Replying to LO26432 --
Dear Organlearners,
Gavin Ritz <garritz@xtra.co.nz> writes:
>Also my knowledge here is a bit weak,
>of how Socrates and Plato saw archetypes.
Greetings dear Gavin,
My knowledge, or perhaps I should rather say my memory, is also weak
because there is so many things which I try to focus on when reading an
ancient book whenever I get hold of it. (I usually avoid a commentary on
an ancient book as soon as I become aware that it distorts the ancient
book.)
I never took notes (fixing the physical being) from ancient books because
it wasted my time for mental becoming with them. How often, when someone
else would question me while also demanding from me an ontological answer,
I would say to myself "Hardegat, waarom is jy nie ook sag nie?" The direct
English for it would be, and please forgive the string words: "Hard arse,
why cannot you be soft too.?"
Since I own none of these ancient books, I have to borrow them again and
again when needing them for documentation purposes. However, at each
successive reading I become aware how much I failed to note on previous
occasions. I began to realise that I would never be a scholar relying on
my own notes because I rely too much on the books themselves.
But this I know for sure:- for some thinkers the "archetype" ("logos" or
idea) was an empty container (only form) while for others it was a filled
container (content and form). Very few began with content without form to
which form has to be given
>I think the names are just that labels
>and they are not really archetypes.
Are "labels" not also another way of thinking about archetypes?
>I thought the ontology is the study of beings or structure.
It is indeed, although in recent IT the word ontology has been given
different meanings too. I frequently find the curious connection that when
a thinker uses the concept ontology, that person often thinks of
"archetype" as a template or "form to be filled". It is as if the person
uses ontology as a template itself. In my reply to Doc Holloway I explain
how this "form to be filled" may be a Mental Model. If that is the case,
then it explains why ontology as ths study of being is prefered to
ontogeny, the study of becoming.
>Is content entropy production? I seems more
>like entropy to me. Are they not both structural.
These are extremely complex questions to answer. I will try my best to
articulate my own understanding.
Both "entropy" S and "entropy production" /_\S are the form of total
energy energy E as the content. Thus E manifests itelf in many forms of
energy (mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc). In other words, both S and
/_\S become the content of the many forms of energy (but not the "raw"
total energy E). (This is what I would call "form collapsing creatively
into content".) Likewise S and /_\S are the content in higher ordered
forms of manifestation -- chemical molecules, geological minerals,
climate, soils, cells, organisms to speak of only the physical world.
"Entropy" S and "entropy production" /_\S together have such a form that
all seven essentialities (7Es) of creativity are required to become aware
of this form. As I explore these higher ordered manifestations of "raw"
energy E (forms of energy, elementary particales, atoms, molecules, ....)
the 7Es have to increase just as S increases by /_\S. These increases in
the 7Es give rise to what I now recognise as the Law of Requisite
Complexity (LRC). (Without Ashby's breath taking work on the law of
requisite variety I would probably not havev been able to formulate the
LRC.) They also give rise to what I recognise as the Law of Singularity of
Complexity (LSC). These two laws eventually culminate in Love-agape, the
most singular and complex order of all.
"Entropy" S as well as "entropy production" /_\S has each "structure",
although I prefer to use the word "patterns". The patterns of S are static
whereas the patterns of /_\S are dynamic. All these patterns together I
prefer to call organisation. The extraodinary thing is that the
manifestations of /_\S in a higher order usually surprise thinkers. They
assume one process for such an order and become surprised to learn of many
processes in that order.
Gavin (and I am not sure if I am replying to another question yours), I am
sure that we have to untie the knot. Are you and any other consultants
convinced that your clients needs process ("becoming") which has many
faces? We ought to understand why we facilitate them. For me it is because
they cannot understand how liveness ("becoming-being") and othernesss
("quality-variety") necessarily have to interact with each other since
they are not independant.
>If Systems thinking included form and content
>then it would indeed be systems thinking.
Amen. But how can we rush what took eons to understand? For Socrates (more
than two millenia ago) it was no problem because he was forever willing to
question. But immediately after him Plato went for form and being while
Zeno went for content and becoming. Two thousand years later we still are
still trying to find the best answer. As for me, I believe that seeking
harmony between content and form is better. For example, when new form has
to emerge out of old form, I view the old form as the content of the new
form.
>>Is this why souls realize themself in
>>physical bodies to evolve?
>
>I am afraid this is an area of which I know very little.
Gavin, your answer makes me happy because with (not in) it I recognise my
own rote learning. I have been told and accepted without question that the
soul (spirit) and the body had little to do with each other. The body
merely functioned as a container for the soul.
Today I think much differently. To say that the body contains the soul or
likewise that the soul resides in the body is only a metaphor fitting to
the Mental Model of "empty container to be filled". Once we relieve us
from the constraint of this Mental Model, should it be indeed one, we will
have to seek a new relationship between the body and soul. I now
understand the soul as an emergent phenomenon of the body, the most
profound among all emergent phenomena.
Sometimes I think that I am on the verge of understanding one of the
deepest mysteries which I can think of, namely why did God who is spirit
created a material universe in which our bodies have to live so as for our
souls to emerge as spirits too? In other words, why did God create the
concrete-abstract complementary pair. Should the soul emerge form the
body, then in terms of content-form the body is the content and the soul
its form. But when we die, it seems as of we lose this content so that
only the form persists should we believe that the soul is immortal. In
that case I can very well identify myself with Plato that the idea is a
form which exists without form since the soul is then such an idea.
But on the other hand, I now know for sure that my abstarct knowledge
evolves as my body through all its sensory organs open up to the rest of
the physical universe in which my body becomes. It means that my concrete
body is not a container of my knowledge, but rather that my abstract
knowledge emerge from all the physical interaction between my body and the
rest of the concrete universe. In other words, my knowledge has the whole
of the physical universe as its lower order. Now if this the case, what
about the whole of my soul of which my knowledge is merely part of it. Can
I expect that my soul has also the whole of the phsyical universe as the
lower order from which it emerged? If this the case too, then the death of
my body has little bearing on the mortality of my soul. Only the death of
the whole physical universe will make my soul mortal.
Through many disciplines of science we have good reason to suspect that
the hyical universe is several billion years old beginning with the Big
Bang. In other words, the mortality of the physical universe extends many
billion years. As for my soul, I do not know when it was conceived. The
Bible tells that it was conceived before Creation by God. This I still
question. But what I do know, is that my soul began to evolve when I was
conceived in my mothers womb. So long as the universe does not die,
although my body will die for sure, my soul will not die since it emerges
from the universe and not only from my body.
When I accept the conclusion that my soul emerges form the whole universe
and not merely my own body, then my soul has to care for the universe
rather than merely my body or even the bodies of those close to me. My
soul has to care for the lower orders by way of what I have several times
described as the back action of the higher order on the lower order from
which it has emerged. My shorter name for this "back action" is the
"ordinate cybernetic loop". After WWII many people have articulated this
"back action" pf a person's soul to the whole of the physical universe as
the "ecological directive". It means that we are the stewards of the
ecology of this universe.
Gavin, I realise that what I have said above may shock you as well as
fellow learners out of your wits. Whenever in our Bible Study group I
begin to speak in this direction, my fellow students would, metaphorically
speaking, seek handest to cover their ears, mouths and eyes -- hear no
evild, speak no evil and see no evil. But as I have stressed so mnay times
before, you need not believe or merely trust a single speculation of mine.
I have merely articulated these specualtions so that you may use them as
"entropic forces" since they will surely differ from your own opinion. As
"entropic forces" theywill aid you to prepare your own falsifications.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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