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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. An Ontology for Systemic Knowing

Author : Raghav Rajagopalan

Published in: Immersive Systemic Knowing

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The systems ontology is characterised, corresponding to recent systemic findings about the nature of reality. Three key features, an idea of the interconnectedness of all things, the idea of enactive cognition , and an idea of the teleonomic principle, are suggested as central to a systems perspective. The irrationality inhering in the modern outlook and its rigid and limited view of basic ontological elements such as space and time is described. The debates and understanding of cognition are reviewed and the enactive idea of cognition is elaborated by incorporating a model called the anticipatory present moment . The inherent paradoxes in reality as constructed from purely rational frames are described. The chapter concludes by stating plausible political , epistemic, and pragmatic goals for systems thinking that follow on this systems ontology.

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previous chapter Three Basic Perspectives to Evaluate Systems Thinking
next chapter Two Useful Models of Knowing
Footnotes
1
From this point onwards, applied systems thinking is simply referred to using the generic label ‘systems thinking’.
 
2
Which is important to note given that Laszlo is evaluating an area where metaphysical speculation abounds, and traditional scientists can frequently be dismissive about.
 
3
Ateljevic (2013) documents how such relearning is informing the practise of science across numerous disciplines by young inquirers around the world, confronted by the intransigent nature of contemporary challenges and bumping up against the limits on knowing imposed by the extant practices within their disciplines (see Sect. 3.​6).
 
4
Some instances including reported experiences of other persons trained in meta-rational ways of knowing using arts-based research methods are included in Chap. 6.
 
5
Sources of ideas arising from non-Western cultures or intuitive processes are not permitted to be acknowledged within the canons, or commandments, of the modern theology of rationalism and first-order science.
 
6
The reference to the pronouns is related to an earlier discussion drawing a parallel with Wilber’s (1995), analysis of the same issue. Although both Heron and Reason recognise this separate, fifth domain, they do not dwell on this much in the development of their framework of types of knowing; whereas I wish particularly to emphasize this fifth domain because it is precisely the blind spot in modern Western rationalism.
 
7
An Eastern practice currently ‘translated’ (Latour, 1991) into a Western discovery and accordingly anointed with the new “modern” “scientific” name—mindfulness or mindful alertness.
 
8
Ironically, truly considered, as I explained earlier, it is the ‘modern’ that is tribalistic in terms of Malhotra’s evolutionary perspective. To speak in existential universe mapper terms (Sect. 3.​4), we need to favour an ‘include and ascend’ approach that restores and uplifts the first-order science model by reintegrating these varieties of human experience and consciousness, adding the Humanistic (with vital dimensions of the Mechanistic and Conformistic) to the excessive anchorage in the Individualistic and Aspirational. By a balanced (re)alignment of all these levels, an enlivening and the awakening of a truly holistic perspective is invited. (‘Holistic’ is a badging that should, I imagine, be acceptable to Systems Thinkers!)
 
9
Especially when stuck in the mire of the limitations of a noun-based language such as English (see Sect. 5.​2.​4).
 
10
See, for example, the discussion of Husserl on page 19; also, an explanation about how Anglo-American analytic philosophy has steadfastly attempted to find meaning as a fixed relation between words and the world, from Mark Johnson, on pages 149–150.
 
11
This would appear paradoxical or ironical viewed solely from a Becoming-striving perspective, but accords well with the abiding orientation.
 
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Metadata
Title
An Ontology for Systemic Knowing
Author
Raghav Rajagopalan
Copyright Year
2020
Book
Immersive Systemic Knowing

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49134-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-49135-2

Copyright Year: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49135-2_4