Cognition Is a Rhizome

Comments on my last post spoke against applying the rhizome to higher education. I've thought about the objections, but making the rhizome practical still makes sense to me, and really, this blog is all about me trying to make sense of things. Still, the comments gave me pause enough to wonder if others have tried to tease out the practical implications of the rhizome for their own disciplines, so I did a bit of research and found lots of attempts, including this fine article called RHIZOMATIC SYSTEMS & THE EMERGENCE OF INTELLIGENCE (On Slime Mold, Robots and Deleuze & Guattari) (03 May 2005) by Garnet Hertz, who attempts to apply the rhizome to the fields of artificial intelligence, artificial life, information/computer science, and robotics. I think Mr. Hertz provides some interesting ways to proceed, so I will.

Hertz notes that the rhizome has influenced numerous fields of study, but in this article he is interested in the efforts "to construct intelligence apart from a biological substrate" (2), a broad scientific effort which to date has relied mostly on arborescent modes of thought, those tree systems that D&G use in A Thousand Plateaus to contrast with rhizomes. Hertz describes this mode of thought as:

a system that is hierarchical, centered around a core belief, reductivistic, increasingly specialized, non-cyclical, linear, and ripe with segmentation and striation. Similar to a tree-like description of biological evolution or genealogy, arborescent systems start from a central origin and continue to evolve by branching into successively specialized generations. Vertical in nature, the arbolic is ordered, structured and “scientific”: it has a distinct train of thought, a clear inheritance, an order. (1)

This kind of thought and approach has not proven so effective in helping scientists create artificial intelligence. They still cannot create a device, for instance, that can amble across a crowded room without creating chaos, something a cockroach with vastly less computing power than IBM's Deep Blue can accomplish. Why? Because Deep Blue is mostly tracing known pathways, while the cockroach is mapping reality in its infinite variations. And as Hertz notes: "The real world is such a complicated [I prefer the term complex here] system that it is almost impossible to not leave something out while creating an abstraction of it" (8). Yes, Deep Blue can beat anyone at chess, but only because it has enough computing power to cycle through all available possible scenarios and moves, all tracings, very quickly. Deep Blue still couldn't get across an elementary school classroom. Children and cockroaches can—usually.

It may take all the computing power in the universe to enable an arborescent system to walk across a room. Rhizome to the rescue. According to Hertz, rhizomatic systems are:

non-linear, horizontal, nomadic, deterritorialized and heterogeneous. The rhizome cuts across and between the order of vertical space, connecting multiple points simultaneously in a network of nodes. Connected to each other at arbitrary points, the rhizomatic system is more concerned with the multiplicitous interlinking of concept, action and being. Although it lacks a central dogma of a trunk/brain, it is a horizontal, bottom-up system that produces an emergent system of metabehavior that is strong, robust, and intelligent... in the non-standard sense of the word. Within nature, rhizomatic systems like ants or grassy weeds eventually win … If intelligence could exist without a central brain, the rhizome would be it. (1, 2)

You don't need enormous computing power to walk across the room—you just need rhizomatic thought. You need a few simple strategies that map quickly and well as reality emerges around you. Being able to trace all known paths, even very quickly, is almost no help at all; rather, you must be able to map new paths as they emerge. Think birds in a flock, or players on the futbol pitch. Linear, arborescent thought is almost useless here. Fortunately, our brains are rhizomes. As D&G point out: "Many people have a tree growing in their heads, but the brain itself is much more a grass than a tree" (15, ATP).

Hertz insists that "Individual organisms collect together into a swarm of particles that, despite having absolutely no centralized brain, is capable of complex tasks" (4), and offers as proof Toshiyuki Nakagaki's successful efforts in 2000 to teach slime mold to find the shortest path through a maze. "Without any standard cognitive powers, the swarm of slime emerged into a clever mass capable [of] solving the navigational puzzle without a leader, brain, command center, map or plan" (4). It seems likely that our own brains could likewise be described as "a swarm of particles" [neurons] … "without a leader, … command center, map or plan". Hertz could have offered as proof our own brains. There is no homunculus in our brains orchestrating all our mental activity; rather, the brain is a self-organizing swarm, ceasely mapping reality and its own internal resonances, mostly in unconscious ways out of which our conscious knowledge emerges. As I've quoted in this blog before, Olaf Sporns demonstrates that "cognition is a network phenomenon". Cognition is a rhizome.

