Here's a sampling of the 1998/99/2000 series of essays arranged chronologically --- e.g. the 'ASIDS' essay on 'acute systems-inquiry deficiency syndrome' was written in January, 1998, the 'Valentine's essay on intimacy etc. on February 14, 1998 and the 'Science, Prodigal Son that you are' essay on the fundamental role on cultural welfare, of the periodic rapprochement of 'mother' nature with her 'son', science and rationality, was written a few days ago, on February 23, 1999.
An early 1998 comment on the 'continuing story' of inquiry journalized in the essays on this web page follow the linked listings. A 1999 commentary will be added soon.
"ASIDS in Collaborative Structures" 1/19/98
"Valentines: The Polarities of Resonance" 2/14/98
"Generalizing on Generalizations" 1/31/98
"The Good, the Bad and the Butterfly" 3/14/98
"Culture and Geometry: Burying the Hatchet" 5/15/98
(Jointly with
Martine Dodds-Taljaard, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa )
"The Geometry of Understanding" 5/19/98
" A Symphonic Liberation" 5/22/98
"Western Life in ToeDoe" 5/24/98
"The Myth of Progress" 5/28/98
"Flatlanders" 5/29/98
"The Gravity of the Error" 6/1/98
"The Purpose of Time" 6/9/98
"Death by Dissonance" 6/13/98
"'Growth', in Plane English" 6/17/98
"Bottoms Up in Atlanta" 7/25/98
(Jointly with
Martine Dodds-Taljaard, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa )
"Literacy: Emancipator of Knowledge from Experience" 8/11/98
'Consilience and Complexity' or 'The art of the Solvable' 8/13/98
"Living on the Edge: When Push Comes to Shove" Sept. 1 '98 Montreal
"Bi'God, Bi'Cause and Bi'Lief" Sept. 5 '98 Montreal
"The Dance of Life" Sept. 14, '98 Montreal
"Goals: The Footprints of Purpose" Sept. 17, '98 Montreal
"Kilroy was Here" Sept. 20, '98 Montreal
"The Science of Detachment" Sept. 21, '98 Montreal
"Memory and Detachment" Sept. 22, '98 Montreal (Mythic Impressionist Twin of Above Essay)
"The Denial of Birth" Sept. 28, '98 Montreal
"Western Man, ... Smart Feller or Fart Smeller" Oct. 10, '98 Montreal
"The Return of the Myth-Makers" Oct. 19, '98 Montreal
"Intuitive Backfill" Oct. 23, '98 Montreal
"The Amazing Voyage of Nozyla and Ayzool" Oct. 24, '98 Montreal
"The Magic Mirror" Oct. 29, '98 Montreal
"The Story-Carvers" November 5, '98 Montreal
"Climbing the Totem Pole" November 7, '98 Montreal
"Fides et Ratio and the Deus Absconditus" November 13, '98 Montreal
"The Forrest Gump Principle" November 18, '98 Montreal
"The Somatic Imperialism of the Western Psyche" November 20, '98 Montreal
"The Politics of Judgement" November 27, '98 Montreal
"A Story of Knowledge, Perception and Design" November 29, '98 Montreal
"Emile's Millennial Madness Survival Guide" December 4, '98 Montreal
"Story-Time Blues" December 10, '98 Montreal
"And Who Shall Speak For Youth?" , written in Dallas on January 14, 1999, closes out the '1998 Update' series and begins the new. This essay was motivated by a request for a 'simple language' guide to assist young persons in navigating social dysfunction, to help strengthen their 'voice'.and to put a little more sunshine in their lives
"Coming (or Going?) 'Round the Bend" January 27, '99, Chilowie West Virginia
"The Upside-Down Man" February 9, '99 Montreal
"The Co-Littoral Shores of Perception" February 20, '99 Montreal
"Science, Prodigal Son That You Are, ...." February 23, '99 Montreal
The following 'Inside Story' is a review of the reasoning approach and the evolution of thinking over the past five years, in the essays on this website. Also reviewed is a personally significant 'milestone' in my understanding of complexity.
