'Having Words'

Montréal, October 22, 1999

http://rampages.onramp.net/~emlumley/words.htm

I have to admit it, ... I 'get off' on the power and fury of people 'having words'. My favorites are the Scots pub crowd with their rich accents, warrior-like demeanors, and their 'total committment', .... "... Jimmeee!!!, ... ya durrrtie wee bastard ye, ... steal me fuckin pint wud ye, ... while i'm off furrrrr a wee fuckin piss, ... i'm gwinna crackkk yerrrrr wee fuckin skull, ye @%#@#&##^% bastard, ye"... ..... "och, aye, aye, angus, .... ye cudna crakkk a wee walnut wi'out yer wee mates tae hald it doon 'n yer wee sister tae tell ye hae." In most cases, ... an hour later, they will be back together, standing and swaying, with arms over each other's shoulders, singing choruses of 'Mo Ghile Mear', .. or some equally rousing Gaelic ballad of bravery and 'heroism'.

It's interesting that we say 'having words', when words are really just the tip of the iceberg. as Goethe had Faust say in reply to "In the beginning was the word", ... "In the beginning was the deed", ... and it seems that the thought comes in there somewhere as well. Somehow, the expressions 'having deeds' or 'having thoughts' does not quite stack up to 'having words', the portent in words can be enormous, not just in the moment, but in changing the course of the future. In this context, 'words' are more powerful than actions because they 'keep working' without having to be refueled, ... they pick up fuel from their environment and just continue on.

This week has been an unusual week for me with respect to 'having words'. No, not in the manner of Jimmie and Angus, but in the quieter domains of science and family. And strangely enough, the 'words' involved deal with differences over a common notion, ... the notion of 'level' or 'precedence' or 'leadership' in the sense of hierarchy.

What do you think of when the word 'level' is uttered? How do you see one 'level' as being different from another? Does one level 'dominate' the next, as Jimmie's friend threatened to dominate Jimmie? What is the relationship characterizing the difference between two levels?

On the science side of things, ... a few days ago, I was asked if I would agree to have an essay I had submitted to *Complexity* published in split column form, with critique and comment by the reviewer (whose identity has not yet been revealed) in the adjacent column. I said sure, and proceeded to make the minor typo corrections etc. which had been pointed out.

Now it was evident to me, that my essay, ... 'Is Evolutionary Computing Evolving?', which was a critical commentary on evolutionary computing, as portrayed in an article on that topic in *Complexity*, ... could be picked up on in a manner similar to the way Jimmie's friend had picked up on Jimmie drinking his pint while he went to the loo.

At the very bottom of it, my essay-commentary revolved around the interpretation of three little words, ... 'as well as', ... in Darwin's following statement;

"This difficulty, though appearing insuperable, is lessened, or, as I believe, disappears, when it is remembered that selection may be applied to the family, ... as well as ... to the individual, and may thus gain the desired end."

'As well as?', ... what is intended? .... simultaneity or sequentiality? .... 'the whole-and-part effect', ... or the 'sum of the parts effect?, ... 'she was her mother's daughter at the same time as she was her daughter's mother?', ... or, 'she was a daughter to her mother and she was a mother to her daughter?'

Once more, we come back to a bifurcation in cognitive view which splits apart east and west, redman and whiteman, buddhist and christian.

To get a better perspective, we can explore the issue in this particular case mentioned by Darwin. Darwin was speaking to the objections to the theory of natural selection; i.e., in the section entitled "Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection as applied to Instincts: Neuter and Sterile Insects";

"It has been objected to the foregoing view of the origin of instincts that "the variations and structure of instinct must have been simultaneous and accurately adjusted to each other, as a modification in the one without an immediate corresponding change in the other would have been fatal."

Darwin argues the point effectively and observes that there are many examples where the instinct comes first and the structural adaptation follows gradually, by selection (e.g. as in the case of 'the larger titmouse' which "spontaneously" developed a taste for eating seeds and slowly developed the equipment (beak) attuned to that purpose over many cycles of reproduction and selection.

At the same time, he concedes; "It must, however, be admitted that in many instances we cannot conjecture whether it was instinct or structure which first varied."

In the case of very distinct and evolving neuter and sterile offspring, where they are, as is obvious, not 'inline' in any reproductive-selection cycle, an explanation of their evolution requires another 'angle', ... and that 'angle' is the evolution of whole-and-part based on intefering behaviors. For example, when the beak of the larger titmouse evolved as it became a seed-eater, ... there was no danger that the beak would evolve on its own and risk dropping off because it no longer fitted on the bird's head, ... the beak evolved in a 'whole-and-part' manner with respect to 'whole bird'. Similarly, Darwin appears to be arguing that the 'family' and 'individual' evolve in a 'whole-and-part' manner. This implies 'mutual inclusion' and 'simultaneous unity and plurality' as characterizing the relationship between 'family' and 'individual', ... categories which modern evolutionary computing theorists are calling 'levels' and which they seem to view in terms of 'mutual exclusion' and 'sequential unity and plurality' (I could be wrong, but we'll find out.).

Logic, ... the essence of computers, ... is based on 'the law of non-contradiction', the property of mutual exclusion where a 'thing' cannot be another 'thing' at the same time. Logic equips us to simulate evolution in sequential mode, ... where the individual changes a bit and THEN this changes the family a bit and THEN this changes the individual a bit, ...and so on. This is a linear, logical approximation and it is not equivalent to the case where the whole-and-part, family-and-individual, container-and-constituent, change simultaneously. If the base of the titmouse's beak changed first and the 'reciprocal' configuration of beak-supporting region of the bird's head changed in a sequential manner, ... the beak would drop off in the interim.

No, ... it is evident from our viewing of nature, ... from observing the development of an embryo to an infant and infant to adult, that change is innately 'whole-and-part' change and not sequential 'sum-of-the-parts' change.

What does this mean? ... simply that logic cannot give us an understanding of evolution, .. logic is incomplete as Goedel's theorem has proven. It cannot handle situations involving 'mutual inclusion' where one thing is another at the same time (where the family IS the individual and the individual IS the family), ... it cannot handle situations involving 'simultaneous unity and plurality' as is the general 'field' and 'relativity' view of nature.

In order to understand evolution, then, one must use the 'field' and 'relational reasoning', as used by Einstein in developing the theory of relativity. In the view of field and relativity, the so-called 'environment' is no longer seen as a passive thing 'out there', but as a full participant in the game of life. The environment IS the 'whole system', ... the 'field', ... the 'container' which engages with its own 'constituents'. The constituents or 'things' in nature do not exist 'in their own right' (mutually exclusively) out of the context of 'environment', nor do they change 'on their own', ... and the environmental whole is not the sum of the 'on their own'-changing 'independent' constituents.

