The
Self as a Nonlinear Dynamical Structure-Process
Abstract
The
models of nonlinear dynamics and self-organization of complex systems are
applied to understand the emergent patterns of individual thinking and behavior.
A number of notions from the modern theory of complexity, such as poising at the
edge of chaos, operational closure and self-production, autopoiesis, the
existence of a multitude of possible discrete states and the existential of
choice in the points of bifurcation, the slow, iterative going out to the
automodel stage of development and the autocatalytic, avalanche-like growth of a
new property, facilitate our comprehension of internal complexity of individual
self. The self is considered as a nonlinear dynamical structure-process which
has a certain spatial configuration and temporal depth. Such a view of the human
mind and behavior coincides with the modern dynamical approach in cognitive
science (F.Varela, T. van Gelder, A. Clark, and others). Cognition is embodied:
the perceptual and mental processes are bound up with the “architecture” of the
human body. Cognitive and creative activity is an enactive process: a man
cognizes the world but at the same time the very process of cognition forms and
changes him. Human life (and therefore human cognition) is an autopoietic
activity because it directed to the search of elements that are missed, it longs
for completing integral structures.
Key
words
Blow-up
regimes, complex systems, dynamical approach in cognitive science, embodied
mind, nonlinear dynamics, self-organization, situated cognition,
synergetics.
1.
Transdisciplinarity of the Synergetic Models
The
modern theory of self-organization of complex systems, also called synergetics,
has its hard core in mathematical modeling and computer simulation of
evolutionary processes in complex systems of nature. But models elaborated
within the theory increasingly demonstrate their usefulness in analyzing human
behavior and cognitive activities. The theory is transdisciplinary by its
nature. Transdisciplinary research is characterized by the transfer of cognitive
schemata from one disciplinary field to another as well as by the working out of
joint research projects.
Since the late sixties synergetics has
been regarded by its founder H. Haken as a teaching of interaction (Haken,
1978). This is a transdisciplinary research field focused on the exploration of
systems which are composed of several or many constituents and display new
emergent macroscopic properties that are unexpected and nonderivable from the
available state of elements. As regards human psychology, the complexity and
mass character of interactions can be understood at least in double sense. On
the one hand, the human body and brain consist of a multitude of cells, tissues,
muscles, articulations of bones, neurons and neurons knots. On the other hand,
the human body, brain and consciousness reveal highly complex and changeable
behavior, they are multifunctional and multistable. As a matter of fact, the
processes of self-organization of sensory and motor, perceptual and mental
activities are processes of reduction of many degrees of freedom to a few or
even to one degree of freedom, to a few or even to a certain independent
variable – the so-called order parameters or an order parameter. The order
parameters define key properties of a system on the level of the system as a
whole.
Synergetics steps over boundaries
between different scientific disciplines, including the boundaries between
natural sciences and the humanities. The theory tries to construct certain
bridges between inanimate and animate nature, between the quasi-purposes of
systems behavior in inanimate nature and human rationality, between the birth of
something new in nature, the so-called “creativity of nature” and the creative
abilities of a human being. Similar patterns of evolution and of the structure
formation are being studied in both domains. On the one hand, some features of
living beings show themselves sometimes already in self-organizing systems of
inanimate nature, and on the other hand, certain properties of inanimate nature
can be found in living creatures, some of properties of life are already
pre-given, pre-formed in the “dead nature”, in the general laws of evolution of
the universe. Synergetics thus reveals common geometries of behavior at
different levels of organization.
There are already some attempts to apply
the synergetic models of complex systems behavior to comprehend the human brain
and its diverse activities, first of all the visual perception and pattern
recognition (Haken and Stadler 1990; Haken 1996a, 1997) as well as to understand
some phenomena of human cultural and social activities (Haken 1996b). In recent
works (Knyazeva 1998; Knyazeva and Haken 1999), some essential principles of the
synergetic outlook on the human cognitive and creative activities are
expounded.
