Unsaying and ignorance

Embodying a Hypercomplex of Unhygienic Nescience (Part #5)

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Mystery of phase shifting: Any degree of connectivity within the above argument is necessarily and paradoxically called into question by the argument itself. This situation challenges the capacity to make explanatory assertions about the condition, or to formulate strategic declarations as to how to transcend it. A degree of coherence is however offered by the dynamic between the phases, as stressed in practice by recommendations regarding use of de Bono's "hats".

Missing however is any sense of how and when to shift phase, as highlighted earlier by reference to the dynamics between the archetypal "knights" of any roundtable. How might they "agree" on when to change phase? There may indeed be ways of framing this dynamic as the practice of an aesthetic art, but this would also be subject to challenge in the light of other aesthetic principles. The possibility may also be explored in terms of "shapeshifting" (En-minding the Extended Body: enactive engagement in conceptual shapeshifting and deep ecology, 2003; Secret sharing, Shapeshifting and Embodiment: reintegration of a remaindered world, 2011). It relates to understandings of morphogenesis.

A specific example of the challenge is the determination of how to shift between disciplinary perspectives in responding to a situation understood to require interdisciplinarity -- or even transdisciplinarity.

Unsaying and Not-saying: One approach, itself questionable, is to explore the process of "unsaying". This is known to theology as apophasis, whereby only statements of what God is not are considered meaningful (Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, 1994).

For example, the classical mystical text, The Cloud of Unknowing, argues that the only way to truly "know" God is to abandon all preconceived notions and beliefs or "knowledge" about God and be courageous enough to surrender the mind and ego to the realm of "unknowingness," at which point, one begins to glimpse the true nature of God. The approach can be more widely applied to any question of identity, as discussed separately (Being What You Want: problematic kataphatic identity vs. potential of apophatic identity? 2008).

The process is indicated otherwise in Lawson's own descriptive comments with regard to Eliot's Four Quartets (1943):

Of course I also risk appearing to say straight-forwardly what Eliot is so careful to avoid saying directly, or at all. My description should be taken therefore not as a description but as a temporary way of holding the Quartets which may help to explain my judgment as to their success. (2008)

In the form of "not-saying", ironically it could be said that -- "saying no" -- is in fact a primary modality of governance, notably as experienced by the young. Not-saying could then be seen as failure of government capacity to reframe situations. It is then obliged to have to recourse to "saying no" to initiatives of which it has no adequate comprehension.

Scientific assertion: The process of unsaying is in curious contrast to that of science. The latter is characterized by assertive declarations regarding the nature of reality -- possibly formulated as hypotheses (or with the typically unwritten assumption that the assertion is tentative). In practice such assertions tend to be definitive in their effort to deprecate and set aside alternative explanations -- even though such assertions may be qualified as provisional if challenged (by other scientists), especially if subsequently proven (by science) to be less than adequate.

Discourse of this kind can be caricatured as unself-critical "gung-ho" science -- usefully to be compared with "gung-ho" religion and "gung-ho" governance.

There is consequently a curious process of "undignified" competition between the advocates of contrasting explanations -- a feature of the scientific method reminiscent of "survival of the fittest" and well exemplified by the World Football Cup process. This results in the existence of conceptual models, abandoned (like shells), "on the bank and shoal of time".

Answers versus Questions: Answers are preferred to questions by science -- and it is by providing answers that scientists are primarily recognized and rewarded. However the process is also characterized by carefully framed efforts to avoid what its methods have proven unable to handle (Knowledge Processes Neglected by Science: insights from the crisis of science and belief, 2012).

Science engages in a curious dance with what it claims to "know", in contrast to its motivation to engage with what is "not known" as part of the process of "advancing human knowledge" in which it claims pre-eminence. The process tends to be distorted by feverish efforts to "discover" and "grasp" which merit challenge in terms of the above-mentioned sexual metaphor of harassment. Should all mysteries be solved -- all questions answered -- incidentally depriving the future of the ability to engage in scientific discovery?

Systemic boundaries: These can be understood in terms of their manipulation -- usefully compared with gerrymandering in politics (Scientific Gerrymandering of Boundaries of Overpopulation Debate, 2012). This plays out in the cultivation of information silos, groupthink and derivative thinking (Vigorous Application of Derivative Thinking to Derivative Problems, 2013).

Science would appear to be completely unable to address destabilizing social processes like unchecked population growth or the flood of economic refugees -- or even the systemic factors inhibiting reasoned discourse on such controversial matters. These are carefully defined to be outside its exciting mandate to "advance the boundaries of human knowledge" for which ever more resources are required -- irrespective of the irrelevance to daily life (Challenges More Difficult for Science than Going to Mars -- or exploring the origins of the Universe or of Life on Earth, 2014). .

The dubious complicity of science in framing space exploration has been usefully reviewed by Simon Ings (Space for Doubt, New Scientist, 5 July 2014) with respect to recent studies (Matthew D. Tribbe, No Requiem for the Space Age: the Apollo moon landings and American cultture, 2014; David Meerman Scott, Marketing the Moon: selling of the Apollo lunar program, 2014).

Ings cites Stanislaw Lem (1961):

We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. a single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.

The search for extraterrestrial life offers an example -- ironic given inability to engage adequately with terrestrial life and its problematic manifestations. This suggests that science -- like religion -- would be equally at a loss in framing processes for engaging with alien civilizations, as discussed separately (Communicating with Aliens: the psychological dimension of dialogue, 2000). This has been admirably illustrated by the movie Avatar (2009).

Remedial incapacity: Unfortunately for science, it has many answers but -- like religion before it -- has proven to be unable to address scientifically (and usefully) the processes whereby these answers are ignored in wider social practice, as discussed separately (Remedial Capacity Indicators Versus Performance Indicators, 1981; Recognizing the Psychosocial Boundaries of Remedial Action: constraints on ensuring a safe operating space for humanity, 2009).

In this sense "gung-ho" science is an exercise in escapism through skilled focus on low-hanging fruit to the exclusion of more complex challenges of potentially greater relevance to human life.

Most striking at the time of writing is recognition that -- to the extent that science is being applied in ongoing conflicts in the Middle East -- this takes the form of enhancing military capacity. There is no detectable application of those skills to reframing such conflictual relationships, as may be variously suggested (And When the Bombing Stops? Territorial conflict as a challenge to mathematicians, 2000; Middle East Peace Potential through Dynamics in Spherical Geometry, 2012).

Given the scale of human deaths now considered acceptable in global governance, it may well be only when "science" and "religion" have together enabled and justified the death of a further 6 million that consideration will be given to "mathematical theology" (Mathematical Theology: Future Science of Confidence in Belief, 2011). The current pattern is curiously reminiscent of the proclivity of the Aztec civilization for periodic large scale human sacrifice as a key to sustainable governance.

Ignorance and the unsaid: Ironically, in arguing for "unsaying", more problematic is the extent to which much in human society can be characterized as "unsaid" (Global Strategic Implications of the "Unsaid", 2003). To the extent that this may be characteristic of systemic inadequacies in the array of specialized sciences, it lies beyond the current capacity of science to address.

This is the domain of ignorance which science is as yet unable to consider on its own terms (Nicholas Rescher, Ignorance: on the wider implications of deficient knowledge, 2009). There is a particular irony to the manner in which engendering knowledge "locally" (in some specialized domain) effectively engenders ignorance "globally" (given the problems of dissemination and comprehension of new knowledge).

More generally, civilization itself could be considered as based on silence, and strangely sustained by it, as separately argued (Civilization as a Global Configuration of Silences: recognizing silence of a higher order, 2013).

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