Challenges to Comprehension Implied by the Logo
of Laetus in Praesens
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8th January 1983

Complexification of Integration

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Part 7 of Development through Alternation. Augmented version of a paper originally prepared for Integrative Working Group B of the Goals, Processes and Indicators of Development (GPID) project of the Human and Social Development Programme of the United Nations University (UNU). This document was originally distributed as a separate monograph in 1983. The paper provides a structure linking reviews of alternation as it emerges in studies from a wide range of sources. The paper is in 9 separate parts [searchable PDF version]

0. Introduction / Abstract

1. Monopolarization
1.1. Questionable answers
1.2. Forms of truth
1.3. Accumulative answers
1.4. Developing a new "meta-answer"
1.5. Decodification of analyses of capital accumulation
1.6. "New International Conceptual Order"
1.7. Accumulation and development
1.8. Development of accumulation
1.9. Domains of significance

2. Antagonistic dualities: polarization and paradox
2.1. Oppositional logic
2.2. Polarity
2.3. Paradoxes and antinomies

3. A third perspective
3.1. Beyond method
3.2. Constraints on a meta-answer
3.3. Meta-answer patterning
3.4. Containing discontinuity through aesthetics
3.5. Observer entrapment and micro-macro complementarity
3.6. Order through fluctuation: dissipative structures
3.7. Opening and closing: alternation for discontinuous learning
3.8. Third-perspective "containers": patterns of alternation
3.9. Revolutionary cycles of alternation
3.10. Trialectics: a logic of the whole

4. Threshold of comprehenisibility: a fourfold minimal container?
4.1. Omnitriangulation: interlocking cycles
4.2. Number and time
4.3. Logos and lemma for interparadigmatic dialogue
4.4. Epistemological mindscapes
4.5. Complementary languages
4.6. Nonlinear cybernetics
4.7. Modes of managing

5. Further constraints on conceptual container design
5.1. Cyclic self-organization requirements
5.2. Encompassing system dynamics
5.3. Encompassing varieties of form

6. Comprehension and learning
6.1. Non-comprehension "holes"
6.2. Discontinuity: comprehension and internalization
6.3. Pattern accumulation in a learning society

7. Complexification of integration
7.1. General systems and holonomy
7.2. Cognitive systematization
7.3. Wholeness and the implicate order
7.4. Health and space-time
7.5. Dissonant harmony and holistic resonance

8. Development of comprehension and compehension of development
8.1. Interwoven alternatives: organizational tensegrity and resonance hybrids
8.2. Non-comprehension as a structuring characteristic of a learning society
8.3. Learning cycles
8.4. Patterns of alternation: a musical key from a political philosopher
8.5. Patterns of alternation: an agricultural key from crop rotation
8.6. The entropic crisis and the learning response
8.7. Alternation between energetic expansion and mentalistic reduction
8.8. Uncertainty: the source of meaning
8.9. Morphic resonance
8.10. Toward an enantiomorphic policy
8.11. Game comprehension and identity transformation
8.12. Ecodynamics and societal evolution
8.13. Language of probabilistic vision of the world

9. Implications
9.1. Implications for agreement and consensus
9.2. Implications for action formulation
9.3. Implications for values and norms
9.4. Implications for organizations
9.5. Implications for unemployment
9.6. Implications for the developmental responsibility of answer domains
9.7. Implications for forms of presentation
9.8. Implications for information processing
9.9. Implications for the human self-image

10. Conclusions

Notes
References


7.1 General systems and holonomy

The most deliberate effort to clarify the nature and possibilities of integration has been made through general systems research (84, 85). This has of necessity involved the perspectives of many disciplines. Efforts, such as those of J G Miller (86), have brought a very extensive range of phenomena within the same framework. General systems has not however been very successful in bringing its insights to bear upon the world problematique, despite deliberate efforts to do so (87, 88). Part of the problem seems to lie in the esentially left-hemisphere approach to describing, explaining, and classifying systems. This has not met the needs of those participating in systems, however valuable it has been to those observing such systems.

