11. Morphology,
Structures, the Cultural Pattern
11.1. Morphology
The
following section contains material on the systematics of
Cultural
Pattern
,
the
Morphology.
The salient aspect of
pattern
is that of
form
over
content
or
substance
or
matter.
We are deriving this usage from Goethe's concept of morphology as described in
Riedl
(1987a), Ruth
Benedict's
"patterns of culture" (1934: 49-56), and
Bateson's
(1972) and (1979) work on pattern. The cognitive model of of pattern is that of
relation
and
interconnectedness
as described in the section on
paticca
samuppada
.
[421]
It has been characterized by
Bateson
(1979: 17, 18) as "
a
pattern that connects
",
referring to Goethe.
Bateson
(1979: 18): We could have been told something about the pattern which connects:
that all communication necessitates context, that without context, there is no
meaning, and that contexts confer meaning because there is classification of
contexts...
So
we come back to the patterns of connection and the more abstract, more general
(and most empty) proposition that, indeed, there is a pattern of patterns of
connection.
Tyler
Volk
(1995: vii) has derived from Bateson's "pattern of patterns of connection" the
term
metapattern.
Now "a pattern that connects" is strictly speaking, a tautology, because there
is nothing else to a pattern than its connectivity in the neuronal action of
the cognitive system of the observer.
Stafford
Beer, in (Sieveking
1974, preface): What after all
is
order, or something systematic? I suppose it is a pattern, and a pattern has no
objective existence anyway. A pattern is a pattern because some
one
declares a concatenation of items to be meaningful or cohesive. The onus for
detecting systems, and for deciding how to describe them, is very much on
ourselves. I do not think we can adequately regard a system as a fact of
nature, truths about which can be gradually revealed by patient analytical
research. A viable system is something we detect and understand when it is
mapped into our brains, and I suppose the inevitable result is that our brains
themselves actually impose a structure on reality.
It
is true that a pattern as
Gestalt
has no separate reality in the physical world apart from a set of stimuli. That
is cogently shown by the Boring flip Gestalt picture
[422]
where exactly the same set of physical visual stimuli is perceived in two very
different ways. Thus the Gestalt must be a production of the cognitive system.
But if these Gestalten have no
reality
in the physical world, they have so much more of a
presence
in the world of
relations,
the SEMsphere.
[423]
They certainly have an
effect.
Bateson makes a definition of
context
(1979: 15) "
as
a pattern through time
".
This will be taken as essential platform for the present systematics of the
cultural pattern. Patterns
persist
in
time,
and in
communication,
and we wouldn't be able to communicate about patterns (or about anything) if we
were not constantly and self-speakingly apply our ability to perceive and
understand the patterns of our voiced and written communications (ie. react to
them in an intersubjectively coherent manner). The best known cultural pattern
by which context arises, is called
language,
but it is not the only one, and it probably is not the most fundamental one.
The SEMsphere is the present term for the most encompassing, the all-embracing,
pattern of patterns that generates context. So, the world of intersubjective
communication, the SEMsphere, is created by the structural coupling of
cognitive systems, and ensures that everything we tell each other is not just a
chaotic mumbo-jumbo, but it is meaningful.
Morphology
derives from the Greek word
morphae:
form, gesture, position, pattern. (
Rost
1862: 98)
.
In philosophy, the concept found application in the Aristotelic
hylemorphism,
and in scholastic usage by Thomas Aquinas as
materia
and forma
(
Hoffmeister
1955: 310-311). There exists also a mythological connection to the Greek god of
dreams,
Morpheus.
Mental images of waking life and dreams were considered by the ancient Greeks
as productions coming from the same source
.
Hamilton
(1942: 107).
(
Encarta:
Morpheus): Morpheus, in Greek mythology, god of dreams, the son of Somnus, god
of sleep. Morpheus formed the dreams that came to those asleep. He also
represented human beings in dreams.
The
term
morphology
is used in slightly different meanings by different schools of thought. In
linguistics,
morphology
is the study of
morphemes
-- the minimum meaning-bearing constituents of words.