Thus, the aim of this paper is to
consider how the modern theory of self-organization of complex systems may
contribute to comprehending the nature of individual self from the point of view
of the modern theory of self-organization and complexity and to exploring
emergent patterns of human mind and behavior when using the main principles of
the synergetic holism, the building of a complex evolutionary whole from parts.
The theory of synergetics doesn’t strive for recipes for productive creative
activities, rational behavior and effective management under conditions of
uncertainty and instability of environment, but rather attempts to reveal some
synergetic mechanisms which might form the basis of the human cognitive and
behavioral activities.
2.
A New Evolutionary Holism:
Philosophical
Consequences of the Theory of Complexity
What is evolutionary whole? The
main principle of holism that “the whole is more that the sum of its parts” may
be traced back to ancient philosophical studies. One of the earliest
formulations of the principle may be found in Taoism, in philosophy of Lao Tsu.
However, a complete and profound sense of the principle has been revealed only
by such theories, as gestalt-psychology, systems theory, and
synergetics.
The method of analyzing from the whole
to the parts is quite unusual for the classical science. The latter moves in the
course of analysis mostly from separate parts to a whole. From the synergetic
point of view, it is order and control parameters that determine the behavior of
the parts (subsystems) of complex systems. They allow us to enormously reduce
the complexity of description of a system under
consideration.
The classical principle of superposition
is not valid in the complex nonlinear world which we live in: the sum of partial
solutions is not here a solution of equation. The whole is not equal to the
sum of its parts. Generally speaking, it is neither more nor less than
the sum of parts. It is qualitatively different in comparison to
parts which are integrated in it.
Circular causality. Parts of a
complex system determine its dynamical properties, the order parameters. The
order parameters in turn determine, or even “enslave”, the behavior of parts.
The phenomenon is called by H. Haken circular causality (Haken 1996a, p.43). An
emerging evolutionary whole alters its parts. The co-evolution of different
structure formations means the transformation of all subsystems by mechanisms of
system coordination and correlation between them. Besides, when altering parts,
the whole can awaken some new unusual and still unprecedented properties
of a part or several parts, it can call it/them into an uncommon being.
Nonlinear synthesis of parts into a
whole. Tempo-worlds. The
complexity of a structure is connected with the coherence in behavior of its
elements (substructures). This coherence is the concordance of the tempos of
“life” of its substructures, something which is a result of diffusion and/or of
dissipative processes that are a macroscopic manifestation of chaos. In order to
construct a complex organization, it is necessary to coherently unify
substructures within it and to synchronize the tempos of their evolution. As a
result of the unification, structures fall into one tempo-world, i.e. they
acquire one and the same moment of peaking, start to co-exist in one and the
same tempo-world (Kurdyumov 1990; Knyazeva and Kurdyumov 2001).
To create a complex structure it is
necessary to know how to unify structures “of different ages”, i.e. structures
of different stages of evolution and having different rates (tempos) of
evolution. It is necessary to know how to include the elements of “memory”, the
biological memory, DNA, or the memory of culture, cultural traditions. Inasmuch
as the structure-attractors which characterize the developed, steady
evolutionary stages of structures in a nonlinear world are described by the
invariant-group solutions, the spatial and temporal properties of
structure-processes turn to be tightly bound. The dynamics of development of a
complex structure needs a coordinated (with one and the same moment of peaking)
development of substructures of “different ages” within it, this leads generally
to the breakdown of spatial symmetry. The insertion of “memory” (of elements of
the past) signifies the symmetry breakdown in space.
Different but not arbitrary structures
can be unified. The degree of connection of structures which are to be
integrated and the stages of their development are not arbitrary as well. There
are various but not arbitrary ways of unification of structures into integral
ones. There is a restricted set of integration ways, ways of construction of a
complex evolutionary whole.
The selectivity (the quantum character)
of ways of integration of parts into a whole is connected with the imposed
requirement of existence in one and the same tempo-world, i.e. of development of
all parts with one and the same moment of peaking. This is the physical basis of
quantification when integrating complex evolutionary structures. If joinable
structures have even slightly different from each other moments of peaking,
then, near the moment of peaking (the singularity), they will become
incompatible in intensity.
