Experimentation joined logical analysis over 350 years ago. Simulation, the experiment of the civilization of illiteracy, is becoming the dominant scientific form of expression of the systematic search for the multitude of elements involved in new scientific theories and in their applications. A variety of simulators embody knowledge and doubt. This can be seen in a broader context. Through simulation, variability is accounted for, relations are scrutinized, functional dependencies are tested over a wide array of data critical to the performance of new systems, or over a wide array of the people involved with them. After heroically, and necessarily, separating from philosophy and establishing its own methods, science is rediscovering the need for the dimension covered by human reasoning. This is, after all, what the subject matter of artificial intelligence is and what it ultimately produces: simulations of our capability to reason. In the same vein, scientists are concerned with the metaphysics of the beginning of the universe, and the language of the mind (lingua mentis), evidently assumed to be different from language as we use it in the framework of community, cultural, and national existence.
To reflect upon the beginning of the universe or upon the mind means to constitute oneself, together with the appropriate language, in a pragmatic context different from community interaction, cultural values, or national characteristics. The focus is changed from obsession with quantity to preoccupation with quality. Qualities are pursued in the attempt to build a science of artificial reality. As a scientific artifact, this reality is endowed with characteristics of life, such as change and evolution over time, selection of the fittest, the best adapted to that world, and acquisition of knowledge, common sense, and eventually language. Focused on the model of life as a property of organization, artificial reality is intent on generating lifelike behavior: iterative optimization, learning, growth, adaptability, reproduction, and even self-identification. Whereas science followed strategies of standardization, artificial life is focused on generating conditions for diversity, which eventually foster adaptability. Allocation of resources within a system and strategies of co-evolution are seen as resources of incremental performance. Research starts from a premise that belongs to the realm of reasoning, not rationality: humans and the problem being solved are continuously changing.
Exploring the virtual
Virtual realities are focused on almost everything that art pursues: illusion of space, time, movement, projection of human emotions. Interacting with such a system means that the person becomes involved in the inside of images, sounds, and movements. All these are simulated, using animation as the new language of the science that the moving image embodies. In some ways, virtual reality becomes a general purpose simulator of a captivating variable reality, made possible by mediating elements such as computer graphics images, animation, digital sound, tracking devices, and quite a number of other elements. Inside this reality, virtual objects, tools, and actions open the possibility of practical experiences of self-constitution in a meta- knowledge world.
Quality in virtual reality is also pursued as scientists try to give a coherent image of the very first minutes of the universe. Physics, genetics, biophysics, biochemistry, geology, and all else integrated in this multi-mediated effort are turned from science into natural history or philosophic ontology. To explain why physicists needed an indestructible proton for explaining matter is not an issue of numbers, precision, or equations, but of common sense: If protons could decay, mountains, oceans, stars, and planets would crumble and turn back into neutrons and electrons, and a reversal of the Big Bang might occur. Is this predictive rationality? Is validation of this type of experimentation a subject of language? As a possible explanation, which facilitates a new array of experiments in computer simulation, particle accelerators, and radio- astronomic observations, virtual reality facilitates new forms of human praxis and is embodied in new theories of physics.
Obviously, the efficiency factor, one of the major elements in the transition from one dominant literacy to partial literacies, plays an important role in this endeavor. This generalized notion of efficiency has several components in the case of science. One is the efficiency of our attempts to make science productive. Compared to the efficiency of the lever and the pulley, the efficiency of the electric engine reaches a different scale of magnitude. The same applies to our new tools, but in more dramatic ways. So far, we have managed to make science the most expensive human endeavor. Its current development appears to be motivated by a self-perpetuating drive: knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Science generated technology, which dramatically affects the outcome of human effort.
The second component factor in the transition to the pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy is the efficiency of our preparation for commanding these new tools, new forms of energy, and new forms of human interaction. Learning how to operate simple mechanical devices is different from learning how to program new tools capable of commanding sophisticated technology and of controlling tremendous amounts of energy. Although mediation has increased in human praxis, people do not yet know how to handle mediation, even less how to adapt education, their own and their children's, to shorter cycles of scientific and technological renewal.
Last among the factors at work in the change we are going through is the efficiency of invention, discovery, and explanation. Largely supported by society (states invest in science in order to pursue their goals, as do businesses and various interest groups), science is under the pressure of performance.
Markets confirm scientific results from the perspective of the return on investment they promise to deliver. Parallel to the most advanced and promising scientific endeavors, venture capital underwrites the industries of the near future. Insulation of any kind, even secrecy, no matter how stubbornly pursued and justified, is no longer possible within the economic dynamics of the present. No matter how hard companies try to impose secrecy, they fail when faced with the interactivity and integration of effort characteristic of the new dynamics. The expectation of change, of shorter cycles of investigation, and of shorter times for integration of results in the productive ability of technology is unavoidable. Still, in the USA and in Europe, there are conflicts between the new dynamics of scientific and technological progress and the bureaucracy of science. Driven by motivations characteristic of literate infatuation with national pride and security, this bureaucracy extends well beyond science and is hard at work to protect what is already passé. For science to advance, networks of activity, distributed tasks, and shared resources, all implying transparency and access, are essential.
The conflict between scientific goals and morality takes on its own characteristics in the civilization of illiteracy. Indeed, scientific results might be right, but not necessarily always good for humankind. They might support higher efficiency, but sometimes to the detriment of people obsessed with maintaining high standards of living. There are many activities-too many to list-in which humans can be entirely replaced by machines. Extreme effort, exposure to chemicals, radiation, and other unfriendly elements could be avoided. However, doing away with the living person whose identity is constituted in work experiences makes the activity itself questionable. It is no longer the case that we only talk about genetic control of populations, or about mind control, about creating machines endowed with extreme capabilities, including control of the people who made them. These are distinct possibilities, to which we are closer than many believe. Neither science nor technology, even less philosophy, can afford to ignore the conflict immanent in the situation, or the danger posed by giving in to solutions resulting from a limited perspective, or from our dedication to make real everything that is possible. After all, we can already destroy the planet, but we do not, or at least not so radically as it could be destroyed. Short of being paralyzed by all these dangers, science has to question its own condition. In view of this, it is far from accidental that sciences in the civilization of illiteracy rediscover philosophy, or they re-philosophize themselves.