International
Society for the Systems Sciences
Conference
Toronto 2000
Papers by
Kent Palmer, Ph.D.
Box 1632, Orange CA 92856
000503 DRAFT Version 22 isss2000ac.doc
Copyright 2000 Kent Palmer. All rights reserved.
SIG: What is Life and Living?:
Defining Life And The Living Ontologically
And Holonomically
(Not necessary to prioritize) [edited
and corrected]
SIG: Research Toward a General Theory of Systems:
New General Schemas Theory: Systems, Holons,
Meta-Systems & Worlds
(Priority 1, highest) [edited and
corrected]
SIG: Duality Theory:
Intertwining Of Duality And Nonduality
(Priority 2) [edited and corrected]
SIG: Processes and Human Processes:
Holonomic Human Processes
(Priority 4) [not edited]
SIG: Spirituality and Systems:
Genuine Spirtuality And Special Systems Theory
(Priority 3) [not edited]
SIG: Living Systems Analysis:
Not Written
(Priority 5, lowest)
SIG: What is Life and Living?
ABSTRACT
PALMER, K. D.
DEFINING LIFE AND THE LIVING ONTOLOGICALLY AND HOLONOMICALLY
Trace Studies Institute, Box 1632,
Orange, CA 92856
USA E-mail: kent@palmer.name
The distinction
between
"Life" and the experience of "Living" is a variety of
subject/object dualities. In order to understand what it means deeply,
we need
to move through the meta-levels of Being because the distinction takes
on a
life of its own as we go up through the thresholds of the meaning of
“living
life” when the subject/object distinction breaks down and
successively reveals
deeper and deeper levels of significance. Finally, we reach a level
that is
unthinkable in which we become immersed in complete nonduality. But at
that
level, things become more clear when balancing the successive
obscuration of
the meta-levels of Being. At this fifth meta-level of Being, we
encounter
something different which is Existence. Existence has its own structure
which
defines life, the social and the negatively entropic thermodynamicism.
We find
that these Holonomic non-dual structures reach around to define the
levels of
Being themselves. We get a picture like that of Escher of two hands
drawing
each other. This is the picture of the symbiotic nature of Being and
Existence.
In that symbiosis living, the social and the thermodynamicly
neg-entropic are
defined in existence where they could not be defined in Being. (What is
Life
and Living? Special Integration Group)
DEFINING LIFE AND THE LIVING ONTOLOGICALLY AND HOLONOMICALLY
Kent D. Palmer
Trace Studies Institute
Box 1632 Orange CA 92856 USA
SUMMARY
The distinction between "Life" and the
experience of "Living" is a variety of subject/object dualities. In
order to understand what it means deeply, we need to move through the
meta-levels of Being because the distinction takes on a life of its own
as we
go up through the thresholds of the meaning of “living
life” when the
subject/object distinction breaks down and successively reveals deeper
and
deeper levels of significance. Finally, we reach a level that is
unthinkable in
which we become immersed in complete nonduality. But at that level,
things
become more clear balancing the successive obscuration of the
meta-levels of
Being. At this fifth meta-level of Being, we encounter something
different
which is Existence. Existence has its own structure which defines life,
the
social and the negatively entropic thermodynamicism. We find that these
Holonomic non-dual structures reach around to define the levels of
Being
themselves so we get a picture like that of Escher of two hands drawing
each
other. This picture illustrates the symbiotic nature of Being and
Existence. In
that symbiosis living, the social and the thermodynamicly neg-entropic
are
defined in existence where they could not be defined in Being.
Consideration of the distinction between
Life and
Living takes place in the context of a broader theory that extends
General
Systems Theory by looking at the theory of General Meta-systems and
between
them sees the existence of Holonic Special Systems. Meta-systems are
seen as
being produced by the interaction of normal systems and the holonic
special
systems which is called an Emergent Meta-system. Special Systems Theory
and
Emergent Meta-systems theory as it appears in the paper Reflexive
Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems Theory[1]
is precisely about the nature of life and the living. It is a theory
based on
the work of Ilya Prigogine[2]
on neg-entropic dissipative ordering structures and Humberto Maturana
and
Francisco Varela's[3]
theory of
autopoiesis[4]
as well as
the theory of John O'Malley[5]
and Barry Sandywell[6]
concerning
reflexive social theory. The theory rethinks the concept of the living
as
self-organizing machines developed by Maturana and Varella and places
it in a
social context. It shows that living things function in the interspace
between
systems and meta-systems as embodiments of special anomalous systems
defined by
hypercomplex algebras. Living is an emergent property that exists at
the next
higher level from the emergent properties of dissipative neg-entropic
ordering
systems as defined by Prigogine. At the next higher level beyond the
living is
the social level of organization which is fundamentally reflexive in
nature.
Within the multi-cellular organism, all these properties are balanced
against
each other. Cells are dissipative neg-entropic ordering structures in
terms of
energy balance. But they are autopoietic in terms of information
balance and
reflexive in relation to other cells in the body. The same structures
again are
balanced against each other at the level of organisms which form social
groups.
The important thing about special systems is that they are
ultra-efficacious
(ultra-efficient and ultra-effective) such that once life appears, it
takes
over and spreads everywhere taking up all the various niches in the
environment
which it transforms by its presence. This factor of
ultra-efficaciousness is
what makes living things stand out from the rest of nature so that
wherever we
look on earth, there is life even though we do not see signs of it in
the
immediate vicinity of earth. This paper and others presented along with
it at
this conference will lay the foundation for showing how living social
beings
that embody special systems are embedded in the larger ecosystemic
environmental meta-system which appears to be formed on the model of
the
emergent meta-systems that are made up of the interaction of the
special
systems. This forms a basis for a new understanding of the nature of
Gaia as
the planetary living ecology.[7]
Keywords:
Life, Ontology, Holonomics, Meta-Systems, Special Systems
INTRODUCTION
The
distinction between “Life” as a phenomenon and our
experience of it as “Living”
beings needs to be approached in terms of a “Neg-entropic Living
Social
Hermeneutical Phenomenology[8]”
in order to be properly understood. This is because the same kind of
relation
between ourselves and life exists as the relation between ourselves and
the
social. In other words, we are already living as we are already social
beings.
Both Sociality and Life are already always lost origins of the
individuals that
come to question the distinctions between the individual and the
society or
between the living and the dead. Social Phenomenology[9]
is an approach which takes the social as primary, just as it takes the
Living
as primary. In other words, it does not comprehend a view that would
separate
us from either the living or the social. Instead, it views both of
these
phenomena and our embeddedness in them as the milieu out of which we
separate
ourselves as scientific observers which is a further differentiation of
our
individuality from society. Similarly, we are living already, and it is
a
social project to build dead and impersonal institutions and
disciplines which
reify that fundament of our living experience within the social milieu.
However, it should occur to us to ask ourselves. What is the nature of
this
primal milieu[10]
which is
inseparably social and living for us? We notice that it is carried on
in an
environment that is far from the equilibrium dynamic environment of the
type
that Prigogine calls a dissipative ordering structure that is
negatively
entropic. All we have to do is look around the earth at the variety of
species
that abound to see that we live in a thin film of highly neg-entropic
matter on
a small planet of an ordinary star which is one out of an uncountable
number of
stars in one galaxy out of myriads. Thus, a complete view of this
primal
situation would note that it is a differentiation of matter in
environments far
from equilibrium circumstances that gives rise to life which is
inherently
social. We discover ourselves already part of this situation and
differentiate
ourselves from the rest of the physical world, from the rest of the
living
world, and from the rest of the social world of our species.
Social
Phenomenology considers the primary situation of negatively entropic
living
social being as central to all our concerns and that everything we know
and do
differentiates ourselves out of that primary situation which, to us,
seems to
be one of the biggest mysteries of all. Social Phenomenology turns the
world
upside down and places the “negatively entropic living
social” primary
situation[11]
of our life
at the core of our understanding of the world rather than relegating it
to a
marginal note. Husserl in his Krisis[12]
showed that we must look at phenomenology first because it is through
phenomenology that everything else becomes available for us to study
and
understand. Science produces a spiritual crisis by separating itself
from the
lifeworld and reifying things and concepts including ourselves. But
even
Husserl's individualistic phenomenology
must give rise to social phenomenology because it recognizes that the
social
must come before all our experiences as individuals[13].
It is difficult for us to understand the world from the point of view
of social
phenomenology due to the individualism that is imprinted upon us within
our
Western culture. We distrust immersion in the social and deprecate the
mob
which appears when our reified social institutions break down.
Precisely the
same problem appears in the distinction between the living and life.
The life
of others is the objective phenomenon, whereas the living experience is
our
own. And the key point is that without social upbringing, we could not
achieve
the capacity to even make the distinction. A similar problem exists
with
understanding the negatively entropic circumstances that make life
possible. We
have a difficult time thinking of living things as merely matter.
Bergson[14]
had to posit an élan vital which
separated the living from the dead things, and even today this dualism
is alive
and well in our consideration of our self-imposed separation from
nature.
It
is necessary to embrace a new way of thinking in which the old dualisms
are put
out of play and a new understanding is grasped that satisfies our
longing for
an understanding of ourselves within nature, as living creatures, and
as social
creatures. We want this comprehension of ourselves and our place in
nature to
unify all these concepts that have been nihilisticly separated out into
various
disciplines within academia, i.e. thermodynamics, biology and
sociology. We
want to understand how all the other disciplines unfold from this
primary
situation of our embodiment in our own social-lifeworld which connects
to
nature. This is the fundamental problematic of social phenomenology.
ONTOLOGICAL LEVELS OF LIFE/LIVING
The
view we take in order to facilitate this understanding is one of
developing a
non-dual approach to the understanding of each of these concepts in
relation to
the dualities that are normally projected by Western science as it goes
about
the business of attempting to understand the world based on its
inherently
dualistic approach. Dualism does not only mean production of opposites,
but
indicates the production of extreme nihilistic opposites which struggle
until
one overcomes the other. However, these nihilistic extreme opposites
ultimately
prove to be the same thing and thus the nihilistic distinction is
ultimately no
distinction at all[15].
As Fred Alan Wolf intimates: nihilism is always the given answer to the
wrong
question. In other words, nihilism always leads us through a maze of
blind
alleys although the labyrinth is a non-nihilistic because it has a
single path
that leads to its center with no blind alleys. The classic example of a
nihilistic distinction is mind and body which, in our predominantly
idealistic
tradition, exalts the mind over the body. This is mirrored by many
other
similar dualities like the exaltation of the paternalistic male over
the
subjugated female, the white race over the black race, colonizer over
the
colonized[16],
etc.
Dualities are applied analytically to dissect the world and the
phenomena that
it presents. A non-dualistic approach is at the same time
non-nihilistic. A
non-dualistic[17]
approach
attempts to hold the dualisms apart and explore the middle ground
between them.
It rejects Aristotle’s principle of excluded middle. As such, it
attempts to
find the point where things distinguish themselves naturally rather
than
imposing upon them distinctions that are inappropriate projections.
When
we apply this to the distinction between life
as an objective phenomenon and living
as a subjective phenomenon, we immediately realize that what is behind
this
distinction is the dualistic relation between subject and object.
“Life in
itself” is a single phenomenon seen from these two nihilistic and
dualistic
viewpoints. Life as an objectively reified and scientifically studied
phenomenon is seen as distinct from the subjective view of life within
our experience.
Heidegger, already in Being and Time[18],
subverted this view of the subjective verses the objective by
attempting to
look deeper into what came before the arising of the subject and object
dualities. He described this prior existent as Dasein (being there)
which is
prior to the arising of subject and object distinction and thus their
dualism.
Dasein is the ecstatic pouring out of Being into Being by the unique
process
of being-in-the-world which thereby
produces a world. This ecstasy is a dynamic process that underlies all
static
dualistic distinctions within our tradition. Dasein is life
itself in the living prior to the distinction between
subjective experience and objective knowledge of that phenomenon. In
Dasein, we
are too caught up in the ecstasy to make this separation. Dasein is
“living
life” by expressing this non-dual possibility that hides within
the excluded
middle between subject and object.
In
general, Heidegger calls this difference the two modalities of
being-in-the-world which are present-at-hand (Pure Being) and
ready-to-hand
(Process Being). Dasein is rooted in Process Being which is Heraclitian
and
probabilistic. The subject/object dichotomies persist in Parmenidian
Pure Being
which is a reification of the world as objective and as separated from
subjective experience. In Pure Being, there is a distinction between life as objective phenomenon and living as
an experience; but this
collapses at the level of Process Being where Dasein is “living
life” and
cannot separate itself to become either an objective disembodied
observer or
into a purely subjective experience.
However,
the realization of Dasein is not the end of the story because Dasein is
primarily MitSein, "With-there" or "Withness" in its social
milieu which is what appears before Dasein differentiatiates itself.
Other
philosophers following Heidegger such as Merleau-Ponty and Levinas have
explored this territory in which Dasein collapses into what I call the
Query.
The Query is the one who asks: What is “living life?”
Levinas points out that
at this level of Being, ethics and meta-physics collapse together
because the
individual becomes absorbed back into the “social,” or the
social upbringing
that makes possible the arising of language within the organism. It is
clear
from observing wolf children that without the social involvement with
the
mother and family, we would never achieve this capacity. Merleau-Ponty
talks
about how philosophy must take into account the genetic and
developmental
unfolding of the child and its development of language in attempting to
understand the individual who projects a world. First, there is the
social
world, then individuals form subsets of that world through the ecstasy
of the
projection of their own lifeworld. Derrida calls this level of Being
differance, which he says has the
nature of differing and deferring. At this level, our life and our
social world
and our natural world and the relations between them become entangled.
Derrida
describes an indecision which exists in the pause between the words
“living
life” that Dasein is lost within. We represent this pause as the
space between
the words or the point of indecision between the two, which is the
internal and
external. Derrida describes it as a hinge[19].
Levinas describes it in terms of mutual bearing. Life bears the living
and the
living bears life just as the socializing mother bears the child while
the
child must bear the ministrations of the mother. There is a hiatus in
between
the child and the mother which is both “neither” and
“both,” in which both are
lost. We come to ask, who “lives life?” This is the query
which gets hung up on
the hinge or lacuna[20]
between defining “living” and “life” as
separable terms. When we collapse into
the Query, then an endless series of possibilities unfold between which
we
cannot decide. This undecideability is like the quantum uncertainty,
only on a
macro level. It makes us consider the possibility that macro quantum
mechanics
is a reality which contravenes the Copenhagen convention[21].
We see it also in the arguments concerning the contents of
consciousness
brought up by David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind[22].
There is a postulate that different individuals may experience the
qualia
differently and so thereby splintering the world of subjectivity just
like the
world of objectivity is splintered by the non-determinacy of quantum
mechanical
states. There is a separation between the objective world without
qualia
differentiation on the one hand and the subjective world of qualia
differentiation on the other hand. Subjective differentiation of the
qualia
causes an explosion of qualitatively different worlds for different
subjects.
On the other hand, there is the non-determinacy of quantum mechanics
which
under the interpretation of David Deutsch in The Fabric of Reality[23]
produces multiple real simultaneous universes. Quantum phenomena is
seen as the
interference between these real universes. Note how on the side of
consciousness there is a splintering of subjective worlds, and on the
side of
objective nature there is a splintering of objective worlds. If
instead, we do
not accept the distinction between subject and object, and the
distinction
between micro nature and macro nature posited in Copenhagen, then we
find
ourselves in a world where there is macro quantum mechanical phenomena
which is
qualitative in nature. Viewing this strange imaginal world[24]
in which macro quantum mechanical phenomena are not suppressed, where
neither
quality is given precedence over quantity, nor quantity is given
precedence
over quality, is a way of viewing the world as seen by the Query, i.e.
the
world of Differance prior to
Dasein. In Dasein, the ecstasy of existence is separable from the
reification
of things in the world. The Query is in the hiatus or lacuna between
the
ecstasy and its reification. In that world there are two splinterings
that
overlap. There is the splintering of the subjective qualia producing
myriad
subjective worlds, and there is the quantum mechanical splintering
which
produces multiple real worlds. This splintering has the nature of
differing and
deferring or Differance. We
call this kind of being: Hyper Being after the Hyperdialectic of
Merleau-Ponty
that he describes in The Visible and the Invisible[25].
That is the hyperdialectic between the Process Being of Heidegger and
the
Nothingness of Sartre. There he
distinguishes this hyperdialectical mode as being-in-the-world, which I
call
in-hand, from another deeper modality, which I call the out-of-hand of
Wild
Being.
Think
about “living life” in terms of the hinge (or lacuna or
hiatus) of Differance. We do not know whether we
are in separate realms of qualia or within separate physical universes.
We
experience macro quantum mechanical states qualitatively as the
imaginal realm,
and in that way our consciousness becomes completely intertwined with
the
physical and subjective worlds in a way that cannot be unentangled.
This hinge
within the “living-hinge-life” dichotomy is the same as the
individual-hinge-social or the thermodynamics-hinge-physics
dichotomies. In
other words, the trace of the hinge pulses in the midst of many of our
dichotomies. The hinge itself is merely an indecision between our
projected
categories. Cornelius Castoriadis calls the Magma the substrate on
which we
project our categories. We have strange attractors within our category
schemes
that cause us to hover over the distinctions we make between living and
life.
Because we project these categories on ourselves and everything else in
some
sense, we are beyond the categories themselves in a realm that we only
see when
we are unable to decide whether we are the life or the living, the
individual
or the social, the thermodynamically far from equilibrium entropic or
the
physical. At the level of Hyper Being, the concept of life is
equivalent to the
third meta-level of the concept, i.e. “the lively living of
life.”
The
Hyper Being of the Query is not the end of the story. The Query itself
slides
into another even deeper strata of Being. That strata is called the
Enigma,
which finds no answer to the Query: Who is Dasein? or Is Dasein Life or
Living?
or Is Dasein individual or social? or Is Dasein themodynamical or
physical? It
is Merleau-Ponty that discovers this level of Being in The Visible
and the
Invisible. He calls it Wild Being and contrasts it with Hyper
Being. The
Enigma is what allows us to see ourselves at the hinge of
indecidablity. The
enigma is a position that we cannot step back into to view ourselves
any more
deeply. Life is an enigma because we are that enigma. The social is an
enigma
because we are that enigma. The neg-entropic far from equlibria
thermodynamic
system is an enigma because we are an enigma.
First, we are the enigma, then all the other distinctions appear
as
facets of that enigma. It is the enigma that is the object of social
phenomenology
par excellence because it is opaquely social, living, thermodynamical
and more
beyond that which is beyond our kenning. However, this level of Wild
Being has
of late been the subject of much philosophy building. Deleuze and
Guattari in Anti-Oedipus[26]
and Thousand Plateaus[27]
build a philosophy at this level which they call the Rhizome. John S.
Hans in
the Play of the World[28]
does the same. Arkady Plotnitsky in his book Complementarity[29]
gives us a good view of the relation between Bohr, Bataille and Derrida
with
respect to this level of Being. Also, Cornelius Castoriadis[30]
builds a dynamic theory of social institutions at this level where he
distinguishes the Magma upon which all distinctions are projected.
Thus, from a
philosophical viewpoint, there are some outposts on this frontier of
Wild
Being. Wild Being is only an aesthetic surface and has no depth itself,
so it
is very difficult to think at this level of Being. But here we see, as
Merleau-Ponty tells us, the chiasm between living-life and life-living.
The
reversal of this pair of terms has a subtly different meaning.
Merleau-Ponty
says that this chiasm or reversibility has the nature of
touch-touching, i.e.
you cannot feel from both sides at the same time. Thus, there is an
interspace
within the reversed dichotomy that is subtle but real. That chiasmic
non-dual
interference between the reversible images has the nature of Flesh
according to
Merleau-Ponty. Deleuze and Guattari call it the Rhizome. Cornelius
Castoriadis
calls it the Magma. John S. Hans calls it Play in the sense of the play
between
things, i.e. the allowable movement that shows us differences. Arkady
Plotnitsky calls it Complementarity as defined by Bohr where there is
no deep
structure underlying the complementarity but merely the complementarity
itself.
The propensities are etched in the intaglio of the two phases of
reversibility
within the spacetime interval, and these propensities send us chaoticly
into
one dualistic basin of attraction or another.
In
this way, we see that life will always be an enigma because it is
rooted in
Wild Being, i.e. the deepest level of Being in which all the
dichotomies
underlying dualisms resolve into the chiasm or reversibility between
the
opposites differences with themselves in conjunction. There is no
deeper level
of Being. At the fifth meta-level of Being, we reach the unthinkable
which is
interpreted as Existence. Beyond Wild Being the difference between life
and
living, individual and social, thermodynamical and physical becomes
unthinkable. This unthinkability gives us an intimation of the
groundlessness
of Being. The culmination of Being occurs when the operator and the
operand are
the same. “Life autopoieticly Lives” is a view of the
monolith of Being. We can
express it as the “Social reflexively Socializes” or the
“Thermodynamical
neg-entropicly Thermodynamicizes.” This monolith of Being
encompasses the verb
and the noun in a single construct. But we notice that there is the
difference
between the noun and the verb. That difference leads us to understand
Hyper
Being or Differance. But
ultimately the distinction between the two breaks down and we are
thrown into
the chaotic Wild Being where there is mixture between the life and
living,
social and the socialized, thermodynamical and the thermodynamicized,
order and
disorder, continuity and discontinuity. At the level of Wild Being, the
concept
of life is equivalent to the fourth meta-level of the concept, i.e.
“a lively
living of life as lived.”
The
fifth meta-level of Being is utterly non-dual and non-nihilistic. It is
what we
call supra-rational. In that utter nonduality where even reversibility
does not
exist, the tension between living and life is finally resolved in
silence or
death. But that resolution occurs in a very strange way. It is
impossible to
think of the augmentation of “a lively living of life as
lived” with another
way of saying “life” that takes us to a higher level of
expression. Somehow the
mind freezes up when it tries to go to that fifth meta-level of Being.
HOLONOMIC LEVELS THAT DEFINE LIFE/LIVING
When
we reach the level of utter nonduality in our consideration of these
primary
dichotomies such as life living, social socializing, thermodynamic
thermodynamicizing, etc., then we must go to special systems theory in
order to
understand the situation as it has unfolded in Existence beyond Being.
General
Systems Theory concerns social gestalts, i.e. what the socializing
social,
living life, thermodynamicizing thermodynamic, i.e. negentropic system
sees.
Social phenomenology studies the phenomenon that “we are
ourselves.” The dual
of General Systems Theory must be a general Meta-systems Theory
concerning the
milieu of the system under our gaze. Meta-systems are environments,
ecosystems,
situations, contexts, etc. of systemic gestalts. Systems as gestalts
are wholes
greater than the sum of their parts. Meta-systems, on the other hand,
are
wholes less than the sum of their parts. Meta-systems are full of
niches tailor
made for the systems that appear within it and interact within it. A
Meta-system
is the origin and arena of the systems that comprise it. But it is like
an
operating system for those systems giving them resources and the
processing
time they need to exist. Our culture and sciences are blind to
meta-systems. We
see systems but not their dual, which is the meta-system. Even ecology,
which
is our only explicitly meta-systemic science, is bound by the ideas of
systems
instead of understanding the nature of the meta-systems which underlie
the
environment being studied[31].
The meta-system is a General Economy as described by Bataille in the Accursed
Share[32]
which he
contrasts with the Restricted Economy of the system[33].
Once
we realize the duality between the system and the meta-system as wholes
either
greater or less than the sum of the parts, then it is necessary to
realize that
there are systems which are wholes exactly equal to the sum of their
parts,
like the perfect numbers studied by Euclid. These are special and
anomalous
systems, and we discover they are three in number. There are several
different
kinds of balance of “part to whole.” They roughly
correspond structurally to
prefect, amicable and sociable numbers. These kinds of balance are
called
Dissipative after the concept of the Dissipative ordering structures of
Prigogine, Autopoietic after the theory of Maturana and Varella, and
Reflexive
after the social theory of John O’Malley and Barry Sandywell.
These three kinds
of systems and their relation to the Emergent Meta-system are explained
in
detail by the author in his paper Refllexive
Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems Theory[34].
This theory shows how the utterly non-dual level of existence is
articulated.
Existence beyond Being is not without structure but has a very special
structure that demands that we augment our General Systems Theory by
the
addition of other related disciplines. We must construct the inverse
categorical[35]
dual of the
System to produce the Meta-system. Then we must realize that in the
region
between these categorical dualities there exists Special Systems that
defy our
intuitions, but have a definite mathematical form and specific
phenomena that
shows that they have actual existence, not just theoretical
possibility. Beyond
that there is the Emergent Meta-systems theory that combines the
special systems
together with the normal systems theory to give us a dynamic image of
the
Meta-system.
We
learn from these extensions that in the process of the social gestalt
unfolding
out of the Meta-system of the social, there is a series of stages,
first of
which is the social field, which Deleuze and Guattari call the Socius.
It is
reflexive. Barry Sandywell described this in his Logological
Investigations.
The next stage is the living autopoietic system which unfolds from the
social
as a further holonomic differentiation of the social field. Finally,
the
dissipative structures which produce neg-entropy unfold from the
autopoietic
system as yet a further differentiation. Finally the social gestalt
appears
within the meta-system of the social environment. Each of these stages
are
partial systems and partial meta-systems. They are, in fact, what
Koestler
calls "Holons" because they are Janus faced looking up the
hierarchy of the meta-system and down the hierarchy of the system at
the same
time. In this emergent unfolding and differentiation, the social
environment of
the various species comes first, then comes the social field of our
species,
then comes the differentiation of individual organisms which then
differentiate
into smaller structures called dissipative systems and which Deleuze
and
Guattari call desiring machines. It is on the basis of the entire
structure of
emergent differentiation that the social gestalt finally appears as the
socially constructed object held in view as a system. The whole greater
than
the sum of the parts unfolds from the whole less than the sum of the
parts
through a series of stages in which the whole is exactly equal to the
sum of
the parts. It turns out that the difference between these five stages
is, in
fact, the four different kinds of Being. Thus, there is a structure to
the
following construction that underlies the differentiation of phenomena.
Kinds
of Being |
Emergent
Systemic Levels |
|
System = thermodynamic-living-social
gestalt |
Pure Being |
|
|
Holonic Dissipative Special System =
Thermodynamic |
Process Being |
|
|
Holonic Autopoietic Special System =
Living |
Hyper Being |
|
|
Holonic Reflexive Special System = Social |
Wild Being |
|
|
Meta-system |
Thus,
the non-dual is interlaced with and embedded in the dual. It is not
without
structure, but merely has a kind of structure that we are not used to
seeing
due to the dualistic bias of our culture. In the non-dual, we see the
thermodynamic, living and social distinguished by the emergent levels
as they
exist in the unfolding between the meta-system and the system. We find
that
these non-dualities appear in the interstices between the levels of
Being that
we considered earlier. In other words, the differences between the
thermodynamic, living, and social, differentiate the various stages of
consideration
of the nature of each of them. The subject of our inquiry, when we
consider the
imaginal primal situation encountered by a living social phenomenology,
structures our means of inquiring. We might expect this since we
ourselves are
the subject of our inquiry and thus we are structuring ourselves. In
other
words, if we consider the universe, including ourselves, to be dreaming
the
quantum mechanical probability wave with its incomprehensible
superimpositions
which we experience qualitatively as the imaginal realm, then that
dreamtime
which we called the primary or archaic situation has a peculiar
structure which
embodies the balance of nonduality and at the same time defines the
unfolding
of the imbalance of the dual through the meta-levels of Being.
CONCLUSION
This
is a taste of the kinds of insight afforded us by an Ontological and
Holonomic
view of the difference between Life and Living. We find that
life/living means
something different at each level of Being. But eventually as we go
beyond
Being into Existence, we find our own life/living, along with our
social and
thermodynamic basis, structures the kinds of Being just as our inner
nature
structures our understanding of ourselves at the deepest level. What
seems a
mystery in terms of the hierarchy of Being, becomes very clear in terms
of the
holonomic hierarchy between the systems and the meta-system, we define
our own
mystery very succinctly.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Would like to thank my mentor Ian Dallas,
as well as Ben Goertzel, Onar
Aam, Bob Cummings and Owen Ware.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kent
Palmer is a Principle Systems Engineer at a major Aerospace Systems
Company. He
has a Ph.D. in Sociology concentrating on
Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics and a
B.Sc. in
Sociology from the University of Kansas. His dissertation on The
Structure
of Theoretical Systems in Relation to Emergence[36] focused on how new things come into
existence
within the Western Philosophical and Scientific worldview. He has
written
extensively on the roots of the Western Worldview in his electronic
book The
Fragmentation of Being and the Path Beyond the Void[37]. He had at least seventeen years
experience[38] in
Software Engineering and Systems Engineering disciplines at major
aerospace
companies based in Orange County CA. He served several years as the
chairman of
a Software Engineering Process Group and is now engaged in Systems
Engineering
Process improvement based on EIA 731 and CMMI. He has presented a
tutorial on
“Advanced Process Architectures[39]” which concerned engineering wide
process
improvement including both software and systems engineering. Besides
process
experience, he has recently been a software team lead on a Satellite
Payload
project and a systems engineer on a Satellite Ground System project. He
has
also engaged in independent research in Systems Theory which has
resulted in a
book of working papers called Reflexive Autopoietic Systems Theory[40]. A new introduction to this work now
exists called Reflexive
Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems Theory[41]. He has given a tutorial[42] on “Meta-systems
Engineering” to the INCOSE
Principles working group. He has written a series on Software
Engineering
Foundations which are contained in the book Wild Software
Meta-systems[43]. He now teaches a course in
“Software Requirements
and Design Methodologies” at the University California Irvine
Extension. He may
be reached at kent@palmer.name.
SIG: Research Toward a General Theory of Systems
ABSTRACT
PALMER, K. D.
NEW GENERAL SCHEMAS THEORY: SYSTEMS, HOLONS, META-SYSTEMS & WORLDS
Trace Studies Institute, Box 1632, Orange, CA 92856 USA E-mail: kent@palmer.name
The theory of
Special
Systems and the Emergent Meta-systems stands as a new extension of
General
Systems Theory. Briefly, Systems are defined as Gestalts that are
wholes
greater than the sum of their parts. Meta-systems are defined as
environments
which are wholes less than the sum of their parts. Special Systems
Theory
posits that there are a class of special systems that are exactly equal
to the
sum of their parts which has not been recognized before. Koestler
called these
special kinds of systems HOLONS, and we call the investigation of these
specially balanced systems HOLONOMICS. We posit that there are exactly
three
special systems which are called Dissipative neg-entropicly ordering
(Prigogine), Autopoietic (Maturana and Varela) and Reflexive (O'Malley
and
Sandywell) which are mathematically based on Hyper Complex Algebras.