(Encarta
:
Linguistics):
Morphology
is concerned with the units, called morphemes, that carry meaning in a
language. These may be word roots (as the English cran-, in cranberry) or
individual words (in English, bird, ask, charm); word endings (as the English
-s for plural: birds, -ed for past tense: asked, -ing for present participle:
charming); prefixes and suffixes (e.g., English pre- , as in preadmission, or
-ness, in openness); and even internal alterations indicating such grammatical
categories as tense (English sing-sang), number (English mouse-mice), or case.
11.1.1. Goethe's
morphology
In
the present context,
morphology
is used in a meaning derived from Goethe, Bateson, and Benedict, which we might
call the
Gestalt
tradition of morphology.
Its
earlier traces go back to Herder and Vico. (
Straube
1990: 168), (
Herder
1975: XVI-XVII),
Berg
(1990: 61). Severi's
(1993: 309, 311-315) description of Goethe's idea of
morphology
shows the similarity with the
paticca
samuppada
principle of Macy, and later on p. 315, he describes how Bateson took up
Goethe's idea. Further, on p. 318, he shows how Goethe's work "Farbenlehre"
pioneered the application of the Gestalt principle to higher cognitive forms of
perception.
Severi
(1993: 314): Doch für Goethe ist jeder lebendige Organismus eine Ganzheit,
die nicht auf die Summe ihrer Elemente reduziert werden kann... Diese
spezifischen Formen, die das Reich des Lebendigen charakterisieren, ändern
ihre Gestalten und folgen dabei einer von den Gesetzen der Physik
unabhängigen Logik. Diese Logik kann nur von einer systematischen
Morphologie enthüllt werden..
Nach
Goethe... muß man die Idee, daß jede Ursache ihre bestimmte Wirkung
hat, durch die Idee eines wechselseitigen Bedingtheitsverhältnisses
mehrerer eine Ganzheit bildender Elemente ersetzen.
(315):
Man muß vielmehr die Natur der Beziehungen analysieren, aufgrund derer
die Elemente eine Ganzheit bilden.
(318-319):
Die "Farbenlehre" ist im Grunde einer der ersten Versuche, die Beeinflussung
der Wahrnehmung durch die Tätigkeit des menschlichen Geistes zu
studieren... [dann] bedeutet dies für Goethe, daß der menschliche
Geist auf spontane Weise eine Form der Organisation der Materie zum Ausdruck
bringt. Wir können also etwa, wenn wir die Wahrnehmung einer Landschaft
studieren... in dieser das Funktionieren des menschlichen Geistes wiederfinden,
wenn wir dabei nur die kausale Betrachtungsweise ausschließen.
Goethe:
Morphologie, cit. in Riedl
(1987a: 21): Die Erfahrung muß uns vorerst die Theile lehren... und worin
die Theile verschieden sind. Die Idee (die Vorstellung) muß über dem
Ganzen walten und auf eine genetische (zusammenhängende Weise) das
allgemeine Bild abziehen
.
Riedl
(1995: 114): Goethe... tried to understand the principle underlying his ability
to discern pattern.
Riedl
(1996c: 105):
Morphology:
since Goethe (1795), the methodology of comparing Gestalt and to generalize the
Typus; the cognitive basis for comparative anatomy, taxonomy and phylogeny.
Riedl
(1995a): This year, 200 years have passed since GOETHE focused his attention on
the path of discovery the mental/cognitive process which allows us to grasp
synthetic concepts in morphology, comparative anatomy and taxonomy, to justify
them and to estimate their probability. Since this cognitive and
epistomological path has become an indispensable foundation for modern science,
we hereby honour the anniversary with a translation and commentary of this
treatise. Key words: GOETHE, morphology, typus, comparative anatomy, homology,
epistemology.
[424]
Goethe's
approach was elaborated in the art theory of Wölfflin, and the
Gestalt
psychology movement, whose founders were Ehrenfels, Wertheimer, Koehler, and
Koffka.
