the Pearl of Tao

speaking of Tao

Gregory Bateson, photographer. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson working among the Iatmul,
Tambunam, 1938.
Gelatin silver print.

LANGUAGE COMMONLY STRESSES ONLY ONE SIDE OF ANY INTERACTION

We commonly speak as though a single "thing" could "have" some characteristic. A stone, we say, is "hard," "small," "heavy," "yellow," "dense," "fragile," "hot," "moving," "stationary," "visible," "edible," "inedible" and so on.

That is how our language is made: "The stone is hard." And so on. And that way of talking is good enough for the marketplace: "That is a new brand." "The potatoes are rotten." "The eggs are fresh." "The container is damaged." "The diamond is flawed." "A pound of apples is enough." And so on. But this way of talking is not good enough in science or epistemology. To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least two sets of interactions in time.
"The stone is hard" means a) that when poked it resisted penetration and b) that certain continual interactions among the molecular parts of the stone in some way bond the parts together. 
"The stone is stationary" comments on the location of the stone relative to the location of the speaker and other possible moving things. It also comments on matters internal to the stone: its inertia, lack of internal distortion, lack of friction at the surface, and so on. Language continually asserts by the syntax of subject and predicate that "things" somehow "have" qualities and attributes. A more precise way of talking bout insist that the "things" are produced, are seen as separate from other "things," and are made "real" by their internal relations and by their behavior in relationship with other things and with the speaker.
It is necessary to be quite clear about the universal truth that whatever "things" may be in their pleromatic and thingish world, they can only enter the world of communication and meaning by their names, their qualities and their attributes (i.e., by reports of their internal and external relations and interactions).

Patience (7 of Pentacles)

There are times when the only thing to do is to wait. The seed has been planted, the child is growing in the womb, the oyster is coating the grain of sand and making it into a pearl. This card reminds us that now is a time when all that is required is to be simply alert, patient, waiting. The woman pictured here is in just such an attitude. Contented, with no trace of anxiety, she is simply waiting. Through all the phases of the moon passing overhead she remains patient, so in tune with the rhythms of the moon that she has almost become one with it. She knows it is a time to be passive, letting nature take its course. But she is neither sleepy nor indifferent; she knows it is time to be ready for something momentous. It is a time full of mystery, like the hours just before the dawn. It is a time when the only thing to do is to wait.

---

We have forgotten how to wait; it is almost an abandoned space. And it is our greatest treasure to be able to wait for the right moment. The whole existence waits for the right moment. Even trees know it--when it is time to bring the flowers and when it is time to let go of all the leaves and stand naked against the sky. They are still beautiful in that nakedness, waiting for the new foliage with a great trust that the old has gone, and the new will soon be coming, and the new leaves will start growing. We have forgotten to wait, we want everything in a hurry. It is a great loss to humanity.... In silence and waiting something inside you goes on growing--your authentic being. And one day it jumps and becomes a flame, and your whole personality is shattered; you are a new man. And this new man knows what ceremony is, this new man knows life's eternal juices.

A western contemporary of Tao in Tao

 

 Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588, Utrecht – 1629, idem)

  Heraclitus -  1628

 Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

"INTO THE SAME RIVERS WE STEP AND DO NOT STEP.
YOU CANNOT STEP TWICE IN THE SAME RIVER.
EVERYTHING FLOWS AND NOTHING ABIDES.
EVERYTHING GIVES WAY AND NOTHING STAYS FIXED.
COOL THINGS BECOME WARM, THE WARM GROWS COOL.
THE MOIST DRIES, THE PARCHED BECOMES MOIST.
IT IS BY DISEASE THAT HEALTH IS PLEASANT;
BY EVIL THAT GOOD IS PLEASANT,
BY HUNGER, SATIETY; BY WEARINESS, REST.
IT IS ONE AND THE SAME THING TO BE LIVING OR DEAD,
AWAKE OR ASLEEP, YOUNG OR OLD.
THE FORMER ASPECT IN EACH CASE BECOMES THE LATTER,
AND THE LATTER AGAIN THE FORMER,
BY SUDDEN UNEXPECTED REVERSAL.
IT THROWS APART
AND THEN BRINGS TOGETHER AGAIN.
ALL THINGS COME IN THEIR DUE SEASONS.
INTO THE SAME RIVERS WE STEP AND DO NOT STEP...
... because the appearance, and remember, only the appearance, remains the same.
Otherwise, everything changes and flows."


