1000 Taos: the conclusion of Tao

March 4, 2010 - July 21, 2014

In the 1001 posts (433 in this english partial version) of the full italian version of this blog an attempt was made to describe the complexity of multi-levels systems and processes that in this century will bring a radical destructive and irreversible change of the global ecosystem, here identified with the myth of KaliYuga.

The two main guidelines are represented by Global Dynamics Processes - GDPs - the description of the physical-chemical-biological-social-mental and environmental processes involved starting from the hierarchical levels of natural sciences and of the knowledge domains to the logical levels of knowledge of knowledge.

The second guideline is called Pattern which Connects and is mainly based on the wide variety of ideas developed in the systemic-cybernetic-environmental fields by Gregory Bateson, subsequently carried out in the neurosciences and sciences of cognition fields by Francisco J. Varela and Humberto Maturana and finally merged in the modern science of complexity mainly due to the work of Edgar Morin.

Into these two guidelines - interlaced with each other - there are the connected lines of Tao, based upon the 81 chapters of Tao Teh Ching, the one of Synchronic Tao, based on the description ensemble of the 78 +1 symbols of Tarots, Tao Interlude and, starting at a specified point, the one of of Tao Level 3 and beyond, linked to the two main guidelines for descriptions in areas higher then the logical level 2 of complexity.
The full italian and this partial english versions coincide till June 13, 2011; afterwards only some selected posts are published in the english version, tagged Over The End of Tao.

The evolution of the real KaliYuga - not mythological - in the next decades is naturally unpredictable, both because it involves an ensemble of the most complex systems known, and because phenomena and conditions never occurred in the past will become effective.

Though everything brings to believe that quantitatively the global ecosystem will be destroyed or radically transformed, it is always possible that in a highly complex system of this type relevant choices and actions different from the past may lead to other types of evolution.

One moment it was there, another moment it is gone.
One moment we are here, and another moment we have gone.

And for this simple moment, how much fuss we make - how much violence, ambition, struggle, conflict, anger, hatred.
Just for this small moment!

Just waiting for the train in a waiting room on a station, and creating so much fuss: fighting, hurting each other, trying to possess, trying to boss, trying to dominate - all that politics.

And then the train comes and you are gone forever.

Heaven's Reason is to benefit but not to injure;
the holy man's Reason is to accomplish but not to strive.

© Elena Cinguino Illustrations

meta Tao design: Reflections

METADESIGN

Humberto Maturana

PART III

* Reflections.

Technological transformations do not impress me, biological technology does not impress me, Internet does not impress me. I say this not out of arrogance. No doubt much of what we do will change if we adopt the different technological options at hand, but our actions will not change unless our emotioning changes. We live a culture centered in domination and submission, mistrust and control, dishonesty, commerce and greediness, appropriation and mutual manipulation ... and unless our emotioning changes all that will change in our lives will be the way in which we continue in wars, greediness, mistrust, dishonesty, and abuse of others and of nature. Indeed, we shall remain the same. Technology is not the solution for human problems because human problems belong to the emotional domain as they are conflicts in our relational living that arise when we have desires that lead to contradictory actions. It is the kind of human being, Homo sapiens amans, Homo sapiens aggressans, or Homo sapiens arrogans, at the moment in which we have access to a new technology, either as users or observers, what determines how we use it or what we see in it.

We frequently speak as if the course that human history is following were independent from us as individual human beings, and as if we were carried by powerful forces beyond our control. But, to what extent such a manner of thinking is valid? Our life is guided by our emotions because our emotions define the relational domain in which we act, and hence, what we do. Each culture is defined by a particular configuration of emotioning that guides the actions of its members, and is conserved by those actions and the learning of the configuration of emotioning that defines it by the children of its members. If this systemic dynamics of constitution and conservation of a culture is broken, the culture comes to an end. So, we are not trapped, it is not what we do, but the emotion under which we do what we do. It is not technology what guides modern life, but the emotions, that is the desires of power, riches, or fame, ... under which we use or invent it. We human beings can do whatever we imagine if we respect the structural coherences of the domain in which we operate. But we do not have to do all that we imagine, we can chose, and it is there where our behavior as socially conscious human beings matters.