Severi
(1993: 319),
Rock
(1991: 68),
Luchins
(1975: 21-44),
Koehler
(1969),
Ertel
(1975). These early Gestalt pioneers didn't have the recent neurological
knowledge available to their research, but their methods were influential to
the later biological and neurological research (
Pribram
1975: 161-184), and on later models of neuronal networks (
Rock
1991: 75). In the biological sciences, the Gestalt morphology found a main
proponent in the work of Riedl who continues the Konrad Lorenz school and its
specific branch of evolutionary epistemology (EE). (
Riedl
1976-1996c), specific in:
Riedl
(1987a: 20, 21, 126, 128) and (1995). In the present usage,
Gestalt
will mean the phenomenal side of a pattern perception process. When a neuronal
system interprets a pattern of external stimuli, the recognition configuration
that it reaches, will be a
Gestalt.
And it needs to be noted, this
Gestalt
is also a pattern of neuronal excitation in the neuronal system.
Laughlin
(1974: 5): As generally formulated, structures are viewed as naive systems.
That is, structures are comprised of elements of some sort and the rules of
their combination. Structures thus form configurations, the meaning or total
impact of which cannot be understood apart from the set of relationships
between elements. This is really a restatement of philosophical holism present
in Bergson (1907), Whitehead
(1929)
[425],
and later perfected in the general system theory of Bertalanffy (1956-1971, cg.
1968). In this immediate sense the structuralist-functionalist controversy that
was waged in anthropology during the first half of this century was also a very
lively topic in ancient Greece - Plato's
Timaeus certainly may be considered a structuralist document.
The
view of structures as formulated by
Laughlin
serves to illustrate the role of Bertalanffy's
(1956-1971) and Whitehead
's
work in the context of General Systems Theory.
Severi
(1993: 312): Struktur ist ein aus interdependenten Faktoren gebildetes Ganzes.
Jeder dieser Faktoren hängt von den anderen ab und kann, was er ist, nur
durch seine Beziehung mit ihnen sein.
As
Severi
(1993: 311-315) further points out, the morphological work of Goethe had been
influential on the concept of structure as used by Trubezkoi and Jakobson, as
well as on the works of Levi-Strauss, Wittgenstein, G.
Bateson
(1968, 1972, 1979), Piaget, and Frobenius.
[426]
The usage of the structural principle in the present context seeks a
generalization beyond the concept of language to non-verbal cultural
transmissions. The Semiosphere
[427]
encompasses, but extends beyond, the range of verbal language.
The
structural principle is based on the factor of interrelation that is described
in Whitehead's relation principle of society.
11.1.3. The
Kulturmorphologie movement
In
the field of cultural studies, Goethe's approach was taken up by Frobenius.
Severi
(1993: 312), (
Haberland
1973: 15-20), and
Spengler
(1980), whose work "Untergang des Abendlandes" is mostly known for the
controversy it generated. (
Encarta:
Spengler), Straube
(1990: 168).
Frobenius
(cited in Haberland 1973
:
15): Cultural morphology, which endeavours to discover the meaning and the
phenomena of culture as such. The data of the three other related disciplines
[History, Prehistory, Ethnography] provide its raw material and its aim is to
discover the correlations of the building up of human culture as a unity,
according to meaning, geographical distribution and chronological order.
Even
though the present academic consensus largely rejects the earlier
interpretations of the cultural morphology workers as too much tied to their
{biologistic / mentalistic / idealistic / romantic / Deutschtümelei}
[428]
ideas that are not valid any more in the light of present CA knowledge, in the
present study the
method
of the morphological approach
is still assumed useful.
(
Straube
1990: 168, 169): Sieht man in einer Kultur nicht nur ein Aggregat von
Einzelelementen, sondern einen Organismus [wenn auch nicht notwendigerweise im
strengen biologischen Sinne (A.G.)], dessen Teile in einem sinnvollen
Funktionszusammenhang stehen und sich gegenseitig bedingen, so wird sich die
Bedeutung einer einzelnen Kulturgestaltung nur bei Erfassung des
gesamtkulturellen Zusammenhanges erschließen... Er bezeichnete dieses
wissenschaftliche Bemühen, also die ganzheitliche Betrachtungsweise, die
heute eine Selbstverständlichkeit ist, als Kulturmorphologie.
Ruth
Benedict
recurs in her "Patterns of culture" to the Gestalt psychology movement and
Spengler's
work (1934: 49-56). In her discussion of Spengler, she makes clear the
difference between the principles of his morphological method and his untenable
and premature conclusions that derived from a falsely applied biological
metaphor of culture
(p.
