A study in Scarlet: Some words on Goethe (Visualization)

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
                                                      Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe´s Science in Respect to Art and

Sustainable Social Change (Visualization)

In my visualization we have the phenomenon in the center, as all the other elements are either paths towards the phenomenon or resultant from our interaction with it. However the phenomenon is not simply known via means of, or defined by all those elements; rather the whole of the phenomenon is in each of them. This is represented by the phenomenon´s hands that reach out; it signals the relationships that constitute the phenomenon.

On the top left corner we have represented the “Analytical Mind[i]” that gives birth to the “Quantitative Science”. This is the mode of consciousness that through our physical evolution and interaction with the solid objects of the world constitutes our default mode of consciousness. It is an extension of the “Logic of solids”[ii], that deals with the world around it by means of abstraction, replacing the phenomenon with a mathematical formula that allows its classification, measurability, predictability, and control. To do this it must separate itself from the senses and everyday experience (page 18). Its premises are from the parts to the whole, generalization, deduction, systematic thinking.

However to truly know the phenomenon we must understand that the relationship between the whole and the parts is so that the whole is present in the parts while simultaneously the parts emerge through the whole[iii]. This is why a knowledge that has been accessed through generalization will remain incomplete. In order to know the hidden aspects of the phenomenon we must access it through a different mode of consciousness: The “Intuitive Mind[iv]” that brings forth the “Qualitative Science”.

This is represented on the top right corner of the visualization; this mode of consciousness interacts with the phenomenon by dwelling in it, immersing the subject in the object to look for an instance worth a thousand, bearing all within itself”[v] that unlocks the core of the primal phenomenon in us[vi]. This allows the phenomenon to be its own theory[vii]. This mode of consciousness is a particular way of seeing; it restores the mind as an organ of perception providing a pathway to understanding the phenomenon.

Goethe´s “way of seeing” referred to as “Intuitive seeing”[viii] is in actuality a change in consciousness[ix] (represented in the bottom left corner); this consciousness is non linear, simultaneous, intuitive, and relation focused. It gives thinking the quality of perception, recognizes the power of ideas as actions, as the act of organizing[x], made explicit in the concept of organizing ideas which dictate our perception and therefore create actuality. It enables us to distinguish elements without separating them, but rather recognizing their relation and significance[xi] via the act of identifying their existence and their boundaries.

This way of seeing requires the subject to engage actively[xii] in the process of cognition, with tools that allow the cognitive process to be slowed down, or stopped so that we may glimpse not just the conclusions resultant from our organizing ideas (which we may mistake for the phenomenon) but to experience our organizing ideas as well, so that we may challenge them, deautomatizing our cognitive process, being participants in the phenomenon. In my visualization Art is presented as a tool that teaches the mind to go into the two stages of contemplative Meditation and Exact Sensorial Imagination[xiii] that Goethe requires in its method for qualitative science. Art then, will be the bridge to identify our ideas and their connections, to achieve harmony with the phenomenon and access its intrinsic Knowledge (necessity[xiv]).

This knowledge is represented on the top right corner of the visualization, said knowledge understands the phenomenon´s own language, it is intuitive, meaningful, is the result of Awe (and as such connects us to the phenomenon and fosters a relationship to grounded on concern, respect and responsibility); and in this way of understanding the phenomena we access its last stage, the phenomenon is changed, it is now complete[xv]. In other words, the primal phenomenon inhabits the subject, there is a relation that empowers the subject, who has been changed by said knowledge, and it changes the actions (aka ideas) of the subject and therefore would by means of those actions change the social structures that constitute our phenomenon[xvi].

Specific to the Gulliver Project

1)      We need to understand both the elements of the system as well as their relations; the analytical mind is good for the first task, but misses out on the second one, which might explain why social models/theories seem so tricky to transfer from one case to another. For this we need the intuitive mind.

2)      In order to steer the change we want in the system we need to understand not just the relations as a causality that is contingent, but we need to identify the primal phenomenon of the system that enables us to understand the necessity of those relations, the language of the system, its logic.

3)      But according to Goethe we cannot be external to the phenomenon, and know it; as the instance of being known is part of the phenomenon, it´s the phenomenon coming into being inside the mind. Then it comes to conclude that we need all stages of the cognitive process (including being known) in order to have adequate knowledge of said phenomenon.

