Inclusionality: Bringing Evolutionary Awareness to Perception, Inquiry and Community-Constituent 'Management'
Montréal, June 11, 2001
http://www.goodshare.org/aware.htm
This essay, on understanding the nature of 'dynamical order' (sustainable coresonance) and 'dissonance' (dispersive conflict), in the relationship between 'community-and-constituent' ties such understanding to the evolution of perception and inquiry approaches as are embodied in 'scientific analysis' and the 'Systems Sciences'. The connection is made between the 'passing through' of the 'reasoning geometry' of the perception and inquiry approach which we 'impose' on the phenomena we inquire into and the 'geometry' of the 'scientific view' which emerges from the respective perception and inquiry approach. In particular, it is shown how the 'one-to-many' (causal) dynamical ordering geometry of the 'logical' or 'rational' approach leads to 'one-to-many' (causal) views of how the world works and to 'one-to-many' control-hierarchy approaches to community-constituent system management, while the 'many-to-one' (inductive) dynamical ordering geometry of the 'inclusional' approach leads to 'many-to-one' (inductive) views of how the world works and to 'many-to-one' egalitarian co-creative approaches to community-constituent system management.
The issues of 'community-as-complex-system', as they pertain to 'business management' or 'social systems management' is in a state of confusion for one very simple reason which was identified by Johannes Kepler in 1618, and articulated in 'Harmonies of the World'; i.e. the way we describe 'order' in the world for the purpose of diagoia ('discussive intellection') is not the same as the hous ('intuitive intellection') needed for our participative co-creation of order in our containing space [1].
More specifically, the way we have been (scientifically) describing 'order' in the world for the purposes of scientific discussion has been in a 'one-to-many' sense; i.e. in term of the actions and transactions of material entities. One typically diagrams this in terms of 'history' with 'time' running from the left to the right and the one-to-many branches growing more 'bushy' as one moves to the right along the axis of time.
But this is not the same as our immersed-in-space perception, inquiry and response when we participate with other constituents in 'co-creating' order; i.e. when we co-create order from an immersed sense of participation it has a 'many-to-one' geometry which cannot actually be diagrammed on a flat sheet of paper. For example, when we are driving on a crowded freeway, ... in this 'immersed-in-space' positioning (rather than 'voyeur view from a helicopter'), we allow our actions to be guided by the shape of the holes which we 'co-create' in collaboration with our fellow freeway drivers. That is, we key our actions relativistically to the dynamic geometry of space in which we are immersed, ... and we act so as to simultaneously, reciprocally transform the geometry of our containing space so that it sustains our 'opportunity-to-act'.
So, from the helicopter, we plot the trajectories of the vehicles (material objects) and their 'one-to-many' 'transactions' (how they causally effect the trajectories of their fellows), but from our immersed-in-life position, we think in the 'many-to-one' terms of how our relative actions co-transform the dynamic geometry of our containing space which governs our, and our fellow constituents, 'opportunity-to-act'.
Kepler described this duality of how we think of the evolution of 'order' in a system in the context of the 'archetypal' system of the sun and planets. He pointed out that the 'rational' system of describing things in terms of the actions and transactions of material objects is too indirect and cumbersome to guide our actions as immersed participants (in ''real-life inline mode'), and that in real-life experience, we reference instead to the geometric shape of our enveloping space,.... a dynamic geometric shape which we co-create as in the freeway driving example.
In terms of space and time concepts, ... when we are in immersed mode, the dynamics of the constituent 'references' directly to the reciprocal, co-created many-to-one dynamic geometry of space and this is a 'relativistic' view since we do not impose the notion of euclidian space and absolute time which is needed to describe things in terms of the one-to-many actions and transactions of material objects. Kepler's discussion of this general principle, that there are really two scientific views, one of which is a descriptive one-to-many view by a 'voyeur (excluded) observer' and the other is a many-to-one 'participative' view by an 'included observer' is included below in footnote [1]
Now from a 'science' and 'systems' viewpoint, this duality wherein 'many-to-one' order is co-created by the immersed participants but we attempt to reduce it for scientific discussion purposes down to the 'shallower' terms of 'one-to-many' order as seen by a voyeur observer, can confuse our systems of perception, inquiry and management and such confusion is indeed leading to many problems in our modern society.
Here's the heart of the problem which is 'confusing' our scientific and systems inquiry.
In the solar system, and in nature in general, systems as seen in an inner-outer dynamical context by the 'included participating observer', have a relativistic 'many-to-one' ordering geometry. For example, the system of sun and planets is a 'coresonant' system which can be described in the terms that 'the earth references its movement to the dynamic geometry of the overall system of sun and planets'. For the purpose of scientific discussion, we can certainly describe the geometry of each planet's trajectory in terms of euclidian space and absolute time, but such description is innately incapable of getting to the 'many-to-one' coresonance which involves each immersed constituent directly referencing its actions to the overall system dynamic it is co-creating.
In 'many-to-one' relativistic system dynamics, the symmetry of the dynamic orients to the center of coherency of the system, as in the case of the 'many-to-one' motion of a hurricane where the particles of air and moisture orient to the 'eye' of the storm, ... the 'center of coherency' of the dynamical system which emerges co-creatively from its dynamically evolving containing space.
In the freeway driving example, the 'center of coherency' does not stay in one place (i.e. there are multiple centers of coherency), but the situation is nevertheless characterized by the coherency of the dynamic geometry of space co-created by the constituency of drivers, ... and such 'relativistic' dynamic coherencies in the geometry of space, which are apparent to the immersed constituent, are innately beyond the capability of description in the 'one-to-many' terms of standard analytical science.
Mainstream scientific inquiry is built upon 'fixed identity objects' and their 'actions and transactions' along the axis of (absolute) time but one must ask, ...'does such inquiry have the capability for dealing with relativistic 'many-to-one' ordering coherencies?'
To answer this question, one can think of playing the game of pool. Do the actions and transactions of the balls in the game of pool 'tell the whole story'?
The skilled pool player will emphatically say 'no'. In pool lingo, perception and inquiry based solely on 'shots' (the domain of actions and transactions of the balls seen as independent causal agents) misses out the most important aspect of the game which is 'shape' (how the opportunity-to-move 'seen' by each and every ball transforms simultaneously, reciprocally with the movement of any ball). The skilled pool player plays 'shape-over-shots' (i.e. he puts the need to manage the coherent transformation of the geometry of space into the primacy over the management of the actions and transactions of the balls since the geometry of space constitutes the 'opportunity-to-act' for the constituents immersed in that space). Note that this is not an 'either/or' choice since the 'shape-over-shots' perception and inquiry approach 'includes', in an informational context, the information on the actions and transactions of the constituent balls, it simply does not 'start building a view of how things work' on top of such an approximated and informationally reduced conceptualization. In other words, while there is room to manage one's shots within a 'shape-over-shots' management approach, there is no room for 'managing shape' within a 'shots-over-shape' management approach (in the latter approach, one inevitably snookers oneself in terms of forward 'opportunity-to-act' when one's mind is 'bewitched' by 'causing things to happen' in the domain of 'making shots' and forgetting the fact that any movement of any ball is, simultaneously, reciprocally, a transformation of the dynamical geometry of space constituting 'opportunity-to-act',... and this type of 'snookering', where we are 'bewitched' by the process of 'making things happen' out of the context of how this reciprocally transforms our 'opportunity-to-make-things-happen' is the common curse of our western 'one-to-many' mode of systems management).
