In our science and celebrity-worshipping society, we allow ourselves
to be collectively mesmerized by ‘order’, ‘perfection’ and ‘beauty’.
In mathematics (non-transfigural), we ‘get off’ on ‘symmetry’, the
symmetry of things with ‘local being’ such as geometric figures and
objects.  Symmetry can be defined as ‘invariance against change’.
Symmetry provides the basis for generalising the IDENTITY of a
‘locally existing object’.

In Charles Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’, Sissy Jupe, who loves horses, is
asked by her teacher, Thomson Gradgrind, who refers to her as ‘girl
number twenty’, ‘what is a horse?’.  Thomas Gradgrind epitomizes
‘formalization’, this quest to generalise all particularity out of a
local material structure by capturing the essential ‘symmetries’ which
carry over from one instance of an object to another, in the manner
that the generalisable aspect of an electron carries over to every
other electron in the cosmos, making the universal laws of physics
possible.

In the century and a half  since Dickens wrote ‘Hard Times’ (in 1854;
i.e. followed five years later by Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’),
it seems as if the characteristics, which Dickens warned about by way
of his characterisation of Thomas Gradgrind, have proliferated to the
point of becoming the norm, and no longer ‘stand out’.  That is,
Dickens lived in a period of transition between the ‘Romantic Era’ and
today’s modern ‘Scientific Era’.   Today, Dicken’s caricature of
Gradgrind may elicit the response; ‘What’s Dickens going on about with
this Gradgrind thing?’;

“THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of fact and
calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two
are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing
for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir- peremptorily Thomas- Thomas
Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication
table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel
of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere
question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to
get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind,
or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all
suppositious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas
Gradgrind- no, sir! “

That is, Dicken’s character ‘Gradgrind’ exemplies the slide down the
slippery slope towards the’reign of generalisation’ which has, in many
ways, become a ‘reign of terror’.

What is a horse?   The heart of the exchange, ... or should I say the
‘heartlessness’ of the exchange between Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe
follows.  When Sissy falters in her response, Gradgrind redirects the
question to a student he knows he can ‘count on’ for the ‘correct
answer’;

'Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!' said Mr Gradgrind, for
the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 'Girl number twenty
possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of
animals! Some
boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.'

'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.'
'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders,
four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in
marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be
shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more)
Bitzer.

'Now girl number twenty,' said Mr Gradgrind. 'You know what a horse
is.'

 * * *

An ‘overdone’ caricature, perhaps, but the point is well made, all the
same, and that is that ‘a certain something’ is being ‘left out’ of
such a ‘manner of understanding’.

WHAT IS BEING LEFT OUT?

This question would appear to be one that has relevance to all of
science as it is popularly applied since without symmetry-based
generalisation, every unfolding observation/experience would be
‘particular’ and we would be unable to use our prior observations/
experiences to give us a ‘heads-up’ on what we were about to discover
in the newly unfolding situation.

If we, in our ‘minds eye’, take that horse and ask ourselves what a
horse is, we can see it galloping swiftly and gracefully over the
hills, its mane flowing  elegantly in the wind.  We see it joined by
others, including foals, and we get the sense of ‘loving
togetherness’.  When they stop to graze on a rich selection of wild
grasses, we get the sense that these creatures fit very harmoniously
into the ceaselessly unfolding innovation of nature; i.e. they are
‘included’ in the dynamical space of nature in a very harmonious way.

How do we get from ‘symmetry-based generalisation’ to such
understandings as ‘the harmonious fit’ of an animal relative to the
‘dynamical space of nature’ that it ‘lives in’?.  Does the
reproductive cycle of a human female (e.g. her ‘moon days’) have
anything to do with the dynamics of the space she is included in?
Should we say that ‘this is a coincidence’?   Isn’t that the same sort
of response that came from the supporters of the Ptolemaic earth-
centric world view, to Galileo’s observation in support of a sun-
centred world view, that all of the planets out there, for some
reason, had 365 ¼ day cyclicities in THEIR movement?

In the same vein, when we ask clam-diggers why they all flock out
there on the inter-tidal mudflats to dig clams AT THE SAME TIME, they
find no problem in explaining this highly spatially-coherent flow of
people out onto the beach with the ebb-tide and their retreat with the
flood-tide, which appears almost like ‘part of the tidal cycle’, in
the standard terms of generalisation; ‘I am a local, independently
existing organism with locally originating behaviour that is
internally purpose-driven and intelligence-directed, and what you see
me doing derives from my own free-will, from my capacities as local
independent being to sense, interpret, choose, decide and act’.