Thus, the synthesis of relatively
simple evolutionary structures in an entire complex structure occurs by the
establishment of a common tempo of evolution in all unified parts
(fragments, simple structures). The intensity of processes in various fragments
of the complex structure can be diverse. The fact of integration signifies that
structures becoming parts of a whole acquire a common rate
development.
The role of topology of integration.
An
integrated complex structure arises only if there is a certain degree of
overlapping of simple structures. There must be a certain topology,
“architecture” of overlapping. A constructive “sense of proportion ” must be
observed. If the area of overlapping is not sufficient, then the structures will
develop independently, they wont feel each other, and they will live in
different tempo-worlds. But if the overlapping is too wide, then the structures
will flow together very fast, they will straight away “degenerate” in one
rapidly developing structure.
The factor of unification of parts into
a whole structure is chaos, dissipation, fluctuations or their analogue. Chaos
plays a constructive role not only in the moments of choosing a further
evolutionary path, but also in the processes of assembling a complex
evolutionary whole. Chaos leads to the establishment of coherence of development
in all parts (substructures). Chaos serves as a “glue” that binds parts into a
united whole.
If a complex structure is organized from
more simple structures in a right topological way (if there are a certain degree
of interaction of substructures and a certain symmetry of architecture of an
originating united structure), an exit to a new, higher level of hierarchical
organization occurs, i.e. a step towards a super-organization is taken. Thereby
the rate of development of structures which are integrated into a complex one is
being picked up. The rapidly developing structures “pull to themselves” by the
tempo of life the slowly developing structures. If an evolutionary whole is
rightly organized, the whole begins to develop at a rapid pace which is higher
than there was a pace of the most rapid developing structure before the
unification.
Non-linearity of development and the
emergent properties of systems. Emergent
properties of entities are connected with the non-linearity of development of
systems in the world. The concept of non-linearity a profound philosophical
sense. The content of this concept may be elucidated by a few more intelligible
notions, namely: a) the notion of multiplicity of evolutionary pathways, the
availability of alternative pathways of evolution (it is well worth to underline
here the fact that a large number of evolutionary pathways is characteristic
even for one and the same invariable complex system); b) the notion of choice
between these alternative pathways of evolution; c) the notion of tempo of
evolution, i.e. the speed of evolutionary processes in a complex system; d) the
notion of irreversibility of evolution.
Complex systems are organized in a
hierarchical way. A part itself can be a whole that consists in turn of smaller
parts on an underlying level of world organization. A part (for instance, an
individual) can be more complex than a whole (for instance, society) if its
non-linearity is stronger than that of the whole. The stronger non-linearity
means that a structural entity on this level of organization possesses a more
complex spectrum of forms as well as of possible pathways and regimes of
development.
3.
Blow-up Regimes and the Discrete Spectra of Evolutionary
Structures
Two other consequences of synergetics
that are important for our comprehension of the complexity of individual self
are peculiarities of the blow-up regimes and the notion of discrete spectra of
structure-attractors of evolution.
Synergetics discovers laws and
conditions for very fast, avalanche-like processes, blow-up regimes. These are
processes when some characteristic parameters (temperature, energy, information
etc.) grow infinitely during a finite period of time.
Q(t) ¥
, when t ® tf
where
tf is the blow-up time or time of peaking. Of course, infinite growth is
impossible in real systems of the world. But the rapid growth of the
characteristic values in several orders, sometimes even in several times, allows
us to observe a number of astonishing effects which have been predicted by the
theory of blow-up regimes (Achromeeva et al. 1989; Samarskii et al. 1995.
Blow-up regimes are being studied now in more than sixty different mathematical
problems, starting from plasma physics (laser thermonuclear synthesis) and
concluding with neurophysiology (the modeling of signal propagation along neural
nets) and epidemiology (spreading of infections). There are possibly similar
blow-up regimes in human psychology.
The mechanism of such a super-rapid
growth is a volumetric nonlinear positive feedback. There is a
self-influence in every local area of a complex system. A local change of
conditions of the system has an influence on the work of nonlinear source in
this place. Therefore, this feedback signifies an accelerated self-stimulating
increase of the intensity of processes all over the space of the system.
