Catastrophic axes of qualitative bias

Reimagining Principles Enabling an Existential Ecostery (Part #11)

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Problematic distinctions of quality have been fruitfully explored as engendering predictable conflict in scholarly debate. Using disagreement over literary definitions of "romantic" as an example, it has been shown that authors (in agreement or disagreement) could be distinguished along seven axes of methodological bias (W. T. Jones, The Romantic Syndrome: toward a new method in cultural anthropology and the history of ideas, 1961): The axes of bias distinguished, as engendering predictable debate, are preferences for:

• Order vs Disorder: Namely the range between a preference for system, structure, conceptual clarity, etc. and a preference for fluidity, muddle chaos, etc.
• Static vs Dynamic: Namely the range between a preference for the changeless, eternal, etc. and a preference for movement, for explanation in genetic and process terms, etc.
• Continuity vs Discreteness: Namely the range between a preference for wholeness, unity, etc and a preference for discreteness, plurality, diversity, etc.
• Inner vs outer: Namely the range between a preference for being able to project oneself into the objects of one's experience (to experience them as one experiences oneself), and a preference for a relatively external, objective relation to them.
• Sharp focus vs Soft focus: Namely the range between a preference for clear, direct experience and a preference for threshold experiences, felt to be saturated with more meaning than is immediately present.
• This world vs Other world: Namely the range between preference for belief in the spatio-temporal world as self-explanatory and preference for belief that it is not and can only be comprehended in terms of other frames.
• Spontaneity vs Process: Namely the range between a preference for chance, freedom, accident, etc and a preference for explanations subject to laws and definable processes.

Given the "catastrophic" nature of the dissonant academic "dialogue" resulting from such biases, there is a case for considering the potential relationship of the set to those of the seven elementary catastrophes distinguished from a topological perspective by René Thom (Structural Stability and Morphogenesis, 1972), especially given his application of this approach to semiotics (Semio Physics: A Sketch, 1990). This has been clarified by others (Jean Petitot, Logos et Théorie des Catastrophes: à partir de l'oeuvre de René Thom, 1996; David Aubin, Forms of Explanations in the Catastrophe Theory of René Thom: topology, morphogenesis, and structuralism, 2004).

Given the argument here relating to conflation of fundamental qualitative distinctions, whether as "biases" or "catastrophes", it is potentially useful to explore how these might be related to the set of seven WH-questions as associated with distinctive "cognitive catastrophes": who, why, where, what, which, when, how (Conformality of 7 WH-questions to 7 Elementary Catastrophes an exploration of potential psychosocial implications, 2006). Does existential crisis -- whether collective or individual -- need to be brought into focus by a "deadly question", as separately argued (In quest of the most deadly question, 2013).

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