</a>Insights from Chinese culture

Polyhedral Pattern Language: Software facilitation of emergence, representation and transformation of psycho-social organization (Part #19)

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This exploration was inspired by the use of "pillar" as the overriding European strategic metaphor, as discussed in the earlier paper (Towards Polyhedral Global Governance: complexifying oversimplistic strategic metaphors, 2008). Polyhedra have been presented there as configurations of such pillars in any more coherent approach to governance. With respect to global governance, involving a variety of cultures, it is therefore useful to seek complementary insights from the quite distinct Chinese culture -- especially if there is any tendency to assume that Eurocentric strategic thinking is to be considered appropriate worldwide.

Geometric elaborations of polyhedra, developed by the logic of geometric transformation from Platonic polyhedra, can be understood as patterns implicit in the Platonic forms -- as implied by the potential for such transformation. Corresponding elaborations and implications may be found in the Chinese logical elaboration of two classic coding systems, each a pattern language par excellence:

• the set of 64 hexagrams associated with the binary coding of the I Ching. Their representation in relation to a hexhedron (a cube) has been extensively presented by Z. D. Sung (The Symbols of the Yi King or Symbols of the Chinese Logic of Changes, New York, Paragon, 1969)
• the 81 tetragrams associated with the ternary coding of the Tai Xuan Jing, T'ai Hsüan Ching or Canon of Supreme Mystery (translated by Michael Nylan, The Elemental Changes: the ancient Chinese companion to the I Ching, State University of New York, 1994). An earlier commentary by Derek Walters (The T'ai Hsüan Ching; the hidden classic, Aquarian Press, 1983) includes a section on The T'ai Hsüan Ching and Scientific Thought which highlights the set of numbers that represent the balance between two opposing forces. This is presented in relation to mappings of imaginary numbers.

There is a visual irony to the fact that the European "pillars", and the "unfilled spaces" between them, can be fruitfully compared to the complete (yang) and broken (yin) lines constituting any hexagram. It is of course a fact that the I Ching was long used as tool of governance in classical times -- and was required study for entry into the Chinese civil service.

These patterns are then qualitatively associated, through their respective metaphorical representations, in

• the commentaries on the hexagrams of the I Ching
• the commentaries on the tetragrams of the T'ai Hsüan Ching

The set of patterns calls for exploration as a pattern language (Conditions of Objective, Subjective and Embodied Cognition: mnemonic systems for memetic coding of complexity, 2007; 9-fold Higher Order Patterning of Tao Te Ching Insights: possibilities in the mathematics of magic squares, cubes and hypercubes, 2007).

This of course raises the question of the qualitative implications that may potentially be associated with the patterns of the other Platonic forms, as developments of the less complex ones. Both the icosahedron and the dodecahedron suggest mappings of:

• 12: the many 12-fold archetypes (Dodekatheon, Zodiac, Apostles, Arthurian round table, etc) onto faces in the case of the dodecahedron and vertices in the case of the icosahedron
• 30: such as the 30 Articles of the UN Declaration of Human Rights onto edges in both cases

The integrative (global) nature of such sets is a real challenge to comprehension in terms of how the parts play off against each other. It is for this reason that the relationships are typically embodied in metaphor and stories, an approach explicitly favoured by the authors of The Wisdom of Teams (1993).

There have been many exercises in interpreting the relevance of the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching to issues relating to organizational strategy and management. Perhaps most relevant to this argument is the classical text of Cheng Yi (1033-1107) as translated by Thomas Cleary (The Tao of Organization: the I Ching for group dynamics, Shambhala, 1995), who comments:

The Tao of Organizations analyzes relationships and power configurations within groups. Taking into account both the subjective and objective dimensions of these structures, it is extraordinarily subtle and complex. The relationship between interpersonal and intrapersonal forces... is the central focus of the explanation.

Cleary adds an appendix on Cheng Yi's instigation of "inner design" (or noumenalism) intended to bring out hidden dimensions in classical Chinese works -- obscured because of the use of rigidly fixed interpretation schemes, inappropriate in any context of transformation. He comments at length on how such principles were consciously applied by the legendary Japanese industrialist Matsushita Konosuke (1894-1989).

More generally the challenge of comprehending the interrelationship between seeming disparate facets of a pattern may be seen as a challenge of "correlative thinking" of which the Chinese understanding of yin in relation to yang offers an example (A. C Graham, Yin-Yang and the nature of Correlative Thinking, Institute of East Asian Philosophies, 1986). The issue for governance is how credible is any degree of correspondence and to what degree of confidence does it give rise in strategy development and implementation (cf Theories of Correspondences and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking, 2007).

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