Babel: Confusion of tongues

The Tower of Babel

Bruehel's Tower of Babel, 1563

"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children builded. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel (confusion); because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." - Genesis 11:1-9

A being causes a system to fail by adding complexity + fragmentation; the tower is not completed because its production system (the people) is divided by language + location. Order + understanding change to chaos + complexity.

The confusion of tonuges (confusio linguarum) happened after the collaspe of the Tower of Babel; according to the bible it is thought as the first fragmentation of human languages.'The Confusion of Tongue' Gustave Dore, 1865.

Other accounts suggest that God was responsible for the fall of the tower by using great winds. (Book of Jubilees, Corneluis Alexander (frag. 10), Abydenus (frag. 5-6), Josephus (Antiquities 1.4.3), and the Sibylline Oracles (iii, 117-129)). “When all men were of one language, some of them built a tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven, but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave every one his peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon” - Josephus, (Antiquities 1.4.3)