Introduction

The problem that language creates the reality given to man or that it is reality "in itself" the one that must be known, is one of those profound philosophical problems, whose practical implications has to do with man whether or not he, as an individual, be conscious of it.

We can in general point out two general tendencies:

• that one that assumes it is language that creates reality, and
• that other one that it is reality in itself the one that must be known.

At this moment I find it difficult to classify them as idealistic or materialistic, later on we will try to make a classification though. It is said that with Kant's well-known Copernican revolution in philosophy, was generated a philosophical movement known as ontological idealism, according to which nothing can be known in itself. The problem of language and thinking, the active role of mind in the process of cognition can be associated with that other one according to which the structure of language affects all our categories, including specially those of time and space.

Ken Wilber and Adam Shaff and the problem of cognition

We can know something if we have a language , but the structure of language itself affects all our space time categories. The evident conclusion is that our knowledge of reality depends on our language. But we have

According to Ken Wilber in his Sex, Ecology and Spirituality three languages:

- the "it" language,

- the "I" language,

- the "we" language and

This subdivision can be compared to the models associated with the cognition process, as they are presented by Adam Shaff in Language and Cognition: 

• the so-called mechanistic one or the copy theory according to which cognition is a copy of the object.
• The other one in which it is the subject the one that creates reality and
• That intermediate solution between the two and according to which it is the relation between object and subject what is important in the process of cognition.

The "it" language or the copy theory of cognition is then that one akin with the so-called language of objective naturalism and in which that "thing" that has to do with wholeness, with form, with the qualitative, normally is reduced to the quantitative, or simply to the part or to an object. Linearization is desirable to be able to avoid any ambiguity in the necessary process of determining the objects of study. So a practical determinism is generated and it will be the highest goal of scientific knowledge, from this point of view.

But not every knowledge, even scientific knowledge can be reduced quantitatively, so even within every field a solution has been generated to solve those contradictions, to close those real gaps found by man in his quests. The evolution of science generated two alternative to close the epistemological gap between an objective and a subjective worldview. 

• one atomistic, or just quantitative in which the object prevails, in which it is necessary to isolate the element from its environment to be able to study it or just to linearize it. This tendency even though seems a realistic one, is an idealistic one, because in it, ideal objects of study are essentials.
• The other one, holistic, as per Bertalanffy and David Bohm, as the system and the whole is the desired object of study instead. This solution in a certain sense try to include the other and definitively is closer to reality than the other one, and as so it will prevail for some time, as a good alternative.

So far so good with scientific knowledge and language as creator of an image of reality. But let us see the other point of view.

Ken Wilber explains us that the "it" language is not altogether compatible with those "we" and "I" languages, as it were, with beauty and goodness, or just with philosophy and ontology, defined the latter in its widest sense, as that domain of knowledge that tries to study the being of the evolutionary reality, not precisely that reality associated with eternal and immutable substances of ancient philosophy.

The problem of object and subject, of the active role of mind in the process of cognition, between the relation of the part and the whole, how the whole can become a part or how the universals can be instantiated in particulars is one that was solved by two eminent linguistics and it will be the one we will assume in this assay as the "best" alternative. We will analyze how those two masters solved it.

The language structure reflects the same profound structure of reality. The qualitative, the within, the nondual has to do with that realm of experience and reality that is independent of that other one, quantitative, exterior, dual, that one of the physiosphere.

The Basic Unit System concept and its universal need

The need of a Basic Unit Concept is posed as a real universal need that can also be found today in different fields. This need is not the main aim of the prevailing holistic worldview, being this one an essential difference between a holism and a holonic worldview.

We find new terms such as genes, memes, holons and they all have in common what we have named the profound structure of reality. This profound structure was in fact, as we have said, taken by Ferdinand de Saussure, as the starting point of that most influencial movement known, precisely, as structuralism. In his well-known Course in General Linguistic, taken from his main lectures by his disciples and put together in a book after his death, De Saussure introduced, at the beginning of 20^th century, the linguistic sign, which as a matter of fact is a holon, term coined by Arthur Koestler and elaborated by Ken Wilber, as that concept that being a whole in a context, is simultaneously a part in another, or just as that concept in which the part and the whole are linked together by some sort of a gluing principle, in which the signified and the signifier, the quantitative and the qualitative are joined together in some sort of strange and eternal or ontological marriage.

But it was another linguistic too, the late professor Edward Sapir, the one who thinking about the relationship between words and language, introduced that same concept in his second chapter of his well-known Language An Introduction to the Study of Speech, when he wrote:

"...They represent, on a sense, compounded concepts that have flowered from the fundamental one. We may, therefore, analyze the words sings, singing, and singer as binary expressions involving a fundamental concept of more abstract orders -- one of person, number, time, condition, function, or of several of these combined. If we symbolized such a term as sing by the algebraic formula A, we shall have to symbolize such terms a sings and singer by the formula A + b. The element A may be either a complete and independent word (sing) or the fundamental substance, the so-called root or stem or "radical element" (sing-) of a word. The element b (-s, -ing, -er) is the indicator of a subsidiary and..."

What I want to point out is the need of a symbol for separating two independent but at the same time interdependent entities - as they are linked comprising then a two-sided entity- and in which each element triggers the other, as was explained by De Saussure in his Linguistic sign.