It is therefore interesting to note the recent effort by J S Stamps to "marry" the insights of general systems research with those of humanistic psychology, as an "integration of conscious systems with concrete systems", in which mind and system are perceived as complementary (89). Stamps interrelates general systems taxonomies of recent decades to provide a "multi-dimensional elaboration of the fundamental principles of complementary process and level structure" which indicates the "limits of integration and transformation" at each level. The final design of Stamps heuristic taxonomy arises from the combination of two ideas which he believes have not previously been related:

"Namely, that the complementarity between awareness and organization can be applied to the distinction between abstracted and concrete systems and theories. A taxonomy with this feature becomes a potential "Rosetta stone" for translating abstracted scientific language into conrete scientific language...(And secondly) is the suggestion that the form and processes of both individuality and collectivity evolve. To the conventional notion that phylogeny evolves and ontogeny develops, I have added the idea that phylogeny also develops and ontogeny also evolves. The importance of being able to make an argument such as this is enormous, for it places the human individual into a context of onthological equality with the many layers and types of human and social organization." (89, p.204)

Stamps makes a deliberate attempt to move beyond Cartesian dualism, especially in the light of research on the bicameral mind. The limitation of this approach, as discussed elsewhere (26) lies in his implication that a heuristic taxonomy does not contain inherent limitations in a society which is increasingly resistant to such hierarchical orderings, whether conceptual or otherwise. Some of these limitations emerge in the work of Rescher, discussed in the next section, where such orderings are contrasted with a "network" organization of knowledge. Ironically, Stamps subsequently co-authored a book on "networking" for practitioners, which emphasizes this other perspective (1).

Stamps uses Arthur Koestler's term "holon" as referring to complex entities, particularly organisms and people, which are simultaneously whole individuals and participating parts of more encompassing wholes (90). From it he names his approach "holonomy" as being a systems theory which acknowledges the place of the human individual. This new term has also been recently used by Bohm in a rather different sense, as noted below.

7.2 Cognitive systematization

In order to clarify the implications of the previous sections for some integrated approach to human and social development, it is appropriate to consider the current status of cognitive systemization. This has been the concern of Nicholas Rescher who explores the reason for systematization in the cognitive domain and shows how this is one of the crucial features of the development of knowledge (91). It is to be expected that the pattern of insights and conclusions would be relevant to development in general.

Rescher identifies eleven definitive characteristics of systematicity: wholeness, completeness, self-sufficiency, cohesiveness, consonance, architectonic structure, functional unity, functional regularity, functional simplicity, mutual supportinveness, and functional efficacy (91, p.10)). He points out, citing C S Peirce, that the need for understanding through a unified view of things is as real as any of man's physical cravings, and more powerful than many of them. The above characteristics "are constitutive components of that systemacity through which alone understanding can be achieved". (91, p.29) The point of cognitive systematization in reational terms is that (a) it is the prime vehicle for understanding by making claims intelligible, (b) it authenticates the adequacy of the organization of knowledge, (c) it is a vehicle of cognitive quality control, providing a test of acceptability, and (d) it provides the definitive constituting criterion of knowledge (91, p.29-38). Similar points could be usefully made about the integration of development.

The alternative modes of cognitive systematization are distinguished by Rescher. These are foundationalism, based on a "Euclidean model of a linear, deductive exfoliation from basic axiones "and coherentism, a network model of cyclic systematization of interrelated theses (91, p.39). The Euclidean model is typical of the logic governing formalized (intergovernmental) development programmes based on a set of principles. The network model is typical of the logic of "grass-roots development movements. From the network perspective, the Euclidean model imposes a drastic limitation by "inflating what is at most a local feature of derivation from the underived (i.e. locally underived) into a global feature that endows the whole system with an axiomatic structure". Thus although "a network system gives up Euclideanism at the global level of its over-all structure, it may still exhibit a locally Euclidean aspect, having local neighbourhoods whose systematic structure is deductive/axiomatic" (91, p.44-45)

The network model shifts the perspective, as Maruyama also notes, from unidirectional dependency to reciprocal interconnection, abandoning the concept of priority or fundamentality in its arrangement of these. "It replaces such fundamentally by a conception of enmeshment in a unifying web" (91, p.46-47), whereas the Euclidean approach gives priority to derivation from what is better understood or more fundamental.

Rescher notes (91, p.58-59) basic weakness in the latter approach was however demonstrated by Kurt Goedel (92), who showed both that the consistency of any formal axionatic system can never be proved, and that the deductive axiomatization of any such system was inherently incomplete. There are therefore always "true" statements in a given domain that cannot be derived from the chosen axioms. It would seem that this too has important implications for the limitations of development programmes elaborated on the basis of pre-determined sets of principles in some "declaration" or "world plan of action", especially since Rescher indicates the possibility of a breakdown of deductivism in the factual sciences as well (91, p.176).