53)
:
...but Spengler's far more valuable and original analysis is that of
contrasting configurations in Western civilization.
(p.
55): ... the facts of simpler cultures may make clear social facts that are
otherwise baffling and not open to demonstration. This is nowhere more true
than in the matter of the fundamental and distinctive cultural configurations
that pattern existence and condition the thoughts and emotions of the
individuals who participate in those cultures. The whole problem of the
formation of the individual's habit-patterns under the influence of traditional
custom can best be understood at the present time through the study of simpler
peoples.
11.1.4. Connections
of Harold Innis and cultural morphology
Harold
Innis
(1952-1991) was a pioneer of cultural media studies whose work is relevant for
the present study.
[429]
There are several connections between his work style and that of cultural
morphology:
Innis
(1972: v, Foreword): If Hegel projected a historical pattern of
figures
minus an existential
ground,
Harold Innis, in the spirit of the new age of information, sought for patterns
in the very ground of history and existence. He saw media, old and new, not as
mere vertices at which to direct his point of view, but as living vortices of
power creating hidden environments that act abrasively and destructively on
older forms of culture.
Innis
(1972: vii, Foreword): Innis is unique in having been the first to apply the
possibilities of pattern recognition to a wired planet burdened by information
overload. Instead of despairing over the proliferation of innumerable
specialisms in twentieth-century studies, he simply encompassed them. Whether
by reading or by dialogue with his colleagues, he mastered all the structural
innovations of thought and action as well as the knowledge of his time.
Innis
(1972: ix, Foreword
):
That is why Innis carefully watches the changing material conditions of
cultures since a reversal of figure-ground relations will put an individualist
culture overnight into an extreme bureaucratic or hieratic posture.
Innis
(1992: x, Introduction
):
This is macro-history on a broad canvas. It freely acknowledges the influence
of Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, and Alfred Kroeber, scholars concerned with
understanding the fate of civilizations
[430].
11.2. Cultural
Patterns: observation, stability, transmission, synchrony and diachrony
Benedict
(1934: 223)
:
The three cultures of Zuñi, of Dobu, and of the Kwakiutl are not merely
heterogenous assortments of acts and beliefs... They differ from one another...
because they are oriented as wholes in different directions... and these ends
and these means of one society cannot be judged in terms of those of another
society, because essentially they are incommensurable.
(231-232):
It is obvious that the sum of all individuals in Zuñi make up a culture
beyond and above what those individuals have willed and created. The group is
fed by tradition; it is 'time-binding'. It is quite justifiable to call it an
organic whole. It is a necessary consequence of the animism embedded in our
language that we speak of such a group as choosing its ends and having specific
purposes... These group phenomena must be studied if we are to understand the
history of human behaviour, and individual psychology cannot of itself account
for the facts with which we are confronted... only history in its widest sense
[observation / documentation of cultural patterns in their diachronic
extension, A.G.] can give an account... history is by no means a set of facts
that can be discovered by introspection.
With
the morphological approach and Ruth
Benedict's
(1934) concept of "Patterns of culture"
,
the theoretical basis of the cultural memory system will be further elaborated.
Patterns are most generally,
Gestalten
that are perceived in the neuronal system of an observer. To be of cultural
relevance, there must be an intersubjective stability of patterns on the side
of the observer as well as on the observed. That is, if a pattern is just a
subjective hallucination, then it has no intersubjective relevance. Also, the
sensory inputs impinging on a neuronal system must not be just a random noise.
The intersubjective stability of cultural patterns is insured by the structural
coupling of organisms in social systems. This factor, their
stability,
is what makes the study of cultural patterns possible at all, and justifies
their stystematic treatment. Stability shows as
diachronic
and
synchronic
extension.
If there were no such stability or extension, then again, no observation would
be possible. A quotation of Delius supplies those essential traits of
observable cultural patterns.