Scientific inquiry normally stops with the description of 'shots' (the causative actions and transactions of the material objects involved), as the dynamically transforming 'shape of space' (opportunity-to-act) requires a relativistic framing wherein the constituent of space references to the geometry of space. Informationally, this requires the retention of the unique dynamical geometry 'seen by' each immersed constituent of space as he/it participates in the co-creative transformation of the dynamic geometry of his/its containing space (i.e. the co-creative evolution of the shape of opportunity-to-act).
The systems sciences in the latter part of the twentieth century recognized this major 'shortfall' in scientific analysis or 'causal' analysis, particularly when applied to social systems.
Russell Ackoff describes the shortfall in the terms that while scientific 'analysis' is a 'down-and-back-up-again' inquiry, ...this presumes a persisting 'fixed identity' of the system we are analyzing (the notion of a 'trajectory' implies that something with a persisting (fixed) identity is moving along a particular locus). But, as he points out, what if we are 'analyzing' a university? Do we start by assuming an a priori definition of the functions and faculties of a university and how they work?... i.e. do we start from a pre-defined definition of 'university' and go 'down-and-back-up-again' and seek to optimize the functioning of our fixed definition 'university'.
Or, do we instead, take into account that the 'university' is responding to some 'opportunity' which has emerged within its enveloping space, ... within the supersystem of 'community' which includes the university?
Ackoff pointed out that we needed first of all to do 'up-and-back-down-again' inquiry to find out the 'shape of the opportunity' which had emerged in the enveloping community (in which the 'university' was included) which had elicited the emergence of the 'university'. Since the 'shape of the opportunity' (the 'dynamic geometry of the containing space') is not a 'thing' but a purely relational dynamic geometry, ... it would seem wise to avoid referring to the emergent relational need, the 'dynamical space which must be filled', by such a discrete name as 'university'. One could just call the 'dynamical hole' which needed to be filled, for example, 'savoir-besoin' (a need for knowledge).
The point being made by the systems scientists is that for the system to stay in a 'many-to-one' state of coresonance (community-constituent-coresonance), one would need to recursively repeat the 'up-and-back-down-again' inquiry so as to evolve the definition of the system in reconciling it with the 'down-and-back-up-again' inquiry to allow the notion of university to evolve in a relativistic, coresonant relationship with its containing and including supersystem space of 'community'.
That is, in the outer-inner limit of such bidirectional inquiry, the components (subsystems) of the 'university' (or whatever we want to call it) reference directly (relativistically) to the overall dynamics of the enveloping community rather than referencing to a static, generalized definition of a university. This 'community-constituent-coresonance' geometry replicates in a dynamic, inclusional, inner-outer nested fashion in nature, from the community of molecules in a cell which is included in the community of cells in an organ which is included in the community of organs in an organism which is included in the community (of organisms) in a community which is included in the global community etc. Since the spherical space of the biosphere is unbounded, one can imagine the simultaneity (multilevel nested coresonance) of this system extending on indefinitely into the space-time continuum. That is, if the space-time continuum of biospheric space is regarded as the natural containing Unum,... one can refer the notion of 'simultaneity' to it and thus think of 'motion' not in terms of sequence along an absolute axis of time, but instead, in terms of the continuing transformation of the Unum of the space-time continuum.
Now it is evident that we are not really talking 'up' and 'down' as in the systems sciences terminology, ... terms which emerge from the 'rectangular' aspect of euclidian space, but are instead talking about 'inclusional' systems wherein 'inner-outer' dynamical balance is what is needed, the general case in nature (e.g. when we are hungry we are trying to rebalance the inner and outer). The terms 'up' and 'down' will continue to be used in this essay for the convenience of relating the discussion to systems science concepts.
When scientific inquiry concerns itself only with 'down-and-back-up-again' inquiry associated with the actions and transactions of the parts and what their overall 'effects' are, ... it runs into the Gödel's Theorem limitation of logic. Here's how it happens;
We want our 'university' to operate 'correctly' and so we set up a linear control hierarchy for imposing 'one-to-many' order ('causal order') throughout the system of university. Gödel's Theorem says that 'the judge who judges the operating correctness of all those (subsystems) who cannot judge their own operating correctness cannot judge his own operating correctness but cannot avoid doing so if he wants the overall system to work 'correctly''. That is, WHO can say what is a 'correctly working university'. We avoided that problem when we did the 'up-and-back-down-again' inquiry to understand the shape of the opportunity (the 'dynamic geometry of the containing space') and used that as the 'floating definition' for the thing called 'university' which was intended to satisfy the dynamical 'hole' in the enveloping container of community.
This Gödel's Theorem limitation of finite systems of logic has been described in terms of systems of logic 'not being able to stand on their own shoulders and look down on themselves to make sure that they are working logically'.
Now Kepler pointed out this limitation in the case of using 'one-to-many' logic while inquiring into the relativistic 'many-to-one' ordering in the system of sun and planets, in the following manner; ... if the Earth 'looks' at Mars, the earth sees that Mars has a pretzel-shaped orbit, as in the following 'Earth-centric' plot of Mars orbit (for the earth years 1580 - 1597; Mars years are 686/365 times longer) made by Kepler which he published in 1609;
The general principle is that if the observer, like 'Earth', is a participant in a 'many-to-one' ordered dynamical system (i.e. a 'complex system' or 'coresonant systems' such as the solar system where the system behaviour cannot be deduced by the behaviours of the components) then what the observer 'sees' is not the purely objective movements of the fellow constituent 'out there', but instead, what one sees includes the effects of one's own motion as mediated through the relativistic dynamics (community-constituent-coresonant dynamics) of the system within which it is an 'inclusion' (i.e. an 'included participant').
Logic will not inform the observer that the dynamics he is perceiving are 'distorted' by his own codynamical connection with what he is looking out at, because logic cannot 'stand on its own head' and look down at itself as it engages with its enveloping supersystem. Logic starts off, axiomatically, by defining what is out there and what 'it is doing' is taken to be the 'objective truth' (i.e. it is assumed that the behaviour of the thing is its 'in its own right behaviour' since the thing is assumed to 'exist in its own right' and not exhibit behaviour, as in 'many-to-one' coresonant systems, which is subordinate to, or a function of the over-riding behaviour of the enveloping, many-to-one system.).
But, as Kepler 'rightly concluded', if the Earth-observer effectively 'stood on his own head' and looked at the movement of the Earth relative to Mars from the center of coherency of the many-to-one dynamical system, ... it would then became apparent that the 'pretzel-shaped' orbit of Mars was not due to Mars 'in its own right' behaviour but was an artifact of the 'many-to-one' community-constituent-coresonance of the overall system imbued within the subjective perspective of the observing constituent due to their immersion within the many-to-one codynamic. (While the problem which 'many-to-one' community-constituent-coresonance posed to scientific description based on 'one-to-many' ordering did not escape Newton (see footnote [2]), the subtlety of Kepler's archetypeal modeling appears to have done so.)
