Dear LO-friends, dear At,
In your introduction you included two pieces of homework and I wish to
share my results with you:
>Here is a fine example coming from your world of experience to test
>the idea of eidetic reduction. Is a leader essential to any human
>organisation? (Iwould love to see how you handle this one). And just
>to give your paradigm a slight bump, here is another example. Is the
>element carbon essential to any human organisation?
Leader:
No leader without a human organisation to lead, but an organisation is at
least thinkable without a leader (whether it practically occurs or not).
Thus my result is, that human organisations are essential to leaders, not
the other way round.
But there is also a chance to become "essential" by definition (not by
eidetic reduction): For a subset of human organisations, namely those lead
by a leader, the leader is essential.
Carbon:
Yes, Carbon is essential to human organisations. But there are many steps
of eidetic reductions from human organisations to carbon: humans, organs,
cells, organic molecules, carbon - there we are.
With this, my understanding of eidetic reduction becomes as following
(reminds me of what I have learnt from Ken Wilber, who referres to Arthur
Koestler, who probably was influenced by Jan Smuts): complex wholes
(holons) consist of a hierarchie of emergents, the higher emergent is not
possible without the lower one having matured.
This provides also for a definition of "higher" and "lower" in this
hierarchy: Think any layer of emergents (lets say cells in above example)
away and check what is still possible and what not (organic molecules and
carbon is still possible, cells and all kind of higher order livings not).
Phenomenons still possible are "down the ladder", the others are "up the
ladder".
Eidetic reduction is then the path "down the ladder". This is eidetic
reduction viewed from the essentiality "associativity-monadicity"
(wholeness).
Changing the viewpoint to "connect-beget" (fruitfulness) I notice, that
the metaphor of a ladder is incomplete (wholeness does not provide
completeness! For completeness you need all seven essentialities - I just
learnt this lesson while writing here and now!!) There need to be at least
two ladders coming from downward to meet for the new emergence to happen.
And "quality-variety" (otherness) require, that the two ladders come from
two qualitative different lower-level-emergents.
Hm. What about the reaction H + H -> H2? No H2-molecules without H-atoms,
yet H-atoms may exist without H2-molecules, thus this is an emergent
reaction, but where is "quality-variety"?
The second homework:
> When you get to the list of essentialities, read this paragraph again and
> see how many essentialities you can identify in it.
I cite the mentioned paragraph below and include my guess of where the
essentialities are by using their nomal names:
"Obviously, I had to report (publish) (fruitfulness) the discovery of the
seven patterns somewhere so that other people could check (spareness) on
my becoming (aliveness). It is then for the first time when I experienced
how destructive any lack in these essentialities can be. Referees in
chemistry are not able to follow the mathematics and referees in
mathematics are not able to follow the chemistry (impaired otherness). For
both of them the whole venture seemed to be crazy (impaired wholeness).
Why should any sane person try to make such a connection between
mathematics and chemistry (impaired fruitfulness)? It is like finding
corresponding patterns (sureness) between human organisations and
biological organisms. Twenty years ago it would have been a crazy idea,
but the Santa Fe institute helped to normalise the idea. (openness)"
Thank you, At, for these nice exercises. I am looking forward to being
confirmed or corrected by any of you.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
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