What is tectology? This is the science of construction, a kind of universal constructor. The purpose of the study is to understand the general organizational principles that underlie all systems. The goal of tectology is the monism of knowledge, which means that there is a single law governing the development of the universe, human society and social knowledge.
Theory of General Systems
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian physiologist Vladimir Bekhterev formulated 23 universal laws, which, according to him, relate to social and psychological processes. The science of tectology is associated with cybernetics, which is defined as the science of effective organization. The theory of general systems is a kind of metaphysics, that is, a knowledge system that manipulates the results obtained in all other areas.
Tectology is a science for a new person created in the process of a socialist revolution. This person must live in a team. Science is a way of uniting millions of people into a single classless collective. Existing forms of knowledge are based on the separation of “male” and “female” tasks, on the separation of theoretical and practical knowledge, on the separation between the “city” and the “country” and the specialization of each of these sectors. Thus, the current forms of comprehension of reality correspond to class society.
Alexander Bogdanov - author of tectology
Bogdanov’s organizational conscience contradicts thinking in stereotypes, according to the “stencil”. Therefore, this type of conscience is what we call “creativity” today. Creativity is exactly the attitude that concerns both theoretical and practical tasks. The foundations of the laws of creativity were prepared by Altshuller in his Theory of the Development of a Creative Person. Any construction task is essentially creative.
The desire to find structural unity for different types of experience or knowledge is an attempt at a socialist orientation of knowledge. Bogdanov’s practice was to administer the Institute of Blood Transfusion. He died during one of the experiments in 1928. Nevertheless, it can be noted that practical activity can be any specific task: sailing on a yacht (as Jules Verne did), or flying, or leading a group (organization), etc. All practical exercises help us get a theoretical understanding of the unifying forces of the universe.
Any new knowledge is caused by the needs of the development of our civilization and culture. For example, the study of astronomy by Copernicus was caused by the needs of navigation of that time. Similarly for tectology. The need to combine knowledge is dictated by the need to develop socialism. The worst enemies of progress today are “specialists” and “professionals”. That’s why the advice of the late Stephen Jobs remains relevant: "Stay hungry, stay stupid."
Tectology analysis
In any developing system, two opposite trends simultaneously develop. Its contradictions develop into a "crisis", which leads to revolution or death. Thus, any revolution is preceded by a crisis. The way out of it is what the leadership of the revolution stands for. This is true for any confrontation: both social and scientific.
The basis of tectology is an isomorphism of laws governing various processes. It means an identical structure of laws. Difficult problems can be solved if they are posed in a general form. Generalization is a kind of simplification of the problem. For example, measuring the distance from the Earth to the Moon is a difficult task before we pose it in a general way: how to measure the distance to an object that we have never come close to (here we see the relation to heuristics).
Everything complicated consists of simple
Any complex problem consists of several simple elements or tasks, each of which can be solved or created by an "average" person. Consequently, the main difficulty is how to break down a difficult task into a number of simple ones.
The deepest abyss that exists in nature is between unconscious nature, spontaneity and consciousness, or even self-awareness. For example, every day when we experience the transition between sleep and awakening, we must bridge this chasm.
Previous forms of knowledge that tried to combine all knowledge
Speech is a tectological trend that has been present from the very beginning of human history, which unites all kinds of experiences. It is for this reason that a language teacher can be a “universal” teacher. He (she) does not teach this or that special knowledge (if they teach only grammar, they are not better than beginners), but they can teach all knowledge, since it is all in the form of a language.
Music is a rhythm present in nature and in speech. Consequently, the development of music can be seen as a unifying tendency. Religion develops from polytheism to monotheism. Mathematics - the objects of this science are not special things, everything can be counted and measured. Pythagoras claimed that "all things are numbers."
Logic is the discovery of the general principles governing the universe. The best-known examples are the logic of Aristotle, Francis Bacon (The New Organon), George Hegel (dialectic) and John Stuart Mill. Since the mid-19th century, no studies comparable to their work have been conducted.
