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Eliciting imaginative thinking from coronavirus of relevance to governance
Cognitive Engagement with Spike Dynamics of a Polyhedral Coronavirus (Part #2)
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Although the following common quotations are allegedly from Albert Einstein, efforts to clarify their source by Alice Calaprice (The New Quotable Einstein, 2005), have only indicated that they correctly paraphrase his thinking:
- The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them
- "The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them
For example, as noted by Ian Goldin and Robert Muggah (The world before this coronavirus and after cannot be the same, The Conversation, 28 March 2020):
With COVID-19 infections now evident in 176 countries, the pandemic is the most significant threat to humanity since the second world war. Then, as now, confidence in international cooperation and institutions plumbed new lows.... Even as we attend to the countless emergencies generated by COVID-19, we need to think deeply about why the international community was so unprepared for an outbreak that was so inevitable. This is hardly the first time we've faced global catastrophes.... A global Marshall plan, with massive injections of funding, is urgently needed to sustain governments and societies.
Such sentiments are expressed otherwise by Bill Gates (How We Must Respond To The Coronavirus Pandemic, TED Talk. 29 March 2020). Whilst physicists have struggled for decades over insights into unity as physically understood in terms of many dimensions, the global unification implied by "we" and "plan" seemingly calls for little thought in that regard. The language of politicians prevails, namely that "we are all in this together", without addressing that many of us do not accept the superficial thinking behind such slogneering. The fact that the world population is not appropriately mobilised by such language -- and what "we must do" from one perspective or another -- remains a profound mystery to those who have called for it so vainly over many decades (International Community as God or Sorcerer's Apprentice? Strategic chaos in the absence of an interlocking temporal pattern of longer-term cyclic processes, 2015).
New thinking? Much is made of the need for "new thinking" with respect to a global civilization in crisis (Richard A. Slaughter (Ed.), New Thinking for a New Millennium: the knowledge base of futures studies, 1996; Edward de Bono, New Thinking for the New Millennium, 2000; William J. Williams, New Thinking for a New Millennium: the processes and application of abstracting, 2000). The implications have been highlighted separately (Re-cognition of higher orders of insight through "new thinking", 2104; Eliciting new thinking, 2009) .
It would seem that some such possibility is being explored otherwise as "joined-up thinking" (Rick Lewis, Joined-up Thinking, Philosophy Now, Nov/Dec 2014; Chris Frith, Neuroscience: Joined-up thinking, Nature, 2014; Philip Delves Broughton, Joined-up thinking, Financial Times, 8 June 2011; Joined-up Thinking, Lloyd's News, 1 December 2014; EU development policy needs joined-up thinking, say MEPs, European Parliament News, 25 October 2012). How is this form of integrative thinking enabled within the world wide web?
The challenge could be framed otherwise. Each year one might ask what is the "new thinking" to which governance is currently attentive? What new thinking has emerged from which disciplines -- or from the UN, from the OECD, from the EU, from NATO -- as might be a focus in their annual reports? How is such "new thinking" to be recognized and ranked? Should precedence be given to the thinking emanating from those most highly ranked -- a function of the Almanach de Gotha in determining order of precedence on diplomatic and social occasions?
The coronavirus pandemic is reinforcing that long-expressed call for "new thinking" -- even those articulated by authorities (Annan calls for 'new thinking' in Mideast process, The Irish Times, 22 February 2002; Gorbachev's New Thinking, Foreign Affairs, 1 February 1989), or as articulated by the Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics. Bluntly stated, few official reports are characterized by the quality of imagination attractive to larger proportions of the population.. The point has been separately argued (Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present, 2012) -- which took the form of a review of an essentially unimaginative report presented to the Club of Rome (Jorgen Randers, 2052: a Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, 2012).
Curiously it is innovators in technology who offer highly imaginative frameworks, most obviously manifesting in interactive gaming, virtual reality, the prospect of space exploration, and the like. They then function, to some degree, as surrogate officiants. They too may fantasize about their role in enabling more fruitful governance -- a more fruitful marriage between problematique and resolutique (John R. De La Mothe, Science, Technology and Global Governance, 2014; Benjamin Barber, Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities: the opportunity facing Silicon Valley, 2015 State of the Valley Conference; Jonathan Visbal, Governance Lessons from Silicon Valley, Bloomberg Business, 13 May 2008).
Physicists proudly refer to the much-quoted statement by Niels Bohr in response to Wolfgang Pauli: We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough. To that Freeman Dyson added:
When a great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer, himself, it will be only half understood; to everyone else, it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope! (Innovation in Physics, Scientific American, 199, 1958, 3)
Faced with global crises and social chaos, the question with regard to the much-sought "new thinking" with respect to "global governance", and the "governance of globalization", is whether any theory is "crazy enough" -- as may well be essential. In this light the newly announced UK initiative for high-risk innovative research, frames the question whether the requisite "craziness" will be inhibited by the same mindsets that have inhibited it previously (UK to launch £800m 'blue skies' research agency. The Guardian, 12 March 2020; Dominic Cummings calls for 'weirdos and misfits' for No 10 jobs, The Guardian, 3 January 2020).
Correspondences, analogy and metaphor as insight catalysts: Within the conventions of the various disciplines, correspondences and analogies between domains tend to be viewed with suspicion in the quest for articulations which are natural to the particular domain -- and make no reference to other domains. Of interest in this respect are the various theories of correspondences (Theories of Correspondences -- and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking, 2007). Therein, as Variations on any "theory of correspondences", the following are discussed:
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The latter clarification was elaborated in the light of the role of correspondence in a fundamental mathematical discovery with regard to the so-called monster group (Potential Psychosocial Significance of Monstrous Moonshine: an exceptional form of symmetry as a Rosetta stone for cognitive frameworks, 2007).