Rescher also provides a valuable analysis of the limits to cognitive systematization. He identifies three possibilities: incompletability, inconsequence (or disconnectedness, compartrnentalization), and inconsistency (or incoherence). With regard to the first, he notes that it is unrealistic to expect either attainment of a completed and final state of factual knowledge, or a condition in which all questions are answered. "Accordingly, we have little alternative but to take the humbling view that the incompleteness of our information entails its incorrectness, as well" (91, p.152-3). In a more highly developed future, fundamental errors will be perceived in present formulations and programmes - as we can already detect in the development strategies of past decades.

With regard to disconnectedness, the second possibility, Rescher argues that this cannot characterize the body of our factual knowledge as a whole which can always be joined by mediating connections of common relevancy (91, p.164). The problem is rather that despite such causal linkage, there could well fail to be connections in meaning between two domains. The fundamental causal matrix in which all natural occurrences are bound together "might merely be a purely formal unity, lacking any sufficient substantive basis of functional connectedness." Nature might come to be shown as operating in an essentially compartmentalized manner. Furthermore, Rescher notes, gaps in the knowledge attainable at any time might in practice block realization of any underlying interconnectedness. This issue of compartrnentalization is of course of crucial importance in the design of interdisciplinary development programmes, for which no adequate methodology has yet emerged, partly because of separative behaviour characteristic of disciplines.

With regard to the third possibility, Rescher sees inconsistency as lying at the root of the urge to systematicity. It is the very drive toward completeness that enjoins the toleration of inconsistency upon us. But rather than implying no system at all, any inconsistency-embracing world picture involves the toleration of ungainly systems of deficient systemacity (91, p.176-7). It is a question of degree.

7.3 Wholeness and the implicate order

As a theoretical physicist, David Bohm is concerned with the illusory nature of fragmentation (93 ??, 94) and the manner in which distinct fragments emerge from wholeness in movement (8). He sees the perceptual problems with which he deals as being as relevant to a more healthy response to psychosocial fragmentation as to the problems of fundamental physics. The value of Bohm's perspective for understanding healthy individual development has in fact been recently stressed by a physician Larry Dossey (95).

For Bohm:

"the widespread pervasive distinctions between people (race, nation, family, profession, etc.), which are now preventing mankind from working together for the common good, and indeed, even for survival, have one of the key factors of their origin in a kind of thought that treats things as inherently divided, disconnected, and 'broken up' into yet smaller constituent parts...considered to be essentially independent and self-existent". (8, p. XI)

Attempting to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is then what leads to the growing series of extremely urgent crises with which society is confronted. "Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it." (8, p.2) And yet the seeming practicality and convenience of the process of divisive thinking about things supplies man with "an apparent proof of the correctness of his fragmentary self-world view."

Basing his investigations on insights from the current state of physics, Bohm focuses "on the subtle but crucial role of our general formes of thinking in sustaining fragmentation and in defeating our deepest urges toward wholeness or integrity." (8, p.3) He arrives at the conclusion that "our general world view is itself an overall movement of thought, which has to be viable in the sense that the totality of activities that flow out of it are generally in harmony, both in themselves and with regard to the whole existence." (8, p.XII) This view implies that "flow is, in some sense, prior to that of the 'things' that can be seen to form and dissolve in this flow". (8, p.11) Thus the "various patterns that can be abstracted from it have a certain relative autonomy and stability, which is indeed provided for by the universal law of the flowing movement". (8, p.11)

Of special relevance to the question of human and social development, is that the above-mentioned desirable harmony "is seen to be possible only if the world view itself takes part in an unending process of development, evolution, and unfoldment, which fits as part of the universal process that is the ground of all existence." (8, p.XII) This has the merit of grounding the concept of development in movement from which appropriate conceptual and social forms temporarily arise, rather than, as is presently done, starting from some 'thing' (e.g. a society, a community, or a person) which has to be stimulated into a process of movement and change that is then called "development" (under certain conditions).

