Clues for future understanding of communication space

Communication with Whom, about What, Where and Why? (Part #5)

Explorations by others, indicative (for me) of how this understanding may be engendered and supported, include:

Integrative initiatives: Whilst there are a number of highly insightful integrative initiatives, they are typically weak in their appreciation of each other or of the implication of their contrasting appeals to different constituencies. a striking exception is the work of Jennifer Gidley (The Evolution of Consciousness as a Planetary Imperative: an integration of integral views. Integral Review, 5, 2007) who points to, and compares, a range of authors that highlight the need for "new thinking" and the inadequacy of old methodologies. She highlights the need for a mode of postformal discourse.
Cognitive geometry: The potential of unforeseen cognitive configurations has been fruitfully articulated by R. Buckminster Fuller (Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, 1975/ 1979) and Arthur M. Young (Geometry of Meaning, 1976). The topological implications for comprehension of complexity have been explored by Ron Atkin (Combinatorial Connectivities in Social Systems; an application of simplicial complex structures to the study of large organizations, 1977; Multidimensional Man; can man live in 3-dimensional space? 1981) as summarized elsewhere (Social organization determined by incommunicability of insights). Unfortunately the cognitive implications of advances in understanding of network topology have been limited, despite a degree of appreciation for their relevance to social geometry as discussed elsewhere (Polyhedral Empowerment of Networks through Symmetry: psycho-social implications for organization and global governance, 2008; Topology of Valuing: psychodynamics of collective engagement with polyhedral value configurations, 2008; Hyperaction through Hypercomprehension and Hyperdrive necessary complement to proliferation of hypermedia in hypersociety, 2006).
Visualization of complexity: Given the tremendous computer-enhanced media capacities, there is clearly much scope for imaginative reconfiguration of complexity as an aid to comprehension and learning. (Preliminary NetMap Studies of Databases on Questions, World Problems, Global Strategies, and Values, 2006; Generating a Million Questions from UIA Databases: Problems, Strategies, Values, 2006; Mapping Songlines of the Noosphere, 2006). This may be accompaniedf by sonification of some kind
Engaging with abundance: Authors such as Steven M. Rosen (Topologies of the Flesh: a multidimensional exploration of the lifeworld, 2006; Dimensions of Apeiron: a topological phenomenology of space, time, and individuation, 2004) highlight the manner in which the richness of psychosocial engagement with the world has been completely undermined by formal discourse -- an "eclipse of the lifeworld" in his terms. Ironically, in a period of sensitivity to the challenges of "resources" and "energy", this view is echoed by other authors with respect to such a lost sense of "abundance" (Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance: a tale of abstraction versus the richness of being. 1999; Sallie McFague, Life Abundant: rethinking theology and economy for a planet in peril, 2000; David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world, 1997)
Surface of expression: the implication for articulation of more appropriate understanding through "writing" text on more complex topological surfaces has been admirably articulated by Michael Schiltz (Form and Medium: a mathematical reconstruction, Image [&] Narrative, 6, 2003) in relation to the calculus of indications of George Spencer-Brown (Laws of Form, 1969/1994). Schiltz notes that form/medium is "the image for systemic connectivity and concatenation", as described by Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela. Schiltz argues that the conventional use of a planar surface for writing means that, at this point in the text, both author and reader are ready to be conned into the assumption of a plane writing surface without question. He demonstrates that this is not unquestionable and that use of a toroidal surface, for example, leads to other understandings of truth and connectivity, as discussed elsewhere (Comprehension of Requisite Variety for Sustainable Psychosocial Dynamics: transforming a matrix classification onto intertwined tori, 2006).
Self-reflexivity: A significant effort to bring some of these disparate threads into focus is the necessarily radical approach of Melanie Claire Purcell (Towards ANEWERA: Alternative Non Entropic Worldview Epistemological Resolution Analysis, 2007). Purcell makes extensive use of the cognitive paradoxes of the Klein bottle (as an extension of those of the Moebius strip) to interrelate the seemingly disparate symbolic frames of ancient myths and symbolic logic that are at the base of the inability to ground what is thought to be a new paradigm of science. The Klein bottle exemplifies the challenge of relating from any one perspective to that of any seemingly distant "other", whether the perspective of indigenous knowledge systems or that of women, despite the "continuity" of the surface relating perspectives of disparate orientation -- notably when "internal" and "external" knowledge is counter-intuitively intertwined. In various writings Kent Palmer (Steps to the Threshold of the Social: the mathematical analogies to dissipative, autopoietic, and reflexive systems, 1997; Autopoietic Meta-Theory, 1998; Deep Mathematics and Meta-Systems Theory, 1997; Vajra Logics and Mathematical Meta-models for Meta-systems Engineering, 2001). offers perhaps the clearest articulation of the associated challenges of nonduality. For him:

