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Psychosocial implication of jerk, jolt, jounce and snap?
Cognitive Implication of Globality via Temporal Inversion (Part #6)
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One framework indicative of such implications is provided by the articulation by Kevin Kelly (The Inevitable: understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future, 2017), especially when these "forces" are experienced problematically:
Being jerked, jolted or jounced? Further insight is offered in commentaries on a question: What are some real-world applications of jounce, the fourth derivative of position -- any ideas? And for the fifth, sixth, and seventh? (Reddit). One blog offers a valuable summary with implications for music, distinguishing the terms absement and presement of relevance to flow-based instruments (Derivatives of position, The Spectrum of Riemannium, Log#053)
In a period characterized by "shocks" of many kinds, it is especially valuable to draw attention to jounce in relation to "shock absorption" in the light of extensive understanding of it in mechanical systems, if not in biological and psychosocial systems (Donald Jones, Suspension Systems Jounce and Rebound Center of Gravity Ride, November 2011; Jim Anderton, Compression, Jounce or Bump, AutoServiceWorld, 1 July 2001). Could such insights into "jounce" be adapted to new understanding of life's shocks and those of any society -- as suggested by the above-mentioned argument of Jim Brosseau (Jounce: crafting a resilient life in an increasingly chaotic world, 2014)?
As one review writes of the latter argument:
Jounce is a real physics term -- it's the fourth derivative of position over time. Though the term "jounce" is seldom encountered in science class, we often go through life being jounced: jerked around in several directions at once. From a traffic ticket to bad news from your doctor to a global catastrophe, the sources for being jounced are all around us. This book is about dealing with being jounced.
Unconscious associations of significance? For a discipline renowned for its framing of sexuality as meaningless -- perhaps "not even wrong" -- there is a delightful irony to use of jounce (as "jouncing") and jerk (as "jerking") in contexts which no Freudian would fail to appreciate.
There is no lack of references to "jouncing breasts" and "jerking off", presumably contributing to the intuitive semantic associations of this argument with respect to higher orders of temporal experience. This offers a reminder that the static nature of substantives may obscure significance embodied in the dynamics they imply (Freedom, Democracy, Justice: Isolated Nouns or Interwoven Verbs? Illusory quest for qualities and principles dynamically disguised, 2011).
Correspondences to cosmology? As indicated above, higher derivatives of time are clearly of concern in relatively unknown known technical applications -- with the possible exception of shock absorbers and the resilience they offer (Sean Joyce, Resilience: the cyber-shock absorber businesses need, 18 October 2017). Resilience is then usefully to be recognized as the psychsocial analogue to their operation, as implied by the title of the study by Jim Brosseau (Jounce: crafting a resilient life in an increasingly chaotic world, 2014). However the major focus of studies with respect to such derivatives is on their implications for cosmology and understanding of gravity on a galactic scale, notably with respect to black holes and dark matter.
Curiously the "ghost-like" instabilities (noted above) would seem to bear a strange resemblance to the "snake-like" instabilities long-recognized as a challenge to the current design of viable nuclear fusion reactors -- on which such great hopes are now placed (Kathy Kincade, Taming Plasma Fusion Snakes: supercomputer simulations move fusion energy closer to reality, Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences, 24 January 2014; A. Y. Aydemir, et al, Snakes and similar coherent structures in tokamaks, Institute for Fusion Studies, 5 September 2015). As noted above, use of the term provocatively recalls critical use of the phrase "ghost in the machine" -- in this case the "Newtonian machine".
In the quest for insight into the psychosocial relevance of higher derivatives of time, the arguments with regard to cosmology and gravity on a galactic scale might be considered obscure and irrelevant. It is however appropriate to recall the importance of so-called gravity-models used in various social sciences to predict and describe certain behaviours that mimic gravitational interaction as described in Isaac Newton's law of gravity. Generally, the social science models contain some elements of mass and distance, which lends them to the metaphor of physical gravity. Examples include: gravity model of trade, gravity model of migration, and trip distribution. An obvious question is whether there are conditions under which such models call for consideration of higher derivatives of time.
There is a nice irony to use of the acronym AQUAL as a theory of gravity based on Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), but using a Lagrangian. "AQUAL" then stands for "A QUAdratic Lagrangian". The irony is evident in the use of the acronym AQAL standing for "All Quadrants All Levels", a model of integral theory suggesting that all human knowledge and experience can be placed in a four-quadrant grid, along the axes of "interior-exterior" and "individual-collective".
Use of metaphors relating to the cosmology of the social system, even its black holes, are of course common. The latter is frequently used in relation to public debt. Examples include:
- Ilanit Tof: As above, so below: Modern Cosmology as Psychological Metaphor (Little Tree, 1996)
- Joseph Campbell: The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: metaphor as myth and as religion. (1986)
- Thomas Moore: The Planets Within: the astrological psychology of Marsilio Ficino (1990)
- Henryk Skolimowski: The Participatory Mind: a new theory of knowledge and of the universe. (1995)
- V. Mansfield: Modern Cosmology as Psychological Metaphor (Hamilton, 1996)
Other examples can be explored (Entering Alternative Realities -- Astronautics vs Noonautics: isomorphism between launching aerospace vehicles and launching vehicles of awareness, 2002; Being the Universe : a metaphoric frontier, 1999; Ursula Le Guin, Subjectifying the Universe: science and poetry as complementary modes of comprehending and tending to the natural world, Brain Pickings, 8 April 2018).
