Unacknowledged preferences for partial clarity and partial transparency

Potential of Feynman Diagrams for Challenging Psychosocial Relationships? (Part #8)

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Preference for "cognitive shade": It is readily assumed that clarity and transparency are desirable -- and desired by all -- like consensus. This is notably the case with explanations of any kind -- including theories of the world and everything. It is currently an expectation with regard to governance. Its absence is regularly deplored -- despite the massive investment in classification and confidentiality, which would seem to preclude global comprehension. A similar point could be made with respect to certainty, predictability and completion.

There is however clearly a widespread appreciation of lack of clarity, of ambiguity in various forms, of explanations which are incomplete. These are experienced as fruitful in that they do not exhaust the questioning process and associated creative speculation -- calling for imagination which is otherwise precluded as being unnecessary. What need for imagination if all has already been clearly articulated and expressed with adequate simplicity? Religions contine to face this challenge.

The preference for partial clarity may be demonstrated with geographical metaphors -- through the contrasting preferences for blazing sunlight, shade, and an edenic woodland glen in which shade is relieved by isolated beams of sunlight. Clearly these contrasts create niches favourable to the development of different species variously dependent on different combinations of light and shade.

An equivalent variety of preferences enables the development of a variety of human lifestyles -- favouring or avoiding light and shade with a sense of their relative advantages and risks. In these terms the degree of uptake of any comprehensive explanation becomes questionable -- however adequate it may appear to its advocates. The challenge is as evident in the case of scientific theories as it is of religious beliefs. The variety of preferences engenders niches which are variously occupied.

The challenge can be more dramatically imagined in the case of a Theory of Everything, a Universal Belief System, a Global Ethic, a Global Strategic Plan, or the like. Each implies that people, especially the young, are to be expected to "get with the programme" -- avoiding "inappropriate" questions which do not reinforce the required belief in it. Examples in the case of science were given above. What will physicists do after the Theory of Everything has been discovered? What will they do with their creative imagination?

Obligation to "dwell in the shade": Irrespective of "preferences", there is also the sense in which many do not have the luxury of dwelling cognitively in the niche to which they aspire. Their access to information and insight may be variously constrained. Metaphorically, as articulated by religion, they may be obliged to "dwell in the dark". Science also regrets the widespread ignorance of the cognitive worlds it has articulated -- and the indifference to them. Both avoid the question of the problematic relations between religions, between disciplines, and between religion and science -- presumably to be understood as a higher order of ignorance.

As discussed separately, many are obliged to live imaginatively in the half light "between worlds" as a consequence of the failure of systemic initiatives (Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds: global implications of "betwixt and between" and liminality, 2011;  Towards the Dynamic Art of Partial Comprehension, 2012).

Appreciation of ignorance and error: Given that the world is as productive of ignorance as it is of knowledge, through growth in population and the relative inaccessibility of insight, there is a case for exploring ignorance more creatively, as separately discussed (Reframing the conventional deprecation of ignorance, 2013; University of Ignorance: engaging with nothing, the unknown, the incomprehensible, 2013; Living with Incomprehension and Uncertainty: re-cognizing the varieties of non-comprehension and misunderstanding, 2012).

Appropriate to this argument is Feynman's much quoted attitude to ignorance (Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts). He develops his case in terms of the The Role of Doubt in Science:

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darned sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain. (Quoted from Richard P. Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character, 1988)

A related concern has been expressed by Donald N. Michael: On the requirement to embrace error:

More bluntly, future-responsive societal learning makes it necessary for individuals and organizations to embrace error. It is the only way to ensure a shared self-consciousness about limited theory to the nature of social dynamics, about limited data for testing theory, and hence about our limited ability to control our situation well enough to be successful more often than not (On Learning to Plan and Planning to Learn: the social psychology of changing toward future-responsive societal learning, 1973)

Appropriate dimensionality: In arguing above for recognition of the challenge of living imaginatively "between worlds" -- "betwixt and between" -- this could be reframed in terms of the "dimensionality" of mathematicians, as has been done by Ron Atkin (Multidimensional Man; can man live in 3-dimensional space? 1981). There is however considerable ambiguity to this with respect to the "clarity" offered by higher dimensionality and the "incomprehension" through which it may be experienced -- to be contrasted with the "darkness" of lower dimensionality and the "clarity" with which it may be readily experienced.

Exploiting the metaphor of "light" and "shade", there is a case for recognizing the viability of (edenic) niches characterised by "not too much light" and "not too much shade". Ignorance may be as conducive to cognitive development as insight. Ironically it is "knowledge trees" which may offer welcome shade -- perhaps reminiscent of the archetypal Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Curiously in the tree metaphor, it is the "leaves" on which knowledge is presumably inscribed, thereby associating them with any compilation into a Book of Knowledge -- and yet it is the leaves which provide the shade. If astrophysicists continue to think in terms of the Sun "rising" -- and presumably to derive enjoyment from the process -- what is the case for the "subunderstanding" deplored by Magoroh Maruyama (Polyocular vision or subunderstanding? Organization Studies, 2004), and similarly for "subrepresentation"?

The biotic metaphor (see Annex) may be taken further with respect to the psychosocial corruption which is so deplored as a characteristic of non-transparency and absence of light. Framed as an exemplification of evil in psychosocial systems, it has a much valued role in the case of biological systems -- especially with respect to "waste disposal", which is increasingly a challenge in the human environment. What then is to be said of "cognitive corruption"?

Qualum reality: These arguments help to "clarify" the advantages of psychosocial analogues to Feynman diagrams -- with the degree of closure they imply. As noted above, the original resistance to them, as described in the account by David Kaiser (2005), offers insights in that respect. To a higher degree than in the case of "quantum electrodynamics", the potential qualitative analogue -- "qualum psychodynamics" -- requires a form of inherent conceptual openness. This can be understood as implication without closure -- enabling future development. It may be described metaphorically through a dynamic, as discussed separately -- responding to the challenge that a candle constitutes for a butterfly (Paradoxes of Engaging with the Ultimate in any Guise: living life penultimately, 2012).

Use of "qualum", as a qualitative contrast to "quantum", is also potentially suggestive -- metaphorically -- given its use as a descriptor of wicker basket woven from reeds. Rather than the metaphorical use of "knowledge trees", with their various structural and dynamic associations, the sense of the development of knowledge in terms of basket weaving is suggestive of both openness (to the future) and offering a useful container (in the present), as previously discussed (The Future of Comprehension conceptual birdcages and functional basket-weaving, 1980). The weaving metaphor is itself valuable with respect to threaded internet discourse and global governance (Interweaving Thematic Threads and Learning Pathways: noonautics, magic carpets and wizdomes, 2010; Warp and Weft: Governance through Alternation - world governance as a Gandhian challenge for the individual, 2002).

Time: Feynman diagrams are valuable in their explicit implication of a relation between space and time. Governance, sustainability and daily life call for an engagement with spacetime which remains a challenge to comprehension -- despite intimate experience of its complex dimensions. Strategic recommendations taking space-like form are typically challenged by the process of implementation in time. Those emphasizing processes over time are typically challenged to achieve viability as experientially meaningful structures in the moment. Especially for the individual, however, the reality of the present moment constitutes a major challenge -- an existential question with "metaphysical" dimensions.

Analogues to Feynman diagrams could help to reframe the interface with the temporal dimensions of qualitative complexity and their implications as previously discussed (The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: embodying time as the heartland of humanity, 2003; Strategic Embodiment of Time: configuring questions fundamental to change, 2010; Emergence of Cyclical Psycho-social Identity: sustainability as "psyclically" defined, 2007; Embodying a Timeship vs. Empowering a Spaceship, 2003)

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