Sometime in late 1970 or early 1971, a 23-year-old Patrick Gunkel was asked by MIT computer scientist Edward Fredkin to produce a statement of career ambitions.
Gunkel had just made his debut on the MIT campus by barging into the office of artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky while he was discussing undiscovered geniuses with Fredkin, and Minsky was so impressed—both with Gunkel and his remarkable appearance at the most coincidental possible moment—that he wanted to hire the young man despite his lack of formal education.
What Gunkel sent Fredkin, among other things, as his entrée to the world of MIT, was a very unorthodox statement of ambition titled “Some of the Things Which I Want to Do Include:”
Note: I have the right to disseminate this material. It may not be copied, stored, reproduced, or disseminated without express written permission. However, excerpts can and should be used for scholarly purposes.
I wrote about this document earlier in the year.
But as it turns out, Gunkel never forgot about this list… and about ten years later, he massively revised and expanded it, going from 14 career goals to 60.
Titled “Goals and Tasks,” the 60-point list was recently unearthed from archival materials and I am now presenting it for the world to see in all its expansive, intellectually grandiose glory.
I mentioned the following in my coverage of Gunkel’s original list, but I’ll say it again now—reading through Gunkel’s “Goals and Tasks,” what’s clear is that while Gunkel was wildly, ridiculously, impossibly ambitious and unrealistic in what he imagined for a single person to do in their time on Earth, he was not crazy.
He was not suffering from paranoia; he was not spitting out world salad.
He was not inherent illogical.
Rather, he was behaving as a gadfly of sorts, a provocateur demonstrating in writing that it was possible to push the human mind—his mind—to the utmost limits to comprehend not what might be possible to do, but what might be possible to comprehend.
Just as Gunkel’s early list is jam-packed with grandiose notions about reconfiguring reality, “Goals and Tasks” is also a list of what are essentially Utopian thought experiments.
And while some thinkers have arrived at a few similar ideas and written essays to develop and explore them, perhaps even making just one or two such thought-experiments the entire ambition and output of their life’s work, Gunkel simply could not be bothered to elaborate or pigeon-hole himself into just a few of these overarching ideas.
Like Francis Bacon before him, Gunkel had in mind a grand plan to completely reconfigure human knowledge and propel human society forward.
He was thinking about the universe, humanity, and reality on the grandest possible scale…. and it shows.
Note: I have the right to disseminate this material. It may not be copied, stored, reproduced, or disseminated without express written permission. However, excerpts can and should be used for scholarly purposes.
Might Patrick Gunkel Be the Patron Saint of Transhumanism?
Transhumanism is a philosophy and movement advocating the use of science and technology to expand human capacities, extend healthy life, and reduce suffering.
With earlier twentieth-century roots, it took shape as an organized movement largely in the 1980s and 1990s and has since developed an international network of advocates.
The “Goals and Tasks” list—in addition to providing a valuable key to help decode many of Gunkel’s ideas underlying ideonomy, the science of ideas he founded—offers further evidence that Gunkel ought to be at the forefront of the transhumanist movement: its patron saint, if not one of its key thinkers.
My research has found that Gunkel did associate with transhumanists and even participate in meetings with associated organizations at various points in time.
But as I’ve written before several times, Gunkel did not play nice in groups.
And it’s very possible the ideas Gunkel could have contributed were overlooked by other, better-credentialed figures who found themselves put off or even threatened by the thin, fast-talking high school dropout with wireframe glasses who called you randomly on the phone and assailed you with an avalanche of excited thoughts.
I don’t consider myself a transhumanist, but I generally agree with the broad goals of the movement.
In Gunkel’s “Goals and Tasks” list—none of which he achieved during his lifetime—many of the key themes of transhumanism are clearly addressed, including the following:
#19: to understand and transcend—or see transcended—human nature, or humanity’s human limits; and
#34: to anticipate and serve the infinite future evolution of transhuman intelligence and being (that the field of artificial intelligence will initiate);
Although I wouldn’t go so far as to claim the list “Goals and Tasks” could serve as a manifesto of sorts—there are a few tensions, and transhumanism itself isn’t a unified movement—it is certainly an inspiring document that ought to solidify Gunkel as a major thinker in this area, someone worth a renewed close look by transhumanist thinkers and writers who have unfortunately overlooked him.
A Few Notes on the List
I apologize for the quality of the images here.
Not only was the original photography less than ideal, but there was some error in transferring the images to the internet that I did not have time to address.
To help assist with greater reference and use, I’ve transcribed and posted the list below.
A few things that stood out to me after an intial reading:
Although the list mentions ideonomy, some of the language shows that this list was likely developed before Gunkel had begun his ideonomy grant. Specifically, although the mention of an “omniverse” is number one on the list, Gunkel does not use the later word he coined for a parallel concept to refer to “the systematic universe of all possible ideas”—ideocosm. In fact, it seems here that Gunkel is using the term “omniverse” to describe what he later called “the ideocosm.”
A portion of the ideas on the list are explained in more detail by Gunkel’s philosophy, the Efflorescent World View, which he also mentions. For example, ideas like “the Principle of Fundamental Complexity” (#56) and #27, “infinite complexity and complementary infinite simplicity, and the infinite hierarchy of higher realities (“ultrarealities”),” are themes that Gunkel developed throughout the 1970s as part of his World View.
The list also shows that although Gunkel considered himself a libertarian politically, he was very ethically grounded. Among other statements on his list, Gunkel specifically stated that he hoped to “eliminate all forms of intolerance (save intolerance of intolerance).”
I also can’t help but notice that Gunkel was still hung up on the concept of an “Encyclopedia of the Future,” which was a real project that had actually seen years of discussion between Walt Disney Enterprises and Encyclopedia Britannica in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (I have some fascinating details about this project, which I will publish at some point.) What is particularly fascinating about this project is that in 1996, MacMillian actually published such an encyclopedia literally called “The Encyclopedia of the Future.” So it was not a bad idea. It was just, as far as I can tell based on my research, too much Gunkel for all parties involved.
Don’t You Want to Know WHAT ELSE IS OUT THERE?
Speaking of Gunkel’s “Encyclopedia of the Future” project, I want to emphasize again that there is clearly much more “Gunkelia” out there and we really have no idea what it might consist of.
We have some idea of what has never been publicly shared because of the documents Gunkel mentioned in his writing, but there are many “unknown unknowns” such as the list I’ve posted today—a document that I couldn’t have dreamed existed until I actually found it.
Every time I come across something like this, I’m stunned to realize just how much material Gunkel produced in his lifetime and how much, proportionally, may never be encountered by the public at the exact moment it has become relevant.
I’m trying to track down and publicly share as much of it as I can before it all disappears or gets sold to private owners, which is what I’m most worried about, but as I have repeatedly pointed out, this is not my day job, and there are several people out there who could do more to help… and they really aren’t doing so.
