Hans-Josef Heck
Humankind and knowledge - A new outset from scratch
Version 0.1.2b - 20.08.2008 - 17.11.2016
To represent new insights is difficult.
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Because, new insights demand new means of representation.
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Because, designators have their defined meaning
which is to be "changed".
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Because, we are integrated in a knowledge community
and do not want to lose the ties to this community.
One insight is fundamental:
At the beginning of any activity
of any knowledge.creating and of any acting
there must be a WHATFOR.
Why do we have to create knowledge?
In order that our acting will be successful.
We phrase:
We want to use knowledge, if it is useable und thereby
usable, in order to apply it.
Our acting is part of nature, of the becoming.
The becoming has developed more and more complex structures.
We humans have developed to such a complexity
that we are able
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to recognise, to document and to use the
regularities of the fundamental processes and
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to recognise, that nature has been growing
in its complexity up and up.
But we humans did not yet recognise
that all processes of the becoming are
interlinked by single structural principle.
Man has learned to use his mental abilities
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to survey nature, to document the discovered regularities
and to use them to control processes.
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to represent the natural reality model emblematic
and by means of these models to plan its own activities.
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to create innovative structures - and therewith - within
the rules of nature - to create novel realities.
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to take the WHATFOR as a basis for the agreements of coexistence,
which give the WHATFOR of everyone the same autonomy of decision.
We humans did not manage, to realise consciously
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that we keep ourselves prisoners of our thoughts
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that our thinking always has to take some sense, a
WHATFOR as basis for our knowledge.creating as well as
for our acting.
For this WHATFOR we have created various designators, e.g.
objective, reason, cause, function, purpose, mission, charge
and a lot more "synonyms".
We humans did not manage to realise consciously
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that different functions of activity call
for different processes of knowledge.creating and acting.
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that there are four functionally totally different categories
of knowledge.creating, which each of them is necessary
for every acting and every knowledge.creating.
• • • •
Of course, you already know - which these four are?
Only when we have spotted this
as the brake load of our thinking
it will become possible to gather speed.
The imprisonment of ones own thinking one doesn't notice.
If one would notice, it wouldn't be imprisonment any more.
The "best thing" you can do now, is: Regard all these
statements as rubbish - and do not go on reading here.
And - you will be able to sleep in peace.
For, if you go on reading here, you will get into trouble.
This always took.place when someone
was going to disturb someone's circles.
If you go on reading, I am getting into trouble:
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Either to point up the walls of imprisonment or
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simply to start to present the new knowledge.
I decided to take to the second alternative
as the walls are walls only, because we
did not have the means to break down these walls.
The tools are lying outside these walls!
Therefore, the only thing I can do is, to present the new knowledge.
You probably will have noticed: I already started to do so.
If we are bound to a mental community, the new knowledge
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may lead to reinforce, what we are believing and
what we have internalised since we were born, and
may lead to bind us even closer to this mental community
or the new knowledge
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may lead us to remove the mental barriers, imposed
by education and "put up" by an "unfinished evolution"
preventing us to unfold our mental abilities and skills,
and preventing us, to use our knowledge
about and for knowledge.creating unhindered.
But only you yourself will be able
to break down the barriers of your thinking.
If our thinking is to become independent and selfcontained
we have to try very hard:
We have to start by imagining, that we
do not know anything, absolutely nothing.
We do not have to worry, that we are going
to waste knowledge. Nothing will get lost.
To know nothing means
to give up all our concepts and notions
e.g. of "time", "space", "dimensions", ...
This will not be easy.
We are beings, which are - at least mentally -
grown up in flat surroundings, which has influenced
the way we think and the way we do research.
And we have grown up with the natural impact
of being forced to have a WHATFOR.
We have to start from scratch. By observations.
The becoming
What is becoming, becomes to exist.
At the first hearing this sound - dispensable.
At a second hearing, one feels unsettled.
One has to reflect on it. Physics might be helpful.
We act in order to exist.
We are part of nature, of the becoming. We are becoming.
We have to act in order to be able to exist.
When born, we were willing to create knowledge and to act.
We have to live as communities, to be able to exist.
The community imparts us with knowledge and
coaches us for life.
The community thinks that we are going to act
as the community acts.
With the scientification of our research the community has split
knowledge.creating into more and more specialised categories.
Thereby it was not possible to recognise, that
all becoming,
the whole processing is a unity, an entity in which
all processes of the becoming are
hierarchically and functionally interlinked
by to a single structural principle.
This hierarchical-functional interlinking provided the basis
for the growing of the complexity of the becoming.
How this interlinking takes place, does not seem to be discovered.
Observable is:
The interlinking of processes enables new functions.
Knowledge.creating is not possible without a WHATFOR.
(Which is not yet common knowledge.)
The principle of process interlinking to form a new function is
used in information processing to be able to control
complexity.
Our economic system uses this principle universally.
The basis of any becoming and of any knowledge.creating is
the
functional principle of the
becoming, the "WHATFOR", for
which we have created a variety of denominators in our languages.
If we want to get active, we have to
provide a WHATFOR and
create knowledge about the becoming,
in order to be able to control the processes,
in order to achieve the WHATFOR.
All is processing.
All is changing, is becoming.
The structure of the processing has not been discovered, yet.
For the time being, we assume
a multitude of interwoven, parallel running bundle of processes
influencing each other interactively
each bundle being a hierarchy of functional interlinked processes.
The points of the 'functional interlinking' are
the
interfaces in the becoming, which enable
functionality
and
flexibility and thereby
existence, evolution, freedom of choice and creativity
so that more and more complex structured processes emerge.
The denominators
'processing structure of the becoming' and
'functional principle of the becoming'
are tantamount, as
function and structure are only different functional approaches
to the same unity.
Our knowledge.creating
Our knowledge.creating is missing an insight.
Namely that insight, that constitutes
a "complete" step of our evolutionary development.
To understand this and to accept it,
will - as history proves - face strong resistance.
One has to learn to stand.
At present, we have not recognised that
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there is knowledge with different functions and that
we may not intermingle knowledge of different categories
when processing it.
Partly, this problem has been recognised. We have tried
to solve this problem, by developing meta-languages.
At present, we have not thoroughly recognised that
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our knowledge and the becoming cannot be regarded as identical.
But even those, who state they know the difference
do not apply these insights consistently and consequently.
One should refrain from calling our knowledge.creating as
"medieval" or "stone-aged". As this probably would raise the
barriers of thinking instead of razing them.
Our knowledge.creating has to learn, that we have to discern
our knowledge.creating by those functions the knowledge is going
to fulfil.
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Creating models of the becoming: Creating knowledge
about nature and about how to apply it, functionally.
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Creating moral concepts and precepts
for a peaceful coexistence and acting.
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Creating structural systems, "logical realities",
e.g. music, design, logics, counting, ...
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Generating possible ways, to represent, document and process
knowledge, according to the above mentioned categories of
knowledge.
Our knowledge.creating has to learn, to discern between
logical and
functional:
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Logical is concerned with knowledge and rules,
we have created ourselves.
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Functional is concerned with the knowledge about the
processes of the becoming, which we discovered and represented
as models, and is concerned with the knowledge, how these
models can be applied.
To be able to create, apply and verify knowledge, we need
functional methods, which conform to the field under research.
The detected functional structure of the becoming is
straightforward and will be recognised immediately. This
structure is self-evident for us. As, if we had not acted
pursuant to the general principle of becoming, we would not have
survived.
As the functional structure of becoming enables creativity,
we can create new realities with and in our thinking.
But we did not realise, that we may not intermingle
knowledge of different categories when processing it.
New insights, even if scientific, had always been rejected. And
it took some hundred years until they were generally accepted.
This has never been a technical, but a profound human problem:
The "operational" necessity to have a WHATFOR,
made us and still makes us defend,
in what we believe, tooth and nail.