Questionable answers

Enacting Transformative Integral Thinking through Playful Elegance (Part #15)

The Sufi tale of the quest of the birds highlights the questionable nature of any closure on a premature answer -- a "bird cage" -- whilst reframing the nature of any ultimate answer to an integrative quest (Constraints on a Meta-answer, 1995; Questionable Answers, 1995; Evaluating Synthesis Initiatives and their Sustaining Dialogues, 2000). It raises the question as to the assumed significance of questions as they are conventionally framed. The thematic streams of the Symposium were each invited to formulate questions to be considered in the subsequent World Cafe process.

Questions have now acquired dramatic, if not tragic, significance for a global civilization. There are the questions -- with answers of uncertain quality -- of whether it will simply collapse, of how a turbulent future may be navigated, and of whether the global management and leadership capacity is adequate to the challenge:

For the individual there are corresponding existentially dramatic questions (Being What You Want: problematic kataphatic identity vs. potential of apophatic identity? 2008; Am I Question or Answer? 2006). They raise the possibility of totally problematic answers (Epistemological Panic in the face of Nonduality, 2010; Beyond the Standard Model of Universal Awareness: being not even wrong? 2010). How then to engage with a disparate set of more integrative "answers" (Musings on Information of Higher Quality, 1996)? What space and opportunity does such a set offer for one's own answers -- or have all the spaces been colonized by imperial authorities?

Curiously these contexts are characterized by a high order of play, whether the "Great Game" between power blocs, political gameplaying, bureaucratic gameplaying, playing the stockmarket, preoccupation with global sports (World Cup, Olympics, etc), interactive gaming on the web, or tourism in the quest of recreation. Nevertheless it is readily assumed that the cognitive significance of play is irrelevant to any integrative framework within which answers might be fruitfully engendered. It might even be argued that the questions formulated are a response to the growth prospects of an "answer economy" (Cyclic transformation of the global answer economy, 1982) . An interesting question, again, is the potential insight offered by The Glass Bead Game of Hermann Hesse.

The humanities have elaborated a literature with regard to the nature of possible questions -- the WH-questions (who, where, what, when, which, why and how). A concern is how they are variously encountered in cognitive development and language acquisition. How might this preoccupation be relevant to global and individual challenges -- and to collective acquisition of a language of requisite richness to respond to them? One approach is to consider the clustering of challenging questions, as with those of the Symposium, in terms of the WH-set -- as previously explored (Clustering Questions of Existential Significance, 2010). Of particular interest is the cognitive form of each style of WH-question and what this implies for the manner in which existential space is then framed. How does each style of question frame the above-mentioned "mothering space" from which answers may be expected to emerge? Is the process of questioning a form of intercourse engendering cognitive insemination?

Especially intriguing is the possibility that the questions may variously frame the experience of cognitive space in a manner analogous to the ordering of bifurcations in dynamical systems as explored by catastrophe theory -- a special case of singularity theory in geometry. This may be considered in various ways:

As has been noted in different contexts, the capacity to respond to catastrophic surprises, experienced in relation to a world understood as "ordinary", may be necessarily dependent on "extraordinary" theories. In physics this has been famously framed by Niels Bohr as the requirement that any adequate theoryin fundamental physics be "crazy enough". Arthur C. Clarke argues, in one of his three laws, that it likely to be perceived like "magic". The expectation of an adequate "theory" may itself be called into question, as with the answers from various "crazy wisdom" perspectives. The aesthetic quality of the outcome may indeed embody a sense of moonshine improbability, as mentioned with respect to the fundamental nature of very high orders of symmetry (Marcus du Sautoy, Finding Moonshine: a mathematician's journey through symmetry, 2008).

Any relevant insight may also be fundamentally incompatible with conventional claims to intellectual property and territory -- of "getting it" and "grasping it" -- as recognized in the vedic adage Neti Neti, and argued elsewhere (Einstein's Implicit Theory of Relativity -- of Cognitive Property? Unexamined influence of patent office procedures, 2007).

Any adequate "answer" may then need to be of a subtler nature, a matter of implication rather than explication, as explored by David Bohm -- recalling the contrast between weak and strong integration. A remarkably insightful case, integrating an aesthetic perspective, has been made by mathematician Vasily V. Nalimov (Realms of the Unconscious: the enchanted frontier, 1982) with respect to a probabilistic theory of truth -- as previously summarized (Probabilistic vision of the world, 1995). This recalls the interest in physics in notions of the collapsing of probability functions.

Returning to the Symposium birds, such considerations raise the question as to whether each bird is offering an answer, asking a question, both, or neither. Each may indeed function as a pollinator or spreader of seeds -- seeking to disseminate an insight. Each may be puzzled as to whether it is the target of attempted insemination. But what does their collective dynamic engender? There is however a complementary Sufi tale regarding construction of the ultimate golden bird cage to contain the integrative insight engendered by their efforts. Its bars may then be considered as the trajectories of the birds -- and the interference patterns of resonance between them -- effectively weaving together to form the "mothering space". But, being necessarily doorless and empty, the circumstances under which it becomes occupied remain mysterious -- perhaps enabling the mattering of nothing (Epistemological Panic in the Face of Nonduality: does nothing matter? 2010; Import of Nothingness and Emptiness through Happening and Mattering, 2008).

Concluding expression of appreciation

It is extremely difficult to organize an interdisciplinary event and few can be said to have been adequate to the challenges of the planet as now foreseen. The efforts of Markus Molz, and the support structure of the University of Luxembourg, are therefore much to be appreciated -- recognizing the probable existence of unseen constraints and unfortunate compromises rendering the task nearly impossible.

Gratitude to the organizers is appropriate for having attracted the rich selection of participants. Regret is appropriate regarding the apparently uncritical approach to some dimensions of the event -- especially in the light of its preoccupations. This remains a challenge of continuing concern.

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Questionable answers