But, one may say, ... like an adult female who has her ‘moon days’,
you and many others have your ‘clam days’ and it seems as if there is
some sort of inductive shaping of your behaviour that derives from the
dynamics of space, the dynamics of nature.

Here, we can put on the table for consideration as being ‘more than
nothing’, the notion of space-induced spatial-coherency or ‘flow’.
There is no way that we can ‘get to’ the sort of spatial coherency we
see in the efflux and influx of the clam-digger collective by
positivist-determinist theory that constrains itself to ‘local,
independently-existing objects’ and THEIR actions and interactions.
Not UNLESS we simply ‘shut off the debate’ and insist that the
explanation of the clam-digger, that he, as an independently existing
being with his own onboard power and steerage (a ‘powerboater’ view of
self) chose to do it, and that’s that, ... and if others chose to do
at the same time, that is just the sort of ‘coincidence’ we have to
accept and the reason for it is that ‘wise minds think alike’.  Since
we don’t really know what a ‘mind’ is, this is ‘scientific
obscurantism’.
Here, we are closing in on the crux (one major reason, at least) of
why ‘inclusionality’ clashes with the popular views in our ‘gradgrind-
dominated’ scientific culture.   That is, when we are talking
‘science’, few people are willing to let go, even to suspend for a
moment their grad-grindian generalisation based scientific beliefs to
simply consider the possibility of there being useful ‘meaning’ in the
idea that the dynamics of the space we share inclusion in, may, in
some way, inductively actualize and shape the behavioural potentials
within itself..

Conventional science, the mainstay of our scientific-thinking culture,
is based on positivist ‘symmetry’ that allows us to generalise
UNIVERSALLY.

It’s true that Ernst Mach proposed that ‘space conditions matter at
the same time as matter conditions space’ and that both Poincare and
Einstein supported and affirmed Mach’s proposition, and it is true, as
well, the principle that explains ‘inertial guidance’ (matter is an
inertial element in the inertial field and participates in
constituting the field, thus when matter is accelerated the inertial
‘sensing’ implies a conditioning of the matter at the same time as the
conditioning of the space [inertial field] it is included in).  In
physics, there are principles such as this one of Mach’s and such as
‘conservation of  energy’ that we have never seen violated (and which
are foundational to bringing Maxwell’s equations into mutual
reconciliation) but which are alien to ‘positivist generalisation’.
That is, Mach’s principle, leads to ‘complexity’ as in the ‘three body
problem’ wherein, when three or more bodies move under one another’s
simultaneous mutual influence, we can no longer solve for the
contribution to the dynamic, attributable to a particular body.   This
‘boggles the rational thinking mind’.  As Newton put it;

“An exact solution for three bodies, if I am not mistaken, exceeds the
force of any human mind.”

What ‘inclusionality’ brings out is that ‘what is left over after
symmetry-based generalisation’ is NOT ‘nothing’ or ‘chaos’ or
‘disorder’, ... far from it, ... it is the warm natural mother of
cold, abstract symmetry.

Take the symmetry of a hurricane for example.   Yesterday, hurricane
Bertha became the longest-lived tropical storm in the history of
tracking storms.   How did Bertha ‘hold on to herself and keep herself
together for so ...

read more »

When we are caught in a storm at sea, we quickly have to let go of the
‘proud’ ‘powerboating’ notion that we determine our own destinations,
that we are ‘local, independently-existing organism with local purpose-
driven and directed behaviours whereby we formulate plans, goals and
objects and deterministically achieve them.   The power of the storm
humbles us and we accept that we are instead ‘sailboaters’ and that
our power and steerage derives from nature so that we then put our
movements/behaviours in the service of sustaining dynamical balance
and harmony with the unpredictably unfolding flow that we are included
in.

As discussed in the initial post, the ‘powerboater’ option comes from
symmetry-seeking mathematics (that aspect of things that is invariant
in changing situational context) that purges from the experiential
data, spatial-situational particularity, and ‘re-renders’ dynamics in
terms of symmetrical material bodies (human organisms that, like
electrons, are the same anywhere/everywhere in the cosmos) so that the
drive and direction of the behaviours of these organisms seems to
derive from LOCAL internal and/or external forces.  For example, the
hurricane is a dynamical form that is ‘sailboating’ in the dynamical
space of the atmosphere (derives its power and steerage from the
dynamical space it is included in).  However, with the application of
symmetry-seeking mathematics (spatial-situational-context purging
mathematics), we can re-render the hurricane in powerboater fashion,
wherein its power and steerage appears to derive from ‘onboard
processes’ (local descending and rising air currents, local spiralling
circulation etc.).

