4. The morphological study of pattern
I will now return to the cultural morphology aspect of
Günther
's work and draw up a sketch of the
morphological or
Gestalt method as it originated in the thought of Goethe
and filtered through the work of researchers like
Frobenius
, Spengler
,
Günther, Riedl
(1987a), Ruth
Benedict
's "patterns of culture" (1934: 49-56), and
Bateson's work on pattern. The important aspect is that of the predominance of
form over {
content /
matter /
substance}. As opposed
to models of substance (ontology), the
Gestalt method is a cognitive
model of
epistemology. One of the best known examples demonstrating the
Gestalt effect is the Boring women picture, shown here.
Boring women, Gestalt picture
We notice that the picture we perceive is different from the
"mere" pattern of sensory inputs that impinges on our neuronal system. Because
we perceive two essentially different motives in the picture, either a beautiful
young woman, seen from behind, or an ugly old woman seen up
front
[39]. Our nervous system spontaneously
performs this cognitive flip for us, which is apparently triggered by neuronal
filters that are activated by our cultural expectations of what the patterns of
the picture (are supposed to) mean. This Gestalt picture exemplifies and
demonstrates well the fundamental tenets of constructivism, as proposed by
Glasersfeld, v. Foerster, Watzlawick, and Roth, that are discussed by
Ziemke
(xxxx)
[40] and
Klagenfurt
(1995: 27, 41-48, 68-71, 100-111). Since one
and the same input of stimuli lets us perceive such essentially different views,
this proves that the world of our perceptions is dependent on the disposition of
our nervous system, and our
Weltbildapparat
(Riedl
, below) is not just a device to reflect an
independently existing world, as the classical position maintains.
4.1. The structural principle of the Gestalt method
The structural and systemic principles of the
Gestalt
method are described by Laughlin and
Severi
:
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)
[41], 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 structural principle as formulated by
Laughlin
(1974) above, serves to illustrate the role of
Whitehead
's work in the context of general systems
theory, as has been formulated since Bertalanffy
(1956-1971). Salthe
's works (1985-1993), elaborate
further on this principle.
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) points out
in his paper on the origin of the structural view, 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.
4.2. Morphology: a cognitive approach to the general study of pattern
Morphology derives from the Greek term
morphae:
form, gesture, position, pattern. (Rost
1862: 98). Its
philosophical implications derive largely from the Aristotelic
hylemorphism, and in its 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.
We will now proceed to develop the study of cultural pattern,
the morphology. The important aspect will be that of the
form over
content or
matter. We are deriving this usage from Goethe's
concept of morphology as used by Riedl
(1987a), Ruth
Benedict
's "patterns of culture" (1934: 49-56), and
Bateson's work on pattern. The cognitive model of of pattern is that of
relation and
interconnectedness as described in the section on
paticca samuppada. This has been described by Bateson (1979: 18) as "a
pattern that connects", referring to Goethe (p. 17).
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.
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. Tyler
Volk
(1995: vii) has derived from Bateson's "pattern
of patterns of connection" the term
metapattern, and the
logics of the
formation of
metapatterns is called
morphology in the present
context.
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 someone 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
demonstrated by the Boring flip picture
[42]
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. We may not be able to call this
presence a
reality in
some physical objectivist sense
[43], and it
should be necessary to find a different suitable term. 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). This has already been treated in the discussion of the SEMsphere. The
best known cultural pattern by which context arises, is called
language,
but it is not the only one, and perhaps it is not the most fundamental one. The
SEMsphere is the present term for the most encompassing, the all-embracing, of
patterns that generate context.
[44] 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, and if there
were no intersubjective constancy, there were no communication.
4.3. Goethe's morphology
In the present context,
morphology is used in the sense
of Goethe, Bateson, and Benedict, which we might call the
Gestalt tradition
of morphology. It goes back to Goethe, although it is also possible to find
it in the thought 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 (1995): 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.
[45]
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). Some basic
Gestalt principles
and recent neurological research in cognition are described by
Roth
, Pöppel
, and
v.Foerster
.
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.
[46] 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 again a pattern of neuronal excitation in the neuronal system.
4.4. The Kulturmorphologie movement
In the field of cultural studies, Goethe's approach was taken
up by Frobenius, Spengler, and Gotthard Günther. Literature:
Severi
(1993: 312),
(Haberland
1973: 15-20),
Spengler
(1980), (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 earlier interpretations of the cultural
morphology workers were too much tied to their {biologistic / mentalistic /
idealistic / romantic} conceptions and are not valid any more in the light of
present CA knowledge, their method of the morphological approach still is
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.
4.5. Harold Innis as cultural morphologist
Another worker whose method is related to cultural morphology
is Harold Innis
[47].
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.
4.6. Cultural pattern 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
[diachronic extension of cultural patterns 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 concept of "Patterns of culture" (1934),
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.
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) human memory and possibly
2) external storage, and
3) transmission.
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.
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.
3) Transmission of cultural patterns is effected by
direct human communication and (trans-) action, and indirectly, through media
and artefacts.
Mühlmann
(1996: 112)
[48]:
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...
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. The most remarkable and most problematic factor of the diachronic extension
of cultural patterns is that many of them extend beyond the life span of
individuals. This is primarily an observation problem. The diachronic extension
of cultural patterns can be indefinitely large, spanning many millennia, and if
we take such ancient systems as languages, can even extend throughout all the
history of mankind. To objectively observe and study their diachronic extension,
one would need to make very long-time observations, over many generations, and
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, and
cultural memory consists of cultural patterns, and so the whole task of the
study of cultural pattern is self-reflexive.
[39] There might be ample
opportunity for psychological ruminations as to why the front view presents us
with the not-so-preferred aspect of the reality, while the back view (which
hides most of the details) lets us guess at those wish-fulfilling
preferences.
[40] Literature in Ziemke
(xxxx: 58-59), and Glasersfeld, Maturana, Riegas (1990), Schmidt (1991), Singer
(1992).
[41] In the bibliograpy
referenced under the Free Press edition date (1969).
[43] The question of the
logical domain of pattern needs to be further clarified but this will have to be
done in another section.
[45] Rupert Riedl (1995):
"Goethe and the Path of Discovery: An Anniversary".
(URL)
http://www.kla.univie.ac.at/Journal.html
[48]
(URL)
http://www.uni-wuppertal.de/FB5-Hofaue/Brock/Lehrbetr/MUEHLMAN.html
