies, Ferdinand,

2002[1887]  Community and Society. Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. Dover Publications, Mineola, NY.

Wallace, Anthony

 1956  Revitalization Movements. American Anthropologist 58: 264-281.

Weber, Max

2009[1904]  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Norton Critical Editions.

Reflexivity, Reciprocity & Causality

One of the big differences between Apollonian and Dionysian intellectual patterns is the emphasis each gives to certain types of relationships between variables.

Apollonians, due to their need for simplicity and linear constructs, focus on causality, the time relationship that states “A causes B”.  In the twentieth century Modernists considered cause and effect to be the most important thing in the world.  All other types of relations were ignored as much as possible.  In Modernist science, studying anything other than cause and effect relations was taboo.

The phrase “correlation is not causation” was widely used after 1960 as the early new Romanticism began creeping into various research agendas.   The Romantics began by pointing out relationships that were not causative (i.e. reciprocal and/or reflexive) but were certainly interesting enough to be studied.  The Modernist backlash against such a radical view was to say “correlation is not causation” and thus attempting to shut down expanding intellectual thought.  The certainty that A causes B was sacred to most Modernists.

Dionysian new Romantics understand causality but it just isn’t interesting.  Thus, Romantic (aka Post Modernist) science emphasizes reflexive and reciprocal relations, or a combination of all three.  Dionysian thought is always more holistic than Apollonian.

Reciprocity is the synchronic relation that A and B are related, and that, diachronically, A and B change each other.   A married couple can grow closer together, or apart.  The relationship can be between equals, between dominant and subservient, between primary and secondary, etc.   Also, over time, these patterns can change.   If the husband kills the wife then to an Apollonian that event is a simple case of cause and effect.  One can further ask what was the motive, and maybe some other recent event is viewed as a triggering event (she cheated on him).  The Dionysian wants to know the whole marital history because the killing event is viewed as the conclusion of long reflexive and reciprocal processes.  And, the story is not over for many more years as the husband and both extended families resolve the emotions of the event.  The recent cable series on the Hatfield and McCoy feud showed this very well.  It is always important to tell the audience what happened to the people later in life.

Reflexive thought is self aware and sometimes critical.  A evaluates A, and change may occur due to the evaluation (if they can do it then I/we can do it).  Additionally, reflexive knowledge usually needs to be aggregated to come up with bigger answers.  You all know the old story about ten blindfolded people touching and describing a portion of an elephant.  Each observation is different but the object of study is the same for each.  This tells us that by aggregating unique observations we can get a more complete story.  It also points out that reflexivity, A evaluates A, is a social cultural matrix and not some autonomous relation in a vacuum.

Reflexivity is the glue that keeps causality and reciprocity together.   All science and history should create research projects that address these three perspectives.  Causality is the least important of the three.  

Context as Post Modernism

One difference between Apollonian and Dionysian viewpoints is the way each focuses on a pair of concepts or metaphors.  For example, the time/space pair is always linked together.  Objects moving in space create Time.

 

Apollonian ethoses emphasize time as bounded segments that are recursive but also separate.  Seconds, minutes, hours, and days are each given a separate reality.  They can be counted.  The emphasis is on the linear progression, the “Arrow of Time” was a Modernist phrase.  Space is viewed in the same way; chop it up into manageable little pieces.

Dionysian ethoses view time in non-linear ways.  Time can be still: timelessness, eternity, the past is the present and future, etc.  The cycles of nature are often emphasized: days, months, winter, spring, summer, fall, and years.  Space is viewed as places where strong emotions have played out or continue to do so.

For the Dionysian space is special.  Moreover, just as social relations influence the Dionysian more so than the Apollonian, spatial relations also affect Dionysians more strongly.   In any place, the people, objects, animals, plants, the wind, the memories and stories associated with it, all combine to into a Context that can influence outcomes, feelings, decisions, or one’s contentment. 

Americans have been talking about context for a many years now but it was not something that Old Modernists cared to discuss.   In their abstract worldview, context was not relevant.

Yes, American has become a high context culture.

American scientists have been studying context much more seriously lately.  In archeology, for example, the study of context has become its own trend line, often under the name reflexive archaeology.

In psychology, a new topic is called Ambient Belonging.  The main thesis is

1. Environment can determine who enters a group.
2. People infer stereotypes of a group upon exposure to that group's environment
3. (a) The inference of group stereotypes incompatible with one's identity leads to avoidance of that group, and (b) this process is mediated by feelings of ambient belonging.
4. A lack of ambient belonging predicts lack of interest in a domain and explains why some populations express less interest in a domain than do others. From here.

