Spiral illustrating progression of species and individual knowledge

1. One World Information System
The Spiral of Knowledge
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Legend: S c ie n c e
Learning and Insight
Evolving Mind
COPYRIGHT ROY ROEBUCK, 1982 -2007
The guiding definition of management in the General Enterprise Management (GEM) approach is quot;Management is the resolution of complexity and diversity in science and society into a system of controlled orderquot;. (Reingold Encyclopedia of
Management, 1963. Superseded by Gale Group Encyclopedia of Management, ISBN 0-7876-3065-9).
This “spiral of knowledge” model was developed in 1967 as an attempt by the author to understand how to effectively gain and apply a broad and balanced education, commonly known as a “liberal arts” education, with continuing refinement
from that time. The author was operating from a perception he had envisioned in 1957 that everything was inter-connected within a single universal thing and thus part of a universal “cause and effect” network starting with the “big bang”
forming the universe, and perhaps before, and thus that everything “mattered” from this “unified” or “oneness” perception. To the author, all of existence was a single evolving object, in which he, and every other thing, was interdependent.
This diagram is a conceptual representation of recorded human knowledge and evolving experience. It illustrates that management is the task of guiding the progressive integration of individual perceptions of events into sciences, for
subsequent ubiquitous application across society. This progression moves from one domain of knowledge to the next (for example, philosophy as basis of mathematics, in turn as basis of physics, etc.) until one perceives all recorded
knowledge, and all that the knowledge represents, as integral parts of a resolved whole. This knowledge is expanded and shared through the learning technique known as science, by observing various phenomenon of the world, developing
models giving an initial hypothesis for a given phenomena, tuning the initial hypothesis through subsequent observations until it is a working hypothesis that can be shared and communicated to potentially become an accepted hypothesis,
which is then formalized and given the detailed description and precision of a theory, enabling consistently reproducible events showing the phenomena, and then setting the theory into ubiquitous practice as a shared principle applicable
across all societies, thus giving the basis for expanded individual and societal perception, to continue the spiral into its next cycle. This “spiral of knowledge” itself is a “working hypothesis” reflecting observations on individual and societal
learning and adapting.
From this spiral, we can hypothesize that a well expressed individual is one who achieves high levels of integration of their senses, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Likewise, a well balanced society is one which displays full integration, or
wholeness, in its science, social behaviors, and perception (also known as spirit). To achieve this, an individual or society needs inclusion and acceptance of all knowledge, and all ways, are accepted as valid to their adherents, appreciated
in their context, and possibly agreed-with in theory or principle.
To paraphrase the above management definition, quot;management is the process of resolving the evolving complexity and diversity in science, society, and perception into a simpler dynamic system of controlled order.“ This maps exactly to
the now-scientific relation between chaos (e.g., complexity and diversity) and order. Another way to look at this is that diversity and complexity are the decaying/creating/variance/differing tendency of the universe and intelligence, while
“management” is the forming/organizing/simplifying/pattern-finding tendency of the universe and intelligence.
We hypothesize that individuals and cultures without an effective management philosophy show weak correlation between accepted/universal science, their society, and their perception and belief-systems (philosophy, cosmology,
semantics, religion). Without a unitive management philosophy, integrative cosmology, shared semantics, and inclusive religion working to find overlapping patterns and similarities in knowledge domains, the likelihood of a person or group
resolving the complexity and diversity of day-to-day existence into simpler, less confusing, orderly states, known as ontologies, is diminished. If an individual or culture cannot reconcile their perceptions/belief-systems, accepted/ubiquitous
science, and social patterns into rational and coherent ontologies, then they will continually operate from dualistic, disintegrative, and exclusionary, rather than unitary, integrative, and inclusive basic methods and assumptions.
We further hypothesize that with individual and group basic assumptions (i.e., a paradigm) coming from dualism, disintegration, and exclusion beliefs, their perceptions of the world are fragmented and disorderly. This is because their
paradigm focuses on the differences and distance between science, society, and perception/systems/spiritual beliefs, rather than on their similarities and overlap. Thus, with a dualistic paradigm; science, society, and
perception/system/spiritual beliefs exist as separate domains of knowledge and experience with no clear relation to each other, and are in constant conflict. As a result of their fragmented and disorderly world view, the beneficial synergy
and synthesis from reconciling their knowledge and language into a holistic ontology is blocked, and discord is the order of their day.
Semantics is the mechanism by which to reconcile fragmented and disorderly world knowledge and thus start the movement towards shared vocabularies, and thus shared perceptions, and thus more effective communication, and thus
broadening and overlapping communities, and thus more inclusive societies, and thus expanding civilization. The absence of semantics results in ineffective communication, referred to biblically as “Babel” and technically as “noise”.
But where does this tendency towards dualism come from? It is said Aristotle created what was called the first science, taxonomy, which is the naming and categorizing of things. Taxonomy is one of the semantic methods for categorizing
broader and narrower terms that name related subjects. Our hypothesis is that that our species was initially aware only of a continuum of experiences brought to us through our senses, as were perhaps all living entities. There were no
“terms”. Then, a genetic variation coupled with one or more events led to the behavior of perceiving something as “different from the continuum” - a phenomena. Those exhibiting this “phenomena-perceiving” behavior probably attached a
symbol, such as an unusual utterance or verbalization to this different thing, giving it a name - a term. Further, this naming of the different thing then led to the thought that the thing was separate from ourselves (e.g., quot;not mequot;) and the
continuum, creating the first category (or taxonomy) of named things. This perhaps gave us some survival advantage, and thus became an evolutionary trend, eventually coming into our species' genetic pattern. Additionally, the relation-
oriented construct of human emotion probably entered the scene around the same time, probably in direct relation to the perception of difference and to naming. This then led to the need for semantics, the need to communicate and
understand each other across differing communities having variant perceptions and interpretations.
Our hypothesis includes that this set of circumstances began our species' long history of naming, and mentally and emotionally separating, categorizing, and judging things perceived as different, rather than accepting all things as another
pattern of the continuum. Thus, this capability to name, separate, categorize, and judge is fundamental to our being human – our Humanity. To understand an animal that flows within the continuum, moving from event to event, form to
form, in an ever evolving pattern, study an animal such as a cat or a fish. They exhibit quot;grace“ - animal grace. The above situation describes what has been referred to as humanity's quot;fall from gracequot;. We learned to mentally and emotionally
distinguish, name, categorize and judge, rather than to observe and respond simply through instinct. We eventually diminished the instinctive response to the continuum, lost sight of the commonality among things, and began to mentally
and emotionally perceive only the differences. To borrow another biblical reference, behavior as an expression of continuum (i.e., graceful behavior) is fundamentally quot;goodquot;, while behavior as an expression of separation (i.e., judgmental or
attacking behavior) is fundamentally quot;evilquot;. Thus, when our species began to respond to mental and emotional perceptions of difference, we quot;gained the knowledge of good and evilquot;, quot;casting us out of the Gardenquot;, our instinctive continuum
of wholeness.
Apparently since that time, our species, principally through the efforts of a minority of individuals, has been trying to mentally and emotionally reacquire and express that instinctive continuum-acceptant graceful awareness and behavior.
Their goal is to instinctively, mentally, and emotionally perceive, experience, and express continuum (achieving what was lost) without giving up the mental and emotional uniqueness (what was gained) which makes us creative beings. We
hypothesize that this the basis for all human religion, and when this goal is individually attained, of mysticism.
From quantum physics and physical cosmology, we learn that the natural order of the world is connection or quot;non-localityquot; (i.e., nothing is isolated). All objects are connected and interdependent in space and time. Everything is within a
larger system, rather than separated by space and time as isolated entities.
Your quot;Worldquot; is the totality of your perceptions of the universe and the framework within which you exist, forming your “ontology” (i.e., your world view, your model of how your world works). Your quot;Identityquot; is your quot;perception of connectionquot; to
the surrounding world. Your Identity changes as your World (i.e., ontology) changes. The basis of a person's perspective is either that their world is a separate unique island of reality (duality), or that it is an integrated whole (unitary). Note
that in a unitary paradigm, something can be distinct, individuated, and/or unique, and yet not separated from its environment. Each person is unique, resulting from the billions of years of events leading to their current moment, but are
always unified as parts of one all-encompassing, universe-spanning entity.
Copyright Roy Roebuck, 1967-2007. See Creative Commons License at http://one-world-is.com/beam.