Our brains are not being changed by technology, and what is in fact happening to us through it, is that we change what we do while we conserve the culture (the configuration of emotioning) to which we belong. Unless, of course, our emotioning changes as we reflect on what happens to us through using or contemplating it and we undergo a cultural change. In fact our brain needs not to change for us human beings to be able to manage and understand whatever technological change that the future may offer us if we are willing to start from the beginning. What our brain does is to abstract configurations of relations of activities in itself, which if coupled with our operation in language permit us to treat any situation that we live as a starting point for recursive reflections in a process in fact open to any degree of complication. It is what happens in our emotions what determines the course of our living, and since emotions as kinds of relational behaviours occur in the relational space, it is through the conservation of cultural changes (as changes in the configuration of emotioning that are conserved generation after generation in the learning of children) that the course of our biological history may result in changes in our brain.

Biological evolution is not changing its character as as the constitution, conservation and diversification of lineages which are defined by the systemic conservation generation after generation of manners of living that extend from the inception to the death of the reproducing organisms. The same occurs with the evolution of cultures. Cultures are closed networks of conversations conserved generation after generation through the learning of the children that live in them. As such cultures change if the closed network of conversations that the children learn as they live in them changes, and a new closed network of conversations begins to be conserved generation after generation through their living. One can say in general systemic terms, that what is conserved in a system or in the relations between the members of a group of systems what determines what can or not change in the system or in the group of systems.

Biotechnology is not a new practice, although what we can do now is very, very different from what we humans could do in that area hundred or fifty years ago. Internet with all its richness as a network not something basically different from other systems of interactions that facilitates the use of libraries and museums. No doubt the interconnectedness reached through Internet is much greater than the interconnectedness that we lived a hundred or fifty years ago through telegraph, radio, or telephone. However, we still do with Internet no more no less than what we desire in the domain of the options that it offers, and if our desires do not change, nothing changes in fact because we go on living through it the same configuration of actions (of emotioning) that we used to live. Certainly I know much of what is said and is happening in the domain of globalization of the flow of information, but it is not information what constitutes the reality that we live. The reality that we live arises instant after instant through the configuration of emotions that we live, and which we conserve with our living instant after instant. But if we know this, if we know that the reality that we live arises through our emotioning, and we know that we know, we shall be able to act according to our awareness of our liking or not liking the reality that we are bringing forth with our living. That is, we shall become responsible of what we do.

I want a cultural change, I want to contribute to a work of art in the domain of human existence, I want to contribute to evoke a manner of coexistence in which love, mutual respect, honesty and social responsibility arise spontaneously from living instant after instant such configuration of emotioning because we all cocreate it in our living together. That configuration of emotioning cannot be imposed, nor can it be demanded without denying it, it must be lived spontaneously as a matter of course because that is the way we learned to live in our childhood. Violations of such manner of living will be legitimate mistakes that can be corrected because there will be no intrinsic shame in them, they will be only errors. If indeed we were to live such a cultural change, what would be most remarkable, is that the configuration of emotioning that such a manner of living entails, would arise in us without effort as we begin to live in it by living in it. Moreover, such configuration of emotioning will be conserved generation after generation as our manner of cultural living if our children live it because we live it with them. Indeed, such a manner of living is what we all want to live in our desire for material and spiritual wellbeing. Utopia? yes because it correspond to a way of living that has been ours in our evolutionary history, and most of us know it as an experience or as a yearning of our childhood. Anyway, to do that would be, no doubt, a magnificent work of dynamic art, and a responsible creative act as well if we want to live as Homo sapiens amans.

Humberto R. Maturana.

August 1, 1997

meta Tao design: Living systems
meta Tao design: Technology and Reality

Escape of 4 dimensional collapse by Mandelwerk

the last lecture on Tao

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets

“I recommend you take your hand home and take a look at it when you get there — very quietly, almost as part of meditation. And try to catch the difference between seeing it as a base for five parts and seeing it as constructed of a tangle of relationships. Not a tangle, a pattern of the interlocking of relationships that were determinants of its growth. And if you can really manage to see the hand in terms of the epistemology that I am offering you, I think you will find that your hand is much more recognizably beautiful as a product of relationships than as a composition of countable parts. In other words, I am suggesting to you, first, that language is very deceiving, and, second, that if you begin even without much knowledge to adventure into what it would be like to look at the world with a biological epistemology, you will come into contact with the concepts that the biologists don’t look at. You will meet with beauty and ugliness. These may be real components in the world that you as a living creature live in.
...Of course natural history can be taught as a dead subject.
I know that, but I believe also that perhaps the monstrous atomistic pathology at the individual level, the national level, and the international level — the pathology of wrong thinking in which we all live — can only in the end be corrected by an enormous discovery of those relations in nature that make up the beauty of nature.”