4)      If that is the case it comes to reason that we should:

·          

• Promote processes that enable this shift of consciousness (Art)

• Seek to include all sectors of the system, (as they are all part of the phenomenon and we do not know where the primal phenomenon might be, hence children´s way of seeing becomes highly relevant)

• Promote participatory processes, as someone that cannot see the phenomenon  will not be able to speak its language (chessboards, giraffes, etc. you need to have the idea of the phenomenon to be able to see it, therefore it follows that a degree of familiarity is a requisite but also that probably given that they are able to shift consciousness to get out of their previous mental constructs it is possible the inside individuals would be of immense value)

• For now it seems that this project could be seen beyond a way to empower citizens and promote participatory processes and social change; but rather why participatory processes, a holistic education (both modes of consciousness, and respect for the diversity of the culture [phenomenon]) is a requisite for sustainable social change.

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[i] Often what is called the stream of thought is in fact the stream of language, and the process of thinking is none other than the flow of linguistic associations. The analytical mode of consciousness, therefore, corresponds to the discursive thought of what, for completeness, should be called the verbal-intellectual mind. (Page 63)

[ii] Psychologists have discovered that there are two major modes of organization for a human being: the action mode and the receptive mode. In the early infant state, we are in the receptive mode, but this is gradually dominated by the development of the action mode of organization that is formed in us by our interaction with the physical environment. The internalization of this experience of manipulating physical bodies gives us the object-based logic which Henri Bergson called "the logic of solids"- (page 15-16)

[iii] The hazard of emergence is such that the whole depends on the parts to be able to come forth, and the parts depend on the coming forth of the whole to be significant instead of superficial. (Page 11)

[iv] Etymologically “intuition” means “seeing into”, which clearly expresses the fact that it is the experience of seeing the phenomenon in depth. (page 68)

[v] Goethe´s method was to extend and deepen his experience of the phenomenon until he reached that element of the phenomenon which is not given externally to sense experience. This is the connection or relationship in the phenomenon which he called the law (Gesetz), and which he found by going more deeply into the phenomenon instead of standing back from it or trying to go beyond it intellectually to something which could not be experienced. (page 21)

[vi] In a moment of intuitive perception, the universal is seen within the particular, so that the particular instance is seen as a living manifestation of the universal. In terms of the category of wholeness, the primal phenomenon is an example of the whole which is present in the part. (page 22)

[vii] Goethe was especially scathing towards the kind of theory which attempted to explain the phenomenon by some kind of hidden mechanism. (page 21)

[viii] It is perceived by an intuitive experience-what Goethe called Anschauung, which "may be held to signify the intuitive knowledge gained through contemplation of the visible aspect" (page 21)

[ix] The experience of a relationship as such is only possible through a transformation from a piecemeal way of thought to a simultaneous perception of the whole. Such a transformation amounts to a restructuring of consciousness itself. (Page 63)

[x] Since the time of Kant’s philosophy there has been a growing recognition of this active role of the mind, and of the tendency to mistake our won intellectual constructs for “the way things are”. (Page 57-58)

[xi] When the phenomenon is seen intuitively, it has a further dimension to it, but this does not change the particular elements in the phenomenon. It changes the way that the elements are related, and hence their significance, but they remain the same elements so far as the senses are concerned. (page 68)

[xii] Experiments with guided imagination indicate that a frequent result is the extension of feelings, whereby the student experiences a deeper, more direct contact with the phenomenon imagined. In this way, a more comprehensive and complete encounter with the phenomenon results, and aspects of the phenomenon otherwise unnoticed often come to light. In addition, students feel themselves to be more in harmony with the phenomenon, as if they themselves were participating in it. This leads to an attitude toward nature more grounded in concern, respect, and responsibility. (page 22)

[xiii] The attempt to think the phenomenon in imagination, and not to think about it, is sensory and not intellectual, concrete not abstract. Attention is thereby further withdrawn from verbal associations and intellectual reasoning. This, therefore, is a deautomatization exercise. But at the same time it is an exercise in trying to see the phenomenon in the simultaneous mode, i.e., all at once. Hence, as well as undoing the usual construction of consciousness by the redirection of attention –which by itself can be sufficient for the other mode of consciousness to emerge- this exercise actively promotes the restructuring of consciousness into an organ of holistic perception. (Page 66)

[xiv]Scientific knowledge is not knowledge of what happens to be true –since this would not be “knowledge” for Aristotle- but of what cannot be otherwise and hence must be true. (Page 104)

[xv] Goethe, saw the knowledge of the phenomenon as being intimately related to the phenomenon itself, because for him the state of “being known” was to be understood as a further stage of the phenomenon itself. It is the stage which the phenomenon reaches in human consciousness. (page 108)

[xvi] He realized that different Vortstellungsarten would result in the world being illuminated differently, and hence being disclosed in different modes. (page 120) (the German Word means ways of conceiving or seeing, then this different knowledge’s would indeed affect action and structure, i.e. the system)