Instead, one must think in the terms of, as Henri Laborit puts it, ... spheres- englobing- spheres, ... a simultaneous, mutually inclusive nesting arrangement in the same manner as the atmosphere englobes the oceanosphere and lithosphere. If something happens to the atmosphere, it simultaneously happens to the 'earth' (the whole system) and to oceanosphere and lithosphere. As far as the 'man-in-the-sun' is concerned (as Kepler used to explain such things), ... a change in the atmosphere is a change in the earth, ... and all these fancy-labelled zones, ... atmosphere, lithosphere etc. are just arbitrary abstractions of those funny creatures who live on the earth. When these funny abstraction-loving creatures speak of this sequentiality, ... that the change in the 'atmosphere' may CAUSE a change in the 'lithosphere', ... it is all mental masturbation which is totally dependent on invented words and labels. It's very useful to these creatures, perhaps, but this 'causality' is a notion which could not exist without the differentiating labels for 'things', such as 'atmosphere' and 'lithosphere'. The notion of CAUSE presupposes the notion of independent THINGS, but 'things', as Einstein has pointed out, are simply local concentrations of energy in a continuous flowing field of energy. If we presuppose 'things', then we must account not only for their mass-equivalent energy but also their kinetic energy. But their kinetic energy depends on their velocity and their velocity is relative to the observer's reference frame. If I see a child in a train passing by me at ninety miles per hour juggling a couple of baseballs, ... I can see that from his perspective, the kinetic energy possessed by the balls seems low. But from my point of view, ... if one of those balls was to flip out the window and 'bean me', ... it would be like getting beaned in a major league game. Apparently, this 'thing-based' view is very much a function of coordinate systems and observer effects. As Einstein says;

"We cannot build physics on the basis of the matter-concept alone. But the division into matter and field is, after the recognition of the equivalence of mass and energy, something artificial and not clearly defined. Could we not reject the concept of matter and build a pure field physics? What impresses our senses as matter is really a great concentration of energy into a comparatively small space. We could regard matter as the regions in space where the field is extremely strong. In this way a new philosophical background could be created. Its final aim would be the explanation of all events in nature by structure laws valid always and everywhere. A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone. There would be no place, in our new physics, for both field and matter, field being the only reality. This new view is suggested by the great achievements of field physics, by our success in expressing the laws of electricity, magnetism, gravitation in the form of structure laws, and finally by the equivalence of mass and energy."

Clearly, ... the ambiguity problem in Darwin's phrase 'family, as well as, ... individual' relates to the build on our concept of 'thing', ... does an 'individual' relate to 'family' in the same 'mutually exclusive' way as we visualize a piston relating to an engine?, ... a view which presupposes total independence?

Or, do we envisage that 'individual' AND 'family' are simultaneous yet different aspects of the same unity, ... as a ball in billiards is simultaneously part of the family of billiard balls, ... where each move of the ball simultaneously changes its reciprocal disposition (shape of the family).

Does it really matter?

Indeed it does, in my opinion, ... and that's what I may be 'having words' about it in the *Complexity* article.

So where does the theory of 'field' and 'relativity' take us, where finite systems of logic cannot, and what does this have to do with the notion of 'levels', 'precedence' (primacy) and 'leadership'?

In my opinion, the answer to this question is a lot simpler than one at first thinks. And an understanding of this seems easier if one starts from normal (complex) observations and works downwards and inwards, rather than starting from pieces of the (flawed or incomplete) abstract theory we have been taught and working upwards and outwards. In other words, ... in working from 'field' to 'things' (container to constituent) rather than from starting from 'things'; ... the only thing you can build from 'things' is other 'things', ... 'structures'. But our complex observations involve more than 'things' or 'structures'.

Ok, let's talk about the hierarchy of 'leadership'. Taiaiake Alfred ('Peace, Power, Righteousness') discusses the very different notions of leadership between redman and whiteman. While the redman's leader draws his power 'from the people', ... the whiteman's 'leader' (too often) draws his power 'from position'. Anyone who has been, or has worked for, a manager in a large company, or an elected public official (in the whiteman's world) notices that people treat one differently as soon as one becomes encumbent in that 'leader' position, and that as soon as one drops out of that position, people treat you differently once again, even in those affairs which have nothing to do with the formal function of the position, ... e.g. in social situations. And as the poet David Whyte says, these are not the same differences, when one is rising up to the top of the compost heap and when one is being recycled.

Well, in the white corporate management hierarchy, a control hierarchy is a linear progression in which each level has power over all lower levels, and there is also a 'division of labor' in that each manager 'manages' a distinct part of the whole, ... so while there is 'precedence', there is also fragmentation (mutual exclusion). This notion of 'management' or 'control' level is often used synonymously with the word 'leadership'. And indeed, it would be nice if the 'power from the people' went hand-in-hand with the 'power of position' so that there were no discontinuities in manager-employee behavior as leaders were promoted and demoted through the levels. In fact, if that were the case, ... there would be no need to term this a 'control hierarchy' since there would be no negative feedback processes involved, and the system would work freely and voluntarily, ... the point in indigenous philosophy which Taiaiake is trying to remind his people of.

But where a leader's power draws from the people, ... it is in a wholistic sense, whereas in the 'Elephant Corporation' we have one manager for each part of the elephant, ... and it is hard to reconcile whose views we most 'tune to' when one man's counsel is all about the management of tail, and the other's is about the management of trunk.

As has been discussed in a number of these essays in terms of the different psychology of 'yin/yang' (mutual inclusion) in the east, and 'good' and 'evil' (mutual exclusion) in the west, ... leadership defined by 'power from the people' is cultivated through 'positive models', ... by the 'pull' of cultural myth, images and archetypes, ... rather than by the process of 'purification' where one first assumes that you (or your 'department') are a 'sinner' who must be purified and educates you in the purging of 'evil', ... giving you long lists of 'what to do and what not to do' at the risk of being punished, rather than saying 'model yourself after him'.