"Epilogue-Prologue: The 'Inside Story'" February 28, '99 Montreal
"And Who Shall be the Sun?" March 3, '99 Montreal
"SEAC'ing Relief from ASIDS: What Most Doctors DON'T Recommend" March 8, '99 Montreal
"Unspoken Assumptions on the Geno-Economy" March 19, '99 Montreal
"The Wisdom of Many and the Wit of One" March 30, '99 Montreal
"Commemorating Autistic Terrorism" Easter, April 2 & 4, '99 Montreal
"Intermogular Space-Time Travel" April 10, '99 Montreal
"Reciprocations on Y2K " April 14, '99 Montreal
"Reciprocations sur Y2K" le 14e Avril, '99 Montreal
"The Defining Issue: Humility Rules!" April 17, '99 Montreal
"Recovering from a case of the One-Hand Clap" April 20, '99 Montreal
"King Ruhtra of Tolemac" April 24, '99 Montreal
"Where ya gonna run to?" April 28, '99 Montreal
"Blowing in the Wind" May 1, '99 Montreal
"Summer love" May 2, '99 Montreal
"Blowing in the Wind" May 2, '99 Montreal
"Space-Time and Identity" May 7, '99 Montreal
"Floundering in Complexity" May 12, '99 Montreal
"The Politics of Insolation" May 14, '99 Montreal
"Toxic Inquiry in 'Community as Complex System'" May 16, '99 Montreal
"Harmonic Incubators of Inner-Space Latencies" May 20, '99 Montreal
"The Profane Parent-Child Geometry of Western Scientific Culture" May 24, '99 Montreal
"The Pawning of Western Consciousness" June 9, June 9, '99 Montreal
"The Alien Heart of Science" June 14, '99 Coeur D'Alene
"The Decolonization of the Western Mind" June 19, '99 White Rock
"The Incredible Incompleteness of Being" June 27, '99 Watsonville
"Tomorrow Never Happens" July 5, '99 Asilomar
"Warriors for Evolution" July 7, '99 White Rock
"The Catacombs of Western Thought" July 10, '99 White Rock
"The Boundaries of Thought" July 15, '99 White Rock
"From 'The Contained' to 'The Containing'" July 20, '99 White Rock
"Out of our depth?" July 30, '99, Dallas
"Rational Thought: an Oxymoron?" August 5, '99, Dallas
"Auto-lobotomizing Domination" August 9, '99, Dallas
"Once Upon a Time" August 14, '99, Dallas
"Dialogue with the Container" August 17, '99, Woodstock, Virginia
"The People Who Fell Out of Their Story" August 23, '99, Montreal
"Co-Operation, Competition and Co-Opportunity" August 26, '99, Montreal
"To Be or Not To Be; ... is that the Question???" August 30, '99, Montreal
"In the Belly of the Night" September 1, '99, Montreal
"Slipping Up on the Slopes of Curved Space" September 3, '99, Montreal
"Embracing the Opposites: Life as a Musical Menage a Trois" September 7, '99, Montreal
"The Choice" September 9, '99, Montreal
" Pow Wow at Ile Bonsecours: Voices from Space-Time" September 12, '99, Montreal
"Bio-Technology: The Benefits are Relative" September 14, '99, Montreal
"Your Grandchildren and Mine" September 16, '99, Montreal
"Informed Consent: Getting Things Straight in Curved Space" September 19, '99, Montreal
"Children of a Kinder Science" September 21, '99, Montreal
"It Isn't Logic, .... It's Tragic!: What's the Matter?" September 23, '99, Montreal
"Eco-Opportunity and Discrimination" September 25, '99, Montreal
"A Birthday Essay in Celebration of Openness and Light" September 28, '99, Montréal
"Artoscientific and Scientartistic Reciprocations" September 30, '99, Montréal
"Listening to Nature, ... to our containing Whole" October 2, '99, Montréal
"The Scilence of Howling Love Dogs" October 4, '99, Montréal
"Purposive People, Causality and Systems Science" October 5, '99, Montréal
(Re-posted with Prologue, October 6, 1999)
(Re-re-posted with Response from Ackoff and comment appended, October 12, 1999)
"Science and 'The Conquest of Ignorance'" October 8, '99, Montréal
"Space, Matter and Judgement in the Evolution of Social Fabric" October 11, '99, Montréal
"An Essential Investment in Preparing for Y2K" October 12, '99, Montréal
"The Dipolar Field of Opportunity and Purpose" October 15, '99, Montréal
"Epilogue to 'The Dipolar Field of Opportunity and Purpose'" October 16, '99, Montréal
"Having Words" October 22, '99, Montréal
"The Global Republic" October 25, '99, Montréal
"The Tools of our Inquiry" November 4, '99, Montréal