The
identification of these special systems
that combine together to form an image of the environment called the
Emergent
Meta-system is an important development in General Systems Theory that
has
implications for the future development of General Systems Theory. In
general,
it means that there are really three kinds of theory that need to be
pursued in
parallel. There is General Systems Theory which needs to be augmented
by a
General Meta-Systems Theory which is a theory of environments,
ecosystems and
all other "general economies" as opposed to "restricted
economies" (cf. Bataille Accursed Share). Then there is the
theory
of Special Systems or Holonomics which studies the rare and anomalous
balanced
systems where the whole is exactly the sum of its parts neither more
(as in the
case of systems) nor less (as is the case with meta-systems). The study
of
these ways of looking at things in the world is posed in terms of what
is
called General Schemas Theory which includes other schemas as well, for
example
the schema of the World which serves as a context for understanding
Systems,
Holons and Meta-systems. (Research Toward a General Theory of Systems.
Special
Integration Group.)
NEW GENERAL SCHEMAS THEORY:
SYSTEMS, HOLONS, META-SYSTEMS & WORLDS
Kent D. Palmer
Trace Studies Institute
Box 1632 Orange CA 92856 USA
SUMMARY
The theory of
Special
Systems and the Emergent Meta-systems stands as a new extension of
General
Systems Theory. Briefly, Systems are defined as social gestalts that
are wholes
greater than the sum of their parts. Meta-systems are defined as
environments
which are wholes less than the sum of their parts. Special Systems
Theory
posits that there are a class of special systems that are exactly equal
to the
sum of their parts which has not been recognized before. Koestler
called these
special kinds of systems HOLONS, and we call the investigation of these
specially balanced systems HOLONOMICS. We posit that there are exactly
three
special systems which are called Dissipative neg-entropic ordering
(Prigogine),
Autopoietic (Maturana and Varela) and Reflexive (O'Malley and
Sandywell) which
are mathematically based on Hyper Complex Algebras. The identification
of these
special systems that combine together
to form an image of the environment called the Emergent Meta-system is
an
important development in General Systems Theory that has implications
for the
future development of General Systems Theory. In general, it means that
there
are really three kinds of theory that need to be pursued in parallel.
There is
General Systems Theory which needs to be augmented by a General
Meta-Systems
Theory which is a theory of environments, ecosystems and all other
general
economies as opposed to restricted economies (cf Bataille Accursed
Share).
Then there is the theory of Special Systems or Holonomics which studies
the
rare and anomalous balanced systems where the whole is exactly the sum
of its
parts neither more (as in the case of systems) nor less (as is the case
with
meta-systems). Meta-systems must be distinguished from SuperSystems
which are
the nesting of systems at various levels of abstraction. Meta-systems
are
deconstructed SuperSystems. Meta-systems tend to be invisible because
they are
the background on which the System gestalt is seen, i.e. they are a
deeper
background than the background of the figure in the
gestalt.
The study of these ways of looking at things in the world is posed in
terms of
what is called General Schemas Theory which includes other schemas as
well, for
example the schema of the World which serves as a context for
understanding
Systems, Holons and Meta-systems.
In other
words, we
need to be concerned with a wider theoretical framework than merely
General
Systems Theory. When we look at that wider framework, then we see that
some
interesting and anomalous systemic features arise that can only be seen
when we
compare Systems to Meta-systems. However, this broader framework is
just as
general as General Systems Theory yielding General Meta-systems Theory
and
General Special Systems Theory that both apply to many disciplines. But
the
important point is that the discovery of these new levels of generality
force
us to reconsider some of the basic assumptions of our dominant Western
Philosophy of Science in such a way that makes comprehensible earlier
traditional sciences and also helps us understand how a kind of science
that is
not alienated from the Earth may be built from the ground up on
different
assumptions.
How the
objectives
of Research Toward a General Theory of
Systems Special Integration Group are met:
Objective 1.
To discover or develop a set of universal concepts
and algorithms that are relevant among all the branches of science, and
useful
in describing all the diverse systems in nature and culture. --
Examples are:
Aristotle or chaos theory.
Special
Systems Theory
and Emergent Meta-Systems Theory are founded on the mathematics of
Hyper
Complex Algebra and Non-orientable Surfaces in Topology that gives it a
mathematical rigor to be envied by other systems theories. It is
interesting
that these kinds of Algebra which have been known from about 1850 have
not found
much use within physics or other sciences. It is precisely these forms
of
mathematics that describe the relation between elements within the
special
systems and within the Emergent Meta-system.
Objective
2. To give a rigorous definition to these notions in the physical
sciences to
start with; to add conceptual expansions to concepts and algorithms
where
necessary or appropriate in order to cover the emerging properties of
more
complex systems; to apply these expanded concepts systematically in the
varieties
of complex sciences such as cybernetics, biology, sociology and
ecology.
The hierarchy
from
System through the Special Systems to the Meta-system is a series of
emergent
stages, each with its particular properties that arise on the basis of
the lower
levels but contributes specific emergent new properties at each level.
In the
case of this systems theory, these new properties are described as the
properties lost when we move from one algebra to another. Because these
properties and the subsequent systems that occur when the properties
are lost
are mathematically defined, they are very rigorous. The algebraic model
gives
you a combination of additiveness and emergence together which is
characteristic of holonomic systems in general.
Objective 3.
To test the validity of the unified scientific
theories; to demonstrate and to verify their predictive power by
practical
examples in each of the branches of science; to otherwise establish
criteria
under which the behaviors of observed and inferred systems can be
reasonably
evaluated.
Besides the
mathematical definition of the various special systems and the Emergent
Meta-system, there are also a series of physical examples of these rare
and
anomalous systems that occur in nature which have the same structural
configuration predicted by the mathematical model. Special Systems are
always
anomalous and rare, but the physical examples show that they do indeed
exist in
the realm of physics, and they probably also exist in other disciplines
as well
as yet unrecognized[44].
Keywords Life Ontology, Holonomics, Holon,
Meta-System, Special System, World
GENERAL SCHEMAS THEORY
Instead
of talking about General Systems Theory as the rubric under which we
might
subsume other sister disciplines, let us talk about a General Schemas
Theory
which subsumes all the various ways we understand the myriad phenomena
studied
by different disciplines. In this paper, we will consider several other
potential sister disciplines to General Systems Theory and their
interrelations. The first of these is the General Theory of
Meta-systems which
is still nascent. By meta-systems here is meant ecosystems,
environments,
ecologies, contexts or milieus of Systems. The second of these is the
General
Theory of Holons which was inaugurated by Koestler in his book Janus[45].
A holon is something which is both a part and a whole at the same time.
Here we
will consider a variant of General Meta-systems Theory which sees
Meta-systems
as composed of Holons and Systems which will be called Emergent
Meta-systems
Theory. It is called “Emergent” because in it we study how
Meta-systems arise
as an schema with its own characteristics out of the combination of
holons and
systems. The three General Theoretical disciplines concerning these
schemas:
systems, holons and meta-systems form an unexpected and fascinating
combination
that has unprecedented explanatory power. Together they open up a new
horizon
of research by supplying a new way of looking at phenomena which may be
applied
to various disciplines. A theory is a conceptual view of phenomena. We
are
seeking general views that may be applied across disciplines, i.e.
General
Theories, giving unity to the enterprise of science. Our views of
phenomena may
be reduced to schemas such as System, Form, and Pattern which, along
with
others, give a basis for understanding phenomena by providing a
template, or a
set of analogies, which illuminate the relation between the various
aspects of
the phenomena under study. Here we propose two other schemas which,
like that
of the “system,” are slowly gaining favor among scientists
as ways of looking
at things. What will be explored in this paper is the interrelations
that are
emerging from the study of the relations between the schemas
themselves. The
cutting edge of scientific theory development is the exploration of how
we
might combine various schemas or foundational theoretical views into
composites
that offer the possibility of applying these various views in concert
to better
understand the phenomena under study. The most successful of these
which is the
basis of most Western scientific theorizing is the combination of the
Formal
Structural Systems which is exemplified by the work of George Klir[46]
that combines the schemas of Form, Pattern and System into a single
theoretical
edifice. In this essay we will construct and explore another
interesting
combination of schemas, i.e. system, holon and meta-system, which gives
us an
unprecedented and powerful explanatory perspective on phenomena that
has
baffled Western science since its inception. Many times it is the
limitations
of our conceptual tools which causes us to misrepresent and
misunderstand
phenomena. When we take the chance on a new paradigm, sometimes we are
rewarded
with new insights that could not be apprehended through the old
paradigm. One
way to understand paradigms is in terms of combinations of schemas of
understandings and fundamental assumptions that underlie our theorizing
in a
specific discipline. What is offered here is a new combination of
conceptual
schemas which might be combined with theoretical assumptions to produce
new
paradigms for specific disciplines. Because our focus is on General
Schemas
Theory and not on particular disciplines, the assumptions that would be
necessary to produce a paradigm for a field of study will not be
generated.
Rather, we will concentrate on the interrelation between these various
schemas
and what we might learn from them that might be fruitfully applied at a
more
specific level of theorizing in a particular field to give cogent
results.
THE SYSTEM SCHEMA: Gestalts and Flow
Duality
We
will characterize the “system” schema here in terms of a
social gestalt. In
other words, we will not enter into the debate as to whether systems
are “out
there” in the world, but instead will say that a system is
something projected
by a social group as a social construction or invention. This obviates
the
problem of whether we are imposing or discovering system schemas in
relation to
phenomena. The system schema gets its objective nature from the fact
that it is
a “social” construction or invention which is projected in
concert by a group
of people. This is a matter of perceptual pre-synthesis on the part of
the
group and can be studied by a social phenomenology[47]
which is attuned to looking at the social gestalts produced by various
groups
including scientists.
What
the social gestalt gives us is a basis for thinking about the system
which sees
it as a projected schema and not as something necessarily inherent in
existence. The projection of this schema in a way that cuts through the
joints
of phenomena as Plato has advised us is a skill to be developed and
which has
been perfected over the centuries by science. At one time, all of
science was
concentrated on Forms which derived from geometry and algebra and their
combination discovered by Descartes. It has taken a long time to
establish that
Systems are different from Forms and just as useful in their own right
as
ways of comprehending relations among
Forms. Forms are the Figures that appear on the backgrounds of the
systemic
gestalts. We talk about systems as sets of entities and their static or
dynamic
interrelations. We see those entities as figures on the background of
all the
other entities within the system. We bring out each entity one at a
time to stand
out on that background, and the entire system is the set of all
possible
foregrounding of entities on the background of the possible focal
entities
within a system. It takes time to go through and enumerate the entities
in a
system. It takes time to bring these figures into juxtaposition in
order to
understand their separate interrelations which, woven together, make up
the web
of systemic relationships. Thus, we may view a system synchronically as
all the
entities and their relations at one point in time, or diachronically as
the
evolution of the system as the entities change and their interrelations
transform over time.
We
must first realize that a system is really a social gestalt. That is a
series
of entity figures on the background of the entire system within a
specified
boundary. And we realize that their interrelations as projected by some
social
group so that any one individual’s perceptual or conceptual
gestalt of the
object is a reduction to a single perspective projection of the group's
multiple
perspective projection. [We must recognize, along with Husserl[48]
and Gurwitsch[49],
that
gestalt is always both perceptual (Husserl’s noema) and
conceptual (Husserl’s
noesis) but may emphasize one or the other in any particular instance.]
Then we
may ask ourselves what is the dual of the Gestalt way of looking at
things.
After years of missing this essential point, I realized that the dual
of the
gestalt schema is the flow schema. In a gestalt there is a figure on a
background. If we take the figure and submerge it so that the
background
becomes the foreground, then it becomes a reference point on the basis
of which
we can get some idea of the flow of the foreground. A rock which sticks
up from
a stream is a gestalt figure to us on the background of the flowing
stream. But
submerge that rock slightly into the stream and it becomes quickly a
reference
point for our judging the swiftness and the patterning of the flowing
waters
above it. Thus, it is necessary to consider social flows as the duals
of social
gestalts and understand that flows and gestalts are almost always seen
together, where one is emphasized or the other in each particular
instance of
perceptual or conceptual comprehension based on the system schema.
Thus, when
we look at a system diachronically, we are concerned mostly with flows,
while
when we look at it synchronically, we are concerned mostly with the
various
gestalts by which we pick out the entities and their interrelations.
Another
important point about the systems schema is that these gestalts, as has
been
long recognized, are wholes greater than the sum of their parts, i.e.
the whole
has emergent properties that go beyond the properties of their entities
and
interrelations between entities. Part of that overflowing is seen in
terms of the
dynamic flows within the system, yet even the flows interact with each
other to
produce characteristics that cannot be captured by analysis. A gestalt
or a
flow is a pre-synthesis, what Kant calls an a
priori, i.e. a projection prior to experience on the basis of which
we
perceive and conceive phenomena. That pre-synthesis has characteristics
that
are supervenient, i.e. emergent, which go beyond what can be discovered
by
reductionism and analysis. Those emergent or supervenient properties
must be
understood in terms of dialectics, trilectics, quadralectics[50]
or some other scheme which allows for the superabundance of
characteristics in
the system over and above the forms and their interrelations which make
it up.
This emergent characteristic of the system, i.e. that it is a whole
greater
than the sum of its parts, has always been the keystone of the
identification
of gestalts over and above what formalisms can describe and explain.
The
Formal Structural System is a combination of three levels of schema
that is
endemic within our scientific way of approaching things because it has
been so
successful in helping us to understand nature. Formalisms give the
possibility
of proofs which is particularly reassuring to our rational intellects,
and we
wish all things we studied lent themselves to proof. However, we have
discovered in the development of science that the advances we have made
in
mathematics are harder to win in physics and other disciplines that
attempt to
understand nature. We use our formalisms, both in logic and
mathematics, as a
means of connecting Theory (logos) and the phenomenon of nature
(physus). But
many times we cannot prove in a determinate manner things we would like
to
about the phenomena we study in a particular discipline so we resort to
explanations
that are probabilistic. These explanations are usually based on the
transformations of content as we move across discontinuities that
present
themselves in the phenomena. Thus, we create a level of understanding
that
deals directly with content of the forms which produces a new schema of
understanding called a pattern[51].
Patterns may be seen in terms of time or space and thus can be either
structural or process oriented. Structural Patterns explain
transformative
changes across discontinuities in space while Process Patterns explain
transformative changes across discontinuities in time. In software
engineering,
when we take an Object Oriented Approach to design, we combine these by
encapsulating structures within the wrapper of an object and providing
operations to transform these structures which no other outside object
can
perform. The General Systems Theory of George Klir in Architecture
of
Systems Problem Solving is an example of a Formal
Structural-Process
Systems Theory which combines both ways of thinking about patterns in a
single
edifice. He does this through his hierarchy of epistemological levels
which
splits into meta-models (processes) and meta-structures. These pattern
generating models prove very powerful ways of explaining phenomena that
change
discontinuously across time and space. They appeal to the changes in
pattern
generators that operate on the content of the forms as the basis of
understanding alterations in phenomena that formalisms cannot
comprehend. When
this level of explanation is combined with the Formal level that offers
a
stronger basis of comprehension, i.e. proof, then we are able to
explain many
things in a cogent manner that would otherwise remain baffling.
However, this
does not allow us to comprehend all aspects of the phenomena and so it
is
necessary in those cases where we cannot explain to merely describe
what we
find in nature. When we describe things, our tendency now is to use the
schema
of the system as a basis for comprehending the interrelated entities
which we
observe. Our observations are of conceptual and perceptual gestalts
and flows that cohere into the system schema that we
project by pre-synthesis to encompass the phenomena under study. Thus,
the
Formal Patterned System is a series of fall back strategies for
comprehending
phenomena in general that combines in a powerful way three distinct
schemas,
each based on a separate analogy. Form is based on the analogy of shape
or the
outlines of things that we see in terms of the mathematics of algebra
and geometry
on the one hand and logic on the other. Pattern is based on the analogy
of the
warp and weft of fabric that we see in terms of processes as
discontinuities in
time and structures as discontinuities in space. System is based on the
analogy
organisms that we see in terms of gestalts and flows.
We
should pay attention to Wittgenstein[52]
when he talks of language games. Both
languages and games are systemic phenomena par excellence. It is
through them
that we can understand systems in nature because these are two ways
that the
systemic schema manifests itself within society, and this allows us to
understand what systems are through our own intimate experience of
systems in
this form as social beings. Social Phenomenology discovers that we are
already
language speakers who learn these skills as children when we are also
learning
to play. So the system schema which starts with the analogy of
organisms as
pointed out by Rescher in Cognitive Systemization[53]
is augmented in other powerful socially based analogies based on our
inherent
understanding of games and language which comes to us out of our social
experience. Form and Pattern which we see in nature also have these
social
expressions. Form has two aspects: Shape and Behavior. These are seen
in dance
and theater and other social arts as well as in rituals where costume
and
special actions are performed in some institutional social context.
Pattern
shows up mostly in terms of handicraft such as the weaving of the cloth
for the
costumes that the dancers and participants in the rituals wear. Pattern
shows
up in the embellishment of the architectural forms that hold the
performance.
Pattern is decorative of the forms which participate in the play of the
performance. Thus, there are social roots for all these schema by which
we
attempt to understand nature through the reified theoretical structure
of the
Formal Patterned System.
THE META-SYSTEM SCHEMA
From
the familiar territory of the schemas of System, Form and Pattern we
now move
to a new schema that is gaining in popularity but has not yet become
established except in the discipline of environmental studies and
ecology. This
is the meta-systemic schema which has not yet received a general name
of its
own. If I were to name this schema, I would call it an
“Archon” after the
Archons who oversaw the city in Greece. An Archon was a magistrate in
the
historical setting of Athens after the establishment of democracy. The
Archon
had some functional purview over the whole city which was split out
from that
assumed previously by the king. The city is the perfect analogy of the
meta-system in that it is an environment in which households flourish
and
interact. The Archons are the ones who oversee the functioning of the
household
environment and, for instance, regulate the markets or oversee
preparation for
war with other cities or administrate justice. The functions of the
archon are
hidden in and subsumed by the king, but when the king is deposed as in
the
fledgling democracy of Athens, then these functions have to be taken
over and
performed by others who must coordinate their efforts. The Archon is
the symbol
of the deconstruction of the unity of kingship and, thus, specifically
points
to the environmental aspects of the city as a place for households to
develop
and interact which would otherwise be hidden by the unification of
kingship.
The meta-system has a similar relation to the super-system. A
super-system is a
system made up of sub-systems which are, in turn, made up of
sub-sub-systems to
some degree of hierarchical nesting. Each level is seen again as a
gestalt/flow
whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. However, we do not
often look
at the dual of the super-system which I have dubbed the meta-system,
i.e. the
deconstructed whole which is less than the sum of its parts. That whole
is the
environment itself as the origin and arena of systems at some level of
abstraction. It is different from a system itself because it operates
as an
“operating system” supporting the systems that it contains.
Thus, we only see
the meta-system when we deconstruct the super-system (king) and see
instead the
intervening intermediate level of organization within the super-system
that
acts as an environment for encapsulated sub-systems. The analogy of the
meta-system to the system is like the relation between the universal
turing
machine to the turing machine. It is like the computer operating system
to the
application that operates within that operating system. The meta-system
is
broken up into archonic functions which give resources to and regulate
the
systems that are allowed in its environment. The environment in this
sense acts
as a filter because only certain systems can operate within a specific
meta-system. The meta-system is inherently disunified and thus the
archonic
functions within it are generally orthogonal although they have to
cooperate in
order to produce an environment which facilitates the growth and
development of
the kind of systems that are allowed in its niches.
Meta-systems
are inherently complementary in their organizations rather than
unified. They
are totalizing rather than unified in that they contain the totality of
complementary opposites that provide the necessary archonic operational
resources and regulation of the systems. Sartre, in The Critique of
Dialectical
Reason[54]
calls the
meta-system a detotalized totality because it is never a static
totality but a
dynamic totalization by which the various orthogonal archons cooperate
through
shared complementarities to produce an optimal environment for unified
systems
and anti-systems that appear within it and are enveloped by it. The
meta-systemic environment is composed of niches, which are holes, which
make it
less than the sum if its parts. These holes are exactly fitted to the
kind of
systems that the filter of the meta-system allows. Within the
meta-systemic
environment, systems within their niches are created, given resources
of
various kinds, and are eventually destroyed such that their constituent
elements are recycled back through the meta-system to produce other
systems.
All interactions that a system has with its meta-systems are through
complementary opposites. Thus, the attributes of the meta-system is
always
pairs of complementarities as seen from the point of view of the
systems within
it. These complementarities can be deeply nested as complementarities
of
complementarities of complementarities much like the nesting of the sub
and
sub-sub systems within the super-system. When super-systems are taken
apart,
they appear as meta-systems. One may think of the meta-system as a
field of
tendencies which dictates the order of assembly of the super-system out
of the
sub-systems that appear within meta-systemic milieu hidden within the
super-system. For this reason, when we think about design landscapes,
we are
necessarily talking about meta-systemic fields.
Culturally
we have difficulty thinking about meta-systems. Today we generally
reduce them
to systems, or nested super-system complexes, which suppress their
extremely
different characteristics that are, in fact, the dual of those
characteristics
of systems. Systems are unified and meta-systems are detotalized
totalities.
Systems have their dual within the meta-system where we see
anti-systems
emerge, but where meta-systems are nested complemetarities, systems are
made up
of singular parts or functions. Systems only develop complementarities
in
relation to and by their adaptation to their meta-systemic environment.
We use
the term “meta-system” because if we take the system
through its series of
higher logical types,[55]
we find that the meta-system is related to its rules, like the rules of
a game
or the grammar of language. The rules are the constraints that the
meta-system
places on the system while it is in its environment. The next higher
meta-level
of the system is the properties of the pieces in the game or the
properties of
the markers in language like the phonemes which are allowed within the
meta-systemic environment. The next higher meta-level of the system is
the
constraints on the system and exceptions to the rules which determines
the
freedom and determinism under which the system is operating. Each of
these
meta-levels of the system refer to the relation of the system to the
meta-system. Here the term “meta” refers to all the
meta-levels of the system
operating on it at once. But each schema should have its own name other
than by
reference to another level of organization of phenomena. That is why we
have
suggested the term Archon which is related to the term that Jung uses
for
structures in the collective unconscious which he calls
“complexes” or
“archetypes.” The term complex and the term archetype are
suitable for use when
describing meta-systems because Jung attempted to describe the Totality
of
Consciousness which he called the Self which was composed of the system
of the
Ego and the anti-system of the Shadow and various archtetypes, which
were
higher level nested complementary formations that intervened between
the level
of the unity of the Ego and the totality of the Self that included both
the
conscious and unconscious in one whole. We can see the Self as
super-system, as
Nietzsche did when he posited the uberman as the impending fated
arrival of
what was other than human within humanity (but which never actually
arrives),
or we can consider consciousness as a field full of complementary
complexes in
which various numinous loci like that of the ego interact beyond the
filter of
consciousness. This model is similar to that of the region full of
communities
(city states) which are again full of neighborhoods which contain
households
which are based on marriage. All of these are meta-systemic levels of
organization within society. Our culture has difficulty recognizing and
dealing
with these amorphous types of human organization which are rooted in
the
meta-systemic "field" view of nested environments. Our stewardship of
these aspects of our own society is very poor; because they are
amorphous, they
receive little attention and are easily destroyed by highly organized
systemic
institutions. Meta-systemic institutions are social archetypes. You
notice that
each of the archetypes that Jung points out like the Anima, Animus,
Wise Old
Man, Cathonic Female[56],
etc. are symbolic internalizations of some aspect of society, some type
of
person or some type of relationship between different types of people
in
society. That is why he calls it the collective unconscious. But it is
the dual
of the outward amorphous relations which appear as standing wave
patterns in
the meta-systemic field of society such as region, community,
neighborhood,
family, marriage which mediate between the abstract organized and
systemic
institutions of society and the individuals within it.
Meta-systems
exist as nested complementarities. The first level complenetarity with
respect
to the system is that the meta-systemic field is the origin
and arena within
which the system arises and interacts with other systems including
anti-systems, i.e. complementarity images of itself. An example of
system and
anti-system pairing in society is the gender distinction. In fact, this
is
probably the most basic complementarity within our society, and it is
rooted in
nature based on the distinction between male and female that we
discover in
ourselves. However, gender ascriptions are not directly tied to these
natural
and physical markers but instead form a field of signifiers within
society. But
the next level of meta-systemic nesting of complenetarities is that of
the meta2-system
which includes the conjunction of origin
and arena with source and boundary.
The
arena is bounded, and whatever has an origin within the system must
also have a
source. The origin is the spacetime point of entry into the
meta-systemic
field. The source is the endless-timespace template from which the
system is
patterned. In software, there is a distinction between an object and
its
instance. The object as a template for data structuring, and behavior
is the
source while the concrete instance of that object as it enters the
system given
memory and CPU[57]
cycles and
initialized with specific default values in variables is the origin. In
the
meta2-system, we see that the meta-system establishes the
limits of
its control and filtering via the boundary, and what it establishes is
a priori
patterning of the systems that are allowed to emerge within it, while
once they
appear at a specific origin, then they develop through their
interaction with
other systems until they are terminated by themselves, other systems or
the
meta-system. The meta-system is infinitely nested through a series of
metan-system
levels of environmental articulation. This is another sense of
“meta” than that
used when we considered the various higher logical types of the system.
That
series only has three levels. This sense of meta is the higher and
higher level
complementarities as the meta-system expands to embrace wider and wider
environments which is the dual of the nesting of systems within systems
of
super-systems. At each level of nesting of meta-systems, there is a new
conceptual level of complentarity that arises.
For
instance, Origin / Arena // Source /
Boundary has a dual which is
Generator /Encompassing Regress // Root Singularity / Subspace Regress
at
the meta3-system level. The generator is what takes the
source
template from the endless realm outside of timespace and produces a
system at a
particular origin within the spacetime boundary of the meta-systemic
field. The
encompassing regress is the series of encompassing fields beyond the
boundary
of the meta-system. The subspace regress is the series of
differentiations of
the sources which recede infinitely differentiating in the progressive
bisection of Pascal’s triangle. This regress of sources, which is
based on the
Cayley-Dickson algorithm[58]
for the production of Hyper Complex Algebras, produces negative
dimensionality[59]
which is the opposite of the positive dimensionality of the
encompassing
regress. The root singularity is like the origin in spacetime and the
source in
the subspace only at the next level deeper. It is the meta-source of
the
sources in the subspace. The root singularity is the nexus of
actualization of
the sources. In software engineering terms, if the sources are the
object
templates that are the basis of instantiation of actual instances of
those
object templates in the spacetime of memory and CPU cycles within the
computer,
then this singularity would be the root object from which all the
templates are
built, i.e. the meta-template. It is singular and unique as the root of
all
objects that are produced through inheritance from it. This
differentiation of
the meta-systems is infinite following the form of Pascal’s
triangle down into
an infinite regress of subspaces giving us more and more possible
complex
environmental formations based on complementary duals. The next level
has
sixteen elements and is not completely understood as yet.
If
we want a concrete example of this differentiation of the meta-systems
into the
various levels of encompassing, we can think of a highway. Each lane is
an
arena for traffic flowing in a specific direction. We produce a
conjunction of
the two lanes to create a roadway because it is more efficient to have
the
traffic adjacent than travel different paths. We can see that each lane
has its
sources (on ramps) and sinks (off ramps) as well as the boundary of the
verge
of the roadway. The lanes are the arena in which the systems of the
cars
operate, and each car has a particular origin and destination as it
moves
through the roadway meta-system. When we go up to the next level, we
have to
consider the sources of the cars which are automobile sales companies
and the
fuel sources, which are gas stations. The generators of the automobiles
are the
factories that create them. The end of the production line is the
ultimate
point of origin for the automobile which then goes to showrooms. The
showrooms
are the purchasing source or place for the general public to buy the
automobiles. The encompassing regress can be seen in the fact that the
automobile transportation system is only one of many different kinds of
transportation that are knit together to give us the ability to move
from place
to place on the planet. The subspace regress shows up when we consider
that all
those other modes of transportation have their own generators and
sources.
Transportation meta-systems interlock to form a larger and deeper
meta-systemic
complex made up of various meta-systems. The singular root is the
concept of an
automobile from which many source designs spring to give us a variety
of models
as templates for a variety of instances. The generator takes these
sources and
instantiates them into different individual automobiles which
participate in
the meta-system. This occurs in each of the realms with various models
of
planes appearing from the root concept of the plane and thus leading to
various
sources of planes from different manufacturers. The network of various
kinds of
transportation is merely one kind of meta-systemic nesting within a
world that
has many other meta-systemic facets like government, agriculture,
textiles,
etc. All these meta-systems are nested at some deeper level of
meta-systemic
nesting that gives the world coherence.
Meta-systems
were described by Bataille in the Accursed Share as "general
economies." They are diametrically opposed to "restricted
economies," and seem irrational from the viewpoint of systems. This is
because they contain catastrophes, singularities, miracles and black
holes.
Catastrophes were described by Rene Thom[60]
as geometrical formations that show how discontinuous changes may take
place in
time. Singularities are the same thing with respect to space, i.e.
points of
anomalous discontinuous properties within the field of the meta-system.
Miracles and Blackholes are two opposite sorts of positive feedback in
an
increasing or decreasing direction. In general, we try to avoid the
meta-systemic environments like the plague because when we are in them,
things
are out of our control, like the stock market which seems to have
chaotic
behavior full of booms and busts. We want the miracles but dread the
black holes.
Similarly, we want to avoid the catastrophes that occur at the cusps
that Rene
Thom describes, but we would like to find the mother lode, i.e. that
singular
point in the landscape which is filled with a vein of gold.
Another
important point is that, just like the system can be either seen as a
gestalt
or flow, so the meta-systemic archon can be seen as either
proto-gestalt or
proto-flow. This is understood when we realize that when we look
around, we
move from gestalt to gestalt so that the various gestalts are like
figures on
the background of the proto-gestalt that is at another level of
organization
underlying the gestalt. Gestalt is figure-on-ground, but the gestalt as
a whole
appears on the background of the proto-gestalt. This proto-gestalt has
what
David Bohm[61]
calls implicate order. It is a kind of
unfolding order that is implicit rather than explicit and guides our
gaze as we
move from gestalt to gestalt. The same is true of the flow; it is seen
on the
background of the proto-flow. When we look into a stream, we can see
various
streams in relation to other streams flowing at different rates and
moving in
different directions depending on the undulations of the riverbed and
the
stones that block the path of the water in the stream. Our gaze moves
from
stream to stream within the overall flow based on an implicit ordering
encoded
into our experience which guides what we notice and what we do not
notice.
Thus, we can relate the meta-systemic archon schema directly to
perception and
conceptual grasping just like we did the system. We can also see its
social
origins because we have always lived with others in environments
whether
man-made or natural, and these environments were all organized at
various
extents to facilitate what goes on within them. In social
phenomenology, there
is a concomitant construction and invention of environments which we
call archi-tecture, city planning, and regional
planning[62]
that underlies and goes hand in hand with the social construction and
invention
of social gestalts and flows. We project the proto-gestalts and
proto-flows
just as much as we project the gestalts and flows that take place in
those
environments.
