Cognitive circuits

Polyhedral Pattern Language: Software facilitation of emergence, representation and transformation of psycho-social organization (Part #14)

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In a polyhedral pattern language, each polyhedron may effectively be understood as a representation of a "cognitive circuit diagram". This might be considered implicit, even explicit, in Fuller's "geometry of thinking" and intentions, although his insights are undermined and "denatured" by the inability to take account of the cognitive issues of embodiment so ably explored by Lakoff -- and close to Pask's conversation/interaction theories.

Operationalized and enabled as a tensegrity, the featurs and resonant dynamics of the circuit start to become apparent in their relevance to psycho-social organization. There are indeed analogues to the characteristic features of electrical circuits (resistors, capacitors, etc) through which "energy" is engendered, stored and redistributed (cf Electrical Systems as a Guiding Metaphor for Stages of Group Dialogue, 2001). But, in the sense explored by Francisco Varela (The Embodied Mind: cognitive science and human experience, MIT Press 1991, with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch) and enactivism, such a circuit diagram has to be embodied to be enabled.

It is such cognitive circuits that sustain the patterns of behaviour on which governance is dependent -- and which it endeavours so desperately to seek to change. They constitute the sustaining tracery of communication pathways and feedback loops.