I like this concept because it points us back to a central issue for the Dionysian—the purpose of life is to enjoy it.  And, this means one constantly feels their way through each situation.  If the situation changes, so too can feelings.  And, we can avoid the tainted sterotypes about feng shui and the harmony of qi. Here is Sapna Cheryan summarizing her study.  At 6 min in she starts the change environment to change stereotypes message.

http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/sapna-cheryan-on-stereotypes-as-gatekeepers/

Modernists would ignore such claptrap because feelings were irrelevant.

Brain Hemisphere Lateralization and Culture

A reader asked if I would comment on Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, here.  It is an important book and one that supports a main argument of this blog; a summary of it with many links is here.  McGilchrist is a British practicing psychiatrist who had previously been a Reader in European literature; his interest in mind-body questions motivated him to change careers.

The Master is just that--a magnum opus of research and thought from an Old Master.  It is a broad based discussion of neuroscience & medicine, philosophy, theology, and literary criticism.  The book’s main thesis is that the human brain has two hemispheres that attend to the world in different ways, and that these different outlooks affect our culture.  When the left hemisphere is leading our thoughts then we have a world focused on order, authority and certainty.  When the right hemisphere is leading, then our culture is more empathetic and focused on wholeness.  Part One of the book describes in detail the outlook of each hemisphere.  Part Two is a grand survey of Western culture wherein he describes various eras as manifestations of either left or right hemisphere dominance.  He acknowledges that Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian archetypical cultures are left and right hemisphere cultures, respectively (pgs. 199 & 232).

A second thesis is that he believes that Western culture has become far too obsessed with left hemisphere perspectives, that we are in danger of succumbing to tyrannical forces, and that we need to get back to right hemisphere ways of viewing the world.

Obviously, I agree with the first thesis (the hemispheres do affect patterns of culture) and disagree with the second (because we have already returned to a right hemisphere based culture).

I’m not going to summarize Part One.  You can read for yourself his main descriptions of the hemispheres in these follow up essays:  

Reciprocal organization of the cerebral hemispheres, 2010

Paying attention to the bipartite brain, 2011
and see this 11 min video

which is a shorter version of this one

His descriptions do take us away from many of the simplistic stereotypes that are popular in non-academic medias.  The way that the two hemispheres attend to the world is truly interesting and has made me reconsider how I describe Apollonian and Dionysian cultures.  His descriptions place him fully within what I call the embodied mind movement within the neurosciences. 

Part Two starts with two chapters that actually establish an innovative theory of the evolution of culture.   Human communication is based in imitation, and, in ancient times, changes in the orientation of writing and reading suggest hemisphere dominance changes (he discusses the development of left to right, right to left, and vertical or horizontal patterns of writing).  Also, he suggests that the details of old paintings and rock art allow for the inference of hemisphere development. The real gist of his thesis comes next with the discussion of the following eras:  Renaissance (right hemisphere), Reformation (left hemisphere), Enlightenment (left hemisphere), Romanticism (right hemisphere), and Modernism/Post Modernism (left hemisphere).  In all cases but one he covers in detail main thinkers of each period; his discussion of Post Modernism is narrow and ill considered.  He admits his lumping is crude.  (I have a hard time thinking that blocks of time more than 100 years are classed as one side or the other unless we are taking a fractal perspective with, for example, an Apollonian micro cycle inside a larger Dionysian macro cycle).  My comments follow.

1.  McGilchrist is clearly a biconceptualist in the way that Lakoff uses that term.  Part One of the book is a wonderful example of Post Modern science.  I am all about embodied mind arguments.  Other than the theory of imitation, Part Two is an old-fashioned Modernist highbrow expose about high culture. Part One is a right hemisphere discussion of neuroscience; Part Two is a left hemisphere discussion of intellectual history.  In addition, his lack of understanding of Post Modernism is disappointing given that he doesn’t recognize it as a new type of Romanticism, as if he stopped his study of Western culture circa 1970.

2.  I used the term “Ill considered” above for a reason.  McGilchrist is a psychiatrist who has been around mentally ill people too long.  Like much of his profession, he tends to see much of society through the lens of his work.  When you describe and classify individuals in technical terms such as ill, sick, disorder, psychotic, etc. it becomes easy to extend the metaphor onto society.  Throughout the book, he alludes to left hemisphere culture in terms suggesting schizophrenia.  Modernists would be proud (or appalled) since they obsessed over mental illness--and now they are subtly classed as such.

3.  The “mechanistic” focus of the left hemisphere bothers McGilchrist as if we are all going to turn into ‘bots led by a tyrannical order.  Again, the neuroscientists are stuck on their mind-as-machine metaphor.  No one else is.  I, for one, prefer to think that my thoughts flow through my body, like blood.  Post Modern popular culture provides wonderful examples of how people resist machine metaphors (all the Terminator movies), or allow for human-machine integration (Cyborgs), or machines that are alive and make good romantic companions (Blade Runner).  Why do people treat machines as being alive? Is one important question in artificial intelligence research.  It’s a right hemisphere phenomenon. (Answer: They used to call it animism).