"In the Vernacular (An Open Message to Physicists of the 'Third Culture')" November 9, '99, Montréal
"An Open Letter to Ivan Illich" November 15, '99, Montréal
"Media, Leadership and the New Sciences" November 23, '99, Montréal
"Rediscovering the Role of 'Place' in Understanding" November 28, '99, Montréal
"Children of the Magic Kingdom" December 4, '99, Montréal
"Uncorking a Cultural Renaissance" December 8, '99, Montréal
"Internet: Media Tools of Inquiry" January 5, 2000, Dallas
"Elders and Experts: Showing and Telling" January 14, 2000, Dallas
"Homeschooling: An Introductory Science Lesson" January 21, 2000, Dallas
"Indigenous Wisdom and its Lessons for the Systems Sciences" January 29, 2000, Dallas
"Living Dual Lives and Dual Identities" February 5, 2000, Montréal
"Married and Devoiced" February 12, 2000, Montréal
"A Heraclitean Valentine: A Relativistic, Informational View of 'The Way the World Works'" February 14, 2000, Montréal
"Possibility Space and Syntropy" February 21, 2000, Montréal
"La Comptabilit&eacutre; Globale" 24 F 2000, Montréal
"A Requiem for 'Here'" 28 F 2000, Montréal
"Niche Persona - Healing the Twisted Arrogance of Responsibility" March 5, 2000, Montréal
"A. Hole to Testify in Discrimination Suit" March 11, 2000, Montréal
"The Pleasures and Anxieties of 'In-and-Out'" March 15, 2000, Montréal
"Epilogue to 'The Pleasures and Anxieties of 'In-and-Out''" March 15, 2000, Montréal
"Yin Masters and The Doctors of Yin" March 17, 2000, Montréal
"Epilogue to 'Yin Masters and The Doctors of Yin'" March 18, 2000, Montréal
"The fish that surfaced, rolled and winked, ... and said" March 20, 2000, Montréal
"Portrait of a Panel of Idea-Sharing, Intra-causal Agents" March 22, 2000, Montréal
"Physics & Curved Space Entrance Exam" March 23, 2000, Montréal
(with linked Instructor's Key)
"The Hollow Onion Confederacy" March 29, 2000, Montréal
"Hair of the Dog" April 4, 2000, Montréal
"Voyeur Visualizing vs. Immersed Experiencing of Reality" April 11, 2000, Montréal
"Seb Henagulph's 'Three Pillars of Transdisciplinarity'" April 22, 2000, Montréal
"Indigenous Wisdom and its Lessons for the Systems Sciences" May 7, 2000, Montréal
"Suspension of Judgement is the 'Judgement' in Metis Council Proceeding " May 14, 2000, Montréal
"The Physics of Love and the Myth of 'Selection'" May 26, 2000, Montréal
"The Ethics of Relativity" June 23, 2000, Thunder Bay
"Overcoming ASIDS - Indigestion" July 1, 2000, Montréal
"Toronto World Systems Congress Presentation of 'Indigenous Wisdom and its Lessons for the Systems Sciences" July 22, 2000, Toronto
"Fields of Love and Their Lessons for Physics" August 14, 2000, Montréal
"Skeletons in the Closet of Science" August 27, 2000, Knoxville
"The Killer Eye of Time" September 23, 2000, Dallas
"A Healing Tool in the Oral Tradition" November 19, 2000, Montréal
"Ignorance, Rationality and the Crisis of Trust in Mainstream Science" November 23, 2000, Montréal
"How 'Science and Rationality' Kill Exceptional Teams" November 25, 2000, Montréal
"Last Night I had a Terrible Dream that Space was Dead" November 29, 2000, Montréal
"The '_Ass. Hole Con._'" December 2, 2000, Montréal
"The Road to Madness" December 15, 2000, Montréal
"From Strength to Nemesis?" January 5, 2001, Montréal
For the continuing sequence, go to www.goodshare.org/2001list.htm or,
to the new welcome page at www.goodshare.org
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U N D E R C O N S T R U C T I O N
~^^~ D E S C R I P T I V E I N D E X O F E S S A Y S ^~~^
"ASIDS in Collaborative Structures" 1/19/98, Dallas
Involuntary provocation of dysfunction: --- describes the dysfunctional effect in social systems, ... termed for convenience "Acute System Inquiry Deficiency Syndrome" wherein, the observer who intervenes in a 'problem' is not aware of the 'problem-inducing' effect of his intervention. An analogy is with the pre-Pasteur surgeon who presumed that infection was spontaneous (in-situ) and was not aware that his 'dirty' intervention was often more of a problem than that which he was seeking to cure.
