Number-coded need sets

Needs Communication: viable need patterns and their identification (Part #4)

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

In investigating the implications of the above points, it emerged that the fundamental attributes isolated at this level of concern were ultimately related to the qualities associated with certain numbers. In fact the use of numbers to 'code' such qualities gave a much less ambiguous means of representing them than via words with their many polysemantic associations. The problem, however, is one of comprehending the qualities involved, given the widely recognized inability to get beyond dyadic thinking.

The above outline suggests a way of deriving a well-ordered range of needs whose characteristics would be exemplified by the qualities associated with the number coding. This would be based upon the identification of a 'primary' need (one term) and a 'secondary' need (two term) to establish the series for which higher terms would be increasingly difficult to identify.

Because of their verbal ambiguity, such needs would be identified as a 'fuzzy concept' having 'something to do with':

One-Term: wholeness, identity, boundedness of the human being. Clearly this could focus (depending on the preference of the set creator)

• on the biophysical level, leading to a series concerned with the conditions for a viable biological animal (a necessary precondition for any 'human' characteristics);
• on the psychological level, leading to a series concerned with the condition for a viable psychological being. And in this oneterm case, R. D. Laing's concern with ontological insecurity is relevant. (7)

Two-Term: polarity, duality of the human being.

• on the biophysical level, this would imply the need for exposure to such conditions as heat-cold, light-dark, up-down, and so on as a basic environmental stimulus in terms of which biological processes can be ordered (cf. the consequences of sensory deprivation);
• on the psychological level, this would imply the need for dualistic stimuli such as a sense of pleasure-pain, we-they, approval-disapproval, and so on as basic stimuli for the orderly development of the 'human' being.

Carrying such series on to three or more terms is a challenging exercise in view of the difficulties of comprehension. One attempt that could be adapted to a human needs series is illustrated in Annex 1.

Such an approach would seen to identify primary needs that are so basic that they are not usually considered in the human needs debate. The intermediate terms in the series should cover those conventionally included in such sets, whereas the higher terms should identify much more subtle needs that are usually ignored for that reason. (8)

There is a tantalizingly elusive relationship to the current techniques for investigating and representing macrodynamics. This is itself interpreted in terms of catastrophe theory-namely, the theory of the transitions of attractors (macrons) in a phase space, which is the basis of the geometry of macrons as it has developed so far. (9) The interesting question is what macron patterns the mind chooses to recognize under different circumstances. The ramifications of this question are discussed elsewhere,(10) and it is interesting that the same authors are cited by Erich Jantsch in considering the archetypal implications of the decomposition of a whole in relation to modes of learning, evolution of consciousness, and methods of inquiry. (11) For example, von Franz, a Jungian scholar, states of the time-bound qualities of the first four numbers:

one comprises wholeness, two divides, repeats, and engenders symmetries, three centers the symmetries and initiates linear succession, four acts as a stabilizer by turning back to the one as well as bringing forth,observables by creating boundaries, and so on.(12)

Jantsch notes that it is the transitions between these four basic qualities that symbolize how a gestalt system maintains its nature (to comprehension?) in the presence of many temptations to become formalized. And it is the first step from one to two that constitutes the 'original sin' of formal division which, according to Pankow, 'separates the two sides of complementarities and treats them as identities.'(13) He relates this to the work of Spencer Brown and concludes:

therein lies a formal justification for the ultimate complementarity of the search without (in the physical world) and the search within (in our own experience), 'for what we approach, in either case, from one side or the other, is the common boundary between them.' (14)

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