Replying to LO27792 --
Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you.
Demonstrating holism (increasing wholeness) with numbers may be pleasing
to mathematically minded people. In my reply LO27792 to Leo Minnigh <
l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl > I gave such a demonstration. But what
about other illustrations for the more sensory minded people? In my reply
LO27778 to Don Dwiggins < dond@advancedmp.com > I gave the example of a
twig. Last year I gave an example which involves the South African
delicacy called a "sosatie" which involves taste and smell.
Here is another example which involves our eyes. I dedicate it to Chris
Kloppers, Alfred Rheeder, Ockert Farquharson and Anton de Klerk. They are
four fellow learners who, sometimes including me, often have eye-to-eye
dialogues in which they do not avoid wholeness as many would do..
I work at the Gold Fields Computer Centre which also has a Discovery
Centre where young and old can explore a variety of experimental setups to
discover principles of the physical and biological sciences. I wish you
fellow learners could visit our Discovery Centre, especially when pupils
of some school are visiting it too. It is then when you will observe the
stark differences between rote learning and authentic learning as well as
how rote learning causes spiritual anorexia. (By the way, the Centre can
do with donations. Please browse to <
http://www.up.ac.za/services/finance/docs/engels/a3601eng.html > for
details on this matter and please note that I am not self negotiating for
any donation.)
One of the setups is the "colour wheel" ("color wheel"). It is
illustrated in figure 1. See
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO27834_colorwel.gif
You can make one yourself. The disc eventually has to be spun
around its centre, the faster the better.
Each sector of the disc is a whole. The disc itself is a whole. These
twelve sectors have "unity" or "monadicity" because they form one disc.
They also have "associativity" because the three colours blue B, red R and
yellow Y are involved in a pattern B*R*Y (or R*Y*B or Y*B*R, depending at
which colour we begin the associative pattern). Thus the disc has
wholeness ("unity-associativity"), one of the 7Es (seven essentialities of
creativity).
There are twelve such sectors as wholes. Four of them are blue, four are
red and four are yellow. They have to arranged in a regular sequence like
blue, red and yellow in figure 1 (or red, blue and yellow in another
arrangement not shown). Spin the disc around like in figure 2. At a slow
speed it will begin to look like figure 3. Please bear in mind that the
wheel shown in figure 3 is static whereas you should try to imagine a
rotating wheel. The edges begin to blur with magenta appearing on the
blue-red edge, orange on the red-yellow edge and green on the yellow-blue
edge. The blue, red and yellow are called primary colours while the
magenta, orange and green are called secondary colours.
At a sufficient high speed the colour wheel will look like figure 4. The
colour of the disc has become uniform white. The whole is now white which
is more than the sum of its parts blue, red and yellow! Should we add
blue, red and yellow paint together and "mix them to get their sum", the
result would be a dark greyish colour like in figure 5 rather than white.
It is interesting to trace the other 7Es in the emergence of white from
blue, red and yellow. The disc at rest is a "being", but as soon as it
spins it also gets "becoming". This "becoming-being" is the essentiality
liveness.
The colours blue, red and yellow form the "identity" of the disc. Their
regular arrangement brings "categoricity" into play. This
"identity-categoricity" is the essentiality sureness.
When we view the disc in white light, our eyes "connect" to the disc. The
blue sectors "beget" their blue colour because they reflect the blue
portion of white light. The same argument applies to the red and yellow
sectors. This points to the essentiality fruitfulness ("connect-beget").
We may think of spareness ("quantity-limit") as follows. If we have only
three sectors (one blue, one red and one yellow) on the disc, we have to
spin the disc very fast before the white colour will emerge. If we have
six sectors as the "quantity", two for each colour, the rotation velocity
for the emergence will be lower. The more the "quantity" of sectors, the
lower the speed "limit".
We have used the colours blue, red and yellow. They have the "quality"
that they are the primary colours in the colour spectrum. It means that
when white light goes through a prism, we can clearly identify its blue,
red and yellow parts. But we can also change the "variety" of colours. For
example, we may use the secondary colours magenta, orange and green (shown
in figure 6) to let the same white emerge. So far for the essentiality
otherness ("quality-variety").
[In figure 6 the outer ring presents the primary colours and the inner
disc the secondary colours. Where two primary colours join in the ring,
look for the secondary colour next to the joint in the disc. Where two
secondary colours join in the disc, look for the primary colour next to
the joint in the ring. When this disc gets spun, both the outer ring and
inner disc will become white.]