The message is, and it is a very important one, ... the observer cannot generally assume that the actions of his fellow constituents of space are pure objective truth (as if his experience-modulated subjectivity did not 'touch' the incoming information); ... he must instead assume that his subjectivity due to his immersion in many-to-one codynamics distorts what he sees. In this case, it is futile to debate 'who has the correct perspective' since no constituents immersed in many-to-one dynamical systems can have a 'correct perspective' and instead, the constituents must bring their respective perceptions 'into connection in the mind' to determine, through the coherency of interfering relationships (wavefield continuation in the terms of Gabor's information theory), ... an approach which is facilitated by the 'sharing circle' of indigenous science, as this follow excerpt from www.goodshare.org/subtle.htm suggests;
* * *
Viewgraph 7.
"Science of Describing" and "Science of Living: Systems Inquiry
['small circles' are the top of 'heads' and the little eyelashes represent their orientation ]
On the left, The 'science of describing's' search and debate for the 'objective pieces to the puzzle' which make up the mythical 'true reality'
On the right, The Sharing Circle of the 'science of living' --- acceptance of the multi-reality aspect of Nature which comes from each constituent of space being uniquely positioned within the containing opportunity landscape.
"Am I too busy to listen to others when they have something valid to say? If the answer is yes, look at your ideas of self-importance and see yourself as one part of the whole of Great Mystery. Seek humility. . . . The Talking Stick clearly points to every direction on the Medicine Wheel as being good and worthy of experiencing. . . . [It] also teaches us how to use communication skills from the Native American viewpoint, which is to share feelings, wisdom, teachings, customs and Traditions without seeing others as wrong because they hold different Points of View." . . . Jamie Sams (The Sacred Path)
* * *
To give a further example, if the constituent of space is driving on a 'global autoroute' which circumscribes the globe, ... as in the following diagram excerpted from www.goodshare.org/aletheia.htm , ... and suddenly brakes for a rabbit crossing the road in front of him, ... that 'braking pulse' may travel backwards around the globe to the point that the driver in front of him will put on the brakes. In general, however, space is a mediator for many things and the driver's moves in front of him will be the synthesis of dynamics past and present, so that while he will 'see' some of the effects of his own actions appear 'in front of him', they may not be in a recognizable form.
* * *
Relativistic Inquiry/Response and the Global Highway
The
Global Autoroute
* * *
The standard 'rational' inquiry assumptions of Euclidian space and absolute time are innately incapable of incorporating these 'curved space' relativistic effects, since Euclidian space is, by contrast, 'empty', 'infinite' and 'non-participating in physical phenomena'. Henri Poincaré, mathematician and philosopher of science who is co-credited (with Einstein and Lorenz) for discovering relativity points out that we 'impose' our assumptions about space on our scientific inquiry, but cannot impose them on Nature;
"Space is another framework we impose upon the world" . . . " . . . here the mind may affirm because it lays down its own laws; but let us clearly understand that while these laws are imposed on our science, which otherwise could not exist, they are not imposed on Nature." . . . "Euclidian geometry is . . . the simplest, . . . just as the polynomial of the first degree is simpler than a polynomial of the second degree." . . . "the space revealed to us by our senses is absolutely different from the space of geometry." . . . Henri Poincaré in 'Science and Hypothesis'.
Living in the spherical space of the biosphere, relativistic effects are unavoidable as the game of pool suggests; i.e. the pool table with its reflecting banks, emulates the spherical space of the biosphere. For example, if one shoots a 'four-bank shot' into the upper corners so that it makes two 90 degree reflections across the corner, then comes diagonally back down across the table where it makes two more 90 degree reflections and comes back through the same point it started off, ... such a dynamic emulates going the 360 degrees around the outer surface of a sphere. The following diagram of a pool table superimposed on the sphere of the Earth is to make use of this analogy;
In general, if one removes a ball from the table (i.e. removes a constituent of space from the surface zone of the sphere), or adds one, it simultaneously, reciprocally changes the geometry of space representing 'opportunity-to-act' for all constituents', ... similarly if any ball is moved any amount, opportunity for all constituents of space is transformed simultaneously, reciprocally. Thus, biospheric space, the 'space of our experience' gives 'things' an identity and influence which is a function of 'Place', a 'Place-based' identity and influence which is in a continual state of transformation.
Any and all systems in nature are inclusionally nested in containing supersystems (ultimately 'Nature') which govern their 'opportunity-to-act' and since the 'opportunity-to-act' which gives meaning to a system is in a continuing codynamical state of flux, a purely 'down-and-back-up-again' analysis of the system will be 'incomplete' in the manner suggested by Gödel's Theorem where it is unable to fully define its own 'correctness' without access to the opportunity-giving context of its enveloping supersystem (i.e. without being able to stand on its own shoulders and look down on itself 'in action'). That is, the logical 'down-and-back-up-again' view of a system is a view which imposes 'stasis' on the system definition and fails to account for the fact that all systems in nature are 'inclusions' nesting within a continuing community-constituent-coevolution (supersystem-system-coevolution). Imposing 'logical stasis' on the 'evolutionary reality' of a natural phenomena (i.e. on the continuously evolving 'system') means that all definitions of a system are necessarily arbitrary once the meaning-giving context of the dynamic geometry of opportunity in the enveloping supersystem is abandoned and the system considered as if it is 'in its own right'. It is this 'splitting apart' of the system from the dynamical context-giving of evolution which comes with the imposing of a defining 'label' or 'name' for the system which in turn leads to the 'loose thread' of Gödel's Theorem irresolvability wherein 'the judge who judges the correctness of operation of those subsystems that cannot judge their own correctness of operation cannot judge his own correctness of operation but cannot avoid doing so if the overall correctness of operation of the system is to be fully assured'.
In other words, the stasis-of-definition imposed by logical labelling does not provide any consistency checks on the 'correctness' of its own definition and leaves the contextual definition of the system 'flapping in the breeze' (as alluded to in English humour where someone holds up a fork and says; 'In France, they call this 'une fourchette', in Germany, they call this 'ein Gabel' and in England, we call it a 'fork' which, of course, is what it actually is.'. While a named system can be defined in a 'down-and-back-up-again' context this says nothing about its ontogeny --- 'where it is coming from and where it is going to', yet an understanding of the ontogenetic or 'community-constituent-coevolutional' character of the constituents of evolutionary space is vital to a deeper-than-mechanical understanding of the way the world works. It is 'evolutionary context', the opening up of dynamical opportunity available through 'up-and-back-down-again' inquiry, as Ackoff has pointed out, that 'gives meaning' to the definition of a 'system' (a thing). Without such continually transforming, meaning-giving context provided by the dynamical opportunity in the enveloping supersystem, the logical correctness-of-operation of a system via the 'down-and-back-up-again' approach of scientific analysis is left 'unresolved', 'anchored' as it is as soon as we 'define it', in some unspecified, static 'snapshot' of meaning-giving context emanating from the non-explicitly specifiable continuum of enveloping and including space-time supersystems in which the named 'system in question' is an immersed inclusion. Logic, by imposing stasis on the evolutionary dynamic of the system, splits apart space-time into space and time (into fixed identity, name-labelled objects-in-empty-non-participating-space ('objects' implying 'systems' and their 'subsystems') re-animated in the 'back-up-again' part of the inquiry by the grace of the abstract invention of globally synchronous (absolute) time). This 'splitting apart' comes at the price of losing the evolving, contextual meaning of the system which originally was given to it by the enveloping dynamical geometry of opportunity which induced its emergence, a contextual meaning which is innately relational and relativistic (extending on indefinitely into the enveloping and including supersystems of the continuously evolving space-time continuum of nature).