Bohm cautions against the expectations of quick remedies:

"To ask how to end fragmentation and to expect an answer in a few minutes makes even less sense than to ask how to develop a theory as new as Einstein's was when he was working on it, and to expect to be told what do to in terms of some programme, expressed in terms of formulae or recipes....What is needed, however, is somehow to grasp the overall formative cause of fragmentation, in which content and actual process are seen together, in their wholeness." (8, p.18)

As he notes, this confronts us with a very difficult challenge: "How are we to think coherently of a single, unbroken, flowing actuality of existence as a whole, containing both thought (consciousness) and external reality as we experience it?" (8, p.X) The approach he suggests requires looking at the challenge in a new way. Instead of aiming for some reflective correspondence between "thought" and "reality as a whole", the process of thinking about reality as a whole can more usefully be thought of as a kind of "dance of the mind" (determing, and being determined) which functions indicatively. (8, p.55-6)

He uses the indicative role of the well-known bee-dance as an analogy (although the element of "alternation" in any such dance should not be overlooked). As with Attali, Bohm emphasizes that "thought with totality as its content has to be considered as an art form, like poetry, whose function is primarily to give rise to new perception, and to action that is implicit in this perception, rather than to communicate reflective knowledge of 'how everything is'" (8, p.63). There can no more be an ultimate form of such thought (or of any principles or programmes to which it gives rise) than there can be an ultimate poem which would obviate the need for further poetic development.

Bohm explores the implications of quantum theory as an indication of "new order". The questions he raises are also relevant to the emergence of any new psychosocial order. He demonstrates that in the past recognition of new patterns of order has involved attention to "similar differences and different similarities" (8, p. 115), namely the "irrelevance of old differences, and the relevance of new differences" (8, p. 141). The radical transformation of understanding brought about by quantum theory, for example, results from recognition of the way in which modes of observation and of theoretical understanding are related to each other. A social science equivalent of this is given in Johan Galtung's demonstration of the impossibility of value-free research (96), although his purpose is to orient research in terms of development-oriented values.

For Bohm, however, comprehending the new order bears some resemblance to artistic perception. He uses Piaget's distinction between assimilation (understanding, render comprehensible) and accommodation (adaptation, fitting to a pattern) as the basic modes of intelligent perception. This artistic perception then begins by "observing the whole fact in its full individuality, and then by degree articulates the order that is proper to the assimilation of this fact." (8, p.141) Thus it does not begin with abstract preconceptions as to what the order has to be, which are then "adapted" to the order that is observed.

Bohm uses the differences between a lens system (in measurement processes) and a holographic system to show how by use of the former "scientists were encouraged to extrapolate their ideas and to think that such an (analytical) approach would be relevant and valid no matter how far they went, in all possible conditions, contexts, and degrees of approximation." (8, p.144) The advances in relativity and quantum theory imply, however, an undivided wholeness in which such "analysis into distinct and well-defined parts is no longer relevant." This is best illustrated by the hologram in which a whole pattern is somehow encoded into each part, no matter how small. The new order appropriate to our time could then be conceived as contained as a totality, encoded in some implicit sense into each region of space and time (8, p.149).

He elaborates an entirely new way of understanding order as "implicate", or enfolded, which he contrasts with "explicate" forms that are commonly observed and sought. The simplest example he gives is of a television image, carried by a radio wave in an implicate order, and then explicated by a receiver.

In more general terms, Bohm argues that the underlying wholeness in movement (the "holomovement"), discussed earlier, acts like the radio wave "carry" an implicate order. Under certain circumstances particular things (objects, phenomena, people, nations) can then be unfolded from this dynamic totality by a perceiver, but the holomovement is not limited in any specifiable way at all. As such it does not conform to any particular order and is essentially undefinable and immeasurable. This means that no single theory can capture or contain phenomena on a permanent basis. Rather, each theory will abstract a certain aspect that is relevant only in some limited context, lifting it temporarily into attention so that it stands out in relief (8, p.151). Furthermore, any new order within which a multiplicity of such aspects are "integrated" is itself not a final goal (as in efforts at "unified science"), but rather part of a movement from which new wholes are continually emerging (8, p.157).