The last lecture, lecture delivered October 28, 1979, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

René Magritte, The Promenades of Euclid, 1955, oil on canvas - Minneapolis Institute of Arts

a legacy for Tao - VIII

Angels Fear Revisited:
Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind
Applied to Religion-Science Debates

Mary Catherine Bateson

Logical Types in Mental Process

Gregory’s postwar research on communication was carried out in the context of psychiatry, with a focus on pathology and its etiology. The research of the Bateson group started out oriented towards solving the problem of schizophrenia, yet all the time that they were talking about schizophrenia they were also talking among themselves about humor, about poetry, and about religion, all of which involve switching back and forth between logical types – but the work was published as research on pathology. They identified the double bind in families, defined in relation to the logical types, as a possible cause (or trigger) of schizophrenia, yet once the work is taken out of its immediate context, it becomes clear that the double bind is pervasive. Double binds are by no means limited to the families of schizophrenics and indeed they may be characteristic of all multiply coupled and embedded systems such as we discover in the natural world, and do not always result in pathology.
On the one hand, religion seems to depend upon logical type confusion, so it is fairly easy to connect religious experience with psychopathology. On the other hand, religious traditions look like ways of dealing with the limitations of other kinds of knowledge and the need to function at many different levels, with inevitable conflicts and ambiguities between them. It may, for example, be possible to describe a condition like obesity in strictly physiological terms, yet an understanding of the diverse and multiple causation of different cases of obesity will range from genetic to socio-economic and ideological factors, with multiple possibilities for contradiction and inappropriate intervention at different levels. It is not easy to integrate biomedical understanding with explanations of psychological and social processes. As individuals, we can hardly help experiencing knowledge as fragmented. Scientific method depends on cutting questions down to size by breaking them into manageable pieces. Scientists necessarily focus on parts of the whole and, like laymen, must take most of it – the findings of others which they have not confirmed – on faith in the markers of scientific communication.
Inevitably, in periods of great scientific progress, there is a tendency to exaggerate that progress, and we are in a period today when some scientists and much of the general public seem to believe that focusing on the DNA molecule is the answer to everything and, more ominously, to the control of everything. Yet genetic causation also depends on the transmission and interpretation of messages at other systemic levels, and on complex contextual conditions that convert what appears to be a lineal causal system into a circular one. As with political power, causation always goes both ways. The general public is, in a curious way, buying into a form of biological fundamentalism that is itself dangerous because of the metaphors of unilateral control that it proposes. Overemphasis on “master molecules” and “selfish genes” is as likely to lead to authoritarianism as is monotheism.

Discussion

There are many kinds of ignorance that lead to maladaptive and destructive behavior, including the distorted perception that Gregory connected with conscious purpose and a variety of distortions connected in other ways with religion, such as the initial rejection of attempts to slow global warming and the Kyoto Treaty by Evangelical Christians because we are in the last days and the world will end
shortly. At Burg Wartenstein Gregory proposed that it might be useful to construct a typology of error. Both in our empty-headed school committees and in our dogmatic economists, in fact in many professions and sometimes in scientists as well as in religionists, there is a form of ignorance that is newly dangerous, and we are all at risk of slipping into it.
It may be impossible to arrive at an internally consistent understanding of the world that integrates the details at every level – and certainly impossible for an individual. But thinking in terms of systems offers a different kind of holism where we can see the similarities between ourselves and systems of many kinds, not only organisms but ecosystems and human communities, and we can see them living, responding, and changing. The details must be left to specialists but the patterns still connect.
It is important to keep on trying to understand the limits of science – and at the same time, not to become too arrogant about the understanding that has been achieved. Gregory says of scientists, “We are arrogant about what we might know tomorrow but humble because we know so little today”. We need somehow to build a bridge that allows people to deal with the limits of what they can know scientifically, and still have a mythic and aesthetic sense of their world. Fundamentalism is for many an adaptation to a sense of loss, and loss properly inspires compassion. The student I described earlier came to mind, after I had not thought about her for 20 years, because she was devastated, her foundations were shaken by her recognition of the deep feeling and passion of others. But her foundations were built on a fallacy, and the name of that fallacy is not Christianity, it’s not Islam, it’s not even religion – it’s a fallacy about the truth values of religious statements that may still be valuable for an integrated life. Gregory was convinced of the possibility that systems theory and biology might meet in a description of the natural world that would persuade our species, no longer looking outside that world for explanations of its wonders, to treat it not only with respect but with reverence and recognition.
Gregory was pursuing the use of cybernetics to describe natural systems as wholes in ways acceptable to science, which would still evoke wisdom and a sense of the sacred. In doing this he developed two interrelated analytic tools both for science and for popular understandings of science. One of these was the use of communications theory and the logical types. The other was an understanding of the mental characteristics of systems created by communication, within and between organisms.

a legacy for Tao - VII

meta-Tao gradients

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are gradients, conceived as continuous variation of variables - both scalar or vectors - opposed to rigid binaries variables "true" or "false":

Background

Gradients refer to continuums and shades of gray rather than rigid binaries of black and white. Both hierarchies and holarchies can be described as clearly defined and fuzzy demarcations along a continuum. Size, color, light, temperature, speed, quantity, amounts, elevations, distances, etc. refer to continuums. Most choices for humans and other animals do not manifest as a clear binary, but as a multiplicity along a continuum with no clear “right” or “wrong.”

Gradient of the 2-d function f(x,y) = xe^-x2-y2 is plotted as blue arrows over the pseudocolor plot of the function.

Examples

• In science: speed; acceleration; temperature gradients; slopes; density; solubility; salinity; statistical degrees of freedom; levels of hurricanes, tornado, earthquakes; etc.

• In architecture and design: walkway design; handicap ramps; elevators; lighting of spaces; plumbing design; landscape drainage; golf course design; etc.

• In the arts: use of color, light, and shading; pace of action in dance and drama; curvatures in sculpture; tempo in music; etc.

• In social sciences: population densities, public opinion, intelligence (whatever it is), economic trends, from traditional to modern allegiances in tribal and cultural groups, intensity of emotions, etc.

• In other senses: “mixed emotions,” degrees of friendship, “closeness” of families, types of lies, etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

a legacy for Tao - VII

Angels Fear Revisited:
Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind
Applied to Religion-Science Debates

Mary Catherine Bateson

The Fundamentalist Error Today

It is probably no coincidence that at the same time that these old epistemological debates resurface, we are seeing a renewal of apparently religiously inspired warfare all over the planet, and we are seeing a resurgence of the kind of understanding of faith that was expressed by my fundamentalist student who believed in the literal truth-value of religious texts. We are seeing not only Islamic fundamentalism, not only Christian fundamentalism, but also Jewish fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism, and patches of Buddhist fundamentalism (although Buddhism has some built in protections). Fundamentalism is not limited to “religions” however – it arises in Marxism and psychoanalysis, and, most seriously in America today, in free market economic fundamentalism and the strict construction of the Constitution, constitutional fundamentalism.
So a pattern of thinking – this style of taking things literally rather than regarding any text as having multiple levels of meaning with the interpretation changing over time, always depending on the context – is becoming a widespread epidemic. Both Christians and Muslims are increasing in numbers, and in many places, especially Africa, the forms of Christianity and Islam that are spreading are the most literal and the most supernaturally oriented, without the polite reinterpretation of texts as myth or metaphor that is fairly common among believers in the West.
Much of this has developed since Gregory’s death, but I remember arguing with  him in the 1970s that fundamentalism is by definition a modern pathology. Certainly the ancients took the creation story as true. But, without the modern concept of scientific knowledge as a particular kind of knowledge that is established and modified in specific ways, truth had a different, more ambiguous meaning. Fundamentalism attempts to give to non-scientific ways of knowing the status that is given to science, but it omits the openness of science to new evidence that is essential to that status.
Although what is happening in the United States these days looks fairly strange from the vantage point of Europe, what is equally worrying is that so many educated people throughout the industrialized world have simply become deaf to religious language, and have no access to thinking about the meaning of religion in people’s lives and motivations. Fundamentalists think their beliefs are “true” in a simplistic way, while others think they are “false” in a simplistic way. Scientifically educated people have not only ceased to believe particular doctrines but they have lost the capacity to empathize with those who do, transforming methodologies and useful heuristics, like reductionism, into ontologies. We need to be equally on guard against multiple kinds of illiteracy, for aesthetic and spiritual illiteracy may be as dangerous as scientific illiteracy.
Some of the pathologies of contemporary life may be due to the loss of kinds of knowledge that are now unacceptable because of the way they are coded and mixed with muddle-headedness. The rise of fundamentalism in a secularizing world is reminiscent of the Gospel story,