GOALS AND TASKS
By Patrick Gunkel, circa 1980
To explore the systematic universe of all possible ideas (the omniverse);
To generate all possible—maximally original, important, and beneficial—ideas, in every imaginable domain;
To describe and shape the future;
To elicit excellence in all things;
To edify and inspire mankind;
To enhance civilization’s wisdom and intelligence;
To anticipate and found new fields (of science, art, scholarship, industry, &c);
To create and foster a revolutionary new world view (my Efflorescent Worldview);
To reshape worldwide intellectual research;
To create and promote a new ethic and ethos;
To initiate new modes of thought;
To transform logic into an anamorphic, infinite, creative and applied subject;
To cause mankind to transcend all existing religions and political ideologies by substituting a new, all-comprehensive and benign, equivalent;
To establish the first real civilization;
To catalyze a new world intellectual and cultural renaissance—e.g. via my 99-element Renaissance Program;
To be a universal Aristarch, or critic of all persons, things and ideas;
To foster an infinite aesthetic, or maximize our knowledge of the Sublime;
To eliminate all forms of intolerance (save intolerance of intolerance) and institute a lasting, universal peace;
To understand and transcend—or see transcended—human nature, or humanity’s human limits;
To make taxonomy universal;
To trigger a “panideocratic revolution” and a “democracy of ideas” (wherein humanity would simultaneously concern itself with the synergistic study, realization and coevolution of all possible ideas—or “panideism”);
To found and promote ideonomy, or the science and technology of all possible ideas;
To transform education, in line with all this;
To perfect the network of panhuman associations;
To re-create government;
To maximize the differentiation and diversity of men and their world;
To research nature’s infinite complexity and complementary infinite simplicity, and the infinite hierarchy of higher realities (“ultrarealities”);
To stimulate an infinite pansophic enterprise, concerned with the compilation, transformation, provision, unification, exploitation and transcendence: of all possible knowledge;
To survey and minimize all ignorance;
To pose all possible questions in their systematic entirety;
To conceive and promote the establishment of new types of institutions, or refashion the institutional fabric of civilization;
To revolutionize scientific logic, and, in particular, to create a new physical logic;
To aid the triumph of Reason, Science and Eros (defined for the nonce as the human spirit’s yearning for infinite perfection and transcendence);
To anticipate and serve the infinite future evolution of transhuman intelligence and being (that the field of artificial intelligence will initiate);
To discover and publicize man’s unrealized tendentially infinite responsibilities (via revolutionary deontology);
To master the human brain and the basis of its intelligence;
To rationalize—learn and publish the reasons for—all things;
To revolutionize the science, technology, and art of representation—e.g. via “ideographics” (graphics serving ideas);
To promote telesis (progress intelligently planned) or the world’s planned self-evolution;
To advance revolutionary proposals in every area, and of every kind, imaginable;
To foster “hodography” (or prior description of future stages, elements, methods, programs, options, interconnections, forms, needs, problems, areas, purposes, and accomplishments: of research in science and technology) as itself an important form of research;
To foresee and encourage: the future roboticization of all industry, the transformation of economics from being the science of scarcity to being the science of abundance, the transmutation and supersedure of existing industries, the development of “kaleidoscopic industry” (producing infinitely protean goods and services), and the arrival of the Cornucopian Age of tendentially infinite exponential economic growth and metamorphosis;
To promote the future merger of the physical and mental sciences and of physical and mental things (by transcending the passé physico-mental dichotomy);
To promote the future synthesis of art and science and redevelopment of art as a form of science and technology;
To transform axiology—or the study of values—into a genuine science;
To promote the future’s revolutionary fusion of four things that have remained fundamentally separate from time immemorial: education, play, work and the rest of life;
To guide mankind’s passage through the critical Great Transition of the next century or so;
To develop a universal science of order;
To evolve a science of analogy;
To research all fundamental paradoxes;
To compile, research, and draw attention to all scientific anomalies;
To develop a theory, taxonomy, and science of “stories” (or progressively unfolding diachronic processes—which according to my world view are what all things essentially represent);
To study all possible comparisons (syncrises), contradictions (antilogies), and unions (antisyzygies) of opposites;
To discover all possible ontological categories and advance “myriontology” (or a proposed future doctrine and science that would treat all things nonuniquely or as being many or all things simultaneously, a la wave-particle duality);
To justify and illustrate the consequences of “Pantruth” (my concept that all possible statements must be true simultaneously) and “Panexistence” (or what the Hindus call Savastivadam; my concept that all things imaginable and unimaginable must simultaneously exist—so that reality is an absolute Plenum);
To exemplify the Principle of Fundamental Complexity (a principle of mine asserting that nothing is absolutely fundamental in that there must always be infinite series of ever more fundamental things);
To develop “ultracosmology”, or the science of all possible universes;
To anticipate and advance the future Age of Super Perception (when superperceptual technology will lead to the progressive revelation of the infinitely multifold and complex content of both nature and the human microcosm);
To win funding for, and oversee the production of, The Encyclopedia of the Future (e.g. with 21 volumes, 3,000 articles, 1,000 contributors); and
To spur and contribute to the scientific study, reconstruction, and deliberate evolution of human language.