A
key point is that the system that is a whole greater than the sum of
its parts
is the dual of the meta-systemic archon which is a whole less that the
sum of
its parts. This understanding of the difference between surplus and
lack is the
fundamental distinction between the system and the meta-system. This
distinction is necessary because the meta-system has niche holes in it
just
right for the systems it was made for and to fit into and vice versa.
This
close fitting of the systems into the meta-systems is a major problem
in
software called the portability and interoperability issue. The
creation of the
internet is based on the production of a solution to these issues based
on
TCP/IP protocol and other similar protocols like HTTP which operate on
the top
of TCP/IP. The layering of protocols allows the solution to the
interoperability problems. Portability is still an issue being
addressed by
Java and other multi-platform languages. Much of our knowledge about
meta-systems comes from this kind of work in software engineering where
we
discover, on the basis of trial and error what works and what will
allow this
new level of integration of our systems through the new medium of
cyberspace[63].
We must specifically design systems and the meta-systems in which they
are
embedded so that interoperability and portability can be achieved. The
niches,
and the things that fill those niches, need to be designed to have the
right
kind of reciprocity and we are learning how to make the operating
systems
reciprocal with each other as we go up to the next level of nesting of
complementarities. If you look at protocols, you can see that they are
all
about reciprocal and complementary actions. Protocols are a good model
about
how meta-systems interoperate and allow the exchange of their systems
with each
other.
If
form lends itself to proof, and pattern to explanation, and system to
description, then what is the basis in understanding that meta-systemic
archons
lend us? Here we will appeal to Polanyi's concept of Tacit Knowledge[64]
which underlies all our attempts to express knowledge discursively.
What can be
expressed discursively is merely the tip of the ice berg in relation to
what we
know tacitly from our embedding in the world. Meta-systemic knowledge
is
largely tacit and submerged as a substrata of our systemic
descriptions. But if
we make this tacit knowledge explicit then it appears as concepts like
David
Bohm's concept of the Implicate Order. In other words, it appears as
the
consciousness of how hidden aspects of things control our comprehension
of the
visible aspects of things. The meta-system as proto-gestalt or
proto-flow, is
the deeper background underlying our experience of systemic gestalts or
flows.
Another way we understand the relation between systems
and meta-systems is linguistically, in
relation between count and non-count nouns, i.e. between things and
stuff (See Ecological
Understanding[65]).
Our culture and language exalt countable and quantifiable things over
uncountable and qualitative stuff. Meta-systems or proto-gestalts are
inherently more qualitatively experienced than the countability of
systemic
gestalts. We allude to the meta-systems in our language. These
allusions are
normally amorphous and indeterminate rather than determinate and
precise like
the relation between countable and uncountable nouns in our language.
Some
languages such as Chinese have a greater emphasis on
“non-count” or “mass” or
“stuff,” as ways of looking at things.
With mass, or non-count nouns, the individual instances are
submerged
and become indistinct in the overall grouping which has its own
emergent characteristics.
We allude to these characteristics that cannot be determinably isolated
and
made precise and distinct. Allusion is something we tend to deprecate
in our
scientific narratives which strive toward isolatability and rigor. But
just
because we must allude to our tacit knowledge of implicate order, does
not mean
that meta-systems do not have their own kind of articulation. When we
are
articulate about the decomposition of meta-systems, we point our their
myriad
complementarities which may indeed be generalized in relation to the
system. Whenever
the unity of the system encompasses opposites then we can easily
suspect that
it is interfacing with a detotalizing totality of a meta-system. But
with
things those that are opposite the features of the system, we get
indications
or allusions to the tacit complementarities of the stuff of the
meta-systemic
archon. From the point of view of the system these allusions resolve
because of
the disunity of the meta-system into so many illusions, shadows or
hauntings.
These arise from the multiple perspectives of the holographic
meta-system
within which the systemic gestalt is seen. In the hologram the parts
allude to
the whole but do not encompass it completely because each part is seen
from a
splintered set of perspectives. The holoidal meta-system encompasses
these
myriad viewpoints from which the systemic gestalt may be seen within
the social
milieu.
THE HOLONIC SCHEMA
When
we look at the System Schema and the Meta-system Archonic Schema, we
note that
in the first the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, while in
the
second the whole is less than the sum of the parts. This makes sense
when we
think of the meta-system as a field because any field with nothing in
it
represents a lack, because a field is precisely a place for something
to be,
i.e. a holder of something, say a system. Systems, on the other hand,
are
gestalts which give an overall impression that is more than merely the
sum of
their parts with global properties that the parts by themselves do not
exhibit.
But this raises the question as to whether it is possible for there to
be a
whole which is exactly the sum if its parts. It turns out that this is
possible
in rare cases in which something which is a cross between a field and a
system
is produced anomalously. What we find is that these anomalies have a
very
specific structure which has an unexpected foundation in mathematics
and the
understanding of which drives us into a wholly different way of looking
at
phenomena different from either the systemic schema or the
meta-systemic schema.
This is a big leap because we are not used to thinking about things in
terms of
meta-systemic archons or fields. So now, to ask for an even bigger
conceptual
leap stretches not just our credibility, but also stretches our ability
to
imagine what the cross between a field of niches and systems might be
like.
These partial systems and partial meta-systems have been called
"Special
Systems." They could very well be called "Special Meta-systems
instead." But the best name, the most descriptive name for the special
schemas are Holons, after Koestler's usage in Janus. The study
of these
special systems is called Holonomics, i.e. because it looks at the
Nomos
(ordering) of the Holons. Holons, according to Koestler, are things
like the
organs in the body which are at once parts and wholes, just as the
special
systems are at once systems and meta-systems.
Looking
carefully into the matter, we find that between the emergent level of
the
system (as social gestalt) and the emergent level of the meta-system
(as social
proto-gestalt), there is a series of hinges[66]
which are partial combinations of systems and meta-systems. There are
three
such emergent levels of these special systems which we will call the dissipative ordering special system
which is in reference to the work of Prigogine on dissipative
neg-entropic
structures, and autopoietic
self-organizing special system which is in reference to the work of
Maturana and Varella, and the reflexive
social special system and which is in reference to the work of
O'Malley and
Sandywell. At each level, we use an existing theoretical framework as a
point
of departure for coming to terms with the characteristics of that
particular
emergent level. However, the crux of our definition of these levels is
its
basis, in Hyper Complex algebras[67].
If we consider Systems as operating with real algebras as their basis
then we
can think of Dissipative Special Systems as operating with the
imaginary
algebra which is fundamentally the same as its basis. The Autopoietic
Special
System has the quaternion algebra which loses the commutative property
as its
basis, and the Reflexive Special System has the Octonionic algebra
which loses
the associative property as its basis. The Meta-system can be described
by the
Sedenion algebra which loses the division property or higher
non-division
algebras as its basis. All the higher algebras beyond the Sedenion are
basically the same because there are no more interesting properties to
be lost
as we apply the Cayley-Dickson procedure to generate the even higher
algebras
which follow Pascal's triangle out to infinity. Special Systems have
the Hyper
Complex Algebras[68]
as the
basis of their ordering, and this drives the theoretical considerations
concerning how they are represented rather than the specific theories
by theorists
who have attempted to describe phenomena similar to those found that
correspond
to the special systems. In effect, we use the theory of these algebras
which
were discovered by Hamilton[69]
and Graves toward the middle of the nineteenth century. This form of
mathematics has not really found any fundamental use in physics as yet,
even
though Hamilton had high hopes for them when he discovered them.
Nothing could
be done with the special properties of quaternions that were not more
simply
and easily done with vectors. Thus, quaternions[70]
and octonions[71]
have fallen
into an obscure part of mathematics that is not really studied very
much
mathematicians because they are considered known. Some physicists have
resurrected them to form an integral part of their physical theories of
the
universe, but these are fringe attempts for the most part which have
not found
wide acceptance[72].
Quaternions are sometimes used to program the motions of robot arms,
but beyond
that there is little use for them even though many problems may be
viewed
usefully in terms of this strange kind of mathematics. Here we
resurrect the
mathematics of Quaternions and Octonions to be the basis of our theory
of
holons, and read off from that theory the strange and wonderful
properties of
holons which we look for in real holonomic systems. The transformation
from
mathematics to holonic systems theory comes from the realization that
the loss
of algebraic properties produces a gain in systems theoretic
properties. So,
for instance, when we move from the real algebra to the imaginary
complex
number algebra, we gain the strange property of conjunction. The little
plus
sign between the elements of the complex numbers does not mean they
will be
added but instead means that they will be conjuncted, i.e. always
juxtaposed
and held together. Essentially an imaginary number is just like a
juxtaposition
of two real numbers in a vector. But when conjuncted, these two real
numbers
undergo a symmetry breaking in which one becomes imaginary and the
other remains
real. This symmetry breaking occurs at each level of the unfolding of
the hyper
complex algebras. A quaternion is the conjunction of two complex
numbers which
undergoes a symmetry breaking so that they appear as one real and three
imaginaries. An octonion is a conjunction of two quaternions or four
complex
numbers that go through a symmetry breaking that turns them into one
real and
seven imaginaries. At the level of the sedenion, which has sixteen
elements,
there is a conjunction of two octonions, four quaternions or eight
complex
numbers that undergoes a symmetry breaking to produce one real and
fifteen
imaginaries. Traditionally the real and complex algebras were
considered the
most interesting because they had the most properties. But over time,
interest
in the quaternions and octonions have grown, but still they are seen as
deficient because the first loses the commutative property and the
second loses
both that and the associative property. Sedenions are considered
extremely
uninteresting because it loses even the division property[73].
So it almost seems as if there are no properties left when the sedenion
is
compared to a full algebra of the reals or complex numbers. What we see
from a
systems theory perspective, is that when the quaternion, and thus the
Autopoietic
Special System, loses the commutative property, then that makes mutual
action
very interesting because you can no longer reverse actions with
impunity. When
the Octonion, and thus the Reflexive Special System, loses the
associative
property, then that makes the social aspects of the associations
between things
very interesting because you can no longer associate things with
impunity, in
other words, it matters who sits next to whom at the dinner table.
Losses of
mathematical properties are a gain in interesting systemic properties.
So, for
instance, when the division property is lost at the level of the
Sedenion
Algebra and thus the Meta-system, we find that interesting because that
is what
allows us to enter the field completely, i.e. it is hard to divide a
field into
pieces. The various special systems (or special meta-systems) are
emergent
steps toward this submersion into the field. We can see it as steps
that the
system goes through when it appears or when it vanishes. System
articulation or
system disintegration goes through this series of emergent stages in
which the
ordering fundamentally changes in very strange ways. It behooves us to
understand these changes of structure because that underpins the many
anomalous
systems that, though rare, are very familiar. We find them everywhere
on our
earth: neg-entropic far from equilibria thermodynamic systems, living
systems,
and social systems. In the universe as a whole, they may be rare, but
on our
planet, there are very many of them, and so it is a good idea for us to
understand these holonic forms, if only because we are an example of
them
ourselves.
But
let us go back and think about the idea of wholes exactly equal to the
sum of
the parts. There is a simple analogy for this in the perfect, amicable
and
sociable numbers[74].
A perfect
number is one whose divisors add up to the number itself, neither more
nor
less. An amicable number is a pair of numbers that do the same thing
for each
other, i.e. the divisors of one add up to the other's total and vice
versa.
Perfect and Amicable numbers have been known since ancient times. But
recently
it has been discovered that there is such a thing as Sociable numbers
in which
there is a set of numbers that, in a cycle, the divisors of one add up
the
totality of the next. What is interesting about this mathematical
anomaly is
that it gives us an excellent model of the dissipative, autopoietic,
and
reflexive special systems. A dissipative special system is like a pair
of
amicable numbers which together gives us an autopoietic organization in
which
symbiotic pairs produce a greater whole. The smallest amicable pair is
220 and
284 which was known from antiquity. Perfect numbers are a good example
of the
autopoietc system itself. If we iterate the finding of divisors and the
adding
of them, then we are continually producing the whole of the number from
its
parts, and the parts are exactly equal to the whole. Examples of such
numbers
are 6 and 28. Sociable numbers[75]
are like reflexive special systems. Many of the sets of sociable
numbers come
in groups of four such as 1264460, 1547860, 1727636, 1305184[76].
These four numbers each produce each other in a cycle and form a
mutually
constitutive cycle in which the wholes are equal to the sum of the
parts. But
it is not this whole; rather it is another whole in the cycle. This is
similar
to the amicable numbers except with more members in the set of mutually
constitutive numbers. Perfect numbers are very rare, Amicable numbers
are
incredibly plentiful and Sociable numbers are again rare but not as
rare as
Perfect numbers. These kinds of numbers revealed by number theory give
us a
hint about the way that these special systems are organized. Only their
organization is more deeply based on the hyper complex algebras which
are instead
more complicated than these simple number theoretic objects. We cannot
here go
into all the properties of these hyper complex algebras. We invite the
reader
to study this kind of mathematics because it is fascinating to know
just how
different holons are different from what we are used to in terms of
mathematical ordering. Hopefully, the analogy of the Amicable, Perfect
and
Sociable numbers gives a kind of a hint as to the nature of what these
systems
are like. We advocate a building of a holonomic theory that is based
closely on
the mathematics of hyper complex algebras rather than the ungrounded
theorizing
that now exists concerning self-organizing and social systems. For
instance, we
find that if we study autopoietic theory as it now exists, we find that
it is
incommensurable with the new basis that has been discovered in
hyper-complex
algebras[77].
On the
other hand, the theories of Prigogine concerning dissipative structures
and the
theories of O'Malley and Sandywell are more conducive to direct
interpolation
in the context of the mathematical foundations of Holonomic theory.
The
interesting thing about Special Systems theory is that these anomalous
and rare
systems are neg-entropic and because of that, they are
ultra-efficacious
(ultra-efficient and ultra-effective). These properties of
ultra-efficaciousness come from the suppression of entropy locally (at
the
price of increase globally), which when compounded at the autopoietic
and
reflexive emergent levels, yields some very interesting systemic
properties in
these special systems. Ultra-efficaciousness means that these systems
have an
advantage over normal systems that operate in the realm of entropy,
which,
though probabilistic and small, over time prove to be at a large
advantage.
That is why when life, consciousness, and social aspects of systems
appear on
our small planet, they take over and proliferate. Evolution has
exploited this
ultra-efficacy in the production of life, consciousness and
socialization in
animal and human evolution, so it behooves us to study these special
kinds of
systems and see whether we can take advantage of any of these
properties in
other endeavors.
Special
systems are very different from other kinds of systems because their
main way
of being organized is through the conjunction of elements, and this
conjunction
of individuals that are alike goes though a phase shift to produce an
asymmetry
where there is one real and n imaginaries, where n=1, 3, 7, 15 . . .
and so on.
The relationship between the imaginaries are what is strange about the
hyper
complex numbers. The imaginaries exist as parts and wholes at the same
time in
relation to each other, and that is why they are a good model for
holons. They
give us a good model of interpenetration or what Aczel[78]
calls HyperSets. HyperSets allow classes to be members of themselves.
Hyper
Complex numbers allow mediated hypersets where elements can be members
of
themselves through the mediation of another imaginary in the series.
The
mediated hyperset is an image of the kind of interpenetration of
everything
with everything. The is the kind of interpenetration that we find in
Buddhist
metaphysics which is called the Jeweled Net of Indra[79].
In this image, all the jewels in the network are reflecting all the
other
jewels in the network. The series of infinite reflections within
reflections
within reflections of different things in the set with each other forms
the
hyperset. Onar Aam[80]
noticed that it is possible to construct an analogy of the Hyper
Complex
Algebras by using mirrors. A single mirror reflecting the world is like
the
Real Algebra and the normal System. Two mirrors facing each other and
reflecting the same thing in an infinite regress is a picture of the
Imaginary
Complex Algebra and the Dissipative Special System. Three mirrors
facing each
other and reflecting in a cycle infinitely is a picture of the
Quaternion Hyper
Complex Algebra and the Autopoietic Special System. Four mirrors facing
each
other in an inwardly mirrored tetrahedral orientation is a picture of
the
Octonion Hyper Complex Algebra and the Reflexive Special System. The
Sedenion
and higher Hyper Complex Algebras can be seen as a mirror house where
distorted
and non-flat mirrors form inwardly mirrored spaces of reflection. They
are the
image of the various levels of the Meta-system where the division
property is
lost, and thus there is complete fusion of the field into a single
dynamic
multi-dimensional topology.
Holonomics
is a new discipline which, at the moment, is based on just a few
physical
examples. For instance, we can think of solitons and instantatons in
physics as
a model of the Dissipative Special Systems. For the autopoietic special
systems, we have the model of superconductivity of Cooper pairs. For
the
reflexive special system, we have the macro-quantum mechanical
properties of
the Bose-Einstein Condensate which has been recently shown to actually
exist.
Each of these anomalous physical phenomenon has structures that are
reminiscent
of the mathematical ordering of the hyper complex algebras at one or
another of
the emergent levels. They are enough to show that the hyper complex
algebraic
orderings can exist in physical phenomena and thus ground our science
of
anomalous rare formations which are contrary to the norm. Science
encounters
these anomalies but has no general theory to attempt to understand them
through. Holonomics supplies this general theory and gives us a basis
for
searching for similar formations in different realms of phenomena.
Because of
Holonomics, we no longer need to only look for systems or their
environments;
we can, instead, look for intermediate formations like the family,
neighborhood, community, and region which only exist on the basis of
conjunction and on the phase transition into imaginary spacetime
partial
fields. Holonomics gives a new basis for the consideration of ecology
and
environmental studies which perhaps, can now accept that there are
formations
that are not systems nor environments, but something halfway in between
and
formed though the conjunction of elements in a field like an array
which
undergoes a phase transition into an imaginary space. In this imaginary
space,
there are archons, or archetypes or architectures that arise
spontaneously and
give some kind of partial ordering to the elements that is somewhat
intangible or
fuzzy or amorphous but is precisely described by Hyper Complex algebra.
What
is exciting about this notion from the point of view of the life
sciences, or
the psychological or social sciences, is that it gives a scientific
basis that
has been sought since the founding of these less exact sciences. Now
there is a
way to provide a mathematical underpinning though the holonomic
interpretation
of Hyper Complex algebras for what was seen previously as too amorphous
and
unquantifyable. Holonomics maps out a realm halfway between quantity
and
quality because each of the elements in an imaginary field has its
individual
character given by its place in the field. Holonomics is a natural
meeting
place between the so called hard sciences and soft systems
characteristics that
are difficult to quantify and qualify. The partial submersion in the
field that
occurs with holonomic systems is what makes them difficult to quantify
with
discrete mathematics -- instead, there is a different mathematics which
describes these systems very precisely similar to the way fuzzy numbers
give us
a way of describing the gray areas between discrete black and white
positions.
EMERGENT META-SYSTEMS THEORY
The
Emergent Meta-system (EMS) is a special combination of the three kinds
of special
systems with the normal system which approximates the structure of the
meta-system which produces it though a dynamic unfolding. It is similar
to what
Ben Goertzel[81]
calls a
Self-Generating System in Chaotic Logic[82].
The Emergent Meta-system is a diachronic loop through the various kinds
of
algebras going from the real to the complex to the quaternion to the
octonion
to the sedenion and back to the real. It forms a very specific path
which is
thought of in terms of nodes and meta-operators. This emergent
meta-system
formation is an image of creation ex-nihilo, i.e. the arising out of
the field
of a system and the return to the field[83].
This arising and return goes through a
series of four stages. We start off with seeds in a pod which through a
creation operator produces monads in a swarm. Then these monads
interact
through a mutual action operator to produce viewpoints in a
constellation. Then
these viewpoints together form a gestalt pattern formation which
produces
candidates in a slate. These candidates annihilate with each other
until only
the side effect of seeds are left. This cycle can be repeated
indefinitely to
produce what has been named annihilation mosaics, i.e. formations of
cascades
that produce side effects from the annihilations in a series of
iterations.
Annihilation mosaics can form cycles, and these cycles have the form of
Emergent Meta-systems. The basic idea here is that Emergent
Meta-systems do not
assume continuity from one cycle to the next, but each cycle springs
from the
void spontaneously and unfolds in a series of steps until it returns to
the
void. This is very similar to the ideas put forth by Kauffman in The
Origin of Order[84]
or At Home in the Universe[85]
where spontaneous organization is seen as the basis on which evolution
occurs.
The difference is that Emergent Meta-systems assumes radical
discontinuity
rather than continuity between cycles. It
is thus an image of Existence rather than Being.
The
emergent meta-system is the most fascinating aspect of Holonomics
because it
combines the normal systems with the special systems to produce the
next major
emergent level of the meta-system. In other words, the various kinds of
conjunction systems unfold from each other in a series that takes us
from
system to meta-system and back again. This cascade is seen as a natural
aspect
of the void or emptiness itself beneath the projection of Being onto
existence.
Existence is described by the realm of pure discontinuity under the
assumed
continuity of Being. What is interesting is that Being itself is not
unified
and, in fact, is broken up into fragments that are the interfaces
between the
special systems.
Kinds
of Being |
Emergent
Systemic Levels |
|
System = thermodynamic-living-social
gestalt |
Pure Being |
|
|
Holonic Dissipative Special System =
Thermodynamic |
Process Being |
|
|
Holonic Autopoietic Special System =
Living |
Hyper Being |
|
|
Holonic Reflexive Special System = Social |
Wild Being |
|
|
Meta-system (EMS) |
Pure
Being is the normal way we think about the concept of Being which has
been
prevalent in our philosophical tradition up until the last century. In the last century, Continental philosophy has
discovered other kinds of Being. The first of these was Process Being
which is
dynamic and Heraclitian rather than Parmedian and static like normal
undifferentiated
Being. Derrida is the foremost promoter of looking at things in terms
of Hyper
Being which he calls Differance, i.e.
differing and deferring. Merleau-Ponty calls this Hyper Being and
contrasts it
with Wild Being in his book The Visible and the Invisible. We
will not
give a further elaboration of the kinds of Being here except to note
that they
are the interfaces between the different kinds of systems and that this
allows
their properties to be very precisely defined. The Emergent Meta-system
can
then be seen as an unfolding through the series of the kinds of Being
in a
series of emergent steps. The kinds of Being together define Emergent
phenomena
within the world in general so there is an interesting relation between
these
two ways of looking at this unfolding from the system to the
meta-system or
vice versa. This leads us to postulate a general theory of Worlds based
on this
theoretical foundation.
GENERAL WORLDS THEORY
We
postulate not only these few schemas, but a whole series of schemas
that
describe an ontological series of emergent levels in contrast to the
ontic
series we normally hear about in systems theory. The ontic series goes
from the
quark up to social phenomena through a series of emergent steps we find
in the
world as phenomenal discontinuities between emergent levels which could
not be
reduced away by reductionist analytical efforts. Contrasted to this, we
see a
series of schemas which are ontological in nature that describe our
various
templates of understanding that we project on the ontic phenomena found
in the
world. The ontological series of schemas is something like this:
Pluriverse = Parts with no whole
Kosmos
World
Domain
Archon (meta-system)
System
Form
Pattern
Monad
Facet = Whole with no parts
This
series of ontological schemas moves from the lowest level where we find
wholes
that do not seem to have any parts, like quarks, to the highest level
where we
have parts but cannot see any whole, like the pluriverse of multiple
simultaneous universes such as those postulated by David Deutsch in The
Fabric of Reality. Each of these levels are holonomic in the sense
that
each is merely a conjunction of those on either side which has
particular
properties that look both ways simultaneously, i.e. up the hierarchy
and down
the hierarchy. This hierarchy is merely the set of schemas that we
project on
what Cornelius Castoriadis calls the Magma of existence, i.e. that
which oozes
beneath our categorical projections on the phenomena of the world. Each
of
these ontological emergent levels has characteristics of its own,
making it
very different from the others yet interrelated with them in a strange
way
through holonomic conjunction. What Onar Aam has pointed out, is that
the holon
is made up of something that is simultaneously part and whole, and that
the
ends of the series are either whole without part or part without whole,
and the
holon, in each case, is both of these together. We can think about
sliding[86]
the reference end points up and down the scale so that each adjacent
schema can
be thought of as a whole without parts or a part without wholeness
instead of a
holon. Onar Aam points out that the opposite of the holon is the
holoidal
hologram formation. The hologram is neither part nor whole because it
contains
partial images of all the parts and partial images of the whole from
multiple
perspectives without actually containing the whole or the part or both.
We can
think of the Holoidal formation of the hologram as the opposite of the
undifferentiated magma of the ontic. Thus, we have two opposite extreme
ways of
looking at the ontic. We can see it as magma, always eluding our
categorical
projections, or we can think of it as holoidal such that it is never
either
part or whole and thus like a hologram that contains partial parts and
partial
wholes from various perspectives without resolution to something
determinate.
We can think of these as two different ways of looking at things by the
conjunction of the aspects of Being. The holoidal is a conjunction of
truth,
reality, identity and presence which is opposite the ephemeron which is
the
counter projection of falsehood, illusion, difference and absence. All
the
possible combinations of the four aspects and their opposites give us a
rich
field of the possible facets of Being. When we note that each of these
combinations may occur at various meta-levels of Being which we saw
above, then
we begin to get a picture of just how complex our worldivew might be.
The
General Theory of Worlds would embrace all of these possibilities and
attempt
to comprehend how the various schematic levels interrelate. We call it
a theory
of worlds because it would focus on how the kinds of Being and the
aspects of
Being would cohere into a single picture of the world out of the
fragments of
the various facets of Being. There are sixteen permutations of the
facets and
four levels of Being which gives a veritable I Ching[87]
of 64 possible facets of the world with respect to Being. The relation
between
Normal Systems and Special Systems through the Emergent Meta-system
that
produces Archons (meta-systems proper) is an important part of this
study of
the nature of the world because the ontological hierarchy itself is
holonomic,
i.e. ordered through conjunction and phase shifted to produce an
imaginary
space which is partially a field, and partially the elements within a
field.
This
theory must also deal with two other hierarchies which are the
individual and
social emergent hierarchies by which information is processed within
the world:
Absolute
actualization
Existence
insight
Ontos
wisdom
Episteme
knowledge
Paradigm
information
Theory
data
Facticity
given
Suchness
The
italicized levels relate to the information processing of the
individual, and
the normal font relates to the information processing of the social
group. There
is a dialectic between the individual and the social group in the
projection of
the gestalt (i.e. system) or the other schemas. The social construction
or
invention of the world takes place in the relations between these four
hierarchies. If we see our world split between physus and logos, and
that there
is a lower level splitting between limited and unlimited, then we see
that the
ontic concerns the physus and the ontological concerns the logos and
that these
two later hierarchies concern the relation between the limited as
suchness and
the unlimited as absolute.
The
theory of worlds looks at the way that the schemas in general are
applied to
the phenomena. For instance, the ontic hierarchy must withstand the
pressure of
reductionism, and the emergent ontic levels stand as whatever cannot be
reduced. On the other hand, the ontological hierarchy must withstand
the
pressure of skepticism and what survives are the schemas that do not
collapse
under that pressure. When we look at the Social/Individual hierarchy,
we see
that it must withstand the pressure of nihilism and that it is about
the social
and individual dialogue of the real distinctions in the world that
attempt to
make a non-nihilistic distinction. Out of the theory of worlds arises
the set
of schemas that we will attempt to apply in order to understand
phenomena and
to incorporate as a basis for theory building concerning natural
phenomena.
Some of these schemas will be combined, as we have seen that of System
Form and
Pattern combined, to produce the Formal Structural Systems Theory. We
have
suggested another combination in the Emergent Meta-system of the
Archon, Holon
and System as a viable set of schemas from the set of ontologically
acceptable
schemas in order to understand certain anomalous phenomena which
augment and
take to a new level what was achieved though the projection of the
Formal
Structural System based on Form, Pattern and System schemas by various
disciplines of science.
The
Theory of Worlds concentrates on the level of the schema of the world
and
attempts to bring together ways of looking at things via the aspects
and kinds
of Being with the insights afforded us by the relations between Special
Systems
and normal Systems to build Meta-systemic Archons via the Emergent
Meta-system
cycle which represents a model of Existence. Thus, the Theory of Worlds
looks
at the relation between existence and ontology at the level of the
world schema
and considers the nesting of systems in meta-systems via the holonic
intermediaries. It would also consider the relation of wholes that
cannot be
parts and parts that cannot be wholes to holons and holoidal
hologram-like
formations while also considering the sliding scale by which these are
applied
to the various holonic ontological levels.
CONCLUSION
What
has been outlined here is a new way of looking at General Systems
Theory as
only one out of many General Schemas that might be applied to the
phenomena
that we encounter in the world. Formal Structural Systems Theory is
well
developed and is the basis of science in many disciplines. We suggest
here that
there is a new set of schemas that we need to explore together which
includes
the System, Holons, and Meta-systems as well as Worlds. Together,
Systems and
Holons produce Meta-systems through the Emergent Meta-system cycle.
This cycle
points up the relation between the various emergent levels which, in
turn,
define the fragmented kinds of Being. The kinds of Being are defined in
terms
of modes of being-in-the-world so that there is this interesting
connection
between the differences between the special systems and the
differentiation of
the world. Thus, the relation between Being and Existence on the one
hand, and
the schema of the world on the other hand, are implicated in our
understanding
of the special systems and their place between systems and
meta-systems. So it
is necessary to posit a general Theory of Worlds which subsumes the
theory of
Holons and Meta-systemic Archons into a coherent and integrated picture.
If
we allow the incorporation of other schemas besides the System
schema in our ways of looking at the world, then our
understanding of phenomena will be much richer. The problem is always
the
reduction to a single schema. This proved wrong when there was
exclusive focus
on the Form schema. It will equally
be a mistake if we try to reduce everything to Systems and
do not recognize the existence of other schemas like
that of Holons, Meta-systems and Worlds as
viable templates of understanding for projection on ontic phenomena as
a basis
of understanding it better.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Would like to thank my mentor Ian Dallas,
as well as Ben Goertzel, Onar
Aam, Bob Cummings and Owen Ware.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kent Palmer is a Principle Systems Engineer at a major Aerospace Systems Company. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology concentrating on Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics and a B.Sc. in Sociology from the University of Kansas. His dissertation on The Structure of Theoretical Systems in Relation to Emergence[88] focused on how new things come into existence within the Western Philosophical and Scientific worldview. He has written extensively on the roots of the Western Worldview in his electronic book The Fragmentation of Being and the Path Beyond the Void[89]. He had at least seventeen years experience[90] in Software Engineering and Systems Engineering disciplines at major aerospace companies based in Orange County CA. He served several years as the chairman of a Software Engineering Process Group and is now engaged in Systems Engineering Process improvement based on EIA 731 and CMMI. He has presented a tutorial on “Advanced Process Architectures[91]” which concerned engineering wide process improvement including both software and systems engineering. Besides process experience, he has recently been a software team lead on a Satellite Payload project and a systems engineer on a Satellite Ground System project. He has also engaged in independent research in Systems Theory which has resulted in a book of working papers called Reflexive Autopoietic Systems Theory[92]. A new introduction to this work now exists called Reflexive Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems Theory[93]. He has given a tutorial[94] on “Meta-systems Engineering” to the INCOSE Principles working group. He has written a series on Software Engineering Foundations which are contained in the book Wild Software Meta-systems[95]. He now teaches a course in “Software Requirements and Design Methodologies” at the University California Irvine Extension. He may be reached at kent@palmer.name.
