Periodic Table -- as instance of a pattern

Periodic Pattern of Human Knowing (Part #2)

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The Periodic Table is therefore understood here as the instance of a pattern and, as such, is an indication of what might be comprehended as a periodic pattern of life. But the psychosocial dynamics of how such a pattern is intuited, recognized and apprehended is as much a part of the preoccupation.

However the concern here is less with how any such formulation is held to be true in some way by universal consensus (if only amongst specialists). Rather, given their challenge to average comprehension, it is with the interrelationship between:

• the nature of any pursuit of an integrative dream
• ways of attributing or claiming coherence
• the tendency to attribute greater coherence and validity to what may only be "potentially" or "partially" true, notably the coherence inferred by potentially inappropriate comprehension of particular formulations and their limitations
• what a comprehensible Rosetta stone might look like, especially if it holds the relationship between different ways of knowing
• the number of ways of knowing that can be brought into play to comprehend it, given the incommensurability of their respective perspectives and the probable relevance of their complementarity
• how the discontinuities between such ways of knowing are to be held, especially if some are deprecated
• the extent to which particular formulations exemplify or obscure such distinctions
• the significance of the special claims made for particular ways of knowing, especially by their formulators
• the extent to which comprehended coherence, engaging the human mind, is conditioned by characteristics of the human mind
• the extent to which the ways of knowing, and the emergent formulations, hold (if only implicitly) any of these cognitive challenges, namely some degree of self-reflexivity
• the emergent understanding of order through progressive learning about the pattern as a whole -- namely the "overtones" -- and what they signify

Briefly the issue is with how one engages with the complexity of abstract formulations -- beyond one's capacity -- especially when that complexity purportedly holds a higher degree of order and significance, whose integrity one can only partially intuit, if at all. This is a challenge in a context in which those associated with any such formulations often have their own peculiar and seemingly dysfunctional dynamics. This concern follows from earlier involvement in two complementary projects within the framework of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential whose subject matter was organized in a periodic pattern explicitly inspired by the Periodic Table (see Functional Classification in an Integrative Matrix of Human Preoccupations, 1982). The complementary projects of relevance here, each with an integrative focus, were: Human Development Project and Integrative Knowledge Project.

Of particular interest, given the challenge of representing higher order patterns, is how to talk about them without rendering them even more meaningless to many. In this sense the relationship between the processes whereby such understanding is attempted are themselves indicative.

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