Delius
(1989: 26):
Culture
will be taken to mean ... the ensemble of behavioural traits that characterize
specific human groups in the sense that members of such a group at a given
period of time tend to hunt with this or that technique, sow seeds in this or
that way, adore this or that god, speak this or that dialect, wear this or that
dress, greet in this or that manner, build this or that kind of housing,
cultivate this or that kind of music, respect this or that institution and so
forth. Furthermore, it will be understood that the behavioural traits that
constitute a culture are passed on among the members of the population by
individuals taking them over from other individuals. The transmission of
cultural items occurs through learning by observation of others, by imitation,
through instruction, through tradition. The transmission may be direct or may
involve intermediaries such as letters, newspapers, advertisements, books,
records, videotapes, radio, television. Behavioural traits that are transmitted
from parents to children by biological inheritance, such as the coordination
patterns of suckling, crying, smiling, sleeping and the organic bounds of
perceptual, cognitive and motor capacities of individuals, are thus not part of
culture... Thus culture does not include traits that are innate or that are
learned individually but only those that are learned from others, directly or
through media.
Culture
is not inherited through genes, but the genetic endowment of the human sets the
constraints to what can be acquired by learning from other human beings and
what can be re- or creativly new-produced.
Wilson
(1978: 21):
In
a sense, human genes have surrendered their primacy in human evolution to an
entirely new nonbiological or superorganic agent, culture. However, it should
not be forgotten that this agent is entirely dependent on the human genotype.
Mühlmann
(1996: 112)
[431]:
Kultur ist eine Transmissionsdynamik. Merkmale werden innerhalb einer
Generation und von einer Generation auf die nächste übertragen.
Clarke
(1978, 84): ...every attribute on an artefact is equivalent to a fossilized
action, every artefact is a solidified sequence of actions or activities, and
whole assemblages of artefacts are tantamount to whole patterns of behaviour...
then we can understand artefacts as simply 'solid' behavior...
To
be observable, and to class as cultural patterns, and not as individual
idiosyncrasies, there must be a measure of constancy of
reproduction
of behavior instances. The factors in cultural pattern reproduction involve
1)
the facilities of the human agent, especially
memory,
and possibly
2)
external
storage,
and
3)
transmission.
ad
1) Cultural pattern reproduction is done by the human agent. The prime factor
for reproduction is in the structures of the
human
memory
,
and, to allow action on the environment, to make memory content
intersubjectively experienceable, the human body as expressive device. This is
also called the
somatic
aspect of cultural pattern reproduction.
ad
2) A secondary storage factor is to be found in (some of) the material and
biological elements of the cultural environment. This may be called the
extrasomatic,
artefacts, or technological aspect of cultural pattern reproduction. This is
elaborated further elsewhere.
ad
3)
Transmission
of cultural patterns is effected by direct human communication and (trans-)
action, and indirectly, through media and artefacts.
The
life patterns, and life habits, the behaviors, creeds, and the forms of the
artefacts of peoples of specific human cultures on the planet Earth preserve a
certain degree of constancy even while the generations come and go. In some
cases, cultural patterns change very profoundly and very rapidly during the
lifetime of one generation, such as fads and fashions, or mass conversions.
(
Bee
1974: 12, 186). A primary cause for rapid cultural change is a disruption
resulting from confrontation with external cultural influences, like invasion
or colonization by people from another culture. (For example the colonization
of the Americas which changed the cultural patterns of the Amerind people
profoundly, or the post- world-war-II cultural turnabout in Germany and
Japan.).
Leclerc
(1973),
Said
(1979, 1994). Cultural change is the inverse of cultural pattern stability.
Bee
(1974: 9-11) gives a discussion of the problematics by which factors and
criteria to discern cultural change, factors that are as much observational as
they are attributable to some "objective" data of a society observed.
The
most remarkable and most problematic factor for observation of the diachronic
extension of cultural patterns is that many of them extend beyond the life span
of individuals. How are long-lasting, slowly changing, cultural patterns
observed at all? The diachronic extension of cultural patterns can be
indefinitely large, spanning many millennia, as in the case of languages and
religions. To objectively observe and study their diachronic extension, one
would need to be in the position of an (quasi-) immortal "Extraterrestrial
Observer",
[432]
since within the lifetime of one human being, only partial views of the
long-time cultural pattern process are available. Therefore the recognition and
classification of such patterns depends on the cultural memory itself, but
cultural memory consists of transmission of cultural patterns, and so the whole
task of the study of cultural pattern is self-referential.
