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Cognitive implication in geometrical metaphors in articulation of "The Way"


Way Round Cognitive Ground Zero and Pointlessness? (Part #5)

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Metaphor: Strategic insights, principles, proposals and targets are typically articulated through metaphorical use of the simplest elements of geometry, as discussed separately (Engaging with Globality -- through cognitive lines, circlets, crowns or holes, 2009; Geometry of Thinking for Sustainable Global Governance: cognitive implication of synergetics, 2009; Metaphorical Geometry in Quest of Globality -- in response to global governance challenges, 2009).

As discussed in that connection (Cognitive Realignment: making points and aligning a target, 2009), "points" are made in arguing the case and distinguishing necessary components. Known as "bullet points", the process is notably enabled through the software application PowerPoint. Any confusion is then challenged by the question "what is the point"? Much is made of developing a clear "line" of argument and of adhering to the "party line" -- or the "line of duty" (US Department of the Army, Line of Duty Policy, Procedures, and Investigations, 2008). Strategic differences and opposition are typically framed in terms of the "polarization" of the dynamics -- tending to demonisation in a faith-based context. The situation is well illustrated by the framing offered by Renaud Girard (Increasing Danger of War Through Incomprehension between United States and Iran, Le Figaro, 24 October  2007):

It must be acknowledged that in connection with the Iranian nuclear question a single line is now taking shape, and it is that of confrontation. It is as though two crazy trains were rushing headlong towards each other on the same track, without anyone being able to halt them or divert them onto a different track.

The use of such metaphor extends to the circle (Cognitive Circlets: learning/action cycles, 2009) and to some degree to three-dimensional geometry (Cognitive Crowns: all-encompassing, well-rounded experience, 2009).

The trajectory of an initiative is expected to be "straight" and may be recognized as devious if "curved" (as in throwing a curve ball). It is in contrast to such a perspective that proposals are now made for a "circular economy" (CE), as articulated by Felix Preston (A Global Redesign? Shaping the Circular Economy, Chatham House, 2012)

In today's economy, natural resources are mined and extracted, turned into products and finally discarded. While the recycling of waste and measures to improve efficiency can both help to reduce the need for extraction of raw materials, this remains a fundamentally open, linear system, and one likely to place unsustainable demands on the environment in the medium term. In a CE, the resource loop would be closed,9 so that large volumes of finite resources (metals and minerals, for example), are captured and reused.

Preston notes the challenge for "thinking" by stressing that:

Moving towards the CE will require a paradigm shift in the way things are made - putting sustainability and closed-loop thinking at the heart of business models and industrial organization...Yet in practice, scaling up the concept of a CE raises political economy questions that were not historically the focus of thinking in this arena and are only starting to be explored.

Mathematical speculation: As noted above, the argument here is inspired in part by the fictional speculations from a geometric perspective regarding dimensionally constrained perspectives:

What might be considered surprising is the total lack of consideration of the cognitive implications of such reflections -- serious or otherwise -- for the use of geometrical metaphors in strategy articulation, despite the work of George Lakoff and Rafael Núñez (Where Mathematics Comes From: how the embodied mind brings mathematics into being, 2000). The inhabitual use of "romance" from the perspective of a discipline with the least capacity or inclination to understand romance is itself cause for reflection, given the fundamental importance of strategy in romance (Reframing the Dynamics of Engaging with Otherness: triadic correspondences between Topology, Kama Sutra and I Ching, 2011). Ironically, in this connection, the New Scientist journal has instigated an online dating service for its readers.

Technomimicry: In combination with the insights of genetic epistemology, the question is whether such reflections provide clues for the "reverse engineering" required to elicit the creative adaptability of the "childlike" understanding discussed above and elsewhere (In Quest of Mnemonic Catalysts -- for comprehension of complex psychosocial dynamics, 2007). Given the surprising admission that physicists can fruitfully "dream", what is the nature of the "dreamtime" from which more appropriate global strategies might emerge (Stephen Hawking, The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of: the most astounding papers of quantum physics -- and how they shook the scientific world, 2011; Stephen Hawking, Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, and Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind, 1997). How then might the world of real people be more appropriately "shook"?

The approach follows from the argument previously made for consideration of technomimicry, namely deriving significance from patterns articulated for "technical" purposes, in this case from the formal logic of mathematics and its applications (Engendering a Psychopter through Biomimicry and Technomimicry, 2011). The focus here is on how new insights for thinking "in the moment" can be derived from  formal geometric structures (points, lines, etc), especially given a widespread intuitive application of some of those insights in strategy articulation. How might these apply to the articulation of worldviews and the strategic "visions" of leadership?

Unexplored riches of geometry: It is of course the case that mathematics has developed a vast formal array of sophisticated tools and insights. From this array, those  considered intuitively significant for strategy are seemingly the simplest (points, lines, etc), effectively those which are most primitive in the articulation of mathematics and its applications. Cognitively however, it is these 0 to 2-dimensional structures which are the primary focus in strategy articulation. They are also evident in various forms of accounting, notably in game-playing of every kind -- scoring "points". Such usage is effectively completely unreframed by the potential of richer and more complex forms of geometry -- currently considered unnecessary to the articulation of cognitive life.

The concern in what follows is that far more complex and subtler cognitive insights are in fact implicit in the simple forms to which reference is made in common discourse. The formal explication of higher dimensionality by mathematics may then be "packed" implicitly into such cognitive engagement with the forms of lower dimensionality -- as partially implied by the insights, from the perspective of a physicist, by David Bohm with regard to an implicate and explicate order, notably as elicited and developed in his dialogues with Jiddu Krishnamurti (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge, 1980; The Ending of Time, 1985). It is the cognitive implication of such "simple" packing which may relate more closely to those of the "childlike" modality discussed above.

Missing the point? Ironically it is this sense that the preoccupation of fundamental physics and string theory with the 10-plus dimensional nature of reality may be "missing the point". It might be understood as a form of cognitive "overdevelopment", ungrounded in the psychological reality in which the challenges of governance and conflicting worldviews are articulated and addressed. 

It is in this sense, with respect to strategies relevant to the future, that the above-mentioned question by Terence Deacon may be asked: have we been looking in the wrong places for clues? Especially problematic is the sense in which strategic articulation is trapped in oversimplistic geometric metaphor -- unable either to engage with its "childlike" cognitive potentials or to benefit from richer metaphors based on the formal development of that geometry by mathematics. (Metaphoric Entrapment, 2002; Metaphoric entrapment in time: avoiding the trap of Project Logic, 2000; In Quest of Uncommon Ground: beyond impoverished metaphor and the impotence of words of power, 1997).

Equally ironical, for those individuals variously obliged by their circumstances to engage experientially with "nothingness", this may well involve a form of navigation of "cognitive hyperspace" to which physics is only just endeavouring to give comprehensible form -- as separately discussed (Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds: global implications of "betwixt and between" and liminality, 2011).

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