It's Elemental

Tag: Process

  • First and Second-Order Epistemologies

    First and Second-Order Epistemologies

    Gregory Bateson (1991) famously said that we “cannot claim to have no epistemology. Those who so claim have nothing but a bad epistemology” (p. 178).  Bateson is calling for self-reflection in our epistemology.  He wants it to be recursive, so that in our production of knowledge we do not delude ourselves into thinking that the means of production is independent of what is produced.  Bradford Keeney, cybernetic epistemologist, family therapist, modern day New Orleans-style shaman, and student of Gregory Bateson, notes that recursive epistemology has roots in second-order cybernetics and the recognition (1983) that “any distinction drawn is drawn by an observer. … An observer observes by drawing distinctions. … The starting point of epistemology is therefore an observer drawing distinctions in order to observe” (p. 24). This leads us to a fundamental recursion or non-linearity at the very start of any epistemological endeavor. While non-recursive epistemologies try to mitigate this kind of loopiness, cybernetic epistemology embraces it as the very heart of knowing, using it as a creative generator of change and transformation. Working with a non-lineal epistemology leads to a different kind of knowing, one which “emphasizes ecology, relationship, and whole systems. In contrast to lineal epistemology, it is attuned to interrelation, complexity, and context” (Keeney, 1983, p. 107).

    The consequences of lacking a self-reflexive epistemology are dire, leading to real practical and ethical dilemmas.  The structure of the sequence often goes something like this:

    • Knowledge is produced on the basis of a non-reflexive epistemology (Bateson’s “bad” epistemology). Ex: You performed an act found to be illegal.
    • The knowledge produced is thus assumed to be “objective” and “true” (i.e. independent of the means of its production; ignorant of its genesis). Ex: It doesn’t really matter why you did what you did, you are beholden to the law as written.
    • This tends to have a psychologically limiting effect with respect to alternative knowledge and especially alternative modes of knowledge production.  One’s viewpoint becomes ossified. Ex: The judicial system limits its treatment of you as a whole human being only to what is allowable within the strictures that the law defines. You become identified with your act.
    • The unreflective assumption of the “truth” of the knowledge becomes justification for its projection, often forcefully, onto other people and processes in the environments surrounding the knower.  A sense of conviction that the world is “like this” leads to inflexible protocols in our institutions and in our modes of interaction with others.  In other words, outer processes are also ossified; they become sclerotic. Ex: Now, instead of being a whole human being who with a completely full and complex life that included the illegal act, your identity shifts to that of a criminal. Your identity shifts, and you are now identified with the label “criminal,” and the judicial system creates places called prisons designed largely to maintain this distinction of your new identity.

    The unintended effects of this kind of lineal process knowledge production could fill multiple volumes, from the most subtle aspects of daily life to world-historical events. But recursive epistemology is not in opposition to lineal epistemology; it is rather meant to be a way of maintaining complexity and subtlety (and ideally, wisdom) by calibrating the linearity of standard epistemological practices through higher-order recursion.

    Calibration and Self-Calibration.

    But what does it mean to have a self-reflexive epistemology?  The difference between the two types of epistemologies, non-self-relfexive and self-reflexive, can be described by the first and second order difference.  A non-self-reflexive epistemology is a first-order epistemology, a process of creating knowledge that operates in a linear fashion.  The knowledge it generates is not explicitly connected to the process of its generation, and thus does not act as a potential corrective to its mode of production.  Epistemology is a tool for knowing; but with a non-self-reflexive epistemology, the tool’s operation does not change the tool, so that no matter what job it is called to do, it re-instances any new creations in the manner and style of its past processes—regardless of what might be new in the situation it encounters.  The kind of newness that comes from a linear epistemology is (more…)

  • Reality, Process, and Mathematics

    Reality, Process, and Mathematics

    All the qualities of the physical world exist through the interrelations of things to each other. What Moleschott says is correct for physical existence: ‘All existence is an existence through qualities. But there is no quality that does not exist through a relation.’ Just as everything of a soul nature contains something in itself by which it points to something outside itself, so conversely, a physical thing is so constituted that it is what it is through the relation to it of something outer.
    (Rudolf Steiner, Riddles of the Soul, Mercury Press, 1996, p. 69.)

    For such a philosophy, the relations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation experienced must be accounted as ‘real’ as anything else in the system.
    (William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, Cosimo, Inc., 1912/2008, p. 20)

    In aesthetic epistemology, notions of “reality” are replaced by “patterns in process.”  “Things” are (ontologically) patterned processes.  We mistake the nature of the universe when we presume that “things,” to be, must “be” from the bottom up: on the basis of some “substance,” which THEN interacts in processes to yield what we experience (the first coherent expression of this began with the atoms in the void hypothesis of Leucippus and Democritus in Ancient Greece).  We assume that it is silly to speak of patterns of process without some kind of “thing” that we can point to as an indicator that the process is proceeding.  Because of the way our senses are involved in cognition, we tend to count as “real” only what can be made apparent to us through our senses (or their extensions via instruments). This is a huge presumption on our part.  What if we tried to conceive of “substance” as a secondary phenomenon?  What if process (thing-less process) is more primary?  In this view, things are precipitates (momentary nodes, relatively ‘still’ areas of patterned processes) of higher-order relations… not relations between THINGS but relations qua the activity of relating.  This may sound abstract, but this is because we are trained to think of reality in terms of substances (sub-stances: the “underneath-standings,” the bits from out of which a universe gets built).

    The best example of one way that this can look is given in the field of mathematics.  Mathematics has no atoms, not even metaphorical atoms; it is entirely substanceless.  Rather, mathematics has, at its base, processes and their relations.  Even numbers aren’t the basis of mathematics,  (more…)

  • Goethean Phenomenology, Soul Breathing, and Transformation

    Goethean phenomenology acts as a transformative bridge between the researcher and a topic of inquiry.  The method is unique not in that it attempts to work through the subject/object split, but rather in the WAY it attempts to do this.

    Doing Goethean phenomenological research requires that one be completely open to what presents itself, while at the same time recognizing that one’s perceiving is an active force with regards to the topic of inquiry; the topic changes researcher, and the researcher change the topic.

    The Goethean phenomenological method (GPM) asks that one address the topic in a complex way; it must be approached from many angles in order to gather as much potentially relevant data as possible.  The data are continually taken inward and addressed, particularly with attention to the sequencing, timing, and subtle morphological differences.  The goal is in part to be able to re-create, inwardly, an exact sensory imagination that moves with the same gesture as the phenomenon when observed ‘outwardly’.

    Normally, one takes as an ‘object’ of inquiry some outer phenomenon such as a plant species, a location, or a natural form or process.  This restriction is not required, however addressing the alternative does require the researcher to change somewhat the way in which the method has heretofore been conceptualized and practiced. It is possible to begin with a topic of inquiry that is not phenomenologically perceptible to the outer senses: love, for example, or relations between imaginary numbers.  All the same methods are used to work with the phenomenon, but different challenges arise when taking an ‘inward object’ as the focus of inquiry.

    The primary challenge arises due to the unequal stages of development of our outer and inner organs of perception.  My eyeball provides visual information in a way that is highly correlated with the way in which your eyeball provides you with visual information. Despite the variety of potential sensory differences, on the whole physical human sensory capacities share a high degree of correlation, especially when compared with more subtle (non-physical) senses.

    This is not as problematic as it may seem, because implicit in the GPM is a continual oscillation between the subject and the object, and likewise between conceptual and perceptual experience.  In fact, part of the goal of the GPM is to create the capacity (we could call it what it is: a soul-capacity) that allows our soul to move with the gesture of the unfolding phenomenon, as if from the inside-out… and then to come ‘back’ to oneself in order to become aware of that experience in a way that is not available when you are ‘in it’.  Dennis Klocek, a practitioner of this method, calls this process “soul-breathing.” which is a very accurate description of what is occurring. Indeed, the process of working phenomenologically in this way provides the very training necessary to develop one’s soul-capacities in a way that is commensurate with the phenomenon.  The practice of Goethean phenomenology is thus recursive; its practice changes how one can practice it. This recursivity forms a conceptual and perceptual loop which forms the basis for the development of the soul-organ of perception that is keyed to the particular phenomenon in question.

    Goethean phenomenology, as Goethe himself stated, is “delicate.” because the role of the inquirer is paramount in the endeavor; one cannot simply follow an established external protocol and expect results.  Rather, results arrive through a process of mutual interactivity between one’s own development and the simultaneous ‘unfolding’ of the phenomenon in question.

    This method, in many ways, embodies principles from participative inquiry, in that the method actually takes the ‘object’ as a ‘subject’, and treats it accordingly.  The researcher is not the ultimate authority on the phenomenon, but rather attempts to give the phenomenon voice.  We could actually say that the role of the researcher is to place him or herself in service to the unfolding nature of the phenomenon in all its complexity, so that it can live in an imagination that is exact with respect to the movement, transformation, and unfolding of the phenomenon (which is inseparable from the movement, transformation, and unfolding of the researcher); this allows the researcher to ultimately ‘speak for’ the phenomenon.  In a way, the researcher’s agenda is to give up the agenda in favor of the unfolding of the phenomenon.  This can only happen when the researcher becomes capable of perceiving in a way that is generally opposed to the dictates of normal human day-waking consciousness, which lives primarily in a constructed boundary called the “self” through which all experience is filtered.

    Goethean observation softens this boundary, makes it a semi-permeable membrane, and allows part of our soul to live through its inner movements into the unfolding of the other.  In this way, a real ‘dialogue’ begins to take place between the researcher and the phenomenon (rather than a purely self-relating inner dialogue where two aspects of oneself face each other, i.e. a monologue disguised as a dialogue).  It truly feels like one is dialoguing with the phenomenon, just as one would with another human being, but through an expanded language of gestures, tones, and subtle feeling-movements, rather than explicit words.  This allows for the creation of a shared ‘language’, consisting of inner soul movements that take the form of metamorphosing inner pictures (not simply visual, but tonal, gestural) which are exact analogues to the processes that the chosen ‘object’ of study move through.

    In this way, Goethean phenomenology requires and precipitates the transformation of the researcher. Indeed it is only through transformation that a researcher can learn to hear the continual whispering of what Goethe called nature’s ‘open secrets’.

  • Object and Process oriented languages and human development

    (Note, the Blackfoot people have a process-oriented language, which is much more strongly verb-based, while English and most other languages are object/noun based.)

    Blackfoot Indian Brave
    Blackfoot Indian Brave

    A friend of mine asked:

    Do the Blackfoot people go through a phase where they need to have conceptual boxes, and then learn to transcend the need to reify these artificial demarcations, or do they simply use a different process all together from the very start? So much of western development theory assumes that moving beyond nice neat conceptions is a phase that we can move beyond, but assumes it is a necessary phase; perhaps it is only necessary for those who are raised to think in a linear fashion?

    Which prompted the following response:

    I have this feeling that on a macrocosmic scale, humanity does have to “go through” a stage of categorical reification and abstraction in order to develop certain potentials relating to our “task” if you will, of becoming beings of freedom and love.  However, this doesn’t mean that every single human being has to do this, or in the same way (ex: the West has played such a huge role in this particular part of the human drama, while other areas have different things to bring to the play).

    I imagine that it would be possible to ‘use different processes from the start’, and while there will be similarities in developmental stages, these won’t always match up exactly depending upon what is being brought forth by the language, culture, and individual elements, and so forth.  It’s not like a Blackfoot can’t identify ‘a chair’ if they don’t want to… it’s just that doing so is a reduction or rather abstraction from a different way of understanding, just like if I were to reduce you to a particular image I had of you that came from one specific interaction, and then communicated only this aspect of you when I spoke about you to others or thought of you myself.

    Both the ‘objective’ or reified view of we weirdo Westerners, AND the process or time-sensitive view of people like the Blackfoot are ‘correct’.  The question is more, to me, about the overall appropriateness of each view given microcosmic and macrocosmic pictures of individual and collective development.  Sometimes, identifying “this chair” as a completely abstracted and separate, non-evolving object is appropriate.  Sometimes, seeing the flow of events that entwine themselves into the constantly becoming activity and relations that make up the chair through time is more appropriate.

    BUT, the imporant thing is that we develop the capacity to have both these (and other) options open to us, so we aren’t locked in by our habits of perception.  We — humanity as a whole — has won the capacity to objectify the world through a long and arduous and pain-filled path.  It is something that we shouldn’t abandon — rather we need to learn how to use this capacity responsibly, ultimately in service to the development of our freedom to become beings who can love not by virtue of a given nature (this would describe an angel), but through what has come to us only by virtue of the path we have walked, i.e. in freedom.

    Of course, this just a picture, a way to imagine.