Past, Present and Future 175Notes
1 Incidentally, the full text runs as follows: ‘vivir es constantemente decidir lo que vamos a ser’. The
author states further: ‘nuestra vida es ante todo toparse con el futuro ... la vida es una actividad que
se ejecuta hacia adelante, y el presente o el pasado se descubre después, en relatión con ese futuro. La vida
es futurición, es lo que aun no es’ (‘life is above all dealing with the future ... life is a progressive
activity, and the present or the past is discovered with hindsight, in relation to the future. Life
consists of making futures; it is what it is becoming’; Ortega y Gasset, 1995, p228). For a further
comment, see Remmers, 1998, chap. 7, esp. pp313–317.
2 I am acutely aware that it is easier to speak about the great period of modernization than it is
to define the period. Two issues are clear. First, the era of modernization was constructed only
gradually in civil society as a whole. The rise of capitalism – initially in the Italian city states,
later in The Netherlands – and the subsequent civil revolution in France, the Enlightenment,
and the industrialization that started in England all represent many stages in this protracted
process. Second, it is clear that the same process of modernization occurred in agriculture much
later than in the urban sphere of influence, although it is not clear exactly where and when to
situate the turning point. The work of Hofstee is a case in point. In his ‘early’ work Hofstee
(1946, 1985) located modernization (the turning point from a traditional to a modern-dy-
namic cultural pattern) in the first half of the 19th century. Furthermore, he sometimes refers
to the early Middle Ages and to the periphery of the then feudal systems as the cradle of mod-
ernization. In his ‘later’ work (see, for example, Hofstee, 1953) the post-war period of the 20th
century acts as the turning point. The identification of the turning point is, as is well known,
highly controversial. Historians such as Van Zanden (1985) and particularly Bieleman (1987)
have indicated that in the olden days agriculture already showed remarkably ‘modern’ features.
Be that as it may, it is striking in this controversy that no one disputes the difference between
‘traditional’ and ‘modern’. The big question is where, and particularly when, to situate the
beginning of certain phases.
3 Again, it is not my intention to look for clear boundaries in time, hence the use of the vague
description in the main text. Incidentally, it is remarkable that this ‘next phase’ started earlier in
agriculture, so it seems, than in the rest of society. See in addition Chapter 6, where the function-
ing of the expert system in agriculture is described.
4 As I will demonstrate below, we should perhaps say: in that which specifies our future. The con-
temporary expert systems are more than just a collection of scientists, specialists and experts. They
are also the paramount prisoners of the axioms that regulate knowledge production.
5 James Scott relates the phenomenon of mega- or macroprojects largely to the functioning of the
contemporary state. Thus, he interprets megaprojects as ‘state simplifications’. These simplifica-
tions (as such inherent in the functioning of bureaucracies) ‘do not successfully represent the
actual activity of the society they depict, nor are they intended to; they represent only that slice of
it that interests the official observer... [They are simplifications] that, when allied with state
power, will enable much of the reality they depict to be remade’ (1998, p3). Scott points out that
the development of megaprojects (‘the tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering’) arises
from a combination of four elements: the ‘administrative ordering of nature and society’, a ‘high-
modernist ideology’, an authoritative state (‘willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive
power to bring the high-modernist designs into being’), and finally ‘a prostrate civil society that
lacks the capacity to resist these plans’ (1998, pp4–5). Indeed, those seem to be the required and
necessary conditions with respect to the cases Scott analyses. However, if we introduce the mod-
ernization of agriculture into the analysis, these conditions appear insufficient. Agricultural mod-
ernization as a megaproject takes place (just like various other contemporary macroprojects)
under democratic conditions, which refers indirectly to the considerable influence obtained by and
assigned to the expert systems.