In his latest book, Recursivity and Contingency (2019), the Hong Kong philosopher Yuk Hui argues that recursivity is not merely mechanical repetition. He is interested in “irregularity deviating from rules.” He develops what could be called a neovitalist position, which goes beyond the view, dominant in popular culture today, that 01/06 there is life inside the robot (or soon will be). In the “organology” Hui proposes, a system mimics growth and variation inside its own technical realm. “Recursivity is characterised,” he writes, “by the looping movement of returning to itself in order to determine itself, while every movement is open to contingency, which in turn determines its singularity.”1 Geert Lovink Following On the Existence of Digital Objects (2016) and The Question Concerning Technology Cybernetics for in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics (2017), Recursivity and Contingency is Yuk Hui’s third the Twenty- and by far most ambitious book. Divided into five chapters that deal with different eras and First Century: thinkers, it starts with Kant’s reflective judgement, which Hui sees as a precursor to recursivity. The book then moves on to Hegel’s An Interview reflective logic, which anticipates cybernetics. According to Hui’s organology (and that of i u Bernard Stiegler), science and technology should H with k u be understood as means for returning to life, as Y r paths towards true pluralism, or “multiple e Philosopher Yuk h p cosmotechnics,” to use Hui’s own key concept o s from his earlier book. o l i Hui h P h Our understanding of computational possibilities t i w should not be limited to the “disruptive” w e k i technologies of Silicon Valley, oriented as they are n v i r v e towards short-term profits. Hui looks beyond this o t L n I t myopic view of technology. His foundational r n e A e project is to dig into the philosophical : G y Ê r foundations of today’s digitality, to examine the u 9 t 1 n 0 episteme that presents itself as a new form of e 2 C r t e totality (or as a “techno-subconsciousness,” as I s b r i m have described it elsewhere). How can we think F e - t y p t individuation in an age when the online self is e n s e surrounded by artificial stupidity and algorithmic w — T exclusion in the name of ruthless profit 2 e 0 h t 1 maximization and state control? Is there a r # o l f liberated self inside cybernetics? a s n c r i ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ – Geert Lovink u t o e j n r x e u l b f Geert Lovink: Could you introduce the terms y - e C “recursivity” and “contingency”? How do these two terms relate to feedback, which is a central concept in cybernetics? Is it possible to sketch out potential cybernetic technologies that are not based on the principles of the current information revolution? Yuk Hui: Recursivity is a general term for looping. This is not mere repetition, but rather more like a 09.12.19 / 13:45:03 EDT spiral, where every loop is different as the longer based on the same epistemology. Rather, process moves generally towards an end, they are recursive – capable of integrating whether a closed one or an open one. As a contingency into their operations. computer science student, I was fascinated by ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis centrality of recursivity to recursion because it is the true spirit of contemporary machinery has been obscured by automation: with a few lines of recursive code various ways of describing capitalism, due to the you can solve a complicated problem that might fact that Marxists tend to discuss information demand much more code if you tried to solve it in 02/06 technology in much too abstract terms – a linear way. “immaterial labor,” “free labor,” and so forth. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe notion of recursivity represents an Deleuze tried to make this point in his famous epistemological break from the mechanistic “Postscript on Societies of Control,” but he worldview that dominated the seventeenth and lacked the vocabulary to do so, and simply eighteenth centuries, especially Cartesian borrowed the concept of modulation from the mechanism. The most well-known treatise on philosopher Gilbert Simondon. this break is Immanuel Kant’s 1790 Critique of ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf we want to overcome this failure to Judgment, which proposes a reflective judgment appreciate recursivity, we need to understand its whose mode of operation is anti-Cartesian, significance, and find ways to describe it and nonlinear, and self-legitimate (i.e., it derives analyze it. Martin Heidegger claimed that the universal rules from the particular instead of emergence of cybernetics in the mid-twentieth being determined by a priori universal laws). century marked the completion and end of Reflective judgment is central to Kant’s philosophy. In