And rhizomatic cognition trumps arborescent cognition when it comes to mapping and coping with the emergent real. A recent article "Reservoir Computing Properties of Neural Dynamics in Prefrontal Cortex” by Pierre Enel, Emmanuel Procyk, René Quilodran, and Peter Ford Dominey in PLOS Computational Biology (June 10 2016) demonstrates that primates, including humans, can learn and cope with novel situations that cannot be anticipated (programmed) by nature. A review of the technical article in Neuroscience News.com says:

This study shows that this seemingly miraculous pre-adaptation comes from connections between neurons that form recurrent loops where inputs can rebound and mix in the network, like waves in a pond, thus called “reservoir” computing. This mix of the inputs allows a potentially universal representation of combinations of the inputs that can then be used to learn the right behaviour for a new situation.

If you have ever watched waves in a pond, then you have watched the rhizome. Arborescent thought cannot map waves in a pond. Or rather, arborescent thought maps waves in a pond the same way a stick figure maps a person. You get the idea, but you would never confuse a stick figure for a person. At least, I hope not. However, you do confuse the map in your mind for the person. We do that all the time. That rhizomatic map seems so full-bodied and multi-dimensional. Of course, the map still isn't the person, but let's save that issue for another post.

So what does this mean for education? First, it does not mean that we should abandon arborescent thought, which has formed the basis of much of Western education and society for at least the last few centuries. Arborescent thought has driven our philosophy, industry, education, and politics, and it has yielded great benefits. Most of us of will never know starvation or homelessness because of arborescent thought. Society has benefitted much from the ability to create and harness machines and processes that trace programmed paths with great precision, speed, and reliability. For instance, I like the linear, arborescent process that makes it possible for me to push a key on my keyboard and the letter z pops up on the screen. Thanks be to the tree.

Arborescent thought can work very well and to great benefit in the simple and complicated domains where explicit, known paths can be traced to given goals. Much of education—to make a point, let's call it training—can be structured this way. Do A and then B, and always get C. Every student should do A and then B, and every student should get C. Those who arrive at C in the allotted amount of time and through their own efforts pass. Those who don't fail and must repeat. This is very much like the industrial form of education that Sir Ken Robinson has so famously attacked, but while arborescent, industrial education has many faults that are becoming increasingly obvious, it does have a kind of efficiency and efficacy. Modern societies are nearly universally literate, if literacy is measured at a fairly low level. This is real, measurable progress when compared to 300 years ago. If we want more, however, then arborescent education is not enough. If we want creative, engaged, resourceful students, and not just barely literate students, then we have to climb down out of the tree of knowledge and step onto the open, grassy plains of the savannah. We can keep the tree for a landmark, for a resting place, but we have to move beyond the arborescent and into the rhizomatic.

We do not have to settle for either one or the other. We can have both: arborescent and rhizomatic. The main point for me, and what I get from reading D&G, is that we should not rely solely on arborescent knowledge, learning, and thought. We must also, even mostly, rely on the rhizome. The ancient Jewish writers told us this centuries ago: pursued alone or above all else, the Tree of Knowledge leads away from the Garden, away from Eden. The dualism of the arborescent separates us from the rhizome. It replaces the right brain with the left, the master with the emissary, to use Iain McGilchrist's terms. From our perch at the top of the Tree of Knowledge, we can see the vast, open plains of grass, and we can be deceived into thinking that we can remain apart from it and master it. The grassy rhizome knows better.

Reality as a Zone of Engagement

So I've distinguished the Real from Reality and accepted that most of the Real is hidden, probably forever and not just from me but from my entire species, both because we physically cannot encounter it all and because, even if we could, we can't hold it all. Hmm … perhaps. This last point troubles me. I accept that I cannot hold it all, but what about we? Can we hold it all? Perhaps not, but we can certainly hold much more knowledge than I alone, and that may be sufficient for whatever tasks our species encounters. This is a thought that I will keep. Hold that thought.

