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Science and Pattern
Let me first of all explain why I use the term patterns, consciously deciding to discontinue the use of the term principles. I indeed think that here we are facing a key point that marks the essential difference between death science and life science. A pattern is a set of things, a certain arrangement I can make out in the complex scheme of reality. It is something I can observe. A pattern can be fix or it can be changeable. It can be static or dynamic. By contrast, a principle typically is the beginning of a down-hierarchy. It’s a top-something in a kind of up-to-down order. It is not something I can observe. Its reality is merely intellectual: the outcome of a conclusion I draw in my rational mind after observing nature. A principle thus contains my observer point or my judgment about reality. Death science looks at life through the glasses of principles it has set before it was going to observe. It is essential blind, and it proceeds by imposing characteristics upon nature. Western science is death science. Traditionally, it gained its first conclusions about life by vivisecting cadavers, not by observing the moving changes of living. It is, and remained, a cadaver science that is far removed from the changing patterns of reality. Life science looks at life without any set principles or assumptions and observes the dynamic patterns or changes in the texture of life. It is a science that since its start in China, around five thousand years ago, was interested in life, and thus drew conclusions from life, and not from death. Traditional Chinese science is life science, one branch of this very large body of science and philosophy being Feng Shui. The I Ching is based upon life science, and is perhaps the highest condensation of it. Needless to add that, as such, it is non-judgmental and thus bears no moralistic judgments about human behavior. It looks at human behavior in exactly the same way it looks at all life patterns, and sees the changing nature of it before all. I am angry at twelve twenty, and at twelve thirty my anger has passed and I am hungry. In his book The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra explains the importance of pattern when he explores into the meaning of self-organization, which is one major characteristic pattern of living systems:
Source: The Web of Life, p. 80 In order to scientifically inquire into patterns we need to change our basic setup of scientific investigation. Capra explains:
Source: The Web of Life, p. 81 This really involves a radical change in our scientific thinking because traditionally Cartesian science was quantity-based and measure-oriented, while systemic science is quality-based and relationship-oriented, a truth that Capra exemplifies when looking at the properties involved in the scientific focus of both static and systemic science theory:
Source: The Web of Life, p. 81 The next important point to understand how nature 'thinks' is the cell's metabolism, the network that serves recycling. Capra succinctly elaborates in his book The Hidden Connections:
Source: The Hidden Connections, p. 9 But the most revolutionary findings are that our usual habit of dissecting parts of a whole for further scrutiny and scientific investigation does not work any more with living systems. Why is this so? Capra pursues in The Web of Life:
Source: The Web of Life, p. 37 My hypothesis is that Western culture has never until now applied what I came to call the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living and that it therefore is at the border of chaos, destruction or another kind of worldwide catastrophe, suffering from a schizoid mindset, the perversion of love into sadistic hate, rampant violence, the impudent slaughtering of minorities, famines that could easily be avoided, and generally a total lack of genuine spirituality which, by itself, already makes for a large part of depression and psychosomatic disorders. What I say is that the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living have been respected and applied by all major tribal cultures including the North American Indians, and that therefore they have lived peacefully. With peacefully I do not mean an artificial Western peace concept which is complete nonsense as it is stuck and rigid, but a dynamic peace continuum that includes little fights and small wars as required by the dynamics of yin and yang, but that is so balanced that it will never trigger a major and global destruction. The fact that Western culture has triggered this destruction in all possible ways, economical, social, health-wise, military, ecological, and other ways, shows that the continuum balance that the Eight Patterns give is completely lacking in Western philosophy, science, military policy, diplomacy, politics and strategy. Western culture has brought about what Wilhelm Reich called the emotional plague, symbolized by the atomic bomb's mushroom. Thus, the Eight Patterns could be taken as a guide concept and implemented in a new kind of lifestyle to be worked out as part of our presently evolving post-industrial global culture. That is the basic idea. I think that the Eight Patterns are tremendously useful as a base layer for establishing the ground principles of a new peaceful society, instead of beginning with Adam and Eve and go time and again though all anthropological material. I have actually done this and there is no novelty any more in this. The Eight Patterns cover all spheres of life and living. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure
that the details contained herein are correct and up-to-date, it does
not constitute legal, psychological, psychiatric or other professional
advice. I do not accept any responsibility, legal or otherwise, for any
error or omission. |
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Pierre F. Walter
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April 11, 2012 |
Science and Pattern
I have stressed in all my publications the importance of
understanding the nature of our universe as a basically patterned universe, focusing on patterned intelligence, or patterned organization
when we observe nature. What are
patterns? I began identifying the perennial
pro-life patterns in living by firstly invalidating the fake
principles that mainstream Western science declares to be the
founding concepts of our universe. To put it more precisely, there
was actually nothing to invalidate: I found that these alleged
principles were but intellectual assumptions, and thus simply
invalid as founding principles of life. At the same time, diligent
study of the 