"Valentines: The Polarities of Resonance" 2/14/98, Dallas
Inverted primacy of 'manifestation' over 'mystery': --- speaks to the theme of Lao Tsu's "Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations." and the tendency, in intimate relations, to put physiological aspects in the primacy over intuitive aspects, particularly since the 1960's when 'sexual liberation' had the tendency of reducing the notion of 'intimacy' to physical intimacy, rather than an intimacy of the spirit and imagination. Discusses the problem that 'desire' tends to impose one's one structure on the 'object of desire', ... while the suspension of desire opens the way to 'co-resonant intimacy'.
"Generalizing on Generalizations" 1/31/98, Dallas
The participation of space in physical phenomena: --- speaks to the fact that generalization and rules depend upon the homogeneity of matter and situation (Poincare) and that this is an approximation assumption which doesn't generally hold. Physics informs us that 'space' is neither homogeneous nor isotropic and thus it participates in determining the results of phenomena; e.g. the if we plant two identical tree seeds, one on the plain and one in the mature forest under a canopy of tall trees, ... there is no material-causal explanation for their difference in growth history, ... one needs to co-consider the interference effects between the containing environment and the constituent (the tree). This 'container-content-coevolution' effect is a continuing theme in these essays.
"The Good, the Bad and the Butterfly" 3/14/98
The effects of nested context: --- examines the cognitive phenomena that the meaning of the whole dataset is changed by expanding the context in which it is immersed; i.e. if I say that I having my bacon-and-egg breakfast in the nude, .. the overriding 'sense' of this dataset is changed, if I add, '... in a Mosque', ... and the overiding sense is further changed, if I add, '... on a movie set in which I am working as an extra'. This essay has five 'englobing' spheres of context, ... and should be read starting from the inner context which is entitled 'The Good, The Bad and the Butterfly'.
"Culture and Geometry: Burying the Hatchet" 5/15/98, Dallas-Stellenbosch
(Jointly with
Martine Dodds-Taljaard, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa )
Misinformation on perception and inquiry taught to youth: --- speaks to the issue that youth are being forced to comply with and master obsolete concepts of space-time which they recognize are defective, ... but which they are forced to accept in order to have access to the nourishment and privileges of the established 'system'.
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UPDATE COMMENTS: June 16,1998:
If you have perused any of the twenty-plus essays linked to my primary home page, you will find that the 1998 series relate to the earlier essays as an image coming from a fragment of a hologram might relate to an image coming from a larger fragment. That is, these essays do not extend the scope of the material (it was very broad to begin with, straddling philosophy, psychology, science and history, not to mention management and organizational theory) neither do they 'fill-in' the blanks; ... they simply increase the resolution of the major theme by drawing from continuing dialogues and incorporation of new material. There is an emerging and continually resolving motif in the fabric of this evolving suite of essays which comes from bringing into connection a diversity of real and imaginary experiences ( thought experiments) associated with high performance and dysfunction in collaborative structures (i.e. in partnerships, classrooms, teams and companies).
The quickie version of this motif is that our assumption of euclidian space was not just a poor approximation but was a massive infuser of flaws into our thinking and behavior of the past 2500 years which has seeded dysfunction on an extraordinary scale. The not-so-quickie version of the motif follows in the next four paragraphs for those who like to dig deeper, ... of course it's not necessary to know of, or agree with this motif to get something out of the essays as these are about inquiries into reality which can be interpreted (and will be) based on one's own personal experience.
* * *
Western culture is plagued with problems emanating from a very specific flaw in space-time geometry assumptions which has been permeating western perception and inquiry for some 2500 years. This flaw, which equates to the excluding of harmonic aspects of nature from scientific and social science inquiry, has been well known in physics circles since Henri Poincare's discovery of deterministic chaos back in the 1880's, however, the degree to which this omitted consideration of harmonic effects infuses dysfunction into western society is only just now coming into our awareness as the seeds of our flawed approach come into full blossom.
The flaw I am speaking of derives from the assumption of time-independent euclidian space which 'sees' reality as being composed of nothing more than material structures and void space wherein future states are 'caused' by 'forces' acting on the ensembles of material structure. By forcing the 'void' regions of space to be 'inert' (though they are in fact rich in potential field energy which encodes ontogenous 'know-how') and by not allowing space to interfere with itself, by extending it straight on out to infinity rather allowing it to have curvature, nature's innate properties of self-referentiality and harmony were excluded from scientific inquiry.
