Comprehension and Organization

-

---

Comprehension and Organization

---

Comprehension and Organization
6.2 Discontinuity: Comprehension and internatization
6.3 Pattern accumulation in a learning society

---

[Parts: Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx ]

---

---

Part 6 of Development through Alternation. Augmented version of a paper originally prepared for Integrative Working Group B of the Goals, Processes and Indicators of Development (GPID) project of the Human and Social Development Programme of the United Nations University (UNU). This document was originally distributed as a separate monograph in 1983. The paper provides a structure linking reviews of alternation as it emerges in studies from a wide range of sources. The paper is in 9 separate parts [searchable PDF version]

---

0. Introduction / Abstract 1. Monopolarization 1.1. Questionable answers 1.2. Forms of truth 1.3. Accumulative answers 1.4. Developing a new "meta-answer" 1.5. Decodification of analyses of capital accumulation 1.6. "New International Conceptual Order" 1.7. Accumulation and development 1.8. Development of accumulation 1.9. Domains of significance 2. Antagonistic dualities: polarization and paradox 2.1. Oppositional logic 2.2. Polarity 2.3. Paradoxes and antinomies 3. A third perspective 3.1. Beyond method 3.2. Constraints on a meta-answer 3.3. Meta-answer patterning 3.4. Containing discontinuity through aesthetics 3.5. Observer entrapment and micro-macro complementarity 3.6. Order through fluctuation: dissipative structures 3.7. Opening and closing: alternation for discontinuous learning 3.8. Third-perspective "containers": patterns of alternation 3.9. Revolutionary cycles of alternation 3.10. Trialectics: a logic of the whole 4. Threshold of comprehenisibility: a fourfold minimal container? 4.1. Omnitriangulation: interlocking cycles 4.2. Number and time 4.3. Logos and lemma for interparadigmatic dialogue 4.4. Epistemological mindscapes 4.5. Complementary languages 4.6. Nonlinear cybernetics 4.7. Modes of managing 5. Further constraints on conceptual container design 5.1. Cyclic self-organization requirements 5.2. Encompassing system dynamics 5.3. Encompassing varieties of form 6. Comprehension and learning 6.1. Non-comprehension "holes" 6.2. Discontinuity: comprehension and internalization 6.3. Pattern accumulation in a learning society

7. Complexification of integration 7.1. General systems and holonomy 7.2. Cognitive systematization 7.3. Wholeness and the implicate order 7.4. Health and space-time 7.5. Dissonant harmony and holistic resonance 8. Development of comprehension and compehension of development 8.1. Interwoven alternatives: organizational tensegrity and resonance hybrids 8.2. Non-comprehension as a structuring characteristic of a learning society 8.3. Learning cycles 8.4. Patterns of alternation: a musical key from a political philosopher 8.5. Patterns of alternation: an agricultural key from crop rotation 8.6. The entropic crisis and the learning response 8.7. Alternation between energetic expansion and mentalistic reduction 8.8. Uncertainty: the source of meaning 8.9. Morphic resonance 8.10. Toward an enantiomorphic policy 8.11. Game comprehension and identity transformation 8.12. Ecodynamics and societal evolution 8.13. Language of probabilistic vision of the world 9. Implications 9.1. Implications for agreement and consensus 9.2. Implications for action formulation 9.3. Implications for values and norms 9.4. Implications for organizations 9.5. Implications for unemployment 9.6. Implications for the developmental responsibility of answer domains 9.7. Implications for forms of presentation 9.8. Implications for information processing 9.9. Implications for the human self-image 10. Conclusions

The previous sections clarify the conceptual challenge by which individuals and societies are faced in endeavouring to "ride the tiger" and encompass the development process in which they are immersed. But the very fact that this seems to call for juggling conceptually with seven or more factors simultaneously suggests the need to examine what kind of situation results if this does not prove possible, and what kind of psychosocial structures then emerge. As reviewed in an earlier paper (58), most people have difficulty in juggling with more than three factors, and there is a considerable preference for dealing with one, or at the most two.

The nature of the communication (and organizational) patterns which emerge as the result of conceptual discontinuity and non-comrnunication has been clarified by Q-analysis. This is the theory and application of mathematical relations between finite sets. Ron Atkin has applied this to the analysis of communication patterns within complex organizations (72, 73, 74).

The perceptual significance of this approach is well-illustrated by visual sensitivity to colours resulting from the three primary hues (red, green and blue). These may be represented on a simple piece of geometry as shown in Figure 3. Here the vertices (O-simplexes) represent the primary hues, the sides are twofold combinations (l-sirnplexes), and the combination of the three hues makes the central white (2-sirnplex). The 2-simplex, together with all its faces, forms a simplicial complex KY(X) where X is the vertex set (red, green, blue) and Y is the set of seven perceived colours.

Triangle model of levels of insight Reproduced from Atkin (73, p.108)

Now to be able to see all the colours, a person's vision needs to have the ability to function in the triangle as 2-dimensional "traffic" on that geometry, moving from location to location adjusting to the complexity of the geometrical structure which carries the visual traffic. If however the person's vision is limited to 1-dimensional traffic, then white could not be perceived because the visual traffic of seeing is then restricted to the edges and vertices. Similarly, if the person's colour vision is only O-dimensional, then it is restricted to the vertices. I

---

[Parts: Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx ]