THE BABEL EFFECT

This article continues a series examining the foundations of knowledge and collective action. The first three articles established that physics operates in three epistemically autonomous perspectives—observational, relational, and interpretative—, that individual dogmas are inevitable but simultaneous collective dogmas are avoidable, and that a heuristic inspired by Yin-Yang (the Interpretative Incompleteness Principle) allows combating stagnation in the interpretative perspective. They also introduced the concept of half-truth, by which false concepts persist and propagate hidden in conjunction with concepts held as true. The present essay shifts the focus from the conceptual structures of science to the organizational structures that produce and sustain them. It proposes the concept of the Babel Effect to designate a universal phenomenon: every formal organization inevitably deviates from its stated goal over time, through endogenous and exogenous mechanisms of competition and coercion. Three central mechanisms of the effect are identified: (A) internal competition for power, space, and influence; (B) interorganizational competition to reduce rivalry; (C) combating nonadherents. It is argued that the Babel Effect is uncontrollable but treatable, amenable to mitigation through mandatory periodic dissolution: the dissolution of the organization at regular intervals and its re-creation with the assets of the previous version, with former leaders barred from participating in the new board. Objections, variants of the proposal, and its application to different organizational types are discussed, with emphasis on scientific institutions. It is concluded that the worst consequence of the effect is its invisibility to the agents themselves, who join institutions for the original formal goal and, without realizing it, contribute against it.