New Language
It is at this juncture that the need for new words and perspectives begin to trickle into the discussion. At first there is only a vague feeling about where and how to apply them. However, it can be realized by the accumulation of specific "situational" similarities, disparities and even 'holes' in our conceptual milieu, pertinent to a whole variety of topics. We will in fact accumulate them, in order to re-integrate them later on. What we're doing here is an exercise in elaborating a symphony orchestra... by focusing on one aspect at a time: on the individual instruments (types and abilities), the musicians, tonality ffunctions, composition to be played, orchestral seating orientation and configuration, size and accoutrements of the theater, timing and coordination of play, tempo, cacophony and harmony, air & lighting quality, health and ffunctionality of the instruments and of the players...a whole panorama..seemingly disparate...but truly coherently interrelatedly ffunctioning.
Remember, "fuzzy logic" and its application to Artificial Intelligence and systems dynamics and control feed-back circuits in the 1980's and 1990's, are really extended Boolean logic dressed in another field's application. We recognize that when we look behind the language and behind the terminology to see the processes and relationships being offered. That's all we're doing here with the Calculus and "dimensions" and "exponents".
The overview that needs to be maintained throughout is very specific. The goal of a unified field theory implies foundational aspects that go beyond the mechanistically obvious ones of developing a mathematics which will encompass descriptions of all known "forces". First, in the presence of a universe which appears to contain "anomalies", that is, inexplicable incompatibilities and incongruities, we must formulate a completely holistic and dynamicly compatible kinetic-structure that "allows" even those inconsistencies to arise - under specifiable conditions - yet in the overall sees them as natural and totally coherent parts of the order of uniform existence. If anomalies arise - as they actually do - within the current logic systems we have cognatively devised, these are no less real than physical phenomenon and demand no less attention, in resolving them and/or maintaining them as due to understandable parameters. What this usually indicates - from the historical perspective of being able to shift paradigms, Gestalts, or weltenschaungs (worldviews) etc. - is an adjustment in basic definitions, a priori's, or some other systemic alteration.
I like to view the techniques involved in all these mental machinations as a most natural kind of wave form function. A "smoothing" towards a specific value - an asymptotic approach towards an ideal. By analogy, it's like living in "Flatland", on a hyperbolic curve in a 2 dimensional plane, sensing that somewhere out "there" at a distance is an ideal we might label "straight lines, crossed". Recognizing differences and similarities, and formulating a domain that accounts and allows for both. My freshman year in college found me writing a term paper in English to discuss the differences between poetry and p, two rather distinct forms of linguistic presentation. Drawing from sources as old as ancient Greek and as diverse as Haiku and the exposition of logic theorems, I concluded by saying that even though every culture's language has its separate poetic and p forms, the highest praise we laud on each form is that the best p reads like poetry, and the best poetry...like p. "Distinctions" seem a priority quality, but, there is a unifying bridge - it is our sense: that our best (nicest?) 'expressive communications' link an idealization of form with ffunction. A blending of "content" with "technique". A communication domain. Insightfully important characteristics. Disparity is a "point of view". There are transdomain connections.
In the realm of human interactions, not a small group of distinguished thinkers over the years have formulated a whole panorama of theories of human psychology and sociology. We could rigidly assume that only one theory of psychology or sociology is correct and the rest are aberrations to be disregarded. (Take your pick.) Or. We can ascribe to these thinkers what we hope are the best mental capacities of our species...the ability to examine a set of information, bringing to it personal experiences, analogues, and emotional and experiential biases...and organize those realizations into a consistent coherent gestalt of those phenomenon. Each one being "real and correct". Each one attempting to be broader and "more inclusive by taking into account more information, more behaviors, more situational settings", and yet, doing this in a medley of a few simple rules and relationships.
It becomes apparent that each investigator used a very personal informational bundle, and saw most clearly the connections and interlinkages to describe how the information could be coordinately "all connected". A reticular network. Interrelatedly ffunctioning. But if any one theory could not accept or allow for all the others, then that one too, though it may have ffunctionally correct applicability for the specific scope it was addressing, would be somehow deficient in its completeness. Not enough information, insufficiently channelized (interconnected) and inclusive.
In the highest tradition of scientific and critical thinking, it becomes crucial (besides being a higher domain normative Integrity function) to believe in our selves and our individual and collective images of self worth and integrity. I mention this now as a pertinent aside (reflecting it back to the nature of this presentation in and of itself, and how it might be received by specialists in the various fields it touches) because too many people find it difficult to accept criticism, and/or suggested novel approaches to thinking. Instead, such an event is predominately perceived as being a "personal" attack on their own persona or self worth. This stems from the most natural mental ffunction whereby we cognatively secure our existence by identifying "who" we are with "what" we have accomplished or built in a social context. To be told that our perceptions are faulty or that we possibly are "not really" who we thought we were, or that the lives we are living, the ideals we hold etc., might be "incorrect" - well, life is short enough, to some where along the way be told we might have wasted a lot of it. People become very tenacious to hold on to what is comfortable. Comfort is "security". It preserves "Integrity". It is one of the factors that the psychologist Kurt Lewin saw as contributing to what he holisticly called a person's "life-space"...the perception identity that a person (or even a collective) has as a self-reference. The dynamic that sociologically translates as "territorial imperative" on the environmental level. A physical domain that is as valid as a perceptual domain and as valid as a controllable process-domain.
But a new idea, a new worldview, is not necessarily a threat. Our specie's desire to learn is an entropic ffunction that stabilizes our diversely spread "life system" by broadening our collective operational region. The more extensive and complete the information included, the more sure we can be of the validity of our perceptions...and our life systems.
The way to understand and appreciate all the ways that the Integrity dynamic truly applies to everything in the universe is to cognatively note and recognize the ffunctional kinetic flow of systems operations in general. The synergetic flow, interaction and changing distributions of energy and information, regardless of the specific system being considered, and regardless of how the energy/information is grouped or tagged. That is, bring to your analysis of a system an awareness of the ebb and flow of any given system's energetics, but, and this is most important, do it without any of the terminology which you previously learned and applied. Observe and attempt to appreciate those several systems as if you were familiar with systems energetics in general, but treat them as totally new and as yet unlabeled. It is no easy task at first, but becomes the focal method of thought, the active information channel conduit which will seem effortless in no time.