All of what has been said in the last two paragraphs, which concerns the epistemology of 'defining' things in nature, applies also to 'language'. Language is to words as the over-nesting, evolving and including supersystems of nature are to the defined and 'named' system. Thus the 'invention' of explicit words for 'things' (i.e. 'nouns') imposes a 'splitting apart' of space and time in the same manner as in the geometry of the above discussion.
It is thus not simply by chance that the Native American languages have opted for the 'up-and-back-down-again' opportunity-oriented view which avoids nouns since this avoidance preserves the natural primacy of evolution over the fixed identity labelling of 'inclusions' within the evolving space-time continuum. On the other hand, the western culture's proclivity for imposing 'literal' meaning on word-labels for things, ... the meaning of a thing 'in its own right' captured in a word, ... runs into the Gödel's Theorem .trap where the contextual source of meaning which comes from the over-nesting supersystems of language which give dynamical opportunity to the word cannot be imbued in the 'name-label, and the meaning is subject to irresolvability wherein; 'the word that defines the meaning of all those words that cannot define their own meaning cannot define its own meaning but cannot avoid doing so if the system of words is to have consistent meaning'. That is, a 'word' is defined by the use of sub-supportive words in a manner similar to a system being defined in terms of its subsystems but what is left out is the enveloping nestings of including 'supersystems' which give ontogenetic meaning to the system (word) through their provision of dynamical opportunity to 'do something' in the larger context (i.e. to 'say something'). As Vygotsky says in 'Thought and language'; "Consciousness is reflected in a word as the sun in a drop of water. A word relates to consciousness as a living cell relates to a whole organism, as an atom relates to the universe. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness." As Vygotsky elsewhere points out, our consciousness is in a continuing state of evolution in terms of a spontaneous.concept-non.spontaneous.concept-coevolution, a 'dynamic contextual opportunity space' into which words are invited to assert themselves and in so doing, to co-create new meaning by virtue of the newly transformed contextual opportunity space into which they have asserted.
The continuing transformative power of words as they are used (their nonreiterativity when used in an inevitably new and unique context) has been discussed by Sartre in 'The Writer's Responsibility' as well as by Vygotsky (a literary critic turned psychologist) and the Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin speaks of the 'Natural uniqueness (the fingerprint for example) and the signifying (semiotic) nonreiterativity of the text. Only a mechanical reproduction for the fingerprint (in unlimited quantity), such a mechanical reproduction is, of course, also possible for the text (a reprinting for example), but the reproduction of a text by a subject (return to the text, new reading, new performance, citation) is a new and nonreiterative event in the life of the text, a new link in the historical chain of verbal communication.'. In other words, text is impossible to repeat (nonreiterative) in terms of the way it is created by an individual. Each interaction between creator and receiver constitutes another unique circumstance. To Bakhtin, an 'utterance' (any expression produced in a living, concrete , and unrepeatable set of circumstances) is always directed towards somebody. An utterance is inconceivable without a speaker and a listener. As Bakhtin puts it; 'Discourse (as all signs generally) is inter-individual. All that is said, expressed, is outside of the "soul" of the speaker and does not belong to him only. But discourse cannot be attributed to the speaker alone. The author (the speaker) may have inalienable rights upon the discourse, but so does the listener, as do those whose voices resonate in the words found by the author (since there are no words that do not belong to someone). Discourse is a three-role drama (it is not a duet but a trio)."
The implication is, as in Gabor's 'Theory of Communication' that information 'interferes with itself' through the mediating role of the containing space which envelopes both the observing constituent and the observed constituents, involving a relativistic 'ternary' rather than absolutely discrete 'binary' elementary information signal. Thus, to insist that our perception of defined terms or systems are 'absolute' and 'in their own right' is to insist on the emptiness and non-participation of space, a notion which has bewitched our minds by our habitual scientific imposing of the simplistic, abstract reference framings of Euclidian space and absolute time.
Conclusions:
Our experience informs us that we are 'systems' which nest inclusionally within enveloping supersystems and the whole thing ('Nature') is in a continuing state of evolution. Nature is one big 'container-constituent-coevolution' wherein a 'many-to-one' type of ordering is what sustains the unity of the overall system and there are no 'constituents' within the superspace of Nature which 'exist in their own right'. The impression of 'things in their own right' is an illusion born of our imposing name-labels on the constituent features of our enveloping, continually evolving supersystem space.
Meanwhile, it is convenient to 'name' and 'define' entities within the system as if they did 'exist in their own right', even if everything is in a state of flux, including all of the constituents of space which we would like to name-label and define properties and behaviours for in our attempt to understand natural phenomena. When we impose name-labels on CATEGORIES of things, we are generalizing and implying that these things 'exist in their own right'; i.e. we detach them from their enveloping, meaning-giving containing space, ... their unique 'Place' in the world. We do this detaching by imposing the notion of empty, infinite, non-participating Euclidian space which gives domicile to material objects or 'systems' which are 'independent' and exist 'in their own right'. When we do this, we in effect 'deny' the overriding role of 'Place' (i.e. the dynamic geometry of opportunity that the constituent entity is immersed within) in giving meaning to the constituent entity. As pointed out by reference to Gödel's Theorem, there is an innate ambiguity in defining things (systems) 'in their own right' since, while we can explain the system in the terms of 'down-and-back-up-again' inquiry into their subsystems, we cannot assure that we fully understand 'how they work' by analysis out-of-line from their immersion in nature, out-of-line from their engagement with their containing space. An example given was the Earth-observer who looks out at Mars and observes to Mars 'in its own right' the 'pretzel-shaped' orbit, ... an orbit which is meanwhile an artifact of not accounting for Mars and the Earth being inclusions whose dynamics are 'referencing', relativistically, to the over-riding many-to-one' system dynamics of sun and planets. To overcome this subjective distortion, the Earth-observer (i.e. any observer since this is a general principle) must not 'take what he sees literally', but must 'include himself' in his inquiry by 'standing on his own shoulders and looking in upon himself and his object of inquiry' as they engage with their containing environment (i.e. one must 'include the tools of inquiry in the inquiry'). The point is, in this case, that the system of sun-and-planets with its 'many-to-one' ordering (a complex 'coresonant' system wherein the behaviour of the system cannot be deduced from the behaviours of its parts) has an over-riding dynamical identity and all of the planets, while we give them each an explicit name implying their 'in their own right' existence, are constituent dynamical features of their containing dynamical supersystem space, ... constituent features whose 'dynamical meaning', interwoven as it is with the enveloping, continually evolving supersystem dynamic, cannot possibly be captured 'in its own right'.
Similarly, if I am a biologist seeking to understand 'how a woman works', I can study her 'in her own right', inquiring into the functioning of her subsystems all the way down to the molecular physics, biochemical and genetics level and come up with an explanation of 'how she works'. Of course, by categorizing her as 'woman', I am, in the process, detaching her from the over-riding, uniqueness-endowing sense given to her by her positioning within the enveloping supersystem of 'Place'. If she is schizophrenic, I can search for the name-labelled entity 'in its own right' which we term a 'gene' deemed to be responsible, in a 'one-to-many' or 'bottom-up' way, for her schizophrenia. But schizophrenia is an attribute which concerns her 'community-constituent-codynamic' (supersystem-system-codynamic) and if I try to explain it within 'down-and-back-up-again' inquiry which regards her as being 'in her own right', ... I am saying, ceteris paribus, that her enveloping supersystem of environment, the dynamic geometry of her opportunity to act, is a non-participant in the determining of her properties and behaviours, ... that with respect to 'the way she works', she may as well be situated within an empty and infinite inertial frame (Euclidian space) or have grown up alone on an isolated space-station. Ackoff recognized this flaw in scientific analysis, saying "Perhaps even more revealing of the environment-free orientation of Machine-Age science is the nature of the place in which its inquiry [is] usually conducted, the laboratory. A laboratory is a place so constructed as to facilitate exclusion of the environment. It is a place in which the [one-to-many] effect of one variable on another can be studied without the intervention of the environment."
