Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (Da Capo Press, 1988), 35, 36.
Wiener, Human Use of Human Beings, 36.
Wiener, Human Use of Human Beings, 36.
Wiener, Human Use of Human Beings, 46–47.
Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, 11.
Aleksander Bogdanov, “Goals and Norms of Life,” Russian Cosmism, ed. Boris Groys (e-flux/MIT Press, 2018), 180, 175, 201.
Aleksander Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology: The General Science of Organization (Intersystems Publications, 1984), 249.
Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology, 227, emphasis in original. It is true that Bogdanov also shows some skepticism towards the hypothesis of the heat death of the universe: according to him, as long as science did not know sufficiently well “how those differences were created which are now being equalized, how those atoms were formed which are now being decomposed, and what are the bases of differentiation of the universe itself,” it would be arbitrary to project a future point of “maximum contra-differentiation.” Bogdanov, Essays in Tektology, 152.
Bogdanov nonetheless warns that the best economy is not necessarily the absence of expenditure: “Victory over nature is achieved not by petty preservation of energy but by the fullest, most productive use of it.” This statement, while not strictly false, ought to be qualified in the face of the present environmental crisis. Aleksander Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience: Popular Outlines (Haymarket, 2016), 147.
Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience, 174.
Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience, 174, emphasis in original.
Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living Experience, 200.
James White, Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov (Haymarket, 2018), 290.
White, Red Hamlet, 287.
A critique of this optimism by Stanislav Volsky appeared as early as 1911 in the second issue of the newspaper published by the Vpered group, of which Bogdanov was the leading figure. See White, Red Hamlet, 282. Of course, it would always be possible to suggest that Bogdanov was, despite a fairly common interpretation of the German thinker, closer to Marx’s true opinion. See Paul S. Adler, “Marx, Machines, and Skill,” Technology and Culture 31, no. 4 (1990).
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 6.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 6.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 26.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 148.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 39, emphasis in original.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 52.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 42.
See Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Philosophie Pratique (Minuit, 1981), 147ff. As the famous passage on lymph and chyle from his correspondence with Oldenburg shows, Spinoza is a pioneer of both perspectivism and, as we will see below, the hierarchical conception of reality assumed by the organizational point of view. See Baruch Spinoza, “Letter 32,” Complete Works (Hackett, 2002).
Michel Foucault, “Le Sujet et le Pouvoir,” Dits et Écrits, vol. 2 (Gallimard, 2001), 1056.
See for example T. F. H. Allen and Thomas B. Starr, Hierarchy: Perspectives for Ecological Complexity (University of Chicago Press, 2017).
H. A. Simon, “The Organization of Complex Systems,” in Hierarchy Theory: The Challenge of Complex Systems, ed. H. H. Pattee (George Braziller, 1973).
“The concept of ‘elements’ in the organizational science is completely relative and conditional: it is simply those parts into which, in conformity with a problem under investigation, it was necessary to decompose its object; they may be as large or small as needed, they may be subdivided further or not; no limits to analysis can be placed here.” Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 42–43.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 93.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 80, emphasis in original.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 54.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 79.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 43.
Bogdanov, Essays on Tektology, 127.
This text is a version of the introductory essay to the Brazilian edition of Aleksander Bogadnov’s Essays on Tektology (Ensaios de Tectologia: A Ciência Universal da Organização, Machado, 2025).