For example, a "system" has a domain and a bound. It might be the space in a vessel (open or compartmentalized) and the vessel walls. It might be a discussion group, and the bound is the number of participants. It might be the Seventh Cavalry, constrained severally by a fixed knoll, the waters of the Little Big Horn, and the moving placements of Sitting Bull's soldiers. It might be a point of logic, which can only be "true" in the context of statements which disallow its application. It might be all cars, trucks, and busses...and all street curbs (thusly, the roads they define). It might be a sieve or net which constrains some things and lets others pass ... like leaf stomata which control inhalation and exhalation of gases and fluid into and out of the plant structure. It might be a magnetic "bottle" which uses a malleable force field to hold and "contain" high energy plasma particles in a physics laboratory.
It might be competing political parties, where the variable bound is the number of voters and supporters each can gain in an election. The United States has an extraordinary organization, in that, by mutual agreement, any given leader...who provides the thema under which the "political group in toto" will ffunction for an agreed upon duration, can, in one fell swoop, obtain for her or him self (and the representative sub-group party), a domain of authority that expands from the "partial"to the "complete". The effective entropy domain of the "candidate" is allowed to transcribe to a larger more effectively ffunctional domain as "elected official". The British and Canadian political systems make that slightly more unstable as well as more responsive, by allowing dissolution of a sitting government that does not maintain on-going support of the general populous.
It might be competing manufacturers - each having a different growth potential - determined by the kind of vehicles available to market their product. The first uses trucks. The second uses rail lines. The third uses trucks and ships. The fourth uses all of the above, plus airlines.
Obviously, the first 2 can grow only to the limit bound of their contiguous land mass. The others can develop extra-continental markets. In this case, one of the ostensible bounds is the shoreline. It could just have easily been a political frontier. Or an import tariff. In a totally different context, it might be the availability and quantity of oxygen diffused in a water environment.
Or, a tax limitation in an economic system. In fact, "taxes", are an example of a very interesting ffunction, which can simultaneously control a diverse spectrum of coordinated or even dynamicly opposed co-components. A tax can inhibit part of a dynamic system by draining it of the "energy units" on which it thrives and operates. Conversely, it can create a negentropic gradient, that promotes or inhibits co-relevant activities. It can syphon energy, and diffuse it through corollary systemics, which were previously insufficiently integrated to survive on their own. A tax can neg-entropically amass energy in a corollary side-system (such as a bank or foundation or special purpose agency, etc) and create a new "source" for the promotion of other activities. It can also ffunction as a "barrier" for systems it was set up to affect (such as a tariff aimed at non-domestic cotton producers)which might have difficulty complying with the tax without negatively affecting its general cash flow...and thus its on-going ffunctional Integrity.
The principle idea is that a "bound" can be so distinct, that it merely "contains" activities (as a glass flask does most chemical reactions <glass becomes interactive and is etched by Fluorine reactions>), or, a "bound" could be dynamicly and interactively responsive "with" those activities (a piston; a river...until a bridge is built; the air in which flight takes place; a trade tariff). These are the kind of aspects that are important to evaluate and understand. It takes a perceptive openness that appreciates the dynamic interdependence of all things.
Additionally, this is where the Integrity Paradigm embraces the Fuzzy Logic of Zadeh, and corollary work done by Eleanor Rosch - a psychologist at UC Berkeley circa 1973. Rosch explored concept formation based on people's "assessment of experiences". What she and her group found was that conceptual-bounds were variable and constantly open to adjustment - at each evaluative encounter. For example, (Fuzzy Logic. McNeill & Frieberger, 1993 Simon & Schuster) "a guppy could have low membership in pets and fishes, yet high membership in pet fish. Compare a guppy to other pets and other fish, and it scores low. Compare it only to other pet fish, and it leaps up. The field narrows and the best examples change. The scale is different." The perceptual set boundary changes, and the Integral representative Identity ... they call it "prototype" ... malleably shifts.
An adaptive-logic evaluation system is open to a variety of inputs and gauges ... and yet is always open to correlation around some central and consistent Identity, or even a process-goal-ideal-homeostasis. Which is always open to adaptive change in-and-of-itself. The Evolution link. Integrity dynamics is a qualitative blend that employs the dynamics broached by fuzzy logic, on multiple levels of the electromagnetic spectrum at once (light, heat, radiation, olfaction, sound etc), simultaneously for each component : atomic, molecular, biochemical, whole organism, collective groupings , ad astrum.
The other factors which fuzzy logic analogizes are: the exploitation of minimal appropriate responses (avoiding "over compensation" and the model of harmonic damping ... though those too are Integrity sustaining techniques.. resulting in smooth approaches toward a desired goal from only one side of an imbalance; this, implies the process technique of using finer and finer discriminating adjustments based on evaluations done more often and being more perceptive to smaller and smaller variances (and collective association of variances from several different types of qualifiers). This all can be more traditionally described as: sufficiently integrated and redundant feedback loops that enable the continual processing of information. Information which is used for maintenance of Integral functioning and goal acquisition.
Fuzzy Logic is built on extensive interconnection to appropriate environments (internal & external), with enough distinction and weighted effects discrimination built in to evaluate that data and use it successfully, so that successive evaluation steps can be reached, and processes continued.
I'd like to take a moment now to explore Integrity in light of some work done in Sociology. I have been a long time admirer of Amitai Etzioni. When in the early 1970's I read his work on 'the "organization" of social interactions' I recognized as inherent within his schema of social organizations the same dynamics as my Integrity paradigm . He used more parochial vocabulary, but was - in his own way - examining the exact same dynamics and interactions which I was. We differed in vocabulary, definitions and the extent to which we applied our diverse understandings. Even so, I found merit in his approach if not in the exact schematics of how he organized the topic, and I even went so far as to introduce his concepts to the organization I was working with at the time, the Committee For the Future, in Washington DC. Subsequently, and was ask to attend a SynCon Conference which the Committee had organized. As I recall, the conference was held at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, circa 1974. Unfortunately I don't recall having had much time to talk and discuss things with him then, as I had work obligations involved with the nuts and bolts production of the conference, for the benefit of the attendees there, himself being one. I regret that lost opportunity to this day.
Etzioni's ideas exemplify the Integrity paradigm. Even though I found his descriptions to be somewhat restrictive and too old-world in language and perception I saw through that terminology to recognize that he too struggled to account for the underlying motivating forces that drive human interpersonal relationships. To this day I agree with Etzioni in general, as I did at the outset of my familiarity with his ideas, but I am compelled to place Integrity as the foundational underpinning of even his schemata, as I shall explain.
His classification of "power" into 3 kinds: Coercive, Remunerative, Normative (this last being subdivided further to:"pure" and "social"), makes for a superficially easy system by which to understand and discuss interpersonal interactions, but, it glosses over the more fundamental and intricate dynamics of perceptive-cognitive organisms and the evaluative processes each and any interactor has or displays, which in turn creates the panorama of behaviors which he tried to simplify and organize into a fluid gestalt. In other words, he looked at behaviors which could not be directly analyzed into a literal "cause > effect" relationship (ala the methodology of physics, chemistry, or mechanics in general) and he attempted to define, using the traditional terminologies of psychology and sociology, those behaviors which did not result from "energy in/energy out" activities, but rather from "inducements" acted out at a distance - in space and/or time. That is, behaviors induced from minimal and nearly inconsequential transferences of Information or energy. Where the "data" or the inherent energy-quantity transferred is not of a magnitude in and of itself to justify the resultant events that might follow the information transference.
Etzioni focussed on the net-result of such interactions (exemplified by a person carrying out the oral directives or commands of another), and labelled it "Compliance". Compliance, as an encompassing term, was meant to cover interactive cause/effect situations which are more transcendental than direct. A single soft spoken word like "go" might result in an inordinate expension of energy like an Oklahoma Land Rush. A symphony orchestra will begin to play because of a slight change in the tilt of the conductor's baton. In the context of smoothly functioning social environments, behaviors like that are more the norm than rarity. In order to span this immense chasm where an obvious causality linkage is missing (in the sense that the "laws" of thermodynamics are seemingly ignored), Etzioni relied upon the existing net of psychological perceptions, concepts and terminology to explain behavior and "motivation". What Etzioni did not go far enough in analyzing were the qualities inherent in each of the participants involved in such transactions. The action-qualities which each possesses and how it is those attributes that are actually the "defining" aspects of the secondary behaviors which follow. Without any new novel paradigm available, he fell back on the old imageries of "power", "mystique", "charisma" and similarly experienced but nebulously defined qualities.
He indeed won a Nobel Prize for his masterful analysis. The words and ideas he used were immediately understood by everyone, because they were the ones which were in mutual use under current gestalts and mind sets. People were used to the words. They were familiar with the characteristics - no matter how loosely defined - under the umbrella of socially familiar terms that referred to mutually appreciated experiences. Notwithstanding his clarity of vision employing the dominant ceptual terminology, Etzioni probably missed the foundation his schemata rests on.
Part of the problem with his schema is that he uses as A Priori a predefined "flow of information", as if there is a pre-existing social ordering that exists, prior to people randomly filling in the assigned "roles"; a rigorous if vaporous structural template (quite different from the open options of Integrity impetus). I.e., "vertical" and "horizontal" power relationships, which presumes a very specific pre-structural hierarchy of interactions. There is indeed and underlying foundation, but it is process, not form. There are more fundamental dynamic relations of environmental information transaction going on between organic-dynamic Integrity-groups that only there-after determine not just the apparent structures of Etzioni power-groupings, but also encourage the relationships which only afterwards show up as so called "vertical" or "horizontal" compliance flow-directions.
Every individual person brings to an interactive encounter a perception set about what things in the world will positively, negatively, or neutrally affect that individual's life and life space. That perception set includes personal welfare and the welfare of persons or things of importance to her or him. The person also brings a self-knowledge - partially built on past performance in similar encounters - of what that individual will or will not do as a "behavior", when a response of some sort is required.
What happened in the past, and what continues at every moment of existence, is a constant evaluation of encountered situations. There is a perpetual flow of information whereby an organism evaluates a wide variety of data and knowledge pertinent to continuing and enhancing secure and safe survival. Value judgements are constantly being made, some so quickly that we have come to appreciate them as intuitive or even instinctive. None the less, they are consciously carefully-considered determiners of behavior. All of this is valid for all life forms, and is only limited by the bodily mechanisms an organism has for successfully dealing with the information received. If something is careening towards me, but I don't have strong enough legs or enough lead time to get out of the way or have some way to stop or redirect the object, no amount of desire or degree of perception about the situation would help me protect myself. If I have tenure in a work situation, then no amount of badgering by a subordinate or superior will affect my job security ... only the social contract and my personal considerations of what is best for myself, my family, my co-workers, and my society at large ... and how I rate and evaluate them all in regard to each other. In either of these examples, whether it is bones and muscles, or, a group-accepted dynamic that serves as an operational environment for every participant, there is some tool/function present which enables me to successfully, or not, maintain and continue my being, as the case may be.
With strong muscles and information, I can jump out of the way (my Integrity is paramount). With strong muscles and information, I can hold my ground and accept injury to save my child from being killed (my child's Integrity is paramount). With strong muscles and information, I can divert the object into a ravine, and make a step stone there where no bridge was available to help me get across before (the Integrity of completing a journey, for what ever larger purpose, is paramount). With strong muscles and information, I can jump out of a logging flume (my Integrity is important so that I can keep working to earn money to ensure my family's health and Integrity; the log's Integrity needs to be maintained in order to shore-up the Integrity of the mine shaft to ensure the Integrity of the mine to ensure the Integrity of the company which operates it, to ensure the Integrity of the local economy, and ensure the Integrity of the people who rely on the ore coming out of the mine).
Social interactions in the work place and elsewhere operate the same way. We all have a vast panorama of factors on which to evaluate and then act out responsive behaviors. Does the Integrity of our company, school or organization rest on encouraging new ideas and being open to change, or does it rest on holding the status quo and keeping things as they are? What are our future objectives? What goals takes precedence? Or, does any of that matter or not, as long as we continue earning money and just make our own jobs "secure"? If the business fails, so what, as long as we still have the knowledge and skills to start over and work someplace else. The answers (our decisions and performance) depends on the information we include and weigh vis a vis the maintenance of someone's or something's or some combination's Integrity...now, or in a few moments, or years into the future.
Etzioni's "compliance" functions can all be reduced to or built up from these more primal operations. "Coercive, remunerative and normative" compliances are in fact only a few of the externalized processes that are at work. What predominates in encounter situations is the overall perception net and personal world-view a person (or even a collective social persona) holds ...the capacity to process information and act on the information's pertinence. Much of this also rests upon the education and socialization a person receives in the formative years. In general, how a system is instructively organized ... whether by trial and error experience or pre-evaluated knowledge which reduces the required learning time. Concurrently, it can even be affected by predispositions developed in the natal environment or due to individual internal biochemistry .... such as the latitude of gross reaction time allowed or constricted by neuronal response times, or, variances in hormone levels, the chemicals which aid behavioral responses. These are valid variables not considered in Etzioni's schemata. Their functional absence does not make his model incorrect, just incomplete.
