A
PROGRAM OF EXPLORATION AND TRANSFORMATION FOR THE ELEMENTS OF BEING
ANIL MITRA PHD, COPYRIGHT © 1999 AND REVISED May 13, 2003
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Document status: May 13, 2003
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A PROGRAM OF EXPLORATION AND TRANSFORMATION FOR THE
ELEMENTS OF BEING
I. DESIGN AND PLANNING FOR THE PROGRAM
1 DESIGN ISSUES FOR THE PROGRAM OF EXPLORATION
1.1 Transformation… the fundamental objective
A primary focal point
for the program is the question: what is the capability and potential of an
individual, what may an individual being or part of the whole know and become?
Transformation includes exploration and metamorphosis
Exploration includes learning; and experience both
physical and ideational and reflective; and includes discovery and
use. The ideational or mental aspect is meant to include thought, emotion and
will: all aspects of mind. Exploration also has the following dimensions:
direct from the world and indirect through others,
education… since others are part of the world this distinction is not
completely natural. Sources: bridge print and digital text; networking
blurs the formal/informal and draft/published distinctions and need for
pre-primary sources. Sources are thus primary - original communications
and records, secondary - compilations, and tertiary - reference
and guide
Personal sources include: B -
circles, B/E, JQ which include vision and maps; and contacts
General sources include main schools and current
writers. Some benchmarks for the modern academic disciplines are Encyclopedia
Britannica, Evolution and Design and related work, and Mortimer W.
Adler’s A Guidebook to Learning of 1986. While these benchmarks
have numerous limitations, they are perhaps, as general purpose works, the best
of their kind as of the present
The topics
include physical, perceptual, conceptual, dynamic,
transformational and metamorphic aspects of exploration. A thesis is
that the distinctions among these modes are blurred
Metamorphosis includes changes in form, content,
extent and possibilities for duration of an individual being
1.2 Completeness and Minimality… the
fundamental existential and operative criteria
Relative to the
objectives defined, the program will be:
Completely covering…over B -
Being-Meaning-Action; monads-groups, and modes; it is to go beyond
culture…especially beyond modern culture - eastern and western
Minimal… it will contain only what
is needed, combine different aspects of the program in the phases, perform
maximal conceptual extrapolation. For an immediate minimal program see below
Urgent… to marshal resources and
reserves to realize and express contact with original and entire being as it is
Dynamic… moving out: self --> absolute…in exploration and
discovery of The Variety and Extent of Being
For some aspects of
covering and dynamics see The Variety and Extent of
Being
Summary: the program will be complete,
minimal, urgent and dynamic relative to the variety of being and the phases of
the program
2 PLAN
Site types: correspond
to, primary, secondary, tertiary…; primary
the informal primary sites include individuals’ pages and
institutions - associations, professional societies…while the formal
sites include devoted sites and online journals; secondary include “digital
text” in addition to conventional secondary and likewise tertiary
includes lists of links and search engines and portals in addition to
conventional tertiary sources
Next reduce to a minimal set consistent
with completeness over the dimensions of Being and the
phases of the program
II. A PRELIMINARY AND MINIMAL PROGRAM OF EXPLORATION
1. Experience: nature,
society and vision…
Locate primal source for [a] primal experience and [b]
nature; extrapolate with reading. Example “Tarahumar”
2. Ideas: being, mind,
absolute, consciousness, philosophy, computation
3. Computer: gather
knowledge tools and ideas; integrate
Minimal cognitivism,
Strong/Weak AI, nature of machine mind: hardware, software, co-evolution
Minimal programming, Computer Science, technology
Knowledge applications: concept synthesis, human knowledge project
4. Social action
Online institute
Placement
III. THE TOPICS IN THE PROGRAM OF EXPLORATION
1 EXPLORATIONS, TRANSFORMATIONS AND
METAMORPHOSES OF BEING
1.1 Being and Related Topics. Philosophy…Being as a Whole
Topics - six major traditions - and keywords:
Philosophies of the Veda
- the gods Indra[creation, war, rain], Varuna [sacred authority], Agni
[fire],Usas [dawn], Rudras
[storm], Mitra [honour], Surya
and Savitr; the rituals and sacrifices
especially the soma ritual; Upanishad - karma-samsara and Atman-Brahman and “tat
tvam asi”,
“ayam atma brahman”, “aham brahma asi” and “neti, neti”s; Bhagavad Gita - action and karma yoga
and also jnana and bhakti yoga; Buddhism
and Buddha - eight-fold way and four stages of being where
the final stage, arahat, is enlightenment in
this life; Samkhya and Yoga - unite atman-brahman
by Astanga yoga: five preparatory elements [Hatha yoga] and samyama or dharana-dhyana-samadhi;
and Vedanta - the three fundamental texts are the Upanishads, especially
the older Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya,
Taittiriya, and Katha,
the terse Brahma-sutras or Vedanta-sutras, and the Bhagavad
Gita…the ideas of permanence of being, atman is Brahman, stages of
life…and realization - brahman is the only
real, there is one brahman, I and brahman,
the universe is brahman…and of Isvara, Purusha,
Prajapati, Atman, Brahman, Citta, Prakrti, Prâna, Vayu…
Individuals and writers:
Radhakrishnan and Zimmerman; Eliot
Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe, A Companion to
World Philosophies, 1997
Sources:
My notes on Yoga and
The Periods of Indian Philosophy
Topics - major philosophies concerned
with the nature of being - and keywords:
Realism; idealism; materialism;
phenomenology Husserl; existentialism Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
Jaspers; and - in contrast - analytic philosophy, deconstruction
and pragmatism
Being, time, sein,
zeit
Individuals and writers:
Philosophers of being: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, the Scholastics, Eckhart, Leibniz,
Jonathan Edwards, Avicenna, Hegel, Fichte, Brentano, Whitehead and the
philosophy of organism, Heidegger, Martin Buber,
Santayana, Sartre, Jaspers, Lovejoy[?],Bonhoeffer,
Borges, Marcel, Maslow[?]
Analytic
Philosophy
and related topics: Meaning and Use/Logical Positivism/Logical
Atomism and British Empiricism/Ordinary Language Philosophy/Moore,
Russell and Wittgenstein/Oxford Philosophy - other Oxford Philosophers are J.L.
Austin, A. J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, Richard Hare, G. J.
Warnock, Peter Strawson, J. N. Findley, S. Hampshire,
Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa
Foot, Isiah Berlin
The decline of
Analytic Philosophy began with Word and Object by the
Sources:
Britannica outlines
and articles on Western Philosophy: History, Schools and Doctrines,
Philosophers, Philosophies of the Branches of Knowledge
History of Western
Philosophy, A. Mitra
Recent texts: Archie
Bahm
Since the topics are
related the sources cross over
The Absolute - Aquinas, Augustine, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alexander,
Whitehead, Nozick on the origins of being
Mysticism - Buddha, Christ, Eckart, Descartes, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Freud, Jung
Being - Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger,
Dreyfus…and the Variety of the Elements of Being
Self Knowledge - Shamanism, Upanishad, Gita,
Vedanta
1.2 Mind, Consciousness and Metaphysics
General…the modern literature 1960 -
2000
Searle, Chalmers,
Dennett, Penrose, Edelman, Crick…Baars etc…
1.2.1 Consciousness, Mind and Nature
Psychology and
Sociology; Biology, Anthropology and Physics; Computers and AI; Philosophy
1.2.2 Consciousness, Mind and the World
Exploration of
consciousness and mind, individuals as plurals, relations among individual
minds and the world, exploration of the world
The
idea, levels and dimensions, and dynamics of being. Being through and being beyond
time. The Absolute and consciousness
1.3 Exploration and Experience
The first need is: Summation of Studies done and
Experience had…and Needed. Extrapolations
Generating the
Variety and Extent of Being: self --> absolute
[dynamic moving out] generates the logic F º
B --> B[t] and dynamics B = B.M.A. of existence where B, or entity, has the types Nature,
Society, Mind or Psyche, and Universal while A, action,
includes agency and choice and so determinate and indeterminate process in
balance and M, meaning or relationship, includes the primitive idea of
space-time and of dialog
Some dimensions -
and examples…the
real place for these details are in the divisions!
Synthesis of
Nature-Society-Psyche [mind]-Universal... may be enhanced through primal
interaction; modern, political
Nature: Journey Quest - touch: being, primality - sustenance, the hunt, migration; touching,
simulating the “bear” - “no language”
Modern - Annie Dillard,
Henry Thoreau, R. D. Lawrence, Peter Matthiessen,
Barry Lopez, David L. Mech, Farley Mowatt[?]…the ethnobotanists…geography
and the geographers
Physical exploration is naturally included - see below
Social: Work, communication, social
action, primal society
Psyche: Meditation, various psychological
and vision experiments and explorations
William James, The Variety of Religious Experience, 1902. Dream search
Modern visionary
seekers: Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman,
Charles Tart…
Universal Being: dynamics and study of being; the
Absolute and being as such
1.3.4 The Explorations of Others
Prehistoric
“exploration” as a paradigm for universal exploration. The primal migrations e.g. the
Siberians to North America, with integration with land, and ocean and their
changing forms…is a much better paradigm than is modern exploration which
is goal directed and not integrated with the earth
The studies of cultural
and physical anthropology
2 KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING AND DISCOVERY
Art, and religion are covered above.
Technology is in section 2.2. These items are included here for completeness
2.1.1 Knowledge as a Whole: The Variety of Cultures…The Place of
Science…
Physics
Bio- and
Neuro-Psychology
2.1.4 Anthropology and Psychology
Paul Radin
2.1.5 Social Studies, Social Sciences, Culture and Institutions
2.1.10 Linguistics, Language, Logic and Mathematics
2.2 Professions and Applied Studies
2.2.1 General and Social Design and Planning
With global and
national through local consultation
2.2.2 Engineering and Technology…and Design
3 ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION PROCESSING ELEMENTS AND SYSTEMS
Since this document
is part of the design of the program of exploration and transformation this
section emphasizes the role of such elements in the dynamics of being. The
following aspects are relevant:
3.1 Computer as Dynamic Element in the
Electronic hardware and
software
Designed and evolving
systems: hardware-software interaction, actual including but not only designed
Computers and
communication systems as independent agents and as tools or co-agents
Biological or living
and mental function including, possibly, conscious mental function
Theoretical or
conceptual and experimental and experiential approaches
Knowledge dynamics -
includes conceptual, perceptual transformation; knowledge engineering and AI
Human knowledge project
4 EXPLORATIONS IN SOCIAL AND GROUP ELEMENTS AND ACTION
Action
General: Action and
choice; metaphysics of Being-Meaning-Action; Ethics, utilitarianism, planning,
design, cause and causation
In specific cultures,
traditions, metaphysics and philosophies
Sources …are not other than
the elements of being - being itself, studies,
art, religion, institutions, professions…
the following sources pertain to all modes - individual, group and
general
Significance and
meaning
Relation to the whole
Symbolism
Cognition and design
The practical aspects
of Sections 1.1.1, 1.1.2 and 2.2
Interaction, group action and causation
Influence as causation
Influence as flow and
balance; “no mind”
Charisma and rhetoric
My life and its work;
explorations and transformations of being
Charisma and influence
A source: Knowledge
…real knowledge
Binding individual and
social action; see institutions and related topics in section 2.2 above or the
corresponding sections in EB bookmarks and Web links
Focus and influence
4.4 General Social Action
Arenas: Work, family,
life, institutions [see Section 2.2]
Modes of action and
influence
The principles of
social action include:
Principles of
individual action applied to the group
Institutions [see
Section 2.2 above and in bookmarks and web links.]
Miscellaneous items
from sections 1 and 2.1
History of European
Overseas Exploration and Empires
Exploration
Technology of Earth and Space Exploration
Extraction and Processing Industries
Exploration
Space exploration
The Solar System: Exploration
Mapping and Surveying
Mapping and Surveying: The Age of Discovery and Exploration
Speleology
Earth Sciences: Exploration
Geography
Historical Geography
Ratzel, Friedrich
Vidal de La Blache, Paul
Leif Erikson
Columbus
Hispanic Explorers
Amundsen, Scott
The
The
The
The
Geography is subsumed
under item 1, above
3 Migration and Travel
The Art of Literature:
Travel and Letters
Animal Behaviour [Contents at Migration]
Animal Migration
Population [Contents at Human Migration - Early to Modern]
Human Migration [short art]
Sample articles on specific groups
Birds: Migration
Mammals: Migration
Fishes: migration
Insects: migration
The
Biosphere and Concepts of Ecology [Contents at Migrations of marine organisms.]
The Islamic World [Contents at Migration and renewal 1041-1405]
Homing
Team and Individual
Sports
Mountaineering
Backpacking
Survival Training
Hillary, Sir Edmund Percival
Tenzing Norgay
Hunting
Fishing
Camping
Orienteering
6 Some [mostly modern] Expeditions and Explorers
Beagle
Challenger Expedition
Great Northern Expedition
Lewis and
The
Royal Geographical Society [some expeditions]
Humboldt Glacier...world’s largest glacier
Arfersiorfik Fjord
The Biological Sciences [Contents at: Biological expeditions.]
Everest, Mount - incl. exploration
Kosi River - Everest drainage
K2 - incl. Exploration
Annapurna - incl. ascent
Aconcagua, Mount - highest in W. Hem. - incl.
Exploration
McKinley, Mount - incl. Exploration
Denali National Park and Preserve
Shackleton, Sir Ernest Henry - Antarctic explorer
Heyerdahl, Thor - Polynesian Ra Expedition
Mikkelsen, Ejnar -
Greenland explorer
Sturt, Charles - Australian explorer