Nature is the Realm of the Unspeakable

Some favorite excerpts from "Finite and Infinite Games",
James P Carse, 1986, Ballantine, ISBN 0-345-34148-8
follow below:
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Nature is the realm of the unspeakable. It has no voice
of its own, and nothing to say. We experience the
unspeakability of nature as its utter indifference
to human culture...

We count among the highest acheivements of modern
society the developmemt of a technology that allows us to
master nature's vagaries.

The effort has largely taken the form of theatricalizing
our relation to nature...

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" (Bacon).
It is as though, by learning its secret script, we haved
learned to direct its play as well. There is little left to
surprise us.

The assumption guiding our struggle against nature is that
deep within nature itself contains a structure, an order,
that is ultimately intelligible to the human understanding.
Since this inherent structure determines the way things
change, and is not itself subject to change, we speak of
nature being lawful, of repeating itself according to quite
predictable patterns.

What we have done by showing that certain events repeat
themselves according to known laws is to *explain* them.
Explanation is the mode of discourse in which we show
why matters must be as they are. All laws made use of
in explanation look backwards in time from the conclusion
or the completion of a sequence...

A prediction is but an explanation in advance.

Because of its thorough lawfulness nature has no genius
of its own. "One may say that 'the eternal mystery of the
world is its comprehensibility'" (Einstein).

This is as much as to say that nature does have a voice,
and its voice is no different than our own. We can then
presume to speak for the unspeakable.

...the voices of the gods proved to be ignorant and false;
they have been silenced by the truth.

There is an irony in our silencing of the gods. By presuming
to speak for the unspeakable, by hearing our own voice as
the voice of nature, we have had to step outside the circle
of nature.

To be intelligible at all, we must claim that we can step aside
from the process and comment on it "objectively" and
"dispassionatly", without anything obstructing our view
of these matters. Here lies the irony: by way of this perfectly
reasonable claim the gods have stolen back into our struggle
with nature. By depriving the gods of their own voices, the
gods have taken ours. It is we who speak as supernatural
intelligences and powers, masters of the forces of nature.

This irony passes unnoticed only so long as we continue
to veil ourselves against what we can otherwise plainly see:
nature allows no master over itself. Bacon's principle works
both ways. If we must obey to command, then our commanding
is only obeying and not commanding at all. There is no such
thing as an unnatural act. Nothing can be done to or against
nature, much less outside it. Therefore, the ignorance we
thought we could avoid by an unclouded observation of nature
has swept us back into itself. What we thought we read in nature
we discover we have read into nature. "We have to remember
that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed
to our method of questioning" (Heisenberg)....

Explanations succeed only be convincing resistant hearers
of their error. If you will not hear my explanations until you
are suspicious of your own truths, you will not accept my
explanations until you are convinced of your error. Explanation
is an antagonistic encounter that succeeds by defeating an
opponent. It possesses the same dynamic of resentment
found in other finite play. I will press my explanations on you
because I need to show that I do not live in the error that
I think others think I do.

Whoever wins this struggle is privileged with the claim to
true knowledge. Knowledge has been *arrived at*, it is the
outcome of this engagement. Its winners have the uncontested
power to make certain statements of fact. They are listened to.
In those areas appropriate to the contests now concluded,
winners possess a knowledge which can no longer be challenged.

Knowledge, therefore, is like property. It must be published,
declared, or in some other way so displayed that others
cannot but take account of it. It must stand in their way.
It must be emblematic, pointing backward at its possessor's
competitive skill..

So close are knowledge and property that they are often
thought to be continuous...

Scholars demand higher salaries for their publishable successes,
industrialists sit on university boards.

If explanation, to be successful, must be oblivious to the silence
of nature, it must also in its success impose silence on its
listeners...

What one wins in a title is the privelige of magisterial speech...

We expect the first act of a winner to be a speech...

The silence to which the losers pledge themselves is the
silence of obedience. Losers have nothing to say;
nor have they an audience who would listen...

The victorious do not speak with the defeated; they speak
for the defeated...

Indeed, the titled, as titled, cannot speak *with* anyone...

It is only by magisterial speech that the emblematic property
of winners can be safeguarded...

One is speechless before a god, or silent before a winner,
because it no longer matters what one has to say. To lose
a contest is to become obedient; to become obedient is to
lose one's listeners.

The silence of obedience is an unheard silence. It is the
silence of death. For this reason the demand for obedience
is inherently evil.

The silence of nature is the possibility of language.
By subduing nature the gods give it their own voice,
but in making nature an opponent they make all their
listeners opponents. By refusing the silence of nature
they demand the silence of obedience. The unspeakability
of nature is therefore transformed into the unspeakability
of language itself...

That language is not about anything gives it its staus as
metaphor. Metaphor does not point at something there.
Never shall we find the kingdom of daylight's dauphin
in one place or another. It is not the role of metaphor
to draw our sight to what is there, but to draw our vision
towards what is not there and, indeed, cannot be anywhere.
Metaphor is horizontal, reminding us that it is one's vision
that is limited, and not what one is viewing...

Speaker and listener understand each other not because
they have the same knowledge about something, and not
because they have established a likeness of mind, but
because they know "how to go on" with each other
(Wittgenstein).

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Best Regards, J Gill

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