Clearly, the ‘powerboating’ model of the hurricane is a generalization
based on symmetry-seeking mathematics that extracts out that which is
‘invariant to situational context’ in order to ‘generalise’ ‘what a
hurricane is’, so that whatever particular spatial-situational context
unfolds that brings with it the familiar dynamical form that we call a
‘hurricane’, we can extract from it, a common, universal, invariant-to-
spatial-situational context, understanding of ‘what a hurricane is’.
This ‘powerboating’ view then ‘takes over’ and HIDES the ‘sailboating’
reality.  But if our atmosphere-at-large, in which the hurricane is
included, became ‘very turbulent’, we would have to concede and go
back to acknowledging that the spatial-situation context ‘rules’ over
the dynamical forms included within it; i.e. we would have to concede
that the hurricane derives its power and steerage from the dynamical
space of the atmosphere that it is included in.  After all, our
application of symmetry-seeking mathematics to the hurricane, to
capture its behaviour LOCALLY (even though it cannot realistically be
reduced to a local system), is the very act of stripping out the
spatial-situational particularity, and re-constituting the hurricane
in terms of those of its aspects that are invariant to changing
spatial-situational context.

Before we stripped out the spatial-situational particularity (before
we converted the dynamical form from a sailboating to a powerboating
archetype) we had the situation where the dynamical form was, at the
same time ‘inclusor’ and ‘inclusee’.  This ‘inclusional’ relationship
is also the case, for example, where the movements of  iron filings
(which contribute to the magnetic field they are included in) are
shaped by the magnetic field they are included in, at the same time as
they are co-shaping the field.   Far from being ‘outside of science’,
this simultaneous ‘inclusor’ – ‘inclusee’ situation is captured in
Mach’s Principle (‘dynamical matter conditions the dynamics of space
at the same time as the dynamics of space are conditioning the
dynamics of matter’).  Mach’s Principle was affirmed by both Poincare
and Einstein even though, like the principle of conservation of
energy, it is not in itself ‘mathematically formulable’.  This
simultaneous ‘inclusor –inclusee’ geometry can be seen in the
following conceptual model given by Einstein and Infeld in ‘The
Evolution of Physics’;

"What impresses our senses as matter is really a great concentration
of energy into a comparatively small space. We could regard matter as
the regions in space where the field is extremely strong. . . . A
thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the
states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the
velocity of the stone."

It follows, in this simultaneous ‘inclusee’ – ‘inclusor’ undestanding
of space and matter,  that if a material body is a convection cell in
the energy flow (or a nested convection cell complex), that the notion
of the ‘wall’ of a material body such as a cell-wall can instead be
understood in the same terms as the ‘eye wall’ of a hurricane.

It is not that hard to see that the reason for this (essentially three-
body-problem relation) being ‘hard to grasp’ (as Newton said, “it
exceeds the force, if I am not mistaken, of any human mind’) is
because we have for so long taken-for-granted our ‘absolutizing’ (by
way of symmetry-seeking language and definition) the dynamical form
that moves about within the dynamical (transforming) space by way of
OUR unilateral (nature didn’t have say) ‘declaration of
independence’.  Once we endow the dynamical form (hurricane or iron
filing or electron or etc.) with ‘local independent being’, then we
are forced to make up still more ‘lies’ and further endow the ‘local
being’ with local internal drive and direction.  By the time we have
finished making up our self-consistent system of ‘lies’, we have
deprived the dynamical space of its primary role in the dynamics
business and farmed this role out to ‘local independent objects/
systems/organisms’.  It is impossible, while ‘holding onto this
illusion of local independently-existing objects with local internally
and/or externally driven and directed behaviours’, to, at the same
time, get back to an understanding where ‘inclusor’ and ‘inclusee’ are
‘the same dynamical medium’, as we acknowledge is the case with
‘hurricane’ and ‘atmosphere’ and which has been proposed, within
science, as the general case in the dynamics of nature.