"THE HIDDEN HARMONY
IS BETTER THAN THE OBVIOUS.
OPPOSITION BRINGS CONCORD.
OUT OF DISCORD
COMES THE FAIREST HARMONY.
IT IS IN CHANGING
THAT THINGS FIND REPOSE.
PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND
HOW THAT WHICH IS AT VARIANCE WITH ITSELF,
AGREES WITH ITSELF.
THERE IS A HARMONY IN THE BENDING BACK,
AS IN THE CASE OF THE BOW AND LYRE.
THE NAME OF THE BOW IS LIFE,
BUT ITS WORK IS DEATH."

Heraclitus of Ephesus (535 - 475 BCE)

what we see of Tao?

One of the fields of complexity where most has been concentrated the research is the neurophysiology of the vision system, that is how and what we see.

Anatomically and physiologically the brain visual system is widely known:

 

The image formed on the eye retina and codified is transferred by the optic nerve in the lateral geniculate nucleus (NGL/LGN), situated in the thalamus, from where nerve pathways go toward the visual cortex (CV/VC), the brain area which specific elaborate the information coming from the optic nerve. In particuar images from the right eye are elaborated in the left visual cortex, and vice versa.

The visual information flow according to this anatomical-functional model is represented as:

Following this model some thousands (litteraly) of works and papers has been made. The direct consequence of a model of this kind is the representationalist approach to the brain, outlined by Maturana and Varela with the Caesar's figure looking at the Imperial Eagle:

In the Varela words:

"The Caesar's Eagle is represented in his brain through the activity flow (the film tape) cthat undergoes a "treatment" (by some small operator) and which later produces the behavioral proof of  the recognition by the word "eagle" (through carefully selected organ pipes)"

A model of this type is also what normally assumed by common sense: an object outise ourselves is represented in some way inside our head; more technically an object in the visual field are associated  specific neural activity patternsi, typically in the primary visual cortex. The ultimate consequence is when we imagine ourselves, where the imagined ourselves naturally imagines himself, and so on, as in the following illustration by Von Foester, an extreme solipsism case:

In reality, the model of the flow of visual information in the brain is radically different, closer to the following type (NPG: geniculate nucleus; Coll. Sup.: superior colliculus; Ipo.: isothalamus; FRM: midbrain):

where have been added those connections to the NGL which do not come only from the retina but also from other central areas of the brain, including the same visual cortex. The conclusion is that less then 20% of the information dell'informazione which get the geniculate body come from the retina. The situation, drom the point of view of a neuron in the geniculate body, is more similar to a cocktail party rather than to a linear element of an information chain forwarded from the retina to the visual cortex. In addition, the dashed arrows may be bidirectional for the information, for example the visual cortex receives information from the geniculate body but at the same time forwards other information to the geniculate body. The Varela conclusion is:

"... in the visual system ... does not exists an overall flux, the system is organized in a reticular pattern, and there is a simultaneous convergence or coherence among all the parts concerned."

Francisco J. Varela: Brain complexity and autonomy of the living

He loved Clissold Tao

clissoldpark.com

Tao does not work backward

CAUSALITY DOES NOT WORK BACKWARD

Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause. This generalization has been a stumbling block for the psychological and biological sciences since the times of Plato and Aristotle. The Greeks were inclined to believe in what were later called final causes. They believed that the pattern generated at the end of a sequence of events could be regarded as in some way causal of the pathway followed by that sequence. This led to the whole of teleology, as it was called (telos meaning the end or purpose of a sequence).
The problem with confronted biological thinkers was the problem of adaptation. It appeared that a crab had claws in order to hold things. The difficulty was always in arguing backward from the purpose of claws to the causation of the development of claws. For a long time, it was considered heretical in biology to believe that claws were there because they were useful. This belief contained the teleological fallacy, an inversion of causality in time.
Lineal thinking will always generate either the teleological fallacy (that end determines process) or the myth of some supernatural controlling agency.
What is the case is that when causal systems become circular, a change in any part of the circle can be regarded as cause for change at a later time in any variable anywhere in the circle. It thus appears that a rise in the temperature of the room can be regarded as the cause of the change in the switch of the thermostat and, alternatively, that the action of the thermostat can be regarded as controlling the temperature of the room.