Languages as frozen portions of learning cycles

Review of Frameworks for the Representation of alternative Conceptual Orderings as Determined by Linguistic and Cultural Contexts (Part #19)

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In different ways the previous sections suggest that it might be fruitful to consider the apparent isolation of languages as being due to an inability to understand how to move between such languages. Although each language constitutes a rich learning environment, itbecomes a trap if no way can be found to exploit the advantages of other languages when they may be more appropriate. In a sense each language provides a mode of information processing which is effectively a frozen portion of a larger learning cycle. Each such portion, just as with an organ in the human body, processes certain kinds of information in a manner significant for the whole, but within the prevailing paradigm there is no means of transferring the significance extracted to other contexts within the whole where it may be of value. 

In the West part of the difficulty lies in the conception of learning as a linear process resulting in a shift in comprehension from A to B. It is only in the insights of Western poets that there is any recognition that, as stated by TS Eliot: 'The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time'. Gregory Bateson does however makes a strong case for the essential discontinuity of the learning process as a 'zigzag dialectic between form and process' (37, p. 194). If the zigzag is considered as occuring around a learning cycle however, marrying in the Eastern bias towards recurrence, this cycle can then be subdivided into sufficiently detailed elements to be of significance for organizational operations. Jantsch discusses cyclical organization in terms of the system logic of dissipative self-organization: 

'Hypercycles, which link autocatalytic units in cyclical organization, play an important role in many natural phenomena of self-organization, spanning a wide spectrum from chemical and biological evolution to ecological and economic systems and systems of population growth. The cyclical organization of a system may itself evolve if autocatalytic participants mutate or new processes become introduced. The co-evolution of participants in a hypercycle leads to the notion of an ultracycle which generally underlies every learning process'. (38, p. 15) 

The question then becomes how many discontinuous phases (Jantsch's 'participants') it is useful to distinguish in the cycle. Too few and the incompatibilities between them are too fundamental, too many and the distinctions between them are too subtle. The operational significance of this conceptual constraint has been explored in earlier papers from which it is apparent that significance is lost if more than about 7 categories are used (39), unless the total breaks down into sub-sets based on simple (e.g. 2,3,5) factors (40). 

A novel approach to the learning cycle in relation to action has been taken by Arthur Young (41) as a consequence of his experience as the inventor of the Bell helicopter (whose three-dimensional movement is notoriously difficult to control. He established the vital learning-action link through a new interpretation of the operational significance of the set of 12 'measure formulae' through which material phenomena are observed, acted upon and controlled in physics and engineering. These he portrays as corresponding to a series of phases in a learning-action cycle. Of special interest for the development theme is the significance he attaches to the sequence of movement around the cycle: one direction involving essentially unremembered experience-without-learning, the other involving conscious-learning-action. His approach has been adapted and modified to further emphasize the action-learning significance (Section KD, 33). It is interesting that the philosopher Stephane Lupasco also attaches importance to the analysis of such measures in terms of the polarities they constitute and the types of energy with which they are associated (42, p. 26). 

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Place Figure 7 here

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This approach clarifies how portions of such a cycle are vulnerable to institutionalization (as specialized, independent answer domains, or habital responses) to the extent that there is no learning bridge across the discontinuities. The problem of (social) integration is thus intimately related to the functioning of (collective) learning cycles. It seems probable that needs (and their satisfiers) also relate to different portions of such cycles, as would ranges of incompatible development goals or alternative visions of desirable futures. In each case the point to be emphasized is that such seemingly incompatible fragments are 'frozen' portions of a cycle with which individuals or groups identify. None are of lasting significance in their own right, especially insofar as they hinder the collective learning process which must take place through them. 

The facilitative and obstructive factors to further learning (i.e. successful 'struggle' in marxist terms) at each stage in the cycle are probably linked to patterns of complementarity and incompatibility between the stages according to their memberships of (2,3, or 4-member) sub-sets in the cycle (e.g. preceding and succeeding stages in the cycle are in conflictual relationship since they would correspond to thinking of the opposite hemisphere). Answers given from any part of a cycle are of course 'questionable' as perceived from other parts of the cycle. 

A single cycle is probably not a sufficiently concrete representation of the complexity to be encompassed by an adequate meta-language. Where several cycles interlock to form a sphere, the nodes are effectively combinations of cyclic phases. The relationships of challenge and harmony between such nodes have been discussed in earlier papers (43, 44, 45) concerning Fuller's tensegrity concept (46). 

The acid test of learning cycles however, is whether they can encompass the discontinuities between the major political tendencies by which the world community is seemingly divided. Any such relationship posited must necessarily be highly controversial, but the controversy should be patterned according to the aspects of the learning challenges involved. This has been explored elsewhere (47). 

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