There are gaping holes in the fabric of genetic theory which make it a classic example of 'Machine Age science', as follows;
1. To 'whom' or 'what' do the genes belong? The genes are assumed to be the sovereign property of the 'individual' but the notion of 'individual' is suspect due to its dependence on our imposition of empty and non-participating Euclidian space, ... the simplest of all spaces in the same sense as 'a polynomial of degree one is to a polynomial of degree two. Experimentally validated quantum entanglement (non-locality) confirms that we cannot truly detach the 'individual' from his containing space. Therefore, we cannot accept the simplistic notion that we are investigating the genetic structure of an individual. And as far as the effectiveness of the laboratory goes in trying to impose an environment-free situation, ... physics is saying that when we modify something locally, we are in generally changing something else, non-locally.
2. To 'whom' or 'what' do the properties which we are describing in association with the genes belong? The sensory powers of the species are known to differ radically, and this includes humans, however the properties we specify for other creatures are largely in anthropocentric terms. If we say that dogs behave in certain ways due to their genetic structures, ... do we include in their behaviour the effects of ultrasonic waves? In fact, if we think about it, 'ultra-sonic' is already an indication of the anthropocentrism in our observations, since the high frequencies of sound that dogs hear cannot be said to be 'beyond sound'; i.e. we tend to reference the notion of 'sound' to 'what humans hear'. What does it feel like to hear those high frequencies we cannot hear, ... how does it 'interfere' with the other perceptions of the creature. What kind of consciousness does the slime-mold amoeba possess? 'For most of their four day lifespans, these amoebas live as single-celled animals, ... hunting for bacteria, ... an amoeba's major problem is is limited mobility, ... at full speed it covers about half an inch in 24 hours, ... and it can quickly consumes all the available bacteria within its very limited reach, ... it then excretes a hormone-like substance which sends out chemical pulses roughly eight minutes apart, ... a 'chemical distress signal', ... the amoebas sense the chemical signals with special receptors which stud the outer surface of their cell membranes and respond by moving towards the source and emitting their own chemical signals, ... drawn towards the densest chemical concentrations, as many as 100,000 amoebas stream toward each other until their minute bodies merge into a single gelatinous mass --- slime mold, ... barely visible to the naked eye, this cigar-shaped collection of cells wiggles across the dank forest floor this time in search of light and heat, ... upon finding a 'suitable' spot, some of the cells extend downward, forming a hollow shaft, ... most of the amoebas then flow up through the shaft, coming to rest inside a bulbous tip called the fruiting body, .. inside this tiny bud, each amoeba encases itself in a tough cellulose spore, ... when the fruiting body is eaten by a worm or bird, its spores are carried off to places far beyond the oozing range of a single amoeba."
So what are the properties of what and how do they tie back to DNA and genes? What is it that undergoes genetic evolution? Darwin even proposed in 'Origin of the Species' that both the individual and the family evolve in conjunction with each other (i.e. a 'community-constituent-coevolution needed to explain, for example, how the distinctive sterile members of ant families have a continuing evolutionary development even though they do not reproduce and are therefore not 'selected' in a preferentially reproductive manner). 'Natural selection' is being debunked by modern experimental studies as are detailed in papers such as 'Do Bacterial Communities Transcend Darwinism?' (1997) by Douglas Caldwell et al and by Kirchner and Weil in 'Delayed biological recovery from extinctions throughout the fossil record' (2000) who establish the 'interdependence of the ecosystem' and suggest that '...species are interdependent, species themselves are niches, so the destruction of one species removes opportunities for many others'.
Geographical influences on evolutionary forms, such as plate tectonics, have previously been seen as evidence for support of Darwinian theory, and this has been based on an assumed fundamental difference in the evolution of the 'animal' or 'vegetable' and the 'mineral', things that are 'living' and a 'terrain' which is 'dead', a view which would have it that the containing space of nature is 'dead' but has been 'infected with life' (Caldwell). But is there a 'discrete boundary' between the living and the dead? Alan Rayner [3] says, in artistically depicting 'the intra-connectedness of trees and fungi', ...'Within and upon the branching, enfolding, water-containing surfaces of forest trees¾ and reaching out from there into air and soil¾ are branching, enfolding, water-containing surfaces of finer scale, the mycelial networks of fungi. These networks provide a communications interface for energy transfer from neighbour to neighbour, from living to dead and from dead to living. They maintain the forest in a state of flux as they gather, conserve, explore for and recycle supplies of chemical fuel originating from photosynthesis. So, the fountains of the forest trees are connected and tapped into by the fountains of fungal networks in a moving circulation: an evolutionary spiral of differentiation and integration from past through to unpredictable future; a water delivery from the fire of the sun, through the fire of respiration, and back again to sky, contained within the contextual boundaries of a wood-wide web." Is nature a 'dead terrain' which 'contains life' or is 'nature alive'?
There is much evidence to suggest that an individual species is, at the same time, the 'terrain' and one comes back to the basic experiential observation that the 'container' of 'Place' is in the primacy over the 'constituent', the general case being that the constituent is a relative 'feature' of the 'many-to-one' containing space, rather than an 'independent' individual, ... the notion of 'independence' being an illusion which comes from our imposing of a 'name', a 'definition' and the assumption of empty, non-participating space.
3. In intuitive mode, the driver on a crowded freeway puts his actions in the service of co-creating a harmonious (smoothly flowing) dynamic geometry of space (a commodious dynamic shape of opportunity-to-move). His behaviour, in this instinctive mode, is not 'his' behaviour but belongs jointly (and not as the sum of the parts) to his fellows,... to 'community', thus 'behaviour' in the general case, cannot be described as the property of an independent individual.
In 1-3 above, there are gaping holes in the basic definition of 'gene' and 'behaviour' and who or what they belong to, not to mention the question of 'how do genes evolve'. Genetics, in the popular sense it is being discussed and in the oversimplified biotechnology applications, is a classic case of 'Machine Age science' and like the poor pool player who sees the game in the trivialized 'atomic' terms of the actions and transactions of independent causal agents, ... we shall suffer the dissonance infused into our containing life-commons by the lack of 'evolutionary awareness' of the simultaneous, reciprocal transformation of our containing environment, the deeper view of things which emerges when we back off from imposing the notion of empty, infiinite, rectangular, non-participating space on our experiential perceptions.
Many modern day physicists continue to use what Ackoff refers to as the 'Machine-Age science' approximation based on definitions of 'things in their own right' out of the sense-giving context of 'Place', as the following, excerpted from dialogue within a 'quantum consciousness' forum coordinated by Berkeley quantum physicist Henry Stapp implies; [the entries with the '>' are mine and those without are Henry's].
* * *
> ... science can also inform us as to how to navigate in the world,
Exactly! That is what is really important.