The advantage of cultivating leadership on the basis of living models rather than on the basis of 'rules' and structure derives from the different 'levels' of understanding we are capable of (the dual option notion of 'levels' arises time and again). For example, we can describe the human body in terms of its components, but this is a purely structural view of a body and not a view of the human as a living system. In other words, if you gave the component-based structural description to a Klingon who had never visited earth, ... he would say 'I don't get it, .. how does it work again?'. And then you would have to tell him about the sun and the commodious intensity of the sunlight and its warmth-giving and life-inducing properties, ... and you would have to tell him about the atmosphere and the oxygen supplied by photosynthesis in plants and about the oceanic reservoirs of H2O which circulated oxygen and moisture via an automated kind of 'fanning' called 'wind' and the re-condensing-recycling units called clouds etc. In other words, ... while structure is one level of understanding a human body, another is the living system aspect which is innately dependent on the context of container and the container-constituent co-processes which constitute 'life'.

Thus, logical structure 'in its own right' says nothing about 'living process', and an understanding of living process requires an understanding of relative container-constituent relationships.

Similarly, 'leadership' as a structural entity, 'in its own right', ... is an incomplete understanding which says nothing about 'leadership' as an ecological potency, and an understanding of 'ecological potency' requires an understanding of relative container-constituent relationships (coresonances).

What's the problem here with respect to 'In the beginning was the word'? The problem is that the container-constituent-co-processes, while they give essential meaning to the 'constituent', ... are 'implicit' and are not explicitly articulable.

Why aren't they articulable?

Because they involve the confluent 'flow' of multiple interfering processes and language is 'single issue at a time' medium [1]. So Goethe's Faust's "In the beginning was the deed" is made very relevant here. We can understand the wise response to confluent, living flow on the part of a leader, and we can model after it, but we cannot explicitly articulate it or design it, or specify it in terms of 'what must be done'.

Our language is based on the sequential transfer of action from subject to object, the same type of geometric model as the 'causal' model, ... a model which provides a low level explanation of natural phenomena, as if 'things' were interacting purposelessly.

What's wrong with this causal mode of description relative to the describing of an ongoing confluence of multiple interfering processes?

In the 'flow' model, ... subject and object are 'relative'. In life experience, there is no place to 'start' describing something since everything is part of a continuing process. If we are immersed in a flow, for example as when we are diving in a large river, we are aware of relative convergence and divergence of things, but there is no sense of 'solid ground' or temperal 'point of departure' (commencement) to build one's description upon. For this same 'geometric' reason, Wittgenstein would never 'write a book' in the conventional sense of the word (his publications are collections of propositions), saying that it made no sense because 'alles fliesst' ('everything is in flux'), as Heraklit had made clear.

Vygotsky ('Thought and Language') very nicely illustrates the 'how does one describe a continuing process' problem here as well. The meaning of what is said comes from the 'containing context' or 'developmental history' (geneticheskii), so every starting point implies a larger, enveloping 'context' or 'space-time- historical- container'. Vygotsky points out that in 'inner speech', meanwhile, there is a tendency towards 'predication', ... "... omitting the subject of a sentence and all words connecting with it while preserving the predicate. This tendency towards predication appears in all our experiments with such regularity that we must assume it to be the basic form of syntax of inner speech."

If we imagine ourselves back immersed in the river flow, ... we can see that it is not possible to say 'this (subject) is causing such-and-such a result (predicate)', because everything is relative to everything else and all is moving in a co-dynamic. The only 'thing' we can point our finger at and 'blame' for what is going on is 'space' itself, ... the shape of space-time (flow), the reciprocal disposition to all of the constituent entities by means of which each entity senses the shape of the flow. In this relativistic world of flow in which the observer and observed are in simultaneous codynamic, ... the 'container' or 'field' in which everything is immersed is the only sense-giving reference.

If I write a book and describe my life and the world around me in terms of a whole series of 'subject-object transactions', ... I may well miss out on the rich meaning which comes from the confluent, interfering, containing context, which says far more than the narrow threads of causal logic. This in fact speaks to the second of my 'having words' engagements this week. My cousin has written a rather highly acclaimed book which pivots off of his Italian family heritage, ... characterizing my grandparents (and his) indirectly via literary expedient, ... the arbitrarily seized-upon logical framework he needed to glue the collection of anecdotes which constitutes his story, into an integrated whole, ... a 'sum-of-the-parts' approach which, unfortunately, fails miserably in giving contextual sense the 'container of family'. But that is 'another story' which is continuing to play itself out (yin/yang wise rather than judgementally).

So what happens if we leave out 'subjects' and go to this inner speech 'predication' route? Clearly our statements no longer have any 'standalone' value if we get a whole series of 'answers' to unknown questions. 'Yes', .. 'no', ... 'thirty-five', ... 'super', ... 'never again', .. and so on. On the other hand, ... if we were able to fill in the questions in our own unarticulated terms, ... then we might be able to visualize the relativistic flow without building it up from standalone parts, .... without putting the 'stake in the ground' of 'subject', ... and by so avoiding the standalone (non-relativistic) building blocks, thus develop the 'field' oriented view, ... the multi-dimensional relativistic confluent interference view.

Vygotsky cites from Tolstoy in regard to this 'relativistic predication';

"Very good examples of the condensation of external speech and its reduction to predicates are found in the novels of Tolstoy, who quite often dealt with the psychology of understanding:

'No one heard clearly what he said, but Kitty understood him. She understood because her mind incessantly watched for his needs.' (Anna Karenina, part V, chapter 18). We might say that her thoughts, following the thoughts of the dying man, contained the subject to which his word, understood by no one else, referred. But perhaps the most striking example is the declaration of love between Kitty and Levin by means of initial letters (Anna Karenina, part IV, chapter 13);

'I have long wished to ask you something.'

'Please do.'

'This', he said, and wrote the initial letters; W y a: i c n b, d y m t o n. These letters meant: 'When you answered: it cannot be, did you mean then or never?' It seemed impossible that she would be able to understand the complicated sentence.

'I understand', she said, blushing.

'What word is that?' he asked, pointing to the 'n' which stood for 'never'.

'The word is 'never',' she said. 'but that is not true.' He quickly erased the word, handed her the chalk, and rose. She wrote: I c n a o t.

His face face brightened suddenly; he had understood. It meant; 'I could not answer otherwise then.'

'She wrote the initial letters; s t y m f a f w h. This meant; 'So that you might forget and forgive what happened.'

He seized the chalk with tense, trembling fingers, broke it, and wrote the initial letters of the following; 'I have nothing to forget and forgive, I never ceased loving you.'

'I understand', she whispered. He sat down and wrote a long sentence. She understood it all and, without asking him whether she was right, took the chalk and answered at once.