Blow-up regimes show an amazing
peculiarity. The course of development has two essentially different stage of
development, namely: a prolonged meta-stable stage, when all characteristics of
processes increase extremely slowly and insignificantly, and a stage of
asymptotic instability near the moment of peaking, when a threat of stochastic
decay of a complex structure appears.
Structures develop very slowly during
rather long period of time. They are meta-stable. To put it differently, blow-up
regimes have a prolonged quasi-stationary stage. Further, when structures
have grown sufficiently and have overcome a threshold of the slow growth, these
structures become to develop super rapidly in a blow-up regime. Near a moment of
peaking, i.e. at the stage of infinite increase of characteristic quantities,
complex localized structures become unstable and may fall apart under the
influence of small fluctuations. The natural stochastic, probabilistic,
"radio-active" decay of nonstationary complex structures near the blow-up point
is, therefore, a consequence of instability of organization of such structures
towards chaotic fluctuations at a microlevel.
The evolution of complex structures
undergoes an alternation of various regimes of process development. There cannot
be sharp growth of a structure without a threat of its fall and destruction.
There are some universal laws which govern these rhythms. They are peculiar to
living beings as well as to complex structures in inanimate nature. There are
cyclical changes of state: upsurge - slump - stagnation - upsurge - slump etc.
Only obeying these "life rhythms", or oscillatory modes, can complex systems
maintain their integrity and develop dynamically. Depending on a result of
interplay between two opposite factors in a given system - the action of
nonlinear feedback (a volumetric nonlinear source) and the dissipative,
scattering processes, - three different evolutionary regimes can be established
in a corresponding complex nonlinear system.
How did the pivotal synergetic idea of
spectra of evolutionary structure-attractors arise? The scholars of the Keldysh
Institute of Applied Mathematics and the Institute of Mathematical Modeling (the
Russian Academy of Sciences) managed to discover mechanisms of localization,
structure formation in open nonlinear media (in complex systems). In relatively
simple mathematical and computational models, a result of fundamental importance
has been obtained: a continuous open nonlinear medium potentially contains in
itself different kinds of localization processes (different kinds of
structures). A medium is a united source that acts as a carrier of different
forms of future organization, as a field of different evolutionary paths
(Kurdyumov 1990; Samarskii et al. 1995).
Structure (or organization) is not
interpreted here in a stationary sense. It is a process localized in certain
regions of a continuous open nonlinear medium. The process has a certain
geometry and is capable of developing, of reconstructing and moving in the
medium. In other words, the structure is a spot of organization wandering inside
the medium. An open nonlinear medium (system) covers itself by organization
spots.
An internal mechanism of structure
generation and evolution (reconstruction, integration and disintegration) is a
competition, or an interplay, between two opposite factors in a medium. One of
them is the factor which dissipates, scatters about inhomogeneities in the
medium; it can be of various nature: diffusion, dispersion, hydrodynamics, etc.
For example, it can be diffusion of neutrons, or diffusion (dissemination) of
knowledge, or diffusion (spreading) of infectious diseases. The other factor is
a nonlinear source that can be also of different kinds. The source (of energy,
information or infection) creates inhomogeneities in the continuous medium. It
can be an active medium in the nuclear reactor which generates an avalanche flow
of neutrons, or it can be a source of knowledge or infectious diseases.
There are no arbitrary structures that
can be self-maintained in a given complex nonlinear system. Only structures in
accordance with the inner evolutionary trends of the system can arise. And
nothing else but select meta-stable structures can be constructed in the system.
This is a kind of evolutionary law of prohibition (Knyazeva and Haken
2000). This idea of discrete spectrum of evolutionary structure-attractors leads
to some more concrete consequences:
1.
There
are a number of types of possible structure-attractors, i.e. evolutionary
pathways, even for a relatively simple open nonlinear medium (system). A whole
“zoo” of structures of self-organization, that is a set of rather exotic
structures, can be contained even in a relatively simple medium. This is even
more true of such complex systems as the human brain and consciousness or human
society.