SIG: Duality Theory
ABSTRACT
PALMER, K. D.
INTERTWINING OF DUALITY AND NONDUALITY
Trace Studies Institute, Box 1632,
Orange, CA 92856
USA E-mail: kent@palmer.name
Special
Systems Theory and the theory of Emergent Meta-systems are articulated
in a
previous paper on Reflexive Autopoietic
Dissipative Special Systems Theory[96].
This theory recognizes the profound relation between Duality and
Nonduality.
Nonduality is an oriental philosophical concept explained by David Loy
in his
book Nonduality[97].
Basically nonduality is a middle ground between unity and duality. It
is not
one and not two. Nonduality is the holonomic middle ground between
unity and
duality. Special Systems theory shows that there is a middle ground of
this
kind between the duals of System (whole greater than the sum of its
parts) and
the Meta-system (whole less than the sum of its parts, eg. environment
or
ecosystem). This nonduality expresses itself as three special holonic
systems
called Dissipative, Autopoietic and Reflexive. These special systems
are
defined by hyper-complex algebras and have physical phenomena that
express
their structure which shows that these are real possibilities within
the
natural world. Special systems are ultra-efficacious (ultra-efficient
and
ultra-effective) in relation to normal open or closed systems. Thus,
they are
rare anomalies. But when they appear, they take over and spread to all
possible
niches in the environment as life did on earth. Dissipative special
systems are
neg-entropic. Autopoietic special systems are the systems theoretic
template
for life. Reflexive special systems are the template for social
relations among
living things. Each of these special systems are holonomic, i.e. have
properties like those that Arthur Koestler attributed to Janus
faced
holons. Holons are chiasmic and reversible non-duals that stand in the
middle
ground between duals. The Emergent Meta-system is a special kind of
holonic
formation that combines the three special systems with a normal system.
It is a
dynamic structure similar to a genetic algorithm by which a model of
the
meta-system is produced out of the interaction of the special systems.
(Duality
Theory. Special Integration Group)
Intertwining of Duality and Nonduality
Kent D. Palmer
Trace Studies Institute
Box 1632 Orange CA 92856 USA
SUMMARY
Special
Systems Theory and the theory of Emergent Meta-systems are articulated
in my
previous paper Reflexive Autopoietic
Dissipative Special Systems Theory[98].
This theory recognizes the profound relation between Duality and
Nonduality.
Nonduality is an oriental philosophical concept explained by David Loy
in his
book Nonduality[99].
Basically, nonduality is a middle ground between unity and duality. It
is not
one and it is not two. Nonduality is
the holonomic middle ground between unity and duality. Special Systems
theory
shows that there is a middle ground of this kind between the duals of a
System
(a whole greater than the sum of its parts) and the Meta-system (a
whole less
than the sum of its parts, e.g. environment or ecosystem). This
nonduality
expresses itself as three special holonic systems called Dissipative,
Autopoietic and Reflexive. These special systems are defined by
hyper-complex
algebras and have physical phenomena that express their structure which
shows
that these are real possibilities within the natural world. Special
systems are
ultra-efficacious (ultra-efficient and ultra-effective) in relation to
normal
open or closed systems. Thus, they are rare anomalies. But when they
appear,
they take over and spread to all possible niches in the environment
just as
life did on earth. Dissipative special systems are neg-entropic.
Autopoietic
special systems are the systems theoretic template for life. Reflexive
special
systems are the template for social relations among living things. Each
of
these special systems are holonomic, i.e. they have properties like
those that
Arthur Koestler attributed to Janus faced holons. Holons are
chiasmic
and reversible non-duals that stand in the middle ground between duals.
The
Emergent Meta-system is a special kind of holonic formation that
combines the
three special systems with a normal system. It is a dynamic structure
similar
to a genetic algorithm by which a model of the meta-system is produced
out of
the interaction of the special systems. The meta-systems are
distinguished from
super-systems which are nested levels of systems. A meta-system is a
deconstructed super-system and appears as a field out of which systems
arise
and through which they interoperate and cooperate. A meta-system is an
environment or ecosystem for a certain level of system and anti-system
pair. It
is out of this milieu that holonic non-dual structures arise in
anomalous and
rare instances. The meta-systemic structures are a prototype for Gaia
in which
multiple species engage in Emergent Meta-system dynamics in relation to
each
other in a broader environment and thus create and regulate the
cooperatively
created environment that they share with other species.[100]
Keywords Life Ontology, Holonomics, Holon,
Meta-System, Special System, Nonduality,
Dualism, Complementarity
INTRODUCTION
Duality
has to be balanced with Nonduality as a way of looking at phenomena.
David Loy,
in his book called Nonduality, has explained the basic
principles of
this way of looking at things that is more prevalent in the Orient than
in the
Occident. The great challenge that we have in Western Philosophy,
Science, and
Systems Theory as well is to attempt to understand this way of looking
at
things within the context of our own viewpoint on phenomena which has
been
successfully developed in a dualistic scheme. We must be aware that
there are
two completely different uses of the terms "Dualism" or
"Duality." One is mathematically based and has to do with the
reversal of certain features in order to produce an isomorphism between
two
structures that are opposite each other. The other use is more
philosophical
and has to do with the production of nihilistic artificial and extreme
opposites which come into conflict and where one subdues the other as
in the
case with the Mind/Body dualism. When we use the terms "dualistic" or
"dualism," we are generally talking about the philosophical variety
of dualism. When we talk about "duality" or two things being duals of
each other, we are using the mathematical concept. This later use of
the term
would be better stated in terms of complementarity rather than duality.
It is
important to our discourse not to mix up these two uses of the same
word. Here
when we speak of Duality, we mean mathematical isomorphism between the
features
of two opposites, i.e. complementarity. It can be contrast to unified
objects
which are seen to be self-dual, i.e. the reversal of characteristics
maintains
the same structure. Non-dual has the specific meaning of not one and
not two,
which is to say that there is an intermediary or middle path between
unity and
duality. Many times these mathematical isomorphisms are seen as the
basis for
producing philosophical concepts which are opposites, or even extreme
artificial and nihilistic opposites, which then come into conflict in
which one
dominates the other. This use of the term is a super-structure built
over the
mathematical use of the term duality and produces a dualism in which
dialectically opposite dualistic philosophical arguments or positions
are
built. Much of that construction assumes, as Kant did, that antinomic
opposite
positions that are mutually contradictory is the only way to produce
arguments
by Reason, and that these arguments may never defeat each other
ultimately
because they are based on opposite assumptions. Thus, throughout the
history of
the Western tradition dualism uses duality as part of the armament by
which it
builds up dialectically opposite arguments and philosophical positions
which
spar with each other. In the Orient, thought took a very different
direction
thought, which we find difficult to appreciate, in which a middle
alternative
between dualism and dogmatic monism has been found, and this is a
direction
that the Western Tradition has found difficult to appreciate.
NONDUALITY
In
order to understand this, we must go back to Aristotle and his
principle of the
Excluded Middle which he held as the first principle in his
metaphysics. By
excluding the middle and banning contradiction, Aristotle forces our
tradition
down the road of Dualism where one of the antinomic opposites
constructed by
reason must completely dominate the other in order to build a dogmatic
monism.
It is this move that we must undo in order to appreciate how the
non-dual is
possible as an alternative to duality and how it causes us to undermine
dualism
within our tradition. If we allow the middle between two opposites,
then we
open up the possibility of considering both A and ~A, as well as
neither A nor
~A, as well as the opposites themselves. This broader logic was
developed in
India, and it is precisely this that Aristotle seems to find so
disturbing.
When we allow the both…and as well as
the neither…nor, then it is possible
to follow Nagarjuna's reasoning which posits that the difference
between these
excluded possibilities is unthinkable. That unthinkability he calls sunyata or emptiness. It is this
emptiness that is the essence of the
non-dual. What we need to do in our tradition is to attempt to come to
terms
with the existence of this possibility. We can do that by looking a
little
closer at our own concept of Being.
Being
is not a conceptual monolith, but as recent Continental Philosophy has
discovered, it is fragmented into a series of modes of
being-in-the-world.
These various modes of being-in-the-world reveal various kinds of Being
which
are called Pure Being, Process Being, Hyper Being and Wild Being. They
form a
staircase of meta-levels of Being. This staircase does not go anywhere
because
the fifth meta-level is missing. When we try to think it, we fail; we
cannot
conceive it. It is unthinkable just like the difference between the
both…and and
the neither…nor. Both of these are ways to access existence.
Existence is
itself intrinsically empty, and we run directly into it when we try to
move up
through the meta-levels of Being. We can call the fifth meta-level
ultra-Being
because it moves beyond Being itself into Existence.[101]
It
is at the level of Pure Being that all Dualities exist. An example is
Subject/Object dichotomy, or mind/body, or
consciousness/unconsciousness. Pick
any extreme artificial and nihilistic opposites and they will have
their Being
at the level of Pure Being. Pure Being is static and rigid, even
frozen, being
identified with Parmenides' view of the world. It assumes that things
are
determinate and continuous and is, in fact, an illusion. When we move
up to the
next meta-level of Being, we find that we move back prior to the
arising of the
extreme duals to the process of their projection. This is the level
that Heidegger
identifies with Dasein. It is probabilistic and dynamic, being
identified with
Heraclitus' vision of the world in flux. At this level, we see that
there is
dynamic interchange between the extreme, artificial and nihilistic
opposites in
as much as they serve to create each other and keep each other in
existence
despite their seeming conflict. Sartre called this the detotalized
totality in
his Critique of Dialectical Reason. When we move up to the next
level of
Being, we discover Hyper Being which Derrida calls differance,
i.e. differing and deferring. Heidegger called it Being
(crossed out) and Merleau Ponty called it the dialectic between Process
Being
of Heidegger and the Nothingness of Sartre. Levinas says that this is
the level
where metaphysics and ethics collapse into each other. It is a realm of
undecidability such as that noticed by Godel. At that level, there is
not just
exchange between the nihilistic opposites, but there is a hinge between
them
which is undecidable. Finally, we move to the level of Wild Being.
Merleau-Ponty named this level of Being in The Visible and the
Invisible.
He also called it Flesh and pointed to the incommensurability of touch
touching. In touch touching, there is a chiasm or reversibility which
means
that there is a difference from one way of approaching the matter at
hand, as
it is seen, from another way of approaching the same matter. So thoughtfeeling is different in meaning
from feelingthought. This subtle
difference in meaning points up an area of nonduality in the cusp
between the
two reversed combinations. What exists within this cusp between the
reversibilities, like the reversibility between the two phases of a
spacetime
interval, is pure nonduality. Pure nonduality is beyond Being
altogether. All
of the world has nonduality embedded in it beyond all the dualisms that
we
project upon the world. Thus, the thinkability of the world that comes
with
Being has a hidden unthinkability of existence embedded in it. Zen
Buddhism
attempts to expose the supra-rationality of this core of unthinkability.
We
start with the assumption of continuity and determinism that we project
on
everything. Slowly this is deconstructed as we move down the levels of
Being
until it completely falls apart at the threshold of Existence, i.e. the
fifth
meta-level of Being. On the other hand, Oriental philosophies for the
most part
start with Existence which is the complementary dual of Being. The
build up of
illusion as continuity projected by Being attempts to cover over the
fundamental discontinuities in existence. The kinds of philosophies
that Loy
describes begin with the assumption of discontinuity, which is only
natural for
languages without Being as an integral part. The concept of Being is
built into
the Indo-European languages. The doctrine of Buddhism is an anomaly. It
is an
example of the discovery of the fundamental nonduality of existence
within an
Indo-European culture despite the assumption of Being as a linguistic
given.
Aristotle's
concept of the Excluded Middle and Non-contradictoriness covers over
the
comprehension of what is called Supra-rationality, which is the
opposite of
paradoxicality. Paradoxicality is generated with, we assume, the
excluded
middle. But despite this, contradiction is allowed. In paradoxicality,
contradictories conflict and interfere with each other within our
thought
processes. Supra-rationality is something entirely different from this.
It
occurs where two opposites are allowed to exist at the same time and
place
without interference. This can only be seen when we drop the principle
of the
excluded middle altogether, and look at the way that the opposites
interlock
across different modes so that the two opposites can exist in their
different
modes at the same time without interfering. Interestingly, Jainism took
this to
be the fundamental way that the world works, and their argumentation
attempted
to clarify how it was always the case that opposites were
simultaneously true.
Buddhists, on the other hand, also saw existence in terms of
supra-rationality
but tended to be more idealistic than the Jainists who accepted that
the
material world was an opposite that existed simultaneously with
consciousness.
Buddhism, instead, followed most of Hinduism and discounted the
importance of
the material world. This is why Buddhism and Taoism ended up being
complementary opposite paths. Of course, our culture has gone to the
opposite
extreme, embracing materialism and discounting, for the most part,
consciousness while at the same time supporting basically idealistic
philosophies.
Thus, in our society and culture, we have a contradiction between our
materialistic techno-science and our philosophical tendencies which
lean toward
idealism. This dualism is driven by the kinds of contradictions that
Hegel and
Marx pointed out. These contradictions underlie the dynamics of our
culture
producing an historical dynamism or an economic determinism, however
one
prefers to look at it.
On
the other hand, if we accept the possibility of the supra-rational as
the
opposite of the paradoxical, then we will be able to understand
nonduality.
Nonduality is always supra-rational; this is a positive way of
expressing the
unthinkability of it. The supra-rational
is not irrational. That is to say, it is not a breakdown of reasoning
but a
transcendence of it. Reasoning is merely the production of arguments
that
attempts to establish motive or cause. Irrational action or
argument fails
to establish reason or cause at all. Supra-rational argument is always
based on
silence. The Buddha was silent when asked about antinomical
metaphysical
opposites. This is a real meta-physical position which shelters itself
in
silence, similar to the kind of sheltering that Sextus Empricius[102]
attempts when he tries to keep the dialectic going but also tries not
to get
caught up in it. The unthinkability of Existence is supra-rational, and
because
of that, it ends up bringing us to silence. If we are silent, the world
does
not vanish. So this is a real philosophical position based on the
meta-physics
of existence which appears as a viable alternative when we stop the
projections
of Being. After much silence, a few words may contain immense meaning
when
compared to endless chatter which is meaningless.
A TOPOLOGICAL ANALOGY
But
how should we understand this duality between the Supra-rational and
the
Paradoxical? We are fortunate that there is an analogy in Mathematical
Topology
that will help us. That is the analogy of the series of non-orientable
surfaces
which has previously been explored by Steven Rosen[103].
We posit that the series of non-orientable surfaces called mobius
strip,
kleinian bottle and hyper-kleinian bottle[104]
give us an excellent lesson in the way that duality and nonduality
intertwine
emergently. We start off with the two-edged and two-sided lemniscate
which,
when joined together with another intertwined oppositely twisted
lemniscate,
gives you a one-sided and one-edged mobius strip. Then, when we take
two
oppositely twisted mobius strips and glue them along the edges, we
obtain the
kleinian bottle. Two kleinian bottles glued along their circles of
interference, give you a hyper-kleinian bottle. When we look at the
mobius
strip, what we notice is that it is locally dual and globally non-dual.
It
seems to have two edges and two sides, but, in fact, only has one edge
and one
side when viewed globally. The same is true of the kleinian bottle
which
appears to have inside and outside surfaces locally, but, in fact, has
only one
surface. Similarly, in the hyper-kleinian bottle, the joined circles of
self-interference creates an ambiguity as to which kleinian bottle we
are in at
the circle of mutual self-interference.
As
Steve Rosen[105]
points
out, these figures teach us that it is necessary to have both duality
and
nonduality at the same time. In the mobius strip, it is a difference of
local
versus global perspectives that separate the distinction between two
surfaces
or edges from only having one surface and one side. The same is true of
the
kleinian bottle which makes the inside and outside similarly
problematic as we
switch from local to global perspectives. In the hyper-kleinian bottle,
it is
the self-other dichotomy that becomes ambiguous locally but globally
unambiguous. Duality and nonduality always appear together as two sides
of the
same coin. Thus, Being and Existence, as the assumption of continuity
and
discontinuity, must always appear together. When we read this larger
meta-physical context into what we learn from topology, we find that we
can
identify the lemniscate with the supra-rational and the ambiguity of
the hyper-kleinian
bottle's interlocked circles of self-intersection with paradoxicality.
The
lemniscate is dual, that is to say it really is two edged and two
sided, both
locally and globally, and we create it when we cut a mobius strip down
the
middle lengthwise. In the lemniscate, we suddenly break into an
emergent level
where the two opposites can be distinguished and nonduality vanishes.
We get
instead two interlocked lemniscates. We take this as the sign of the
non-nihilistic naturalistic and non-extreme distinction between the two
opposites that are supra-rationally interlocked. As soon as we sew them
together, we get the mobius strip which has the non-orientablity that
signifies
their nonduality which at the same time shows us their duality. As we
proceed
through the emergent levels, we eventually produce the paradoxicality
of the
hyper-kleinian bottle where we can no longer tell self from other, the
opposites are mixed and contradictory rather than separated and
distinctly
defined while at the same time having a non-dual relation to each
other.
Nonduality
and duality are two ways of looking at the same non-orientable figure.
Nonduality, when it breaks free from Being, produces non-nihilistic
natural and
non-extreme interlocked opposites. But as it moves up into Being, the
mixture
of the dual and non-dual increases in intensity until they become
paradoxical
mixture which is contradictory and chaotic. Being is ultimately a
paradox, even
an absurdity, i.e. meta-paradoxical. In order to try to come to terms
with it
in reason, we break it down using Russell & Copi's[106]
higher logical type theory. We produce the meta-levels of Being as a
hierarchy
to diffuse the mixture of paradox and viciousness of the circles within
Being,
and then at each level, we produce the various aspects of Being, i.e.
truth,
reality, identity, presence. Each aspect of Being has a different
character at
the various meta-levels of Being. This gives us sixteen facets of Being
that is
like a mobile which intersects with itself just prior to collapse into
paradoxicality. Reason is the attempt to use all four aspects of Being
together
at a particular level of Being, i.e. Pure, Process, Hyper, Wild, or
Ultra.
Ultra is the fifth meta-level of Being which is really beyond Being and
is
actually existence proper, which we experience as pure nonduality
though a
supra-rational grasping by the heart rather than the mind. In most
Oriental
philosophies, there is no distinction made between heart and mind. The
supra-rational cannot be understood by the mind but can be understood
by the
heart which has reasons that reason itself cannot comprehend. This
level that
transcends the Ego and its Shadow is what Jung calls the Self, which is
a
totality rather than a unity.
ONTOLOGICAL DUALISM AND NONDUALITY
This
topological analogy lends support for our understanding of the relation
between
duality and nonduality which is intimate and interwoven. We see the
interwoven
nature of the two when we see that the meta-levels of Being are
distinguished
by the various holons that exist between the System and the
Meta-system. A
system is a social gestalt that is a whole greater than the sum of its
parts. A
meta-system is a social proto-gestalt that is a whole less than the sum
of its
parts. A proto-gestalt is the background for a gestalt which has what
David
Bohm calls implicate order. A meta-system is a field, environment,
ecosystem,
ecology, situation or context. It is the opposite of the super-system
which is
a nesting of systems within systems within systems. The meta-system
takes apart
the super-system to reveal the systems that are parts within it. It
turns out
that between the System as a surplus and the Meta-system as a lack,
there is a
series of non-dual holons which form a series of intermediate emergent
levels
between the system and the field of its origin/arena. These holons,
which as
Koestler says in Janus, are both parts and wholes at the same
time. They
are called dissipative special systems, autopoietic special systems,
and
reflexive special systems. These special systems are partial systems
and
partial meta-systems at the same time, i.e. non-systems and
non-meta-systems
simultaneously and are supra-rational.
They are wholes, like perfect numbers, which are exactly equal
to the
sum of their parts. In fact, an analogy for the dissipative special
system is
the amicable numbers which are two numbers that prefect each other. An
analogy
for the reflexive system is the sociable numbers which are a set of
numbers
that perfect each other in a ring. In these analogies, the perfect
number is
the image of the autopoietic special system which is the static balance
between
the dissipative and reflexive special systems. Dissipative special
systems
exemplify a lack, and reflexive special systems exemplify a surplus in
relation
to the autopoietic special system which has perfect balance. Together
the
Reflexive and Dissipative special systems compensate each other so that
they
represent a perfect dynamic balance in their duality which is the dual
of the
balance of the Autopoietic special system. Beyond these analogies, we
can see
that the special systems have their basis in the Hyper Complex
Algebras. Where
the system is analogous to the real algebra, the dissipative special
system is
analogous to the imaginary algebra that introduces conjunction. The
autopoietic
special system is analogous to the quaternion algebra that loses the
commutative property, the reflexive social special system is analogous
to the
octonion algebra that loses the associative property, and finally the
meta-system
is analogous to the sedenion and higher hypercomplex algebras which
lose the
division property. All of the special systems are non-dual and are thus
a model
of existence, but the differences between them are defined by the kinds
of
Being, so that existence is intertwined intimately with the definition
of the
kinds of Being and vice versa.
Kinds
of Being |
Emergent
Systemic Levels |
|
System = thermodynamic-living-social
gestalt |
Pure Being |
|
|
Holonic Dissipative Special System =
Thermodynamic |
Process Being |
|
|
Holonic Autopoietic Special System =
Living |
Hyper Being |
|
|
Holonic Reflexive Special System = Social |
Wild Being |
|
|
Meta-system |
This
intertwining of duality and nonduality is precisely analogous to the
kind of
intertwining we saw in the mobius strip and kleinian bottle. Each one
defines
the other in a way that, is like an Escher print of two hands coming
out of the
paper to draw each other. Duality and nonduality, and thus Being and
Existence,
mutually define each other and are symbiotic to each other. Together,
they are,
in fact, an image of the autopoietic symbiotic special system's static
balance
between system and meta-system, or as Bataille in Accursed Share
would
say, between the restricted and general
economies. The dissipative ordering special system and the reflexive
social
special system together form a dynamic balance which is the dual of
that static
balance of the self-dual autopoietic system. Reflexive systems are made
up of
four conjuncted Dissipative special systems whereas the autopoietic
system is
made up of two. This repeats the motif of surplus and deficit seen in
the
comparison of the system with the meta-system where the reflexive
special
system is overflowing and the dissipative special system, being not
enough, is underflowing so composition is
necessary
to produce static symbiotic balance. The topological series has similar
properties as the series based on algebras:
Meta-system (sedenion algebra) |
Lemniscate |
Reflexive Special System (octonion
algebra) |
Mobius Strip |
Autopoietic Special System (quaternion
algebra) |
Kleinian Bottle |
Dissipative Special System (imaginary
algebra) |
Hyper-Kleinian Bottle |
System (real algebra) |
Hypersphere of ambiguity[107] |
The
difference is that we must reverse the order of our identification of
the lemniscate
and the meta-system with nonduality, existence, non-nihilism, etc. The
hypersphere of ambiguity is produced from the relation of the two
circles of
self-interference of the two kleinian bottles that compose the
hyper-kleinian
bottle as seen in four dimensional space. If the system is seen as
having
Being, then it is engulfed with the paradoxicality of Being like that
which
appears in the self-other paradoxicality of the hyper-kleinian bottle.
As we
unzip the two kleinian bottles that make up the hyper-kleinian, then we
get the
individual kleinian bottles that have the nonduality of inside and
outside.
When we unzip these, we get the separate mobius strips that have the
nonduality
of their two sides and two edges. When we unzip the mobius strips, we
get the
lemniscates which are interlocking duals, i.e. which makes a natural
dualistic
distinction which holds and is not negated by a global perspective. A hyper-kleinian bottle is made up of four
mobius strips or two kleinian bottles just like the reflexive special
system is
made up of four dissipative special systems or two autopoietic systems.
We
can see the same kind of organization in solitons which form breathers,
and we
might suppose instantaton super-breathers[108]
by a conjunction operation. There are several different physical and
mathematical holonic hierarchies (holarchies) with this kind of
structure which
show us the nature of the Special Systems as embodiments of nonduality
embedded
in duality. We need to study these mathematical and physical structures
which
give us a deeper understanding of holonic construction, like the Cooper
pairs
of superconductivity[109].
It is by searching out the holonomic anomalies in mathematics and in
physical
phenomena that we will be able to understand these non-dual structures
and be
able to find other examples in different disciplines. But our way will
be
hindered as long as we subscribe to the excluded middle as the basic
metaphysical principle. We need to allow the non-dual realm of
existence to
show itself beyond our projections of illusory continuity through
ideation. It
is this illusory continuity, for instance, that attempts to establish
the
Copenhagen convention[110]
that the quantum mechanical phenomenaon only occurs on the microscale. Instead, the non-dual approach establishes
the possibility of macro-quantum mechanical phenomena which is
suppressed by
our worldview through the projection of Being on existence. The
model that
David Deutsch proposes in The Fabric of Reality[111]
is much closer to our understanding of the nature of existence. But
rather than
seeing simultaneous physically real universes that are somehow isolated
from
each other, except for the interference at the quantum mechanical
level, we see
that the pluriverses are interpenetrating, and that the nature of this
interpenetration as seen by the mind is emptiness, or sunyata, and thus
is
supra-rational. At the other end of the spectrum are the multiple
worlds found
by David Chalmers when he considers consciousness. This multiplication
of
worlds is because each of us may apprehend qualia differently. This
multiplication of qualitative worlds has a similar nature to the
suppression of
multiple quantum worlds by the Copenhagen convention. We, instead, take
the
multiple quantal physical worlds and intersect them with the multiple
qualitative worlds to obtain what might be called a Macro
Quantum-Qualia
Observer Mechanics, which celebrates the inundation of the pluriverse
of
existence into our lives instead of attempting to suppress it by our
projection
of illusory continuity through Being.
A GENERAL THEORY OF SCHEMAS
Within
this supra-rational world in which the Copenhagen and the Cognitive
conventions
are eluded, there is a continual production of complementarities within
tiers
of the meta-system which brings out the significance of duality for our
understanding of the world. Complementary opposites are everywhere in
the
meta-system, even complementarities of complementaries with arbitrary
levels of
nesting, which are suppressed by a focus exclusively on the system as a
schema
for understanding phenomena. When we begin with this in mind, rather
than
attempting to construct it or invent it in spite of the dualisms of our
culture, then we get a completely different perspective on the nature
of
existence. We see that there is a whole series of schemas by which we
attempt
to comprehend phenomena. We can separate those schemas from the
phenomena that
we use those schemas to understand.
That is why a General Schema Theory is possible, such as General
Systems
Theory. We posit that the complementary dual opposite of General
Systems Theory
is General Meta-systems Theory. Between these two are the Holonic
schemas in
which the dissipative and the reflexive are dual while the autopoietic
is
self-dual. All the higher dimensions other than fourth and third have
one
platonic solid that is self dual and two of which are complementary
duals with
each other. This pattern of the contrast of the self-dual and the
actually
complementary duals is seen in mathematics as well. But the duality
does not
stop there. There are a whole series of schemas that are used to
understand the
physus that are built up in the logos. We call the hierarchy of the
found
emergent levels of phenomena that resist reductionism, the ontic
hierarchy. It
is composed of levels of phenomena like quarks, particles, atoms,
molecules,
cells, organisms, social groups and
Gaia. Everyone makes the divisions slightly differently. But
these are
contrasted with the emergent ontological hierarchy of schemas that can
be
talked about as having the following articulation:
Pluriverse
Kosmos
World
Domain
Meta-system
(Archon)
System
Form
Pattern
Monad
(Distinction)
Facet
These
emergent levels of schemas contain many dualities within them. Each
level is
related to the next in the same way that the Meta-system is related to
the
System. The holons appear between each of the levels. Each level gets
its
properties as a conjunction of the two adjacent levels. Each level is
dual with
the opposite level at the other end of the hierarchy. All of this
duality
within the ontological framework of the schemas that we project on
existence
gives us an insight into the utter complementarity of the holonic way
of
looking at things. There is a projection by which the ontological
schemas are
thrown onto the ontic realm in an attempt to understand the emergent
properties
of the things found in the realm of physus from the point of view of
logos.
Beneath that projection, there is something fascinating happening which
we
seldom see within the mechanism by which the projection is happening.
We get at
that by first separating the ontic from the ontological, i.e. by
stopping the
projection and considering physus (the ontic emergent realm) separate
from the
logos (the ontological emergent realm). When we stop the projection,
i.e.
suspend our belief in it, and allow the two realms to be seen as
complementary
duals rather than a dualism where one projects onto the other, i.e.
where
thought determines the structure of nature or nature determines the
structure
of thought, then we find some very interesting features of the world
infrastructure that do not become apparent otherwise.
We
must add that there is yet another pair of emergent hierarchies that
have to be
considered in our exploration of the structure of the world. This set
has to do
with the relation between the social and the individual processing of
information.
Absolute
actualization
Existence
insight
Ontos
wisdom
Episteme
knowledge
Paradigm
information
Theory
data
Facticity
given
Suchness
The
italicized words represent the individual's processing of information
at
various levels. The normal typed words represent a processing which
mediates
the social construction and invention of the world at various emergent
levels
of social comprehension. Note that this pair of emergent hierarchies,
that are
interlaced, points to a deeper dualism between the limited and the
unlimited
that underlie the articulation of the dualism between physus and logos
as the
limited. The absolute is the realm of the unlimited and suchness is the
realm
of the limited, and between the two there is the social and individual
construction and invention of reality, truth, identity, and presence
which is
projected as Being and is ontologically distinct from beings within the
world.
The world has the structure of the Fourfold which, as Heidegger points
out, is
composed of Heaven, Earth, Mortals and Immortals. Heidegger takes this
from
Socrates who says in the Gorgias (507e) "And wise men tell us,
Callicles, that heaven and earth and gods
and men are held together by communion and friendship, by orderliness,
temperance and justice; and that is the reason, my friend, why they
call the
whole of this world by the name of kosmos." What is necessary to understand,
however, is that
this division of the world into the fourfold, cited by Socrates, is the
articulation that held sway in the mythopoietic times and that this has
changed
in the meta-physical times inaugurated by Thales and Anaxamander into
the
dualism of Infinite/Finite at the deeper level and Physus/Logos at the
higher
level. Our view of the structure of the schema of the world must exist
within
this framework of dualities as long as the Metaphysical Era continues
to reign.