A valuable discussion of the related nature of analogies has been made by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander (Surfaces and Essences: analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking, 2013), as a further development of Hofstadter's earlier work (Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: computer models of the fundamental mechanisms of thought, 1995) and an extension of his seminal work on music and self-reference (GÃödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, 1979). The importance of metaphor is specifically highlighted with respect to the creativity of Albert Einstein.
Suppose therefore that, contrary to general assumptions, the early patent office procedures were indeed fundamental to Einstein's creative process, as argued separately (Einstein's Implicit Theory of Relativity - of Cognitive Property? Unexamined influence of patenting procedures, 2007). In the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein, such a seemingly "ridiculous" possibility has been extensively argued by the philosopher Susan G. Sterrett (Wittgenstein Flies a Kite: a story of models of wings and models of the world, 2006).
Biomimicry and technomimicry: These naturally follow from any understanding of correspondences and analogy. The issue of mimesis is addressed by the theoretical biologist Robert Rosen (Essays on Life Itself, 2000):
...mimetic approaches have been pursued over the years and indeed go back to prehistoric times (where they were expressed in terms of the occult notion of sympathies and embodied in "technologies" of sympathetic magic). In our own country, the same underlying concepts appear under the rubric "artificial" (as in artificial intelligence and artificial life). (pp. 132-133)
As the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems, biomimetics has been fundamental to development of flight technology (Janine M. Benyus, Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature, 2009; Akhlesh Lakhtakia, et al., Engineered Biomimicry, 2013). Technomimicry, by which one technology is developed through some degree of imitation of another, is less readily recognized in principle, however much it may be a feature of practice.
Both are a source of further insight, separately or in combination (Engendering a Psychopter through Biomimicry and Technomimicry: insights from the process of helicopter development, 2011; Reimagining Tesla's Creativity through Technomimicry: psychosocial empowerment by imagining charged conditions otherwise, 2014).
General systems research and sympathetic magic: As noted above, the argument here is especially inspired by the approach of general systems theory, most notably promoted by Ludwig von Bertalanffy (General system theory: a new approach to unity of science, Human Biology, 23, 1951).
The quest for new insight, across the conventional boundaries by which it is inhibited, is usefully framed by an early editorial in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science (16, 1981, 2). Zygon is interested in weaving together the multicolored strands of ideas and practices of religious traditions and the contemporary sciences. The focus of the issue, and the editorial, exploes the contemporary insights of systems theory for developing a tapestry that portrays human nature, society, and the rest of nature as a dynamic whole.
In view of this current exploration it is interesting to reflect briefly on two of the many ways in which human beings have tried to weave together different aspects of human experience, in order to feel more at home in the world and to exert some control over humans and the system of nature.
The first is the ancient idea of "imitative magic," an offshoot of "sympathetic magic" made famous by Sir James G. Frazer. This understanding of how things are related makes intelligible such diverse phenomena of tribal religion as the technology of voodoo, in which, for example, an image of a person is manipulated to control the actual person, and the various rainmaking practices, in which, for example, boulders are rolled down hills to simulate thunder or blood is dripped on the ground to assist sympathetically the natural production of rain. Similarly Elisha instructed the king to shoot arrows out of a window and then to go to strike the ground with them, in order to insure victory over the enemy (2 Kings 13:14-19). One might even wonder if sympathetic magic serves as a hidden assumption behind the Christian Lord's Supper, in which by partaking of bread and wine one enters into union with (communion) the body and blood of Jesus as the Christ.
The second way, that of scientific inquiry, has severed the type of causal connection postulated by sympathetic and imitative magic. Nonetheless, the attempt to weave out of our experiences a sense of unity that leads to some human control or influence continues in the making of analogies and the building of models by taking images or concepts from one area of experience and applying them to another. The Bohr planetary model of the atom and the billiard ball model in the kinetic theory of gases are two common, historical examples...
However, the building of models by generalizing from one area of human experience to the universe as a whole is always problematic. This is seen in the traditional problem of the relationship between the material and the mental. On the one hand, materialistic philosophies generalize physical models, developed through attempts to understand mechanistically the nonhuman aspects of the universe, to living forms. On the other hand, philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead generalize the introspective experience of the human mind as having both a "physical" and a "mental" pole to all of existence, even to the atoms and the stars?
"Magic" may therefore be variously understood. Those skilled in any art or science are notably valued when their solutions to a challenge are described as "magic". Loosely defined, a social (or romantic) occasion is typically most highly valued if it is "magical". Some such understanding is widely promoted in marketing products and services.
As noted above, a more precise understanding of what makes such occasions magical was the focus of "natural magic" or "sympathetic magic", notably promoted by Marsilio Ficino (B. Copenhaver. Natural magic, hermetism, and occultism in early modern science, 1990) and contrasted with "demonic magic". As understood by its current practitioners (notably neo-pagans and wiccans), the "magical art of correspondences", based on an underlying theory of "correspondences", is held to be the basis of magic itself. These correspondences are considered to be hidden relationships among entities within the universe -- especially between human beings and the external world. They are understood as:
- links that unite seemingly disparate realms;
- a window on the structure of the cosmos;
- a lens between the macrocosm ('as above') and microcosm ('so below');
- based on analogical reasoning, which seeks similarities of pattern -- a "right-brain" approach (artistic, poetic, holistic) -- rather than "left-brain" cause-and-effect reasoning which scientific materialism insists is alone valid.
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