The needed revisions, confirmed by scientific developments in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as deterministic chaos, relativity and quantum physics, re-formulated our notion of space-time in terms of an evolving continuum, wherein material structures may be 'seen' as being precipitated out of a 'participative' (quantum) energy field through the pull of 'attractors'. This reformulation of space-time centered around the curved (non-euclidian) space-time assumption dissolves many inconsistencies in prior scientific explanation of phenomenal observations and sensory experience. The 'non-euclidian' assumption liberates perception and inquiry from an exclusive focus on material structures, and extends inquiry to self-referential and harmonic issues such as the 'imaginary' (i.e. purely geometric) space-time envelopes or 'ontogenies' within and through which material structures come into being. Ontogenetic envelopes form out of an oscillating dialectic between attractor-pulled growth and environmental growth-constraints. Such envelopes are often visible within a plant or organism; examples include the Fibonacci spiral structures in sea-snails and ammonites, sunflower seeds, etc. Similar non-material envelopes are associated with the development of human experience (Vygotsky) and the evolution of language and though these are intangible, they are available to us through our cognitive processes.
The western 'build' on top of this flawed base commenced some 2500 years ago, as the philosophical ideas of the ancient Greeks and contemporaneous developments in written language (i.e. distilling ontogenous oral story-telling traditions down into stand-alone linguistic structures) incorporated the euclidian space concept in an implicit, dependent manner. Though the inadequacy of the euclidian space-time geometry has been recognized by western science for over a century, it has been woven so deeply and pervasively into the fabric of western thought, that a shift to the non-euclidian paradigm can be seen to be of a similar or greater order of magnitude as the shift from the Ptolemaic to Copernican world view.
While the consequences of our abnegation of a unifying harmony in nature are enormous and can only be subsumed, rather than purged by the passing of the centuries, the perceptual problem from whence they have emerged can be resolved more expeditiously. We have only to consider that from the rings of Saturn overhead, to the crystalline rock on which we stand, nature informs us that unity and stability are secured through harmony, through resonant arrangements of space-time and matter. We can reflect on the fact that these harmonies come before both material and cause; i.e. that the imaginary notion of a crystal structure precedes the formation of the crystal, and the imaginary notion of a resonant orbit around Saturn precedes the populating of that orbit. 'Cause' is no more than the encoded 'clue' or tell-tale 'trace' left in the wake of purpose. Nature possesses imagination in the very real and scientific sense that it simply 'understands' resonant geometric states; ... nature can in this sense 'think'. And even as nature 'thinks', it engenders in itself 'purpose'; i.e. natural purpose is the essential notion in 'attractors' and the movement, in highly selective manner, towards the wholeness of fulfilling imagined geometric resonances.
Our sensory experience informs us of this harmonic relationship between purpose, 'thought' and material structure even as our euclidian rationalist self-indoctrination would have us continue to deny it. Being part of nature, homo sapiens are equally animated by the need for harmonically satisfying the interplay between purpose, thought and material structure, yet we have been in a 2500 year state of denial. The multi-purposes in our lives, which derive from imagining desired states in our working life, our education, our family life, our intimate relationships, our health and our hobbies, set up strange attractors rather than sets of linear equations. We can no longer afford to infuse dissonance into our lives and environment by seeking one-by-one euclidian solutions to an obviously interdependent suite of purposes, in denial of the harmonically self-referential nature of space-time. And we can no longer afford to exorcise the rich harmonic fullness of meaning from our oral traditions, by dumbing-down our written and spoken language to a euclidian 'flatspeak' of legalistic and logical constructs. As we revive our ancient linguistic traditions which capture and keep alive our resonant continuing ontogeny, the lost dimensions of our lives will flow back in, reviving flattened symbologies and allowing them to swell with new richness of meaning. Of course, it won't be possible to 'engineer' the itinerary for this 'return trip' since we're coming home to a far more harmonic way of life wherein ... "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose in the universe." * * *
Acknowledgements: The thoughts in the essay have been greatly enriched through exchanges amongst a diverse array of web correspondents, pub conversations etc. In addition to the knowledge ring available during the writing of the essays prior august of 1997, the ring was augmented by new contacts coming from the University of Wisconsin (research into management practice), the U.K. commercial sector (knowledge management) and the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa (systems inquiry into philosophy). Potentials for collaborative implementations based on the conceptual frameworks discussed in these essays, in the context of youth education and Good$hare, are emerging from the 1998 dialogues.
That's all for this 1998 Update. Thanks for coming, and by all means, take your time, browse around through the wardrobe of essays and if you find something that 'fits', please take it with you, that's what its there for!