Contents
I. What is angeletics?
II. To what
extent is this a new sicence?
III. A transparent
society?
IV. A time
of empty angels
V. From hermeneutics
to angeletics
Bibliography
I. What is
angeletics?
What is
angeletics? This is the name given to a new field of scientific research.
Why is it called that? What is its origin? The word "angeletics" comes
from the Greek anguelia, meaning message. We also use it in Spanish
when we refer to the angels as divine messengers. There is a long theological
tradition on this subject in both the Christian and other religions: angelology.
Angeletics is different from angelology in that its purpose is to study
the phenomenon of messages, independent of their divine origin, or, in
other words, it studies this phenomenon within the boundaries of the condition
humaine. This does not mean that studies relating to the fields of
religion and natural sciences are excluded, but its specific focuses are
on messages and human messengers. The human being always implies, of course,
technique. And it is exactly at this historical moment when Internet appears
that the technical phenomenon of messages, beginning with e-mail and extending
to all kinds of cultural and economic activities in the network, plays
a leading and, we could say, paradigmatic role in the world’s 21st century
society.
II. To what
extent is this a new science?
To what
extent is this a new science?
As already mentioned, this is the study of a human phenomenon that has
a long way to go and whose roots lie in the evolution of life. Of course,
it is possible to investigate the dynamism of life and the living creatures
between each other and in relation to their environment, viewing it as
a process of creating messages or information. This was widely demonstrated
when cybernetics and the theory of systems were developed. But it is evident
that the phenomenon of messages in human terms is so complex and specific
that it cannot be properly addressed merely on the basis of conceptual
and technical instruments of, let’s say, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver’s
theory
of information. On the other hand, the industrial
revolution of the last two hundred years has attributed a lot of value
to the marketing theory, that is, the study of propagating messages to
obtain economic benefits. Moreover, when we go back to the cultural revolution
caused by the invention of the press we can perceive the influence of technique
in the worldwide dissemination of political, religious and economic messages
in modern times. Nor should we forget the history of the technique and
organization of the post offices and, last but not least, the history and
theory of relations between the states based on embassies and ambassadors.
III. A transparent
society?
The technical
revolution of the press creates a new situation that is both informative
and angeletic. Immanuel Kant sees exactly in the non-censored distribution
of scientific investigation through the press the medium in which the ideals
and messages of Enlightenment can spread and indirectly(!) influence the
political processes. With the advent of the secularizing process new political
and (pseudo-)scientific messages appeared seeking to occupy the former
place of the vertical structure, with catastrophic consequences for society
and nature, making full use, as in the case of Nazi Germany, of radio-diffusion,
among other media. The peak of mass media, through its one-for-many structure,
opened to debate the task of creating a free public space of pressure structures,
where the force of the arguments and reasoning of the players has precedence.
It is exactly the ideal proclaimed (!) by philosophers like Jürgen
Habermas, who sees in the widespread mass media an
opportunity, but also hazard for the idea of
a society of transparent communication. Habermas mentions that Kant could
not have foreseen the possibility of a transformation of the public space
dominated by mass media (Capurro, 1996a). Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo,
in his turn, criticized the Habermasian transparent society, with emphasis
on its Utopian aspect and leveler of differences, so that a "weaker" mind
permits different kinds of cultural mixes and "heterotypes" that are more
clearly reflected today in the decentralizing character of Internet (Vattimo
1989).
IV. A time
of empty angels
German
philosopher Peter Sloterdijk pointed out that we live in a "time of empty
angels" or "mediatic nihilism", in which we forget what message is to be
sent while the transmission media multiply: "This is the very 'de-angeling'
of current times" (Sloterdijk 1997). The word "de-angeling" stands
out, in contrast to "evangeling", the empty nature of the messages
disseminated by the mass media, culminating in the widely-known words of
Marshall McLuhan: "The medium is the message". The question then is exactly
to what extent Internet creates a new angeletic space that can cause new
synergies of messages without the hierarchical and absolute, or pseudo-absolute,
character of sacred messages or their political substitutes. If, according
to Sloterdijk (1983), mass media is moving inside a cynical structure,
the question is evidently asked about the "fantasmatic" character of the
new media (Zizek 1997, Capurro 1999a). Based on that, we now reach what
we call information ethics, the aim of which is to explain the possible
theoretical and practical horizons in order to maintain, organize and create
new forms of life in common, in a world where the classic parameters of
time and place, determining factors for the creation and diffusion of messages,
are not only questioned, but also where the local structures of political
power that to date controlled such a phenomenon are paradoxically in the
inverse situation. The great economic and social (r-)evolutions are founded
less on the prevalence of media to produce material objects than on the
media to communicate messages. The latter is the basis of the former (Capurro,
1995, 1999).
V. From hermeneutics
to angeletics
Lastly,
I would like to mention the relationship existing between angeletics and
hermeneutics (Capurro, 2000). Hermeneutics was one of the main schools
of philosophical thought in the 20th century. Apart from the disputes between
schools (positivism, Marxism, critical rationalism, analytical philosophy,
scientific theory, etc.), we can say that one of the great results of the
study on the 20th century has been the awareness of the interpretative
nature of human knowledge and instruction. This is valid both for Karl
Popper, for example, who presented a characterization of scientific knowledge
as being an eminently conjectural knowledge, subject to empirical falsifications,
and for the "hermeneutic circle" explained by Hans-Georg Gadamer with basis
on Heideggerian analytics. Each interpretation presupposes a process of
message transmission. Hermes is first and foremost a messenger and, consequently,
an interpreter and translator. This message-bearing nature of knowledge
is exactly what angeletics wishes to analyze. Of course, this is just as
complicated and far-reaching a task as hermeneutics was last century. I
had intended in these few lines to invite my colleagues to jointly prepare
what could be a key-science for the newly-born century. As angeletics is
a message theory, it is in itself only a message aspiring to create common
knowledge around it and others. Its issues relate to origin, end purpose
and message content, power structures, techniques and means of diffusion,
ways of life, history(ies) of messages and messengers, coding and interpreting,
and psychological, political, economic, aesthetic, ethical and religious
aspects. In other words, a complete scientific cosmos.
Bibliography
Capurro,
R. (1995): Leben im Informationszeitalter.
Berlin 1995.
-
(1996): On the Genealogy of Information.
En: K. Kornwachs, K. Jacoby, Eds: Information. New Questions to a Multidisciplinary
Concept. Berlin 1996, p. 259-270.
-
(1996a): Informationsethik nach Kant und Habermas.
En: A. Schramm, Ed.: Philosophie in Österreich. Viena 1996, p. 307-310.
-
(1999): Ich bin ein Weltbürger aus Sinope
- Vernetzung als Lebenskunst. En: P. Bittner,
J. Woinowski, Eds.: Mensch - Informatisierung - Gesellschaft. Münster
1999, p. 1-19.
-
(1999a): Beyond the Digital.
-
(2000): Hermeneutik im Vorblick.
Flusser,
V. (1996): Kommunikologie. Mannheim 1996.
Serres,
M. (1993): La légende des Anges. Paris 1993.
Sloterdijk,
P. (1997): Kantilenen der Zeit. En: Lettre International, 36, p. 71-77.
-
(1983): Kritik der zynischen Vernunft. Frankfurt a.M. 1983
Vattimo,
G. (1989): La società trasparente. Milano 1989.
Zizek,
S. (1997): Die Pest der Phantasmen. Wien 1997.
Last
update: June 23, 2003
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