For a long time he could not make out what she had written, and he kept looking up into her eyes. His mind was dazed with happiness. He was quite unable to fill in the words she had meant; but in her lovely, radiantly happy eyes he read all that he needed to know. And he wrote down three letters. Before he had finished writing, she was already reading under his hand, and she finished the sentence herself and wrote the answer, 'Yes.' Everything had been said in their conversation: that she loved him, and would tell her father and mother that he would call in the morning.'

This example has extraordinary psychological interest because, like the whole episode between Kitty and Levin, it was taken by Tolstoy from his own life. In just this way, Tolstoy told his future wife of his love for her. These examples show clearly that when the thoughts of the speakers are the same, the role of speech is reduced to a minimum. Tolstoy points out elsewhere that between people who live in close psychological contact, such communication by means of abbreviated speech is the rule rather than the exception."

From the point of view of flow and relativity, ... the message from Vygotsky and Tolstoy is that logic and language get in the way of understanding innately implicit (interference-based), relativistic phenomena such as life, and that in the limiting case where the fewest explicit bits can be used as ladders to share an implicit view of the phenomena, the less unencumbered and more profound is the understanding.

In mainstream science, however, the search goes on for more and finer detail and logic to 'get to the bottom' of 'the way things work'. But there is no 'bottom', ... and the detail continues to complexify as one goes towards the 'bottom' and one finds oneself confronting the 'reductionist nightmare', ... a bottomless pit of relationships whose continuing investigation consumes one's whole life, ... Instead, if one gets 'lost' in the details, one can lift one's head from the microscope, stand up, look around and out into the container, ... into the sky and clouds, .. at the forest and the ocean, ... the sunshine, and the birds and animals, ... and imagine the developmental history of the earth, the history of nature, ... allowing oneself to be defined by the space-time container one is immersed in, as a means of 'understanding the way the world works.' As the natives of the pacific northwest say, if the logic that you have depended upon 'runs out' of steam and you feel you are lost;

Stand still. The trees ahead

and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers.

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it you may come back again.

saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you.

You are surely lost. Stand still.

The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

'Lost' by David Wagoner

So, 'words', like logic, are good for expressing things in terms of other things, ... logic in itself is 'content free' as WIttgenstein says, ... and words are like 'empty suitcases' as Henri Laborit says, ... to be filled with a preferred selection of personal experiences.

It is the epitome of 'non-relativistic' communication to express 'effect' in terms of a particular 'thing'. 'He shot the man.' Ok, but what about the history of the container in which this 'causal' action occurs, ... all of the interfering processes which came together to set the stage for this causal action, ... does this enveloping context mean nothing?

The skilled pool player knows that he can use Newton's laws, ... the laws of causal dynamics, to explain what will happen when his cue ball collides with the nine ball. One minor problem, ... what if the nine ball is obscured by other balls? What do Newton's laws say about getting the nine-ball 'in the clear' so that he can get a good shot at it, ... particularly when others are playing and trying to keep it covered up so that you can't get to it?

Newton's laws and causality say nothing about 'purpose', ... so they do not speak to the 'shape' of the containing configuration relative to what one is trying to do. That's why the 'systems sciences' were invented. They said, effectively; "we want to understand natural situations which involve environmental effects, ... like the kind of causality in which an acorn grows into a tree, ... where one cannot fully determine 'cause' by the system itself, but where there is a necessary involvement of the enveloping container, the environment, ... where cause is more like a 'producer-product' relationship (Singer) or a 'directive co-relation' (Sommerfeld).

So, the systems sciences went beyond pure Newtonian 'causality', which most of our disciplinary sciences still limit themselves to, ... and they began accounting for 'container-constituent' interactions. While Newtonian pool, if anyone were interested, would be a game where all the balls are the same colour and indistinguishable, ... and where the players would say to each other, ... 'I can tell you exactly what's going to happen if I hit that combo over there', ... and you can capture that knowledge and reproduce it in your factory if you like, ... Systems sciences pool would be where you put distinguishing marks such as colours and/or numbers on the balls and go after them with some particular purpose in mind, ... such as sinking them all in a particular order.

Whereas in Newtonian pool, there was understanding and accomplishment in the sense of 'causal understanding' and factory type results, ... being able to predict what's going to happen mechanically and reproduce the situation many times, ... in Systems sciences pool, we now understand things in terms of 'purpose' and we can measure our accomplishments, not just in terms of volume and number, but in terms of 'progress' towards our purpose, ... how many balls we have sunk out of the total of fifteen. We can now 'plan' our work and set some timetables, ... designing a succession of moves which will change the environment in the desired way and timeframe, so that we expose the balls in sequence and are then able to pocket them, and clear the table by an agreed time.

What's missing?

The Systems sciences and the notion of 'adaptive planning' tends to assume that we are the only ones with purpose and that the environment is 'causal' (purposeless). This combination of purpose and causality may arise from the fact that it seems to complicated to try to factor in the purpose of the other constituents which we bundle into the term 'environment'.

What's the realistic case in nature?

Everything is coming from someplace and trying to get to some place, ... and the basic laws of physics, ... such as electromagnetism, ... say that you can't get to an understanding of this unless you come at it from the point of view of 'field', ... the shape of the containing configuration. As soon as you think or say, ... 'The environment (e.g. ball configuration) looks like this, and so therefore, I must do this.', ... you are being 'non-relativistic' and are grounding your actions in something that is inherently unstable, .. you are sailing off into the future on a raft of crocodiles rather than logs.

Imagine the pool game where one or more other players are giving very different 'purpose' to the other balls in the configuration. You cannot then 'build your plans' upon your perspective of the configuration because each ball has a purpose of its own, .... the whole environment is purposeful, .... there is no distinction between you and the environment and now 'everything is relative', .... you are back diving in that river again and all you know is that things converge and diverge, .... but with respect to what?, .... with respect to themselves, ... with respect to the ensemble of things, ... with respect to one's own 'reciprocal disposition'.

So how does one 'understand the way the system works' and how does one measure 'accomplishment' in this 'relativistic' or whole-and-part purposive environment? In the most basic or 'causal' way of thinking, we understood in terms of subject-and-object 'cause' and we felt accomplishment in terms of 'volume' and 'replication' associated with predictability under controlled conditions, .... then, in Systems science, we understood in terms of 'directive correlation or 'purpose' and felt accomplishment in terms of 'progress', the linear movement towards some fixed material goal. Finally, in the full and unapproximated 'relativity' of nature, ... through the eyes of 'the theory of relativity', .. how now do we understand and accomplish?

