Precautionary comments regarding integrative initiatives

Tuning a Periodic Table of Religions, Epistemologies and Spirituality (Part #5)

It is a fact that down the centuries different people have articulated integrative "models" to explain experience in an all-encompassing manner. Religions might be considered to be such initiatives as sanctioned and inspired by the divine. The periodic table is a relatively new metaphor that has inspired new approaches to organization which nevertheless echo efforts from the more distant past.

Some concerns relating to current initiatives towards synthesis have been listed elsewhere (Evaluating Synthesis Initiatives and their Sustaining Dialogues: possible questions as a guide to criteria of evaluation of any synthesis initiative, 2000). Particular concerns relate to the production and status of "models" -- in this case "periodic tables" -- in the current commercially biased academic context. Questions might include:

is there something inherently flawed in any all-encompassing periodic table -- as a theory of everything -- if it is subject to copyright and possibly only commercially distributed to those who can afford it, whatever cost is associated with access to such knowledge? How do such practices compare with use of the Mendeleev table, whose estate presumably never derived any financial benefit from its subsequent use, nor restricted that use? The challenge is especially acute for religions in anticipating copyright issues on the revelations of the next Messiah, Imam or Buddha.
at a time when much is appreciated about the open source approach to directory development (eg Wikipedia) and software development (eg Linux), is there something fundamentally flawed about initiatives that are uniquely associated with particular individuals -- especially when they are impelled to label their cognitive framework with their own names?
to what extent should the motivation for producing an all-encompassing model, given its qualitative scope, be rendered explicit by its design?
how does an all-encompassing table provide for innovative future discoveries and "paradigm changes", or is it to be considered as definitive for all time -- effectively a temporal form of cultural imperialism?
how does an all-encompassing model account for its critics, whether "ignorant" and/or offering alternatives which others (possibly in the future) find to be insightful? In particular how does it handle the interpersonal dynamics so repeatedly evident in the evolution of all belief systems (eg Jung/Freud, Chandrasekhar/Eddington, etc) which give rise to the kinds of conflict only too evident in religion (Catholic/Protestant, Sunni/ Shiite, etc)
given the inappropriate claims made for completion of the Human Genome Project, based on assumptions that static sequencing would be determinative, is it not vital to be sensitive to the possibility that dynamics may be the key to future understanding -- as was subsequently discovered with respect to protein folding? The focus on placement within a scheme of categories might be usefully described as "placement illusion". The question is reinforced by recent recognition of an entirely new basis for chemical reactivity that has called into question the descriptive adequacy of the distribution of atoms into positions within a table through recognition of "superatoms". These clusters of atoms of a particular chemical element take on the properties of entirely different elements, transform the periodic table from a "flatland" to a three-dimensional landscape in which each element is drawn out into a series of super-elements (Philip Ball, A New Kind of Alchemy, New Scientist, 16 April 2005)
at a time when the cognitive challenge of self-reference and embodiment has been fruitfully articulated (cf Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, 2007; George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy In The Flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought, 1999; Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 1991), what is the cognitive/experiential relationship of the producer or user of any such table to such an ordering device? How is this specifically recognized within the device? A related issue is the nature and degree of self-criti8csm as a prelude to learning and further transformation.
in a period characterized by a "clash of civilizations" -- supposedly religiously determined -- and by a multitude of bloody (if not genocidal) religious conflicts, how seriously is any detached theory of everything to be taken, whether or not it can be elegantly expressed through some form of a periodic table? Rather than a top-down design approach, to what extent is it incumbent upon any design process to seek to encounter the perspectives of those whose various seemingly incommensurable existential realities are otherwise claimed to have been successfully packaged into sterile categories?
a key issue, in a period whose difficulties are aggravated by the dynamics between religions, is why efforts to order belief systems in some form of periodic table or other mapping do not inform the "interfaith" dialogue process in some productive way -- and are even remarkable by their absence (as indicated with respect to the Parliament of the World's Religions). Is it appropriate that any such initiatives should facilitate a form of in-group dialogue that might be caricatured as incestuous and supportive of a particular (cultic) language, studied as appreciative inquiry at the Weatherhead School of Management (Case Western Reserve University)?

Some of these issues have been discussed elsewhere (Musing on Information of a Higher Quality, 1996; Future Coping Strategies: beyond the constraints of proprietary metaphors, 1992). Specifically it needs to be asked -- if such a cognitive device is all that it claims to be, and its use is subject to exclusive copyright or patent -- to what extent is the world thereby held to ransom, possibly when there is a vital need for such a device? Some implications of such issues have been raised in The Economist (16 June 2007) by recent efforts by Craig Venter to patent life. At some threshold "cost", it becomes cheaper to invent one's own model rather than "buy into" one for which there is a significant price to be paid. Ironically, this is a basis for reproduction (at least for the moment).

A religion may also be understood, to some degree, as such a device about which such questions may be asked. Access to spiritual insight may only be available under special conditions. How is this reflected in the design of any periodic table?