4.  McGilchrist does not provide a balanced view of the two hemispheres in the sense that he discusses the vices and virtues of the left but only the virtues of the right.  To him, normal balanced culture is right hemisphere culture.  Left hemisphere cultures tend to be out of balance.  However, don’t right hemisphere cultures have their vices as well? (of course they do, see 6 below)

5.  McGilchrist is apparently unaware of the work of Anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Edward T Hall.  Benedict used the Apollonian/Dionysian contrast to describe cultures in her 1934 book Patterns of Culture; it was a mainstay of the profession for two decades.  Hall recreated the same contrast in his 1976 book Beyond Culture but referred to it as Low Context Culture/High Context Culture (for some reason, he did not allude to Benedict’s work).  These discussions would have greatly helped McGilchrist.

6.  McGilchrist seems to embrace the Apollonian/Dionysian contrast with half a heart.   He doesn’t really adopt the fullness of either god.  He seems to think that Apollonian cultures will tend toward excessive order just as do mentally ill people when their right hemisphere is damaged or inhibited.  I for one find it hard to describe cultures in such terms but will play along here.

Most discussions of Apollonian culture and behavior focus on the order aspect.  We should also remember the moderation aspect.  All things in moderation was an Enlightenment saying.  Healthy normal Apollonians resist excessive behavior because it is disorderly.  During the modernist era, scientists resisted taking an argument to its logical conclusion because they knew it was silly to do so.  Even avant-garde modernist artists were chided if they went too far.  Excessive behavior was "crazy" and no one wanted that label.

“Excessive” behavior and ideas are characteristic of Dionysian cultures, consistent with the archetype of Dionysus.  Today, in our new Romanticism, we have values of excess such as shop ‘till you drop, no rules, no boundaries, just do it, pushing the envelope, unthink, and think outside the box.  These are normal healthy traits of a Dionysian culture.

The big difference between the two types is in their understanding and acceptance of entropy, their sense of openness.  Both Apollonian and Dionysian cultures create normal healthy living situations; the Awakenings that tie them together are a little higher in entropy but can still be non-violent, healthy, and intellectually creative.  The left side defines “Excessiveness” of course; the right side may think that such behaviors and ideas are within the normal range of acceptability.

McGilchrist fears the Orwellian specter and he is correct to do so.  Totalitarian cultures are sick and abnormal in that they destroy themselves; they can morph, evolve, from either Apollonian or Dionysian bases.  They also don’t last long in terms of culture history (not saying I want to live under one even short term).  I don’t think America is headed down that road.

Even though we, Americans, are in seasonal secular crisis as a culture, we are not there yet folks.  It is theoretically possible but I’m not thinking we get that far.  Old Modernists worry that we have gone too far with our excesses; and the Dionysian says yes there have been excesses but not too much; wait awhile and the wave will recede.  Our media tells us that the lunatics are running the asylum; that Wall Street psychotics and sociopaths are in control of the White House and congress.   There is no doubt that such people exist; I am not convinced that they, like Hitler, have taken control.  They have the illusion of being in control.

I actually think most of those greedy bastards are nervous that they will be lynched.  America has 300 million guns in private hands and a tradition of Don’t Tread On Me.  The Germans didn’t have that.  Also, Americans have literally hung bankers on Wall Street before (in 1876).  It’s been a while but it can happen again.  The oligarchy that exists today is minor compared to the one of the late 19^th century led by the old Robber Barons.  The confusion that exists today is the recent recognition of the fact that it has all returned, and quickly.  Knowing that it exists is the first step in correcting it.  Remember, the secular crisis replaces a status quo (here & here).

I think that McGilchrist, like many people, is bedazzled by some of the subtleties of postmodernism, especially the modernist stuff that has been recast in postmodern ways.  For example, under Modernism, “rational man”, as preached by economists, used to be a moderate fellow who maximized smallish profits and tried to live within his means.  Under the postmodern Monetarist and New Keynesian ideologies people supposedly are hyper rationalists pursuing with leverage all or nothing financial gains without a care for the disruption to their families or society.  This is all smoke and mirrors to allow the greedy to take from the sheeple all they want.  Post Modern “rational man” is an intellectual eye dazzler, a phony, used by con artists to steal from others. (You know the saying:  if you can't blind them with your brilliance then baffle them with bull shit).

McGilchrist provides wonderful postmodern neuroscience.  His cultural analysis is modernist anxiety about mental disorder.