The social interactions addressed by Etzioni presume the absolute middle range of any statistically possible imbalances. He codifies organized social regimes, whether authoritarian or charismatic, without looking beneath the surface to clarify more fundamental impetus, or even allow for real-world variables. He achieves an extraordinary level of specificity when describing interaction states and relationships. But I believe the Integrity Paradigm to be the foundation on which his perceptions rest, making "Integrity" dynamics the more comprehensive and appropriate schema. The Etzioni model is nice and neat, something fairly easy for social scientists to grasp. But, I re-iterate, it is incomplete.
"Interest rates" are another Integrity/entropy-relevant economic ffunction-process. In one sense it is "how much do I get back, over and above a principle amount that I put to work for a specific purpose and specific time?". That is how most people view it. It is, however, much more than a quantumly fixed "value-amount". It is exactly as its name states: the measure of the actual time relevant RATE of how fast money flows through an economy. It is a ffunction with a range of values and flexibly variable "optimums" as part of the Integrity maintenance of a social economy. It is dependent upon the homeostatic needs of a system, based on its environmental and internal conditions...eg. active growth periods, high energy and resource needs periods (such as war or external economic competition), and can healthily average between 15-22 percent. In recent experience (1970's & 80's), rates above 25 % overly stressed the American economy. Maintenance periods (i.e., post-war) historically have settled in at 1-3 percent. Periods of maintenance & regeneration produce 5-9 percent.
Of course, "rates" are affected by "perceived needs" ...over and above "actual needs" ... on an individual basis. That "individual" can be a person, a family, a community, a company, a corporation, a local social group, a nation-state)...beside the context of mutual-collective significance.
For example, when enough "individuals" perceive their personal Integrity to take absolute precedence over the Integrity of the next higher collective level, then it is perceived as crucial to take more active control of personal energy needs, to maintain holistic Integrity and thusly, to amass extra energy-stores (money) in order to weather and survive a potentially erratic and predictably unassurable future, in which resources for survival cannot be guaranteed. The "quick-fix" (in an otherwise normal steady-state economy) is to increase the production rate of money and work...a boost in prices unsubstantiated by any changes in the cost of production...or an increase in the interest rate charged on funds. All, done in order to side-line negentropicly an accumulation reserve of funds. What results...when that perception is acted upon and effected by enough of the "rate control gates"...is rampant run-away inflation. In some cases it can become a mob-response "self-fulfilling prophesy" (or disastrous uncontrolled "program-trading" event) , because the anticipation designs the mechanisms that create the outcome. If, however, just a few "individuals" do it...there might be no harm (as long as they control only a small percentage of the total economic environment). In fact, the net negentropic creation of localized energy resources can be beneficial. But, this in turn depends crucially on how when and where those "resources" are re-integrated back in with the main economic flow. If too many "individuals" participate, beyond the economy's ability to adjust and respond with positive feedback (increased production; participation of more members of the society...mitigated by adequate education in the production technologies ... and holistic system organization ...including appropriate costs for such things as re-cycling and waste management), the results are disastrous to the body-politic-economic. Dysffunctional over activity. Unrestrained growth, played out as a societal version of Cancer. Or over-use of resources...either too much or too quickly.
Balance between co-dependent Integrities is crucial, where there is degree of free action for immediate priorities on one sub-system level to guide the whole network, yet not jeopardize the primary organism in toto.
Present democratic cultures are fixated on individual rights ... as well they should be, as a fundamental principle ... yet some situations become apparent which verge on threatening the Integrities of social orders (the body-politic). For example, at some point in a business's or organization's life cycle - at some measuring point when it is apparent that a great many people are affected by the actions of a single individual (a CEO, eg) - we really do need new social "contracts" that require the approval of the society at large before a controlling stockholder or owner or group can just make "personally beneficial" decisions which otherwise adversely affects employees, or the consumer market which depends on them.
Social responsibility starts to take precedence over individual rights at some point ... because in the end, that is what the security and stability of those individual rights relies upon. Being able to get up in the morning and being reasonably assured (not "guaranteed" a la communism) that work ( a means for continuing welfare and survival) will be there ... to the same extent as needing to be reasonably assured that a thief isn't waiting to rob you out in the streets somewhere ... is crucial. A secure, safe, nurturing environment. Pertinent to all the activities we are involved in each day. Whether it's public safety...or job security. The responsibilities of a person whose, or group which, actions are pivotal in the maintenance of some major part of the social structure must forfeit a degree of personal latitude and individual freedom.
We expect parents to stay continually responsible for the welfare of their children until the children can take care of themselves. The same "guardianship" falls onto anyone who consciously takes up that mantle on a social level, by free will and choice. Only in this instance, they cannot just "walk away" with no thought as to consequences. Their responsibility now extends ... to doing the best they can to assure that the system of organization they oversee will continue (thrive, grow, adapt or transform), beyond that individual's time of involvement. Any one in that position of authority or power cannot (or should I say in a more socially acceptable form: "should not be allowed to") act out a hedonistic life style that jeopardizes the general public. Two examples of such renegade behavior from the 1980's comes to mind: airline magnate Frank Lorenzo who manipulated and dismembered several air carriers in order to increase his personal wealth by selling off their hard assets; Canadian realtor Campeau who secured control of merchandising markets and distribution nets, with the same personal goal in mind as Lorenzo, and in the process damaged those product distribution infrastructures destroying the companies he had gained control of.
I fervently believe in the free market system. But anarchy at the leadership level is just as disastrous as anarchy in the streets. A single criminal act at the corporate level can bring a nation to its knees. It can devastate more individuals and more families than any single gunman with all the ammunition he could personally carry. The penalties should be meted out accordingly...no matter how "clean" the crime. The murder (in essence) of family structure should be as equally a liable act as the murder (in fact) of a person. The dismemberment of a company, that strips a multitude of people from income and support, or vaporizes a pension plan that people relied upon, is just as heinous a crime as disemboweling a person as they writhe in pain. "No blood, no crime" is an outdated standard. Social involvement carries social responsibilities. More so because the number of reliant persons is greater. "Parental" concepts maturing to the social arena.