44 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.
45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
(Matthew xii:44–45)

44 Allora dice: Ritornerò nella mia casa donde sono uscito; e giuntovi, la trova vuota, spazzata e adorna.
45 Allora va e prende seco altri sette spiriti peggiori di lui, i quali, entrati, prendon quivi dimora; e l’ultima condizione di cotest’uomo divien peggiore della prima. Così avverrà anche a questa malvagia generazione.
(Matteo, 12:44-45)

where a man is cleansed of an unclean spirit who then comes back with seven others more evil than himself and, finding the man’s soul swept and garnished, moves back in with his companions. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I think that the only defense against what I take to be a dangerous and erroneous set of attitudes towards religion is a much more flexible understanding of the possible meanings of faith, as contrasted with belief, in people’s lives, and in the lives of scientists. There is an apparent symmetry of mutual blindness.
There is still however a need for an integrative level of scientific description such as Gregory found in cybernetics. Perhaps our view is necessarily dependent on multiple alternative descriptions – we may even need a little help from some of the nine and sixty tribal ways to understand the world. It has been a mission of anthropology to collect and make available these multiple visions. What we ask of science is first of all, that it always include a degree of tentativeness and openness – and second, not that it be true but that it fit the evidence, which is very different. One could ask the same kind of questions of mythologies of many sorts. Do they fit? Do they offer an interpretative frame for the adaptation of a cluster of human beings in a particular environment?
Much of Gregory’s portion of Angels Fear was written at the Esalen Institute, in California, where Gregory went to live after his cancer, in the year before his death. In one essay written there, titled “Neither Supernatural nor Mechanical”, Gregory says he is horrified both by conventional scientific and technological views of the world and by the supernaturalism of Esalen. “The problem is not, however, entirely symmetrical,” he wrote, “I have, after all, chosen to live at Esalen, in the midst of the counterculture, with its incantations, its astrological searching for truth, its divination … My friends here love me and I love them … The beliefs of the counterculture and of the human potential movement may be superstitious and irrational, but their reason for being … was a good reason. It was to [generate that buffer of diversity that will] protect the human being against obsolescence”. The bracketing of a portion of the previous sentence indicates an insertion that I made in editing, for one of the strangely attractive features of Esalen is the comfort with which a huge miscellany of beliefs manage to co-exist. No zero sum truth there. Gregory feels sure that his counterculture friends are talking nonsense, but perhaps the nonsense is connected to something worth knowing, which might promote a degree of sensitivity or empathy with other organisms and a degree of perception and response to the pattern which connects.

a legacy for Tao - VI

meta-Tao rigidity and flexibility

Jos Leys, Kaleido 4D

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom is the binary complementarity of rigidity/flexibility, in time, space and relationship:

Alexandre Arrechea, No Limit

Background

Rigidity and flexibility can be binaries of space, time, and relationship. Rigidity implies strength and impenetrability, while flexibility implies adaptability and change. In a spatial sense, a tube, sphere, sheet, border, or layer can be rigid or flexible. Boundaries of time can be rigid sequences of steps or stages or can delimit actions and activities. Binary relationships can be rigidly established or provide for flexibility. Both flexibility and rigidity can serve to protect.

Examples

• In science: Adaptation, acclimatization, organism tolerance to environmental change and variation, cell walls vs. cell membranes, "class of atoms that are inert", etc.

• In architecture and design: flexibility in skyscrapers, rigid vs. flexible interior designs, car crumple zones and uni-body construction, springs, etc.

• In the arts: rigid and flexible representations in dance and theater, malleable vs. static sculpture, etc.

