Transdisciplinarity: a sustainable ecology of developing conceptual frameworks

Metaphors as Transdisciplinary Vehicles of the Future (Part #8)

7.1 Selection (or design) of appropriate metaphors: The most practical implication of this paper is the need to select (or design) metaphors which can bridge the schizophrenic separation of inputs from policy-making sciences and media-led policy-making. What metaphors underlie the major strategies of the different Specialized Agencies of the United Nations and of the unquestioned administrative jargon in which they are discussed? Is it possible to select or design better metaphors:

to articulate richer policies in response to more complex problems;
to capture the imagination of wider constituencies increasingly alienated by the outworn clichés of public information programmes and prone to compassion or donor "fatigue";
to acknowledge proactively the pervasive role of "corruption", which only the unrealistic can afford to ignore;
to provide an integrative scaffolding to interrelate issues, policies and institutions in a more fruitful manner.

One set of interesting candidates are the metaphors drawn from ecological and environmental insights. Institutional factions and coalitions may then be usefully perceived as distinct animal species, as a development of an existing tendency to label opponents as "sharks", "sheep", "snakes", "dogs", and the like. The aim would be to endeavour to map out the ecology of factions and actors, identifying the web of interactions between them. Such an ecosystem can be as complex as is required and provides a comprehensible language in which to explore the ways in which niches are defined and protected -- and the extent to which particular species are imbalancing the system and evoking the need for counter-active measures. And the crisis of the times may perhaps best be illustrated in considering the application of this ecological approach to the green movement. The challenge for the tragically factionalized green movement is to reinterpret its simplistic perceptions of its internal factional relationships into the organic, ecological metaphor which is supposedly most meaningful to them (Judge, 1990a).

Another rich and accessible set of metaphors can be obtained from traffic, especially from the manner in which streams of traffic with different, related, and conflicting "agendas" (speeds, directions, capacities) can be interwoven (using underpasses, stoplights, systems of priority, etc) so as to maintain the flow of vehicles. At this physical level conflicts are not "resolved". Consensus on a single agenda is not sought. Rather the distinct agendas are appropriately channelled and interwoven. Much can be built on such traffic insights at the level of social policy-making.

Another frequently used response to metaphoric attack is to reframe the situation by switching to another metaphor. The protagonists then effectively view each other's policies through incommensurable languages. There is normally no creative response to this situation. However, by recognizing such competing frameworks as embodying valuable insights -- however incompatible -- the way is opened to using both alternately, without reducing the exercise to a ridiculous effort to "marry a hedgehog to a snake".

7.2 Alternation between conceptual frameworks: key to development of insight: Conceptual frameworks of adequate complexity may not be stable in isolation. For them to emerge, with any degree of viability, from complex configurations of professional (and political) forces, they may have to alternate with one or more, more or less, incompatible policies of equal instability. It is then the pattern of alternation or resonance between the essentially incompatible frameworks which constitutes a form of dynamic transdisciplinary "framework". It is this "trans" or "meta" perspective which is the appropriate and stable response to the complexity of the problematique -- not the essentially unstable frameworks by which it is engendered (Judge, 1984a). The time dimension is thus used to design more complex frameworks and policies.

In principle this is how the democratic process works through alternation of governance between political factions, although no such faction would accept the necessity for such alternation (except when it was out of power). The challenge is then to discover ways of designing, and rendering comprehensible, cyclic patterns of alternation. In this light it is probable that reconciling the incompatibilities of the "sciences" and the "humanities", of "centralized planning" and "market economy" policies, or of "environmental conservation" and "industrial growth" policies, can only be achieved through some form of alternation using phasing through the time dimension.

7.3 Conceptual and policy cycles: It has long been recognized that the practitioners of any discipline tend to view the further application of their particular perspective as the most appropriate response to a challenge, of whatever nature. But is it not also correct that the selection of relevant disciplines, methodologies or policies needs to be alternated through cycles in order to correct for each others defects as a guarantee of sustainability? Again this is the implicit message of democracy, although no political party would recognize the need to "sacrifice" a cherished policy as part of such a process -- unless it had the assurance of its reinstatement in a subsequent phase. At present the distinct policies of opposing parties do succeed each other in a kind of chaotic cycle, as each endeavours to respond to (and profit from) the defects of its predecessors. But it is doubtful whether such chaotic cycles provide the sustainability required through the crises to come.