The answer, in geometric terms, lies equally in the game of pool which emulates relativistic curved space-time; i.e. 'whole-and-part' purpose, .otherwise describable in terms of 'harmonic purpose' or 'container-content-coevolution' etc. How does the skilled pool player 'understand' the game from the 'relativistic' perception, inquiry and response mode, and how does he feel 'accomplishment'?

Firstly, he knows that he must put 'playing shape' in the primacy. He cannot assume that the environment which envelopes the balls he wants to make shots with, is 'passive', as he did in the systems sciences and 'adaptive planning' approach, so he must contrive to 'shape' the configuration so as to engender shooting opportunities, ... to cultivate a favorable 'reciprocal disposition' or 'opportunity landscape'. So he learns how to understand the game in terms of 'evolution of shape' or 'container- content- coevolution' or 'field effects'. His accomplishment is now felt in terms of how well he 'cultivates shape' or 'cultivates the opportunity landscape'.

But this is not all.

His cultivation of shape gives birth to shot making opportunities, so within this 'nesting' of understanding and accomplishment, ... he still includes understanding in terms of 'purpose' and accomplishment in terms of 'progress' and understanding in terms of 'causality' and accomplishment in terms of 'amassed volumes' and predictability. The difference is in what he puts in the primacy in his approach and there is a natural hierarchy here. If I play at the lowest level, I get my jollies from amassing repetitious results in a controlled, predictable environment and saying 'I told you so, ...everytime I do this, ... this happens', though a friend might say, 'yeah, but where are you going with your life, ... what is your purpose?', and I have no answer. So, I may want to move up to the next level, set some purposive goals and get my jollies from the notion of progress and saying; 'Look isn't this wonderful, ... do you see all this progress I've been making by applying my technology and skills to purpose?', though a friend might say, 'yeah, but what about all the dissonance you've infused in your surroundings, ... in your community? You can afford the antibiotics but others are dying from the microbes you've angered, ... and you've amassed all kinds of foodstuffs and supplies while others are starving and lacking for tools. Where are you going with respect to your relationship with your containing whole, the community and environment?', and I have no answer. So, I may want to move up to the next level, and instead of just jumping in and playing towards purpose, ... consider also the purpose of my teammates and other who constitute 'the environment' And instead of shooting and leaving them snookered, ... cultivate 'shape' or 'opportunity' for the whole team, ... for the whole environment, which can be harvested by-and-by, according how the whole unpredictable system evolves; i.e. according to 'to every thing, there's a season and a time to every purpose' as the wise of 1000 B.C. and before have counselled.

In this highest level of understanding and accomplishment, .... once again encountered in pursuing my 'down-and-back-up-again' perception and inquiry voyage, ... my ego-centric purpose has been upgraded into a reciprocal eco-centric purpose, ... a 'view from the field', from the space between things, rather than from a particular, detached perspective. My sense of accomplishment now comes from how well the full team, ... all of the constituents of nature, ... fare and flourish. But this understanding and feeling of accomplishment is not mutually exclusive from the other levels, they 'contain' the understanding and accomplishment of the lower levels. I do not lose anything, ... I simply 'deepen' my experience and make it more fulfilling.

Something else happens as well, when I shift from 'progress in the primacy' to 'opportunity cultivation' in the primacy, ... I no longer have the same anxious, linear sense of time. I am not always thinking, ... 'I've sunk three of my balls and there are twelve more to go', dreading how long and hard it will be to 'finish the job'. Instead, .... 'time' is no longer a measure of something partially completed which must be completed, ... like the rest of the day or the rest of my vacation or the rest of my life, ...instead, ... each time I come to play, ... I think in terms of opening up latent opportunity, ... and there is always the potential to widen or open up new channels of opportunity, even if one is in a tight spot or on death row.

For example, if I am educating my child, instead of telling him how important it is to 'make progress' in school, ... I can help him to see and to cultivate the latent channels of opportunity with respect to his natural purpose, ... so that he can see 'progress' as a lesser thing and not in the non-relativistic terms of something of value 'in its own right'.

So, we have three nested levels of understanding and feeling of accomplishment which tie in to different 'views' of science, ... different levels of 'perception and inquiry' as Erich Jantsch says ('Design for Evolution'), using slightly different framings and metaphors (perhaps he didn't like pool halls).

That about completes my thought-survey of the meaning of 'having words'. If and when my commentary is published in *Complexity*, ... I fully expect to find the critique in the form of particular points made in reference to particular things I have said, ... implying that understanding comes from a bottom-up sum-of-the-parts, ... the very definition of what does not happen in complex systems. Is the field of ideas and understanding a complex system? Modern physics has provided a definite answer, 'YES', ... but we continue to dig deeper into the logical detail in search of answers not in complement to, but instead of 'tuning in' to our containing environment.

So, my 'having words' on the issue of 'community as complex system' was kicked off because of different interpretations of the notion of 'level' emanating from a rather important statement by Darwin in his chapter on 'Instinct' in 'The Origin of Species', ... the one interpretation being that levels are 'mutally exclusive', ... separable by logic and causality, and additive in a computational sense, ... and the other interpretation, as described herein, that levels are simultaneous and mutually inclusive, .... a geometry which includes the alternative geometry as a lesser and subordinate abstraction. Somehow, I have the feeling that it will not be practical to respond to the critique, by giving the initial letters of my answer.

* * *

[1] Excerpt from the essay "Culture and Geometry: Burying the Hatchet" 5/15/98

Non-Euclidian Language

The issues of language have woven themselves into all of the above discussions on systems inquiry, philosophy, psychology and knowledge management. In fact, it is obvious that our language serves euclidian concepts far better than non-euclidian; i.e. our language is essentially bivalent and single-issue at a time (it direct usage mode, at a given point it can deal with only one 'article', surgically extracted from its ecological relationships.).

Wittgenstein who claimed that his philosophical works were "struggles against the limits of language" (Ankaempfen gegen die Grenzen der Sprache') speaks to this issue, as follows; "There is a truth in Schopenhauer's view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and an end, is a sort of contradiction [Elsewhere Wittgenstein quotes Heraclitus "everything is in flux" on this same problem of being forced to capture a complex continuing dynamic by 'parts']. One difficulty with philosophy is that we lack a synoptic view. We encounter the kind of difficulty we should have with the geography of a country for which we had no map, or else a map of isolated bits. The country we are talking about is language, and the geography its grammar. We can walk about the country quite well, but when forced to make a map, we go wrong. A map will show different roads through the same country, any one of which we can take, though not two, just as in philosophy we must take up problems one by one though in fact each problem leads to a multitude of others. We must wait until we come round to the starting point before we can proceed to another section, that is, before we can either treat of the problem we first attacked or proceed to another. In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say 'Let's get a rough idea', for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads. So I suggest repetition as a means of surveying the connections."