11.2.1. The
Collective Cultural Memory and the Cultural Pattern Replicator
In
addition to the biological construction and the facilities of the body, the
expressive and impressive facilities of the human being are provided by the
framework of cultural pattern templates available in a specific culture.
Cultural patterns are those standardized forms of behaviors and artefacts that
serve as the
cultural
memory framework
for
the individual humans, as contradistinct from the
contents
of human memories, which are {dependent on / expressions of} individual
experiences and dispositions.
Eco
in (<. Eco
in (BB:Lotman
1990: xi): ... led Lotman to ... see that culture as a set of texts and a
non-hereditary
collective memory
Dudley
(1991: 80), Society has value to the individual primarily as a means of
obtaining, storing, and transmitting information.
It
is possible to view the unfolding cultural process from the different positions
centered at the end of the individual, or at the society. This gives rise to a
possible antagonism between the aspects of determination (of the individual) by
the existant biological and cultural structures, versus aspects of individual
freedom and creativity. Ruth Benedict declares this is as virtual:
Benedict
(1934: 251-252): There is no proper antagonism between the role of society and
that of the individual. One of the most misleading misconceptions due to this
nineteenth-century dualism was the idea that what was subtracted from society
was added to the individual and what was subtracted from the individual was
added to society... The quarrel in anthropological theory between the
importance of the culture pattern and of the individual is only a small ripple
from this fundamental conception of the nature of society.
In
reality, society and the individual are not antagonists. His culture provides
the raw material of which the individual makes his life... Every private
interest of every man and woman is served by the environment of the traditional
stores of his civilization...
The
man in the street still thinks in terms of a necessary antagonism between
society and the individual. In large measure this is because in our
civilization the regulative activities of society are singled out, and we tend
to identify society with the restrictions the law imposes on us... Society is
only incidentally and in certain situations regulative, and law is not
equivalent to the social order. In the simpler homogenous cultures collective
habit or custom may quite supersede the necessity for any development of formal
legal authority.
Since
all human activities take place within the context of the social system, so is
also the study of cultural patterns itself an application case of structural
coupling in social systems. Cultural patterns are replicated from the memory of
the people, and conversely, the collective repertoire of all their cultural
achievements, their cultural facilities, their techniques and crafts,
are
the collective cultural memory
,
on which each new generation builds their world anew. We can thus view the two
aspects of:
1)
cultural pattern and
2)
cultural memory
as
complementary images, or aspects of the same phenomenon, like the two possible
aspects of the Boring women Gestalt picture shown above.
[433]
Thus the
Cultural
Memory System CMS
can be also viewed as a
Cultural
Pattern Replication System
that
is based on the structural coupling of self-organizing biological organisms
(the humans), which forms itself a self-replicating, auto-poietic,
quasi-living, self-organizing system.
The
morphological principle of pattern perception, maintenance, stability, and
replication, applies to the neuronal networks active in the brains of observers
as much as in the connection networks between individuals of an abstract
society. The pattern laws are equivalent for neuronal as well as cultural
networks, since the agents of culture are (neuronal networks active in the
brains of) humans, and all events and data of the cultural world must in some
way be reflected in the human brain and acted / re-acted upon through
structural coupling of many brains. By this we are able to apply the
morphological principles of pattern laws to any networks whatsoever, to treat
any (non-human) "social" phenomena as abstract pattern propagation processes,
for example networks of physical nature, as already Whitehead and Vernadsky
have presented. The structural laws of such pattern processes are the laws of
the SEMsphere.
11.2.2. The
Entity-Relation-Transaction triad
The
following will be an elaboration of the systematics of metapatterns. For this
we will recur to the principle of
paticca
samuppada
.
We will supply a general logical structure of cognitive dynamics models that
generalizes the
paticca
samuppada
principle and sets it in a logical relation to the other known philosophical a
priori principles of fundamental perceptual orientation. The following is based
on
Goppold
(1998). In a prior section above, Whitehead's view of the world as system of
'societies' was described.