Catastrophic disruption to governance processes -- experienced as a "jolt": An obvious challenge for such models is how they encompass the kinds of abrupt discontinuity which might well be intuitively recognized using such terms as "jerk" or "jolt". More obvious is the question of how any understanding inspired by the smooth continuity of "gravity" is challenged by "catastrophe" -- and the understandings offered by catastrophe theory and its dependence on higher derivatives (Tim Poston and Ian Stewart, Catastrophe Theory and Its Applications, 2014; C F Chan, et al, Perturbation Methods, Instability, Catastrophe and Chaos, 1999). The commentary on the osculating parabola (above) in the discussion in the Mathrmatics Stack Exchange, makes the further point:
Further, one could also give a geometric interpretation for the fourth derivative; what one now considers is the osculating conic (the limiting conic through five neighboring points of a curve when those five points coalesce), and one could classify points of a plane curve as elliptic, parabolic or hyperbolic depending on the nature of the osculating conic. In this respect, the discriminant of the osculating conic depends on the first four derivatives.
Arguably many conventional mindsets (whether lending themselves to description in terms of gravity models or not) can now be understood as being subject to "jolt", however catastrophic -- or as being "jerked" into a new mode. The assumptions underlying the business-as-usual of the international community and the rule of law over many decades can be seen in these terms -- most notably as jolted by a wave of populism (Italy Faces Political Paralysis After Populist Jolt, The Wall Street Journal, 5 March 2018; Italy Sends a Jolt Through Europe, Spiegel Online, 1 June 2018). Ironically the term "snap" is favoured for snap elections which such populism may engender.
It is readily argued, especially in the current period, that people experience their leaders as "jerking them around" through the arbitrary nature of governance processes unable to encompass the higher dimensionality in terms of which jolts and jerks are perceptible. Should it be considered surprising that people "snap"? Indeed the very nature of such a surprise to the conventional models of "business-as-usual" merits reflection in terms of the arguments of black-swan theory as articulated by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable, 2007).
Correspondence to nuclear fusion? As noted above, the constraints of higher derivatives of time suggest that valuable insights with respect to the requisite flow of attention are available from the design requirements of nuclear fusion reactors currently under development to recreate the "power of the sun".
These call for avoiding any contact between what flows and what contains that flow (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006; Implication of Toroidal Transformation of the Crown of Thorns: design challenge to enable integrative comprehension of global dynamics, 2011). The flow of plasma within the toroidal container recalls the form of the ouroboros and the possibility of its animation in 3D (Complementary visual patterns: Ouroboros, MÖbius strip, Klein bottle; Circular configuration of cognitive phases framing toroidal experience?).
Arrogance as a gravity analogue: Given their attractive power, potentially irresistible in some instances, there is a case for Understanding models otherwise -- as centres of "gravity" (2015). In that sense gravity models are not only relevant to explanations offered by the social sciences, the models offered by those sciences (as with any belief system) may function as centres of gravity.
Of particular interest is the mysterious manner in which arrogance is associated with belief systems, as discussed separately (Arrogance as an analogue to gravity -- equally fundamental and mysterious, 2015). There it is noted that:
Little attention is however accorded to arrogance in psychosocial systems, and specifically with respect to that associated with the promoters of particular models in which others are called to believe. A valuable exception with respect to arrogance and "cultural gravity" is extensively discussed by Rajiv Narang and Devika Devaiah (Orbit-Shifting Innovation: the dynamics of Ideas that create history, 2014). Another with respect to business cycles -- recalling the understanding of gravitational collapse -- is that of Michael Farr (Avoiding the Arrogance Cycle: Think You Can't Lose, Think Again, 2012). It has been a concern since its articulation as hubris in Ancient Greece (Ariston, On Arrogance; Michael Dewilde, Hubris: The Psychological and Spiritual Roots of a Universal Affliction; Valerie Tiberias and John D. Walker, Arrogance, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1998)
Arrogance (perhaps framed as egotism) is frequently cited as a factor undermining global initiatives. Military arrogance is an ever-present phenomenon, perhaps to be usefully recognized as a characteristic phenomenon of the security and intelligence services in general (Alistair Horne, Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century, 2016).
There is considerable irony to the extent to which arrogance functions as an "invisible" force in the sciences, as exemplified in a commentary on a proposed revision by the American Physical Society of its 2007 statement on climate change (Arthur Smith, The Arrogance of Physicists, 13 October 2009). He remarks:
But sometimes that arrogance and self-assurance and collection of intuitions lead us, or at least a few of us, astray. We forget that there are other smart people in the world, who have been thinking about their limited problem for a lot longer and perhaps have a deeper understanding than we give them credit for. We jump in with our simplified models and ideas and then wonder why they don't find them helpful. Or we too deeply trust the intuition of a colleague who has been often right before or who we trust for other reasons, but in a particular instance has not put in the effort to properly understand the problem, and ends up only embarrassing themselves, and us by association.
Given the mysterious nature of gravity, it is perhaps no surprise that there is considerable difficulty for the sciences to address its role in the elaboration and promulgation of systems of knowledge (Knowledge Processes Neglected by Science: insights from the crisis of science and belief, 2012). A strange relationship is recognized between arrogance and creativity (Neel Burton, Bad Genius: The Link Between Arrogance and Creativity, Psychology Today, 6 September 2017; Tom Jacobs, The Focused Arrogance of the Highly Creative, Pacific Standard, 8 July 2011) .
Comprehending the potential significance of higher derivatives of time in relation to gravitational models is necessarily challenged by their subtlety -- however this is understood in relation to subjective experience. As "non-sense" within a Newtonian framework, this suggests a valuable challenge to the contempt of physics for the psychosocial sciences, as notably framed through the Sokal Affair (Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science, 1999).
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