2.
The
number of possible structures can be very big, but it is limited. The spectrum
is by no means continuous one. Only a definite set of evolutionary pathways is
“allowed” by the nature of a given complex system itself. The spectra of
possible, “allowed” structures correspond to sets of the eigenfunctions of the
nonlinear equations describing the evolutionary processes in the complex system.
The sets of eigenfunctions of the corresponding nonlinear equations are
mathematical representations of spectra of evolutionary structure-attractors.
3.
The
spectra of evolutionary structure-attractors are determined exclusively by the
own properties of a corresponding complex system (open nonlinear medium). They
are its inner potentials, so to speak, a “tacit knowledge” of the system itself.
4.
The
discrete sets evolutionary paths into the future presuppose ways of a special
soft, or nonlinear, management. The art of soft management consists in the ways
of self-management and the self-control of complex systems. It is a management
by “clever” and appropriate, so called resonant, influences. Some human actions
are doomed to be unsuccessful. They fail if they are not in line with the inner
trends of development of complex systems.
5.
Some
possible changes of inner properties of complex systems can lead to a
transformation of spectra of evolutionary structure-attractors, sets of possible
paths into the future.
The problem of obtaining accurate
spectra of evolutionary structure-attractors of complex systems has been solved
so far only in particular cases. Hence, we are faced with a vast area to
explore. In fact, it is a “super-problem”, close to that of W. Heisenberg
in nuclear physics, when nonlinear equations are required to describe a medium
which as a self-organizing system would yield stable states in form of the
spectrum of elementary particles.
It seems that synergetics can initiate
more complex research problems to be studied by psychologists and philosophers.
For example, a task of determining a spectrum of human emotional states or a
spectrum of psychological types of personality.
Six basic emotional states of a human
being, namely pleasure (joy), sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, have been
distinguished by psychologists. These are, of course, a kind of pure, idealized
emotional states, but real human emotions can be qualified as inclined to this
or that of basic states. Highly correlated external and internal symptoms such
as facial expressions, heart beats, blood pressure and so on determine these
various emotional states of humans. It’s worthwhile to study the states as
behavioral patterns with respect to their control and order parameters. The
central question will be to cast the concepts into a scientific form that
includes procedures for quantifying them. An enormous amount of research work
lies ahead for behavior and psychological science in the light of the modern
theory of self-organization and complexity.
4.
The Individual Self: A Self-organizing Complexity
Structures
of self-organization are not hard blocks from which the observed well-ordered
universe is built. They are rather metastable localized processes that are able
to become permanently transformed, to enter into the cooperative interaction
with other processes and to form thereby larger entities or, on the contrary, to
come apart and sometimes to completely disappear in the general chaotic
background of the universe. The observed well-ordered world is the world where
structures-processes of self-organization live their own life. If we consider a
human being, his cognitive abilities and practical intentions, the construction
of his personality, the hierarchical layers of his
consciousness-subconsciousness, the historical strata of his memory, all these
formations can be understood as structure-processes of self-organization.
Many synergetic notions, such as self-organization and poising at the edge of
chaos, operational closeness and self-production, autopoiesis, a multitude of
possible discrete states and the existential choice in the moments of
bifurcation, the slow, iterative going out to the automodel stage of development
and the autocatalytic, avalanche-like growth of a new property, are in use for a
better understanding of the internal complexity of individual
self.
Poising at the Edge of Chaos.
Nature is wise in constructing complex structure formations, but these
structures are rather fragile. They are poised “at the edge of chaos” in such a
way that even the best little step in the direction of improvement of their
organization can initiate the process of their rapid spontaneous decay. Such
properties of self-organizing systems are studied in the theory of
self-organized criticality (Bak 1997).
Availability of chaotic elements, i.e. a
relative irregularity is often a sign of human health, both corporal and
spiritual, a sign of stability of personal structure. For example, only a strong
aperiodicity in heartbeat means a sickly state – arrhythmia, whereas some small
chaotic fluctuations in heartbeat are quite normal; they are a result of
especially internal rather than external factors. A line of demarcation between
the health and an illness, between life-giving and basilisk chaos is rather
polysemantic and mobile. The question is: what portion of chaos must a human
carry in himself in order to be healthy?
Chaos is a natural randomizer, i.e. a
random-signal generator in nature. Chaos makes our organs more flexible and more
suited for a changeable environment. A complex organization emerges and
maintains itself at the edge of chaos. “The edge of chaos is a dynamic, fluid
transition zone exiting between two extremes: predictable order and
unpredictable chaos¼
All of life evolves to the edge of chaos, where it remains flexibly poised in a
critical state of readiness¼
Only between extremes, at the edge of chaos, can psychological balance be
achieved. At the edge of chaos, we are best equipped psychologically to deal
with erratic and unpredictable events in life”(Marks-Tarlow 1999, p.
322-323).
The more stereotyped human behavior is,
the more suspicions of a pathology there are. Whereas a psychologically healthy
man conforms to the patterns of behavior depending on social roles he plays at
the present moment, a man with a mental disease pursues – to a considerable or
lesser degree – only one object (idée fixe), his behavior is – to a great extent
– repeatable, iterative, liable to cyclic attractors. His behavior doesn’t have
due flexibility and isn’t sensitive to an unsteady environment.
To be chaotic means to be creative.
Chaotic cognition. The human creative activity is in need of special stages
or permanently existing layers of subconscious random, chaotic movements of
mind. To be productive, cognition should have periods when it plunges into
chaos. Nowadays some specific methods of chaotic cognition are under
development. Such methods allow thinkers to explore new possibilities and to
make maximum use of moments of intensive inspired work when the increase of new
knowledge occurs. Creative thinking is divergent thinking. The pathway of
creativity consists in giving oneself over to chaos in order to take possession
of it. That is to resign oneself to control of chaos when at the same time
seizing the opportunity to create a refined structure.
Every human has a shady side which lies
not only in his psychological weaknesses and shortcomings but also harbors a
demonic dynamics. This monstrous, explosive, non-organized energy that cuts its
way though layers of subconsciousness is similar to avalanche-like natural
processes, the so-called blow-up regimes, studied in synergetics, in which new,
so far unwitnessed structures of self-organization arise. A “wandering look” of
mind – this is an image that might rather precisely express the basis of human
creativity. The mind should be decentralized, defocused; it should move freely
between vectors of directional activity. The “wandering over the field of
possible pathways of development”, the chaotic movement of creative mind leads
every now and then to coming out to one of structure-attractors. Thereby, a
vector of creative activity, leading to a break-through into a new, is
determined. The field of possibilities is put to the test and sounded out. As a
result, one of latent structures is materialized; the crystallization of new
knowledge occurs.
Thus, chaos is necessary in order to
allow a cognitive system to go out to a structure-attractor, its own trend of
development and to initiate the process of its self-organization. As a matter of
fact, it was known long ago and was expressed in allegorical, poetical forms,
such as, for example, in one of aphorisms of Nietzsche: “Man muß noch Chaos in
sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können” (Nietzsche 1955, S.284).
According to the synergetic model of H.
Haken (order parameters, slaving principle, circular causality), as a result of
creative activity or creative teaching, new order parameters of behavior of a
human as a complex nonlinear system spring up. The system “swings” over all
accessible degrees of freedom, and after that new macroscopic structures of
knowledge or of experience appear. Creativity is a factor of success, because it
implicitly relies on chaos as a way of self-renewal. To undertake something
means to change oneself permanently and to find vectors of further
development.
Individual landscapes of
personality. Every personality is autonomous and all-sufficient. If we apply
a term from the theory of autopoiesis elaborated by H. Maturana and F.Varela, we
may say that a personality is operationally closed, i.e. a man derives his
strength and intentions of his activity from himself, makes his own plans,
actualizes himself, devotes himself to the world. The Russian academician P. L.