[434]
It had been stated that his notion of 'society' is not that of a human society
.
This is now generalized and brought to an abstract formulation:
Goppold
(1998: 1):
Society
is defined in this context as a generic term for a "
relation
and transaction system between agents
".
An
agent
is an acting entity as described in
Salthe
(1993, p. 159). A
transaction
is defined as a
process
between agents involving a energy/matter exchange. Transactions can only occur
along the path of a physical
relation.
This definition makes society functionally equivalent to a thermodynamically
open system of dissipative flow, regardless of whether the constituent members
are human, organic, or purely physical, like for example a turbulent flow in a
hurricane. "Biological systems are only more complicated because of their
relative stability, achieved through genetic information - we are especially
stable dissipative structures" (
Salthe,
1992). J.
Barham
(1996, p. 238) notes another vital difference: "One of the chief properties
distinguishing biological systems from inorganic ones is their limited autonomy
from local energy potentials... by actively seeking out more favorable
conditions."
Goppold
(1998: 2): One of the fundamental analytical aspects concerns the archetypal
notion of
state
and of separated (external) dynamical laws, so entrenched in natural science;
it appears particularly at odds with "the fluid nature of life"
(
Marijuán
(1997) and Introduction to this Issue). Whitehead in his philosophy of process
was the main contemporary philosophical proponent of the issue.
Whitehead
(1957, p. 27): "...the actual world is a process, and ... the process is the
becoming of actual entities."
Goppold
(1998: 2): Interestingly, a sideways glance to another region of the planet
shows us that at the same time, when the Greeks laid down the ontology of the
western world, an ontology of process and relation sprung into existence with
the "pratitya samutpada" (paticca-samuppada in Pali) as it was laid down in the
teachings of the Buddha.
Goppold
(1998: 2): Peirce has described the ontological categories of Firstness,
Secondness, and Thirdness as "a table of conceptions drawn from the logical
analysis of thought and regarded as applicable to being". (
Peirce,
1958, CP 1.301-1.353). An essential characteristic of category is its
non-conversibility (with other categories), or as it will be called further
down, its mono-contexturality. The examples of
entity,
process,
and
relation,
give a primary triadic categorization of being (i.e. a many-valued ontology)...
As the discussions between the Parmenides and Heraklit schools show, anything
in the world can be perceived either as state (entity) or in flow (process),
and it was noted in the beginning (and by the Buddhist philosophy), that the
world can also be perceived as a system of relations, thus showing that
non-entity oriented systems of ontology are entirely feasible, and whole
civilizations have been built on these foundations. The design of the
holon
as given by Ian Smuts and Arthur Koestler corresponds closely to the
positioning of
entity
as ontological category.
11.2.3. The
morphology of metapatterns: the triad of Entity-Relation-Transaction
The
above statements can now be condensed and lead to a
three-fold
Gestalt flip of cognitive dynamics. This is here called
the
morphology of metapatterns, the ERT: {entity / substance}, relation,
{transaction / transition / process}
.
The
morphology
of metapatterns
is the logical ordering by which
patterns
of patterns
arise.
The
cognitive dynamics can take three forms of
metapatterns:
1)
by
Parmenides
and
Zeno,
we can entertain a fundamental cognitive model based on {static entities /
unchanging substances / persistent objects / eternal, immutable ideas}.
2)
by
Heraklit,
we
can entertain a fundamental cognitive model based on {
process
/ transaction / transition
}
3)
by
the Buddha,
we
can entertain a fundamental cognitive model based on {
paticca
samuppada
/
inter-relation
/
inter-causality}.
On
reflection of these metapatterns, a Gestalt flip of the cognitive dynamics can
occur, called
metanoia.
The ability to perform a metanoia, leads to the formation of the next level of
metapatterns, ie. reflexions upon reflexion. A still further level is to
reflect on the form of the changes of reflexions.
Cyrill
von
Korvin-krasinski,
a researcher who sought to overcome the dualism of the western mentality, saw
the potential of the Christian idea of the Holy Trinity which was never used by
its philosophy. He wrote in "Trina Mundi Machina" (
Korvin-krasinski
1986):
Korvin-krasinski
(1986: 51) Ein Vertreter der indisch-tibetischen Lebensanschauung sagte mir
einmal: "Ihr Christen habt in Eurer Religion einen geoffenbarten Gott, die Hl.