The preeminent requirement is maintenance of balanced energy exchange ... for any and all participating sub- or interdependent systems. When the British Empire, the Dutch, and other European economic powers of the 1700's and 1800's wanted tea and other spices from China, which only accepted hard currency gold and silver for its products, the relatively asset poor European countries pushed narcotics and drugs into China. And, made them pay in kind with gold and silver (!) which they had in some abundance. The Europeans then used the Chinese' own precious metals to buy the desired tea and spices.
To the Europeans, it was an eminently satisfactory arrangement. Everybody seemed to be getting what they "wanted". In point of fact, there were other adjacent powerful dynamics at work. First, in the most obvious affect, the 5000 year old Chinese society was being mortally disrupted and individual person's lives were being thrown into the garbage. Political and economic self-determining power was being wrested from the Chinese themselves. The power of their economic body was being literally drained away from internal maintenance ffunctions. Monetarily crucial gold and silver was being side shifted to maintain the Opium-Spice trade instead.
It's no wonder then, seen in the broader context of centuries and the Integrity of nation-states, that the Opium War and the Boxer Rebellion took place, that a nation reached for hope in the form of an idea called Communism under the leadership of Mao Tzedong, in order to regain control of itself. I make this statement, not in support of a communist market system or social order. Rather as an analytical observation of how several levels of ffunctional living organisms responsively behave in order to survive. Control, security, stability, dynamic Integrity.
My anxious concern is that a similar situation is occurring in our transition years from the 20th to the 21st century. The worldwide illicit narcotics trade is bleeding the life energies out of several once-vigorous societies...in addition to the abominable affects it is having on individuals. Monetary quantum/resources are being literally drained out of main stream economic cycles/sequences....the drugs themselves are creating a dysffunctional subculture that the main-stream economy must fund to support or regulatorially/penally control. Those who were not close to the main-stream economy when the drug-trade process took force...due to past social inequities ...became even more isolated. And old factionalisms became amplified... further stressing the general society. Several "Integrities" competing for survival...based on mutual interest in the life sustaining effects of a diminishing energy (read: financial) pool, and any subsequent benefits that can be gained by wealth and time in pursuing the gratifications of life.
In the general process, if current and future Integrity driven stability states are perceived and projected as being "handle-able", and the economic gradient flow isn't driven to exceed what an economic interplay can handle, the severally integrated process of economies will continue to ffunction well. Remembering, that there is an on going simultaneous maintenance of nested and co-operative Integrity systems....including such diverse aspects as work-force, personal health and welfare, material resources, data and materials transport, information coordination that links events and behaviors, rejuvenation cycles, infrastructure maintenance and repair, catastrophic event responses, death (loss) and replacement, conceptual motivation and creativity, waste and refuse processing and recycling, etc.
In "primal constructive systems" (atomic particles and molecules), priority is given to the quantum values of the stable Integrity states plateaus. As the level of complexity increases (in much the same way as massed quantum states of gas molecules transcribes to "temperature" and "pressure" measurements in large collective systems), each individual's distinct plateau state becomes less crucial than the derivative-ffunction of "rate-flow" of energy/information through the conjoined interdependent grouping.
What transpires is a continually ongoing energetics of several nested continuum levels. Each ffunctions in regard to the identical universal "rules-guides-relationships" as all the other levels. There are even "effective overlaps" of action and behavior...even as each continues in its amoebic-bound Integrity maintaining activities.
When I refer to the extensive interaffects of many different levels of existence - each having its own focus and entropy gradients - yet whose dynamics can convey information to the other nested and interactive levels, I mean to convey a sense of holistic synergetic interactions. Interactions that should be taken into account when any behavior is analyzed.
A recent event symbolizes this very well. The Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra brought over a well known European conductor to take over the orchestral helm. After playing in the existing hall, he agreed to take the job on one condition: that a totally new facility be built!.
It seems that in previous years the wood floor of the hall had been replaced with concrete. The halls owners had encountered revenue falloffs, and in an attempt to generate more monies to keep the facility open, installed concrete flooring to handle other events. This destroyed the acoustics. The change had been a reasonable one from the standpoint of wanting to create revenues to keep the building self sufficient. But not a technique in the best interests of maintaining the Integrity requirement of a philharmonic facility. The re-structuring had generated jobs. It had opened up the facility for a wider range of activities. It's just that the music suffered. Music that for generations had been composed based on the tonality of instruments and music halls built of pre-20th century materials. And that was the building's purpose in the first place: music.
Music could still be played there, but it would no longer be up to the expectations of the composers, the players, or the listeners. Who could have envisioned that a music hall construction contract, which cash flow benefitted the community, would result in the silencing there of the music ... one of the principle symbols of humanity ... our creativity and expressiveness. (Obviously, no one took the time to consider that concrete lacks "timbre"!)
Depending on the information set being considered, all benefits or deficiencies per a given Integrity domain, are relative. The entropy gradients are different, and, interaffective. What benefits one set of requirements may co-improve others, yet co-diminish still others.
To remain naive to this effect, is to throw away all the intellectual qualities we hold most dear. No one can perfectly perceive everything. But to ignore information and integrated goal priorities is foolish, and sometimes downright reckless and destructive.
Using the deduced conclusion of a "unified field theory" with its corollary of a singularly uniform labelling of components and energetics which can be applicable to all systems, some particular label must be found and utilized. We must recognize that "information" is the key concept which every kinetic system could be translated to, and maintain the "sense of ffunctioning". Energy transfer is a transfer of information. I am not referring to the serendipitous labels we put on given quantities or measurements. I am speaking of the more fundamental principle that the slightest variant of any infinitesimal amount is an "information bit". This translation into "information" of all components, aspects, forces and continuums, is the path-gateway for linking everything together. There are examples of interchangeable interpretation available. The Soviets, for many decades in the 1930's and 1940's, designed and built electrical power grid networks, using calculations and mathematics based on the dynamics of water flowing through a conduit ... applied to electricity.
Modern information theory is "linguistically" built upon Leibnitzian-Newtonian Calculus which is in itself an information processing "mechanism". This shows us a true example of the perfect uroboric twist - a system defined (or at least, understood) by itself. Other than allowing that the Universe itself is a 'self defining set' (in line with the current Shinn-nu Event cosmology), logicians and mathematicians currently contend that a 'self defining set' is an artifact and does not actually exist. On the contrary, I put forth the premise just stated: self reflexively ... information quantae defines 'information'. The Calculus is an Information ffunction, which is in turn, self-reflexively used to "define" Information. Just like Escher's drawing "Hands".
