Potential insights into the Szilassi configuration of WH-questions from 4D

Now as the Ultimate Cognitive Strange Attractor (Part #13)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

There is the possibility that the seeming complexity of the Szilassi configuration could be comprehended otherwise from a 4-dimensional perspective. The Stella software package specifically permits such exploration. As noted by its developer Robert Webb (Stella 4D Manual, 2014) with respect to The Fourth Dimension?: Although we can't experience a four-dimensional object directly in its original form, there are several ways we can get a glimpse of them in 3D. The software supports the following methods: 4D Projection, Cross-Sections, 4D Nets, Cells, and Vertex Figures.

The issue here is whether such an interactive facility could trigger imaginative exploration of forms suggestive of integrative insights -- in this case into the cognitive configuration of the questioning environment framing the experience of "now". The possibility builds on the sense in which the space-time continuum is understood to be necessarily 4-dimensional.

In any simulation of 4 dimensions the 21 question-pair edges are transformed from lines into 21 planes. The questions associated with the 7 faces of the configuration are transformed into as many volumes -- of which one encompasses the 6 others (as represented in 3 dimensions, below).

The argument here is that the 21 question-pairs -- each understood as a continuum -- suggest an even greater degree of multidimensionality. The number of dimensions is of similar order to that argued by physics as being of relevance to the integrative potential of string theory whether the 11-dimensional form called M-theory or the 26 spacetime dimensions for the bosonic string. It remains to be comprehended what "dimensions" might mean in a psycho-social context. The issue has been discussed separately in relation to the concept of brane in string theory (Global Brane Comprehension Enabling a Higher Dimensional Big Tent? Strategic implication in encompassing nothing and coming to naught, 2011).

Experimental projection of Szilassi 3D question configuration into 4D (using Stella software options to create a duoprism based on a 6-sided polygon)
Animation of rotation in 3D	Aimation of simulated rotation in 4D

With respect to the space-time continuum, the imagination of many has of course been triggered by spaceships -- with some possibility of travel through time. There is some speculation regarding the nature and implication of "timeship" in contrast to "spaceship" (Timeship: Conception, Technology, Design, Embodiment and Operation, 2003; Embodying a Timeship vs. Empowering a Spaceship, 2003). With respect to the many more dimensions cognitively associated with the questioning dynamic (as implied here), it might be asked whether there is a case for focusing on "questships" -- reminiscent of travel framed as a "vision quest". Potentially more suggestive might be "imagination-ship", "image-ship" or "imaginal-ship", as considered separately with respect to the "magic carpets" required for "noonautics" (Magic Carpets as Psychoactive System Diagrams, 2010).

Could such travel be understood metaphorically as a form of "sailing through life" in which the configuration of questions serves as a form of cognitive vessel -- with the "dimensions" indicated by the question-pairs constituting the "rigging" through which navigation is enabled? Curiously there is a tendency to decorate such rigging with lights and flags (bunting), as with the use of strings of Christmas fairy lights or of prayer flags in Tibetan sacred places -- perhaps a faint reminder of such intangible dimensions. There is a certain charm to the circumferential pattern of faces of the Szilassi polyedron -- arrayed above -- which bear a resemblance to a string of prayer flags -- especially if animated.

Despite the lack of any pattern of "rigging", could some think tanks then be fruitfully understood as "questships", as might be separately inferred (Meta-challenges of the Future for Networking through Think-tanks, 2005)?

Such arguments highlight the paradoxical relation between the simplicity, supposedly associated with appreciation of "now", and the complexity it may imply, whether experientially or according to theoretical insights. Intuition may offer a degree of comprehension of such complexity, but without the capacity to articulate and explicate it. Geometrical forms offer a means of navigating between various degrees of complexity, much as with the zooming facilities in interactive exploration of maps. The issue is the degree of simplicity/complexity appropriate to different circumstances.

With respect to the adequacy of any representation of "now", a particular concern is whether it offers an alienating, sterile insight -- one that is "boring" rather than essentially attractive. A related concern is the counter-productive tendency to "grasp" any such insight possessively (Paradoxes of Engaging with the Ultimate in any Guise: living life penultimately, 2012; Beyond Harassment of Reality and Grasping Future Possibilities, 1996).

It is from such perspectives that the Szilassi mapping can be considered a questioning complex -- an appropriately enigmatic challenge to conventional comprehension, especially through enabling interaction with it in 4D.

With respect to achieving greater comprehension of the dynamics of that complex of higher dimensionality, the following images are suggestive.

Images suggestive of variously engaging with a higher dimensional questioning dynamic In each case the "lens" is that of the single questioning process encompassing the others "Where-ing" and "When-ing" relate notably to space and time respectively
"Where-ing"	"When-ing"

"How-ing"	"What-ing"	"Which-ing"	"Who-ing"	"Why-ing"

The arrows in the images are indicative of a form of directionality to the dynamic -- with the suggestion that in each case the encompassing dynamic "meshes" with those encompassed, although the directionality between them "clashes". The higher dimensional condition in which such clashing is resolved is associated with the 12-fold typing of the 21 edges with which the question pairs are associated (as discussed above). It is here that mapping of those hexagonal circular arrangements onto a dodecahedron of 12 faces is helpful -- with the suggestion that there is a dynamic alternation in the directionality. This approach was developed separately (Flowering of Civilization -- Deflowering of Culture: flow as a necessarily complex experiential dynamic, 2014) in a section on Arranging the flowers to engender an ecosystem?. This representation offers a sense of "now" as accessible through 12 "rabbit holes" of more comprehensible nature, rather than through a singular one more challenging to comprehension.

Alternative animations of a "12-flower" dodecahedron -- accessing the "rabbit hole" (an "untruncated" football")

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]