This approach is very helpful in opening up ways of conceiving development and new forms of social order. In providing a mathematical description of implicate order, for example, Bohm makes a useful distinction between:

The former characterizes much development thinking, whereas the subtlety of the latter has hitherto made it appear non-operational or equivalent to catastrophe. Given Atkin's use of simplicial complexes to describe social organization, as discussed earlier, it is also interesting that Bohm suggests the extension of this technique in terms of "multiplexes" (8, p.166-7). His argument that phenomena need to be perceived as projections of a higher-dimensional reality for which appropriate algebras are required (8, p.188), related to Thorn's concerns with mathematical archetypes (19).

The challenge of Bohm's arguments lies in the manner in which they strike at the very root of the meaning of human and social development. His arguments highlight the extent to which both the physical and social sciences continue to rely on a Cartesian framework (if only in the familiar tabular/matrix presentations characteristic of social science papers) at a time when inherent weaknesses in the thinking behind such frameworks have been demonstrated. His most basic point is that the phenomena such as those which are the preoccupation of "development" (peoples, ideologies, groups, societies) are essentially derivative. "The things that appear to our senses are derivative forms and their true meaning can be seen only when we consider the plenum, in which they are generated and sustained, and into which they must ultimately vanish." (8, p.192) In this light, the basic flaw in present development thinking is the a priori recognition of certain distinct social entities which it now seems desirable to "develop".

It is precisely this conception (as argued on different grounds by the world-system theorists) which reduces development to "sterile" transformative operations and prevents any metamorphoses (to use Bohm's terms). For it is development which precedes and underlies such explicate social entities as a movement from which they have been unfolded: "what is movement" (8, p.203). Metamorphosis thus calls for ways of unfolding new, currently implicate forms from this holomovement, and enfolding into it those which are currently explicate, but are inadequate to the time. This is far removed from mechanistic efforts to "eliminate" undesirable structures and to "build" new ones from their components.

It should not be assumed that this implicate order is an inaccessible theoretical abstraction. Bohm argues that consciousness itself operates by enfolding and unfolding and that "not only is immediate experience best understood in terms of the implicate order, but that thought also is basically to be comprehended in this order." (8, p.204) This creates the possibility for "an unbroken flowing movement from immediate experience to logical thought and back" thus ending the fragmentation characteristic of the absence if any awareness of such movement (8, p.203). He argues that movement is itself sensed primarily in the implicate order and that Piaget's work "supports the notion that the experiencing of the implicate order is fundamentally much more immediate and direct than that of the explicate order, which...requires a complex construction that has to be learned" (8, p.206).

7.4 Health and space-time

As has been noted on many occasions, the concept of health is intimately related to that of wholeness. As broadly defined by the World Health Organization, it encompasses the physical, psychological and spiritual well-being of the individual and is thus central to the concept of human and social development. It is therefore valuable to explore the evolution in the concept of health, as a form of integration, and as throwing light on the implications of such integration for an understanding of development.

This question has been admirably discussed by Larry Dossey (95), a physician, in the light of the conceptual implications of theoretical breakthroughs in 20th century physics, and notably as a result of the work of David Bohm (see above). The shortcomings of the current health care system are increasingly perceived as rooted in the conceptual framework that supports medical theory and practice. As the physicist Fritjof Capra states in introducing Dossey's work: "The crisis in medicine, then, is essentially a crisis of perception, and hence it is inextricably linked to a much larger social and cultural crisis....which derives from the fact that we are trying to apply the concepts of an outdated world view - the mechanistic world view of Cartesian-Newtonian science - to a reality that can no longer be understood in terms of these concepts." (95, p.VIII)

To describe the globally interconnected world, in which biological, psychological, social, and environmental phenomena are all interdependent, Dossey explores the implications of quantum physics as "the most accurate description we have ever discovered of the physical world" (95, p. l26).

Given the disturbing innovation of such physics, whereby the behaviour and subjectivity of the observer is necessarily incorporated into any understanding of the results of observation, he points out the weakness in the argument that such theoretical breakthroughs are only of significance to the abstract world of nuclear physics. He cites the physicist E Wigner who states: "The recognition that physical objects and spiritual values have a very similar kind of reality....is the only known point of view which is consistent with quantum mechanics" (123 ??, p.192). Dossey points out that the relevance of such supposedly sub-atomic preoccupations to macroscopic phenomena is also demonstrated by Bell's theorem as noted by the physicist H S Stapp: "The most important thing about Bell's theorem is that it puts the dilemma posed by quantum phenomena clearly into the realm of macroscopic phenomena....it shows that our ordinary ideas about the world are somehow profoundly deficient even on the macroscopic level" (124, p.1303). The theorem can be described as stating: "If the statistical predictions of quantum theory are true, an objective universe is incompatible with the law of local causes", which requires that events occur at a speed not exceeding that of light (124, p.1303).

This theorem has been substantiated by experiments which show that simultaneous changes in non-causally linked distant systems can occur when a change in one takes place. In some sense, as yet not understood, all "objects" thus constitute an indivisible whole, in contrast to the prevailing notion of an external, fixed, objective world of separate things. Furthermore, the theorem shows that the ordinary idea of an objective world unaffected by consciousness lies in opposition not only to quantum theory but to facts established by experiment.

In addition to the implications of quantum mechanics, Dossey draws attention to those from the logical limitations highlighted by the theorems of Godel (92), Turing and Church, and Tarski. These collectively demonstrate the inherent limitations of any symbolic language which purports to describe the world unambiguously but is also called upon to make self-referential statements about itself as part of that world. They show that no precise language can be universal and that no scientific system is complete. Any language used to describe health and development, must necessarily suffer from similar limitations.

In the light of these considerations, Dossey points out that if our ordinary view of life, death, health and disease rests solidly on seventeenth-century physics (and on the logic on which it is based), and if this physics has now been partially abandoned in favour of a more accurate description of nature, then:

"an inescapable question occurs: must not our definitions of life, death, health, and disease themselves changes? To refuse to face the consequences to these areas is to favor dogma over an evolving knowledge....We have nothing to lose by a reexamination of fundamental assumptions of our models of health; on the contrary, we face the extraordinary possibility of fashioning a system that emphasizes life instead of death, and unity and oneness instead of fragmentation, darkness, and isolation." (95, p.141-2)

After listing the characteristics of health and of the image of man arising from the "traditional" view (95, p.l39-141), Dossey outlines the nature of the concept of health which emerges in the light of the new participative descriptions of nature. He notes, for example, that even from the point of view of elemental biology and physiology, the body behaves more as pattern and process than as an isolated and noninteracting object. It cannot be localized in space and its boundary is essentially illusory as in the notion of "body" in de Nicolas analysis (above). Health and illness are then a characteristic of the dynamic relationship between bodies on which therapy should necessarily focus as a participative process. The divisions of time are also arbitrarily imposed.

"Connected as we are to all other bodies, comprised as we are of an unending flux of event themselves occurring in spacetime, we regard ourselves not as bodies fixed in time at particular points, but as eternally changing patterns for which precise descriptive terms seem utterly inappropritae." (95, p.l 42-9)

The ordinary view of death is then inadequate because it is based on two erroneous assumptions - that the body occupies a particular space, and that it endures through a span of linear time (95, p. 158). Dossey considers that during illness the experience of spacetime construction is distorted: "When we are sick we become a Newtonian object: a bit-piece stranded in a flowing time" (95, p.l75). Health and illness are field phenomena. Comprehending spacetime in this way is not a matter of intelligence and restricted to gifted scientists. It is largely a skill of the right-hemisphere. Such understanding has long been characteristic of certain oriental philosophies, and other cultures have developed with a concept of non-flowing time (95, p.l78). It is possible that such understanding is even to some extent characteristic of the musically-oriented (youth) in the West, for example. Desire for experience in this form may also contribute to widespread use of drugs as offering an alternative to domination of daily life by a Newtonian world view with its many limitations.

The emergence of such incompatible spacetime views in society as flowing or non-flowing time, isolated objects or shifting energy patterns, should perhaps be seen as constituting a vital complementarity of evolutionary significance. Dossey therefore stresses the importance of alternation between them:

"These two modes of time perception, working alternately, make sense. They strike a balance not conferred by either alone. Perhaps we find within us these two capacities for sensing time because we needed one as much as the other." (95, p. 180)

The two modes may then be seen as corresponding to Bohm's distinction between the explicate and the implicate order, the former being characterized by separated objects and the latter by flowing movement of totality (the holomovement). For Dossey it is the latter with which health is associated, disease being a disequilibrium in favour of the former:

"Seen in this way, health has a kinetic quality. There is an essential dynamism to it, grounded as it is in Bohm's proposed underlying implicate order...Health is not static." (95, p.l83)

Health and the Implicate Order
Reproduced from Dossey (95, p, 186-7)

Traditional View Implicate View
1 The sensory world of objects and events is primary. 1. The sensory world of objects and events is not primary. They belong to the explicate order which is grounded, or enfolded, in an underlying indivisible totality, the implicate order.
2. Health is the absence of disease. 2, Health is not the mere absence of disease, but is the manifestation of the harmonious interaction of all apparent parts that inhabit the explicate domain.
3. Health and disease are absolutes

3. Health and disease are not and are irreconcilable opposites. irreconcilable opposites. They are the "moving principles" of each other.