Kapitza once noted that “the main sign of talent consists in the fact that a man
knows what he wants”. At the same time the self is a polylayer and
many-dimensional formation which is dissolved in situations, actualized in
different social and family roles, distributed in a topological way. The self
has its own space of life which borders are fragile and mobile. An individual
landscape of personality is built into a landscape of his family as well as of
the corresponding social group, nation, and noospheric reason.
These notions are strikingly close to
the ideas of Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) who was a disciple of the Berlin school of
gestalt-psychology but developed later on his original research trend called by
different names: “dynamical theory”, “topological psychology”, “vectorial
psychology”, “field theory”. Lewin introduced a notion of “space of life”
(“Lebensraum”). This is a personality together with his psychological
environment in such a form how it exists for the personality. As a rule, the
space of life is taken into consideration, if personal needs, motivation, mood,
purposes, doubts and fears, ideals are analyzed.
What is structure of the personal space
of life? The concept of purpose as an ordering of forces in a dynamical field of
personality plays here the central role. The space of life contains “the
psychological past”, “the psychological present” and “the psychological future”,
they are different dimensions of the available space of life (Lewin 1982, p.
68). Lewin introduced the principle of simultaneity (synchronism) and of
simultaneous influence of the past and the future: any act of behavior and any
possible change of the psychological field depend purely on the state of the
field at the present moment. The
psychological past, present and future are parts of the psychological field in a
certain point of time. Both the past (accumulated experience) and the future
(expectations, desires, apprehensions and hopes) exert influence on forces
regulating the today’s behavior of an individual.
The space of life of personality is a
certain field on which different forces, determinative tendencies, aspirations
come into collision with each other. Thereby, the purpose is understood as a
force field of psychological activities structured in a certain way; it is a
disposition of forces in space. As a matter of fact, this is a certain dispersed
purpose. The notion of vector finds a quite constructive use in topological
psychology. Firstly, forces that are available in the psychological field can
differ in magnitude. Secondly, one can perceive various directions of forces (of
aspirations) within the psychological field. The very notion of direction makes
sense only if one can distinguish different directions, as we might say from the
synergetic point of view, different structure-attractors of psychological
activities.
Individual landscapes of personality are
configurations of the inner (own) space and of environment of an acting and
cognitive subject. These configurations are determined by a dispersed purpose,
by a spectrum of structure-attractors of cognitive and creative
activities.
The cognitive activities are partly
pre-determined by latent and overt attitudes and plans. The cognitive subject is
permanently in a multistable state and takes a random walk about the field of
possibilities. There is a zigzag path that every time actualizes only one
possibility from an available spectrum of theirs. The individual landscape a
whole series of purposes and paths that lead to them. One can form a picture of
a certain space where all possible forms of trains of thought are already
available in a concealed, latent way. When a new knowledge arises, a fan of
possibilities rolls up into one possibility from a set of discrete
states.
Another specific feature of the
individual landscape of personality is synchronism. The landscape involves
possible pathways of future development as well as some traces of the past
activities. Applying a term of Kurt Lewin, one may say that the landscape has a
certain temporal depth. The synchronism of configurations of the human soul was
a subject of investigation in the works of Karl Jung as well: “The soul is all
that a human has already done and that he still has to do in the future”. The
memory of the past is always at present, but it can exert influence on the
course of life only before points of “bifurcation”, i.e. at the moment of
decisive choice of one of possible courses of life. If the point of
“bifurcation” is already passed, the choice is made, the human activities are
determined by the future rather than by the past. In such a case, the activities
are built from the future, in accordance with one of structure-attractors of
development.
Instabilities. Cascades of
Crystallization of Personality. The structure of the landscape of the
individual self is not rigid. Change in the intrinsic characteristics of a
personality leads to reconstructing the field of pathways of his movement into
the future. The stages of child’s education as well as the further
self-education condition periodic qualitative transformations of a spectrum of
purposes of life (plans, expectations and hopes) and a spectrum of
possibilities. The personality passes through periods of instabilities and
crises, as a result crystallizations of personality (his knowledge, his talent,
etc.) can take place. The long process of self-education and of permanent
creative activity is connected with a whole series of “bifurcation”, cascades of
crystallization of personality, several events of qualitative reconstruction of
structure-attractors, non-linear phase transitions. The individual landscape is
repeatedly rebuilt in a qualitative way. A person becomes times and again
another one. A creator is created. As Paul Valéry once noted in his diaries, the
attained exerts a backward influence on the creator. The work alters an
author.
Fractal Geometry of Human
Behavior. The fractal pictures of human behavior are determined, in the
first place, by some stable, reiterative, reproducible structures (patterns) of
behavior and, in the second place, by self-similarity of these structures on
different levels and on different scales of human activities. The fractal
dynamics signifies either the structure of a strange, chaotic attractor that
underlie the human behavior or self-organization of a complex structure in the
vicinity of a critical point, “at the edge of chaos”.
The landscape of individual self has a
certain fractal depth. In other words, configurations of situations of life
demonstrate a property of scale invariance. A creative man is creative in all
kinds of activities, both in the large and in the small. He is creative on all
levels of the scientific and practical activities, down to the everyday life.
For example, he can develop his original methods of cooking – of the preparation
of house-made veal cutlets. It is paradoxical that the creative, non-linear
writing is connected with the creative, non-linear cooking. On all levels and in
all fragments of the chain of his actions, one can discover his “handwriting”,
his original style of creative activity.
5.
The Individual Mind: Embodiment, Situation, and Enactivation
The synergetic approach to understanding
the human mind and behavior coincides with the modern dynamical approach in
cognitive science (F.Varela, R. Brooks, T. van Gelder, R. D. Beer, A. Clark and
others) which is based on the applying the models of nonlinear mathematics and
of the theory of complex adaptive systems. The dynamical approach is defined by
three key words: embodied, situated and enactive cognition. What is sense of
these new concepts?
Cognition is embodied: the perceptual
and mental processes are bound up with the “architecture” of human body.
F.Varela with his co-authors explains the term as follows: “By using the term
embodied we mean to highlight two points: first, that cognition depends upon the
kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor
capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are
themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological, and
cultural context”(Varela et al. 1991, p.172-173). The processes of perception
and motor activity are indissolubly connected in the real processes of
cognition. The mental processes are bound up not only with the emotionality of
an individual but also with peculiarities of his corporal organization.
Therefore, it is in a certain sense true that a human thinks using his body and
not only his brain. It is said for a long time that there is a language of body
that constitutes a basis of nonverbal communication. If there is the language of
body, may be the thinking is not concentrated in the head but is poured over the
whole body.
Cognition is situated: a cognitive act expands into a situation
that possesses certain topological properties. The relations of a cognitive
subject with his environment are essential. From the standpoint, memory isn’t
considered as something accumulated in a symbolic form in the head, it is rather
spread over environment. The cognitive psychology becomes an ecological
psychology.
The third neologism is enactive
cognition. It is introduced to lay emphasis on the active side of perception and
thinking, of the human cognition in general. We learn, remember, and get to know
something when we act. Cognition is an epistemic action: cognition occurs in
action and through action. A human conceives the world but at the same time the
very process of cognition forms and changes him, imparts configurations to his
cognitive activity. A going man paves the way, but at the same time the way
makes the going man; when the path is traversed, he becomes another man. And
what is more, the cognizing subject not only cognizes the world but also
constructs it, because if the world of a pigeon is colored in five colors, the
bats perceive the world in ultra-violet rays and the world of humans is
polychromatic, it is senseless to question the real color of the world. Thus, as
Varela says, the world can be characterized not by attributes but only by
potencies that can be enactivated in the cognitive activity. In such an enactive
process of cognition, new emergent structures arise and develop, sometimes fall
into decay or, on the contrary, become complicated and are completed. Human life
(and therefore human cognition) is an autopoietic activity because it directed
to the search of elements that are missed, it longs for completing integral
structures.
Acknowledgements
The
research is supported in 2001-03 by the Russian Foundation of the Humanities (#
01-03-00367a).
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on how to order Helena Knyazeva’s forthcoming book follow this
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