Wittgenstein speaks to the innate bivalent or 'euclidian' nature of language (and of philosophy which depends upon language). Nature, meanwhile, is innately multivalent or 'harmonic', entailing geometries such as the dipolar yin-yang geometry in which multiple dynamics are occurring at the same time. While Shakespeare could get away with saying 'she makes hungry where most she satisfies', a clearly multivalent or harmonic (interference-based) notion, the imagery so produced is engendered within the reader and is not fully 'grounded' in the words themselves. So while a literary document may be designed for the feelings and interpretation it invokes within the reader, a philosophical or mathematical document, to ensure its internal consistency, is more dependent on the direct signification of the words and how they are connected (as opposed to how the reader interprets and connects them).

This presents a formidable challenge when using western languages since non-euclidian (e.g. self-referential, harmonic) notions cannot be directly developed from closed form 'nouns'. Wittgenstein attempted to get around this problem, of our language's inadequacy in dealing with non-euclidian notions, by 'surveying the connections'. What emerged from this approach, which tried to preserve the consistency of rationalist philosophy and capture the harmonies of nature (and art) at the same time led him to comment; "My style is like bad musical composition." (Mein Stil gleicht schlechtem musikalischen Satz.)

Clearly, the medium of western 'euclidian thing'- based language is a poor medium for the self-referential concepts of non-euclidian geometry. While mythopoeic era languages possessed a non-euclidian base, the shift away from ontogenetic (developmental) learning to the embrace of material performance driven organizational learning (i.e. trade and commerce), led to the rise to primacy of the phonetic, noun-based structure which is currently in use (with exceptions such as Celtic and Native North American languages which escaped this transition because their cultures escaped the shift from ontogenetic to material performance driven learning and the stewardship of their languages did not pass from the priests, shamans and poets to the traders and merchants.)

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Epilogue to 'Having Words'

Montréal, October 23, 1999

http://rampages.onramp.net/~emlumley/words.htm

As alluded to in the essay 'Having Words', ... it seems important to explore, in a discussion which seeks to determine which of alternative views is more consistent with 'the way the world works', ... the relationship of words to the sense we make out of 'reasoned inquiry'. On what basis do we get the feeling, from linguistic dialogue, that 'this is more consistent with our experience' than another alternative. This epilogue probes more deeply into the foundations of 'reasoned discussion' in science, especially discussions dealing with evolutionary notions, ... notions dealing with the relationship of 'being' and 'becoming', ... 'family' and 'individual', ... 'container' and 'constituent'.

~~^^~~

Russell Ackoff's observation of the 'insufficient causality' of the acorn and the tree, ... the 'producer-product' or 'directive co-relation' property which seems to emerge or be pulled into being by the enveloping environment, rather than from internal causal or 'upward and outward' structural construction, ..... led him to the basic Systems sciences hypothesis, that our perception and inquiry needed to be 'up-and-down-again' rather than 'down-and-up-again'. While this is a very general 'geometric' principle on mode of inquiry, ... in the domain of commercial organisation, where the money for thinking about such things ultimately draws from, ... it translates into, ... 'visualize your supplier organization role in terms of the demand emanating from the container in which you are immersed.'

There is a notion of 'primacy' innate in this thought which characterizes all of nature; ... and it is that the 'field of influence' emanating from the 'environmental container' is more fundamental than the behaviors of material structures seen in 'their own right'.

This principle, .... of the primacy of inductive container-influence over deductive material constituents and their behaviors, ... while intuitive, ... emerges naturally as we bring a multitude of real life experiences and imagined-as-real experiences (thought experiments) into connection in our minds.

While Ackoff explored this question in terms of 'objective teleology' as being the 'antithesis' of determinism, ... in other words, that the notion of 'purpose, ... some kind of 'final cause' or attraction emanating from containing-space, preceded the APPARENT determinism in natural phenomena, ... he opted for endowing 'things' with 'purpose' rather than the containing space itself. This leads to the same discordancy with our intuition, as did the attribution of gravity to things, .. which was so unequivocally objected to by Newton. Newton effectively said, ... 'this is just a way of looking at things, ... something else has to be going on here, as it's absurd to assume that one body 'knows about' and attracts another, remote body, at a distance, ... without any 'contact', ... without anything 'in between'.

Had Ackoff listened to Einstein talking about 'field' and 'relativity', ... or had he been a fan of the game of billiards, he might have decided, instead, to endow 'purpose' with a 'dipolarity', ... making it a 'co-function' of the 'inductive influence' of the container AND the reciprocal 'deductive structural behavior' of the constituent.

To reiterate Einstein's comment on thinking in terms of the (complementary) primacy of container over constituent;

"What impresses our senses as matter is really a great concentration of energy into a comparatively small space. We could regard matter as the regions in space where the field is extremely strong. In this way a new philosophical background could be created. Its final aim would be the explanation of all events in nature by structure laws valid always and everywhere. A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone. There would be no place, in our new physics, for both field and matter, field being the only reality. This new view is suggested by the great achievements of field physics, by our success in expressing the laws of electricity, magnetism, gravitation in the form of structure laws, and finally by the equivalence of mass and energy."

... "Field being the only reality", ... seems a rather important statement, .... a hypothesis which, it seems, we should keep our minds open to, ... for further testing against our observations and experiences.

As a matter of fact, the expression in pool, ... 'shape is everything', ... meaning that the shape of opportunity in the 'containing configuration', the 'reciprocal disposition' of relativistic curved space-time, 'gates' or 'reciprocally constrains' the opportunity potentials so that the causal dynamics or 'determinism' we speak about is, in an informational sense, fundamentally incomplete, being only a feature within the larger topography of understanding. Not only that, but there are two 'vantage points', rather than one from which we can commence our perception, inquiry and response; ... (1) the vantage point which first examines the whole field of opportunity in the 'container', ... an 'opportunity landscape' which reciprocally pre-determines and constrains causal dynamics, and/or, (1a) the vantage point which starts off from examining the material-causal dynamic system, ... the system thereby being perceived in a 'closed system' or 'in its own right' sense.