[Open your windows PaintBrush (PB). Draw something and save it. On the
"save as" window a window at the bottom asks "save as type". Click on its
button to see the types. A 256=2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 (eight twos) color bitmap
means that eight bits are used for each pixel on the drawing screen to
represent its colour. If you click on the task bar "options" and then on
the "edit colours", a window appears on which the button "define custom
colours" allow you to create your own colours. Click on it so that the
window enlarges showing a spectrum and four black dots on it. Move the
dots around in the spectrum by pointing the mouse in it. See how the
amounts of red, green and blue in the spectrum changes. It is fun.]
What then can we say about the last essentiality openness
("paradigm-open")? As for "open", our eyes have to be open to see it all.
As for the "paradigm", blind persons will sadly not be able to experience
this visual demonstration. By opening ourselves up to new paradigms, we
often discover whom and what were excluded from our past paradigm.
The big question now is the following. Did the white light emerge because
of an increase in wholeness so that the whole has become more than the sum
of its parts? No. The "unity" of the twelve sectors as one disc and their
"associativity" B*R*Y stayed the same! What essentiality then has been
improved so that the colour white could emerge? The essentiality liveness!
The wheel at rest has only "being", but as it spins faster, it also gets
"becoming". Up to some velocity we can still see the three colours,
although considerably blurred. But then suddenly, when the "becoming" has
been sufficiently restored, the white colour emerges.
Let us now pursue holism, i.e., "increasing wholeness". We have only
looked at the colour wheel. We also have to look at the people looking at
it. There are some people for whom the colours of the spinning wheel
cannot emerge into white. They are the colour blind people. In the back
wall (retina) of the eye are many minute rods and cones sensitive to
light. They are connected by nerves to the brain. An eye can actually
sense only two things:- the quantity of light by the cones and the quality
of light (only the colours blue, red and green) by the rods. For example,
in a person colour blind for green the rods are not functioning. As for
the remaining four colours in the spectrum violet, indigo, (blue),
(green), yellow, orange and (red), our eyes themselves are blind to them!
Our eyes do not actually sense, for example, orange light. The orange
colour is an image produced in the brain by mixing the blue, red and green
impulses from the eye almost like a painter would do with three paints of
different colours. Thus for a person colour blind in green, the colour of
orange would be different than for a normal person. However, that person
has learned to recognise that different brain image for orange as orange
too! It is almost like words. You see the word "knowledge" and I see the
word "kennis", but our brains make it one and the same concept (hopefully
;-)
Now for the surprise. The spinning colour wheel never got the "white
colour". It still has the three colours blue, red and yellow, no matter
how fast it spins. The emergence of the "white colour" happens in the
brain! At a slow turning speed of the wheel, the brain is capable of
interpreting the colour of each sector as it moves through the focus point
of the eye. But when the sequence of impulses generated by the eye (caused
by the light from blue, red and yellow sectors) becomes too fast, the
brain interprets this rapid sequence as the "colour white". In other
words, as the chaos in blue, red and green impulses from the eyes
increases sufficiently, the whole of it emerges in the brain as the
"colour white".
The incident white light (like sunlight) also does not have the "colour
white". White light has a spectrum of colours ranging from violet through
green to red. There is not the slightest indication of the colour white in
the spectrum. This spectrum can be produced with a prism as Sir Isaac
Newton discovered long ago. When white light falls on a surface capable of
reflecting all these colours from the spectrum, we say that the light as
well as the surface have the "colour white". Again, what happens in the
brain is that when signals from the all the activated rods (blue, green
and red) are received in the correct ratio, the whole of these signals at
the ridge of chaos emerges into the "colour white".
In a person colour blind for, say green, signals for only blue and red
arrives in the brain. The whole has less parts and thus some colour less
than white emerge. However, again the whole is more than the some of its
parts.
The complete lack of signals coming from the eyes is called the "colour
black". It can be that no light of whatever colour is getting into the
eyes. For example, blindfolding can produce this effect. But it can also
be that signals which the eyes do produce, cannot reach the brain. For
example, a stroke or an epilectic seizure in that part of the brain
dedicated to sight can also produce this effect. Hence physical blindness
has one or more of many possible causes.
Spiritual blindness is also caused by one or more of many possible things.
Some of these causes, like blindfolding, may be outside the spirit. Some
may be in the entrance to the spirit, like the colour blindness to green
in the eyes. Some of these causes may be much deeper in the spirituality
like what a stroke does to the brain. This topic of spiritual blindness is
so vast that it requires a LO-dialogue on itself.
For example, what is the entrance to the spirit? For me it is my
creativity as I have explained many times. Hence a lack in one of the 7Es
(just like a blindness to the colour green) will cause a lesser emergence,
if not a sheer immergence. But for you the "entrance to the spirit" may be
different and I cannot argue against it. So let us begin the LO-dialogue
on spiritual blindness -- the sooner the better for me.
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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