In that light/shadow here's a reminder from Edwards in the religion and politics thread:
"In the [preceding] figure I draw two holons encountering each other in a moment of relationship. The space between is filled with the interobjective artifacts of that encounter – words, gestures, signs, touch, meanings, displays, roles, communications. Using the developmental ideas of Vygotsky the space between is filled with the mediating processes and artifacts that flow between the two holons. We can draw an holonic boundary around some logical grouping of these artefacts to identify the “mediating holon”. The archetypal mediating holon is the “Word”. The pure expression of communion. It is not coincidental that in the Catholic tradition the very heart of the great sacrament of the Mass is called 'communion.' This is the recognition of the Godhead as manifest through community, through sharing a meal together, through relationship—completely present in the most fundamental act of existence—a simple act of breaking bread together as incarnate beings. The beginning of all experience and all form and all communication begins there. Hence we have 'In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God.' John here is saying that Jesus is the true agent of Mediation, the ultimate source of connection that gives rise to all distinctions and all encounters between “two or three”. So in this figure of two holons encountering each other we have the 'Word' and 'Love' emerging from the space between."
I shall hereinafter refer to the seemingly everlasting* mediating holon simply as Word.
*For it outlives the person that spoke or wrote it and lasts a good long time, if not forever.
As this is an extension of the theory for anything thread, please consult it for prior info to which I will now refer.
ReplyDeleteTying together some of my prior posts above, we saw how image schemas were prototypes that generally fit into any given hierarchy in the middle, with the most particular and the most general at the extremes of said hierarchy. Often the hierarchicalists find the “cause” of their edifice in those extremes, the fundamental thing-in-itself part and/or the fundamental thing-in-itself principle or ideal Platonic form, which by any other name is certainly metaphysical. When we understand though that those embodied image schemas are indeed the origin of that whole-part gestalt that later becomes hierarchical abstractions we can eliminate the metaphysical implications from this postmetaphysical base and keep our holons of various magnitudes to boot.
Of course one way Edwards comes in is by noting that there are also mediating holons, again being a process “in the middle” or in the “space between” holons of the human type. Again with the metaphor of middleness, that which connects the two poles in relationship so that they can never fly apart into metaphysical extremes.
But I also extend that mediating holon diagram with its shared venn diagram space to any particular individual holon as well, however we choose to define said individual holon, in that the parts which constitute this whole boundary contribute to a meaning that is more than the sum of those parts within that particular whole boundary, yet are not themselves completely subsumed in that specific more inclusive boundary. The easiest example most often used even by kennilinguists is how a word is part of a sentence is part of a paragraph is part of an essay, etc. The essay as a holon has an overall meaning that transcends and contextualizes any particular word, yet that word can and does participate in other sentences, paragraphs and essays and is changed by those larger wholes, as well as mutually changing the larger wholes. There is no master narrative that eternally fixes the meaning of that particular word in all sentences, let alone essays. The word in never completely subsumed.
Now when we take examples from a human holon this seems a bit harder to grasp. Say our brains for example, where the lizard brain is enveloped by the limbic brain which is enveloped by the neo-cortex. We cannot see how the part, lizard brain, can exist without benefit of the whole in which it is now embedded, which now completely subsumes our lizardness. This seems so from the nested hierarchy of physical size and containment, but is this in fact the case? Certainly not. The lizard brain can completely take over the entire body-mind when necessary in those fight-or-flight situations of imminent threat to life. Even here the part’s function will depend on the specific context and not be completely determined by said whole, at least on occasion. Indeed there are times the tail wags the dog, as every man with a hard penis knows all too well.
All of which brings me back to khora and khorons, how to posit the imposition, eff in ineffable in a way that is not either extreme in a metaphysical dichotomy, that resides somewhere in that space between, in media res. For now I can only refer to the “what ‘is’ the difference” thread with perhaps more later.