Clearly, if we start from vantage point (1), ... we also get to have a full view of vantage point (1a), ... but if we start from vantage point (1a), ... we remain BLIND to the complementarity of opportunity and purpose, because we ignore the notion of the 'shape of opportunity', ... the reciprocal 'space-time-gating' of the container relative to constituent properties and behaviors. This clearly has practical import relative to evolution; ... if a predator comes after me, ... I cannot hide under the skirting boards, as a cockroach can. The shape of my container reciprocally 'gates' my opportunities relative to my purpose.

The 'shot-meister' in pool, ... and it is the brilliant causal shots which one can 'see' which bring the applause from onlookers in the gallery, ... starts at level (1a), and while he way 'win' in the short term, he will never 'win' in the long term against the equally shot-making skilled 'shape-meister' who starts at (1) and who foregoes the adulation of the crowd which comes from 'going for' spectacular shots and instead 'nudges' the configuration and 'shapes' the 'reciprocal disposition' to cultivate opportunity and a sustainable harvest over the long term. For the 'shape-meister', ... the game is not 'the sum of the causal transactions', ... it is a space-time continuum wherein the 'behavior' of the family of balls COEVOLVES with the 'behavior' of the individual ball.

We could more appropriately say 'co-behavior' since the behavior of the family is SIMULTANEOUSLY and reciprocally modulated by the movement of each individual RELATIVE to the whole family ensemble, as given by the 'reciprocal disposition' of Einstein's relativity theory.

The message is simple, intuitive, and we know it only too well prior to being 'educated out of it', ... and that is that 'whole-and-part' relationships are more fundamental than 'things' seen 'in their own right'. The only meaning a 'thing in it's own right' can have is a dead meaning. As Vygotsky says "A word devoid of thought is a dead thing", ... and, citing Gumilev, ... "... and like bees in the deserted hive the dead words have a rotten smell."

Now we have a minor cultural problem here, since the notion of 'the shape of opportunity' involves 'implicit' thought based on 'complex information', ... the relational complementarity of 'real and imaginary' aspects. Thought without imagination, ... aka 'rationalism', ... based on the real mechanical tangibles stripped of the imagined phase relationships of 'becoming', ... thought which ignores the sense-giving context coming from the containing, space-time historical development, is like sex without intimacy. Meanwhile, visualizing things (material-causal-behaviors) in terms of historical development requires 'space-time phase' information which is innately 'complex'.

Wittgenstein complained about this in the domain of logic and language, saying that logic was 'content free' (6.124 in Tractatus...), 'mathematics is a logical method' (6.13), 'a proposition of mathematics does not express a thought' (6.21).

Ludwig was pointing out that the apparent 'stand-alone' meaning of logic and mathematics was illusory; 'In philosophy the question, 'What do we actually use this word or proposition for?' repeatedly leads to valuable insights' (6.211). That is, the containing context gives sense the constituent, as Vygotsky also says, and as Henri Laborit puts it; 'words and propositions are like empty suitcases which we give meaning to by filling them with a selection of our personal experiences'

What we 'imagine', or understand 'implicitly' by bringing a multitude of experiences into connection in our mind (using our 'relational intelligence'), to be brought into a meaningful confluence, requires 'phase' or 'relative timing' information (associated with the 'interference' viewport of quantum duality) which informs on the shifting 'shape' of the containing configuration, as in pool. In this view, we see the 'opening up' of opportunity which spawns a playing field for 'causal dynamics'.

The type of 'timing' and 'phasing' information which relates the opening up of opportunity to material-causal dynamics and which yields a Goedellian incompleteness transcending view, is not wall-clock timing. That is, there is an innate 'timing associated' incompleteness in building up explicit understanding from causal dynamics; i.e. "the observer who describes causal dynamics for all 'those' who are unable to describe their own causal dynamics, cannot describe his own causal dynamics, but cannot avoid doing so'. That is, he cannot avoid doing so if he wants to 'complete' his system description. This formulation of 'incompleteness' speaks to the problem of 'missing space-time phase information' when one is compiling descriptions of 'the way the world works' from 'discrete interventions' into a continuing historical development.

The type of 'timing' information we need, has also been described by Wittgenstein; 'We cannot compare a process with 'the passage of time' --- there is no such thing --- but only with another process (such as the workings of a chronometer). Hence we can describe the lapse of time only by relying on some other process.' (6.3611).

So, where were we?

We said that in order to really understand 'the way the world works', we needed to see causal dynamics, not just in 'their own right', but to see them in the context of the reciprocal 'space-time-gating' of opportunity in their container. In other words we needed to be 'shape-meisters' first, and 'shot-meisters' second, to use the pool metaphor. BUT, shape-meistering involves 'implicit understanding', .. the incorporation of complex information which involves historical development and space-time phasing obliterated by capturing observations in terms of discrete transactions and subsequently summing them, rather than seeing 'the game' as a continuous, spawning and unfolding of configurational latencies (a metamorphosing opportunity landscape) which coevolves reciprocally with the material-causal dynamics of its constituents.

This type of 'reciprocal relationship' is not the standard 1/X (identity related to positive integers only) reciprocal which Ackoff effectively came to be seeing 'objective teleology' as the reciprocal of 'determinism', ... but is the more comprehensive 0/X (identity related to positive and negative integers), ... the 'yin/yang' 'full-emptiness' of the east, and/or the 'negative space' of the impressionist artist who comes to his work with an implicit understanding of 'whole-and-part' harmony, the reciprocal approach to 'building up' from a fine detail to a more complex structural view.

It seems that there is a nested hierarchy of considerations here which has three levels to it, as follows;

a. 'Nothing but the facts, ma'am.' (causal view)

b. 'Shape is everything' (opportunity-purpose-co-relation which is the mother of (a.))

c. 'Timing is everything (container-constituent-coevolution, Vygotsky's 'geneticheskii', which is the mother of (b.) which is the mother of (a.) )

There's nothing new here, ... this nested hierarchy is all intuitive stuff and it has been well laid out in science, particularly in astronomy which is uniquely challenged with the job of relating our (celestial) container to the experiences of its (terrestrial) constituents, ... the 'up-and-back-down-again' inquiry of Ackoff, .. or if we shift gears out of flatspace mode into volumetric metaphor, .. 'inside-outwards-and-outside-inwards-again' aka 'bootstrapping' inquiry.

To cite an example, Kepler said; "while the harmony does not adorn the termini; i.e. the single movements, in so far as by being taken together and compared to one another, they become the object of some mind;" . . .and, . . . "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 with the movements, the eccentricities which fell to the lot of each planet had to brought into concord."

What is Kepler trying to say?