When Shannon developed his formulas and definitions for "information" in the 1940's, he came into the fray with the bias that "information" is strictly the useful energy quanta that is transferred "via a channel", and that other energy is "noise". He relied upon Calculus to establish priority ratios, staring with the binomial system of 0,1 and built from there. That is he used calculus as a methodology of Statistics, in order to distinguish "usable" from "not-usable" data. After evaluating several different formulations he concluded that Boltzmann's statistical analog of entropy was the most correct, and that there was a general inverse correlation between disorder and information; Shannon built thereon, on measurements as well as assumptions, regarding the components of information transmission systems. Importantly, as closed bounded operating mechanisms...i.e., there was the assumption that information transfer required a conduit, or at minimum, a self-contained carrier, that acted as its own conduit. What my treatise proposes, alternatively, is to throw away that confining bias entirely. To show that space itself, time itself, are the "conduits" of informative construction in which energy/information passes from one place to another, from one moment to another. And that all forms of all ffunctionings and extants in and of the universe can be both conduit and content. Can be the carrier of "information" as well as the place-time-form that is the information.
At this point in our new understanding, we recognize that when we apply the realization that any and all quanta is usable information then even the simplest thing such as a number line continuum, where two numbers along that line can be distinctly different even out to the billionth decimal point. Out to the farthest imaginable "infinitesimal" that is invoked by the Calculus! And therefore, the mathematical "structure and ffunction machine" that is the Calculus, Shannon used in order to "define" information in a more limited though practical sense - according to the systems applications. In 50 years, we have even gone so far as to redefine our planet and our societies because of his imaginative work. That is no small ripple effect!
Energetics flows, with domains loosely (at first) describable by an "external/boundary/internal" configuration, appear applicably appropriate to psyches, atoms, social organizations, continental masses, logic ffunctions, and much more. And, though we are used to distinguishing information as distinct from the channels, locations or carriers through which the energy (nee information) flows, in the world of Reinmann-Lorentzian transformations of frame-of-reference, it is possible to see a given system from several information domain perspectives....each subsuming the data it is appropriate to process. It seems natural to allow an information "channel" in one perspective, to "be" the information of another referential domain. With that in mind, it seems natural to allow, in general, an information channel to be information, and vice versa, and, allowing the range of currently understood physical phenomenon, all space and time can be either or both. Waves can impact as information units in and of themselves. They can also be analyzed for the information they carry vis a vis how the components of the wave forms interact with "solids" or other waves or media, etc. Or, they can be the channel domain that we vary by amplitude and/or frequency (with the source either at rest or with a variable velocity) and we can extract information which is separate from the wave itself.
{As an interesting aside, if we look back at Aristotle, his list of "Causes" are all the necessary components of what today we call an "information network". He would probably be the greatest computer architect if he were alive today...or maybe the best "hacker"! }
I had a brief but interesting conversation over a computer network bulletin board back in February of 1993 with Dr. Frank Drake - who with Carl Sagan and others put together the SETI project, Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence - that dealt with a related issue.
2/18/93 6:47 PM EST
JNR: "Is it possible that extra-galactic travelers or civilizations ... supposing hopefully that there are several ... might have found it prudent to just be cautious in their galactic travels ... just as we have here on Earth ... and that (with no assumed premeditation on their or our parts) they have simply codified their transmissions to blend in with the general electromagnetic spectrum? We on Earth are going to great lengths (1st for reasons of political security, second for reasons of "general" or "corporate" or "financial" security) to establish unbreakable coded transmission systems. I'm only familiar with the essences of these efforts, but it seems that you might be up against a similar scenario. SETI should not only be seeking out the obvious, but also the not-so-obvious. Such as "higher density" nodes along a range of frequencies. (I know I'm talking about something I've had no schooling in ... so please excuse me for sounding foolish). It seems to me that there might be a panorama of communicative techniques that advanced civilizations would employ, that we just haven't integrated yet into ours, but that is a buffer that allows the potential for a "them" to monitor us, better than we could monitor "them"? Just a musing. Which I hope is "amusing".
Jamie
2/19/93 3:15 PM EST
Frank Drake's reply: "You've put your finger on a possibility which worries us. Here on Earth we sometimes transmit radio messages in a form which makes them indistinguishable from radio noise. This is done in some military transmissions, both radar and communication transmissions -- a common form is called "Spread Spectrum" where the transmissions are transmitted on a broad and unpredictable range of frequencies. This is done to keep an enemy from receiving the transmissions. In ordinary digital communications, there is a well known theorem that if a signal is coded so that it transmits the maximum possible amount of information, it is indistinguishable from noise unless you know the coding system. The signal will still be confined to a narrow band of frequencies, so would still be detectable as a signal, but it would look like noise, which would puzzle us. Extraterrestrial transmissions of either of these kinds will be very difficult for us to detect, and will make a real problem. We hope there is not much of this, and that there will be ET signals which are not in these forms, but in the forms which our systems can readily detect. It is a worry."
Frank Drake
Information is the key event or phenomenon to understand about the universe. Because, regardless of what else things may be they are first and foremost "information".
We tag and label many different levels and distinguishable factors of data as "information". Thus, the information a system has is not limited just to the usable data we find applicable for a given focus of observation. It is so much more. Even so, we can analyze each bounded study region with uniform ways of ffunctioning consistent with the topics we might wish to concentrate on. We can do that, and, we can do more.
Having described everything as "information" we want to connect them "in situ" as such with specific dynamic behavioral ffunctioning processes. This will be the crucial pivotal paradigm shift that coordinates everything we are trying to understand: we invariably observe that what is entropic for one domain is negentropic for another and that there is a connectivity of interaction between what was previously seen as disparate "levels". Dynamic systems of all sorts take on the qualitative characteristics of an electron cloud. A loose yet definite Integral system with boundedness in a matrix. For example, atoms could be seen as so independently individual - with electron shells operationally focused only to the nucleus - and electrons that would on the face of magnetic polarities be repellent of each other - that to bind separate atoms would require an outside negentropic force to "coerce" the atoms into proximity with each other, with any degree of stability. But. If we consider just the electrons, we could describe what happens as the electron cloud dispersing in a most natural entropic way. First, the statistical region of being for a given outer-shell electron is expanded consistent with entropic activity when atoms combine. Second, angular momentum stresses are reduced for those shell electrons in the region between the specified atoms. The stress-gradient partial derivative component, called "angular momentum", alters to comparatively more stable states. Third, electron waves mutually reinforce "in-phase" stability functions, reminiscent of lasers. Result: the atoms consolidate negentropically!