Dreifaltigkeit; und in Eurer Philosophie betreibt ihr nur die dualistische
Spekulation des Aristoteles. Eure Philosophie ist kein Abglanz der
Trinität! Wir Asiaten dagegen kennen oft keinen persönlichen Gott,
noch weniger kennen wir die Göttliche Trinität der Christen, aber
unser Welt- und Menschenbild, unsere ganze Spekulation ist triadisch aufgebaut.
So eignet sich unsere asiatische triadische Spekulation anscheinend viel besser
für die Auslegung Eurer trinitären Religion, als Eure eigene
dualistische Philosophie!"
11.3. Cultural
patterns as immortality complexes
Dennett
(1990) points out one essential property of cultural patterns (which he calls
memes)
[435]:
they are potentially immortal.
Dennett
(1990): Memes, like genes, are potentially immortal, but, like genes, they
depend on the existence of a continuous chain of physical vehicles, persisting
in the face of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. [material carriers]... tend to
dissolve in time. As with genes, immortality is more a matter of replication
than of the longevity of individual vehicles... Brute physical replication of
vehicles is not enough to ensure meme longevity... for the time being, memes
still depend at least indirectly on one or more of their vehicles... a human
mind.
(Wright
1994: 157): The only potentially immortal inorganic entity is a gene (or,
strictly speaking, the pattern of information encoded in the gene, since the
physical gene itself will pass away after conveying the pattern through
replication).
In
the present study, cultural patterns are said to form
immortality
complexes
.
Cultural patterns share this property with the genetic patterns of the DNA
molecules, which
Dawkins
(1976) had therefore awarded the attribute "The Selfish Gene". Whether such a
character trait can at all be attributed to some otherwise quite harmless
strings of nucleotic acid, is a discussion for which this is not the place. The
observation is indeed, that the patterns of life forms have enjoyed a fairly
good constancy as long as our cultural memory will attest to (the
rhinocerosses, antelopes, bisons and horses in Altamira and other caves look
pretty much the same as they do now) (
Anati
1991), and what comparisons of fossil bones with those of presently living
species can tell us.
Within
the cultural memory of humanity, we can also conclude, that certain cultural
patterns have endured for a very long time indeed: The Australian Aboriginal
rituals, which are, to the claim of the Aboriginals themselves, tens of
thousands of years old (
Strehlow
1947-1971), and the rites of the major religions of the world that are one to
several thousand years old, the Vedic and Parsee:
Staal
(1982), (1986), (1989), the Jewish:
Assmann
(1992: 196-255), and the Christian (
Encarta:
Christianity), and Islam (
Encarta:
Islam, Muhammad). And, as we see from the example of ritual, these patterns
depend in their transmission from the past into the future on the humans to
perform (enlive) them. A central aspect of
cultural
memory
could be characterized as:
CM
is that of the personal memories which doesn't die with the person who is dying
.
[436]
Since cultural patterns are also the cultural memory, we thus come to the
pact
or
bargain
(pistis) that is being struck between the mortal humans as living agents in the
transmission of the (potentially) immortal patterns: the humans can gain a
piece of that immortality for themselves. In this way, we can re-interpret the
significance of those very old and venerable rituals that the most long-lived
traditions of humanity have upheld during all those millennia. To be a
transmitter of cultural patterns is a virtual equivalent of an "Alternative to
the immortality of the Soul".
[424]
Rupert
Riedl (1995): "Goethe and the Path of Discovery: An Anniversary".
http://www.kla.univie.ac.at/Journal.html
(URL)
[425]
In the bibliograpy referenced under the Free Press edition date (1969). See
also:
->:WHITEHEAD,
p.
114. [428]
Erdheim (1984: 10): "Unbehagen über eine Ethnologie wie die von
Frobenius, die die 'Seele des Negers' verstehen wollte."
[431]
http://www.uni-wuppertal.de/FB5-Hofaue/Brock/Lehrbetr/MUEHLMAN.html
(URL)