However, we can extend this series of dualities both downward and
upward to
produce the chain of bifurcations in Being as it exists in the
Meta-physical
Era. This chain of bifurcations consists of at least eight layers of
dualities
within which are nested non-duals which are normally hidden, but when
we cease
to project and allow the different duals to exist independently, they
become
manifest[112]
to the
careful observer.
Particle |
Uncertain Complementarity |
Wave |
Quantum Mechanics |
Spacetime |
Relativity |
Physics |
InfoEnergy |
Thermodynamics |
Physus |
Orders |
Logos |
Limited |
Rights |
Unlimited |
Have |
Goods |
Have not |
Exist |
Fates |
Exist not |
Actualize
(paradoxicality) |
Sources |
Actualize not
(supra-rationality) |
Unmanifest = Extremal[113] |
Root (Single Source) |
Manifestation |
At
each level, the left hand column bifurcates into the next higher
dualism. The
fundamental duals that make up the world structure have been made bold
in this
table. The non-duals are seen in italics. The dualisms arise out of the
Root
(or Single Source of causation) which bifurcates into what is
actualized and
what is not actualized flowing from the myriad sources of things within
the
subspace of negative dimensionality. That subspace is made up of
Pascal's
Triangle Hyper Complex Imaginaries that are produced by the
Cayley-Dickson
process and which is infinitely deep. But at the highest level, i.e. at
subspace negative one, there is a single root for the differentiation
of all
the sources at the lower negative dimensions. The sources are the
opposite of
points, i.e. instead of being localized at one place, they are spread
out all over
the negative dimensional subspaces. These sources are the templates for
the
actualization of things within positive dimensional spacetime.
Actualization
leads to the placement of existences that we find and onto which we
project
Being turning existents into beings. What existences actually occur is
a matter
of selection that we call fate. Fate is a very fundamental non-dual
within the
Western worldview. Being and Having enter the Indo-European language
complex
together, and they share their extreme irregularity which shows that
they are
an artificial construct within these languages. Having and Not Having,
i.e.
possession and private property, is a fundamental theme within the
Indo-European worldview in general, and this theme points us to the
importance
of variety production which we call the good. Being proper appears at
the level
of the distinction between the limited and the unlimited which, in the
Mythopoietic Era, was understood as the split between heaven and earth
or
Uranus and Gaia. In the metaphysical era, inaugurated by Anaxamander
and
Thales, the split between the Apeiorn and the Peiron was inaugurated.
Thales,
suggested that the Apeiron or meta-physical principle underlying
everything was
Water, i.e. the water of life that circulates in the Indo-European
primal scene
of the Well and the Tree. Anaximenes suggested that it was air. In
other words,
the primal elements were seen as the source of the world. But
Anaxamander
realized that the meta-physical principle had to be something beyond
the elements
which were by their nature limited. All throughout the presocratic era
there
were many suggestions as to what should be the meta-physical principle.
Eventually, Parmenides suggested Being as the principle par-excellence
and that
was accepted by everyone except dissenters like Heraclitus. Since the
time of
Hegel, one of the followers of Heraclitus, we think of the
Meta-physical
principle as the Absolute. When the Absolute is combined with suchness
we have
what Hegel calls Absolute Reason,
i.e. the reason which is embedded within the particulars of being.
Thus, for
Hegel, there is a cycle from the absolute back to the particular which
most
idealistic philosophies do not recognize. But this cycle informs the
world with
its dynamic of understanding, which we see as the interlaced emergent
hierarchies that are social and individual. Hegel called this dynamic
the
advance of spirit in history. He thus produced the first philosophy
since the
Sceptics, like Sextus Empiricus, which was on the model of a dynamic
dialectical
system in which spirit moves through history continually advancing via
Aufheben
from one supervenient level to the next, continually developing deeper
and
deeper self-consciousness which, in turn forms a basis of consciousness
within
which representations appear, i.e. schema for understanding things in
the
world, which, through their articulation, leads to a new level of
self-consciousness. The non-dual hidden between limited and unlimited
is Rta,
Asa, Arte, or Right which is the golden balance between limited and
unlimited.
Within
the Meta-physical Era, the split between physus and logos replaces the
dichotomy between mortals and immortals. Immortals, i.e. the gods, have
been
supplanted by man himself, and man recognizes that he is split between
consciousness
and rationality and embodiment
in matter, or his animality. Thus, man on the one hand is confronted by
the
physus, i.e. growing things beyond himself and his own growth and
development,
and the logos, i.e. the unfolding of thought and language within
himself and
his social group. Between physus and logos, we find the nomos, or
order, as the
non-dual that allows us to connect our theories with physical phenomena
and
thus we construct a science of the physical world. In that science, we
distinguish
thermodynamics from physics proper and that physics proper unfolds into
quantum
mechanics and relativity theory which are the micro and macro views of
the
workings of spacetime. Quantum mechanics unfolds two complementarity
views of
matter as both particles and waves which gives us some insight into the
deep
complementarity of the natural world as seen in Bohr's scientific
philosophy.
At the level of physus, we see the ontic hierarchy of phenomena which
resists
reduction and analysis which stretches from quarks, to particles, to
atoms, to
molecules, to cells, to organisms, to social communities, to Gaia.
There are
many ways to cut up the magma of existence by categorizations that see
the
ontic emergent levels in various lights. On the other hand, there is
the
emergent ontological hierarchy of schemas which are the templates of
understanding that the logos uses as a basis of comprehending how the
outer
world works. We use these templates to project on the ontic hierarchy
as a
means of subduing it and subjecting it so that it becomes our
knowledge. But if
we resist this desire to project on the ontic, we find that the
ontological
hierarchy has many strange aspects that we slowly discover are
holonomic.
First, the hierarchy stands under the pressure of skepticism which is
the
continual attempt to discount the importance of one or more emergent
levels in
understanding. Skepticism is the dual of the pressure of reductionism
seen in
the ontic hierarchy. They are both related to the pressure of nihilism
on the social
and individual hierarchies seen at the lower level of the limited and
unlimited. Once we accept some set of schemas such as the one proposed
here,
then when we synthetically recognize their multiple complementarities,
we see
that they have the nature of holons and that they too form a ring of
conjunctions which has the nature of interdependent arising. All of the
schemas
are a conjunction of the adjacent schemas in the hierarchy which loops
back
around to produce itself in the manner talked about by the Buddha in
terms of
Samsara, the wheel of birth and death.
THE SECRET OF THE WORLD
The
world has a secret that can be discovered only when we disengage the
dynamic of
the dualism in which projection occurs at the level of physus/logos and
in
which the influx of Being as the absolute meta-physical principle into
beings
occurs at the level of the Apeiron/peiron. That secret appears only
when the
pressure of nihilism production at the level of limited/unlimited and
the
pressures of skepticism/reductionism at the level of physus/logos are
let up
for a moment. The world does not collapse when these pressures are
alleviated.
Instead, what happens is that we realize that the entire structure of
the world
is based on the relation between the non-duals and the dualisms which
are bound
together and manifest together in the infrastructure of the world. This
is just
like the structure of nonduality/duality we saw in the mobius strip and
kleinian bottle example. Being is the paradoxical and even the absurd
as a
meta-physical principle. We attempt to change this so that we can
comprehend
the world by allowing the fragments of Being to appear, i.e. Pure,
Process,
Hyper, and Wild Being. These are segmented by the aspects of Being,
i.e. true,
real, identical and presence. These four kinds of Being together
produce a
series of higher logical types that are categorically articulated at
each level
by the aspect of Being. The paradoxicality appears in the topological
analogy
of the hyper-kleinian bottle. The bottle creates a tantric ambiguity
between
self and other which can be infinitely deep as we produce higher and
higher
level hyper-kleinians. The higher level hyper-kleinians take us into
higher and
higher intensities of absurdity. But if we go in the other direction,
the hyper-kleinian
splits apart into two kleinian bottles which again split into four
mobius
strips which then split again into eight two-sided lemniscates. The
lemniscates
establish a natural duality which does not have any aspect of
nonduality
integrated into it. The lemniscates are interlocked in pairs, and
further
interlocked lemniscates can be produced by continuing the bifurcation
process.
We identify natural duality without nonduality with the supra-rational
which is
opposite the paradoxical. The supra-rational allows us to make
non-nihilistic
distinctions that are based in our hearts not our heads. When we break
into
duality, the nonduality becomes implicit, just as it is in the
bifurcating
chain of Being which is a series of dualisms. The lemniscates are
interlaced,
and by an operation of joining, they
reveal the nonduality that is hidden within their articulation.
Similarly, the chain of Being has interlaced dualisms that we
disengage. Where
has the nonduality gone? It has gone into the discontinuities between
the
interlaced lemniscates. The discontinuities hide the non-duals, so the
supra-rational is a marriage of the dual and the non-dual which allows
the
duals to be seen on the background of the non-dual discontinuities.
Thus, the
discontinuities between natural opposites hide the nonduality which is
a
background for the manifestation of duals. The bifurcation of two-sided
and
two-edged lemniscates can go on indefinitely within this non-dual
environment
of discontinuities. This is precisely the way it is with the structure
of the
world in general. It is made up of myriad dualisms which revolve around
the
core of the chain of Being which arises out of existence and actuality
from the
root. But within this chain non-duals are hidden. At
the level of Being these non-duals are nomos, or order, and
arte (rta), or right. Right allows us to comprehend the balance between
Being
and beings which called ontological difference. In the comprehension of
that
balance, both individuals and society differentiate themselves at
various
emergent levels by which knowledge is constructed or invented about the
world.
But up at the level of nomos, we find a separation between the
ontological
schemas and the ontic phenomenal coherences at various emergent levels.
Almost
any schema can be applied to any level of phenomena. The phenomena
appear
different depending on what schema we use to attempt to comprehend
them.
Various combinations of schema give us particular insights into the
phenomena
that other combinations do not. Thus, the schemas, when brought into
conjunction, have an illuminating effect which are not necessarily
implicit
within the phenomena themselves as ontic realities. The phenomena are
what
Cornelius Castoriadis calls magma
upon which we project our categories in the process of social
institutionalization, construction and invention. We need to allow the
magma to
be just that, undifferentiated yet still distinguishable in multiple
ways
depending on what schemas we bring to bear. We need to allow the
schemas to
interact with each other so that their special illuminating effects can
be seen
with respect to various phenomena. It is by this means that the
emergent
transformations occur at the various social levels that we experience
as
paradigm shifts, episteme changes, transformations of our
interpretation of
Being, and new perspectives on existence. There is only one
meta-physical
principle, but myriad sorts of suchness. That suchness is
differentiated into
logos and physus and is inspissated by Being as it differentiates the
myriad
beings into those that have their being in physus or logos or both as
we do.
What we realize is that the ontological hierarchy and the ontic
hierarchy are
two different ways of looking at suchness as it is saturated by the
Absolute
which we, in our tradition, interpret fatefully as Being. We only see
the
supra-rationality of existence by separating everything, underneath
every being
is an existant which we see by interpreting them in terms of neither
this
aspect nor its opposite. Thus, every existent is neither true nor
false,
neither real nor unreal, neither present nor absent, neither identical
nor
different. To interpret them in the opposite way produces the quintessence, i.e. both present and absent,
both
identical and different, both real and unreal, both true and false.
When we
lift the barrier of the excluded middle, both existence and the
quintessence
become possibilities for looking at the world. The quintessence[114]
sees the world in terms of the fusion of the holoidal, in which
everything is
real, true, identical and present, i.e. the monolith of Being, and
opposite,
i.e. the ephemeron where everything is false, illusory, different and
absent.
In the quintessence, the paradox of Being is bodied forth for us in our
experience. Whereas in existence, everything is separated into the
supra-rational background of utter discontinuity that makes present the
void or
emptiness of existence. What is non-dual between the quintessence and
existence
is manifestation proper, i.e. the non-dual between continuity and
discontinuity
as fundamental presuppositions concerning the nature of things in the
world.
We
get some inkling of this when we look at the ontological emergent
hierarchy. In
that hierarchy, as Onar Aam has pointed out, there are facets which are
wholes
that cannot be parts, like quarks, and there is, at the other extreme
in the
pluriverse, parts that cannot be wholes, like the whole universe which
we
cannot see the edge of and which we are embedded in. Holons, like the
intermediate levels of schema, are both wholes and parts at the same
time. They
are composed of wholes-that-cannot-be-parts and parts-that-cannot-be-wholes
juxtaposed with each other. The
opposite of the holon is the holoidal or the hologram which is a
partial part
and a partial whole in which multiple perspectives see partial views of
both
part and whole. When we think about it, the denial of part or the
denial of
whole can be slid up and down the ontological hierarchy[115].
Thus, any adjacent layer on either side can be seen as a whole that has
no
parts or a part that cannot be whole. When we consider this carefully,
we
realize that this means intermediary concepts are necessary to produce
the
holon in the middle which gives the part what it needs to become whole
or gives
the whole what it needs to become a part. Looking at these intermediate
concepts, it becomes clear that what is at play is our concepts of
countable
and non-countable things. We see the higher level as a mass which needs
a bound
in order to have part instances. We see the lower level as something
countable
that has attributes to which we add a universal to allow the part
particulars
to become whole. At each level, there is the upper level mass and the
lower
level attributes that, through bounds and universals, become instances
and
particulars. The particular instance is the holon which is at once the
part and
the whole forged out of the part-that-cannot-be-whole, like the
pluriverse, or
the whole-that-cannot-be-part, like the facet. The bound allows the
mass to
become an instance, and the universal allows the attribute to become a
particular. The particular instance is the holon between these two
adjacent
levels. Bob Cummings realized that the parts that cannot be wholes and
the
wholes that cannot be parts could slide up and down the ontological
hierarchy
producing limits at any level. For our purposes here, this could relate
to the
meta-system and the system. The meta-system is considered as mass, or
non-countable, while the system is considered as countable. By using
the bound
and universal that mediate these limits to the Holon, we see the
special
systems between the two adjacent schematic levels.
This
shows how strange the ontological hierarchy is to us, which, in the
midst of
projection we are blind to, and becomes apparent only when we immerse
the
structure of the world in the supra-rationality of existence. Then we
see the
complementary duals and the non-duals out of which the world is
constructed
clearly. They are tightly interwoven. Each level of dualism has
embedded in it
a non-dual. At the level of Being, these non-duals are right
and order which are
internal to the physus/logos and the limited/unlimited dualisms.
Between the
Absolute and suchness, we attempt to find the non-nihilistic
distinctions
against the pressure of the continual production of nihilistic
opposites.
Between physus and logos, we attempt to understand the suchness which
has been
inspissated with Being by producing a bridge of order between phenomena
and our
theories. The theories are based on schemas that can be applied to the
emergent
levels of the physus in the ontic hierarchy. When we separate these two
emergent hierarchies and stop projection, we notice the strangeness of
both of
them. The strangeness of the ontic hierarchy is the fact that it is a
magma
that will accept multiple categorizations and schematizations, none of
which
can claim complete victory. The strangeness of the ontological emergent
hierarchy of the schema is the utter complementarity of all the schemas
with
each other in a way that shows their holonoic infrastructure. That
holonic
infrastructure has within it the secret of the special systems that
mediate
between each level of the ontological hierarchy just as it has been
shown to
mediate between system and meta-system schemas. The special systems
interact
with each other and the system to produce, via the emergent
meta-system, the
meta-systemic level. This dynamic interaction of holons is what
produces the
interdependent arising of the holonic hierarchy of the schemas. The
meta-system,
as a whole that cannot have parts, is composed of myriad
complementarities
which arise through the nonduality of the holons out of the unity of
the system
considered as a part that cannot be whole. Thus, there is a dynamic
interplay
between dualities and non-dualities that must be the foundation for our
understanding of the world and all the other schemas in the ontological
emergent hierarchy.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Would like to thank my mentor Ian Dallas,
as well as
Ben Goertzel, Onar Aam, Bob Cummings and Owen Ware.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kent Palmer is a Principle Systems
Engineer at a
major Aerospace Systems Company. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology
concentrating
on Philosophy of Science from the
London School of Economics and a B.Sc. in Sociology from the University
of
Kansas. His dissertation on The Structure of Theoretical Systems in
Relation
to Emergence[116] focused on how new things come into
existence
within the Western Philosophical and Scientific worldview. He has
written
extensively on the roots of the Western Worldview in his electronic
book The
Fragmentation of Being and the Path Beyond the Void[117]. He had at least seventeen years
experience[118] in
Software Engineering and Systems Engineering disciplines at major
aerospace
companies based in Orange County CA. He served several years as the
chairman of
a Software Engineering Process Group and is now engaged in Systems
Engineering
Process improvement based on EIA 731 and CMMI. He has presented a
tutorial on
“Advanced Process Architectures[119]” which concerned engineering wide
process
improvement including both software and systems engineering. Besides
process
experience, he has recently been a software team lead on a Satellite
Payload
project and a systems engineer on a Satellite Ground System project. He
has
also engaged in independent research in Systems Theory which has
resulted in a
book of working papers called Reflexive Autopoietic Systems Theory[120]. A new introduction to this work now
exists called Reflexive
Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems Theory[121]. He has given a tutorial[122] on “Meta-systems
Engineering” to the INCOSE
Principles working group. He has written a series on Software
Engineering
Foundations which are contained in the book Wild Software
Meta-systems[123]. He now teaches a course in
“Software Requirements
and Design Methodologies” at the University California Irvine
Extension. He may
be reached at kent@palmer.name.
SIG: Processes and Human Processes
ABSTRACT
PALMER, K. D.
HOLONOMIC HUMAN PROCESSES
Trace Studies Institute, Box 1632, Orange, CA 92856 USA E-mail: kent@palmer.name
I would like
to submit
a presentation concerning my research on Reflexive Autopoietic
Dissipative
Special Systems Theory which is embodied in a paper of that name[124].
This work combines the theories of Prigogine, Maturana and Varella with
the
theory of Reflexivity in Sociology such as that of O'Malley and
Sandywell in a
novel and perhaps interesting configuration. The paper answers to
almost all
the points that you have made in your call for papers.
"(1) Process Methods.
Papers on analytic methods to study novelty,
complexity, diversity, episodic patterns (complexes), asymmetry, and
all other
features of creative processes in time series and other empirical
data."
The theory
presented
under the title Reflexive Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems
Theory is
primarily a process theory. It defines systems as social gestalts and
talks
about social construction of such gestalts in terms of both gestalts
and flows.
It distinguishes these from the proto-gestalts and proto-flows that
constitute
the background of all gestalts and flows. This process work takes a
standpoint
similar to Rescher in his recent introduction of process metaphysics.
Rescher
says that process metaphysics should be connected in a fundamental way
to systems
theory. I have attempted to forge such a connection under the rubric of
social
phenomenology.
"(2) Empirical Applications
of the Process Paradigm. How can one
apply the process approach in scientific research, clinical practice,
organizational development, or social action? We particularly welcome
contributions that include empirical data."
In my paper I
point
out anomalous physical systems that have the characteristics of the
special
systems that are described in my paper. Thus the theory presented in
the paper
is grounded in empirical evidence of specific anomalous physical
phenomena.
"(3) Advances in Process
Theory. Process theory of processes is an
evolving set of scientific hypotheses. A hypothesis is scientific when
it is
grounded on observation, clearly formulated (mathematically whenever
possible),
experimentally testable, and practically applicable. Processes must be
described in terms of physical dimensions, plus additional dimensions
of
information and organization not included in standard physics."
In my paper I
describe
how normal scientific endeavors miss the existence of the special
systems and
describe a different kind of science founded on Plato instead of
Aristotle
which is focused on anomalies rather than the common experiences of the
many. I
show how the western tradition is lopsided because it focuses on
systems but
ignores environmental ecosystems or meta-systems and their intrinsic
relation
to systems. I then describe how out of a balanced perspective that
values both
systems and meta-systems that we apprehend the special systems which
are of
three succinct types, dissipative, autopoietic and reflexive. Then, I
show how
physics has found phenomena that corresponds to these kind of special
systems
but has not recognized their relation to each other as a set of
emergent levels
that exist mediating the relation of systems to meta-systems.
"(4) Mathematical Models.
Papers on bios, chaos, recursive
equations, strange attractors, and other mathematical models of natural
processes."
Special
systems theory
is founded on the mathematical basis of hyper-complex algebras and thus
has a
firm foundation within the realm of mathematics for the theory of
special
systems. These special systems combine into the emergent meta-system
which is a
description of how normal and the special systems work together to
produce
another higher emergent level. I also show how these special systems
are
exemplified by other mathematical anomalies as well such as the
topological
anomalies of non-orientable surfaces.
HOLONOMIC HUMAN PROCESSES
Kent D. Palmer
Trace Studies Institute
Box 1632 Orange CA 92856 USA
SUMMARY
See Abstract.
Keywords Life Ontology, Holonomics, Meta-Systems,
Special Systems
INTRODUCTION
Rescher
suggests that we should consider the relation between process
philosophy and
systems theory. In what follows we will attempt to take up that
suggestion but
in a new and different way exploring holonomic human processes.
Holonomics
studies the nomos or order of holons. Holons were first named by
Koestler in Janus
where he talks about things that are both wholes and parts as the same
time.
This suggests that there is a way of looking at things that avoids the
dualism
of whole and part and thus posits a non-dual alternative vision of
existence.
When
talking about Holonomic Human Processes we will use the philosophy of
Delueze
and Guattari as our point of departure. They posit three levels when
considering human life which they call the socius, the individual as
organism
and desiring machines. In their philosophy individuals as persons are
made up
of desiring machines embedded in the social field, i.e. the socius.
What is
good about the theory of Deleuze and Guattari is that they have
attempted to
build a theory of the at the level of Wild Being which has interesting
relations to the holonomic theory that we will propose.
In
the history of Western Ontology the term Being has been thought of as
the most
general concept and thus the emptiest concept for a long time. Only in
the last
century was it discovered that Being actually has structure and in fact
is
fragmented at its very core. When we consider Being in the context of
the
entire tradition we discover that it is a very paradoxical term which
has been
interpreted many different ways by different philosophers in different
centuries. We can appeal to Russell and Copi's theory of higher logical
types
to break up this paradox into something that reason can deal with. Thus
we can
continuously go to higher and higher logical types when ever we are
confronted
with paradox. And as they observed we not only need meta-levels of
Being but
also categorical types at each meta-level. These are supplied by the
aspects of
Being, namely truth, reality, identity and presence. The meta-levels of
Being
are called Pure, Process, Hyper and Wild. There is no fifth meta-level
of
Being. At the fifth meta-level we confront the unthinkable. Parmenides
said
that Being and Thought are the Same. Thus were thought ends so does
Being. This
unthinkability at the higher meta-levels of Being is identified with
Existence.
When the aspects of Being are expressed in existence beyond Being then
we call
this level, which starts at the fifth meta-level, Ultra. Truth at each
meta-level of Being has a different significance. The same is true of
the other
aspects.
Heidegger
was the one to identify the difference between Pure Being, the
traditional
static Being of the present instant first described by Parmenides.
Process
Being was first described by Heraclitus when he said all was change.
Heidegger
in Being and Time talks about these as two complementary
aspects of our
being-in-the-world, as two modalities named present-at-hand and
ready-to-hand.
Merleau-Ponty in his book The Phenomenology of Perception shows
that
present-at-hand relates psychologically to pointing and ready-to-hand
relates
psychologically to grasping. Later Heidegger goes on to talk about Being
(crossed out). Derrida talks about this in terms of what he calls
differance,
which is differing and deferring. Merleau-Ponty calls this the hyper
dialectic
of Heidegger's Process Being and Sartre's Nothingness. From this
expression of
Merleau-Ponty I derive the name Hyper Being which can be said to be the
in-hand
modality of being-in-the-world. Levinas talks about this level of Being
as
"beyond Being" by which he means beyond Process Being of Heidegger.
It is where ethics and metaphysics collapse together in the mutual
bearing of
mother and child. We can think of the in-hand as the expansion of
being-in-the-world, like with the blindman learning to see with his
stick or
the guitarist who masters his instrument such that it becomes part of
him.
Finally, Merleau-Ponty in The Visible and the Invisible
distinguishes
Hyper Being from Wild Being, which is what is left over when Process
Being and Nothingness,
its antinomic metaphysically opposite principle, cancel. Merleau-Ponty
calls
this encompassing Flesh. Deleuze and Guattari refer to it as the
Rhizome.
Cornelius Castoriadis calls it the Magma. John S. Hans calls it Play in
his
book Play of the World. Since the fourth meta-level was
discovered many
different philosophers have attempted to build a philosophy at this highest meta-level of Being. That is
very difficult because the conceptual headroom is very limited, in fact
Wild
Being is merely a surface not unlike the surface that produces the
Mandelbrot
Set that occurs in the real/imaginary plane where every point no matter
at what
scale partakes in a fractal structuring that occurs when the points are
iterated in away that allows us to color them with respect to their
escape
velocity. Every point has a chaotic "line of flight" or intensity
that when taken together shows us a complex fractal patterning. This
infinite
chaotic fractal patterning is the expression of Wild Being. Wild Being
is the
contraction of being-in-the-world that occurs after the expansion of
Hyper
Being.
Here
we shall take another completely different route toward the
understanding of
the holonomic character of Human beings which follows the series of
meta-levels
up from our normal level of discourse sanctioned by scientific
convention in
Pure Being or the present-at-hand. We note that in Pure Being there is
a
subject/object or mind/body dichotomy which is an inescapable dualism.
That
duality is understood by Buber in terms of I-It relations which reify
and
objectify the alter-ego. Buber suggests that we need to develop I-Thou
relations with the other which allows it its otherness which is
maintained in
the course of the dialogue. Jung on the other hand wants us to
individuate our
ego as unity into the Self as a totality that encompasses its own
otherness
which it normally rejects. Thus we could imagine the building of
Self-Thou
relations which would combine the insights of both Buber and Jung.
When
we move up the meta-levels of Being we discover along with Heidegger in
Being and Time that there is something prior to the subject/object
dichotomy which he calls Dasein, or being-in-the-world. It is the
ecstasy from
which the world overflows out of a particular instance being, our own
being.
Dasein exists at the probabilistic level that is the basis for
constituting the
deterministic illusion of the ideas of Pure Being. Out of Dasein both
subject
and object (I and It) unfold. Dasein is essentially a process of
projection of
the world out of one of the beings in the world, i.e. ourselves. The
Subject/Object dichotomy at the ontological level is rephrased into the
statement "Being Is". Being is its own object and its own subject. At
the level of Process Being this is rephrased as "It Gives" which
Heidegger calls Appropriation which stands opposite the nihilistic
enframing of
Pure Being. Here the emphasis is on the process of giving, i.e. the
verb rather
than sameness of Noun and Verb in the statement "Being Is". What does
it give? "It Gives" itself to itself.
If
we want to go deeper than Dasein we next encounter what I call the
Query in
Hyper Being. The Query steps back from the projection and asks who is
projecting. This Query finds only undecidable and uncertainty and no
answer to
that question, i.e. who is asking? The Query is who we are as a
primordial
self-consciousness who is never exactly who he or she thinks they are.
Who is
liable to laugh in the midst of grief or to cry in the midst of
happiness. It
is not the reified self-consciousness of Hegel which gains distance
from itself
through representations. But instead it is what Paul Simon calls a
"slip-sliding-away". Derrida calls it the differing and deferring of
differance. Heidegger calls it
Being (crossed out). It is the difference between Pure Being and
Process
Being as modalities within the monolith of the entirety of Being. It is
the
non-decidablity of Godel's theorem, where we cannot decide if the
statement is
inside or outside the formal system that gives rise to it.
The Query is a horizon of possibilities that
lies hidden below the probabilities which open out and gives us room to
ponder
various ways we might be in our world, and through those possibilities
we get
some perspective on the world that we do project. At the level of the
Query the
space in the phrase "Being Is" becomes the point of indecision
between noun and verb.
To
go deeper still we enter the realm of Wild Being and there encounter
ourselves
as the Enigma. The Enigma is the lack of an answer to the question
concerning
the nature of the I or the Self. Neither are to be found by rigorous
analysis
of the world in which we live. We are the greatest enigmas of the
world, we who
are it's source are no where to be found in it. This lack of self or
lack of
I-ness is seen in the chiasm of the touch touching which Merleau-Ponty
calls
Flesh. Here the difference of thoughtfeelings and feelingthoughts is
seen as a
difference of emphasis which underlines the existence of some pocket of
reversibility in the intaglio of the two non-dual ways of looking at
things
within ourselves and within the world. This pocket which is obscure or
opaque
is pure nonduality of existence which is itself empty.
When
we enter the emptiness of the truly non-dual we discover the utter
emptiness of
the Self or Ego, either one. This emptiness is matched by the emptiness
of
Other and Alter-ego. It is this emptiness that was described by
Nagarjuna the
great Buddhist metaphysician as the difference between the
both…and… and the
neither…nor of Indian logic which we do not see in Western Logic
because of the
principle of Excluded Middle. If we allow as Priest does
Para-consistency and
Para-completeness in our logic as the Indians did then it is possible
to
encounter emptiness and recognize it as the unthinkable basis of
existence, the
so called bedrock of existence prior to Being but also the dual of
Being. Being
is the projection of illusion onto this bedrock of empty or void
existence. We
call this Ultra Being, i.e. Being so refined that it vanishes like the
homeopathic remedies past taken past Avogadron's number. Being at
meta-levels
of five or higher is no Being at all, it is in fact Existence. In
Non-dual
Vedanta of Sankara this is the realm of illusion or Maya. Only the four
lower
meta-levels are actually embodied as the projection mechanism of the
illusion
on the empty screen of existence. All the other meta-levels of Being
are merely
illusory and hide this emptiness of existence.
What we have seen so far is that there is
a series of meta-levels to Being
that if we follow them lead us up a series of stairs to nowhere. When
we
translate our present identity that we feel is true in the realm of
logos and
real in the realm of physus up these stairs we discover beyond the
Subject/Object, Ego/Alter, Self/Other split, any deterministic dualism
you
might name, a series of levels called Dasein in Process Being, the
Query in
Hyper Being and the Enigma in Wild Being and which is discovered empty
when we
reach the level of No Being, which might also be called Ultra-Being
where the
aspects of Being are purified and become aspects of Existence.
If
we look at the Hindu unfolding of Being as consciousness then we find
the
series Persona, Ego, Self, Atman, Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva and Nirguna
Brahman. The
persona is the masks we wear at any given time in a particular social
situation. The ego is an artificial unification of these masks across
time in
many different situations. The Self which Kant calls the Transcendental
Subject
is an a priori synthesis, i.e. a synthesis prior to experience that our
analysis must have as a starting point. The Atman is the
Intersubjective Whole
to which we belong or also our unity across multiple universes. The
next level
beyond that intersubjective a priori synthesis is the attributes of God
while
the attributeless Godhead is the last element in the series. All of
these
various levels of consciousness can be spoken of at the different
meta-levels
of Being. Thus we have followed the Ego, as I or unity at the center of
consciousness, through the meta-levels of Being and we have followed
the self
as totality on the same path way as well. What ever level of the
unfolding of
consciousness you want to choose may be treated to the critique of the
deconstruction of Being from determinate, to probablistic, to
possiblisitic, to
its propensities and finally to the void itself. Thus the analysis of
the
various kinds of Being is orthogonal to the differentiation of
consciousness
into levels of unfolding.
Here
we will concentrate on the Persona-Ego-Self-Atman progression. The
difference
between the Hindu and Western philosophy is that the Hindu sages start
from the
top and unfold the various lower levels whereas Western Philosophy as
it is
based on nihilism, skepticism and reductionism starts from the bottom
and only
allow for a higher level when it discovers insoluble problems that
force it to
admit to a higher synthesis. To this series we will apply what we call
General
Schema Theory which posits a number of schemas that act as templates of
understanding within the logos that are applied to the physus. Here we
will
focus in on the schemas of the System, Meta-system, Holons and World.
We
understand the System to be a social gestalt that is a whole greater
than the
sum of its parts projected from multiple perspectives within an
intersubjective
cohort. A meta-system is a field, or environment, or ecosystem, or
context or
situation that is a whole less than the sum of its parts, which means
that it
is full of holes or niches that are just right for the carrying of
systems
within it. Holons are wholes that are exactly equal to the sum of their
parts,
like perfect numbers where the divisors add up to the whole number
exactly.
Most numbers have surplus or deficit when their divisors are added up.
Perfect
numbers like 6, 28, 496 are very rare. But they have perfect balance
between
surplus and deficit. It turns out that just like in number theory there
are
three different kinds of numbers that act like perfect numbers. They
are called
the amicable, perfect and sociable numbers. Amicable numbers are a pair
whose
divisors add up to each other's total. Sociable numbers form a series
where
each number adds up to the next one's whole. The most prevalent number
in these
sets is four, although some sets have other numbers of elements that
are
sociable. Just like there are three kinds of numbers whose divisors add
up to
the whole of themselves or another which in turn adds up to its whole;
so there
is three kinds of holonomic systems where the whole is exactly equal to
the sum
of its parts. We call these the Dissipative Order Special System, The
Autopoietic Self-organizing and Symbiotic Special System, and the
Reflexive
Social Special System. Instead of being based on number theory they are
based
on Hyper Complex Algebras. If the System is seen as determined by a
Real
Algebra, then the Dissipative Special System is seen as determined by
the
Complex Imaginary Algebra which adds conjunction between numbers, and
the
Autopoietic Special System is seen as determined by the Quaternion
Hyper
Complex Algebra that loses the commutative property, and the Reflexive
Special
System is seen as determined by the Octonion Hyper Complex Algebra that
loses
the associative property, and finally the Meta-system is seen as
determined by
the Sedienion and higher Hyper Complex Algebras that lose the division
property. These Special Systems have some strange properties such as
ultra-efficaciousness, i.e. ultra effectiveness and ultra-efficiency.
That is
because thermodynamically they begin with what Prigogine calls far from
equlibria neg-entropic states in which order is spontaneously produced.
A
dissipative ordering system is one where order appears from no where
and
neg-entropicly expands to fill the niche in the far from equilibria
environment. Such systems can only be neg-entropic locally while
globally
entropy increase is maintained. But the local neg-entropic flow even
though it
cannot be energetically a perpetual motion machine, it may be tied to a
strange
attractor and produce an infinite amount of information. Two symbiotic
dissipative ordering speical systems can form an autopoietic special
system
which is stable instead of expanding and which uses the two flows of
infinite
information as a means of self damping and thus as a source of the
impetus for
self-organization. We use the theory of Maturana and Varella as the
starting
point for the understanding of these kinds of self-producing machines.
Four
symbiotic dissipative ordering special systems or two autopoietic
self-organizing special systems form a reflexive social special system.
We use
the reflexive sociological theories of John O'Malley and Barry
Sandywell as the
basis for understanding these strange heterodynamic duals of the
homeostatic
autopoietic systems. Reflexive special systems overflow their
boundaries with
the kind of ecstasy that Heidegger attributes toward Dasein while
autopoietic
systems merely maintain their boundaries and their own organization in
the face
of continuous change.
Now
we advance the theory that what Deleuze and Guattari call the socius,
individual and desiring machines as levels of organization that are
psychologically meaningful can be seen in terms of the special systems.
Thus
the desiring machines are dissipative ordering special systems, the
individual
is a conjunction of these desiring machines at the level of the
organism, and
the socius can be seen as the reflexive special system. The nihilism of
Delueze
and Guattari's approach to schizoanalysis of human experience is
ameleorated
when we realize that what they are talking about can be seen as
existing in
these holonic strata between the ego and the self, i.e. between
artificial
synthesis and natural pre-synthesis of the person. It is interesting to
place
this same schema in the context of Jung's thought. In Jung there is are
the
various levels of the archetypes. We can see the special systems theory
as
contributing a holonic understanding of the nature of these archetypes.
|
Self |
Self as thou |
Meta-system (general economy) |
socius |
Wise Old man |
Cathonic Female |
Reflexive special system |
individual |
anima |
animus |
Autopoietic special system |
desiring machine |
Shadow transforms when integrated into
feminine wisdom of the Wise Old man |
Shadow transforms when integrated into
masculine wisdom of the Cathonic Female |
Dissipative special system |
|
Male ego |
Female ego as alterego |
System (restricted economy) |
However,
this superficial paralleling of the Deleuze and Guattari model with
that of
Jung will not stand for long. Because as it happens Deleuze and
Guattari may be
better seen as dealing not with the relation between Self and Ego but
in the
relation between Self and Atman. And this in fact deepens our
appreciation of
the work of Jung. Jung talks about personal individuation leading to
the
development of a totality of the self out of the unity of the ego but
not of
individuated interpersonal relationships. Individuated interpersonal
relations
may be seen as operating between the Self and the Atman. Let us see how
we can
understand this different way of looking at the work of Jung and
Deleuze and
Guattari.
When
I become individuated I develop a Self as a totality of who I am
including both
consciousness and unconsciousness. That self is a mandala like
structure which
constellates the archetypes that I develop from the collective
unconscious.
Jung felt that to develop the archetypes of the collective unconscious
one had
to individuate, i.e. pull away from collective consciousness. If both I
and my
mate do this then we are liable to meet at every level of the
articulation of
the special systems between the ego level and the self level of
articulation.
This is called in Alchemy the Mysterium Conjunctus, that is the meeting
of the
male and female at every holonomic level. Each person has alternate
layers of
male and female and each of these meet giving outward marriage
(brother-sister-hood) of the egos, erotic love between animus and
anima,
daemonic love between Wise old man and Cathonic Female, and agape
between male
wisdom of the Cathonic Female and the female wisdom of the Wise Old
Man. In
other words the various forms of love recognized by the Greeks appears
at the
various levels of the individuated relationship between two
individuated
persons.
However, when we look at the Self-Thou
relations that is mutual between
the conjuncted pair what is missing is Otherness. Both of the selves
are Other
to the Other. This realm of Otherness is brought out in the
articulation of the
Self pre-synthesis with respect to the Atman pre-synthesis. I have
written of
this before in terms of the Greimas square. Greimas uses the logical
square of
contraries and contradictions to produce a structural theory of
narrative. What
we learn from Greimas is that when we move from Self to Other there are
two
operations, articulation of anti-self and articulation of non-self. The
Otherness of the other has logically to be seen as the anti-non-self
and vice
versa. There is an articulation of nonduality in the chiasmic
reversibility
between two anti-non-selves postulated from one in relation to the
other and
vice versa.
What
we would like to do is expand the schema of Deleuze and Guattari to
include
more than just the Desiring Machine. Instead we would like to include
Dissemination as well as the opposites of both, i.e. Avoiding and
Absorption.
We will call these the Dissipative Machines and see them as the nature
of the
relations between self-thou/thou-self which includes the otherness of
both to
each other. By otherness we mean true otherness beyond the projections
and
transference phenomena, i.e. unmotivated differences that arise
spontaneously
in the other that the self finds unexpected. When we look at the dance
of the
selves we see mutual desiring and avoiding as we see dissemination and
absorption operating in the field between the selves. In the Self-thou
relation
the other stands as separate from ourselves in dialogue. But this does
not say
anything about the otherness of these to each other. That otherness
revels
itself in the relations of desiring, avoiding, dissemination, and
absorbing
which altogether produce a reflexive field but in themselves are
dissipative.
When we connect these four kinds of dissipations to each other we get
sixteen
possible combinations which form autopoietic conjunctions. When we
connect
these autopoietic conjunctions to each other we get sixty four possible
combinations, a veritable I Ching, at the reflexive level prior to the
absorption into the Atman. We can see the socius as the field of the
sixteen
reflexive combinations of the four types of dissipative machines. We
can see
the individuated relations as the eight types of conjunciton between
the
dissipative machines. We can see the machines themselves whether
desiring,
avoiding, disseminating or absorbing as the building blocks of
individuated
relationships.
Thus
we can see Deleuze and Guattari as talking about a deeper level of
pre-synthesis than the level of the self. That is why their emphasis is
upon
the social and the nations encompassed by the schizophrenic undergoing
schizoanalysis. That is why they talk about the savage, barbaric and
capitalist
periods of the development of the ego. They are exploring beyond the
self-thou
dialogue into the inability to communicate between othernesses.
Otherness is
when the dissipative machines do not connect within the rhizome.
Self-thou only
deals with the connections between the machines. But the rhizome has
just as
many breaks and failures to connect as it does connections.
Individuated
relations are those that particularize and instantiate sets of
connections and
disconnections between various dissipative machines. The dissipative
machines
hang off the body without organs, that is the social body, of the
collective
unconscious which is related to the collective consciousness discovered
by a
social phenomenology. Medals are there for all to see hanging on the
chest of
the general. They appear in collective consciousness but they emerge
from the
collective unconscious as orthogonal fragments that emerge as a social
gestalt.
Jung speaks about symbols and signs. But Deleuze and Guattari make the
excellent
point that if the partial objects have any relation to each other at
all then
they have been processed by consciousness. This is a higher standard
for
judging what is unconscious material. Unconscious material is
orthogonal, i.e.
unrelated to other unconscious material that has been brought to
consciousness.
When we talk about conscious or unconscious we must specify if we are
talking
about the individual or the collective.
Sartre
has an excellent study of the fused group in the Critique of
Dialectical
Reason, which is the revolutionary group which arises prior to all
institutionalization. Cornelius Castoriadis talks about how such a
group
Institutes itself, i.e. reifies itself dynamically out of the magma of
the
social flux. Sartre speaks of a similar theme as he builds up the
various kinds
of institutions from the core of the revolutionary group which
Castoriadis sees
as Magma which like volcanic material can always push to the surface
and break
up institutional forms. Elias Cannetti treats the same theme in terms
of the
Pack in Crowds and Power. Hannah Arendt calls the social The
Blob[125].
There is much distrust of the power of the mob and the role it played
in the
power of ideological movements like Nazism and Communism. But a genuine
look at
the foundations of life in a social pre-synthesis is necessary so we
can
understand proto-social grounds of our individuated lives. We can see
Deleuze
and Guttari beginning to explore this area beyond the self where there
is true
otherness which has to be experienced as the anti-non-self, i.e.
radical
otherness. Radical otherness between selves from both sides needs an
explanation, and Deleuze and Guattari explain it by the failure to
connect
between dissipative machines in the rhizome of individuated relations
that
become social relations.
Recently
there has been discovered the phenomena of Mentalizing as something
different
form thought. Mentalizing is reading others minds in terms of
understanding
their intentions. It is necessary for deception. Schizophrenics and
Autistic
individuals have deficiencies in their abilities to mentalize. At a
certain age
children can suddenly mentalize, i.e. impute motives, intentions and
knowledge
to others different from those of the self and orient themselves to
those
others on the basis of the postulated motives, intentions and knowledge
of the
other. We postuate that Mentalizing is a different faculty than that of
thought. In fact, we note that Heidegger ascribes three existentials to
Dasein,
i.e. Verstehen, Rede and Befindlichkeit (Understanding, Talk and
Discoveredness). The intersection of all these is called Sorge (Care).
But we
can easily see that the intersections between any two can be
interpreted as
Logos (Understanding Talk), Physus (Discovered Understanding) and
Praxis
(Discovered Talk). What we notice is that Logos gives rise to Speech
and
Thought. Physus gives rise to Sensation and Perception. Praxis gives
rise to
Behavior and Mentalizing. It has recently been found using brain scans
that
mentalizing is in the same part of the brain as behavioral mechanisms
and is
not associated with centers of thought. Thus mentalizing of another is
a
completely different operation than thinking about them. Mentalizing
reads
their minds, i.e. imputes motives, intentions and knowledge to them as
a basis
for behavior towards them. Mentalization is a kind of lost or
suppressed
function which has been recently re-discovered through studies of
children that
emphasizes our social interconnectedness. When we move beyond the Self
into the
realm of the social we find ourselves in a realm that goes beyond the
duality
of thought and perception into a realm which we can enter into based on
our
capability to mentalize. We mentalize based on our resonance with the
other.
Through this capacity we learn how to recognize the other as other and
self as
self and how to bring the other into a Self-Thou dialogue despite
mutual
otherness. Fred Alan Wolf talks about how it is dreams that allow us to
make
that self-other discrimination in The Dreaming Univese. Thus we
can see
that there is an implicit interrelation between dreaming and
mentalizing. We
can think of dreaming as a kind of shadow of our mentalizing processes.
In
dreaming we process the otherness of the kosmos in relation to our
self. In the
dream world as Jung recognized there are "Others", i.e. independent
numinous complexes which he called the Archetypes. Mostly Jung
considers the
relation of the autonomous archetypal complexes to the Self as it
occurs in
dreams. But what he does not do is consider the relations of the
archetypal
complexes to each other. Considering this takes us directly into the
Atman
pre-synthesis as Jung was aware. We relate to one set of others in
wakefulness
and another set of others in our dreams. Sometimes these two sets
overlap and
many times they do not. The otherness of the others in dreams is
greater than
the otherness of those around us in wakefulness because of a lack of
familiarity in many instances. If we posit that the ego is the center
of
consciousness in the waking state but the self is the center of
consciousness
in the dream, and as the dream weaver produces dreams that integrate
conscious
and unconscious materials, then we can see the others in the dreams as
the
others with respect to the self rather than the alters to the ego. Thus
the
mentalizing that occurs in dreams is of a higher type than that which
occurs in
mundane waking consciousness for the most part. It is a mentalizing of
the true
other rather than merely shadows of our projections.
When
we look at the archetypes we need to think about the concept of the
field of
archetypes introduced by Von Franz in Number and Time. What we
see is
that there are holonic emergent levels between the system of the ego
and the
meta-system of the self. These levels are both part and whole at the
same time
and in them the whole is exactly equal to the sum of the parts. Thus we
have
levels of Anima, Wise Old Man, and Sophia (transformed Shadow) within
us which
are integrated into the totality of the self when we give up the
artificial
unity of the ego. But when we move beyond the Self into the realm of
dialogue
with the Thou of the other, then we must mentalize not parts of
our-self but
what goes beyond our selves. We move into a field that contains the
four
disseminating machines which connect to produce the sixteen
individuated
relations at the autopoietic level and the sixty four social relations
at the
reflexive level prior to falling into the meta-systemic field of the
Atman,
i.e. the intersubjective pre-synthesis which boils up as the fused
group
occasionally breaking the reifications of institutionalization and
allowing for
a new social construction or new social invention of truth, reality,
identity
and presence. The atman is what looks through everyone's eyes. The
atman is
what looks through your eyes in all the different universes in which
you
manifest. Atman is related to Purusha and Prajnapati. It is realted to
Yamir of
Norse myth. It is the Giant that is sacrificed to give rise to the
world in the
Indo-European tradition. We are within that giant through our capacity
to
mentalize. It is mentalization that allows us to live within the waters
of the
Atman like fish in the sea, i.e. not noticing the medium within which
we live,
like the way we ignore the air. We live in a similar social medium that
predates our developing as individuals. The field of that mentalization
of the
other can be seen as an I Ching of possible combinations of the
dissipative
machines. This field of possible states of mentalization allows us to
understand how to connect the dissipative machines to each other from
self to
other, other to self, self to thou, thou to self. The rhizome of these
connections and disconnections forms a field within which nodes of the
sixteen
individuated relations appear. Meta-relations (relations between
relations) in
this field are reflexive. Beyond the reflexive we fall into the
meta-system of
the atman as the pre-synthesis of the Planetary Man talked
about by
Desan.
We
know that the kinds of Being and the holonic special systems mutually
define
each other. Thus as we are moving up this series either between ego and
self or
between self and atman we are moving through the different kinds of
Being.
Kinds
of Being |
Emergent
Systemic Levels |
|
System = thermodynamic-living-social
gestalt |
Pure Being |
|
|
Holonic Dissipative Special System =
Thermodynamic |
Process Being |
|
|
Holonic Autopoietic Special System =
Living |
Hyper Being |
|
|
Holonic Reflexive Special System = Social |
Wild Being |
|
|
Meta-system |
In
this way we are moving from determinate and continuous systems toward
discontinuous and indeterminate meta-systemic fields. We do this over
and over
as we move from persona to ego to self to atman to the attributes of
god to the
godhead. The attributes of God appear as manifestation between being
and
existence. The system is indicative of Being while the Meta-system is
indicative of Existence. Between the two are the holonic intermediaries
which
are both dual and non-dual at the same time[126]. We can see this differentiation either
topologically in terms of non-orientable surfaces or algebraically. In
either
case there is a definite movement from the paradoxical to the
supra-rational
through a series of dual/non-dual stages which take us from unity to
totality.
There is not only local and global duality but also local and global
coherence
at play in this staged transformation of the ego's unity into the
self's
totality. The same staged transformation occurs between the Self's
totality and
the Atman's wholeness. The self is a collection of all the unitary
complexes or
archetypes that exist within it including the most enigmatic and
mysterious of
all, the ego. The ego is like the mirrored balls of the quaternion or
octonion
imaginaries, inside it is utterly opaque although it seems to be the
center of
clarity and the light of the clearing in Being. It is a droplet of
oblivion.
The
Self is a totalizing collection of these droplets of oblivion that
inhabit the
horizon of awareness that includes both consciousness and
unconsciousness. The
self as a meta-system is a detotalizing totality as Sartre pointed out.
The
Atman is a wholeness which includes both the Holoidal and Ephemeronal
combinations of the aspects of Being. The aspects of Being are
permutated
between totally true, real, identical, and real which is holoidal
utopian Being
on the one hand and the totality false, illusory, different and absent
on the
other called the Kakatopia[127]
of the Ephemeron. The entire spectrum of combinations of the aspects of
Being
form the basis of wholeness. It is not just the total collection of
what is but
is instead the wholeness of all possible combinations that may be. Thus
wholeness is associated with the Good which is the root of variety
production.
Wholeness is not just the perfected holoidal state but encompasses all
possible
permutations including the ephemeron. It is epitomized by the
quintessence
which is both true and false, real and illusory, identical and
different as
well as present and absent.
When
we look at the ego and the persona we would find a very similar
transformative
unfolding. Persona is the mask in a certain situation Personas are
fragments of
the ego which are not unified. We can think of the personal as having
some but
not all the properties of a formal system which include completeness,
clarity
(well-formedness), consistency, coherence, verifiability, and validity.
These
are the relations between the aspects of Being. Unity of the ego
demands all of
these things at once which produces a closed and stable system we call
character.
Persona is a form which is a figure in the system of the ego which is
one unity
among many in the meta-system of the Self. The persona can be seen as
the
interface of the dissipative machines. Through those interfaces we set
up to
either disseminate, desire, avoid or absorb what the other offers us.
These
interfaces to the other are formed into an artificial unity over time
by the
ego who has the ideal of remaining utterly consistent, complete, clear
(well
formed), verifiable, valid and coherent as a formal system. These
properties
are the relations between the aspects of Being. If we consider the ego
as just
a formal system then it would only have completeness, consistency and
clarity
as its properties. It is only when we add reality as an aspect that the
properties of verification, validation and coherence become important.
Reality
is determined by testing the individual ego, and so by testing we
consolidate
the ego as the plethora of test results over time. This consolidation
leads to
more than formal unity but also systemic unity, i.e. the unity of the
flow and
gestalts of consciousness. However, due to the suppression of
contradiction and
the exclusion of the middle para-consistency, para-clarity and para
completeness are not allowed. This exclusion of what is not complete,
consistent and clear from the ego produces what Jung calls the shadow.
But we
must also consider para-validity, para-verification, and
para-coherence. All of
these produce shadows around the ego that are indicative of its
relation as a
restricted economy to the general economy of the self. We note that the
persona
relates to the dissipative machines and acts as their interfaces. The
ego
attempts to produce an artificial unity of a system, i.e. of gestalts
and
flows, which allow the aspects of Being to be seen in consciousness.
What does
not conform to this view, enforced by the filter of the meta-system, is
suppressed into the unconscious. One thing that does not conform to
this view
is that macro quantum mechanical view of existence that recognizes the
nonduality of quality and quantity. The meta-system determines what
kinds of
systems will be allowed within its environment. Thus the Self is the
total
field of possible ego formations. Similarly the Atman is the whole
field of
possible self formations. Self restricts ego formations and provides
niches for
acceptable ones. Atman restricts self formations and provides niches
for
acceptable ones. With the persona there is a kind of reversal because
the
various persona are fragmented and have not always been integrated,
being a
conglomeration in many cases. The ego to the extent that it gives Being
to
these persona or their facets accepts them as parts of itself. What is
rejected
falls back into the field of the unconscious as the background of the
gestalt
of the ego in consciousness. Thus the ego is not a totality to the
persona in
the same way that the self is a totality to the unity of the ego or the
atman
is a whole to the individuated self. But if we are talking about
accepted
personas then the ego is the unity of accepted personas where each
persona is a
partial coherence[128]
in a particular situation.
A
persona is a gestalt or flow of the individual within a certain
situation. I
recommend the concept of Coutu in Emergent Human Nature where
he
introduces the TINSIT or tendency-in-situation as the basic unit of
social
analysis. I believe this has merit because it brings us back to Wild
Being
which is at the level of Propensity, Tendency, Line-of-flight or Habit.
Each of
us has certain tendencies in situations to desire, avoid, disseminate,
or
absorb. The persona is the vehicle for the establishment of these kinds
of
relations with others. These TINSITS form the basis of the social field
which
we mentalize as we resonate with others. We do not think about these
tendencies
consciously but merely react based on our mentalization of the states
of mind
of others as we know them from our experience with them as we are
absorbed in
the They. I also recomend William Sadler's ideas in Existence and
Love
where he talks about existentialism's over individualistic bias that
comes from
our nihilisitc and dualistic culture. He likens the relation to the
other
through romantic love to music rather than perceptual gestalts and
flows. The
gestalts and flows of music are all space filling and interpenetrating.
Just as
love fills the whole world of the lovers so sound fills the whole
environment
with a fabric that covers everything. Thus the ego can be seen as an
artificial
systemic unity that arises out of the totoality of the self as a
meta-system
just as the self as system arises out of the meta-systemic
pre-synthesis of the
wholeness of atman. So to does the persona arise out of the ego either
as a
projected façade, which can be used for deception in a
mentalizing field, or as
a rejected aspect of the ego that appears as the shadow. The
interpenetration
of the shadows making umbras and penumbras in multiple directions
because of
multiple sources of light is an analogy for the embodied field of the
Self
itself. The self also has a shadow which is its otherness that it casts
producing umbras and penumbras in the meta-system of the whole atman. The atman is a totalization of all
perspectives, just as the self is a totalization of all unities in
awareness.
The ego is a totalization of all accepted personas which are forged
into an
artificial unity across time. The persona is a totalization of all the
tendencies in the situation which along with the possibilities produce
a
probabilistic action which we gloss determinately in terms of ideas and
emotions. As a mask the persona has no depth. The mask is merely the
defense
mechanism to the mentalizing of the other. It can have various levels
of
reification depending on the level of Being that it is produced at.
There is the
fully reified mask of ideas and emotions. There is the process by which
thoughts and feelings become ideas and emotions. There is the
indecision
between thought and feeling. There is the chiasm between thoughtfeelings
and feelingthoughts,
and there is the non-dual field of the heart itself which is
supra-rational and
unthinkable by reason. The persona can exist at any of these levels of
Being
and the persona can also be seen as conjunctions of
tendencies-in-situations. A
tendency-in-a-situation is something dissipative in realtion to the
practio-inert of already composed human encounters. Conjunctions of
tendencies
in situations produce autopoietic relations between tendencies which
when
conjuncted again produce reflexive relations. Barry Sandywell talks
about
pre-reflective, reflective and reflexive. Reflective relations needs
representations to produce consciousness and self-consciousness.
Reflexivity is
something different from reflectivity. It spills over into the social
construction and social invention that is an ecstasy of the persona
that takes
into account the full dramatically situation not just the relations
between
characters taken in pairs.
CONCLUSION
In this paper we have explored a way of looking at human processes based on meta-systems and holonic special systems theory. It would be possible to go on further than this to look at the action of the Emergent Meta-system that dynamically combines the various holonoic levels with the system level to produce the meta-system level. It would be possible to look at each of the stages taken above and show how each one can be seen as an Emergent Meta-system. Jung has done this in his Alchemical works where he explores the dynamics of the self such as Aion and Mysterium Conjunctus. We have not done so here for the sake of brevity. However, it is important to understand that the holons between the system and meta-systemic field combine with the system to produce the meta-system. We have seen that it is possible to read Deleuze and Guattari as if they were exploring the relations between total Self and whole Atman rather than as Jung has done exploring the relations between the unified Ego and total Self. This amounts to a deepening of Archetypal theory in which we explore reflexive individuated relations between self and other rather than merely the individuation of the self.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Would like to thank my mentor Ian Dallas,
as well as
Ben Goertzel, Onar Aam, Bob Cummings and Owen Ware.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kent Palmer is a Principle Systems
Engineer at a
major Aerospace Systems Company. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology
concentrating
on Philosophy of Science from the
London School of Economics and a B.Sc. in Sociology from the University
of
Kansas. His dissertation on The Structure of Theoretical Systems in
Relation
to Emergence[129] focused on how new things come into
existence
within the Western Philosophical and Scientific worldview. He has
written
extensively on the roots of the Western Worldview in his electronic
book The
Fragmentation of Being and the Path Beyond the Void[130]. He had at least seventeen years
experience[131] in
Software Engineering and Systems Engineering disciplines at major
aerospace
companies based in Orange County CA. He served several years as the
chairman of
a Software Engineering Process Group and is now engaged in Systems
Engineering
Process improvement based on EIA 731 and CMMI. He has presented a
tutorial on
“Advanced Process Architectures[132]” which concerned engineering wide
process
improvement including both software and systems engineering. Besides
process
experience, he has recently been a software team lead on a Satellite
Payload
project and a systems engineer on a Satellite Ground System project. He
has
also engaged in independent research in Systems Theory which has
resulted in a book
of working papers called Reflexive Autopoietic Systems Theory[133]. A new introduction to this work now
exists called Reflexive
Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems Theory[134]. He has given a tutorial[135] on “Meta-systems
Engineering” to the INCOSE
Principles working group. He has written a series on Software
Engineering
Foundations which are contained in the book Wild Software
Meta-systems[136]. He now teaches a course in
“Software Requirements
and Design Methodologies” at the University California Irvine
Extension. He may
be reached at kent@palmer.name.
SIG: Spirituality and Systems
ABSTRACT
PALMER, K. D.
GENUINE SPIRTUALITY AND SPECIAL SYSTEMS THEORY
Trace Studies Institute, Box 1632, Orange, CA 92856 USA E-mail: kent@palmer.name
Special
Systems theory and their combination into the Emergent Meta-systems has
a
special relation to spirituality in as much as we define genuine
spirituality
as being related to the experience of and orientation to formlessness.
We see
this kind of genuine spirituality in several relations such as the Void
of
Taoism, the Emptiness of Buddhism and the Annihilation of Islamic
Sufism. The
point of special systems theory which is treated in my paper on
Reflexive
Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems Theory at
http://server.snni.com/~palmer/autopoiesis.html
is that it provides a specific theory of how things in the mundane
world unfold
from the void. Thus as the Heart Suttra says Form is Void and Void is
Form. The
special systems theory and its combination into emergent meta-systems
theory
specifies a concrete theory of how this interchange between void and
form
occurs in terms of the embodiment of a model of interpenetration which
is
supported by a mathematical basis and specific anomalous physical
phenomena
which embody these very strange mathematical forms seen in
hyper-complex
algebras which form the basis of this theory. An extension of the
theory
hypothesizes that the Buddha discovered the ground of special systems
theory
within the mundane world and called it enlightenment. It is also seen
as
embodied in the sunnah and sharia of the Prophet Muhammad which all
sufic
practices are based upon. There is evidence that it was this ground of
special
systems that the Taoists were referring to in the Tao Te Ching and
other
recently discovered Taoist works. The key point is that genuine
spirituality is
founded on the relation between void and form and it is the special
systems
theory and the emergent meta-systems theory that gives us the first and
only
concrete model of this strange and beautiful relationship which is
described in
Taoism as the arising of everything from the gate of the mysterious
female,
i.e. the aspect of the void which is embedded in forms as their
reference back
to their source.
GENUINE SPIRTUALITY AND SPECIAL SYSTEMS THEORY
Kent D. Palmer
Trace Studies Institute
Box 1632 Orange CA 92856 USA
SUMMARY
See Abstract.
Keywords Life Ontology, Holonomics, Meta-Systems,
Special Systems
INTRODUCTION
In
this paper genuine spirituality will be defined as any discipline that
is
concerned with formlessness which involves an understanding of the
spirit or
soul which are formless aspects of the human being. In other words it
is
concerned with how the formless aspects of ourselves relate to
formlessness
beyond ourselves. Of course, formlessness itself is an unpopular
subject for
science which deals exclusively with forms, or attempts to. Sometimes
the
objects of science can only be studied by the traces of formless
entities on
other forms. But in general science imagines even those things it
cannot see
directly as having form. Western Science has developed a very
sophisticated
approach to understanding forms using what may be called Formal
Structural
Systems Theory. A good example of such a theory is Klir's Architecture
of
Systems Problem Solving. It uses the schemas of System, Pattern and
Form
together to describe, explain and prove things with respect to forms.
Notice
that the system appears as a social gestalt at one level above form
while the
structural or process patterning appears as one step below form. Thus
form is
the basic schema by which we understand things in the world. We have
expanded
our horizons somewhat by developing schemas above and below the level
of form
to explain some things that the schema of the form cannot explain. In
the
papers associated with this conference[137]
I have suggested that we should also concentrate on the schemas of
Holons,
Meta-systems and Worlds within the overall emergent ontological
hierarchy of
schema. I have proposed a speculative hierarchy of such schemas which
consists
of
Plurivese
Kosmos
World
Domain
Archon (Meta-system)
Holon
(Special Systems)
System
Form
Pattern
Monad
Facet
In
the face of this ontologically emergent hierarchy I would have to
rephrase my
definition of spirituality to talk about "schemalessness" rather than
just formlessness. Formlessness is readily understood by everyone, but
all the
schemas as templates of understanding apply some constructed or
invented
ordering to the ontic realm. We can think of the ontic realm of physus
as a
kind of magma that we slip our categorizations over by a kind of
projection.
The schemas live in the realm of logos. Science relates the schemas of
the
logos to the material of the physus through the nomos of ordering.
Schemas take
mathematical categories and render them by analogy into something that
may be
applied generally to the physus. But in our theory of worlds we suggest
that
the schemas be disengaged from the physus and studied in their own
right in
order to understand them better. We suffer from the mistaken impression
that
the schemas come from the physus and we are discovering "systems" out
there in nature. When in reality we are projecting these schemas onto
the magma
of the ontic. The ontic has its own separate emergent levels that
resist
reduction. That gives us the hierarchy of quarks, particles, atoms,
molecules,
cells, organisms, society and Gaia. But the schemas have to resist not
reductionism but instead skepticism. It is skepticism concerning the
application of a particular schema to a particular phenomena. If people
are
talking about the same phenomena in terms of different schemas then
they cannot
understand each other. This is because they are using different root
analogies
and the phenomena will appear differently based on what root analogy
one uses
to attempt to understand it. To understand the schemas we must attempt
to do an
archeology of knowledge on our tradition to find the schemas which have
been
developed over the centuries and to understand their relations to each
other.
What we find when we do that is that the schemas have all kinds of
interesting
holonomic properties in relation to each other. We need to understand
those
dualities because they strengthen our comprehension of the phenomena
because we
will know what comes with the projection of the schemas and what are
the
aspects related only to the phenomena. General Schemas Theory has the
task of
studying the schemas, like for instance General Systems Theory or
General
Meta-Systems Theory, which science in general are unconscious of and
attempting
to understand the general properties of these schemas outside the
application
to any particular domain or discipline. We understand that the Domain
itself is
a schema which has particular properties of its own. The university is
a
conglomerate of specialist disciplines or domains. This is what causes
nihilism, i.e. the splitting of the perspectives on the phenomena.
Within our
science there are various emergent levels of the processing of
information by
the group and the individual. This gives us another dual hierarchy that
connects the metaphysical principle to the limited phenomena of the
physus and
logos.
Absolute = metaphysical principle
actualization
Existence
insight
Ontos
wisdom
Episteme
knowledge
Paradigm
information
Theory
data
Facticity
given
Suchness = finite phenomena
This
interleaving of the individual's levels of knowledge with the levels of
the
social organization of knowledge that undergo emergent changes allows
us to
span the distance between the meta-physical principle and the finitude
of the
realm of physus and logos which each are in turn articulated by the
ontic and
ontological emergent hierarchies. In our Theory of Worlds we suggest
that the
projection of the schemas on the magma of the ontic be suspended. We
also
suggest that the inspissation of Being into the phenomenal beings be
suspended.
When this suspension is effected then we find ourselves within the
chain of
Being which is set of unfolding a dualistic bifurcations which has the
following form.
Particle |
Uncertain Complementarity |
Wave |
Quantum Mechanics |
Spacetime |
Relativity |
Physics |
InfoEnergy |
Thermodynamics |
Physus |
Orders |
Logos |
Limited |
Rights |
Unlimited |
Have |
Goods |
Have not |
Exist |
Fates |
Exist not |
Actualize
(paradoxicality) |
Sources |
Actualize not
(supra-rationality) |
Unmanifest = Extremal[138] |
Root (Single Source) |
Manifestation[139] |
Within
the dualisms produced by our social construction or invention of the
world
there are a series of non-duals at each level of dualistic unfolding.
This
successive symmetry breaking is the fundamental basis for the emergent
generation of the schemas within the logos, and the emergent
differentiation of
the phenomena within the physus. If we suspend the principle of
excluded middle
and its dual the principle of non-contradiction then we are able to see
the
non-duals and trace them back to their root which is the single source
of
causation, which is the basis of what Jung calls synchronicity. At that
root we
find the basis of genuine spirituality or soulfulness which is not just
beyond
the "Form" or the other schemas but is also beyond the dualistic
splitting that produces our world. To get to that level we must pass
our of
Being into Existence and on to Manifestation which is the non-dual
between
Existence and Being.
BUDDHISM, SUFISM, TAOISM AND PLATO'S
DIVIDED LINE
We
take three traditions as exemplary of the schemalessness and even
nonduality,
i.e. dualistic bifurcationlessness. These are Chinese and Indian
Buddhism,
Chinese Taoism and Islamic Sufism. Each of these in their own way take
us out
of Being into existence or manifestation. We believe that these three
traditions have different goals and that they are not routes all
leading to the
same place as Perennialist approaches to spirituality or soulfulness
suggest.
We will attempt to explain these different goals based on Plato's
divided line
analogy. In most interpretations of the divided line the lines
themselves are not given any meaning. Here we will give the
lines themselves meaning as a way to understand the various goals of
Buddhism,
Taoism and Sufism.
Glaucon said, with a
ludicrous earnestness: By the
light of
heaven, how amazing!
Yes,
I said, and the
exaggeration may be set down to you; for you
made me utter my fancies.
And
pray continue to utter
them; at any rate let us hear if there is
anything more to be said
about the similitude of the sun.
Yes,
I said, there is a great
deal more.
Then
omit nothing, however
slight.
I
will do my best, I said; but
I should think that a great deal will
have to be omitted.
You have to imagine, then, that there are two
ruling powers, and
that one of them is set
over the intellectual world, the other over
the visible. I do not
say heaven, lest you should fancy that I am
playing upon the name
('ourhanoz, orhatoz'). May I suppose that you
have this distinction of
the visible and intelligible fixed in your
mind?
I
have.
Now
take a line which has been
cut into two unequal parts, and
divide each of them
again in the same proportion, and suppose the
two main divisions to
answer, one to the visible and the other to
the intelligible, and
then compare the subdivisions in respect of
their clearness and want
of clearness, and you will find that the
first section in the
sphere of the visible consists of images. And
by images I mean, in the
first place, shadows, and in the second
place, reflections in
water and in solid, smooth and polished bodies
and the like: Do you
understand?
Yes,
I understand.
Imagine,
now, the other
section, of which this is only the
resemblance, to include
the animals which we see, and everything
that grows or is made.
Very
good.
Would
you not admit that both
the sections of this division have
different degrees of
truth, and that the copy is to the original as
the sphere of opinion is
to the sphere of knowledge?
Most
undoubtedly.
Next
proceed to consider the
manner in which the sphere of the
intellectual is to be
divided.
In
what manner?
Thus:
--There are two
subdivisions, in the lower or which the soul
uses the figures given
by the former division as images; the enquiry
can only be
hypothetical, and instead of going upwards to a
principle descends to
the other end; in the higher of the two, the
soul passes out of
hypotheses, and goes up to a principle which is
above hypotheses, making
no use of images as in the former case, but
proceeding only in and
through the ideas themselves.
I
do not quite understand your
meaning, he said.
Then
I will try again; you
will understand me better when I have
made some preliminary
remarks. You are aware that students of
geometry, arithmetic,
and the kindred sciences assume the odd and
the even and the figures
and three kinds of angles and the like in
their several branches
of science; these are their hypotheses, which
they and everybody are
supposed to know, and therefore they do not
deign to give any
account of them either to themselves or others;
but they begin with
them, and go on until they arrive at last, and
in a consistent manner,
at their conclusion?
Yes,
he said, I know.
And
do you not know also that
although they make use of the
visible forms and reason
about them, they are thinking not of these,
but of the ideals which
they resemble; not of the figures which they
draw, but of the
absolute square and the absolute diameter, and so
on --the forms which
they draw or make, and which have shadows and
reflections in water of
their own, are converted by them into
images, but they are
really seeking to behold the things themselves,
which can only be seen
with the eye of the mind?
That
is true.
And
of this kind I spoke as
the intelligible, although in the search
after it the soul is
compelled to use hypotheses; not ascending to a
first principle, because
she is unable to rise above the region of
hypothesis, but
employing the objects of which the shadows below are
resemblances in their
turn as images, they having in relation to the
shadows and reflections
of them a greater distinctness, and
therefore a higher value.
I
understand, he said, that
you are speaking of the province of
geometry and the sister
arts.
And
when I speak of the other
division of the intelligible, you will
understand me to speak
of that other sort of knowledge which reason
herself attains by the
power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as
first principles, but
only as hypotheses --that is to say, as steps
and points of departure
into a world which is above hypotheses, in
order that she may soar
beyond them to the first principle of the
whole; and clinging to
this and then to that which depends on this, by
successive steps she
descends again without the aid of any sensible
object, from ideas,
through ideas, and in ideas she ends.
I
understand you, he replied;
not perfectly, for you seem to me to
be describing a task
which is really tremendous; but, at any rate, I
understand you to say
that knowledge and being, which the science of
dialectic contemplates,
are clearer than the notions of the arts, as
they are termed, which
proceed from hypotheses only: these are also
contemplated by the
understanding, and not by the senses: yet, because
they start from
hypotheses and do not ascend to a principle, those who
contemplate them appear
to you not to exercise the higher reason
upon them, although when
a first principle is added to them they are
cognizable by the higher
reason. And the habit which is concerned with
geometry and the cognate
sciences I suppose that you would term
understanding and not
reason, as being intermediate between opinion
and reason.
You
have quite conceived my
meaning, I said; and now,
corresponding to these
four divisions, let there be four faculties
in the soul-reason
answering to the highest, understanding to the
second, faith (or
conviction) to the third, and perception of
shadows to the last-and
let there be a scale of them, and let us
suppose that the several
faculties have clearness in the same degree
that their objects have
truth.
I
understand, he replied, and
give my assent, and accept your
arrangement.[140]
The divided line analogy allows us the
division into
four parts:
Principle
Hypothesis
Right opinion Unfounded
opinion
Soul-reason |E| Understanding |M|
conviction |V| appearances of
perception
Where E = Emptiness of Inward Existence
M =Manifestation
V= Void of Outward
Existence
Soul-reason
deals with non-representable intelligibles, i.e. principles, while
hypothetical
understanding deals with representable intelligibles, i.e. hypothesis,
such as
we find in geometrical proof. Conviction or faith deals with those
things that
are taken as true or real, which have been tested by experience forming
the
basis of true or real opinion whereas the realm of appearances
themselves have
not been tested and thus may appear to be anything such as a rope that
appears
to be a snake which has no basis and therefore leads to unfounded
opinion. On
the other hand the non-representable intelligibles are things like the
idea of
the Good. What we see in the divided line is a general movement from
phenomenal
embodiment toward the realm of schemalessness and nonduality. It is
several
stages of purification that Socrates feels is necessary when moving
from the
physus to the logos.
We
will look at the divided line in a different way which will help us
understand
the difference between Taoism and Buddhism first and then Sufism. First
let us
look at the difference between representable and non-representable
intelligibilities. If we consider the non-duals then Order and Right
are
representable while Good and Fate are non-representable. Generally as
we move
downward through the non-duals they become more and more
non-representable. On
the other hand lets look at the aspects of Being, i.e. true, real,
identical
and presence, which all have opposites. We ascribe Presence and
Identity to
perceptual appearance and Reality and Truth to conviction. This means
the
opposites are ascribed to the opposite section of the divided line in
each
case. This gives us the following formation:
A |
B |
C |
D |
soul-reason principle |
Understanding hypothesis |
Conviction Correct
Opinion |
Perception Unfounded
Opinion |
Good |
Spacetime |
True |
False |
Fate |
Infoenergy |
Absent |
Present |
Sources |
Order |
Real |
Illusory |
Root |
Right |
Different |
Identical |
Thus
we can see that the divided line connects yet keeps apart the non-duals
and the
aspects of Being. Generally major division between B and C separates
the physus
from the logos. The division between A and B separates the
representations we
have internally from those things that are schemaless that have no
representation. The division between C and D separates those things
that can be
verified and validated from that which has not been purified by any
sort of
testing. What is interesting is the concept that what arises from A is
what
comes to us from beyond ourselves from within while what arises from D
is what
comes to us from beyond ourselves from the outside. Thus B and C are
the region
of the ego while in Jungian terms ABCD is the region of the Self. In
other
words the self is the totality of what appears even from beyond the
self
inwardly or outwardly while the ego is that is representable and
testable so as
to forge a unity as the center of consciousness.
Now
we will be bold and assert that the minor line between A and B stands
for
inward existence while the minor line between C and D stands for
outward
existence while the major line between B and C stands for
manifestation. I
other words we will use the divided line of Plato as the basis for
searching
for the non-duals between each of his named divisions. We posit that
Buddhism
interprets inward existence as emptiness and would reduce the entire
phase
space of the line divided into two phases A and BCD. Above we have
labeled this
line as E for the Emptiness of Inward Existence. We posit that Taoism
interprets outward existence as void and would reduce the entire phase
space of
the line divided into two phases BCD and A. Above we have labeled this
line as
V for the Void of Outward Existence. Both of these reductions destroys
the
interior phase space of the ego within the self. The analogy for Inward
Existence used over and over again by the Buddhists is Gold. Gold has
the
feature that when purified that it is imperishable. Thus the Buddhists
think of
the suchness of Inward Existence as being like Gold. All we need to do
is look
at the Awakening of Faith to understand that the Tathatagata
Gharba[141]
is a region of imperviousness which has a characteristic similar to
gold but
with respect to consciousness. The Taoists on the other hand value Jade
which
is a stone which is full of detailed patterning and which is strong
enough to
be carveable. The nature of Outward Existence is like Jade rather than
Gold.
The Taoists are overwhelmed by Nature which is from beyond the self
coming from
the outside. The Buddhists on the other hand are overwhelmed by the
Schemalessness which comes from the "formlessness" within
consciousness. Both of these sources of inundation breakdown the region
of the
ego within the self which they see as a false unity. The Self has a
pre-synthesis that is a priori to experience. An even greater
pre-synthesis is
that of the Atman which is an intersubjective synthesis prior to
experience.
Both Buddhism and Taoism would immerse themselves in these
pre-syntheses.
However, Buddhism emphasizes the Sanga, or community of monks, while
the
Taoists emphasize the pre-synthesis of all of nature. When we look at
Chinese
paintings we see the little man hidden in the voluminous landscape.
That little
man is the one who is overwhelmed by Outward Existence and who lives as
a
hermit in those wilds. The reduction to inward existence is very
different from
the reduction to outward existence, even though their effects in terms
of
effacing the self is similar. Thus, the emptiness of the self-nature of
Buddhism is different from the Void of Nature which includes the self
of Taoism.
These are two paths with different goals even though the destruction of
the ego
in favor of the pre-synthesis of the Self and Atman are similar in both.
ASPECTS AND NON-DUALS WITHIN THE KINDS OF
BEING
Sufism
strives for an even deeper non-dual which breaks the phase space into
two
sections AB and CD. Beyond the Gold of Inward Existence is the Platinum
of
Manifestation. Beyond the Jade of Outward Existence is the Diamond of
Manifestation. Manifestation is the non-dual between Being, i.e. the
content of
the sections of the divided line, and Existence, i.e. what lies beyond
Being,
at the fifth meta-level of Being and beyond. Being has four kinds, i.e.
Pure,
Process, Hyper and Wild. Thus it is necessary to take the determinate
divided
line through all of these meta-levels of Being until we reach the ultra
level
of existence.
|
ULTRA existence |
WILD Being4 |
HYER Being3 |
PROCESS Being2 |
PURE Being1 |
ORDER |
indeterminate |
propensity |
possibility |
probability |
determinate |
ORDER |
discontinuous |
chaotic |
fuzzy |
stochastic |
continuous |
RIGHT |
asymmetry |
singularity |
Symmetry breaking |
groups |
symmetry |
GOOD |
Indifference, singleness |
unique |
differAnce |
Difference that makes a difference |
pure difference |
FATE |
Simultaneously freedom and determination |
Special determination of freedom |
Undecidablity of determination or freedom |
Unfolding freedom or determination |
Pure freedom or pure determination |
SOURCE |
From one viewpoint it exists from another
viewpoint it does not exist |
Both arising and departing |
Neither arising nor departing |
Arising or departing |
Unmixed and unadulterated, i.e only arising
or departing. |
ROOT |
Single source of causation or correlation |
Break up of the single source into
indeterminate causation, Wild indeterminate causation or correlation |
Undecidablity of causation between causes or
correlations |
Correlation |
Determinate causes. |
A
similar thing occurs with the Aspects of being which must also be taken
up
through the meta-levels of Being:
Aspects verses Kinds of Being |
Pure Being1 |
Process Being2 |
Hyper Being3 |
Wild Being4 |
Ultra Existence |
Truth |
Pure Truth |
Process Truth |
Hyper Truth |
Wild Truth |
Ultra Truth |
Identity |
Pure Identity |
Process Identity |
Hyper Identity |
Wild Identity |
Ultra Identity |
Reality |
Pure Reality |
Process Reality |
Hyper Reality |
Wild Reality |
Ultra Reality |
Presence |
Pure Presence |
Process Presence |
Hyper Presence |
Wild Presence |
Ultra Presence |
This
fact that each aspect transforms as we move to higher and higher
meta-levels is
little appreciated by most philosophers. It means that Being ultimately
presents us with a faceted structure where each facet is like a part of
a
mobile in which all the facets intersect all the others as they move in
the
mobile.
For
instance, Truth at the level of Pure Truth means verification. But it
transforms at the next level up into Process Truth which is the Showing
and
Hiding of unconcealment that brings forth the truth. At the next level
up Hyper
Truth is what we see when the Unconscious reveals itself. Hyper Truth
is the
truth that is never manifested but which haunts the truths that are
uncovered.
Wild Truth is the final level and that appears when we realize that the
revealed truth and the secret truth are ultimately the same. After that
there
is only the emptiness of existence where truth itself becomes an empty
construct. Here ultra-truth becomes an indicator pointing at suchness.
If
we were to look instead at identity we would see that Pure Identity is
what we
get in formal systems that have tautologies at their root. Process
Identity is
the next meta-level up and it is what Heidegger calls the belonging
together of
Sameness in Identity and Difference. At the next level up we have Hyper
Identity which occurs when the undecidable enters the picture. Suddenly
identities are ambiguous and multifarious. This is what Derrida calls
differance which he explains by way of differing and deferring. It is
embodied
ambivalence. The final level up is called Wild Identity. We see that in
something like Hegel's 'absolute reason' in which the myriad varieties
in their
concrete details become identical in a sense, this is to say identity
within
and though difference, i.e. knowledge of the self though the other.
Beyond that
there is the identity of the sources of difference themselves in
existence. At
that point ultra-identity becomes empty itself and points to pure
suchness.
If
we look instead at reality then we see Pure Reality as the product of
testing
which like verification needs to be repeated often. Process Reality
occurs when
there is a continual regime of testing that never ends. We find this in
some
critical professions where they must continually be retrained to
continue to
hold their certification. Hyper Reality is a departure at the next
higher level
of reality where the simulation or test is more real than 'reality'
itself. For
instance, some simulation environments allow for scenarios that are
very
unlikely to occur in reality but we can make them happen as if they
were real
in order to prepare for them. In Hyper Reality the game becomes more
real than
normal mundane 'reality'. Finally at the last step up there is Wild
Reality in
which we can no longer discern what is real and what is not real, what
is the
game and what is reality. Cyberspace as
a new medium which uses the Internet as an infra-structure has the
nature of
Wild Being which spawns a myriad of virtual realities. Beyond that is
the
ultra-reality of existence itself. Ultra reality is a pointer toward
suchness.
If
we look at the next aspect then we need to consider Pure Presence. Pure
Presence is static and fixed presentation of a product with illusory
continuity. Process Presence is the underlying mechanism behind the
showing and
hiding of the presentation. The process of presentation is called
appearance.
Hyper Presence is the appearing of the always already hidden as a
disruptive force
within the presentational process which distorts the final product
which is
held within the illusory persistence. Wild Presence is when we cannot
tell the
difference between the things hidden and presencing behind the
appearances and
the appearances themselves. Beyond that is the realm that is never
presented
but merely is found lying around ignored which is called existence.
Ultra
presence is a pointer toward suchness.
All
of these facets taken together give us a picture of Being in its
totality which
is utterly fragmented. We look at these facets as if for the first time
and
wonder at the complexity of the paradox of Being that our Indo-European
ancestors forged. It is this mobile of facets that we find ourselves
caught
within. The ones that exhibit this encompassing the best are the
Analytic
Philosophers who are realists obsessed with Truth and Identity because
they
think reality can be formalized, or at least wish it could. They, of
course,
reject introspection and phenomenology which concentrated instead on
presences.
Thus philosophy is divided against itself. Phenomenology develops into
ontology
of the kinds of Being while Analytic Philosophy stays within the realm
of the
more orthodox concentration of philosophy on aspects. The kinds of
Being are hidden
behind the veil of illusory continuity of Pure Identity, Pure Presence,
Pure
Reality, Pure Truth. It is the heirs of Husserl that break though this
veil
mostly by way of his recognition of the fundamental difference between
simple
ideas and essences. By doing that they reveal the transformation of the
aspects
at the various deeper meta-levels of Being.
It
is this new ontology of the fragmentation of Being that we now have to
work
with in our approach genuine spirituality. This is a theory like the
theory of
the unconscious which gives us deep insight into the structure of the
world. It
turns out that the Western world has conserved this underlying
structure for
thousands of years. If we look back at the Vedas we find it in the
differences
between the Vedic gods. We find it in various Indo-European mythic
traditions.
In fact once we start looking for it, through the practice of
onto-mythology,
it seems to appear everywhere. This is because these four different
meta-levels
of Being synergize to produce the face of our world to us in concrete
phenomena. We can look at these faces of the world in various
disciplines and
even in our selves as we consider how the facets of Being fragment our
lives
and the lives of others. This has to do with manifestation and that
effects all
disciplines. Manifestation as a whole is fragmented in the Western
Worldview.
We experience this in our lives and see it in the nihilism all around
us.
Genuine Spirituality needs to see these structures in the world and in
the
subjects surrounding us within the world and use this knowledge to help
the
subjects unify themselves and gain totality and gain wholeness within
this
fragmented world they inhabit. This basic theory is explicit and well
formed.
It contains within it something like the unconscious that appears on
the third
meta-level of Being. But this unconscious is the Essence of
Manifestation[142]
within Being, not the unconscious of an individual nor society but the
unconscious of manifestation within Being itself. The unconscious is
basically
split between psychological and social unconsciousnesses as has been
pointed
out in The Production of Desire. But this split unconscious
that
mutually mirrors each other has an origin in the unconscious of
manifestation
which is always already lost. We see it in the primal scenes like that
of the
Well and the Tree of the Indo-Europeans. But more than just a theory
similar to
that of the unconscious that founded psychology or a theory of
alienation from
sociology we have a contextual structure that gives the concept of the
unconscious of manifestation a structurally articulated situation
within which
it is expressed. Thus the theory of the fragmentation of the mobile of
Being is
a much richer and more profound notion than the amorphousness of the
unconscious
which is a mere absence made present by indications. The theory of
kinds and
aspects of Being that combine into the facets of Being shows how the Essence
of Manifestation plays off of and ultimately becomes an integral
part of
manifestation at the higher level of Wild Being.
We
need to take the divided line through all of the various levels of
Being until
we reach the bedrock of Existence at meta-level five where we go beyond
Being
into the unthinkable. The unthinkable is interpreted as Emptiness by
the
Buddhists and Void by the Taoists. These two sound the same but in
actuality
they are different since the Buddhist emptiness refers to inward
existence and
the Taoist Void refers to outward existence. Both effectively reduce
the inner
B and C phase space of the ego to nothing within the total line divided
ABCD.
If we want to get to manifestation, i.e. the deeper non-dual which is
the
object of Sufic practice then we merely need to think of the dualism
between
Inward and Outward Existence and take that down through the meta-levels
as
well. Thus instead of dualisticly having a separation between these two
kinds
of existence we begin to see existence as a process, i.e. the process
of
actualization. Then we note that there is a undecidablity between
emptiness or
void, a hiatus at which we are neither empty nor void. Finally we note
the
chiasmic reversibility of the "empty void" and the "void
emptiness." There is a slight difference in meaning between these
reversed
phases. This slight difference defines the pocket of complete
nonduality
between them in their mutual intaglio. That pocket of nonduality is
manifestation which is the non-dual between inward and outward
existence. The
way the Sufis understand this is by switching from creation to the
attributes of
the creator. If we consider the realm of othreness which is the mutual
alienation and anomie between selves then the realm of manifestation is
non-otherness. It is not self and it is not otherness but it is a
unique and
singular non-other. In this sense God alone has no dual, i.e. is
singular and
unique. Existence has to do with the creation as seen beyond Being.
That is to
say Existence is neither true nor false, real nor illusory, identical
or
different, present nor absent. Existence is the opposite of the the
quintessence which is both true and false, real and illusory, identical
and
different, present and absent. The quintessence is the amalgam of all
the
various moments of the aspects of being which produce the Holoidal
which is
true, real, identical and present to the Ephemeron which is false,
unreal,
different and absent with all the combinations in between. There are
sixteen
moments of Being which are all summed together in the paradoxicality of
the
quintessence which point toward the wholeness of the Atman.
Quintessence is
paradoxical while Existence is supra-rational. What is rational is
between
these extremes. In the West we are obsessed with paradox. Note the
celebration
of paradox in Hoffstadter's Godel, Escher and Bach. But the
supra-rationality of existence is hidden from us by the underlying
assumption
of excluded middle. Indian Buddhist logic violates this taboo and
establishes
with Nagarjuna that Emptiness is the unthinkability of the difference
between
the neither…nor and the both…and. Thus Manifestation is
the midpoint between
paradox and empty/void existence, and more deeply it is the non-dual
between
emptiness and the void as well. We zero in on manifestation by
following the
chain of nonduality between the duals. It is the interspace and barrier
between
Existence and Being but it is further the interspace and barrier
between
Emptiness as Inward Existence and the void of Outward Existence. It can
be
thought of as the rare Platinum which is beyond Gold and Silver, the
royal
metals. Some alchemists hypothesized that there was a metal beyond gold
which
was the basis of raising the other base metals to the level of Gold.
Platinum
is so rare that it was not known until very recently. It is heavier
than gold
and of silverish hue and thus it is in some since between them. It acts
as a
catalyst. Similarly Jade is a very special kind of crystalline
structure that
has beautiful patterning and will hold a carving. But diamond is the
ultimate
crystal lattice which is the hardest of all substances. Manifestation
is like
Diamond in relation to the Jade crystals, and like Platinum in relation
to the
royal metals of Silver and Gold. At the point of manifestation one
changes
one's gaze from the found creatures to the attributes of the creator
who is
non-other[143].
From
those attributes one seeks also to understand the non-dual core which
is called
the Godhead[144],
which is
a desert of namelessness and attributelessness that Meister Echardt
talks about
so eloquently.
If
we want to look for examples we find the poetry of Stonehouse
compelling. He
was a Zen monk with taoist inclinations. He says:
There's a road to the
west that nobody takes
people want out but hell
has no gate
jeweled pavilions and
terraces are empty
cauldrons and ovens are
full
Look for the real and it
becomes more distant
try to end delusions and
they just increase
followers of the way
have a place that stays serene
when the moon is in the
sky its reflection is in the waves
Trying to become a
Buddha is easy
but ending delusions is
hard
how many frosty moonlit
nights
have i sat and felt the
cold before dawn
Stripped of conditions
my mind is blank
emptied of existence my
nature is bare
often at night my
windows turn white
the moon and the stream
visit my door
Work with no mind and
all works stops
no more passion or sorrow
but don't think no mind
means you're done
the thought of no-mind
still remains
No mind in my work the
wind through the trees
no work in my mind the
moon through space
windsound and moonlight
wear away
one layer then another
The new
year comes and the old year goes
the fourth tomorrow the
third today
still unenlightened i
have aged in vain
where in the world can I
express my shame[145]
Here
Stonehouse expresses his attainment of the Gold and the Jade together
in
conjunction. And still he does not count that as enlightenment, because
he
senses that there may be an even deeper non-dual.
THE INNER STRUCTURE OF EXISTENCE AND
SPECIAL SYSTEMS
THEORY
All
this talk of the spiritual, i.e. what is beyond schemas, beyond the
splitting
of the dualisms that underlie the world, beyond the aspects and kinds
of Being,
beyond even the non-duals at the heart of our worldview prepares us to
think
more clearly about the schemas themselves. What we have noted before
and will
note again is that there is a crucial difference between the
meta-system schema
and the system schema. The system is a gestalt or a flow or a
combination
thereof. A meta-system is a proto-gestalt or proto-flow or a
combination
thereof. The proto-gestalt is the background of the gestalt just as the
proto-flow is the background of the flow. The proto-gestalt or
proto-flow has
what David Bohm calls Implicate Order which is the dual of the Explicit
order
of the system. What we note is that a systemic gestalt is a whole
greater than
the sum of its parts while the meta-systemic proto-gestalt is a whole
less than
the sum of its parts. This brings us to wonder if there is any kind of
whole
that is precisely the same as the sum of its parts with no surplus or
deficit.
It turns out that such wholes exist and we call them holons after the
usage
established by Koestler. Holons are both wholes and parts
simultaneously like
our organs with our bodies. It turns out that there are three holonic
special
systems which are called Dissipative Ordering, Autopoietic
Self-organizing, and
Reflexive Social. These are defined in terms of the Hyper Complex
Algebras
where the System is related to the real algebra, the Dissipative System
is
related to the complex algebra which adds conjunction, the Autopoietic
System is
related to the quaternion algebra which loses the commutative property,
the
Reflexive System is related to the octonion algebra which loses the
associative
property and the Meta-system is related to the sedenion non-division
algebra
and those above it. Holonic Special Systems are at the same time
partial
systems and partial meta-systemic fields. Meta-systems can be called
environments, ecosystems, ecologies, situations, contexts or milieus.
They are
the dual of the super-system which is a nested hierarchy of systems
within
systems within systems, or what is called a system of systems. The
meta-system
is a deconstruction of the super-system into the field that supports
the
sub-systems within the super-system.
We
posit that the nature of the holonic special systems is a model of
existence
rather than Being. However, we note that the kinds of Being delineate
these
kinds of existence.
Kinds
of Being |
Emergent
Systemic Levels |
|
System = thermodynamic-living-social
gestalt or flow |
Pure Being |
|
|
Holonic Dissipative Special System =
Thermodynamic |
Process Being |
|
|
Holonic Autopoietic Special System =
Living |
Hyper Being |
|
|
Holonic Reflexive Special System = Social |
Wild Being |
|
|
Meta-system = proto-gestalt or proto-flow |
This
is the way that Existence defines Being and vice versa. The meta-levels
of
Being define the special systems and the special systems define the
meta-levels
of Being. In this way duality and nonduality define each other as we
see in
mobius strips and klieinian bottles the anomalous non-orientable
surfaces in
topology. Existence and Being are complementary duals of each other
while
manifestation is Self dual. Existence is supra-rational comprehended
only by
the heart while Being is Paradoxical pushing reason into chaos.
Existence is
non-dual while Being is dualistic. But there is a deeper non-dual
beyond Inward
and Outward existence called manifestation. In manifestation reason is
maintained neither going to the extreme of paradoxicality or the
extreme of
supra-rationality. This is similar to the position of Dzong Ka Ba, the
Tibetan
Buddhist philosopher, who maintains that emptiness and reason are
compatible
even within the bounds of the acceptance of excluded middle.
When
the Buddha achieved enlightenment we posit that he discovered the
ground of
Existence beyond Being. His discovery was powerful because he exited
from the
Indo-European worldview which is saturated with Being into the realm of
Empty
Existence. However due to the idealistic prejudices of the Indian
culture this
resolution was different from the Void discovered by the Chinese
Taoists. In
China the indigenous view of existence as Void came into contact with
the
Buddhist concept of Emptiness. At first the Chinese thought that
Buddhism and
Taoism were the same. But eventually their appreciation of the
difference of
Buddhism and Taoism was refined until with Stonehouse we see both of
them at
the same time held in conjunction as empty
void or void emptiness.
Stripped of conditions
my mind is blank
emptied of existence my
nature is bare
often at night my
windows turn white
the moon and the stream
visit my door
Work with no mind and
all works stops
no more passion or sorrow
but don't think no mind
means you're done
the thought of no-mind
still remains
No mind in my work the
wind through the trees
no work in my mind the
moon through space
windsound and moonlight
wear away
one layer then another
If
we look at Buddhism and Taoism as well as Sufism for evidence of
knowledge of
the Special Systems we find it in the insistence on achieving balance
between
surplus and deficit. Under the Bodhi tree the Buddha discovered the
bedrock of
existence which is structured in terms of the holonomic special
systems. The
Taoists as well discovered these special forms which are embedded in
the void.
The void or emptiness is not completely empty of schemas, but instead
has the
schemas of the special systems embedded within it. It is because of
that
embedding of this special kind of ordering that normal schemas can
spring
spontaneously from the emptiness or void. If we look at Buddhism then
the three
jewels are Dharma Buddha and Sahgha. These correspond to the special
systems
where the Dharma is a Dissipative Order that is expressed as a
doctrine. The
Buddha is that doctrine embodied and thus is Autopoietic, i.e. he
becomes
impervious to the chain of causation called Samsara and achieves
nirvana. The
Sangha is the brotherhood of monks who have left home and reflect each
other
providing the continuity of teaching in the Buddhist tradition. Thus
the three
jewels are the embodiment of the Holonic special systems formations by
human
beings which live in the emptiness of existence. If we look at Taoism
the
picture is less clear, but we note that there is a relation between Yin
and
Yang which together form the Great Ultimate. That relation between Yin
and Yang
is produced based on their conjunction as we see in the trigrams and
hexagrams
of the I Ching. We can think of this progressive bisection of the
yin/yang
combinations at the various heuristic levels as an image of the
bifurcation of
the Hyper Complex Algebras via the Cayley-Dickson process. At each
heuristic
level the differentiation of Yin and Yang is merely a mirror of the
Great
Ultimate which is their source. In Taoism one is engulfed by nature as
it
expresses the dance of yin and yang in creation. The Confucian sage
sits at the
middle of the human world and contemplates how he is determined by it
but is
inwardly non-determinate. The Taoist sage sits in the middle of nature
as a
whole and realizes his unity with it, i.e. how he is determined by it
even
though he is himself indeterminate. The sufic practitioner who has his
eye on
the attributes of God does the same thing with respect to the Creator
who goes
beyond creation yet is closer to one than creation. In Islam the
structure of
the sunnah and sharia of the Prophet Muhammad[146]
has this same holonic structuring based on the special systems. In fact
there
is a belief in Islam that all the Prophets pointed to this same ground
in
different ways when they established their individual Sharias (i.e.
presence
and identity, good and order) as opposed to the Haqqiqat (i.e. the
reality and
truth, right and fate or debt) which is the same for all the prophets.
It is
fascinating that the aspects and non-duals are mixed together in the
meanings
of Sharia and Haqqiqat[147].
The point is that the sunnah and sharia of the Prophet Muhammad[148]
is the most complete embodiment of the special systems formations of
either of
the other traditions. However, we can recognize in both Buddhism and
Taoism
previous embodiments which maybe have some sort of prophetic origin. In
China
the prophet might have been Fu Hsi who might be Dhul Karnin in the
Quran.
Whether the Buddha was a prophet or not is unknown as he was silent on
any of
the meta-physical antinomies that he was asked, and thus was silent on
the
existence of God. The point is not so much that they were perhaps
prophets, but
more that each of these spiritual disciplines have different endpoints,
i.e.
goals, but all of them in one way or another exemplify the special
systems
formation which is the structure of empty or void existence and beyond
that of
the deeper non-dual of manifestation.
Understanding
the non-dual holons and their structure allows us to comprehend the
schemas
that the interpenetration of all things in the empty void takes. The
special
systems when combined with the system gives rise to the Emergent
Meta-system
which is a model of the dynamic by which the meta-system arises from
the
combination of the holons with the system. With the Emergent
Meta-system
systems arise from the void emptiness and return to the empty void. The
meta-system as described by the non-division hyper complex algebras
gives us a
picture of the jeweled net of interpenetration. Out of that jeweled net
because
of its internal ordering based on the special systems there arises
gestlts or
systems through the mediation of the Holonic special systems. This is
the
dynamism of Existence which is normally suppressed beneath the
projection of
Being. These traditions use this structure as the basis of their
modeling of
the relation between emptiness or void and creation. As the Taoists say
in the
Tao Te Ching all things spring from the gateway of the mysterious
female. The
mysterious female is the Void achieved through non-action. That void
gives rise
to everything. You do not have to do anything or produce anything, all
things
are already produced out of the void spontaneously without our
intervention.
The Buddhists go so far as to deny production or destruction. In other
words
they deny that anything other than the emptiness actually exists
because they
are intent on focusing on inward existence which does not need the
production
or destruction of the outward world. Taoists on the other hand find
their home
embedded in the void of the Outward Existence. Islamic Sufism
concentrates on
the non-dual between these two non-duals of void and emptiness.
Manifestation
is a fullness that fills the void emptiness or the empty void. As Sidi
Ali
al-Jamal says in his book The Meaning of Man . . .
Know that existence is
filled. It is never empty. Whoever wants to
empty it or says that it is empty, he is ignorant. Allah made its
filling vary
between senses and meaning. What increases the senses, decreases the
meaning.
What increases the meaning decreases the senses. Existence is always
filled by
the sense and the meaning. Had you scrutinized all existence, you would
not
find the weight of a mustard-seed empty of senses or meaning. This
analogy is
only understood by the one who plunges into the sea of meanings. May
Allah have
mercy on ash-Shitri when he said:
Do not look at the
vessels.
Dive into the sea of
meanings.
Perhaps you will see Me
In the company of the
Sufis.
Whoever wants the
meanings must destroy the senses. Whoever wants the
senses, must destroy the meanings. The senses are separation and the
meanings
are gatheredness. The meaning does not come to the senses, except by
that the
senses leave, and the senses do not come to the meaning, but that the
meaning
leaves. Existence is filled between them always either by this one or
that one.
Emptiness is impossible.[149]
CONCLUSION
The
holonic schema nestled as the non-dual between the System and the
Meta-system
is the model for existence which is the complementary opposite of
Being. Unless
we recognize the nature of Being and find our way out of its
fragmentation into
Existence we can never know of the deeper non-dual between them of
manifestation. Special Systems Theory and the Theory of the Emergent
Meta-systems is a route toward this understanding which allows us to
appreciate
the nature of genuine spirituality. Genuine spirituality goes beyond
all the
schemas, but there are also special hidden schemas that point directly
to the
nature of existence which is structured differently than Being. Between
these
two structures one implicit in the emptiness or void and the other
explicit in
Being we get a glimpse of the truly non-dual formlessness of
manifestation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Would like to thank my mentor Ian Dallas,
as well as
Ben Goertzel, Onar Aam, Bob Cummings and Owen Ware.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kent Palmer is a Principle Systems
Engineer at a
major Aerospace Systems Company. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology
concentrating
on Philosophy of Science from the
London School of Economics and a B.Sc. in Sociology from the University
of
Kansas. His dissertation on The Structure of Theoretical Systems in
Relation
to Emergence[150] focused on how new things come into
existence
within the Western Philosophical and Scientific worldview. He has
written extensively
on the roots of the Western Worldview in his electronic book The
Fragmentation of Being and the Path Beyond the Void[151]. He had at least seventeen years
experience[152] in
Software Engineering and Systems Engineering disciplines at major
aerospace
companies based in Orange County CA. He served several years as the
chairman of
a Software Engineering Process Group and is now engaged in Systems
Engineering
Process improvement based on EIA 731 and CMMI. He has presented a
tutorial on
“Advanced Process Architectures[153]” which concerned engineering wide
process
improvement including both software and systems engineering. Besides
process
experience, he has recently been a software team lead on a Satellite
Payload
project and a systems engineer on a Satellite Ground System project. He
has
also engaged in independent research in Systems Theory which has
resulted in a
book of working papers called Reflexive Autopoietic Systems Theory[154]. A new introduction to this work now
exists called Reflexive
Autopoietic Dissipative Special Systems Theory[155]. He has given a tutorial[156] on “Meta-systems
Engineering” to the INCOSE
Principles working group. He has written a series on Software
Engineering
Foundations which are contained in the book Wild Software
Meta-systems[157]. He now teaches a course in
“Software Requirements
and Design Methodologies” at the University California Irvine
Extension. He may
be reached at kent@palmer.name.
SIG: Living Systems Analysis
ABSTRACT
PALMER, K. D.
PAPER TITLE: Not Written
Trace Studies Institute, Box 1632, Orange, CA 92856 USA E-mail: kent@palmer.name
Special
Systems theory
is the first mathematically based theory of life. Briefly it
distinguishes
between Systems and Meta-systems (ecosystems or environments) and then
identifies hidden between them three special systems called dissipative
(Prigogine), autopoietic (Maturana & Varella) and reflexive
(O'Malley,
Sandywell). These three special systems are neg-entropic and
ultra-efficacious
(ultra-efficient and ultra-effective). Living systems are a composite
of these
three special systems the middle of which gives static balance by a
maintenance
of organization by self-production while the other two give dynamic
balance.
This combination of static and dynamic balance gives living social
systems
their adaptability and resilience within changing meta-systemic
environments.
This theory is based on the mathematics of HyperComplex Algebras and
has
several physical examples of anomalous phenomena to substantiate that
such
special systems actually exist in nature even at the non-living levels.
The
existence of Special Systems as holons which exist non-dually between
systems
and meta-systems gives a completely new theory of living social systems
of a
classical scientific nature but with many strange and unexpected
corollaries
due to the nature of the underlying mathematical model. Hypercomplex
numbers
have been known since about 1850 but have never before been articulated
as a
systems theory and applied to understanding phenomena like neg-entropy,
life
and sociality. Due to the interesting structure of the mathematical
underpinnings of the theory, it is necessary to rethink the structural
basis of
these phenomena. For instance, Maturana and Varella's theory of
autopoiesis has
to be completely rethought on the basis of this new mathematical model.
The
model allows us to understand the emergent steps from anomalous
dissipative
structures of Pirgogoine, to living things which are a symbiotic
conjunction of
two dissipative special systems, and on to the understanding of
reflexive
special systems which are inherently social as a conjunction of four
dissipative special systems or two autopoietic special systems. The
combination
of these three kinds of special systems with normal open systems give
us
various formations one of which is the Emergent Meta-system which is an
interesting variation on the Genetic Algorithm. The emergent
meta-system gives
us a dynamic picture of how the special systems interoperate with
normal
systems to give us a model of meta-systems. This in turn gives us a
mathematically founded image of Gaia which is a interpenetrating and
dynamic
model of various autopoietic social species cooperating together to
form a rich
environment which is produced by the organisms that it contains. The
paper that
describes fully these results is at See
http://archonic.net/autopoiesis.html. The paper I would
write for
your session would be a summary of the argument of this longer paper.
PAPER TITLE: Not Written
Kent D. Palmer
Trace Studies Institute
Box 1632 Orange CA 92856 USA
SUMMARY
See Abstract.
Keywords Life Ontology, Holonomics, Meta-Systems,
Special Systems
INTRODUCTION
THIS
PAPER WAS NOT BE WRITTEN DUE TO LIMITATIONS SET BY THE PROGRAM
CHAIR.
[1] The paper may be found at http://server.snni.com/~palmer/autopoiesis.html
[2] Kondepudi, D. K. with Ilya Prigogine, Modern Thermodynamics : from heat engines to dissipative structures. Chichester ; New York : John Wiley & Sons, c1998. Also Glansdorff, P. and I. Prigogine. Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, stability and fluctuations. London, New York, Wiley-Interscience [1971]
[3] Maturana, Humberto R. and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition : the realization of the living. Dordrecht, Holland ; Boston : D. Reidel Pub. Co., c1980.
[4] Mingers, John. Self-producing Systems : implications and applications of autopoiesis.New York : Plenum Press, c1995.
[5] O'Malley, John B.. Sociology of Meaning. London, Human Context Books. 1972
[6] Sandywell, Barry. Logological Investigations. London ; New York : Routledge, 1996. v. 1 to 3.
[7] See also the following papers presented at ISSS2000: New General Schemas Theory: Systems, Holons, Meta-Systems & Worlds in the Research Toward a General Theory of Systems SIG; and Intertwining Of Duality And Nonduality in the Duality Theory SIG.
[8] We say hermeneutical phenomenology here because as Heidegger shows in Being & Time this Neg-entropic Living Social Phenomenology needs to augmented by a hermeneutics that looks beyond the immediately given in order to produce understanding which always must go beyond what the information given to represent real understanding.
[9] Which is short for Neg-entropic Living Social Hermeneutical Phenomenology.
[10] Henry Corbin in Mundus imaginalis : or, The imaginary and the imaginal. Ipswich : Golgonooza Press, 1976. This is the Imaginal Realm which Fred Alan Wolf in his book Dreaming Universe posits as having a quantum mechanical nature which unites observer with the observed. See Wolf, Fred Alan. The Dreaming Universe : a mind-expanding journey into the realm where psyche and physics meet New York : Simon & Schuster, c1994.
[11] which is by the way intrinsically non-dual and imaginal
[12] Husserl, Edmund, The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology; an introduction to phenomenological philosophy. Translated, with an introd., by David Carr. Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1970.
[13] Sadler, William Alan. Existence & Love; a new approach in existential phenomenology, New York, Scribner 1969.
[14] Bergson, Henri, Matter and Memory. Translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer, London, G. Allen & Unwin; New York, Macmillan, 1950.
[15] Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism: a philosophical essay. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1969.
[16] Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Translated by Howard Greenfeld. Boston : Beacon Press, 1967.
[17] Loy, David. Nonduality : a study in comparative philosophy. New Haven : Yale University Press, c1988.
[18] Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time. Translated by John MacQuarrie and Edward Robinson. London, SCM Press, c1962.
[19] Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology; translated by Gayatri Chakravorty. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
[20] Lacan calls this lacuna the "Sign of the Father." See Lacan, Jacques, Selections. Écrits : a selection; translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. New York : Norton, c1977.
[21] Fred Alan Wolf in Dreaming Universe provides us with the first cogent theory of how this macro-quantum mechanics may be experienced through our dreams and the dreams of everything in the universes.
[22] Chalmers, David John, The Conscious Mind : in search of a fundamental theory. New York : Oxford Press, 1996.
[23] Deutsch, David, The Fabric of Reality : the science of parallel universes-- and its implications, David Deutsch. New York : Allen Lane, c1997.
[24] We may trace this back to Democritus, the father of atomic theory, who researched the eidolons emitted from all bodies. Lindsay, Jack, The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt. New York, Barnes & Noble, 1970. Page 95.
[25] Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Visible and the Invisible; followed by working notes. Edited by Claude Lefort. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston [Ill.] Northwestern University Press, 1968.
[26] Deleuze, Gilles. Anti-Oedipus : capitalism and schizophrenia. Translated from the French by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. New York : Viking Press, 1977.
[27] Deleuze, Gilles. A Thousand Plateaus : capitalism and schizophrenia Translation and foreword by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c1987.
[28] Hans, James S., The Play of the World. Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1981.
[29] Plotnitsky, Arkady. Complementarity : anti-epistemology after Bohr and Derrida. Durham : Duke University Press, 1994.
[30] Castoriadis, Cornelius. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1987.
[31] See S.T.A. Pickell, J. Kolasa, G.G. Jones, Ecological Understanding . Academic Press 1994.
[32] Bataille, Georges, The Accursed Share : an essay on general. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York : Zone Books, 1988-1991.
[33] Plotnitsky, Arkady. Complementarity : anti-epistemology after Bohr and Derrida. Durham : Duke University Press, 1994.
[35] In the sense of mathematical category theory.
[36] http://archonic.net/disab.html
You may also try http://dialog.net:85/homepage/
or http://think.net/homepage/ for any of the web related material.
[44]
A paper on this new
extension to
General Systems Theory called Reflexive Autopoietic Dissipative Special
Systems
Theory exists at http://archonic.net/autopoiesis.html.
See also the following papers presented at ISSS2000: Defining Life And
The
Living Ontologically And Holonomically in the What is Life and Living?
SIG; and
Intertwining Of Duality And Nonduality in the Duality Theory SIG.
References
are given in the first paper where the reference is mentioned.
[45] Koestler, Arthur. Janus : a summing up. New York : Random House, c1978.
[46] Klir, George J., Architecture of Systems Problem Solving. New York : Plenum Press, c1985.
[47] As mentioned in "Defining Life and Living Ontologically and Holonomically" by "Social Phenomenology" we really mean "Neg-entropic Living Social Hermeneutical Phenomenology" which we have called the "Primary or Archaic Situation".
[48] Husserl, Edmund, Ideas : general introduction to pure phenomenology. Translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson. London : Allen & Unwin ; New York : Macmillan, 1931.
[49] Gurwitsch, Aron. Field of Consciousness. Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1964.
[50] Fuller, R. Buckminster Synergetics; explorations in the geometry of thinking. New York, Macmillan, 1975-79, 2 volumes.
[51] Grenander, Ulf. Elements of Pattern Theory. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, c1996.
[52] Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. New York, Macmillan 1953
[53] Rescher, Nicholas. Cognitive Systematization : a systems-theoretic approach to a coherentist theory of knowledge, Totowa, N.J. : Rowman and Littlefield, 1979.
[54] Sartre, Jean Paul, Critique of Dialectical Reason. Translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith ; edited by Jonathan Rée. London : NLB, 1976.
[55] For a more in-depth analysis of the relation of this view of systems theory to systems engineering see the author’s “Meta-systems Engineering: A New Approach to Systems Engineering based on Emergent Meta-Systems and Holonomic Special Systems Theory”, International Council of Systems Engineers (INCOSE) 2000
[56] Note that these archetypal patterns in the masculine and feminine psyche are patterned on age related groups of the parents at marriageable age (Animus, Anima) and the grandparents (Wise Old Man, Cathonic Female).
[57] Central Processing Unit
[58] Narin, Stephen. The Cayley-Dickson Process . Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, Santa Barbara, 1974.
[59] Normally negative dimensionality is not recognized in geometry. It is a recent realization of the author that negative dimensionality follows the Pascal triangle of the Cayley-Dickson process down to infinity so that negative dimension is a subspace of sources which is the dual of the points of origin in normal positive dimensionality. Sources are everywhere while origin points are specifically located but dimensionless. Negative dimensionality appears in this way because the first dimension past zero is negative one which is the singularity where the imaginaries appear. Thus the sub-space of negative dimensionality is entirely imaginary and is a horizon of all possible sources at some level of hyper-complex algebra. In this space there is one source at negative dimension one giving an imaginary algebra, three at negative dimension two giving a quaternion algebra, seven at negative dimension three giving an octonion algebra, fifteen at negative dimension four giving a sedenion algebra, etc. In other words, negative dimensionality is imaginary and is not merely the inversion of positive dimensionality which is meaningless mathematically. There is an important phase transition between positive and negative dimensionality at negative dimension one which has not been recognized by geometry or algebra. Algebras form the underpinning of geometry in the subspace of negative dimensionality.
[60] Thom, René, Mathematical Models of Morphogenesis, Translated by W.M. Brookes, D. Rand. Chichester : Ellis Horwood ; New York : Halsted Press, 1983.
[61] Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London ; Boston : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981,
[62] Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building. New York : Oxford University Press, 1979. Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language : towns, buildings, construction with Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel. New York : Oxford University Press, 1977.
[63] See "Thinking Through Cyberspace" a presentation by the author at http://dialog.net:85/uciconf1/index.htm
[64] Polanyi, Michael, The Tacit Dimension. Garden City, N.Y., Anchor Books 1967, c1966 1962.
[65] Pickett, Steward T., Ecological Understanding. With Jurek Kolasa, Clive G. Jones. San Diego : Academic Press, c1994.
[66] Or hiatus, or lacuna, or moments, or loci
[67] See http://www.innerx.net/personal/tsmith/Dixon.html
[68] Kantor, I. L.. Hypercomplex Numbers : an elementary introduction to algebras. Translated by A. Shenitzer. New York : Springer-Verlag, c1989.
[69] Graves, Robert Perceval. Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton. New York : Arno Press, 1975. See also Hamilton, William Rowan, Sir, Elements of Quaternions., By the late Sir William Rowan Hamilton ... Ed. by his son, William Edwin Hamilton ... London, Longmans, Green, & co., 1866.
[70] Altmann, Simon L., Rotations, Quaternions, and Double Groups. Oxford [Oxfordshire] : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1986. See also Hardy, Arthur Sherburne, 1847-1930. Elements of Quaternions. Boston, Ginn, Heath, & co., 1881. See also Hathaway, Arthur S. A Primer of Quaternions. New York, Macmillan and co.; London, & co., ltd., 1896. See also Joly, Charles Jasper, A Manual of Quaternions. London, Macmillan and co., limited; New York, The Macmillan company, 1905. See also Kelland, Philip, Introduction to Quaternions, with Peter Guthrie Tait. Prepared by C. G. Knott. London, Macmillan; New York, Macmillan, 1904. See also Macfarlane, Alexander, Bibliography of Quaternions and Allied Systems of Mathematics. Dublin, Printed at the University Press by Ponsonby and Gibbs, 1904. See also Tait, Peter Guthrie, An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1867. See also Ward, J. P., Quaternions and Cayley Numbers : algebra and applications. Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, c1997.
[71] Helmut Salzmann. Compact Projective Planes : with an introduction to octonion geometry. Berlin ; New York : Walter de Gruyter, 1995. See also Okubo, S. Introduction to Octonion and other Non-associative Algebras in Physics. Cambridge ; New : Cambridge University Press, 1995. See also McAulay, Alex. Octonions : A Development of Clifford's Bi-quaterions. Cambridge, [Eng.] : University Press, 1898. See also Dixon, Geoffrey M. Division Algebras : octonions, quaternions, complex numbers, and the algebraic design of physics. Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, c1994.
[72] See Tony Smith’s theory of everything at http://www.innerx.net/personal/tsmith/TShome.html
[73] See http://www.innerx.net/personal/tsmith/sedenion.html
[74]Yan, Song Y. Perfect, Amicable, and Sociable Numbers : a computational approach. Singapore ; River Edge, .J. : World Scientific, c1996. See also http://xraysgi.ims.uconn.edu:8080/amicable.html; See also http://www.vejlehs.dk/staff/jmp/aliquot/tables.htm and http://www.vejlehs.dk/staff/jmp/aliquot/apstat.htm
[76] There are other cycles, however. “There are 60 [known] cycles in all: 53 of length 4, 1 of length 5, 2 of length 6, 2 of length 8, 1 of length 9, and 1 of length 28.” See A LIST OF ALIQUOT CYCLES OF LENGTH GREATER THAN 2 at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SociableNumbers.html by David Moews.
[77] See “Autopoietic Meta-theory: Paradox and Supra-rationality” and “The Ontological Foundations of Autopoietic Theory” by the author at http://archonic.net/autopoiesis.html
[78] Aczel, Peter, Non-well-founded Sets. Foreword by Jon Barwise. Stanford, CA : Center for the Study of Language and Information, c1988.
[79] Cook, Francis Harold, Hua-yen Buddhism : the jewel net of Indra. University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, c1977.
[80] onar@intellegenisis.com
[82] Goertzel, Ben. Chaotic Logic : language, thought, and reality from the perspective of complex systems science. New York : Plenum Press, c1994.
[83] See Ons -- a theory of truly elementary particles, explaining the emergence of structure from void inpsychology and physics; See also Universe as Network: The Standard Model plus Gravity as a Consequence of Simple Transformation Rules on DiscreteEvent Networks, with Tony Smith, Onar Aam and Kent Palmer; See also Ons Algebra: The Foundations of Being and Time; See also Ons Algebra: The Emergence of Quaternionic,Octonionic and Clifford Algebra Structure From Laws of Multiboundary Form, with Tony Smith, Onar Aam and Kent Palmer at http://goertzel.org/ben/ben_research.html
[84] Kauffman, Stuart A. The Origins of Order : self-organization and selection in evolution. New York : Oxford University Press, 1993.
[85] Kauffman, Stuart A. At Home in the Universe : the search for laws of self-organization and complexity. New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.
[86] Bob Cummings had this insight.
[87] R. Wilhelm & C.F. Baynes. I Ching or Book of Changes. Pantheon 1950.
[88] http://archonic.net/disab.html
You may also try http://dialog.net:85/homepage/
or http://think.net/homepage/ for any of the web related material.
[96] This paper may be found at http://archonic.net/autopoiesis.html
[97] Loy, David, Nonduality : a study in comparative philosophy. New Haven : Yale University Press, c1988.
[98] This paper may be found at http://archonic.net/autopoiesis.html
[99] Loy, David, Nonduality : a study in comparative philosophy. New Haven : Yale University Press, c1988.
[100] See also the following papers presented at ISSS2000: Defining Life And The Living Ontologically And Holonomically in the What is Life and Living? SIG; and New General Schemas Theory: Systems, Holons, Meta-Systems & Worlds in the Research Toward a General Theory of Systems SIG. References are given in the first paper where the reference is mentioned.
[101] Sankara's Avidia Vedanta, which is another non-dual philosophy, interprets Existence as a kind of Being in this way. We prefer to follow Nagarjuna who recognized that Being ends at the fourth meta-level. Whatever is at the fifth meta-level or beyond is maya or illusion.
[102] Sextus Empiricus. Outlines of Scepticism. Translated by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes. Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1994.
[103] See "Wholeness as the Body of Paradox" at http://focusing.org/Rosen.html
[104] A hyper-kleinian bottle joins two bi-toridal kleinian bottles along their circles of self-intersection. In other words where a toridal kleinian bottle has a figure eight cross section, a hyper-kleinian bottle has a four leaf clover cross section.
[105] Rosen, S. M. Science, paradox, and the Moebius principle. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1994.
[106] Copi, Irving M. The Theory of Logical Types. London, Routledge and K. Paul, 1971.
[107] This hypersphere is formed from the two independent circles of self-intersection of the two kleinian bottles that are joined to form the hyper-kleinian bottle as seen in four dimensional space.
[108] In physics called multi-Monopoles. See Duality and Supersymmetric Theories, edited by David I. Olive and Peter C. West. Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1999.
[109] Bardeen, John, Understanding Superconductivity. Philadelphia, American Society for Testing and Materials, 1964. Billings, Charlene W.. Superconductivity : from discovery to breakthrough .New York : Cobblehill Books/Dutton, c1991. Blatt, John Markus. Theory of Superconductivity. New York, Academic Press, 1964. Bogoliubov, N. N.. The Theory of Superconductivity. New York, Gordon and Breach, 1968, c1962. Crisan, M.. Theory of Superconductivity. Singapore ; Teaneck, N.J. : World Scientific, c1989.
[110] Wick, David, The Infamous Boundary : seven decades of controversy in quantum physics. With a mathematical appendix by William Farris. Boston : Birkhauser, 1995.
[111] Deutsch, David, The Fabric of Reality : the science of parallel universes-- and its implications. New York : Allen Lane, c1997.
[112] Manifestation is the deepest level of disclosure beyond Existence and Being. It is non-dual between Existence and Being. See An Approach Toward Being, Existence and Manifestation at http://archonic.net/fe00v01.pdf
[113] The Extremal is the mixture of Paradoxicality and Supra-Rationality. It is the antipode to Manifestation. See :Autopoietic Meta-theory: Paradox and Supra-rationality" at http://archonic.net/autopoiesis.html
[114] Called by the Alchemists the Philosopher's Stone (Lapis).
[115] This insight came from Bob Cummings.
[116] http://archonic.net/disab.html
You may also try http://dialog.net:85/homepage/
or http://think.net/homepage/ for any of the web related material.
[125] The Attack of the Blob : Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (University of Chicago Press; 1998)
[126]
Those
point toward manifestation which is the non-dual between existence and
being.
So for instance the attributes of God, i.e. Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva, beyond
Atman
are known by the fact that they are non-other, i.e. in the field of
othenesses
God cannot be other but is the single and unique non-other. But this
does not
mean that God is Pantheistically identical to the Self. The Godhead as
well can
be understood as the non-dual beyond and within the attributes of God.
[127] Hell on earth.
[128] Or completeness, clarity, consistencey verifiablity, or validity
[129] http://archonic.net/disab.html
You may also try http://dialog.net:85/homepage/
or http://think.net/homepage/ for any of the web related material.
[137] ISSS 2000 Toronto
[138] The Extremal is the mixture of Paradoxicality and Supra-Rationality. It is the antipode to Manifestation. See :Autopoietic Meta-theory: Paradox and Supra-rationality" at http://archonic.net/autopoiesis.html
[139] Manifestation is the deepest level of disclosure beyond Existence and Being. It is non-dual between Existence and Being. See An Approach Toward Being, Existence and Manifestation at http://archonic.net/fe00v01.pdf
[140] Benjamin Jowett translation
[141] Womb of Thus-come, a name for the Buddha
[142] Michael Henry
[143] "There is no god, only Allah" is the axiom of Islam.
[144] In Arabic 'Dhat.'
[145] The Zen Works of Stonehouse by Red Pine (Mercury House San Francisco 1999) pages 51-53
[146] Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him
[147] See Lane's Lexicon of the Arabic Language
[148] Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him
[149] The Meaning of Man by Sidi Ali Al Jamal (Diwan Press 1977) page 93
[150] http://archonic.net/disab.html
You may also try http://dialog.net:85/homepage/
or http://think.net/homepage/ for any of the web related material.