All the rules of Schroedinger wave functions, Pauli exclusion
principle, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Dirac etc. are retained, intact, but they are
organized and coordinated under the schema of Kinetic Stability. Each discernable level of
ffunctioning - whether quark interactions , plate tectonics, commercial trade,
biological homeostasis, or galactic clustering -
ffunctions in regard to its "stability maintaining" Integrity ffunction
(motivation). The dynamic balance of forces.
Every level of existence is a "dynamic", that is open to
encountering information/energy, both "from" the environment, omnidirectionally
across its "boundary", in and around its internal region, for maintenance of
its integral form and
ffunctioning. Again, this cognition will lead us into new
definitions for these concepts, that will require the subtle re-structuring of
Mathematics. Particularly regarding what we mean by "dimensions". And especially
what this means vis a vis "information".
But, it is with these formative conceptual steps, that a workable image begins to form. Entropy is more than an interesting measure of order or chaos. It is a dynamic and active /function (I am loath to use the overworked word "force"). It is another active dynamic in the interactions of energy and masses. Kinetic stability (inertia, pressure equalization in a closed systems, electrolyte balance, fluid gradients, international balance of power, social organizations in general, psychological peace-of-mind, etc) is a continual presence of entropic processing of energy and information, that allows a wide range of activities, yet reinforces the existence of a "system". It has a specifiable range of activity for various systems, but, again, by this very fundamental relationship, entropic activity at a given "level" can account for negentropic activity at the next higher level of organization.
To understand why information/energy gathering/absorption behavior exists at higher levels, such as human consciousness, something that seems to require a prior consciousness or volition, we can make the interpretation that "consciousness" is also an entropy activity. The more information we have, the better able we are at responding to future interactions. We "kineticly stabilize" our existence by assuring a future response that will have a positive and beneficial preservative result. It might seem like a conceptual "stretch", but mathematically it works. It is consistent with our understanding of behaviors of living systems. It smoothly connects with the parameters that drive evolution, eco-niches, environmental stresses, and the ability of organisms to cope. Sometimes an individual organism can respond successfully. Sometimes it can't, but its species can. Survival by adaptation. Mitigated by trial and error, of course. Evolution only has the appearance of linear causality. We need to remember that we only have the success stories to gauge it by. Living systems attempt many adaptive strategies, operating at different time scales. Some work, some don't, some will work - given an adjustment in the environmental conditions. It is all an active interplay, an orchestration, a Gaia.
The qualities of this Gaia is just what so many researchers are spending their time and efforts looking for - to give humans a leg up on "control" - to help improve and stabilize the lives of the members of our species - give us as individuals and as socio-economic units - better Integrity.
The mathematical models are beginning to blend with real world experience. But only in unclear ways. The language of Chaos math is exposing a few of those ways, and most researchers have jumped on its bandwagon because of some significant successes. But, as seen in the light of the Integrity Paradigm , their enthusiasm is a little premature and they are getting in over their heads. They are being blinded by the language and grammar of math and computer graphics without appreciating the essences of what those "words" mean.
In September of 1993, I happened to watch a Learning Channel/Discovery Channel TV program which dealt with Chaos Theory and anti-chaos Complexity.
There were several ideas and situations presented in this overview program on chaos/anti-chaos theories which I found disturbing. One dealt with ideas presented by Dr. Stuart Kauffman of the Sante Fe Institute and of the University of Pennsylvania. I had previously started reading Kauffman's book "Origins Of Order" back in May of 1993 and was already pursuing my own evaluation of his work from the perspective of the Integrity Paradigm. I had been analyzing his strongly academic written presentation, so that when the show aired I was fascinated in hearing first hand how he would discuss and phrase his ideas in summary-presentation for a general audience.
Per Kauffman's book presentation, his cumulative data is quite impressive, as it builds on the theoretical work done by Manfred Eigen, and attempts to formulate a strong mathematical model for genetic behavior (drift and evolution dynamics). Basically, they assigned stable molecular nodes with Cartesian coordinates (to numerically model econiches and genetic configurations ... those indistinctly bounded biological stability locations) and then attempted to formulate a mathematics which would analog and act the same as what is observed in the real world.
This is an interesting technique and has a degree of merit. Unfortunately, it's my opinion that it has led them blithely into an erroneous conclusion, that being : "Autocatalytic sets" as a present and dominating function. These proposed biochemical "sets" are supposed to have the same qualities as mathematical chaotic-attractors. {A chaotic attractor is a localizable area (or behavior focus) around which special randomizable mathematical functions seem to organize themselves. The mathematical relationships don't reduce to any specific values, yet continue to hover around these regions in consistent but subtly reshaping forms. Bio-complexity is assumed to be similar and to exhibit such process nodes. Autocatalytic sets are envisioned as being real world expressions of this mathematical process.} The principle dynamic they are trying to evaluate is the process by which complex systems arise so naturally and pervasively when thermodynamic laws do not allow for or expect such events. What the processes or rules might be that drive atoms and molecules over the entropy threshold in displays of such strongly organized negentropic activity.
Because catalysis is a reasonable and viable chemical process found in many metabolic reactions, autocatalysis appeared to these researchers to be a reasonable way to get over that wall of thermodynamic entropy. They have apparently found some correspondences that indicate Boolean order vis a vis genetic coding and sequence drift. There is also some relevance with protein production. However, as Kauffman is quick to point out over and over again throughout his text exposition, his models have numerous failings and don't fit in many situations. He continually defers to the need for more investigation to clarify these deficiencies. Nonetheless, he continues to express with confidence the over all validity of the "autocatalytic" paradigm.
Interjection (11/93)}: As I continue to polish this document, I review my several decades accumulation of useful and pertinent references. It seems that back in the 1960's work was done in this exact same area. Apparently it received little notoriety because it preceded Fractal Math and Chaos Theory by several decades, and was not even referenced in "Origins of Order". I'm sure this was an oversight rather than intentional omission. H.H.Pattee, Stanford Biophysics Professor, published in 1964 Recognition of Hereditary Order in Primitive Chemical Systems, 8th Ann.Biophys.Soc.Meeting (Chicago, 1964) :
"The new approach to origin of life experiments which I am proposing, is directed at the simplest possible level of hereditary propagation in macromolecules which may arise after a stage of spontaneous chemical evolution, but well before self-replicative biological evolution, which progresses by natural selection. This intermediate level of organization I would call the stage of molecular automata, or to paraphrase Charles Babbage, the stage where polymers begin to "feed on their own tails."