Marxism is a kind of unifying knowledge that does not limit itself to any subject, for example, history, philosophy or economics, anthropology or politics, it stands only above all this. Information applies to everything: both practical and theoretical. For example, if we need to repair a radiator, we are looking for a solution on the Internet. Or, if we need to understand the definition of knowledge, we go online. This is a common “cure for all” for all problems.
Thinking is the conversation of the soul with itself. In children, we notice that they are talking to themselves, which is naive thinking done aloud. The common verb for all human activity is to do. For example, philosophers “make philosophy”, artists “make” art, and workers “build” a boat, which is synonymous with the word “do”. So, you can say that tectology is a study of behavior in general.
Three categories of production
The main problem in the development of research is the systematization of “organized” experience, that is, the productive, creative, collective experience of mankind. The planned production system includes 3 main categories:
- The production of people is the sexual revolution and education.
- The production of things is an economy.
- The production of ideas is knowledge.
Single concept
Tectology is a single unifying concept for all three of these aspects of production. Concepts are made possible by the development of speech. Speech expresses our impressions, images, chaotic thoughts, ideas. Thinking is a person who talks to himself, without actually using words. Intimacy between a man and a woman is the same dialogue and interaction without words.
Tectology - General Organizational Science
Knowledge is a kind of organization of experience. A. Bogdanov more anticipates a new form of knowledge than actually develops it. That is why it is so interesting to read his introductions, but not the work itself. The main problem with the development of any new form of knowledge is not an attempt to go directly to the final conclusions, but, as Francis Bacon pointed out in the New Organ, a gradual transition from empirical facts to the first simple generalizations, and then, as soon as we accumulate these simple generalizations to great generalizations. Then we must return to "practice", having deleted the consequences from our common knowledge, applying them.
Categories of new information are not yet known. The first goal may be the analysis of simple analogues, isomorphism, language metaphors, etc., as well as an attempt to understand their general structure and, therefore, establish some first, indicative categories. Criticism of the general tectology of other forms of systems theory: they do not seem to study any of the general processes in detail. For example, the study of revolution in various forms.
Association of Sciences
Tectology - a universal organizational science - is a term used by Alexander Bogdanov to describe a discipline consisting in combining all social, biological and physical sciences, considering them as systems of relationships and the search for organizational principles that underlie all systems. Tectology is now seen as the forerunner of systems theory and related aspects of synergetics. The word was coined by Ernst Haeckel, but Bogdanov used it for various purposes.
General brief
Bogdanov's work, “Tectology: A General Organizational Science”, published in Russia between 1912 and 1917, anticipated many of the ideas that were later disseminated by Norbert Wiener in Cybernetics and Ludwig von Bertalanffy in Theory of General Systems. There are suggestions that both Wiener and von Bertalanffy could read the German edition, which was published in 1928.
In the sources and precursors of Bogdanov’s tectology, James White (1998) acknowledged the intellectual duty of Bogdanov’s work on the tectological ideas of Ludwig Noire. His work was based on the ideas of Noire, who in the 1870s also tried to build a monistic system using the principle of energy conservation as one of its structural elements.
According to Bogdanov, the goal of tectology (briefly) is to systematize organized experience by defining universal organizational principles. This means that everything organizational, all complexes can be understood only through their organizational nature. This is (historically) the first identification of philosophical “complexes” in the natural sciences, undertaken in order to designate a combination of elements of “activity-resistance”. Bogdanov believed that any complex should correspond to its environment and adapt to it.
General laws of the organization
A stable and organized complex is greater than the sum of its part. In the theory of tectology, the term “stability” does not refer to dynamic stability, but to the possibility of maintaining the complex in a given environment. The complex is not identical to a complex, inaccessible, large unit.
Bogdanov made the first modern attempt to formulate the most general laws of the organization. Tectology addressed issues such as holistic, emerging phenomena and systemic development. As a constructive science, she built elements into a functional entity, using the general laws of organization.
According to the empirio-monistic principle (1899), he does not recognize the differences between observation and perception, and thus gives rise to the general empirical, transdisciplinary science of physical organization as an expedient unity and predecessor of System theory. Personal tectology is the science of organization and self-organization.