Dissipative systems hold two strands of illusory continuity together. They concern the situation where there are two orders that are in imbalance so that one order is displacing the other. Notice that if there is only one order there cannot be a dissipative system. Also if the two orders are in balance or stasis there cannot be a dissipative system. A dissipative system is when there are two different orders or ordering mechanisms that are out of balance with each other so that one ordering mechanism is disordering the other and creating a boundary between the two ordering mechanisms where one is dominant and the other is being dominated.
Formalized epistemology: Of notable interest is the effort to initiate a new discipline, namely a formalized epistemological method drawn both from the cognitive strategies practised in the main modern sciences and from general philosophical thinking. This has been based at the Centre pour la synthèse d'une épistémologie formalisée (CeSEF). As introduced by the editors of a collective work (Mioara Mugur-Schächter and Alwyn Van Der Merwe, eds. Quantum Mechanics, Mathematics, Cognition and Action : Proposals for a Formalized Epistemology, 2002):
What is lacking in order to improve our knowledge and control of the modes available for the generation and communication of knowledge, thoroughly and rapidly and with precision and detail, is a systematic research within the mutually isolated special languages belonging to all the major modern scientic disciplines, of the epistemological essence inherent in every one of them, and a systematic cross-referencing of the explicated results.

Despite their practical emphasis, and their intention, such areas of exploration are essentially abstruse. Despite the clues they offer, paradoxically they themselves constitute a challenge to communication. None effectively addresses this challenge, however well each may highlight aspects of it. In the light of those clues, this is presumably necessarily so and should be recognized as such. For example, despite the recognition of Gregory Bateson that "we are our own metaphor" (Mary Catherine Bateson, Our Own Metaphor: effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation, 1972), a perceptive insight is offered by Tim Parks (Everything is Connected, The Guardian, 13 September 2008):

The curious nature of Bateson's "epistemological" approach was that it prevented him from proposing remedies to the problems he identified. His thinking contained a kind of catch-22: the conscious mind, his own included, was of its nature incapable of grasping the vast system of which it was only a very small and far from representative part; hence any major intervention to "solve" a given problem would always be ill-informed and inadvisable. The only possible solution would be a radical change in our way of thinking, or even our way of knowing, a new (or ancient) mindset in which conscious purpose would be viewed as only a minor and rather suspect part of mental life.

Given the fundamental role of the unknown, epitomized by "dark matter", "dark energy" and "classified" information, it is curious that the role played by the "hidden" in the viability of those biological processes of which one is not conscious -- and would be totally unable to consciously manage -- is not seen as suggestive of the fundamental role of "unknowing" in psychosocial processes. As intimated by Bateson, essential remedial processes in society may need to be of a nature in which conscious awareness does not interfere -- highlighting the importance of new forms of apophatic discourse (Being What You Want: problematic kataphatic identity vs. potential of apophatic identity?, 2008). Failure to do so may indeed break the "pattern that connects" as identified by Bateson:

The pattern which connects is a meta-pattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that meta-pattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect. (Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, 1979).