This is exactly identical with "autocatalytic sets", thirty years before becoming institutionally popular, to explain dynamically stable metabolic plateaus that build complexity in opposition to perceived "general entropy".}{retracement:
Throughout Kauffman's book his negatively-expressed asides and cautious disclaimers about the validity of his ideas troubled me as I read him, but I couldn't focus my thoughts to pinpoint exactly what was wrong. While watching the TV presentation though - his vernacular, demeanor and the visual graphics - it came to me. While I don't debate the theoretical correctness of applying catalytic functions to some biochemical processes, his model would require some degree of autocatalysis at nearly every biochemical threshold, which intuitively seems an extraordinary requirement. But, more important, when we evaluate what "autocatalysis" is ... focussing on it strictly as a process of thermodynamic exchange... it begins to resemble a Carnot Engine! ...a "perpetual motion machine(!)".
The Kauffman model becomes a "perpetual motion machine" reduced to the level of bio-chemical activity! A perpetually functioning looped sequence. In chapter 7 of his book, under the heading, Main Idea, Kauffman states: "We reach a new and fundamental conclusion: For any fixed probability of catalysis P, autocatalytic sets must become possible at some fixed complexity level of numbers of kinds of polymers. The achievement of the catalytic closure required for self-reproduction is an emergent collective property in any sufficiently complex set of catalytic polymers."
Albeit that continual solar infusion of energy into earth's chemical soup can always be championed as the obvious source of externally derived energy ... so that the autocatalysis is a local event loop still driven by larger energy flows, the fact remains that dynamically, we are still required to recognize some self referencing quality that keeps the bio-chemical reactions looped in consistently regenerating cycles.
The interpretation of that previous statement is that Kauffman et al., are saying that autocatalytic biochemistry establishes the environment and the force to arise complexity. Yet, they fall back on a tautological dynamic ... that "complexity" of some sort is a pre-requisite for autocatalysis(!). Is "complexity" a result, or is it a criteria? I am assuming that this is a very reasonable state of affairs for those researchers, as this is exactly the "quality" of the process and the argument proposition. I.e., why choose which came first, the chicken or the egg; just express that each "causes" the other, and let it go at that.
I find this unsettling and unsatisfactory.
I made margin notes as I read his text. This one is dated 6.16.93: "He does not deal with the prime reality of electro-magnetic functionings for all extants on this level of behaviors. The interconnected Integrity activities are a function of the EM field strengths and domains for each molecular configuration. Conformal spatiality is a "symptom" (a result) of electron shelling variances. It is the differences in the comparative shells which "define" energetics pathways. As I said back in the late 1960's and early 1970's...it is these values which must be determined and mapped, in order to make sense of the patterns at work ... not just gene mapping. The protein paths are built on interactions of EM quantum states." Not just their value differences, but the gradients generated by those values.
First, I should clarify that I do not conclude from this seeming paradox that all of their work is worthless or wrong. Quite the contrary. I just feel that they have yet to establish an overall encompassing paradigm that would embrace the activities they are looking at. My Integrity Paradigm, however, can be appropriately applied as the more general dynamic, which can locally account for what is perceived as "autocatalysis" , but is something quite different.
In support of this I ask you to recall my reasonings re the Universe as a holistic information-process. I examined the quality, states and dynamics of information transference, and proposed that "dimensions" are a progression of Nested Cantorian Infinities, each being in exponential relation to other infinities, relationally bounded above and below. They correspond with each other per Euler complex-number relations. That is, they are transcriptions of additive-operations linked with multiplicative functions, depending on whether expression is along a domain number-line or along its exponent. In this regard, Logic and function relationships become Boolean.
This and the Integrity Paradigm in general were deductions already drawn during my own attempt to coordinate the behavioral diversity of even broader ranges of energetics phenomenon. I champion using known simple dynamics... in particular a subtle variant of Entropy ... in order to recognize a pan-general source for negentropic phenomena. It is the simpler and better paradigm. It can embrace such programs as Kauffman's concepts and Etzioni's inter-social dynamics, whereas neither of those, for example, can find mutual correspondences in the other, even though "correspondence" is the fundamental criteria for a Unified Theory of Everything that would mesh chaos with anti-chaos, simplicity with complexity, entropy with negentropy, physics with biology, and biology with sociology, etc.
Here is an example of something predicted by the Integrity Paradigm, that shows up in Kauffman's work. To wit, Kauffman expresses in chapter 7:
"Stringent Criterion for Autocatalytic Set Using Exchange Plus Cleavage and Ligation Reactions, Such that Almost All 2M+1 Members of the Set Have a Last Step in Their Formation Catalyzed by at Least One Other Member of the Set
"BarP" is designated as the a priori probability of catalysis of any specific reaction.
M+2 M+1
barP approx equals = e -P(M-1)(1+2
) (2
) = 1/e 8 < 0.001"
(value table 7.2 is then presented).
As you can see, Kauffman/Eigen express the dynamics in a standard mathematical form that would otherwise be known as "superpowers" or "super-exponents" as they mathematically describe the observed behavior patterns relevant to polymer ligation and cleavage. Please note that the mathematics categorizes alternating positive and negative "values" in the alternating exponential domains. A relationship predicted by the Integrity Paradigm as indicative of alternating entropies for nested Cantorian domains. Ergo, "autocatalytic sets" - as possible biochemical processes - are "attractor functions", subject to energy/exchange behaviors enunciated under Integrity domains. A coordination of oppositely directed entropy gradients. "Autocatalysis" is most probably an artifact or qualitative-describer of metabolic loops, rather than a singularly-actual function.
Another factor is that homeostatic balanced systems hover on both sides of some pivotal "attractor" type state, not just stability nodes in the separated regions, and therefore give the appearance of autocatalysis because of the closely defined reaction/back-reaction matrix. An interesting example exists in our biosphere. From a Discovery channel program about the elements: the current Oxygen level in the atmosphere is 21%. The program indicated that at 17% <21-4%> life aerobic life cannot function. At 25% <21+4%> organic tissue is practically flammable. 21% is the perfect median (Integrity transition value) that straddles oxidation /reduction conditions equally ... an Integrity value maximum that allows the balanced latitude of behavior.
A comparison vis a vis another topic dealt with in the TV broadcast would be enlightening.
[end Part 09] 2025 Copyrights ceptualinstitute.com