At any rate, I now have the Real, Reality, and Knowledge. If I understand Nicolescu, Reality is the zone of engagement between the Real and the knower. Nicolescu describes this zone in, for me, rather interesting terms:

By "Reality" (with a capital R) we intend first of all to designate that which resists our experiences, representations, descriptions, images, or mathematical formulations.

Reality, then, is first that zone within the Real that in some way resists my pushes outward. Reality is the stuff I can bump into, the stuff that I can draw or sculpt or construct, the stuff that I can describe in words or mathematical formulations. Reality is the stuff that sends back a signal when I ping it. Group knowledge, I suppose then, is that zone within the Real that pushes back in similar enough ways when any of a group of us ping it.

I'm immediately troubled by my knowledge of those things—say, the Greek gods or Yoda—that I can push against and describe, but that I don't want to admit into the realm of Reality—and certainly not the Real—but let's not think about that for the moment. What I like about this description of Reality is the dynamic process of engagement between the Real and the knower, or between ontology and epistemology. Reality, I think, is first an emergent property of the interaction between my push outward and whatever pushes back. Of course, sometimes the Real pushes in first and I push back in response. In other words, reality as a zone of engagement is a reciprocal process, but the key is the dynamic interaction, the zone of engagement, out of which Reality emerges.

And here is the key for me in answering my original question: does epistemology take second seat to ontology? Perhaps it should; however, the moment-to-moment emergence of Reality within the interactions of the Real and the Knower seems to depend as much on the Knower (epistemology) as on the Real (ontology). I'm quite certain that Reality—the stuff that I know of the Real—depends as much, if not more, on my engagement with the Real and the processes by which I make sense of that engagement. In his wonderful book The Master and his Emissary (2012), psychiatrist and literary scholar (cool) Iain McGilchrist explores the two realities created by our divided brains, and he is quite explicit about the role we play in creating Reality:

In fact I believe there is something that exists apart from ourselves, but that we play a vital part in bringing it into being. A central theme of this book is the importance of our disposition towards the world and one another, as being fundamental in grounding what it is that we come to have a relationship with, rather than the other way round. The kind of attention we pay actually alters the world: we are, literally, partners in creation.

When I connect McGilchrist's book to Zull's book about the neuroscience of learning, it seems highly likely that my and our Reality depends as much on my/our neurological apparatuses and processes as it does on the ontological features of the Real.

However, I think, too, that the Real as well as Reality is changed by engaging with the Knower. If I understand my readings in quantum physics correctly, then many physicists accept that engaging the Real changes all parties of the engagement, the Knower/s as well as the Real itself. This seems counter-intuitive in day-to-day life. For instance, most of us assume that our car remains the same thing ontologically whether we are looking at it or not and regardless of the angle from which we look at it, but quantum physics seems to suggest that this is not so. While fine quantum weirdnesses are often flattened out in the coarse structures and processes of everyday life, this is not always so. In his Big Ideas talk The World as a Hologram (2011), quantum physicist Leonard Susskind tells the story of two friends Alice and Bob and what they both experience when Alice falls into a black hole. From Alice's point of view, nothing happens as she crosses the point of no return where she can no longer resist the inexorable pull of the black hole. However, from Bob's point of view, Alice is incinerated in a flash of unbelievable heat and disappears forever. In one reality, then, Alice is fine, but in the other reality, Alice is dead. At the same time. This makes no sense, but here's a serious, world-famous scientist insisting that it is the case.

So I don't think that epistemology quite plays second fiddle to ontology. I am increasingly coming to believe that the interactions across the zone of engagement between me and the Real not only change me, but they also change the Real. Engagement changes all parties to the engagement, and the Realities that emerge from that engagement depend very much on the relative positions of the engaged parties.

So what does this have to do with MOOCs and quantum random walks? Much it would seem.