response to Heidegger, I understanding of both beauty and nature, which recontextualize cybernetics within the history of is why the two parts of his book are dedicated to philosophy, with the aim of exposing both its aesthetic judgment and teleological judgment. limits and potential. In order to do this, a new Departing from Kant, and with a generalized language and new concepts are needed. This is concept of recursivity, I try to analyze the why the book focuses on developing the emergence of two lines of thought related to the concepts of recursivity and contingency, which I i concept of the organic in the twentieth century: u then use to analyze the theoretical foundations H k organicism and organology. The former opens u of organicism and organology. Y towards a philosophy of biology and the latter a r ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWe can distinguish two strains of e h philosophy of life. In the book, I attempt to p organicism: a philosophy of nature (exemplified o recontextualize organicism and organology s by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, o l i within today’s technical reality. h Joseph Needham, Joseph Henry Woodger, and P ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊContingency is central to recursivity. In the h Alfred North Whitehead, among others), and a t i w mechanical mode of operation, which is built on what I call a “mechano-organicism,” which w e k linear causation, a contingent event may lead to i encompasses cybernetics as well as systems n v i r v the collapse of the system. For example, e theory. Through historical analysis I try to think o t L n I t machinery may malfunction and cause an recursivity beyond cybernetics. This is reflected r n e A industrial catastrophe. But in the recursive mode e in how the book is structured: the first two : G y Ê r of operation, contingency is necessary since it chapters are dedicated to organicism from Kant u 9 t 1 n enriches the system and allows it to develop. A 0 to cybernetics via Schelling, Hegel, Norbert e 2 C r t living organism can absorb contingency and e Wiener, and Kurt Gdel; the third and fourth s b r i render it valuable. So can today’s machine m chapters are dedicated to organology from Kant F e - t y p learning. t to Henri Bergson, Georges Canguilhem, e n s e ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊGL: Cybernetic concepts such as feedback Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, and my own w — T and the “black box” often gives rise to a reflection on this tradition; the last chapter 2 e 0 h t 1 simplistic understanding of automation. How can unfolds a political philosophy that argues against r # o l f we overcome this? the totalizing tendency of far-too-humanist a s n c r i modern technology. u t o e j YH: In the time of Descartes, and later Marx (who n r x e u l b described human–machine relations in the f GL: What is mechanism today, in a world where y - factories of nineteenth-century Manchester), e C digitization has taken over? The nineteenth- automated machines performed homogeneous, century mechanistic worldview essentially tried repetitive work, like a clock. As Marx wrote, a to explain life without life. This has since given craftsman-turned-factory-worker failed to way to the “organic” perspective that is dominant cooperate with this kind of machine on both a today. Why is it nonetheless necessary to psychological and somatic level because a distance ourselves from the mechanistic? Is it machine enclosed within itself is a separated still a living ideology? reality. Marx attributed this failure to alienation. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊYH: We live in an age of neo-mechanism, in In our time, however, automated machines are no which technical objects are becoming organic. 09.12.19 / 13:45:03 EDT Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Kant YH: Bergson was a philosopher who opposed the wanted to give a new life to philosophy in the organic to the mechanical. This was due to the wake of mechanism, so he set up a new historical background that we briefly mentioned condition of philosophizing, namely the organic. before, the nineteenth century being the age of Being mechanistic doesn’t necessarily mean mechanism, physics, and industrialism. In 1907, being related to machines; rather, it refers to Bergson published Creative Evolution, which for machines that are built on linear causality, for Canguilhem, together with the journal L’Année example clocks, or thermodynamic machines like 03/06 Biologique launched in the same year, marked the steam engine. When I say that Kant set up the birth of the philosophy of biology in France. It the “organic” as the condition of philosophizing, was also Canguilhem, in his 1947 essay it means that for philosophy to be, it has to be “Machine and Organism,” who proposes that organic.