Clearly, he's asserting that the space-time container 'adorns' the system with its consonances, ... that 'field' and its inductive resonances are in the primacy over material structure and causal dynamics, as Faraday and Einstein have also said. Kepler doesn't, in fact, make any bones about this 'primacy of container over constituent' property of nature.

"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 doubled 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 capitulate, so that the harmony-of-the-whole can prevail." [1]

Now it's impossible to 'get to' the harmony of the whole system, a 'simultaneous' relationship of whole and part, ... from 'outside-inwards-and-inside-outwards- again' perception and inquiry, as is constituted by Newton's laws. Newton's laws, ... by the 'trickery' or 'abstraction' of reducing consonant movement which contains 'whole-and-part' phasing and symmetry, by 'going to the limit' in which 'delta-time' (delta-resonance) goes to zero, strips the harmonic aspect out of time and puts 'things' in a primacy over resonant-time and motion.

In essence, Newton reduces phenomena to 'being' and strips out the 'becoming' (evolutionary) aspect by this move. One is then forced to start from this 'dead' state of 'being' to get to 'becoming' and this is achieved by the purposeless and container-indifferent device of 'material-causal-dynamics'.

But as Kepler points out, ... natural motion is innately about 'becoming';

"As the essence of movement consists not in BEING but in BECOMING [emphasis is Kepler's] so too the form or figure of the region which any planet traverses in its movement does not become solid immediately from the start but in the succession of time acquires at last no only length but also breadth and depth (its perfect ternary of dimensions); and, gradually, thus, by the interweaving and piling up of many circuits, the form of a concave sphere comes to be represented --- just as out of the silk-worm's thread, by the interweaving and heaping together of many circles, the cocoon is built."

Understanding the geometry of space-time, then; i.e. 'understanding the way the world works' cannot come from the 'down-and-up-again' or 'outside-inwards-and- inside- outwards- again' perception and inquiry mode of material-causal-dynamics because essential information, emanating from the evolving of the 'shape of opportunity' in the container relative to its constituents, is lost in the initial going 'outward-in' part of the inquiry voyage. The same holds true with respect to language, when we 'go down' ('outward-in') to fabricate word-labels, ... from our initial implicit (complex) thought, ... and this also holds true in logic. While Vygotsky says; "Consciousness is reflected in a word as the sun in a drop of water.", Wittgenstein says; "Logic is not a body of doctrine but a mirror image of the world."(6.13)

Getting back to the nested notion that 'timing (harmonic consonance) is everything' and that next to that in this nested primacy, 'shape (of opportunity relative to purpose) is everything', ... and that after that, 'material-causal-dynamics' are everything.', it is easy to see that Kepler's third law; R**3 = k*T**2, ... the cube of the orbital radius (spatial volume) is proportional to the square of the orbital period,.... which is simultaneously true for all planets (the same constant of proportionality, 'k', applies) represents a basic, fractal 'whole-and-part shaping' property of the space-time 'container' or 'field' rather than a property of material constituents (which are subsidiary to this law and not even mentioned in it), as in the 'down-and-up-again' mathematical principles of Newton.

Linear time, ... the abstract product of the euclidian 'down-and-up-again' perception and inquiry approach, is 'content free' with respect to physical phenomena and 'the way the world works, ... it is a 'dead' man-made reference, just as the 'material being' of rectangular euclidian space is.

The fundamental information about 'becoming' which emanates from the 'container', which gives clues to who we are and where we are coming from, ... the essential 'whole-and-part harmony' information, ... the 'container-content-coevolution' or 'family-individual-coevolution' information, is discarded and ignored in the 'down-and-up-again' inquiry which pervades mainstream science. Mainstream science, by focusing on material-causal-dynamics, and ignoring the sense-giving meaning which must come from historical development or 'container shape' puts itself in the same position as the 'shot-meister', ... of snookering itself by not cultivating the shape of its own immersing 'opportunity landscape'

In astronomy, however, where scientists are trying to 'bootstrap' an understanding of the universe, ... the recognized fundamentals which their relational understanding is being built upon is 'whole-and-part' harmony, ... e.g. the periodicity of explosions on supernovae which provide a brightness reference for scientists to 'ratiocinate' from and thus develop the 'range' to go along with the azimuth of the star and facilitate its 'space-time mapping'.

In other words, in an expanding universe, where, if one ascribes to 'field theory' wherein material is a secondary, perceptual aspect of 'field', or as Einstein says; ""What impresses our senses as matter is really a great concentration of energy into a comparatively small space.", ... and wherein we and our planetary system are also expanding, ... what 'holds this lot together', ... the sustainer of equilibrium of our solar system and all other natural phenonema, as we participate in this expansion, is the innate 'whole-and-part' 'harmony-adorning' property of our container.

To hold open such possibilities, ... or even probabilities, ... that matter and causality are simply the artifacts of our sensory experience, and that the harmony-endowing 'containing field' which we are immersed constituents and evolutionary shaping agents within, is the primary reality, ... means that we cannot lean on 'outwards-in' precipitated logical propositions or mathematical equations as being the 'referee' for what is a better interpretation of 'the way the world works'. Instead, ... we must reason 'relationally', on the basis of bringing our collective experience into meaningful confluence in our minds.

If a discussion is centered firstly on 'shot-meistering',.... getting each word and logical proposition perfect, ...then one may become blind to the 'bigger story' which is the complex information based 'space-time-gating' role of our implicit understanding.

If we are presented with an understanding of 'the way the world works' in the crisp and unequivocal terms of logical closure and finality, ... we will know for sure that it not the 'never-ending storyworld' in which we are immersed participants and intepreters.

* * *

[1] Excerpt from the original, Johannes Kepler's 'Harmonice Mundi'; "Nun aber tragen zur Vervollkommnung der Welt mehr die Gesamtharmonien aller Planeten bei als die einzelnen Harmonien bei je zwei und die Paare von Harmonien bei je zwei benachbarten Planeten. Denn die Harmonie ist gewissermaßen ein Band der Vereinigung. Es liegt aber eine weitergehende Vereinigung vor, wenn alle Planeten miteinander eine Harmonie bilden, als wenn immer je zwei für sich in doppelter Weise harmonieren. Im Widerstreit dieser Harmonien mußte daher von den beiden Harmoniereihen, die die Planetenpaare miteinander bilden, die eine oder andere nachgeben, damit die Gesamtharmonien aller bestehen konnte."(http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~za146/barock/harmonie.htm#Kepplers Fehlschläge) [**'Fehlschläge which are looking more and more like ours rather than Kepler's]

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