Strategic landscape and knowledge cybernetics

Strategic Challenge of Polysensorial Knowledge: bringing the "elephant" into "focus" (Part #7)

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With regard to locating such a "place to live", this might be understood as a generalization of the architectural and planning arguments of Christopher Alexander (A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, Oxford University Press, 1977) regarding a subtle exploration of the quality of a "good place to be", notably as explored elsewhere (5-fold Pattern Language, 1984). As noted by Alexander (The Timeless Way of Building, 1979, p. x):

There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. The search we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments when we are most alive....

To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead, they keep us locked in inner conflict. The more living patterns there are in a place... the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name.

The interface to Chinese cognitive frameworks, notably in terms of feng shui, has been extensively explored in relation to knowledge cybernetics by Maurice Yolles and Zude Ye (From Knowledge Cybernetics to Feng Shui, 2005; Taoist Viable Systems, International Society for the Systems Sciences Conference, 2005; Cybernetics of Tao, submitted to Kybernetes, 2008). They argue in the latter paper, essentially linking to the spatial sense of Alexander:

In setting up a feng shui schema we could adopt a variable called landscape. It has dichotomous energy states that can also be modelled as opposing and interactive (yin-yang) forces, which in practice determine the resulting qualitative energy level of the variable. These forces are normally expressed in terms of a dragon metaphor, when the mountain and water dragons are used. The traditional Tao requirement is for the two dragons to interact over a given landscape, and as a result a balanced landscape state arises, referred to as the landscape dragon. These dragons are code for the conceptual qi forces that emerge from the urban landscape structure. The mountain and water dragons can become one when they find harmony together, and when this occurs they are spontaneously manifested into the planes dragon.

Although the authors do not make any explicit reference to the feng shui compass, they do however refer to a compass in the following terms in relation to measurement of feng shui:

Also in feng shui landscape dimensions can also be created through more complex dimensions in the archetypical schema .... created from the octadic trigram called Bagua. The dimensions of the octal are fundamentally the 8 symmetric points of the compass to define a landscape in terms of space-time energy changes. More complexity is introduced by relating this octal to the five elements archetype, which creates a context for additional metaphorical representations are made in areas that relate to wealth, fame, love, family/health, education, career, and three types of luck. All of these approaches come together to contribute to the overall measuring process in feng shui, and this can therefore be used as a means by which landscapes can be related to personal fortune. It is this particular aspect that some scientists are sceptical about.

Possibilities of facilitating exploration of such traditional metaphors, and their inherent dynamic, have been explored elsewhere (Animation of Classical BaGua Arrangements: a dynamic representation of Neti Neti, 2008; Dynamic Exploration of Value Configurations: interrelating traditional cultural symbols through animation, 2008).

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