Free The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler

open-ended
hierarchy. This line of argument evidently leads to the problem of freedom
of choice, to be further discussed in Chapter XIV .
     
     
To conclude, let me revert once more to that Behaviourist lecturer who
turns his mouth loose and goes to sleep. I have compared him to a bar
pianist reeling off a popular tune. In both cases a single command from
a higher level of the hierarchy 'triggers off' a pre-set, more or less
automatised performance. The process is comparable to pressing a button
on a jukebox. The pianist merely has to say to himself: 'La Cucaracha'
or 'Pop goes the Weasel', and let his fingers look after the rest. But
even in this routine he is not simply unfolding an S-R chain, where
depressing one piano key acts as a stimulus to depress the next. For, as
a skilled bar pianist, he is perfectly capable, again at a single trigger
command, of transposing the whole piece from C Major into B Flat Major,
where the keys and intervals form a totally different chain . The fixed
'rule of the game' in this case is represented by the melodic pattern;
the scale -- and the rhythm, phrasing, syncopation, etc. -- are again
a matter of flexible strategies.
     
     
The 'spelling out' of an implicit command in explicit terms often involves
such trigger-releaser operations, where a relatively simple command from
'higher quarters' activates complex, preset action-patterns. These,
however, are not rigid automatisms, but flexible patterns offering a
variety of alternative choices. To shake hands, to light a cigarette,
to pick up a pencil, are routines often performed quite unconsciously
and mechanically, but also capable of infinite variations. I would only
have to press a single mental button to continue writing this page in
French -- or Hungarian; but that does not necessarily mean that I am to
be regarded as a jukebox.
     
     
     
     
     
III
     
     
THE HOLON
     
I ask the reader to remember that what is most obvious may be most
    worth of analysis. Fertile vistas may open out when commonplace
    facts are examined from afresh point of view.

    L.L. Whyte
     
The concept of hierarchic order occupies a central place in this book, and
lest the reader should think that I am riding a private hobby horse, let
me reassure him that this concept has a long and respectable ancestry. So
much so, that defenders of orthodoxy are inclined to dismiss it as 'old
hat' -- and often in the same breath to deny its validity. Yet I hope
to show as we go along that this old hat, handled with some affection,
can produce lively rabbits.*
     
* More than thirty years ago, Needham wrote: 'Whatever the nature of
     organising relations may be, they form the central problem of
     biology, and biology will be fruitful in the future only if this is
     recognised. The hierarchy of relations, from the molecular structure
     of carbon compounds to the equilibrium of species and ecological
     wholes, will perhaps be the leading idea of the future'. [1] Yet
     the word 'hierarchy' does not even appear in the index of most
     modern textbooks of psychology or biology.
     
     
The Parable of the Two Watchmakers
     
     
Let me start with a parable. I owe it to Professor H.A. Simon, designer
of logic computers and chess-playing machines, but I have taken the
liberty of elaborating on it. [2]
     
     
There were once two Swiss watchmakers named Bios and Mekhos, who
made very free and expensive watches. Their names may sound a little
strange, but their fathers had a smattering of Greek and were fond of
riddles. Although their watches were in equal demand, Bios prospered,
while Mekhos just struggled along; in the end he had to close his shop
and take a job as a mechanic with Bios. The people in the town argued
for a long time over the reasons for this development and each had a
different theory to offer, until the true explanation leaked out and
proved to be both simple and surprising.
     
     
The watches they made consisted of about one thousand parts each, but the
two rivals