4. All living matter is potentially dead. Everything awaits decay. 4. AH matter belongs to the implicate order, where everything is alive. "What we call dead is an abstraction" (Bohm).
5. Life is characterised by movement, and death by stasis. 5. The implicate order enfolds all, and is flux; thus, both life and death are movement. Nothing is static.
6. Health can be conceptualized as proper function of body parts. 6. "Parts" exist only in the explicate domain. Therefore, health transcends the function of parts, since all parts, which consist of matter, are ultimately enfolded in the implicate order, and thus consist of an indivisible whole.
7. The ultimate goal of health care is to forestall disease and, thus, death. 7. Since death is an abstraction ("everything is alive") this is an inappropriate goal of health care.
8. Health can be expressed in terms of objective measurements-laboratory tests, physical examinations, x-rays, etc. 8. All measurements refer to objects belonging to the explicate order and are thus not primary. They defy the unanalysable wholeness of the underlying totality in which all material bodies are grounded. As such, all measurements are arbitrary and are poor indicators of health.
9. The focus of health care is on the physical body. Consciousness is asecondary and irrelevant factor. 9. Both matter and consciousness are enfolded in the implicate order, where all things are one. Thus, all mailer is to some degree conscious. Health care cannot, therefore, ignore consciousness. To focus on matter is to focus on consciousness.
10. Health care focuses on individuals. 10. This is an arbitrary and illusory concern of the explicate domain. All matter is enfolded in the implicate order; thus, so too are all bodies. To is to focus on all, since all bodies (all matter) comprise a totality in the implicate order.
11. Therapy primarily is executed by mechanical means, by matter acting on matter-e.g., by medications and surgery. 11. Everything is alive. There is nothing in principle, therefore, preventing the use of consciousness as a primary form of therapeutic intervention at all levels of matter-from subatomic particles through molecules, cells, tissues, organ systems, etc.
12. Health care is of unquestioned value. 12. Insofar as traditional health care distorts the wholeness of the body by inappropriate concentration on function of mere body parts, it can be destructive. Health care, thus, is of qualified benefit, since it may create distortions in body awareness which may prove harmful and actually generate illness.
13. Transcendence of the concern about health is a mystical aberration usually leading toneglect and rejection of the body. 13. Transcendence of the concern about health may indeed lead to the view of health as irrelevant, but may also lead to an awareness of the body as being materially alive at all levels. This awareness can generate a spiritual regard for the body, a self-identity with the matter comprising it, leading to an enhanced pattern of health care.

He contrasts this with a prevailing image of health as associated with some "frozen stage of youth, whereafter things never change. ...We view health as a frozen painting, a still collection of bits of information" (95, p.183). But this has no meaning if health is the harmony of the movement of interdependent parts. Dossey produces a 1 3-point table contrasting health based on the traditional view with that based on an implicate view (95, p.186-7). The problem is that modern health care (including holistic health), only focuses on the reality of the explicate order of separate objects and events. "The implicate domain, where the very meaning of health, disease, and death radically changes, is currently of no concern to medicine." (95, p.189) Explicate therapy has a purely mechanistic concern to "keep the parts running".

It is clear that Dossey's arguments with respect to health can also be made with respect to human and social development in general, especially since much development thinking can be viewed as directed towards "keeping the parts running". There is much to be said therefore for exploring the possibility of elaborating an implicate understanding of development as a vital complement to the prevailing explicate view. Any "new world order", to be of any long-term significance, could well be based on an alternation between these two modes.

7.5. Dissonant harmony and holistic resonance

As Attali has shown (79), music remains one of the clearest domains in terms of which the thinking underlying any social order can be discussed. It provides a more concretely accessible language with which to comprehend the subtleties and distinctions reviewed in the two previous sections. Thus the composer Dane Rudhyar, in a study of spatialization of tone experience, confronts the basic duality of those sections:

"The basic issues is, should we think of the notion of separate entities in space, or of rhythmic movements of space producing entities which, though they may appear to be separate, are in fact only differentiated areas of space and temporary condensations of energy? This may seem to be a highly metaphysical issue having very little to do with music or the other arts, but it is actually the most basic issue a culture and its artists (and even the organizers and leaders of the society) have to face" (69, p. 4l-2)

Rudhyar points out that the need for order is basic in human consciousness. "But the kind of order human consciousness demands and expects varies at each level of its evolution" (69, p. 93). In the realm of music, Westerners have needed a type of musical order which makes it very clear that classical works constitute an integrated whole with a consistent tonal structure.

"Tonality is a system by which the innate pluralism of a society is kept wihin a definitive operative structure. Its manifestation is not so much in melodic sequence as in chordal harmony....Each melodic tone carries an identifying badge announcing clearly where it belongs, not so much in relation to the tonic as in terms of its place and function in the tonal bureaucracy. This is the ransom of the ideal of universalism....(Multiplicity and differences are the evident realities; the principle that makes possible the harmonization of these differences has to work throughout the society, up and down the scale. It has to be able to be "transposed" to any place, to meet any situation. It is universal, but it has to be imposed upon the many units. It needs the complex power of chords to achieve that purpose. In other words, in our pluralistic European music the instinctual psychic power of integration that once was inherent in sequences of tones had to be replaced by the harmonizing impact of chords clearly stating the tonality to which melodic notes belong. Cadences of chords also make the hearer expect how the melody will develop..." (69, p. 9).

For Rudhyar, any society or work of art is a complex whole composed of many parts which may be organized in two fundamentally different ways. In social organization they may be termed the tribal order and the companionate order. In music these are analogous to what he calls the consonant order and the dissonant order. The tribal order, founded on biological relationships in a community, derives its sense of unity from the past and all the associated (paternalistic) traditions which give rise to such a compulsive, quasi-instinctual feeling-realization. The musical equivalent is the harmonic series and overtones in the classical tonality system.

The companionate order begins with a multiplicity of differentiated individuals and strives to achieve unity as a future condition. If achieved it has to be "unity in diversity" through the harmonization of unsuppressed differences. Rudhyar argues that the musical equivalent of this is to be found in what he calls syntonic music in which the experience of tone is unconstrained by the intellectual concepts of the classical tonality system. Tonal relationships are included in the space relationships of syntonic music, but the rules, patterns, and cadences obligatory in tonality-controlled music normally hinder the development of syntonic consciousness. In syntonic music the notes are drawn into holistic group formations. Instead of emerging from a tonic, they seek the interpenetrative condition of dissonant chords, as pleromas of sounds. "These are limited in content; each has its own principle of organization, which determines the content of the pleroma" (69, p. 142-5).

In these terms, Rudhyar considers that melody is aesthetic in the tonality system associated with the culturally organized tribal order, and expressionistic in a society characterized by transformation. In the latter case its essential attributes are dissonances, rooted in their own musical space. Such dissonant chords can generate, when properly spaced, a far more powerful resonance than so-called perfect consonances, because of the phenomena of beats and combination tones (69, pp. 143-6), which engender beauty of another order (69, pp. 1 41). "A pleroma of sounds refers to the process of harmonization through which differentiated vibratory entities are made to interact and interpenetrate in order to release a particular aspect of the resonance inherent in the whole of the musical space (accessible to human ears), its holistic resonance, its Tone" (69, pp. 139-140). As examples of such holistic resonance, he notes the traditional role and effect of gongs (in Eastern societies) and church bells (in the West). Such effects are also produced by two cymbals tuned to slightly different pitches, giving rise to a vibrant tone because of the interference pattern of the two different frequencies (69, p. 141) - a case reminiscent of Maruyama's binocular vision analogy (see above).

Rudhyar concludes that although consonent harmony has its place and function and should be enjoyed, its danger lies in re-inforcing psychological attachment to the "matricial security and comfort" of the cultural framework with which it is associated. This bond prevents the individual from developing creative spontaneity and thereby engaging fully in the processes of social transformation (69, p. 162).

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