> and this is the 'immersed observer' domain of science, ... the nonlinear,
> relativistic, curved space domain
I do not think the gravitational curvature of space
is the big effect here: it is, in my opinion a small
effect in the basic issue of how individual minds
are connected together in a transpersonal (i.e.,
objective) web of connections.
> wherein the observer cultivates an ability to sense how his flatspace
> material-causal kinetic actions are simultaneously transforming the
> landscape of possibility in which he is immersed.
To be sure our actions and ideas alter the reality
we inhabit. But let's not obscure these big effects
with tiny gravitations corrections, or claims that
everything is relative to man's viewpoint.
...
> with this background, i can 'tighten up' my question and simply ask, ... are
> you coming from a 'conventionalist' philosophy where your avoidance of
> relativistic, immersed observer effects are deliberately set aside for the
> convenience of clarity of understanding within your scientific 'subspace',
> or are you coming from a 'realist' philosophy wherein you claim that your
> theory describes 'the way the natural world works'.
I am coming from a conventionalist philosophy where our theories are
recognized as man-created ideas that we are in the process of improving,
with the aim of increasing their scope and adequacy, and that the
direction is such as to be able to hope that we are approaching an
understanding of the "reality" in which we are imbedded. As regards
the geometry of spacetime I am assuming that for the issue of the
connection between a human mind and the associated brain, here on earth,
in the year 2000, it is a very good approximation to assume a flat
spacetime.
* * *
The citing of this dialogue is not to 'put down' what may well turn out to be a very valuable,insight delivering exercise being undertaken by Henry Stapp et al (i.e. the reciprocal to discovering the nature of the limitations of one's theory can, at the same time, constitute the insight needed for a more comprehensive theory), ... it is cited for the purpose of showing that what Ackoff refers to as 'Machine-Age science', the 'down-and-back-up-again' inquiry into systems based on the actions and transactions of name-labelled, fixed identity entities approximated as existing 'in their own right' and out of the overriding context of their relativistic, inclusional nesting within a continually evolving supersystem space, ... is still the dominant mode of inquiry in modern physics.
The dismissal of relativistic effects on the basis of their seemingly negligible magnitude, as in Henry Stapps comments, would be a common reaction by 'mainstream scientists' to the citing, as above, of the driver braking for a rabbit on a globe-circumscribing autoroute and eventually re-encountering the influence of his own braking action as it is mediated by the spherical space of the biosphere and reflected back to him in a 'laundered' form ('laundered' since it has been 'synthesized' into the overall 'many-to-one' codynamic of the enveloping biospheric space.).
For the 'naturalist' who is seeking to understand the complex relationships amongst 'community-and-constituent' and/or the avid pool player (such as myself), however, understanding the 'game' in terms of the actions and transactions of name-labelled constituents is a radically insufficient type of understanding whose netting is drawn tight around the 'small fish' yet fails to envelope the 'big fish'. The 'big fish' is the 'out-and-back-in-again' understanding ('up-and-back-down-again' in rectangular Euclidian space terms) which includes the recognition of 'things' and their actions and transactions but does not insist on imposing definitions of them 'in their own right'. nor on constructing a view of 'how things work' on top of them. The 'big fish' is thus a mode of understanding which includes the dynamical context of evolution, the experienced fact that 'everything is in a state of flux', ...the experienced fact that the containing dynamical receptacle of supersystem space termed 'yin' or 'the feminine principle' or 'Place' is the over-riding relativistic reference-framing 'container' for the 'many-to-one' 'community-constituent-coresonant' codynamic and 'community-constituent-coevolution' which characterizes our immersed inclusional experiencing of life.
No constituent of space, including man, 'exists in its own right' and when we approximate the workings of the world in the rational, logical, causal 'one-to-many' terms of the actions and transactions of 'name-labelled things in their own right', we make a serious omission which is getting us into a lot of hot water; i.e. we omit the experience-validated fact that we are 'inclusions' within the continuing codynamic of evolution who, through our interfering actions, 'co-create' the dynamic geometry of space which constitutes our dynamical opportunity-to-act.
As Einstein says; 'Space is not Euclidian' ... 'Space is a participant in physical phenomena', ... and as Poincaré says; 'Space is another framework we impose upon [our scientific view of] the world' ... 'the space revealed to us by our senses is absolutely different from the space of geometry.".
In the process of 'selecting out', name-labeling and defining explicit 'things in their own right' from the 'many-to-one' dynamical continuum of evolutionary space-time, we exclude the continually transforming sense-giving meaning bestowed by the enveloping supersystem space on its included constituents. If the doctors of King Arthur's Court were to do a 'down-and-back-up-again' inquiry into the workings of the 'Connecticut Yankee' (as portrayed in the film), would they come up with a 'bottom-up' explanation of his strange powers and influence in their society?, ... or would they conclude that these 'strange powers' were simply artifacts of their own subjectivity, their 'tools of inquiry'? As the anthropologist Mircea Eliade says in 'Mephistopheles et l'Androgyne' ('The Two and the One'), we westerners [who 'worship at the altar of science and rationality'] studied the indigenous 'savages' of America "with the detachment and the indifference which nineteenth century naturalists brought to the study of insects", ... savages who meanwhile appreciated that all men are 'included constituents' within nature who participate in the co-creation of the dynamic opportunity-giving geometry of their containing space, ... savages whose elder's have been responsible for "one of the most beautiful and profound environmental statements ever made" as Buckminster Fuller says in referring to the later-transcribed oral presentation by Seattle, chief of the Suquamish in 1851 on the topic 'How can You Buy or Sell the Sky' (http://featherstonecreations.com/nawisdom.htm#How ).
Seattle's observation that "This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected" reiterates the 'many-to-one' principle of relativistic curved space-time, alluding to an experience-validated 'indigenous science' of 'out-and-back-in-again' perception and inquiry which has yet to 'take hold' in the western culture. Meanwhile, western science is deeply troubled by failure to have accounted for, in the underpinnings of mainstream scientific theory, 'quantum entanglement' or 'non-locality', lack of unified field theory to avoid fixed identity constituents, the excluding (into some undefined non-natural realm) of the observer and his globally synchronous clock (the tools of inquiry) from the inquiry (the latter exclusion being in violation of the current theory which says that there can be no 'outside' to the system of nature). In effect, western science is faced with retracting its approach of constructing theory on top of fixed identity entities, ... an exercise akin to changing the tires on the car as it speeds down the autoroute. In the interim, we are mistaking logic and rationality for 'the way the world works'. As Wittgenstein said in his 1921 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus', ... "The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena . . . the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained." (propositions 6.371 and 6.372)
Our logically perceived, 'in our own right' detachment from our enveloping and including supersystem space, as Chief Seattle says, puts us into conflict with our containing space; " The rivers are our brothers; they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children.. . . you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. ... We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's grave behind, and he does not care. His father's grave and his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert."
Our culture, bewitched by the illusion that the rational 'one-to-many' mode of perception and inquiry we impose on our scientific 'discursive' view of the world represents the workings of natural phenomena, is strip-mining his own containing space, his 'extended self' within which he is an inclusion, ... a participant in co-creating the dynamical geometry of space which constitutes the opportunity-to-act, the evolutionary (ontogenetic) future.