• In social sciences: rules, mores, cultural borders, national borders, social layering, personality typologies, institutional and organization, etc.

• In other senses: athletic protective wear, yoga, martial arts, “letter of the law” vs. “spirit of the law”, rigid vs. flexible writing styles, flexible scheduling, open-mindedness vs. close-mindedness and dogma, etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

meta-Tao clusters

Visualization of the Internet data at the AS level. A plot of all nodes, ordered by their k-shell indices. The legend to the left denotes degree, and the legend to the right denotes k-shell index.
from: Shai Carmi, Shlomo Havlin, Scott Kirkpatrick, Yuval Shavitt and Eran Shir, "A model of Internet topology using k-shell decomposition", Proc. of the IEEE

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are clusters, static or dynamic aggregations of mental or physical elements:

Background

Clusters refer to the accumulation or movement of objects or ideas to positions of proximity to one another. Such clustering may involve one or more center attractors. Clustering seems to involve some sort of attraction that brings objects or ideas together.

Jos Leys, Kaleido 4D

Examples

• In science: plant growth in particular location, clusters of stars, lichen growth on a particular part of a rock, mold and bacterial growth, bird flocks, colonial organisms, etc.

• In architecture and design: building plans that provide space for people to gather; office spaces or rooms in a home that come together around a common space; automobile controls and feedback dials on dashboards; placement of plants and objects in landscape design; etc.

• In art: movement apart and together in drama and dance; pictorial representations of alternating space and clusters; etc.

• In social sciences: town and city development; tribal, community, and nation development; clustering of ideas within a conceptual space; formations of cities and town; family structures; cliques; gangs; etc.

• In other senses: cultural and religious events and gatherings; parties; groupings of people in a variety of settings and contexts; etc.

Berndnaut Smilde, Nimbus II, 2012

M92 globular cluster

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

meta-Tao cycles

Krebs cycle: citric acid

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are cycles, structures repetion in space and time:

Background

Cycles are repetitions in space or time, such as, circulations, waves, repetitive routines, etc. Interactions of cycles and arrows create spirals or helices.

Examples

• In science: Kreb’s cycle, Earth’s rotation and revolution, lunar phases, animal movement, biological rhythms, breathing, water cycle, carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, seasons, tides, bird songs, light, sound, cybernetic feedback loops, system operational closure etc.

• In architecture and design: heating & cooling systems, movement patterns in buildings, etc.

• In art: perceptual “movement,” musical compositions, choreography, etc.

• In social sciences: repetitive actions, routines, rituals, helical patterns of themes running through discourse and other psychosocial situations, etc.

• In other senses: laps in a race, wheel of karma, etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

meta-Tao breaks

Vladimir Kush, Sunrise by the ocean

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are breaks:

Background

Transformations; change; leaps; shifts; sequences of stages; dilemmas and decisions.

Examples

• In science: chemical reactions, metamorphosis, evolutionary change (punctuated equilibrium), energy transformations, phenotypic plasticity, point of change from action to reaction, waterfalls, branching, etc.

• In architecture and design: divisions of space and activity, vehicle brakes, etc.

• In art: perceptual shifts, design changes, etc.

• In social sciences: insights, stages in development, events that change psychosocial states, etc.

• In other senses: divorce, death, birth, marriage, crashing waves, breakthroughs, etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

meta-Tao time

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom is time, and by extension calendars, primary physical and psychological structure which - together with space - indicates movement, memory, counting, progression, sequencing and dynamic of events and processes:

Background

Time can be considered a binary of movement and memory and can be observed by connecting several spaces. Time can be seen as an arrow or cycle. Time also is evident as counting, progression, and sequences.

Examples

• In science: biological clocks, animal behavior, velocity, acceleration, time-space phenomena, etc.

• In architecture and design: how time is defined and related to in particular contexts; at Arcosanti (an environmentally situated desert city in Arizona) all buildings are multiuse in order to minimize building use down-time; etc.

• In art: in drama, music, dance, and other performance arts time is the fundamental organizing pattern, as well as fundamental to the perceptual experience; etc.

• In social sciences: calendars, clocks, history, sequences and stages in development, etc.

