Glass bees & individual ants

[Gary Kern <gkern@alumni.Princeton.EDU>]

Thomas Friese wrote:

We got stuck last night here on this paragraph in the Bogen/Meyer
translation. The narrator, in describing Zapparoni's first automatons,
says:
> 
>         "On the smaller scale they gave the impression of intelligent ants, distinct units working as mechanisms, that is, not at all in a purely chemical or organic fashion. This was one of Zapparoni's business principles, or if you will, one of the rules of his game. When faced with two solutions, it seemed as if he almost always preferred the more subtle one. This corresponded with the trend of the times, and he was not the worse for it." p.6
> 
> We talked for hours on the concept of intelligence in the first sentence.
> Where does the intelligence lie - in the individual unit or in the team of units. The analogy is after all ants. How are ants intelligent? Or bees for that matter?
> Secondly, why is this solution the more subtle one? What alternatives is EJ implying here?
> Any comments on this or the passage in general? I wonder how the original words it?
****************************
German text:

Dort wirkten sie wie intelligente Ameisen, aber immer noch in Einheiten,
die als Mechanismen, also nicht etwa auf eine rein chemische oder
physikalische Weise arbeiteten.  Das gehörte zu Zapparonis
Geschäftsmaximen oder, wenn man so will, zu seinen Spielregeln.  Oft
schien es, als ob er zwischen zwei Lösungen um jeden Preis die
raffiniertere bevorzugte.  Aber das lag im Zuge der Zeit, und er stand
sich nicht schlecht dabei.  [Ernst Klett Verlag, 1957, 11.]

The translation strikes me as fine, though I am confused by the "die" in
"die als Mechanismen."  Perhaps a native can explain.  Can it possibly
mean "rather than as mechanisms"?

I can understand how a group could spend hours discussing this passage
with the questions you mentioned.  My response is that, from our
individualistic, 20th-century point of view, a creature cannot really be
said to exist without consciousness of itself as an individual.  When
working with the group, it would be conscious solely of the tasks to be
performed and perhaps of the feeling of belonging to the group and the
project.  Only when separated from the group could it possibly achieve
what we consider an individual existence.  Usually an ant, when
separated, is still performing a group function; but it may happen that
by accident it could find itself completely cut off from the group, then
its first and lasting thought would be to get back.  But it might have
to solve problems along the way, and the solutions might be individual
ones.  I imagine that an ant on its own over time would become aware of
its separation, its vulnerability and ultimately itself.  I wrote a
little story about it in a work called 51 REINCARNATIONS.  If you wish,
you can read it at this link:

http://www.starfishy.com/calliope/essay/kern.html

Mark Twain wrote a humorous little piece about ants, about how everyone
spoke of their diligence and efficiency, but when he followed one around
it did all sorts of stupid and wasteful things.  Jünger presents a
picture in which each ant performs a task with individual precision,
working separately, which is perhaps very un-antlike.  Zapparoni could
have made his little robots all do the same thing, but he preferred to
make them capable of relating differently to the environment and doing
separate things.  This satisfied his own intellectual and creative
needs, but did not necessarily produce robots in harmony with
nature--one of the themes of the book.

The other day I saw something on TV that relates to this passage.  A
program on computers and technology reported that soon we may have pet
robots:  a toy cat that will purr when petted, move its head in response
to touch, meow and so on.  Apparently it will not eat or defecate, so it
will mark an improvement on real cats.  The Japanese manufacturers were
said to be in no rush to produce the computerized mechanical cat, as
they wanted to add new sophisticated features.  Who knows, perhaps it
will hide from dogs, watch the goldfish and play with a ball of string.
And perhaps each one will be slightly different in its emphases:  one
will meow loudly, another softly; one will roll on its back, another on
its side.  Enough combinations, and you have a personality.  And why
stop at cats?  Parakeets, little doggies, iguanas.  Beautiful androids
can't be far behind.

I watched the story, laughed and went on to other things, and only two
days later realized that I should have paid more attention, since it was
pertinent to the theme of THE GLASS BEES.  (I'm trying to stop watching
TV.)

My chief concern about robotic animals is not so much that human beings
will lose touch with nature as that they will look on real animals as
simply pre-programmed units, as Descartes assumed them to be. Then the
robot-friendly humans could perpetrate fresh horrors upon their animal
kin.

GK