A Holon and its mathematical representation

Mathematically that symbol exists and was discover for the first time by Cardano in 1745 and it is that symbol that results from trying to solve a simple mathematical equation such as

x² + 1 = 0

that gives as a solution the square root of a negative one that certainly nobody will ever see in the real world, as it is a radical symbol, for separating, for differentiating two different and independent entities. The interdependence of those two entities was discover 200 years later by the most prolific mathematician of all times Leonard Euler, when he discovered a relation, that is known by his name. It is a relation in which in the same way of representation of words, we have the sum of two entitied separated by that radical symbol normally written as J. It can be shown that the first component is a cosine function and the second one a sine function, and that the cosine function is nondual in nature, and the sine is dual. So the first one will be, as it were, the qualitative one, and the second one the quantitative. The fact that this Euler Relation is by definition associated with sine and cosine waves, permits us to define a basic unit system as a rotating entity, but for its correct representation we need a plane. Just in the same way Ferdinand de Saussure needed a plane to represent Static Linguistic and Evolutionary Linguistics or the Internal duality of all sciences concerned with values. This plane is a way to represent a totality that includes, as a matter of fact, the four dimensional space time continuum. So this plane is a fifth sphere of reality, that can be called the sphere of form. It is then a whole sphere of reality, that Karl R. Popper would have called "The third world", and is something similar to that sphere of form of ancient philosophy, but in this case, it is not for representing ideas given in advance, but just an intermediate level to close the gap between the physiosphere and the noosphere.

Reality is not like a balance whose equilibrium or static state is impossible to obtain, as in fact reality does not behave itself it that way, but as a pendulum always oscillating between the qualitative and the quantitative, between the within and the without, between the whole and the part, never trying to reduce the one to the other, as we cannot do that without distorting that same reality we are trying to know and control.

With Euler Relation as a powerful mathematical tool we can define a new concept of unity in which the static and the dynamic nature of reality can be represented. A holon is a dynamic reality always rotating around itself, and as so it always creates circles of influences that creates that pattern that connects, that connects it to the environment, but in the most natural way, and from within, not from without. In such a holonic worldview those resonating frequencies generated from within, are the ones that really produce those emergent states of new realities. The well-known order out of chaos is produced just in that moment a holon attains the desired frequency, or just the synergertic state. See Physics and The Principle of Synergy.

Genes, Memes and Holons

Genes., Memes, Electrons and the pendulum are intrinsically dynamic entities, they are holons. Holons all the way up and all the way down. In fact with the Bus concept as a mathematical tool it is possible for the first time to deduce all the fundamental equations of physics, such as those of the Pendulum, those of electromagnetism or relativity, those of gravitational fields and even the well-known Schrodinger Wave Equation, the fundamental equation of Quantum Mechanics.

It is written in Spiral Dynamics that genes are the information units of physical nature, as it were, the buses of the fifth sphere of reality or that of form and that memes are those buses that are generated in that same moment a human being or a mind reacts to the environment, but more precisely to an experience. A meme then has a frequency as every holon or bus, and the way of transmitting information is through a field that is always associated with a frequency. When deducing the pendulum formula, it is necessary to have two conditions: one equal frequency, and a balancing equality between inertial mass or the internal forces, and gravitational mass or external forces, and the pendulum harmonic motion is obtained when this two conditions are met. But in Spiral Dynamics is written "MEMES resonate like the notes in a musical chord" so a meme is just a basic unit system or holon. Electrons, genes and memes are the fundamental holons of the physiosphere, the biosphere and the noosphere. What is the fundamental Holon of that sphere of Being?

The practical implications of a holistic framework to "see" and interpret the world, are as a matter of fact, very different from those in which the Basic Unit System(BUS) or Holon concept, are the starting point of an integral framework that can be named holonic as a contraproposal to the prevailing holistic framework. A holonic worldview cannot be classified in standard "isms", such as those holistic ones and others, as the main point of a holonic worldview is that the part and the whole or partness(localness) and wholeness are main and fundamental attributes.

Conclusions

The great drawback, the great contradiction of the holistic worldview is that natural tendency to put aside the same structure concept, being the organizations flattening tendency the most well-known application in the area of businesses. The lack of a holonic attribute, makes that those elements belonging to a higher whole, as they have no real meaning in themselves, they are then interchangeable, in a very indistinguishable way. The primacy of the whole means that wholes are primordial to parts, but our point is that it is the principle of synergy applied by each holon the one that creates a whole greater that the sum of its parts. This philosophic totalitarism had as main examples the communistic and nazism movements of the 20^th century in particular, and in general all those asphyxiating centralisms. In medium term what can be expected with the application of a holistic worldview is easy to predict and it has to do with an increasing standardization of the individual, as he has always to adjust its own frequency to the frequency of the whole. Normally it will be done by slogans or by decrees. Leadership will be lost. A holonic worldview is not something completely new at all. In fact those Communities of Practice, such those presented by Etienne Wenger, PhD in "Communities of Practice: Responding to the Knowledge Challenge" have always worked with that model, as every successful team achievements, have always been done because every holon in the model can vibrate at a natural frequency which is, as a matter of fact, the frequency of the whole, because first of all the mission of that new holon is something really "wanted" by them all in the most natural way. The creative power comes from it.

By Epsilon Pi

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Copyright 2000 by EpsilonPi