But this ceaselessly unfolding innovation in nature, if it is general,
is not only observed/experienced in a stormy ocean.  If we mentally
change venues for a moment, and come in from the storm, where we are
now included in another kind of continually unfolding spatial-
relational situation, that of the flow of traffic in the space of a
busy freeway, we still have both the ‘sailboater’ (harmony-sustaining
voyage oriented) and ‘powerboater’ (internal purpose driven planned
destination oriented) behaviours available to us.

As ‘power-boaters’ [social Darwinists], will we get the same sort of
‘wake-up call’ when things get stormy, swallow our pride, and
acknowledge that we are ‘sailboaters’ who derive power and steerage
from the dynamics of the space they are included in?

Let’s reflect on what’s going on here.

Whether we are in the flow of a stormy ocean or the flow of traffic in
the space of a busy freeway, we do have a sense of being included in a
continually innovating dynamic, and we are capable of letting our
behaviour serve the sustaining of dynamical balance and harmonious
flow.  For sure, when we do this as a group, we co-form the flow
(dynamical spatial relationships) we are included in at the same time
as we are letting our behaviours be influenced by it; i.e. we are, at
the same time, ‘inclusor’ and ‘inclusee’ and exemplars of Mach’s
Principle.

Why would we want to ‘take the bit in our teeth’ and behave as if we
believed that we were ‘local, independently-existing organisms with
local internally and/or externally driven and directed behaviour?
As we know from our experience on the busy freeway, when one person
starts doing this, we get angry and ‘competition’ is likely to ensue.
Of course, this is a game that the most vulnerable are going to lose.
A motorcyclist is not going to have a chance to ‘win’ if he challenges
a semi-trailer.  So, the motorcyclist (the most vulnerable in society)
is going to get the ‘wake-up call’ and swallow his pride and concede
that his behaviour derives from putting his movements in the service
of sustaining dynamical balance and harmonious flow.

Life is like that, in our westernized society.   We encourage
competition as if the playing field were level (as if everyone ‘were
equal’ in the manner that our symmetry-seeking mathematics holds that
all electrons in the cosmos are equal).  Meanwhile, everybody knows
that the little vulnerable guy, who might nominally have the ethic of
putting his movements into sustaining dynamical balance and harmonious
flow, is going to get hurt in a competition with the big powerful
guy.  That is, who will it be that can hold on longest, to the
mathematical symmetry based notion that one’s self is a local
independent being with internally driven and directed behaviour in
accordance with one’s purpose, plans, goals and objectives,
powerboating one’s way through an environment that is either ‘with
you’ (opens up to your purpose and can be exploited as a resource) or
‘against you’ (closes down to your purpose and is a hindrance that
must be vanquished)?

Clearly, within social flow, those who acquire the most power and are
the least vulnerable can cling longest to the powerboating illusion.
Unlike the monster winds and waves in the stormy ocean that humble the
powerboating psyche and have him give the helm over to his ...

read more »

second postscript:

Some might argue that everything I have said in the initial post and
in the (first) postscript can be explained using our standard
‘rational’ inquiry/modeling.   That is, this postscript ‘anticipates’
what might trouble a reader so that he/she will not bother to engage.

I would say that everything I have said in the initial post and in the
(first) postscript can be REDUCED to explanation using our standard
‘rational’ inquiry/modeling.

This reduction, meanwhile, strips us of our appreciation of how ‘the
harmonies innate in the world’ can organise our individual and
collective behaviour.  Our western (unnatural) assumption is that we
must organise ourselves ‘rationally’ (e.g. by hierarchical control
according to the adage if are not planning your own life, someone else
will be planning it for you) and that nature organises itself
‘rationally’ (Darwinism).

Quantum theory suggests that the world has a wave-particle
duality, ... that matter itself is ‘resonance’, relative inner-outer
wave dynamics.  What this second postscript is about is to show ‘what
we lose’ in our understanding of ‘organisation’ when we shift our
understanding of dynamics from the wave-dynamical to the particle
(local object) dynamics based understanding.

Consider the following example of Mach’s Principle.  You are one of
several people on air mattresses in a swimming pool.   You are playing
around and ‘making waves’.  Everyone notices that the pool water has a
certain ‘wave resonance’ and it quickly coordinates the wave-making
actions of everyone in the pool, regardless of where they are
standing, so that they continually reinforce this ‘natural resonance’
by pushing down on their air-mattresses IN PHASE with the wave action;
i.e. they push down on their air mattress just as the crest phase is
over to add momentum/energy to the development of the trough.  This
‘resonance’ that is innate in nature thus coordinates their behaviour,
in the same manner as the geese, by stirring the air with the flapping
of their wings, excite natural resonance that is neither just in the
fluid-dynamic nor just in their dynamics but in both at the same time;
i.e. they condition the fluid-dynamic at the same time as it
conditions their dynamics, and the result is the familiar ‘V’ flying
formation (they feel the ‘sweet spots’ in the slipstream wherein they
can fly faster for significantly less expenditure of energy).

