Patricia B. Porterfield

The search for certainty

1. The Birth of Certainty.- Civilization and Its Concepts.- Language and the Concept of Self.- Construction of the Word World.- The Anthropomorphic World of Words.- 2. Spirits and Gods.- The Creation of Spirits as Causal Agents.- Differentiation of Spirits into Polar Opposites.- Magic and Religion.- A Reverence for Words.- Greek Gods Made in Mans Image.- The Gods of Rome.- 3. Christian Concepts.- The Rise of Christianity.- Reward and Punishment.- Witchcraft and the Persecution of Witches.- Modern Religion and Magic.- 4. Self, Soul, and Psyche.- The Homunculus Within.- Science and the Soul.- The Unconscious.- From Soul to Psyche.- In Search of the Psyche.- The Anthropomorphic World of Words.- Benediction.- The Mechanical World of Form and Function.- 5. Knowledge in Numbers.- The Language of Numbers.- Harmony in Form and Function.- Natural Periodicities.- Science as Master-The Reign of Certainty.- Scientific Discovery and Technology.- Instruments of Change.- 6. Living Machines.- Early Views of Man as a Biologic Organism.- The Biologic Sciences from the Medievalists to Darwin.- The Building Blocks of Life.- What Controls the Machinery of the Body?.- The Building Blocks of Behavior.- The Mechanical World of Form and Function.- Commencement Remarks.- The Relative World of Process.- 7. The Return of Uncertainty.- The Relativity Theories.- The Quantum Theory and Quantum Mechanics.- Systems or Patterns.- Reducing the Uncertainty.- Practical Considerations.- 8. The Emergence of I.- Life as Process.- Living Systems and Information Processing.- The Nature of Mind.- Mind in Society.- The Relative World of Process.- Seminar Conclusion.- Conclusion.- 9. The Death of Certainty.- Increasing Uncertainty-An Overview.- A New Concept of Mind and Body.- Two Modes of Organizing Information.- The Self-A Wave or a Particle?.

General systems approaches in mental health administration : developing state-university collaboration programs.

Developing state-university collaboration is the process of creating mechanisms to couple two systems for mutual benefit. Collaboration requires setting new organizational boundaries for both the state agency and the university and developing new patterns of information flow within and between the organizations. Each organization’s homeostatic properties resist change; this resistance must be balanced by leaders’ attention to the organization’s developmental needs. The impact of collaboration increases tremendously after key thresholds of involvement are attained and a “critical mass” of faculty exerts a synergistic effect that shifts both the state agency and the university department to new functional states.

The Death of Certainty

In the previous chapters we have attempted to illustrate the progress of a conceptual evolution, a search for certainty. This search began with a rather nebulous, poorly differentiated animistic or anthropomorphic way of viewing our world, through progressive differentiation via linguistic tools and other cultural instruments, to a religious conceptual frame in which man and his gods were differentiated from the world. With religion came ritual, dogma, and increased certainty. From the misty continuum of the beginning we became convinced of a standardized reality. Our certainty was bolstered by revelation and reified by a specialized social segment dominated by priests and shamen whose power rested heavily on words.

The Emergence of I

What are the implications of the recent advances in physics and systems and information theories for our concepts concerning life? They are, as we shall see, enormous. Although the implications are clear, however, the final impact upon biology is still to be felt, for the biological sciences are just now beginning to apply the theories emanating from the momentous changes that have occurred in related fields. While physicists have become increasingly concerned with the role of the human mind in defining all physical events in a relative world of process, biologists have until recently tended to be even more involved in the reductionistic approach to life and have concentrated on determining our place in the mechanical world of form and function. During the twentieth century, physicists have focused on relationships within systems and among systems, defining the human mind as an integral aspect of those relationships. “It is,” says Harold J. Morowitz, “as if the two discplines were on fast-moving trains, going in opposite directions and not noticing what is happening across the tracks” [27:p. 34].

Knowledge in Numbers

Using our ability to differentiate became one of our great passions. By using word tools, we began to differentiate or interrupt the continuum of being into discrete units. We dissected our world into blocks and then attempted to put the blocks back together again. The inclination to analyze, synthesize, to interrupt the continuum, is so pronounced that we might term it an innate human property. We see small children dissecting their new toys, sometimes with disastrous consequences, attempting to reduce them to the smallest possible units and then rebuilding them so that the parts at least resemble the original wholes.

The Birth of Certainty

The study of humanity and civilization is the study of evolving conceptual frames. During the centuries many conceptual frames have evolved that have revolutionized our view of ourselves and the universe as each age and each culture attempt to organize their own particular speculations concerning our place in nature.

Spirits and Gods

The crown jewel of the human symbolic operation was the self. Once the self was established and differentiated from the rest of the world, the word blocks were set up in a cause-and-effect sequence. Perhaps the biologic processes involved in segmentalizing our experience into blocks resulted in a sequential arrangement of events into a space and time pattern, leading to a type of linear logic. With language, whether an innate biologic structure or a learned phenomenon, we developed the concept of cause and effect. “If I (the self) act in a certain manner, then I will cause certain things to happen.” It was only a short step from that idea to believing that if I or my self can cause events to occur, other events are probably caused by other selves.

Self, Soul, and Psyche

As we have postulated in the previous three chapters, man used his skill in differentiation to divide the world into two major blocks—the me block, or internal world, and the not-me block, or external world. By use of his word tools he constructed concepts of the external world that reflected his internal world. He anthropomorphized the external world and populated it with spirits, demons, and gods. By a curious twist he then postulated that his internal world was a reflection of his concept of the external world—that he was a creature like the gods or created by God in God’s image. It is a bit confusing as to whether God was manlike or man was godlike. This “image of God” concept was particularly prominent in the Christian paradigm that dominated Western thinking of several centuries.

The Return of Uncertainty

As the twentieth century began, the scientific world was still dominated by Newtonian method and thinking. The work of Newton had allowed a new vision, a new way of understanding the world. Newton and many of his followers were religious men who believed that they were to direct their inquiries toward the discovery of a divinely governed universe that operated according to immutable laws of God. The universe was analogous to a clock that had been wound up by the Creator and was running as He had directed.

Biological Evolution and Systems Theory

With the evolution of the cell, life as an organization entered a new phase of data processing. The coded information contained in the protoplasm of a cell results in an exceedingly complex set of interacting systems mediated through atomic and molecular functions. Some of the functions of these systems regulated by coded information include metabolism, reproduction, irritability, and contractibility. These functions are associated with the cell’s ability to respond to stimuli.