From this perspective the challenge is whether there are ways to design such cycles. Of great interest, in the light of the work of Buckminster Fuller (1975, 1982), is that significant new forms only emerge when a minimum number of such cycles can be made to interlock or interweave. This level of structural complexity is very elegantly modelled by the tensional integrity ("tensegrity") structures that he so successfully explored. It is also implicit in the traditional policy tool of the Emperor of China, namely The Book of Changes, which offers a useful, richly articulated, non-western perception of sustainable development, replete with metaphor (Wilhelm, 1950 tr). An adaptation in terms of sustainable policy cycles is given in the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (1991, Section TZ).

7.4 Comprehensibility of transdisciplinarity: the quest for sets of complementary metaphors:

The degree of complexity, with which it is now necessary to deal, strongly implies that no single conceptual framework (or policy based thereon) is adequate to encompass it. Despite the potentially greater richness of metaphors, the same should also be assumed. The "answer" does not lie in the choice of a single magical new metaphor. The challenge may prove to be one of selecting (or designing) a set of complementary metaphors which together encompass that complexity.

Classic examples from physics are the "wave" and "particle" metaphors through which electrons are understood in different ways, and the "flowing waters" and "teeming crowds" metaphors through which electricity must be understood (Gentner, 1982). In each case, both metaphors offer necessary but insufficient insights when used independently. The question may then be to discover the art of shifting between the perceptions offered through appropriate metaphors in a set that articulates a complex pattern of insights (and their policy implications). The nature of such shifting (honoured in children's games in the respect for "taking turns" and in the rotation of presidencies), is richly articulated in the resonance hybrid metaphor and in cycles of phases. Other examples of such metaphors have been given in the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (1991).

Ironically it may be from the arts that much insight can be derived from the complementarity of metaphors relevant to policy-making (Judge, 1991b). Poetry, like music, is skilled in combining both complementarity and rhythm. Gregory Bateson (1972) recognized the importance of poetry in dealing with complexity as follows: "One reason why poetry is important for finding out about the world is because in poetry a set of relationships get mapped onto a level of diversity in us that we don't ordinarily have access to. We bring it out in poetry. We can give to each other in poetry the access to a set of relationships in the other person and in the world that we're not usually conscious of in ourselves. So we need poetry as knowledge about the world and about ourselves, because of this mapping of complexity to complexity." This could well prove of significance for the governance of social processes characterized by patterns of relationships normally too complex for the human mind to grasp.

7.5 Travelling patterns on metaphoric pathways: The challenge of information overload for an individual exposed to a plethora of geographical information is alleviated by ordering this information in relation to a pattern of physical locations, disposed around the globe, and linked by roads and other features. It might be argued that a form of spatial ordering for information from the disciplines is the preoccupation of the classification sciences -- with implications for the physical layout of libraries and bookshops. Thus the most recent information system user interface is based on a metaphor of "rooms" (with "walls") which can be "walked through" to the points where the information is located. Ironically it has also been noted that idiot savants, and those with exceptional memorising power, use spatial mnemonics to handle information.

It may be asked whether we can hope to clarify the complexity of disciplinary relationships within a spatial ordering based on a grid system, whether a matrix of categories, the stacks of a library, or the "rooms" of a user interface. This is undoubtedly perfectly adequate within a specialized domain, where a grid system does not introduce significant distortion. It is an appropriate assumption in any detailed map projection. But it is not appropriate to handle the relationships between disciplines which are only "distantly" related. The attempt to do so results in severe conceptual discontinuities. Even more unfortunate for any thinker is the pernicious influence of such implicit metaphors in reflecting about the sum total of human knowledge.

Such difficulties have been resolved in the case of geographical information by spreading cities over a surface. No effort is then made to reconcile the street plans of different cities. It was only when dealing with the challenge of relating distant cities that it became necessary to recognize the "curvature" of the surface on which they were located -- and ultimately the spherical nature of that surface. It remains appropriate for those in any city to treat the world they know as flat, for all immediate purposes. However, information from distant locations, such as whether it is currently night or day, requires recognition of a spherical surface to reconcile apparently incompatible perceptions.