Yes, we can explain this AFTER THE FACT in the rational (particle or
local object dynamics) model in which we say that each goose, being an
independent, locally existing organism or centrally controlled system,
is gifted with intelligence and has the ability to sense and adapt as
with the rational systems model wherein ‘control systems’ adapt and
optimize their performance by way of ‘feedback loops’.  These loops
involve some ‘objective function’ or purpose wherein the organism acts
so as to optimize the objective function, senses the result, compares
it to the objective, adjusts its behaviour so as to get closer to the
desired result, and continues in this behaviour-adapting feedback
mode.

This is all very fine, but in order to explain the coordination of a
group of such systems, one has to assume that the all have same
objective function, and their spatial-situational context doesn’t
matter (i.e. the mathematics in rational modeling seeks symmetry that
is invariant to spatial-situational particularity.   Meanwhile the
coordination of the swimmers playing with air mattresses and the geese
were able to deal with spatial-situational particularity, so the
retort by ‘the rationalist’ in explaining the coordination, that
‘great minds think alike’ (our minds are inhabited by the same purpose
or objective function) falls innately short its attempt to explain how
the coordinated organisation is brought about.

.Another example, which is more subtle because we typically
‘automatically’ reduce it to the rational (particle, or local object
dynamics) model is the resonance that comes about between ‘seed’ and
‘climate’.   It has been observed that the seeds of tasty plants get
into some kind of resonance with the annual cycle of thermal waves and
develop into plants in the may to august phase of the annual cycle.
Like the swimmers with the air mattresses, this has induced
coordination in people who play in the dirt, and sets them all in
motion in phase with the thermal waves; i.e. they may put many seeds
in the ground just following the crest of the cold winter wave so that
the seeds catch the wave and ride the warm trough of repeal from the
cold.   This thermal wave cycle originates with the harmonies of the
planets in the solar system, of course, so its origin is spatial
relational, which shows up in the fact that different farmers in
different spatial situations get in phase with the common resonance;
i.e. their coordinated actions speak of a common spatial-relational
resonance, and not simply a time-based coordination.

But, once again, the mathematics of rational models seeks the
symmetries that are invariant with spatial-relational particularity
and thus reduce what is essentially spatial-relational to that which
is common regardless of spatial-situation; as in ‘every electron in
the cosmos is identical to every other’.  In this case we have ‘every
day in the ceaseless spatial-relational unfolding of nature is
identical’, and thus ‘days’ become countable like electrons and
organisms, ... at least according to our spatial-situational context
excluding symmetry-seeking mathematics of rational modeling.   The
same is held to be true for months, seasons years; i.e. they are, in
our standard type of mathematics, identical and countable, and it is
on this basis that we get the notion of ‘time’ not as the sense of
continual unfolding of spatial-relational innovation as in nature/
evolution, but as a straight line made of countable points going from
day zero (creation) to day ‘whatever-you-like’ (infinity).

‘Time’ is a mathematical concept we impose on our experience.  Our
experience is inherently spatial-relational.   The imposed concept of
‘linear time’, together with the imposed concept of ‘absolute
space’ (space as an absolute fixed and empty container for local,
independently-existing particles) is what keeps rational models based
on ‘local object dynamics’ hanging together.   The simplicity it gives
over-rides the fact that ‘every day is different’ and ‘every organism
is different’, so that we can ‘count them’ and say that if there is a
difference between them, it is in the ‘detail’, the less significant
decimal places of the now-discretized entities.

So, the point of this second postscript is that, yes, all that is
being said in this post can be REDUCED to explanation in rational
terms if you care to accept that every day is like every other day and
that every person is like every other person, the difference being
‘mere details’; i.e. that spatial-situational circumstance does not
deserve to over-ride the primacy of ‘local independent existence’ (of
organisms, systems, objects, particles, nations etc. etc.)..

 * * *

On 17 Jul, 14:11, emile <emili...@goodshare.org> wrote:

read more »