Reframing possibilities of closure

Functional Complementarity of Higher Order Questions: psycho-social sustainability modelled by coordinated movement (Part #13)

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Rather than seeking the stasis normally associated with closure, the emphasis here is on the nature of the dynamics associated with navigation in the knowledge space through continual interactive questioning of that context.

This might be understood as the cognitive analogue to the challenge of Arthur Young in developing the helicopter. This is likely to have been what led to his later exploration of process thinking. Young's Theory of Process is a formal analytical tool, a model based on number theory, geometry and topology -- as well as on traditional wisdom disciplines and other modes of knowledge and insight -- in an effort to help comprehend and integrate a number of disciplines and areas of inquiry. One articulation in physical terms of this challenge is the thesis summary of Shumin Zhai (Human Performance in Six Degree of Freedom Input Control):

This thesis is concerned with design factors that influence human performance in manipulating the location and orientation of three dimensional (3D) objects with six degrees of freedom (6 DOF). The need for this research has emerged from the development of a variety of advanced technologies. Technologies such as virtual and augmented reality (Barfield and Furness, 1995) telerobotics (Sheridan, 1992b), computer aided design (Majchrzak, Chang, Barfield, Eberts, and Salvendy, 1987), scientific data visualisation (Card, Robertson, and Mackinlay, 1991), and 3D computer graphics and animation (Foley, van Dam, Feiner, and Hughes, 1990) all require designing interfaces to let human users control 6 degrees of freedom of objects (robot, data, or viewpoint) in 3D space.

Given the many and varied approaches touching on the cognitive challenge, it would also be totally presumptuous to seek closure. In fact it is more interesting to see the many approaches as interweaing -- twisted together in various kinds of knot -- into a pattern whose outlines preclude closure, even when they can be intuitively recognized to some degree. Perhaps as some form of cognitive Klein bottle?

Some of the tantalizing approaches that enrich this understanding are presented in the following table. It would be good to think that the dimensions of such a table could point to a higher ordering of the preoccupations that it endeavours paradoxically to hold. Could they be usefully ordered in terms of WH-questions with respect to higher order reality?

Approaches: clues to ways of engaging with higher order reality
Each maps into the other through complex transforms of which they are each respectively a metaphor
Each is itself a knot and its own metaphor (symbol, configuration, question, etc)
Themes	Authors	Exemplars
Questions		cognitive condition
Embodiment / Enaction	Francisco Varela	subject/object, embodiment of mind
Measure formulae	Arthur Young	analysis of dynamic kinetic
Virtues / Vices		art of driving, values as attractors
Numeric epistemology / Pattern	Xavier Sallantin	radical ordering induced by necessary fundamental cognitive assumptions
Genetic code / DNA
Symbols of sets		archetypal roundtables, mandala, tribes
Metaphor		allusion, representative tokens, enneagram, mandala, Garden of Eden
Topology		helix, knots, twist, toroid
Self-reflexive	Douglas Hofstadter
Cultural categories	Magoroh Maruyama, W T Jones, Howard Gardner
Biological constraints on mind	Antonio de Nicolas
Configuration	R Buckminster Fuller	spherical roundtable
Polarization		polar configuration
Transitions	Rene Thom	catastrophe theory
System levels	J G Bennett	levels of principles
Strategic dilemmas
Dialogue styles
Logic	Kinhide Mushakoji	quadrilemma
Levels of comprehension	Ron Atkin
Changing classificatory frameworks	Patrick Heelan
Patterns of change	I Ching
Interaction		solenoid, tantra

The challenge of such ordering has also been explored elsewhere by the author (Patterns of Conceptual Integration, 1984).

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