• In other senses: time to kill; wasting time; time management; timeliness;

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

meta-Tao arrows

Vladimir Kush, Chaos Butterfly, Arrow of Time

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are arrows, structure to indicate flow. progression, directional links and relationships. and directionality in general:

Background

Arrows indicate flow, progression, directional links and relationships, and directionality in general. Arrows are often linked to time (as an arrow) and sequences. Arrows of time are equivalent to tubular relations in space. Arrows also depict specific directional relations between binaries.

Examples

• In science: chemical reactions, acceleration, nerve transmission, vectors, velocity, osmosis, rivers, currents, wind, volcanic flow, bird flight, etc.

• In architecture and design: traffic flow, sequences in construction, escalators, directionality in lighting and décor; structural strength in supporting weight; etc.

• In art: as objects, as eye movement in looking at piece of art, choreography, drama, etc.

• In social sciences: directional relations, movement, flow, stages and sequences, etc.

• In other senses: journeys and pilgrimages; travel plans; agenda; etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

meta-Tao binaries

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are binaries, the simplest structure to model a complex relation among elements and between parts and wholes of a system:

Background

Binaries are the simplest form of complex relations. More complex relations involve increasing numbers of components (e.g., trinaries, quaternaries, and so forth). Such binary relations are the most economical (in a variety of senses) way to generate complex wholes with significant new properties. Binaries involve senses of separation and/or unity, duality, and tension. They also provide for a synergy between parts and wholes.

The Red Square Nebula (MWC 922) is a bipolar nebula appearing as an orange square in its center with red bowl-shaped gas and dust toward the top right and bottom left of the image. The infrared image was taken using the Mt. Palomar Hale telescope in California and the Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and released in April 2007. According to Sydney University astrophysicist Peter Tuthill, this nebula is one of the most symmetrical celestial objects ever discovered because of its unique shape. There is no clear explanation of how the central star could produce the nebula's shape, but one possible explanation is that these two outer faint radial spokes are shadows cast by periodic ripples or waves on the surface of an inner disk close to the central star.

Examples

• In science: bilateral symmetry (including two eyes, nostrils, ears, appendages, etc.); positive and negative particles, ions, electrodes, etc.; male and female; opposing forces; diurnal and nocturnal; dorsal and ventral; space and time; acid and base; DNA with component pairs and paired helices; inhale and exhale; respiration and photosynthesis; mass and volume; high pressure; low pressure; perception as the recognition of difference; form and function; acceleration and deceleration; etc.

• In architecture and design: inside and outside and the associated dynamics between them in buildings; entrance and exit; up and down passages; etc.

• In art: light and dark; monotone and multicolored; tensions between parts; attraction and repulsion (emotionally); etc.

• In social sciences: report talk and rapport talk; leader and follower; positive and negative attitudes; consumer and producer; active and passive; aggressive; trust and distrust; unity and disunity or separation; etc.

• In other senses: distal and proximal; all or nothing; night and day; open and closed; on and off; asleep and awake; old and young; love and hate; etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

meta-Tao centers

The next metapattern introduced by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are centers, structures which outline the centricity characteristics of a system:

Background

Centers act to stabilize the whole, provide resistance to change, and provide for organization of the whole. They can act as attractors for autopoietic (self-generating, self-sustaining) systems. In a more general sense, they can imply importance or significance and a sense of centricity. As such, centers can radiate relations to other centers, information, and so forth.

Milann Dobrojevic, Psihodelic Style 2

Examples

• In science: nucleus, strange attractor, queen ant or bee, fulcrum, dominant male in primate societies, center of gravity, heart within circulatory system, brain within nervous system, etc.

• In architecture and design: main office, central meeting places, central structural supports (such as elevator shafts in skyscrapers), etc.

• In art: the central figure or object as subject; the organizing principle or emotional focus of a piece of art, etc.

• In social sciences: president, governor, major, dictator, leader, teacher, principal, central physical site of specific types of activity, heart as center of individual in many indigenous cultures, organizing principles of societies and other groups, brain as center of individual in most technologically developed cultures, focus of life or activity (e.g., individuals may consider self, family, work, sport, hobby, or spiritual efforts as center), ego or self centric, anthropocentrism, conceptual prototype, conceptual defining characteristics, etc.

• In other senses: altar in a church, shrine in a temple, a deity or deities, sacred sites (Mecca, Bodhgaya, Jerusalem), shopping center, etc.

Simon Norfolk, CERN - LHC

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground