I have being circumspect in participation but this issue of law, story,
and patterns speaks to an issue that has been forming for me, and that is
as always meaning.
I will not start with meaning but with definition and some of you may
perceive as meaning.
Law, in the scientific sense, has always represented to me the current
level of understanding we share on a specific set or process within an
interactive, interrelated universe. And as it was once described to me as
the statement of fact unitl something comews along to change what we know.
Stories, again to me, are the perpetuation of knowledge that embraces
perception, possibilities, passion, imagery, order, energy, action and
realibility in describing patternr recognition.
Living, self-ordering systems are not built on laws but more an
accumulation of iterrations of patterns, that include our knowledge,
learning patterns, emotions, social/cultural patterns, perceptions and
expressions through stories, music, laughter etc.
The debate on law and story reflects the origins of meaning in our
individual lives, i.e. knowledge through; identifiable structural
elements; larger conceptual understanding, logical pattern sequence
identification or relative importance and impact. The linking of the
understanding into any type of operative whole may come through
reality/existence, meaning that couples, impartial sequential ordering,
and which is most important comes first. The debate has ventured through
those finding order and structure of primary interest, those who require
meaning as the base, others that look to the logical independent ordering
and still those who look through imagery human valuation at issues of law
and stories.
Ghandi perceived law (a legal/social definition) as not requiring
complicity but as a statement that ought to represent the larger
understanding held in common for the moment, but and a big but, is dynamic
and changeable. I am comfortable with this interpretation in reflecting on
the previous discussion. He also found the Story as the Village as a basis
for metaphorical expression and definition of understanding of life.
Where does this thinking the notes have spawned leave me:
1. the larger system is different from the smaller units and systems that
form it but an expression of all
2. Law is an interpretation or expression of what we understand and does not
preceed but express.
3. Elements are not inherently sumative in meaning, value, process or logic
4.Stories are more dynamic, expressive and connective of our shared
understandings and form a point around which our differing perceptual
preferences can gather.
5. Law is a bookmark that allows focus to move to other areas expanding our
understandings of universe/system.
6. Depending on what you define as "system" interest and interpretation
flows through the approcahes noted above.
I may have diverged but I think we are working on two key issues; how we
each understand and gain greater understanding, and how we share the
understanding across our differing doors. Through this we form
"living-system", self-ordering, self-maintaining, self-reproducing and
self-trancending.
Thanks. I look forward to any responses. Have a good Saturday if it is
still Saturday in your part of the world.
---
Jim Campbell e-mail: CAMPBELL@upanet.uleth.ca
Public
Access Internet - via the University of Lethbridge
190 Oxford Rd. West Phone & Fax: (403) 381 3774
Lethbridge, Alberta Myers-Briggs Type: ENTP
Canada T1K 4V4
"Life-learning: creating new forms, and in turn not diminishing
possibilities"