Packaging wisdom for global governance?

Enabling Wisdom Dynamically within Intertwined Tori (Part #8)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

The economic importance of compact packaging is widely recognized. There is a degree of irony to the current need to be more "economic with the truth" where this relates to the presentation of wisdom relevant to governance. The question raised here is whether there are learnings from the science of packaging, as is most notably evident in the extensively explored geometry of sphere packing -- intimately related to the polyhedral argument above. To the extent that wisdom insights are fruitfully represented as distinct "spheres of truth", how can they best be "packed" together to constitute a meaningful whole? Beyond the possibility of packaging "spheres of influence", what are the possibilities of "packaging wisdom"?

Absent from the above discussion is the content to be associated with relational edges and how which could be fruitfully related to what. This is of course a theme of the systemic explorations of causal loops by Yolles (2006, 2010) and Hays (2007, 2010) -- whether or not these can be usefully related to the above approach.There is a case, for example, of endeavouring to map such "loops" into the fractal organization of the "circles" in an Apollonian gasket as shown below in its 2D and 3D variants.

Apollonian gasket (2D circle packing) (reproduced from Wikipedia)	Apollonian spheres (3D sphere packing) (reproduced from Wikipedia)

The challenge of packing in 3D is well-illustrated by the image on the left below. Some sense of the challenge in relation to "wisdom", as argued in relation to the hexagrams of the I Ching, can be recognized by increasing the diameter of the vertex spheres of the depictions of the drilled truncated cube (above) -- as shown in the image on the right below.

Indication of conventional sphere packing (reproduced from Wikipedia)	Sphere packing illustrated by increasing size of 32 vertices of drilled truncated cube

The argument for packaging wisdom may be framed more generally with respect to the desirability and possibilities of ordering knowledge according to different symmetrical configurations (Spherical Configuration of Categories to Reflect Systemic Patterns of Environmental Checks and Balances, 1994). An insightful illustration is offered by the depiction below which could be reframed as applying to "order in knowledge space".

Sphere packing of the 12 Archimedean polyhedra in their most regular pattern, a cuboctahedron, around a truncated tetrahedron (from Keith Critchlow, Order in Space, 1969, p. 39). Arrows indicate the succession of truncations from 1 to 6 in each case. (Disabled: Clicking on a polyhedron links to a spinning image)

Critchlow's work is consistent with that of Christopher Alexander (The Nature of Order: an essay on the art of building and the nature of the universe, 2003-4), as discussed separately (Harmony-Comprehension and Wholeness-Engendering eliciting psychosocial transformational principles from design, 2010).

Earth Summits: The forthcoming "Rio+20" Earth Summit -- the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (2012) -- will be the subject of extensive tweeting. However, will it engender a coherent strategic pattern which is comprehensible "at a glance" to those of constrained attention span (and in contrast to Agenda 21, the outcome of its predecessor in 1992)? Or will it be reduced to failure by dependence on "fat tree" knowledge management and communication?

The outcome of the Earth Summit will pose a particular challenge in "packaging" its insights at a time when the tired formula of "declarations" has proven only too evidently "unfit for purpose" -- implying that exploration of new modes is appropriate (Structure of Declarations: challenging traditional patterns, 1992).

Transcending strategic dilemmas: Of relevance in relation to the first Earth Summit (Rio de Janiero, 1992) was the effort to identify the "strategic dilemmas", with which global governance was faced, from the arguments of a range of constituencies. Six "functions" were identified as engendering such dilemmas (Inter-sectoral Strategic Dilemmas of Sustainable Development, 1992). These were then configured in the light of polyhedral tensegrity structures, as separately described (Configuring Globally and Contending Locally: shaping the global network of local bargains by decoding and mapping Earth Summit inter-sectoral issues, 1992).

A question for the future is whether and how such an approach might relate to the six facets of both the inner cube and the contextual framework of the drilled truncated cube -- with the polarizing "dilemmas" appropriately framed by the edges of the inner cube, emphasizing the challenge of "in the box" thinking by which the forthcoming Earth Summit may be characterized. The introduction of tensegrity, as an organizing principle for their transcendence on the occasion of the 1992 Summit, followed from the reflections of R. Buckminster Fuller (1975, 1979) and resulted in their subsequent development from a cybernetic perspective by Stafford Beer (Beyond Dispute: the invention of team syntegrity, 1994) and thereafter in relation to the viable system model.

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]