We applaud science for giving us 'anti-biotics', technology born of the 'one-to-many' causal model aimed at killing our brother-life which we consider, not as fellow co-creative constituents of the global opportunity commons, but as lesser forms on the anthropocentric values hierarchy which must give way to the purificational processes of our logic and rationality. As in the case of the global freeway driver, we assume in the case of 'anti-biotics' that that the effects of our local actions (e.g. braking for the rabbit) cannot have any persisting effect since the space within which we are immersed, by our rational tools of perception and inquiry, is empty, infinite and non-participating. But over time, we are seeing that our containing space is more like the pool table where our actions are mediated by the dynamical geometry of our containing space and 'reflect back' on us; i.e. we see that our attack on bacteria is 'reflecting back' on us through the mediation of space in the context of 'disease-resistant bacterial strains'..
Fortunately, there is movement outside of mathematical physics, in the domain of the naturalist sciences (e.g. evolutionary biology, naturopathy), which is recognizing that 'health' is a many-to-one ordering dynamic, ... a community-constituent-coresonance wherein an outer-inner codynamical balance involving a partnership with more than 400 different species of bacteria is necessary for our 'good health', a many-to-one codynamic without which we cannot survive. As Louis Pasteur finally conceded (and as was argued by Antoine Béchamp) on his deathbed, ... 'the microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything'; i.e. the rise to dominance, in sickness, of a particular bacterium is not 'the cause' of the sickness but the 'effect' of a collapse of the balanced 'many-to-one' collaboration of the bacteria with the dynamics of the cells and organs of the human organism. 'Pro-biotics' is an emergent science which embraces the 'many-to-one' geometry of our containing space and it is showing successes in situations where 'anti-biotics' no longer work. In pro-biotics, one cultivates bacteria which catalyze the sustaining of dynamical balance or 'health' seen in terms of community-constituent-coresonance. [Such a difference in perception and inquiry also separates the disputing camps in the HIV-AIDS controversy, where the simplistic 'one-to-many' causal view of AIDS leads to a chemical attack against the alleged 'causal virus', HIV, whereas professor Duesberg and others insist that 'HIV is nothing, the terrain is everything'; i.e. that AIDS is due to a breakdown in the many-to-one dynamical ordering process called 'health' which has been labeled in the inverse terms of 'immune system'.]
The same geometric duality (deeper awareness and shallower awareness) of tools of inquiry and worldview comes into play in our systems of social management. The 'one-to-many' reasoning geometry of logic and rationality leads to 'one-to-many' implementations such as 'representative government' by linear control hierarchies which focus on 'making things happen' out of the context of the simultaneous, reciprocal transformation of the dynamic geometry of opportunity-to-act. The alternative governance schema, as exemplified in 'the Great Peace of the Iroquois' (Kaienerekowa), emerges from 'many-to-one' reasoning geometry and gives a 'many-to-one' implementation in the form of egalitarian, participative democracy in which the 'leaders' are coaches selected for their harmony catalyzing influence, by the people rather than by 'running for election' for positions on the control hierarchies (the egalitarian mode of the Kaienerekowa is the mode of exceptional teams). In terms of the examples used in this essay, the former 'one-to-many' reasoning corresponds to the 'poor pool player' who 'sees the game' solely in the terms of the actions and transactions of the constituents, while the latter 'many-to-one' reasoning corresponds to the 'wise pool player' who 'sees the game', first and foremost, in terms of the transformation of the dynamic geometry of space which constitutes 'opportunity-to-act' and so puts the actions and transactions of the constituents into the service of co-creating opportunity-to-act.
Finally, the 'one-to-many' causal view of 'how the world works' is a manifestly incomplete approximation which we impose on our science but which we cannot impose on nature. The one-to-many geometry of our worldview 'follows through' from the one-to-many geometry of logical, rational thought and thus it is not just the geometry of an approximative worldview but also the geometry of a particular, approximative mode of perception and inquiry. The 'many-to-one' inductive (opportunity space in the primacy) view of 'how the world works' is validated, not by the anthropocentric needs-based, user-imposed axioms of logic, but by our immersed-in-life experience. Similarly, the 'many-to-one' geometry of a worldview is not just the geometry of an immersed-in-life experience-validated worldview but also the geometry of a particular, 'immersed-in-life' mode of perception and inquiry, ... a 'relativistic' mode of perception and inquiry which transcends logic and rationality and which is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the curved space-time phenomena of nature from the point of view of one who is 'included in it'. It is a mode of perception and inquiry that all constituents of space seem to be endowed with as implied by their ability to put their actions into the service of co-creating their opportunity-to-act; i.e. opportunity-to-act in the form of a many-to-one dynamical geometry of space in which we constituents are immersed inclusions.
How have things gotten so far out of balance that we, as a scientific culture, have deluded ourselves into believing that 'one-to-many' dynamical order is 'the way the world works' and are only periodically 're-awakened' to discover that, as John Lennon warns; 'Life is something that happens to us while we are busy making other (one-to-many) plans'.
Marshall McLuhan explains how our penchant for implementing the ersatz one-to-many harmony in our technology acts as a debalancing extension to our natural faculties and takes us 'out of touch' with our natural ability to relate to our immersion in non-euclidian 'acoustic space' where we engage in a relativistic inner-outer dynamical balancing mode. The more 'one-to-many' technology dependencies we have, the more our faculties are overbalanced in favour of 'one-to-many' modes of ordering and the more difficult it is for us to tune in to an immersive engagement with 'acoustic space'. McLuhan points out that; "In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs.". In other words, perception of the induced transformation of the many-to-one dynamical geometry of our containing space which governs our 'opportunity-to-act' is not possible when we perceive and inquire solely through the 'one-to-many' lenses of logic and rationality (i.e. our 'down-and-back-up-again' scientific knowledge of what machines or 'systems' do). With our 'one-to-many' scientific knowledge, implemented in technology, we induce transformation in the dynamic geometry of our containing space (our 'life-commons') which our scientific knowledge is incapable of 'carrying', ... scientific knowledge which focuses selectively on understanding 'systems in their own right'. This is how, by 'worshipping at the altar of science and rationality', we become oblivious to our participative co-creation of our containing 'life-commons'. The philosophical problem which we get into by 'naming things' so that we can talk about them ('discursive intellection') is alluded to by Wittgenstein as follows; "Die Philosophie is ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandnes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache" ("Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our minds by the medium of language").
As McLuhan also points out, 'the medium is the message' in the sense that if the medium is 'one-to-many', rather than 'many-to-one' as in an informal community gathering, it is innately 'bewitching our minds' and making 'voyeur observers who see the world in rational, 'one-to-many' terms, rather than if they are immersed, participating co-creators of their own opportunity-giving space. McLuhan says of giving up the 'one-to-many' broadcast media to advertising; "Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly."
Meanwhile, and in line with McLuhan's predictions, the
electronic media also gives us a chance to amplify the participative engagement
of acoustic space as in 'the global village' allusion, which is not the same
'global village' as seen by those invested in 'the global economy' wherein we
impose 'one-to-many' controls on ourselves in a progressively
opportunity-constraining fashion, ... but the global village of internet sharing
circles which is tending to cultivate the distributed rebirth of immersed,
inclusional co-creation of opportunity potentials for the rebirth of egalitarian
participative democracy, at least in a dialogic sense, ... though 'activation'
of such movement is inhibited by the 'toxic terrain' of government-business
hegemony alluded to by McLuhan which is aggressively promoting a massively
'one-to-many' global economy dominated containing life-commons..
* * *
[1] The following comments by Johannes Kepler are from 'Harmonies of the World' and indicate his differentiating between the 'one-to-many' descriptive reasoning of 'ratiocinative intellection' and the 'many-to-one' immersed-in-life understanding constituted by 'intuitive intellection', a mode of intellection which Einstein explains is necessary for relativistic perception and inquiry; i.e. Einstein says in 'Geometry and Experience'; "Can we picture to ourselves a three-dimensional universe which is finite, yet unbounded? The usual answer to this question is ``No,'' but that is not the right answer. The purpose of the following remarks is to show that the answer should be ``Yes.'' I want to show that without any extraordinary difficulty we can illustrate the theory of a finite universe by means of a mental image to which, with some practice, we shall soon grow accustomed. First of all, an observation of epistemological nature. A geometrical-physical theory as such is incapable of being directly pictured, being merely a system of concepts. But these concepts serve the purpose of bringing a multiplicity of real or imaginary sensory experiences into connection in the mind. To ‘visualise’ a theory, or bring it home to one's mind, therefore means to give a representation to that abundance of experiences for which the theory supplies the schematic arrangement. In the present case we have to ask ourselves how we can represent that relation of solid bodies with respect to their reciprocal disposition (contact) which corresponds to the theory of a finite universe."
Kepler's comments not only point out the difference in 'one-to-many' and 'many-to-one' views of how the world works, but also show how these 'shallower and deeper' views link to the corresponding methods of 'intellection';
"Furthermore, a great distinction exists between the consonances of the single planets which have been unfolded [into 'one-to-many' descriptions from the inclusionally nested 'many-to-one' system geometry] and the consonants of the planets in pairs. For the former cannot exist at the same moment of time, while the latter absolutely can; .." … "Now, the 'harmony-of-the-whole of all the planets contributes more to the perfection of the world than the single harmonies by twos and the pairs of harmonies by the twos of neighbouring planets. For harmony is, so to speak, a volume [containerfull] of unity. A deeper unity yet is presented, when all the planets form a harmony with each another, as when just two at a time harmonize in a dual manner. In the interference of these harmonies deriving from the dual harmonic line-ups, which the pairs of planets form with each another, the one or the other must give way, so that the harmony-of-the- whole can prevail." ... "that in the farthest movement of any two planets, the universe was stamped with the adornment of harmonic proportions; and, accordingly, in order that this adornment might be brought into concord with the movements, the eccentricities which fell to the lot of each planet had to brought into concord."
The thrust of the above statements by Kepler is that the 'simultaneous harmony' of the constituents wherein the dynamics of the individual constituents 'reference' relativistically to the overall co-created system dynamic is the over-riding ordering principle innate in the containing space which is perceived directly and intuitively by the constituents of space;
"But whose good will it be to have harmonies between the journeys, or who will perceive the harmonies? For there are two things which disclose to us harmonies in natural things either light or sound light apprehended through the eyes or hidden senses proportioned to the eyes, and sound through the ears. The mind seizes upon these forms and, whether by instinct (on which Book IV speaks profusely) or by astronomical or harmonic ratiocination, discerns the concordant from the discordant. Now there are no sounds in the heavens, nor is the movement so turbulent that any noise is made by the rubbing against the ether. Light remains. If light has to teach these things about the planetary journeys, it will teach either the eyes or a sensorium analogous to the eyes and situated in definite place; and it seems that sense-perception must be present there in order that light of itself may immediately teach. Therefore there will be sense-perception in the total world, namely in order that the movements of all the planets may be presented to sense-perceptions at the same time. For that former route --- from observations through the longest detours of geometry and arithmetic, through the ratios of spheres and the other things which must be learned first, down to the journeys which have been exhibited --- is too long for any natural instinct, for the sake of moving which it seems reasonable that the harmonies have been introduced. Therefore with everything reduced to one view, I concluded rightly that the true journeys of the planets through the ether should be dismissed, and that we should turn our eyes to the apparent diurnal arcs, according as they are all apparent, from one definite and marked place in the world --- namely, from the solar body itself, the source of movement of all the planets and we must see, not how far away from the sun any one of the planets is, nor how much space it traverses in one day (for that is something for ratiocination and astronomy, not for instinct), but how great an angle the diurnal movement of each planet subtends in the solar body, or how great an arc it seems to traverse in one common circle described around the sun, such as the ecliptic, in order that these appearances, which were conveyed to the solar body by virtue of light, may be able to flow, together with the light, in a straight line into creatures, which are partakers of this instinct, as in Book IV we said the figure of the heavens flowed into the foetus by virtue of the rays."
Given the 'one-to-many' and 'many-to-one' options of world view, Kepler goes on in the 'Epilogue' to 'Harmonies of the World' to suggest that the same geometry options provide the 'archetype' for our modes of perception and inquiry ('intellection'). In particular, Kepler suggests that the positioning of the earth in the middle of the system gave us the opportunity to look inward and see things in a 'one-to-many' manner (detached observer) and also outwards with the same immersed 'many-to-one' view as the sun (inclusional view);
"But if it is permissible, using the thread of an analogy as a guide, to traverse the labyrinths of the mysteries of nature, not ineptly, I think, will someone have argued as follows: The relation of the six spheres to their common centre, thereby the centre of the whole world, is also the same as that of diagoia [discussive intellection] to hous [intuitive intellection], according as these faculties are distinguished by Aristotle, Plato, Proclus, and the rest; ..."
"For as the sun rotating into itself moves all the planets by means of form emitted from itself, so too --- as the philosophers teach --- mind, by understanding itself and in itself all things, stirs up ratiocinations, and by dispersing and unrolling its simplicity into them, makes everything to be understood. And the movements of the planets around the sun at their centre and the discourses of ratiocinations are so interwoven and bound together that, unless the Earth, our domicile, measured out the annual circle, midway between the other spheres --- changing from place to place, from station to station --- never would human ratiocination have worked its way to the true interval of the planets and to the other things dependent from them, never would it have constituted astronomy."
2] Citations from Newton's 'Principia' and related letter (to Bentley) indicating the inadequacy of his 'one-to-many' principia in dealing with the 'many-to-one' ordering inherent in the simultaneous (relativistic) harmony/coresonance aspects of the solar system;
"... and the planets and comets will constantly pursue their revolutions in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws above explained ; but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws. The six primary planets are revolved about the sun in circles concentric with the sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane. Ten moons are revolved about the earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with the same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of those planets ; but it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions, since the comets range over all parts of the heavens in very eccentric orbits ; for by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbs of the planets, and with great rapidity ; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detained the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
That the ‘resonances’ manifest in celestial codynamics should emanate solely from the assertive behaviours of the ‘independent causal agents’ was an ‘absurdity’ in Newton’s view, and he left no doubt that he wanted to distance himself from such views in a letter to Richard Bentley (Cambridge Lecturer linking the Principia to Theology);
"It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must do, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason, why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another, at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it."
While Newton often alluded to a Divine source for the 'many-to-one' celestial 'harmony', ordering seeming to emanate from the containing space itself ( Kepler had overtly stated that the ‘geometry of space’ was the orchestrating source and that the geometry of space was ‘God himself’), Newton left the door open to a deepening of the scientific-philosophical understanding as in his following comment in the ‘Author’s Preface’ to the ‘Principia’;
"I wish we could derive the rest of the phaenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from physical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they all may depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy."