Transdisciplinary Education Philosophy&Applications

i
Transdisciplinary
Education, Philosophy, &
Applications
Editors
Basarab Nicolescu
Atila Ertas
The Academy of Transdisciplinary Learning & Advanced Studies
ATLAS Publishing, 2014
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ISBN: 0-9778129-7-9; doi: 10.22545/2021b/B7

Published in the United States of America
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Table of Contents iii
Table of Contents
1 Systems and Information: Transdisciplinary Study by Joseph

E. Brenner 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Transdisciplinarities Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Rationale and Objective of Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.3 Outline of Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Transdisciplinarity in the View of Nicolescu . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.1 The Nature of Transdisciplinarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.2 The Pillars or Methodology of Transdisciplinarity . . . . 4
1.2.3 The Logic of Transdisciplinarity and Logic in Reality . . 6
1.2.4 Logic in Reality and Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 The Dialectical Methodology of Lupasco . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Systemology. the Origin of Systems in Basic Physical Principles 8
1.4.1 Axiomatic Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.2 Systems Science and Complex Systems in Morin . . . . 10
1.4.3 Systems and Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4.4 Transdisciplinarity and Systems Thinking . . . . . . . . 13
1.4.5 Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.5 An Informational Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.5.1 Transdisciplinarity and Information . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.5.2 What is Missing from Theories of Information? . . . . . 17
1.6 The Philosophy of Information. Informational Thinking . . . . 19
1.6.1 The Reconstruction of Phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.6.2 Wu’s Metaphilosophy of Information and
Transdisciplinarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.6.3 Informational Thinking vs. Systems Thinking . . . . . . 22
1.6.4 The Informational Stance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.6.5 The Consequences for Man and Society . . . . . . . . . 25
1.7 Transdisciplinarity, Ethics and the Common Good . . . . . . . 25
1.7.1 What has happened to the common good? . . . . . . . . 26
1.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2 Perceptive Levels in Plants: A Transdisciplinary Challenge

in Living Organism’s Plasticity by Marc-Williams Debono 33
iv Transdisciplinary Education, Philosophy, & Applications
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2 Common Sensory and Protoneural Dynamic Networks in Plants
and Animals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.2.1 Bioelectricity as Universal Signaling Pathway used by
Biological Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.2.2 Complexity, Evolutionary Processes and Nonlinear Dy-
namics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.2.3 How Plants Treat the Environmental Signals? . . . . . 39
2.3 The Bio-dynamics of Plants as an Upstream Model for the
Study of what precedes the emergence of Cognitive Systems . . 41
2.3.1 Do Primary Centers of Sensory Integration Could
Exist at the Plant Level? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3.2 Could Plant be Considered as Biosemantic &
‘Embodied-Cognitive’ Entities? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.3.3 The Phenomenological Point of View: Blind Access to
Experience vs. Structured Perceptive & Conscious Ac-
tivities in Animals and Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.4 Nonlinear Relationships between Perception and Integration:
the Level of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.4.1 Plants as Sensitive or ‘Knowledge’ Accumulating
Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.4.2 Access to Experience without Representation:
Sensory Streams of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.5 The Transdisciplinary Challenge: Defining a Core-TD Biose-
mantic Research Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.5.1 Metaplasticity: Defining the Levels of Information of
Knowledge Accumulating Systems at each Plastic
Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.5.2 Phenotypic & Epigenetic Plasticity in Plants . . . . . . 52
2.5.3 The Plastic Code of Life: an Epistemic Access to the
World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.5.4 The Plasticity of Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3 The Essential Tension: Rational and Reasonable in Science

and Philosophy by Paul Ghils 63
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.2 Incommunication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.3 Science and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.4 The Fluctuations of Scientific Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.5 From Pre-Modern to Modern to Post-Modern . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.6 Pragmatist Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.7 Language as a Relational Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3.8 Return to Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Table of Contents v
4 Transdisciplinarity and Biomimicry by Sue L. T. McGregor 89

4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.2 Biomimicry Explained . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.2.1 Nine Principles of Life from Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.2.2 Nature as Model, Measure and Mentor . . . . . . . . . 93
4.2.3 Biomimicry Design Spiral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.3 The Fit Between Biomimicry and
Transdisciplinarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5 Transdisciplinary Pragmatism? by Maria F. de Mello and

Vitória M. de Barros 103
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.2 Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.3 TD–P Inspired by Peirce’s Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.4 TD–P Inspired by Heidegger’s Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.5 TD–P: Three Archetypal Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.6 What else makes Pragmatism be Transdisciplinary? . . . . . . 118
5.7 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
6 On the Relationship of Metaphysics to Transdisciplinarity

by Eric L. Weislogel 125
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.2 What is Transdisciplinarity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.3 What is Metaphysics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.4 Objections to Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.5 A Response to the Charges Against
Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.6 On the Parallels between Metaphysics and Transdisciplinarity . 140
6.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7 The Transdisciplinary Carats of Patristic Byzantine Tradi-

tionby Doru Costache 149
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
7.2 The Christological Dogma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
7.3 Levels of Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
7.4 Science, Technology, Theology and the
Spiritual Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
7.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
8 Vision and Experience: The Contribution of Art to Trans-

disciplinary Knowledge by Danielle Boutet 167
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
8.2 The Transdisciplinary Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
8.3 Modes of Knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
8.4 The Separation of Objective and Subjective . . . . . . . . . . . 171
8.5 The Experiential Nature of Art and Knowledge . . . . . . . . . 172
vi Transdisciplinary Education, Philosophy, & Applications
8.6 Alchemical Mediation: Integral, Holistic

Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
8.7 An Experience of Integration and
Meaningfulness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
8.8 Art among the Creative Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
8.9 Transdisciplinary Dialogues beyond Modes of Knowing . . . . . 179
8.10 Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
9 Educating for Joy by Antonella Verdiani 183

9.1 A “nonsense” in a world in crisis: the Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
9.2 Joy and Happiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
9.2.1 Neuroscience and Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
9.3 Philosophers of the Joy: from Spinoza to Sri Aurobindo . . . . 185
9.3.1 Ananda, the Divine Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
9.4 Educating for Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
9.4.1 The “Free Progress” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
9.5 A Path for Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
9.5.1 The Joy, “emotion – guiding thread” . . . . . . . . . . . 189
10 Transdisciplinary Methodology in Research and Education:

The EMMY Case by Liviu Drugus 197
10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
10.2 Words, Words, Words... From the Confusing Words: “Science”
and “Discipline” to the Integrative Word “Knowledge” . . . . . 199
10.2.1 From Complexity to Simple, Essential and Compact Ideas.
Complexity May Be Solved Using Levels of Reality and
the Included Middle (the Logic of the Third Included) . 201
10.2.2 Using Transdisciplinary Thinking Based on Levels of Re-
ality in Solving a Quite Complex and Paradoxal Prob-
lem: Which was First, the Egg or the Hen? . . . . . . . 203
10.2.3 Logic of the Third Included - As a Solution to
Problems from Different (More Complex)
Levels of Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
10.3 Transdisciplinary Teaching and Evaluating . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
10.4 EMMY as a Transdisciplinary, Postmodern, Holistic and Inte-
grative Vision on Human
Action in the Knowledge Based Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
10.4.1 Towards a New (Postmodern) Theory of Efficient Hu-
man Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
10.4.2 Management as a Specific Way of Optimizing
Human Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
10.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
11 Practicing Transdisciplinary Methodology within the Frame

of a Traditional Educational System by Mirela Mureşan 217
11.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Table of Contents vii
11.2 Transdisciplinarity in the Present Days

Education: Delors’ UNESCO Rapport on
Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
11.3 Romanian Experiments in the High-School Education at “Moise
Nicoara” National College, Arad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
11.4 Limits and perspectives: Questions,
Worries and Chalenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
11.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
12 Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Designing Patient Han-

dling/Transfer Assistive Devices :Current & Future Designs
by T. Batuhan Baturalp 235
12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
12.2 Identification of the Patient Handling/Lifting Tasks . . . . . . 237
12.3 Different Discipline Standpoints to the
Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
12.3.1 Business and Administration Standpoint . . . . . . . . . 240
12.3.2 Biomechanical Standpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
12.3.3 Social Sciences Standpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
12.4 Current Designs and Solutions to the
Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
12.4.1 Current Patient Transfer Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
12.4.2 Training Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
12.5 Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Assistive Device Design and
Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
12.6 Design Parameters of an Ideal Patient
Transfer Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
12.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
13 Major Language, Minor Destiny? The Space of Franco-

phone Liberty: The case of the writer M. D. Popescu by
Simona Modreanu 255
13.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
13.2 The Constraints of a Major Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
13.3 Literary Francophonie under the Sign of
Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
13.4 The Francophone Audacities of Marius
Daniel Popescu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
13.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
viii Transdisciplinary Education, Philosophy, & Applications
Editorial
his issue of the JTSE includes contributions from authors in Australia, Ro-
T mania, France, Switzerland, Canada, Brazil, and the USA. Authors of this
issue of the journal addresses numerous topics including: Transdisciplinary ed-
ucation, transdisciplinary methodology in research, Healthcare, art and trans-
disciplinarity, metaphysics and transdisciplinarity, biological systems, Trans-
disciplinary Pragmatism, and science and philosophy.
The first paper by Joseph E. Brenner summarizes some current views of
transdisciplinarity, in particular the theory and methodology of transdisci-
plinarity in the approach of Basarab Nicolescu. In his paper he suggested
that transdisciplinary practice and informational thinking are essential ways
of furthering the common good.
The next paper by Marc-Williams Debono is to evaluate the ability of
plant kingdom to treat information without nervous system. In his paper he
stated that “providing the great value of early sensory processing in plants is
accepted, the only way to progress would be to read the emergent behaviors
of complex informational systems co-creating the world through a transdisci-
plinary framework.”
Third paper by Paul Ghils discusses some aspects of knowledge adopted in
European history, politics and philosophy, in contrast with its own past and
with other cultural areas. Some conclusions from various subjects of research
in social sciences are commented upon with a view to assessing the relevance
of a transdisciplinary perspective.
Sue L. T. McGregor presents the emergent movement towards integrating
transdisciplinarity with biomimicry. Her paper provides an overview of the
biomimicry approach, including discussion of its three basic dimensions: (a)
nine principles of life; (b) nature as model, measure and mentor; and, (c) the
Design Spiral methodology. She stated that “If the intent of transdisciplinarity
is to understand the world in all its complexities, and the world includes
humans, non-humans and nature, then it makes sense to gain insights from
non-humans (other species) and nature, the intent of biomimicry.”
Maria F. de Mello et al., in their paper they carry out an ongoing explo-
ration of a phenomenon they chose to name Transdisciplinary Pragmatism/TD-
P. They stated that transdisciplinary phenomenon is a continuous unveiling,
an opening, a movement towards a reality that is by nature muti-dimensional
and multi-referential. They view TD-P as an event of appropriation: a creative
and free act, original, present since forever, open to possibilities, but yet to be
unconcealed. TD-P demands the articulation of the phenomenal method and
the “trans” dimension inscribed in the transdisciplinary system of thought.
Eric L. Weislogel’s paper shows the parallels between metaphysics and
transdisciplinarity, both in terms of their aims and methods and in terms of
their place or role in academic institutions. He attempts to define metaphysics,
addresses criticisms of metaphysics, and indicates the necessary relationship
Table of Contents ix
of metaphysics to transdisciplinary endeavors.

Paper by Doru Costache presents three samples of transdisciplinary-like
approaches within patristic Byzantine tradition, namely, Chalcedonian Chris-
tology (in conversation with Lucian Blaga’s notion of dogma), the multilevel
interpretation of Scripture in St. Maximus the Confessor, and the Maximian
and Palamite ideas of the rapports between science, technology, theology and
the spiritual life. The contention of his article is double. First, it proposes
that within Byzantine tradition there can be traced a series of transdisci-
plinary features, which up until recently have remained unknown and which,
to be rightly appreciated, require a new appraisal through the lens of current
transdisciplinary methodology. Second, and related, it contends that contem-
porary transdisciplinarity has deep roots within the Christian tradition, as
exemplified by the Byzantine antecedents analyzed herein, and that in order
to understand better the cultural process that led to transdisciplinarity such
roots can no longer be ignored.
Danielle Boutet presents the practice of art as a form of knowledge and
asks: What can one know through art? What does art contribute to trans-
disciplinarity? From an epistemological point of view, what is the nature of
knowledge available through art? Here, art is described as a material, aes-
thetic, experiential and visionary form of knowledge, sharing similarities with
alchemy. While science studies facts, art creates meaning using metaphors
and correspondences. This paper also discusses modes of knowing: physics
and biology, for example, belong to the scientific mode. Psycho-analysis and
mythology use a hermeneutic mode. Furthermore he stated that “to approach
transdisciplinary complexity, a dialogue between and across modes of know-
ing is more difficult, yet as important as dialogue across disciplines. Art is
a significant source of knowledge, and a transdisciplinary conversation needs
artists as much as scientists and philosophers.”
In her paper, Antonella Verdiani claims that education can bring humans
back to their true nature, which is joyful. She stated that ducating for the
sake of joy is possible; many experiences exist that can be reproduced. Her
article highlights those offered by a system known as “integral education”.
The next paper by Liviu Drugus sums up some of his previous ideas on
transdisciplinarity applied during the last years. His pedagogical experience
enriched with situations solved by him through transdisciplinary methodology/
thinking, i.e. the levels of reality paradigm, theory of Complexity, and the logic
of the third included. These three pillars of transdisciplinary methodology are
used in the sense described by Basarab Nicolescu.
Mirela Mureşan stated that everybody knows that the present educational
system is mostly built on disciplinary teaching-learning basis: disciplinary cur-
riculum and assessment, disciplinary specialization of the teachers, disciplinary
diplomas etc. The topic of her paper offers the opportunity to look for some
proper answers to the following problems: could the transdisciplinary method-
ology be applied within the frame of a disciplinary system of education? How
could it be done? What would be its challenges, limits and perspectives? The
x Transdisciplinary Education, Philosophy, & Applications
paper prepresents the transdisciplinary didactic experiments conceived and

performed at “Moise Nicoara” National College from Arad, Romania, during
the last five years. She used the term and concept of “transdisciplinarity” as
it was defined by Professor Basarab Nicolescu.
The main objectives of T. Batuhan Baturalp’s paper are to demonstrate the
necessity of patient handling/transfer assistive devices, explore the economic
benefits of them, review current assistive patient transfer devices, and investi-
gate design parameters of an ideal patient handling/transfer assistive device.
His paper also focuses on the importance of the transdisciplinary collaboration
in developing and designing patient handling/transfer assistive devices.
Finally, the last paper by Simona Modreanu expresses her feeling about
literature and language which plays an important role in our lives.
We wish to thank all the authors for their important and valuable contri-
butions. We hope the readers find this issue of the TJES useful, interesting
and thought provoking.
Basarab Nicolescu and Atila Ertas
CHAPTER 1
Systems and Information:
Transdisciplinary Study
Joseph E. Brenner, Chemin du Collège 1, CH-1865 Les Diablerets, Switzerland.
his Chapter summarizes some current views of transdisciplinarity, in par-

T ticular the theory and methodology of transdisciplinarity in the approach
of Basarab Nicolescu. His conception of the Logic of Transdisciplinarity sug-
gests that explicit reference should be made to it in transdisciplinary studies.
I first develop this idea in a critique of current systems science and thinking.
Nicolescu has stated that transdisciplinarity is not a paradigm. However, trans-
disciplinary methodology may nevertheless be an essential part of an emerging
informational paradigm. In this Chapter, I claim that in fact information can-
not be properly understood without using what is effectively a transdisciplinary
methodology. I describe the philosophy of information of Wu Kun and his
concept of informational thinking and contrast it with standard systems think-
ing. In Wu’s approach, the philosophy and ethics of information are eminently
transdisciplinary. I suggest that transdisciplinary practice and informational
thinking are essential ways of furthering the common good.
Keywords: attitude, common good, contradiction, information, logic, sys-
tems, transdisciplinarity.
1.1 Introduction
1.1.1 Transdisciplinarities Today
Since the publication in 2002 by Basarab Nicolescu of his Manifesto of Trans-
disciplinarity [1] and in 2008 of his important compendium Transdisciplinarity–
Theory and Practice [2], applications of transdisciplinarity in both areas have
greatly increased. Organizational networks devoted to transdisciplinary re-
search and publication such as td-net in Switzerland, TheATLAS and INIT
provide centralized sources of information and opportunities for exchange of
ideas. The major task of transdisciplinarity is generally understood as a new
1
2 Transdisciplinary Education, Philosophy, & Applications
way of potentially correlating scientific capabilities with human individual and

social needs. Nevertheless, the scope and value of transdisciplinarity remains
problematic for many people.
The difficulty of capturing the complex concept of transdisciplinarity in
a single definition - a similar situation obtains with respect to information -
is well-recognized. Nicolescu has recently restated [3] his conviction that our
formulation of transdisciplinarity is both unified (in the sense of unification of
different transdisciplinary approaches) and diverse: unity in diversity and di-
versity through unity is inherent to transdisciplinarity and its logic. It is thus
best to start from the position that there are three major forms of transdisci-
plinarity: theoretical transdisciplinarity, phenomenological transdisciplinarity,
and experimental transdisciplinarity.
The word theory implies a general definition of transdisciplinarity and a
well-defined methodology. Phenomenology is used here to imply the building
of models that connect the theoretical principles with observed experimen-
tal data in order to predict further results. The word experimental implies
performing experiments following a well-defined procedure, justified when it
results in an acceptable level of reproducibility to the scientific community.
From this perspective, the work of Michael Gibbons, Helga Nowotny and Atila
Ertas can be classified primarily as phenomenological transdisciplinarity, and
Nicolescu’s, together with that of Jean Piaget and Edgar Morin, as theoretical
transdisciplinarity. Experimental transdisciplinarity refers to the large amount
of experimental data already collected not only in the framework of knowledge
production but also in fields such as education, psychoanalysis, medicine, art,
literature, history of religions, etc. As Nicolescu states the reduction of trans-
disciplinarity to only one of its aspects is dangerous because it could transform
transdisciplinarity into a set of more or less fashionable doctrines. It should
be clear that simultaneous consideration of theoretical, phenomenological, and
experimental transdisciplinarity could permit a unified, non-dogmatic treat-
ment of transdisciplinary philosophy, theory and practice, coexisting with a
plurality of transdisciplinary models. The three forms of transdisciplinarity,
following the Logic of Transdisciplinarity (see below), are by no means totally
separated or independent but can and should inform one another.
In the most general way, one may say that the practice of transdisciplinarity
consists in application of the theory and methodology of transdisciplinarity to
1) the understanding of the relations between specific disciplines; 2) the solv-
ing of specific practical problems and 3) the understanding of the relation of
transdisciplinarity to structured human thought, philosophy, logic and episte-
mology. In this Chapter, I will focus on the third area, as it may provide a
basis for further progress in the usefulness of the transdisciplinary approach.
In the acceptation of Atila Ertas [4], the transdisciplinary model for, specif-
ically, education and research transcends the artificial boundaries imposed
by traditional academic organizational structures and directly addresses the
problems arising in the satisfaction of human needs, especially in the process
of implementation of the major recent advances in science and technology.
Chapter 1. Systems and Information: Transdisciplinary Study 3
These in turn are related to the solution of large and complex problems by
teams consisting of many people from diverse backgrounds. The essence of
transdisciplinary education, research, and development processes lies in the
common ground built on the foundation of design fundamentals and process
development and management. This “common ground” is a good example
of something that “lies beyond” individual disciplines as in the theoretical
transdisciplinarity of Nicolescu.
The supporting transdisciplinary philosophy and culture that Ertas calls
for has been pointed towards by Nicolescu: a philosophy of the underlying
unity of knowledge and a culture of openness and tolerance of opposing views
combined with rigor in analysis. These views are restatements of basic ethical
principles in other terms, but placing them in the framework of the logic and
methodology of transdisciplinarity helps to insure that they are discussed with
the adequate rigor. I propose this paper, accordingly, as a contribution to the
domain of theoretical transdisciplinarity in the sense of Nicolescu.
1.1.2 Rationale and Objective of Chapter

The basic thesis of this Chapter is that if in fact theoretical and phenomeno-
logical transdisciplinarity are to be accepted simultaneously and rigorously,
their essential components must also be accepted and used and not only more
or less explicitly stated. If, as is often the case, transdisciplinarity is claimed
to derive from and/or exemplify theories of systems and information, such
claims most be considered vacuous unless the theories concerned embody the
necessary features of a relevant transdisciplinary logic and methodology.
In this Chapter, I will use the term of transdisciplinarity as referring to a
complex corpus of knowledge and a set of attitudes constituting an operator
that has or can have a functional role in human society. I note, however, that
Nicolescu has stated clearly that transdisciplinarity is not a paradigm. This
does not mean, however, that a transdisciplinary attitude or “mind-set” or
transdisciplinary thinking may not be an essential part of or support to a new
paradigm that has appeared, namely that of information. I suggest that the
information paradigm may be essential for the development of the common
good in what has been called the emerging information society.
1.1.3 Outline of Chapter

In the next Section 2, I first present a summary of the methodology and logic
of transdisciplinarity according to Nicolescu. This logic is the original logic
of the included third, the major contribution of the Franco-Romanian thinker
Stéphane Lupasco (Bucharest, 1900 – Paris, 1988) [5], to which Nicolescu
added the features of complexity and levels of reality. My recent restatement
and elaboration of that logic [6] is discussed. As an introduction to the dis-
cussion of systems and transdisciplinarity, Sections 3 and 4 summarize briefly
some additional theoretical work of Lupasco, Section 3 his dialectical method-
ology and Section 4 his foundational work on the origins of systems in physics,
as well as some of the problems in using current concepts of systems, systems
science and systems thinking. The alternative, proposed in Section 5, is to
use current much deeper views of information theory and science, which turn
out to have a close relation to the Logic of Transdisciplinarity. In Section 6,
I develop further the concept of Informational Thinking and the role of the
philosophy of information. The final Section 7 addresses in more detail ques-
tions of ethics and the common good, and in which I show that all three key
perspectives – ethical, informational and transdisciplinary - come into play.
1.2 Transdisciplinarity in the View of Nicolescu

1.2.1 The Nature of Transdisciplinarity
At the beginning of his Manifesto [1], Basarab Nicolescu describes transdis-
ciplinarity as a new philosophical movement. Transdisciplinarity is not to be
considered a new discipline, but rather possesses a number of characteristics,
and can accomplish a number of things, of which the following are a brief and
highly personal selection of mine:
• Transdisciplinarity is a process that offers a new vision of nature and

reality.
• Transdisciplinarity provides a platform for expressing and reinforcing
the hopes and aspirations of mankind.
• Through its logic of human experience and human intelligence, transdis-
ciplinarity provides a new approach to age-old problems and paradoxes
of human thought, science and philosophy.
• Transdisciplinarity is a method for thinking about the relations and
implications between human actions and events and about how to include
emotional, artistic and philosophical elements in discussion of solutions
to practical problems.
1.2.2 The Pillars or Methodology of Transdisciplinarity

As proposed by Nicolescu, transdisciplinarity can be described as being sup-
ported by three major conceptual “pillars”: complexity, levels of reality and
the logic of the included middle or third. The general methodology of trans-
disciplinarity is based on these three pillars, as they have emerged from the
study of modern science, especially, of quantum physics, but also of molecular
biology and cosmology.
To begin with, an important distinction needs to be made regarding the
pillars: they are, and should be considered, as different kinds of things, albeit
closely related ones:
• Complexity is a property which is exemplified or attached in some way

to its instances, the things or systems that are complex, and to a cer-
tain extent codified in the discipline of complexity science, the study of
complex structures;
• Levels of reality is a categorical concept;
• The logic of the included middle or third is a discipline as such.
More recently [3], Nicolescu has reformulated the methodology of transdis-

ciplinarity in axiomatic terms, as follows:
1. The Ontological Axiom: There are, in Nature and society and in our
knowledge of Nature and society, different levels of reality of the Object
and, correspondingly, different levels of reality of the Subject.
2. The Logical Axiom: The passage from one level of reality to another
is ensured by the logic of the included middle or third. (Such a passage
implies to me a dynamics, that is, a real energy flow that takes place at
both the lower physical and higher cognitive levels.)
3. The Complexity Axiom: The structure of the totality of levels of
reality or perception is a complex structure: every level is what it is
because all the levels exist at the same time.
The first two get their experimental evidence from quantum physics, but
they go well beyond the exact sciences. The last one has its source not only in
quantum physics but also in a variety of other exact and human sciences. All
three are in agreement with traditional thinking present on the earth since the
beginning of historical time. It is for this reason, among others, that I believe
that Nicolescu considers it is inappropriate to talk about transdisciplinarity
as “paradigm”, a term developed by Thomas Kuhn in the 1970’s to apply to
distinctions between current social and natural science.
For the purposes of this discussion, I suggest that above Axioms of levels
of reality have two major aspects:
• In our knowledge of Nature and society, according to the ontological Ax-

iom, what Nicolescu defines as the transdisciplinary Object and its levels
of Reality, the transdisciplinary Subject and its levels of perception, and
the Hidden Third define the ternary transdisciplinary model of reality.
• Nature and society themselves, however, following the logical Axiom,
also define subjects and objects linked causally by the Lupasco Principle
of Dynamic Opposition that also defines a ternary structure of reality.
Based on these ternary models and structures of reality, one can deduce
other ternaries of levels that are extremely useful in the analysis of concrete
situations by contextualization. Nicolescu provides the following list, which I
have separated in two for purposes of discussion. The placing of a) in both
groups is intentional:
• Logical
a) Levels of objectivity – Levels of subjectivity – Levels of complexity

b) Levels of organization – Levels of structuring – Levels of integration
c) Levels of confusion – Levels of language – Levels of interpretation
d) Physical levels – Biological levels – Psychical levels
• Ontological
a) Levels of objectivity – Levels of subjectivity – Levels of complexity

b) Levels of knowledge – Levels of understanding – Levels of being
c) Levels of materiality – Levels of spirituality – Levels of non-duality
In the remainder of this Chapter, I will be focusing on the analysis of the

phenomena of systems and information with reference to the Logical Axiom of
the methodology of transdisciplinarity. For this purpose, we will need to look
more closely at the Logic of Transdisciplinarity (LOT) itself. I wish to make
it clear that all further references to LOT in this Chapter refer to the Nico-
lescu acceptation of transdisciplinarity. (It is difficult to conceive of a specific
non-standard logic of phenomenological transdisciplinarity in the Gibbons-
Nowotny construction. The dynamic elements of this theory are essentially
classical, and standard logic is, accordingly, applicable to them.)
1.2.3 The Logic of Transdisciplinarity and Logic in Reality

In Nicolescu’s most recent summary of the Logic of Transdisciplinarity [3], the
emphasis is on the major revision of the 3rd Axiom of Aristotle by Lupasco
to allow a third term T (the “T-state”) which is at the same time A and non-
A. This existence of this third term is completely clarified once the notion of
“levels of Reality”, not existing in the works of Lupasco, was introduced by
Nicolescu. In Nicolescu’s view, “If one remains at a single level of Reality, all
manifestation appears as a struggle between two contradictory elements. The
third dynamic, that of the T-state, is exercised at another level of Reality,
where that which appears to be disunited is in fact united, and that which
appears contradictory is perceived as non-contradictory. It is the projection of
the T-state onto the same single level of Reality which produces the appear-
ance of mutually exclusive, antagonistic pairs (A and non-A). A single level of
Reality can only create antagonistic oppositions.”
In addition, however, Lupasco clearly described a modification of the 2nd
Axiom, that of non-contradiction, by seeing the elements of a real system in
opposition as partially actual and partly potential, in what he called contra-
dictorial conjugation. The elements are what would be called today conjugate
variables in a system of non-standard probabilities (the limits are > 0 and <
1). Thus the antagonistic oppositions remain, without self-destruction, exactly
because they are, as Nicolescu says, connected to a higher level of reality. A
and non-A are indeed present at the same time but only to the extent that
when A is actualized (but always less than 100%), non-A is potentialized (but
always less than 100%), alternately and reciprocally, unless and until condi-
tions favor the emergence of a new entity from the T-state. I have proposed
this modified interpretation as a Logic of and in Reality (now, LIR) first in
a paper presented at the 2nd International Congress of Transdisciplinarity in
Vitoria, Brazil in 2005 and in the Nicolescu Compendium [7]. The differences,
very briefly, in the two approaches is that Nicolescu looks “upward” toward
the ontological included middle and the Transdisciplinary Subject and Object
and further toward the hidden included middle, while LIR remains as a logical
tool for the explication of the evolution of complex real processes and systems,
such as those involved in information.
The view expressed of transdisciplinarity and its relation to a logic is sup-
ported by Roderick Lawrence in his paper “Transgression of Disciplinary Fron-
tiers” [8]. In particular, he cites the statement by Thierry Ramadier that “the
specificity of transdisciplinarity consists in simultaneously integrating two con-
tradictory movements (emphasis mine) of disciplinary logic, that is, the frag-
mentation of knowledge and the relation between the “fragments”, in order
to do research into the connections possible between the (forms of) knowledge
produced”. These are the kinds of movements to which the Lupasco logic and
LIR apply.
1.2.4 Logic in Reality and Information

The best expression of the situation is thus perhaps to say, in the spirit of
the original dialectics of Lupasco, that Logic in Reality (LIR) and the Logic
of Transdisciplinarity (LOT) are the same and different. LOT reproduces
the original change proposed by Lupasco in the third of the three fundamental
axioms of Aristotle; LIR does also but restates Lupasco’s Principle of Dynamic
Opposition (POD) as three additional axioms. This enables the non-linguistic
terms of the Lupasco system to be seen not only as a logic of the included
middle (or third), but also as a logic of conditional contradiction and a logic
of emergence of new entities. I have included functional references to Logic
in Reality, and thus indirectly to Lupasco and the Logic of Transdisciplinarity
in a series of recent papers [8], [9] dealing with its application in the field of
information theory and philosophy. I will return to aspects of LIR as they
become useful in the more detailed discussion of systems and information that
follows.
1.3 The Dialectical Methodology of Lupasco

Lupasco made two major applications of his logic and its principles which are
perhaps less well-known but which in my opinion are relevant to the practice
of transdisciplinarity. The first of these is outlined in a late book The Psychic
Universe [11].
The dialectical methodology proposed by Lupasco involves looking, in any

process, 1) for the logical elements that are in real interaction or opposition,
actively “overlapping” and then 2) to what extent each is actualized and/or
potentialized by the other, following the Principle of Dynamic Opposition.
It is the physical movement involved in these interactions that are the basis
for the existence of systems as discussed below. Lupasco uses the neologism
dialectology as the theory of such processes. In this approach, the probability
for synergy as well as opposition of the energies involved also exists, resulting
in the emergence of new entities at the “T-state” as described by the Axiom
of the included third.
I will not follow Lupasco further here in his application of these ideas, un-
fortunately little detailed, in the areas of psychology, normal and pathological,
and religion. To the extent that transdisciplinary methodology involves inte-
gration of critical aspects of these disciplines, the use of the Lupasco concepts
could also constitute a significant way of organizing them.
1.4 Systemology. the Origin of Systems in Basic

Physical Principles
I have previously discussed Lupasco’s “systemology” in [6], but I believe that

it is relevant to the applications of transdisciplinarity that are subject of this
paper and summarize them briefly here. The originator of General Systems
Theory (GST), Ludwig von Bertalanffy [12], defined systems simply as “com-
plexes or sets of elements standing in interactions or interrelations,” but GST
was supposed to be capable of giving exact definitions of and even quantifying
complex concepts. As stated by von Bertalanffy himself, however, he provided
no axiomatic basis for his theory of systems, and failed to see beyond differ-
ential calculus, the basis for current so-called Dynamic Systems Theory, as a
basis for systems theory.
In one of his last articles, “The History and Status of General Systems
Theory” [13], von Bertalanffy wrote that ultimately all the boundaries of real
objects are dynamic rather than spatial. “Hence an object (and in particu-
lar a system) is definable only by its cohesion in a broad sense, that is, the
interactions of its component elements”.
Totally independently of von Bertalanffy, despite the fact that they were
contemporaries, in his “Notions of General Systemology” [14], Lupasco set
forth the principles underlying all of his work in terms of systems. These prin-
ciples constitute an alternate expression of his non-propositional, non-truth-
functional logic that enables an interpretation of the dynamics of “cohesion
and interaction”.
1.4.1 Axiomatic Statements

The Relation of Antagonism
Lupasco’s first axiomatic statement is that systems are not possible if there
is no force of repulsion or exclusion between elements which prevents their
“agglomeration” into an undifferentiated mass, and not possible if nothing
attracts or associates two or more elements; they all fly apart, so to speak. (I
consider here that repulsion; exclusion and dissociation are equivalent terms.)
Accordingly, for a system to form and exist, its constituents must be able, at
the same time, both to attract and repel one another, associate and dissociate,
integrate and disintegrate. The constitution and evolution of every system, be
it nuclear, atomic, molecular or at the level of the macroscopic objects of our
senses is always a function of this relation of linked antagonistic or opposing
forces, constituting a relation of antagonism. Systems which tend towards
an equality of tension, such as hadrons, will be more stable and resistant to
disintegration than those in which one dynamism is heavily favored over the
other.
The Relation of Contradiction

The second axiomatic statement has a similar form: a system is not possible
if all the constituents or elements involved are strictly identical, strictly also
meaning with relation to their location and configuration in space-time. They
would be “confounded” in the same continuity or homogeneity. No system is
possible, either, if all elements are totally heterogeneous, without some degree
of homogeneity that would prevent this diversity not only from not being a
system, but not even a class or set.
Every system thus implies at the same time homogeneity and heterogeneity,
identity and diversity. The relation of contradiction is maximal as identity and
diversity approach equality, as in the notation by Lupasco for “systemogenesis”
[6].
The Principle of Antagonism applied to Energy

The third axiomatic statement is that every real system requires the energy
involved in its dynamic relations in order to exist. All its constituents and
elements, according to the equivalence of mass, energy and information, must
consist of energy. Lupasco developed his “logical algebra of energy” with the
addition of another key concept. Every energy (or phenomenon) passing from
a potential state to an actual state finds itself necessarily, at a certain moment
in an intermediate T-state (see above), where it conflicts with the antagonistic
energy passing from a state of actualization A to one of potentialization P.
This is an alternative statement of the Axiom of the Included Third.
Each of the three elements (A, P, T) is an antagonistic energetic duality or
alternatively an antagonistic conjunction. Each is a system, and all more com-
plex systems are generated by concatenation of such antagonistic dynamisms.
Logical systems of energy thus apply to all phenomena or aspects of experi-

ence, from microscopic to macroscopic, since antagonism and contradictory
values are irreducibly constitutive of all real events. These logical systems are
the basis for the generation of systems of systems, formally, by the extension
of the concept of actualization, potentialization and T-state to that of implica-
tion, considered, with the other logical operators, conjunction and disjunction,
as real processes themselves.
In these principles, I see a basis for von Bertalanffy’s concept of continuous
multivariable interactions as well as their modern formulation by Hofkirchner
and others of meta-system transitions [15]. Already in 1962, Lupasco related
the concepts of feedback and a non-Shannon type of information. Lupasco
noted that any cybernetic system has the capacity for feedback or “counter-
action”, initiated by some perturbation. The key point, according to Lupasco,
is that the interactions are not only associative and epistemic but physical. In
order for real processes to evolve, there must be a driving force that is prim-
itive, and this in fact is a consequence of the existence of duality or polarity
at the most fundamental physical level. “Self” - organization can only occur
in systems that are already sufficiently complex to have the potential for the
organizing process to occur.
In my opinion, these principles exemplify the Logic of Transdisciplinarity
and point toward the need to consider its implications in the understanding
of the evolution of real complex systems. In particular, in my view, it is the
above systems view that insures the foundations in reality of the recursive
aspects of complex processes described as loops or circuits (cf. Hofstadter [16]
and Morin [17].)1
Von Bertalanffy stated that the development of GST could lead to the
unification of science, a science of the future that could play a role similar to
Aristotelian logic in the science of antiquity. At a Symposium on Lupasco in
2010 [18], I showed that his extension of logic to encompass reality effected
a metalogical rejunction, restoring logic to its original role, in antiquity, of a
science of nature. A major conclusion of this study is thus that the logical
approach of Lupasco might provide a unique framework for accomplishing
the task that von Bertalanffy set for his General Systems Theory. Logic, in
the extended Lupasco sense, could be an integral part of what is now called
Systems Thinking (see below Section 4.4).
1.4.2 Systems Science and Complex Systems in Morin

Edgar Morin has given his own, highly personal and humanistic readings of
systems theory since its codification by von Bertalanffy. He has developed
1 David Pouvreau has studied the importance given by von Bertalanffy to mathematics
in the GST. In my view, although standard mathematics is necessary, it is not sufficient to

capture all of the non-Boolean, non-Markovian aspects of systems. This is where the Lupasco
approach may be useful. However, to make a satisfactory comparison, a mathematization
remains to be made, in more familiar terms, of Lupasco’s calculus of chains of chains of
implications as describing the evolution of real processes.
his own logical framework, dialogic, and showed how it can apply to complex
phenomena, leading to his fundamental principle of complexity – the ecology
of action – in a new epistemology of complexity (see also Section 4.5 below).
The relation between complexity and dialogic is that the latter is one of the
principles of the former: the dialogic principle allows us to maintain duality
at the heart of unity. It associates two terms that are at the same time
complementary and antagonistic.
Another expression linking systems and complexity is that “extremely com-
plex systems (are those) where the part is in the whole and the whole is in the
part”. One is beyond holism and reductionism in a recursive relational circuit
in which parts and wholes “explain” one another, neither term being reducible
to the other (Morin’s “holographic” principle of complexity). Three terms,
for example species, individual and society, also can refer to one another in
a circuit that itself is the true system: its three terms are at the same time
concurrent and antagonistic.
Morin collaborated with Lupasco and Nicolescu, in the foundation of the
International Center for Transdisciplinary Research in 1984, and it was pri-
marily Nicolescu, after Lupasco’s death in 1988, who made the major effort to
develop the critical notions of theoretical transdisciplinarity.
Unfortunately, neither Nicolescu nor Morin has reviewed the notions of
Lupasco summarized above of a general dynamics of the origin of systems.
Systems science developed after General Systems Theory from the interaction
of standard information theory and cybernetics. One definition of systems
science is therefore the following2 : “A new discipline that combines theoretical,
practical and methodological approaches relative to research topics that are
recognized as being too complex to be accessed in a reductionist fashion, and
that pose problems of 1) boundaries, internal and external relations, structure
and laws or emergent properties characterizing the system as such and 2)
modes of observation, representation and model building or simulation of a
complex totality.”
Systems science thus overlaps complexity science, in that the latter is based
on a definition of the complex systems that are the objects of systems science
study, albeit from a less computational standpoint. A complex system is
loosely defined as constructed by a large number of simple, mutually interact-
ing parts, capable of exchanging stimuli with its environment and of adapting
its internal structure as a consequence of such interaction. The non-linear in-
teractions involved can give rise to coherent, emergent complex behavior with
a rich structure. Key concepts in complexity science are, for example, the
coexistence of diversity and stability, for which LIR provides an interpreta-
tion. Complexity science also looks at the dynamics of systems in transition
regions of self-organized criticality. Schematic systems are used to investigate
self-organization, but without the grounding in dynamic opposition and po-
tentiality that I have proposed as necessary to explain the functioning of such
2 French Association of the Science of Cybernetic, Cognitive and Technical Systems (AF-
SCET), 1994.
organization, as well as the ambiguity in the term ‘self’.

As stated at a Congress in 20053 , the major objective of systems science
today is to provide a consensual, transdisciplinary approach to the increasingly
complex problems faced by workers in all areas of society, with the laudable
intention of ‘placing man at the center of its preoccupations’. Models and
strategies are designed to develop effective operational tools as well as concep-
tual and philosophical ones.
Systems science includes aspects of such a diversity of sciences and disci-
plines that makes it difficult to capture in a few words. One example is the
science of ago-antagonist systems (SAAS), developed by Bernard-Weil, which
bears a superficial resemblance to Lupasco’s principles. SAAS purports to
identify and take into account, in concrete systems, pairs of elements that
are both conflicting and cooperative, either at the same time or alternatively.
This theory, like many others in systems science, has practical applications
as a step in understanding the role of pairs of antagonists in living cells, the
human body, business enterprises, etc. As I have shown, however [6], it is
necessary to specify more completely what is meant by ‘at the same time’ or
‘alternatively’ and to look for the origins of both conflict and cooperation in
the potentialities of the systems’ elements.
1.4.3 Systems and Emergence

By taking a minor step back from the debates about systems, emergence and
complexity, it becomes fairly obvious that they are not independent concepts
but that their usual definitions are closely entangled, not to say circular. An-
other major problem is that much of systems science and complexity theory is
cast in epistemological terms, referring to more or less abstract observers and
models.
As one example of such an approach to systems and emergence, I cite the
work of Minati, Penna and Pessa [19]. These authors do show that the usual
picture of systems is too limited to deal with logically open systems, in which
the internal state of a system, as well as its environment, need to be taken into
account. The major strategy of Minati is to establish a principled role for the
observer that defines epistemological levels of logical openness.
However, for many complex phenomena whose description and overall
dynamics have not been captured by current theories, such as information,
change, intentionality, etc., an account in which the observer has an epistemo-
logical role needs to be supplemented by an ontological non-conceptual account
in which the rules governing the real interactions between entities, including
the observer, are also applied. In LIR, the observer is in an ontologically prior
dynamic relation with the observed of which he is a part. One such relation is
that between the scientist and his experimental configuration. In the view of
LIR, real-world processes are emergent not, or not only in an epistemological
but also in an ontological sense.
3 6th European Systems Science Congress, Paris, September 19 – 22, 2005.
1.4.4 Transdisciplinarity and Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking, like phenomenological transdisciplinarity, has been defined
primarily as an approach to problem solving: it views problems as features of
an overall system which are best understood in the context of relationships
with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation. In princi-
ple, Systems Thinking techniques may be used to study any kind of system -
natural, scientific, engineered, human or conceptual. The difference and ad-
vantages of Systems Thinking vs. traditional forms of standard analysis are
clear.
In practice, two things are missing that are necessary, in my opinion, to
give Systems Thinking the necessary depth: one is an adequately grounded
definition of a system in the first place, in which contradictorial interactions
are present constitutively. I suggest that this has in fact been provided by the
Lupasco systemology. The second is a proper conception of how the qualitative
properties of systems may be expressed.
In her 2005 paper, Debora Hammond [20] summarizes developments of
Systems Thinking since the establishment of its categories of application –
technology, science and philosophy – by von Bertalanffy. We can all agree
today with his conception of GST that emphasizes a more holistic and hu-
manistic approach to knowledge and practice, while deploring the fact that
such an approach has not materialized.
I consider this article a very accurate reflection of the “state-of-art” of Sys-
tems Thinking. Starting with von Bertalanffy, the author points to many sig-
nificant contributions to a systems view, which she defines: “The systems view
reinforces a constructivist orientation to knowledge as a dialectical, pluralistic
and participatory process that emphasizes the importance of mutual under-
standing, meaning and values.” All of the well-known difficulties in achieving
such goals are indicated, the fragmentation of knowledge, the use of systems
thinking for social control and that indeed “we have yet to discover the ap-
propriate approach to systems”. I of course consider the Lupasco grounding
of systems in the inherent physical antagonisms of matter-energy, formulated
in 1962 [13] as one such approach.
On the other hand, the approach of one of the most influential systems
thinkers, Peter Senge [21], amounts to not much more than an exhortation to
look at the “whole”, at an organization as a holistic, dynamic process and to
balance short-term and longer-term cost-benefit parameters. This is fine as
far as it goes, but no one can say today that it goes far enough.
Hammond’s statement of objective merits repetition here: “Perhaps the
primary challenge for systems thinkers in the 21st Century is to find ways
of integrating the insights emerging out of the various branches of systems
thinking over the past fifty or sixty years.” She proposes that it will be some
form of new thinking emerging from the new informational paradigm that will
suggest new ways of accomplishing this integration, despite the difficult de-
fragmentation of knowledge that must take place. I consider this an excellent
expression of one of the tasks facing transdisciplinarity.
Azad Madni has stated that what distinguishes transdisciplinary system

science-oriented thinking from traditional approaches is that transdisciplinary
thinking emphasizes lateral or associative thinking [22], often relying on meta-
phors and analogies to enhance problem understanding. In particular, trans-
disciplinary approaches employ integrative (or synthetic) problem solving as
opposed to analytic problem solving typically employed by reductionist ap-
proaches. He compares and contrasts analytic and synthetic problem solv-
ing that underlie traditional (reductionist) and transdisciplinary (holistic) ap-
proaches. In the view developed here, these considerations are necessary but
not sufficient. If the language used is of an opposition only with separation, it
can lead only to persistence of a philosophy of separation. The reciprocity of
reductionism and holism was noted early by Hofstadter [16], but it failed to
yield useful further results in the absence of a framework for comprehending
their interactive dynamics.
System Dynamics
System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behavior of complex
systems over time. It deals with internal feedback loops and time delays that
affect the behavior of the entire system. While the approach is in principle
applicable to ecosystems and political systems, in fact it can only be used for
the most mechanical, quantitative features of such systems, capable of being
modeled in causal loop diagrams. Accordingly, system dynamics adds nothing
fundamental to the understanding of information or other complex phenomena
as such.
With hindsight, the notion of applying systems theory to the solution of
practical problems, for example, those of organizations, is neither more nor
less than common sense. The unfortunate state of the world, however, is a
demonstration that such solutions have been limited in scope. As a systems
scientist, in his major book on the relation of systems, semiotics and informa-
tion, Sören Brier [23], clearly shows the limitations of a systems theory such
as that of Niklas Luhmann, in which the subject is lost in functionalism that
is not adequately grounded in an external reality and a proper philosophical
framework.
1.4.5 Complexity
It is often suggested that notions of complexity provide substantial additional
insight into the nature of systems and real processes. On closer inspection, it
turns out to be easy to show that current relatively rigorous notions of com-
plexity are all tied back to computer science, specifically, algorithmic infor-
mation theory, as in the Kolmogorov complexity of an informational object.
I believe, however, that none of the existing approaches based on systems
or standard computational notions of complexity are adequate to define the
unique ontological status of information.
While the lack of formalism in the complex systems approach serves to

differentiate it from strictly computational ones, the lack of foundations di-
minishes the value of its humanistic and ethical characteristics. The only
complex systems studied in detail seem to be those simple enough to be com-
putationally tractable. If the essence of complexity is non-computability, then
the right of such systems to be called complex is open to question.
From the LIR standpoint, the Morin notion of complexity suffers from be-
ing, like the views of systems outlined above, not sufficiently complex! In our
view, the lack of grounding of all of the systems approaches or “ways of think-
ing” has blocked its further as a way of gaining further insights into nature.
Thus the “systems thinking” in this case assumes ab origine a mathematical
structure of reality which it may not have, or have only in the case of simple
processes that take place “spontaneously”, that is are highly linear.
Morin’s system of logic, dialogic, which is often referred to in systems
theory bears some relation to that of Lupasco, with whom as noted he had
been associated. To repeat, Morin [17] defines a “dialogical principle that
allows us to maintain duality at the heart of unity. It associates two terms
that are at the same time complementary and antagonistic.” However, neither
this principle nor the basis for its operation is grounded in physics. The
Lupasco Principle of Dynamic Opposition describes not the abstract elements
or concepts of complexity, philosophical, political, etc., but the instantiation
of the complex elements in reality.
My tentative conclusion is, therefore, that Systems Thinking, even en-
hanced by this concept of complexity, neither further defines information or
how it can be both a constituent of reality and a display or representation
of reality. We will therefore look more closely at the concept of information
as a domain to which the application of a transdisciplinary approach may be
fruitful, and which may in turn inform concepts of transdisciplinarity.
Simplexity
Although this overview cannot mention all current work that tends to confirm
the relevance of Lupasco’s vision to transdisciplinarity, I should mention briefly
that of Alain Berthoz [24]. Berthoz was driven to the concept of what he
calls simplex systems by observation of the way in which neural processes
operate cooperatively, integrating spatial and temporal elements. The body
finds simplex solutions to problems that more rapid and efficient by “detours”
through (configuration) spaces of higher complexity. Berthoz insists on the
modularity of the simplex responses at the level of body and mind, as a way
of simplifying the necessary neurocomputations.
Berthoz feels it necessary to “oppose” the concepts of simplexity and com-
plexity, but this should not detract from the significance and utility of either.
The preferred methodology would be to relate complexity to simplexity, dialec-
tically, as situations in which simplexity can emerge from complexity and vice
versa. This is, of course, where concepts from the Logic of Transdisciplinarity
are useful in the discussion of the dynamics of the changes involved. Nicolescu
has shown [1] that there are degrees of transdisciplinarity. Thus, to the extent
that simplexity instantiates a higher level of reality than complexity, one may
say that it is “more’ transdisciplinary.
Berthoz concludes with a credo that I feel can be useful for anyone con-
vinced of the importance of transdisciplinary thinking (my translation): “Sim-
plexity is a way of living with one’s world. It is elegance rather than sobriety,
intelligence rather than cold logic, subtlety rather than rigor, diplomacy rather
than authority ... It is adaptive rather than normative or prescriptive, prob-
abilistic rather than deterministic”. These ideas are of course related to prior
work by Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Morin, as well as Nicolescu, but using, that
is taking the best parts of complementary views is itself a form of simplexity.
1.5 An Informational Paradigm
1.5.1 Transdisciplinarity and Information
By any definition, the domain of information, consisting of information theory,

science and technology is clearly transdisciplinary. The disciplines involved
include (at least) philosophy, epistemology, mathematics, logic, psychology,
electronics, computer science, electronics and the social, political and economic
sciences. This being so, the difficulty of trying to capture information within
a single definition or category is understandable.
In the view which I have expressed, [25], information is best viewed as a
conjunction of the energetic processes involved in the transmission and recep-
tion of meaning and that meaning, such that information cannot be separated
from the underlying physical processes of its generation. If this hierarchical
picture is partially correct, however, information is constitutive of the disci-
plines but not reducible to them, since it is present in all human activities,
creative, emotional and so on. We may thus say that information is something
that lies within, between and beyond all disciplines, a phrase that exactly
parallels the Nicolescu definition of transdisciplinarity.
The first corollary of this position, following my thesis as expressed in the
Introduction (1.2), is that the logic of information and the methodology of un-
derstanding its operation might be something like those of transdisciplinarity;
in particular, the logic of the included third or Logic in Reality (LIR) should
be applicable. Applicable here means permitting stable inferences about the
evolution of the concepts, processes and events under consideration, provided
they are sufficiently complex for their elements to be in some dynamic, inter-
active relation.
1.5.2 What is Missing from Theories of Information?

There is general agreement that information is a complex but perhaps unifying
concept that nevertheless comes in a wide variety of forms. One version of the
problem is that information clearly has an energetic substrate that can in part
be quantified (bits), but it has proven difficult to explain its being somehow
associated with a qualitative, higher level of meaning dependent on its inter-
pretation by a receiver, human or other. The current set of assumptions about
its nature, still based largely on computational extensions of Claude Shannon’s
original ideas, is sufficient to explicate its minimal physical characteristics but
insufficient to define its representational character or its functional, qualitative
and normative value.
Terrence Deacon has proposed a new approach to information as a pro-
cess instantiating a complex dynamics that starts with thermodynamics and
continues throughout higher ontological levels of form (morphodynamics) and
intentionality (teleodynamics). In his Incomplete Nature [26], Deacon extends
a thermodynamic concept of energy derived from statistical mechanics to yield
a description of complex processes in which absence plays a critical role in the
emergence of living systems, mind and information. Deacon shows how an
interactive operation of both Shannon entropy and Boltzmann entropy must
be taken into account in information. (The title of this Sub-Section is that of
another important paper by Deacon [27].)
Deacon shows that the hallmark of information processes is its absent con-
tent, a resultant function of their necessary physicality, and LIR shows that
presence (actuality) and absence (potentiality) in such processes must be re-
lated dynamically. While the importance of a concept of absence for informa-
tion was indicated by Marijuan and others some ten years ago, it is Deacon’s
detailed current development that now calls for our attention.
Due to its own rigorous ascent from the properties of matter-energy as
first described by Lupasco, Logic in Reality provides a reconciliation of the
logic of physical science and the logic of living and mental teleology and can
link energy, form and information, using potentialities to achieve teleological
properties from unambiguously non-teleological starting points. Despite the
prestige of Norbert Wiener and John Wheeler, it is becoming clear that their
– related - statements to the effect that energy is not information and that
information is primitive to matter-energy (“it from bit”) have been profoundly
misleading.
The relation of modes of information to meaning, Deacon’s approach to dy-
namics and Logic in Reality (LIR) accomplish several objectives: first of all,
they ground and extend a concept of the relativity of information, in that infor-
mation is not only not an invariant quantity, but a process or set of processes
of processes. In this concept of information, biological or cognitive meaning is
defined by interaction with the context (or environment) that interprets the
information.
From the perspective of this Chapter, information or better information-
as-process becomes an integral part of a broader transdisciplinary view of both
knowledge and the finality of knowledge. Let us now look more closely at how
information can be related to the discussion of systems above.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Society: A

Transdiscipline
Before leaving the domain of information per se, readers of this Journal may
be interested in the recent work in both information and the ICTs by Wolfgang
Hofkirchner and his associates in Salzburg and (now) Vienna. Their concept
that the study of the emerging theory of the information society is transdis-
ciplinary, and in particular the new field of research in the Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Society is a transdiscipline, was pro-
posed in 2007 [28]. In my opinion, this paper is completely consistent with the
functional definition of a transdiscipline in the basic charter of ATLAS [4].
By the term transdiscipline Hofkirchner et al. mean something distinct in
two respects: its scientific status and its potential societal function.
a) Scientific Status
As regards the scientific status of the field, the concept of a transdiscipline
does not mean a mere combination of existing disciplines but a transgression
of the traditional borders of the participating disciplines and thereby their
transformation into something new with its own identity insofar as it disposes
of its own terminology overarching the terminologies of the single disciplines
it departs from. A transdiscipline therefore is expected to bridge several gaps:
the gap between the two cultures of (natural) science and social and human
sciences as well as the gap between specialists and generalists and the gap
between applied research and basic research. It is the result of a process that
departs from mono- or multidisciplinarity and transcends interdisciplinarity.
b) Potential Societal Function

If it is the aim of an as-yet-to-be-developed science of and for the Information
Society to help govern society when confronted with the well-known global
challenges, it is the aims of transdisciplinary ICTs-and-Society research to
contribute to shaping ICTs so as to help bring about a Global Sustainable
Information Society (GSIS). A GSIS can be defined in a normative way and
the ICTs can be assessed according to how they facilitate society to live up to
these values. This is in sharp contrast to either undertaking research solely for
reasons of curiosity or being instrumental to whatever is demanded by parts
of society. In contrast to the ideology of value-free science, here the normative
criteria are laid down to which ICTs as well as society should be subject. A
state of future society is envisioned in which these criteria are met.
Hofkirchner argues that to the newly established field of ICTs-and-Society
research must thus inhere transdisciplinary features, if it is to 1) be critical of
current socio-economic developments; 2) aim for the establishment of a GSIS
(global sustainable Information Society); 3) tackle the complex problems of

society and technology; and 4) use social-scientific and technological, empirical
and theoretical methods in a proper way.
As I have discussed elsewhere [29], the Logic of Transdisciplinary, as ex-
pressed in Logic in Reality, supports this transdisciplinary view in general.
LIR supports further integrative ITC assessment and design approaches that
incorporate a normative view of technology and society. There is no place in
LIR for value-free science; the practitioner is always involved logically with
the material substrate of his science, whose dynamics and properties he partly
shares. As clearly stated by Hofkirchner et al., a normative approach requires
“doing justice” to what is normative and factual, actual and potential.
The term “transdiscipline” should thus be adopted in discussions of trans-
disciplinarity where it brings out better the issues under discussion. The con-
clusion of an on-line debate on this question [30] in regard to ICTs-and-Society
was generally favorable. Whether the use of the term conflicts with a definition
of transdisciplinarity which is also supposed to be beyond all disciplines is for
me a secondary question, perhaps best answered pragmatically by reference
to transdisciplinary openness itself.
1.6 The Philosophy of Information. Informational

Thinking
1.6.1 The Reconstruction of Phenomenology
Support for this picture of information, in which what is ultimately the logic
of Lupasco plays a central role comes from recently published work in the area
of the philosophy of information by Wu Kun [31] At the heart of Wu’s the-
ory is a necessarily alternative worldview that emphasizes its relational and
process aspects completely in the spirit of Lupasco’s (toute est relation; every-
thing is relation). We move from a quantitative, “technological” conception of
information to what may fairly be called a transdisciplinary one.
In his Metaphilosophy of Information, Wu Kun positions information as
a critical component of all disciplines, beyond the formal content specific to
them. A summary of his views in English can be found in [32]. Basically, in the
light of information theory, the weaknesses of modern philosophy, from Kant
through Husserl become apparent. It is the existence of information, even
more than, but in concordance with, the Logic of Transdisciplinarity, that
breaks the traditional absolute separation of subject and object. Although
Husserl found a way of beginning to describe the reality of consciousness, his
one-dimensional phenomenological reduction maintains, in another form, the
disastrous (for human society) polarization of standard bivalent logics. From
a Lupascian standpoint, Husserl’s bracketing is thus fundamentally flawed as
a hermeneutic process.
In place of standard phenomenology, Wu proposes an informational ontol-
ogy in which we as humans have (self-evidently) access to “things-in-themselves”.

He emphasizes that his philosophy of information and logic in reality are not
phenomenology because phenomenology is the subjective intent of interpret-
ing the structure of the world. We live, however, also as indicated in the
dialectics of Lupasco, by adhering to route on which “the natural noumenon’s
own movement explains the world”. Articles in the major 1999 compendium,
edited by Jean Petitot and Francisco Varela [33], Naturalizing Phenomenology
fail to reach the minimum complexity required. The implications of this view
for phenomenological transdisciplinarity are most interesting, but outside the
scope of this paper.
While standard functional and operational definitions of information have
their role to play in practical applications, they fail to capture both the intrinsic
dynamics of complex processes and the nature of information itself which is
instantiated in them. Thus, in the understanding of knowledge and knowledge
propagation, drastic modifications of points in standard epistemology have to
be made, with consequences for the dynamics of the emergence of new entities
and meaning, in the contradictorial relationship that is formalized in LIR.
Using an informational paradigm illuminates work such as that of Lakoff
and Johnson [34] on “The Embodied Mind”, in which the physical and physio-
logical structures of the mind and body interact in an informational complex.
Many workers in transdisciplinarity refer to some such concept as a way of
better describing mind-body interactions in a non-reductive manner. To talk
about information at any but the lowest computational level requires attention
to the entire objective dynamics and subjective idiosyncratic patterns, consis-
tencies and inconsistencies, styles of the human actors involved in its gener-
ation and reception, its historical dimensions, and so on. Wu has called this
informational complex, constituted by the complete set of all of the informa-
tional processes and interactions of an individual, past, present and potential
the “informosome”.
Taking into consideration the complex informational properties of existence
is a difficult task for science, but it is the more correct position from which to
start. To quote Wu: “Informational activities have their origin not in the pure
“life world” of an idealized subject, but in the objective world of their own
interactive existence and evolution.” One must maintain in the forefront of
one’s mind the synergy between the physical form and the informational form
and the rules of their evolution to fully understand their unified relationship.
LIR provides a formalism for discussing the “intertwining” of internal and
external, present and potential (or absent) awareness and interactions, the
“subjective active and the objective passive”, ultimately of man and nature in
their unity-in-duality noted by Hofkirchner [35]. Application of the philosophy
of information thus brings out an ontological domain, which Wu has called that
of indirect existence as part of total existence, something that is objective
and complex, having meaning and value and thereby constituting the elusive
thing-in-itself that does not require further empirical proof in the reductionist
classical sense.
1.6.2 Wu’s Metaphilosophy of Information and

Transdisciplinarity
It is perhaps a first indication of an approaching maturity of the field of infor-
mation that, based on the contribution of Wu Kun, one can begin to talk about
a new, functional metaphilosophy of (a theory of) information. One of the con-
sequences, however, is that the comprehensive nature of such a metaphilosophy
establishes the role of those involved in them in the social and ethical aspects
of the informational components of existence. The lack of separability between
the informational and transdisciplinary approaches and their complementarity
deserves much further work. For now, I will just say that to me the spirit of
both forms of thought is similar, without being or having to be identical.
Let us assume, for clarity in the discussion, that there are higher levels
of human thought, in the Heideggerian “clearing”. Then theoretical trans-
disciplinarity, in the view of Nicolescu which I endorse, and which includes
his concepts of the transdisciplinary Subject and Object opens out into these
higher ontological levels of human thought and existence. I will continue the
discussion in this paper, however, at the lower logical level of the evolution of
complex real processes, essentially concentrating on their immanent aspects.
The Metaphilosophy of Information requires attention to the informational
aspects of complex processes as a methodological necessity, in a process that
Wu calls Informational Thinking. Informational Thinking (IT), as conceived
of by Wu, refers to a way of grasping and describing the essential characteris-
tics and attributes of things by reference to the structure and dynamics of the
information involved in their evolution, from their historical origins to future
possibilities and probabilities. However, the doctrine of Wu, unlike that of
Husserl, does not have to be “naturalized”, that is, brought into the domain
of natural science4 . It is already there in what I claim is a transdisciplinary
configuration. Wu discloses directly the mechanisms of the processes involved
in an individual’s understanding at the level of the integrated object and sub-
ject, with internal and external interactions providing the necessary multi-level
objective and subjective mediation.
In this sense, all of the cognitive issues addressed by Wu, especially infor-
mational values, valence and social evolution, have implied the use of Informa-
tional Thinking for their analysis. IT requires the abandonment of thinking
in traditional, absolute material terms while retaining its original foundations.
IT is basically a methodological concept that, via the definitions of carriers and
codes of information, enables inferences to be made about the historical and
potential or probable future states of an information system. IT dialectically
unifies energy factors and informational factors, determinism and indetermin-
ism, internal and external feedback processes, independence (autonomy) and
interdependence. LIR provides the additional logical structure for the dialectic
4 As noted, the naturalization of Husserlian phenomenology was the subject of the major
1999 study [33]. Wu’s approach eliminates the arduous task of finding natural equivalents
for Husserl’s transcendental intuitions.
interpretation of such a unified approach, based on the impossibility of any

total logical or physical separation between these dualities. In fact, Informa-
tional Thinking is the Metaphilosophy of Information in other terms.
To the extent that Informational Thinking requires the consideration of all
the philosophical and scientific facets of information, we believe that we are
close to a new scientific (and logical) paradigm in which Informational Think-
ing, as opposed to thinking in terms of entities, results in new interpretations
of, among other things, traditional disciplines and their theories. Above all,
we see the (meta-) philosophy and (meta-) logic of information outlined here
as a contribution to revealing the essence of information as a natural process.
In other words, by seeing the relations between the changes in values that
take place in human informational activities and the forms of society, a more
profound understanding of information is possible that could be a contribu-
tion to overall progress and sustainable development of human civilization.
Information Science, Metaphilosophy, Metalogic and Thinking may thus fa-
cilitate what Wu calls for, namely, a change in the commitment to and the
interpretation of the dynamic oppositions in all complex natural processes in
informational terms.
Through the study of information as one of the most basic features of ex-
istence, and the formalization of informational activities, the Metaphilosophy
of Information of Wu can and should change the way basic philosophical –
metaphysical, epistemological and ontological – issues are discussed. The Phi-
losophy of Information supported by the new extension of logic to the same
processes that it discusses, could be a “comprehensive revolution in philoso-
phy”, which I consider to be transdisciplinary in character.
1.6.3 Informational Thinking vs. Systems Thinking

Due to the inclusion in Informational Thinking of some of the principles, espe-
cially the logic, of transdisciplinarity that are comparable – (they do not have
to be “identical”) to those of transdisciplinarity – one can “go beyond” the
limitations of a systems approach that lacks a comparable grounding. Further
inferences, for example, about how best to bridge the gap between natural
and social science can be made in informational terms, since inherent to it,
ab origine, is a theory of ethical value present in informational entities at the
lowest to highest levels. As a case study for inclusion in this Chapter, let us
look at the advantages which the informational paradigm brings to a number
of domains of research as compared with Systems Thinking as outlined above.
Wu Kun made an analysis of the relation between information and sys-
tems theory in 2006 [36] in which he called attention to the limitations of the
latter, as well as of the related research programs of information science and
complexity theory. His comparative study of Information Thinking (IT) vs.
Systems Thinking (ST) is outlined below in part. The reader may wish, as
an exercise, to judge from this comparison if IT has some of the “flavor” of
transdisciplinarity.
• Ontology
ST: Basically descriptive, a way of looking at the properties of things in
an integrated fashion, based on established philosophical foundations.
IT: Basically constructive, establishing new divisions of the extant do-
main as a dual-existent dimension of direct and indirect existence, bring-
ing about the integrative and fundamental transformation of philosophy
and other disciplines.
• Value
ST: No internally defined conception of value (no “best” system).
IT: A natural duality theory of the value of information and matter as
nature and emerging from nature. It is similar to but more generally
formulated than Floridi’s Philosophy of Information [36], as higher cog-
nitive levels are addressed
• Social Development Theory

ST: Captures much of the complex structure of society.
IT: Has an interpretive function that integrates informational develop-
ments with the essence of human society and its evolution, and from the
dimension of information activities, establishing the essence of human
society and criteria of its evolution.
• Economic Development Theory

ST: Has the capability of describing informational activities as economic
facts.
IT: Can constructively relate all aspects of information production and
human productivity to an underlying process of creating an informa-
tional world.
• Scientific Research. The Transformation of Science and Philosophy

ST: As indicated, Systems Thinking is a valid way of focusing on and
solving problems related to defined complex cognitive entities at biolog-
ical, cognitive and social levels of reality.
IT: Informational Thinking is a global approach to understanding the
world in as a set of informational terms that extends from fundamental
physics and metaphysical concepts (e.g., determinism and indetermin-
ism) through to complex behavior patterns of individuals and groups.
Unlike ST, IT provides a new informational paradigm for the overall
fundamental transformation of both traditional and modern scientific
ones. The informational paradigm generated leads to a new scientific
system oriented by it, which Wu presented and foretold in 1995, when
he described the tendency as an “informational rescientification (or nat-
uralization) of science itself”.
As implied above, Informational Thinking not only includes Systems Think-

ing as it is currently conceived but goes beyond it, much as transdisciplinarity
goes beyond multi- and interdisciplinarity. In the spirit of LIR and this pa-
per, no invidious message of exclusion is intended here; as perspectives on
knowledge, ST and IT too are related dialectically, and one can look, for ex-
ample, at the interactive patterns of organizational structure and relational
networks with a greater or lesser emphasis, depending on the objective, using
the informational philosophical underpinning that Wu’s new illustrations of
existence can provide. Nevertheless, it is Informational Thinking, including a
logic of the included third, that is primitive and provides the framework for
an improved understanding of systems.
In view of the rich space of possibilities for advances in philosophy and
science offered by the concepts I have defined of Information Thinking, I hope
that it may be possible to move the focus of debate away from the details of
the formal, mathematical conceptions of information toward a more holisti-
cally natural, human and social approach. Wu’s term of the “informational
rescientification of science” is not intended to exclude any less rigorous criteria
for the physical and logical validity of current science but increases the required
degree of scientific and ethical responsibility of its practitioners. One should
realize, only, that standard conceptions of logic, systems and information are
a priori inadequate for this purpose.
1.6.4 The Informational Stance

Informational Thinking in fact further describes an attitude or stance, the
Informational Stance, a philosophical position and attitude that is most ap-
propriate for, and above all not separated nor isolated from, the emerging
science and philosophy of information itself. The Informational Stance [38]
is an attitude that requires attention to the informational aspects of com-
plex processes as a methodological necessity that goes beyond the empirical
epistemological formulation of van Fraassen [39].
Transdisciplinarity supports a humanistic worldview that is primary, sim-
ilar to Wu’s idea that “we should have a metaphysical picture of the world to
discipline scientific methodology, and science and education policy”. I note, as
originally formulated by Wu, the non-separability of metaphysics, epistemol-
ogy, value theory and social issues. The Informational Stance is an interactive
process, in which the human individual or group is engaged morally and po-
litically, as well as being an epistemic observer in the standard philosophical
sense. In fact, consistent with my overall logical approach, it is not necessary
to make absolute separations between an informational stance, thinking, phi-
losophy and the ethical dimension. It is rather an integrating position with
alternating focus. The right integrative property enables complexity, because
the origin of the basic emergent character of complexity requires only the prior
multiplicity of difference and identity. Of course, emergence occurs not only
at the integrative level, but also at the partial level, when the informational
dimension is introduced, producing the holographic property of the general

informational nature of entities, that is, the “informosome”.
1.6.5 The Consequences for Man and Society

The superiority of thinking centered on information in contrast to thinking
centered on systems, Informational Thinking, (in which I include the infor-
mational attitude or stance), over Systems Thinking, can be brought out by
reference to the development of a coherent ontological conception of one’s
place in the world5 . The fundamental shift of philosophy toward a valuation
of what one might call immanent/transcendent realism was also analyzed by
Wu Kun in [31]. As he writes, “the revolutionary significance and value of
information has gone beyond all previous theories of traditional philosophy”.
The term Information Society, where information has been understood pri-
marily in a limited pragmatic sense, may be becoming devoid of meaning as
a consequence. Rather, one should perhaps speak of an Information Era as a
more historically comprehensive concept.
The justification for Systems Thinking, when well meant, is its orientation
toward more effective and just management of a society based on new princi-
ples. When not well meant, the finality is limited to more effective operation
of existing economic structures. The Philosophy of Information, like Logic in
Reality, on the other hand, can contribute to the morally necessary objective of
philosophically grounding of a more just society, in which invidious Manichean
distinctions, supported by standard logics even in their modern forms, have
no place.
It would be naÃŕve to suggest that the arrival of a new informational
society with more democracy and individual freedom would mean that anti-
social behavior would disappear overnight, even if reference to Informational
Thinking and transdisciplinarity became widespread. What I stress here is
only the desirability of independence in the new informational society, which
means informational independence of human individuals from institutions but
relative free will involving interdependence of human beings.
1.7 Transdisciplinarity, Ethics and the Common

Good
The relationship between transdisciplinarity and the common good was very
clearly laid out in a recent ATLAS paper by Christian Pohl [40]. He first
describes alternative combinations of four characteristic features of transdisci-
plinarity, namely (a) to relate to socially relevant issues, (b) to transcend and
integrate disciplinary paradigms, (c) to do participatory research, and (d) to
5 This is, philosophically, an alternate to a Husserlian phenomenology based on transcen-
dental subjectivity.
search for a unity of knowledge. Rapidly, the Nicolescu conception focuses on

d) as well as on how to approach all of these areas.
Pohl has established a concept of the function of a new transdisciplinar-
ity network in Switzerland, the td-net, namely, to add additional features to
the recent concentration on participatory research as the finality of transdis-
ciplinarity. His concept “endeavors to frame, analyze, and process a socially
relevant issue in such a way that the research project (1) grasps the complexity
of the issue, (2) takes the diverse perspectives on the issue into account, (3)
links abstract and case-specific knowledge, and (4) develops knowledge and
practices that promote what is perceived to be the common good.” He then
goes on to say that “the promotion of the common good – or, more generally
speaking, the evaluative component of transdisciplinary research – is rarely
stated explicitly in definitions of transdisciplinarity even though an evaluative
component is inevitable in order to know what an improvement of the cur-
rent situation might look like.” Later he says: ‘... one of the challenges for
transdisciplinary researchers is to clarify underlying value systems by jointly
developing the concrete meaning of, for example, sustainable development for
the research project’s specific context”.
I agree with Pohl’s overall thesis as stated in these sentences, but I disagree
with his choice of emphasis. In my opinion, the purport of the terms com-
mon good, peace, ethics and sustainability go beyond research and researchers
in these fields toward the more general substantive meaning of the subjects
of research, the necessity for their implementation and the barriers to that
implementation. Accordingly, a next step, in my opinion, is to include, in
transdisciplinarity practice, a greater explicit commitment toward the actual
nature of the objectives of the research.
I therefore discuss below some further issues in the area of ethics and the
common good to which the transdisciplinary attitude may make a contribu-
tion. In my opinion, participating in “transdisciplinarity as a philosophical
movement” (see above, Section 2.1) is not politically neutral, since any ori-
entation toward a common good implies, more or less directly, some rather
fundamental changes in social, political and economic values and priorities. I
believe, however, in the area of information, a functional role for the transdis-
ciplinary attitude and transdisciplinary thinking is beginning to take shape.
1.7.1 What has happened to the common good?

There is general agreement that the objective of new science and technology is
to promote advances in human civilization, civilized behavior and well-being.
Thus what is new and requires the attention of philosophers and logicians is
not technology – science and engineering per se. What is new is the ever-
increasing space, material and mental, that is abusively occupied by the arti-
facts of technologies. Unless logic and philosophy address this issue, they will
have failed to address the reality of our world. François Flahault is a French
philosopher without illusions about the current direction of society. In his
recent book [41], whose title is that of this Sub-Section, he shows that social
reciprocity and coexistence are the essential requirements for a satisfactory
individual life, defining the real, non-economic “common good”. However, the
necessary codification of the rights of individuals, in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights in the aftermath of World War II, is now interpreted in an
overwhelming context of market-driven globalization of the new information
and communications technologies (ICTs), leading to a drastic and inhuman
devaluation of the common good.
The new social media enabled by the new ICTs are only partly and superfi-
cially effective in creating new ties, since the overwhelming emphasis is on the
new capacities available to (some) individuals, seen as their rights, with very
little about their duties, the other half of the dialectic of the common good.
(The positive role of these media in pathological socio-political situations is
not in question here.) Flahault shows that the concept of the common good
is anterior to that of individual rights, but pious statements about the need
to “work together” and “love one another” are inoperative. In order for the
balance of power at the political level to further the common good, a new
more scientific basis for the ties between individuals must be found than the
market relations, the economic-social contract of individual consumption that
relieves buyer and seller of all moral obligation.
Logic in Reality provides this: Two or more human individuals and their
relations constitute interactive systems in the LIR categorial sense of non-
separable subjects and objects, sharing in part one another’s characteristics.
An individual is no more isolated logically, psychologically or morally than he
or she is economically. Logic in Reality thus supports the relation between
what was called pre-scientifically “natural law” and the conception of human
society as necessary to human psychological existence, the real common good.
Neglect of the informational, and accordingly of the logical (in the above
sense of the logic of the included third) and transdisciplinary aspects of thought
may insure the purity of some academic research, but it also insures its ir-
relevance. In contrast, no scientific and technological work is without some
redeeming actual or potential value to the community and hence has ethical
entitlement to its share of limited resources. The role of information and its
technology in this respect has been clearly outlined by Rafael Capurro [42]
1.8 Conclusion
In this Chapter, the theory of transdisciplinarity as defined by Nicolescu, con-
sisting of its three ontological ‘pillars’ and the three axioms of its methodology,
has been outlined. Three relevant and closely related logics, the original logic
of the included third of Lupasco, the Nicolescu Logic of Transdisciplinarity
and my Logic in Reality are compared. In particular, the principles of the
Logic of Transdisciplinarity are shown to be essential to the understanding of
problems in the areas of systems and information.
Transdisciplinarity is not a paradigm in the sense that a paradigm is a

limiting concept. However, it can be related to recent developments, for ex-
ample by Wu in the philosophy of information that have been shown to go far
beyond the standard conceptions of philosophy. They establish the philosophy
of information as a framework for the understanding of both philosophy and
science in what may be termed a new informational paradigm. In particular,
the concept of Informational Thinking has been shown to be more potentially
valuable to the extent it incorporates a view of systems that fits Lupasco’s dy-
namic logical conception of the origin of systems in the antagonistic dualities
of physics and metaphysics. Informational Thinking, like transdisciplinarity in
the acceptation of Nicolescu, defines a stance or attitude in which rigor, open-
ing and tolerance are both scientific and moral necessities, augmented by the
feeling for information as a constituent of existence from the lowest to highest
levels and having value as a consequence. This informational paradigm is a
transdisciplinary one in that it seeks, like transdisciplinarity in general, what
lies in, between and beyond the different conceptions of information.
I share the conviction, expressed by Pohl and others, that the transdisci-
plinary approach, embodying the Logic of Transdisciplinarity, does not only
have enhanced potential for problem-solving, but also direct implications for
insuring that the “problem-solving” is done for the common good. The Logic of
Transdisciplinarity, unlike standard logics, is not topic-neutral or morally neu-
tral but founds an ethics. It is my hope that a transdisciplinary ethics, which
has not yet received a minimum necessary codification, may develop from
this work. In summary, the inclusion of transdisciplinary and informational
perspectives in scientific or philosophical work is not simply an intellectual
exercise but a social and moral imperative.
Acknowledgements
Since our first meeting in 1999, Professor Basarab Nicolescu has been a con-
stant source of energy and inspiration in support of my effort to make accessi-
ble, in English, the fundamental logical philosophy of Stéphane Lupasco and
his own contributions to it. I had agreed with Nicolescu that this logic was
the Logic of Transdisciplinarity, as discussed in 2005 at the 2nd International
Conference of Transdisciplinarity in Brazil. In the next phase of my work,
transdisciplinarity became to a certain extent secondary to establishing the
legitimacy of Lupasco’s Principle of Dynamic Opposition and the Logic of the
Included Third (Logic in Reality; LIR) in current philosophical-metaphysical
terms. However, as my interest then turned to the application of LIR in the
most currently significant fields of systems science and information, the nec-
essary functional role of transdisciplinarity and the transdisciplinary attitude,
in the complex acceptation of Nicolescu, became again clearly “actualized”. In
this, I am also very grateful to Professors Wolfgang Hofkirchner and Wu Kun
who have encouraged the application of the Lupasco system to their theories
and philosophy of systems and information in which appear their own visions
of transdisciplinarity. This paper is a first attempt to show the convergence

of these two lines of thought.
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About the Author
Dr. Joseph E. Brenner was born in Paris in 1934. In 1958, he earned a Ph.D. in
Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, After a career in the chemical
industry (Du Pont de Nemours International) in R&D and corporate development,
he began collaboration with the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research
(CIRET) in Paris, working with its President-Founder, Basarab Nicolescu. His ma-
jor objective has been to make the logical system of the Franco-Romanian thinker
Stéphane Lupasco (Bucharest, 1900 – Paris, 1988), a co-founder of CIRET, accessible
to English-language readers. Key publications are his 2008 book, Logic in Reality,
Springer, Dordrecht, and recent papers on applications of this logic to information
and the philosophy of information. He was involved in the 2010 inception of the
International Society for Information Studies, Vienna, Austria, of which he is the
Vice-President for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity. Also in 2010 he was named an
Associate Director of the International Center for the Philosophy of Information in
Xi’An, China. Dr. Brenner is a member of the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science; the New York Academy of Sciences; and the Swiss Society for
Logic and the Philosophy of Science.
CHAPTER 2
Perceptive Levels in Plants:
A Transdisciplinary Challenge in Living
Organism’s Plasticity
Marc-Williams Debono, PSA Research Group (Palaiseau, France).
s a minimal ‘cognitive’ perception of the world by lower organisms possi-

I ble? The aim of this Chapter is to evaluate the ability of plant kingdom to
treat information without nervous system. On the basis of experimental results
on plant bioelectrical potentials and on the analysis of extended cognitive lev-
els defined in the emergent plant neurobiology paradigm, these organisms are
considered: (1) as possessing dynamic integrated perceptive systems close to
those of animals, (2) as self-organized entities with protoneural abilities and
(3) as expressing primitive generic processes which have nonlinearly conducted
to complex brain networks. This approach permits a new bottom-up investiga-
tion of plastic interfaces, particularly at the level of perceptive and knowledge
accumulating systems. Providing the great value of early sensory processing
in plants is accepted, the only way to progress would be to read the emergent
behaviors of complex informational systems co-creating the world through a
transdisciplinary framework.
Keywords: Plasticity, Protoneural networks, Sensory biology, Nonlinear dy-

namic systems, Transdisciplinarity, Information levels, Cognitive processes,
Plastic interfaces, Plant behavior.
2.1 Introduction
The question of a common evolutionary tree before the divergence of plants and
animals today arose, as shown by the discoveries of a lot of plants’ functional
receptors or enzymes with fully conserved amino acid sequences or transmem-
33
brane domains analogous to animal receptor proteins [1]. In the same manner,
as recently clarified by Professor Balŭska, many data show that such neuro-
transmitters homolog, long-distance electrical signals, phenotypic plasticity,
memory of developmental stages, coordinated hormonal transport through
specialized tissues as well as rapid motility, insect-plant communication or so-
cial behaviors are preponderant in plants [2]. Our early work on Kalanchoë’s
extracellular potential variations (Debono & Bouteau, 1992) has shown that
spontaneous electrical activities as well as responses to stimuli occur widely
in plant tissues, being correlated with classical action potentials or resulting
macroscopic currents sustained by plant receptor-channels and organic activ-
ities like those of root apical systems or Auxin transport [3]. Our hypothesis
was that these network activities could, in analogy with animal whole organ
bioelectrical activities, represent the by-product or the algebraic summation of
derived activities of a great population of plant cell tissues. Several other kind
of biopotentials are described in plants like Mac Kinnon’s surface local elec-
trostatic fields, electrosensory activities during thunderstorms (Goldworthy et
al.) [4], endogenous fields and cellular dipoles during tip growth of root hairs
or pollen tubes (Weisenseel et al. or Cooke & Racusen) [5], localized calcium
influx mediated by electrophoretic or cytoskeletal mechanisms for Very [6], in-
duction of stomatal closing by hormonal mediation described by Davies [7] or
finally morphogenetic activities implying transcellular fields and biophysical
or gravitational forces described by Nuticelli [8].
All these mechanisms of action could be directly or indirectly related to
the microvolted spontaneous variations that we have recorded at the level of
polarized groups of cells or tissues [3]. However, the precise functional role of
these ‘surface potentials’ in the plant relation life remains to be found since
they have not really been studied until today. Their physiological confirma-
tion, correlated to other fine regulatory bioelectric mechanisms, would imply
a minimal centralization and diffusion of the information without highly in-
tegrated structures like heart or brains. Historically, when I detected these
field potentials in the 70s, I was totally isolated. Doing the bibliography on
the subject, I discovered that two contemporaneous studies made in Russia
(Paszeusky & al. 1961) and especially in the USA (Karlsson 1972, Pickard,
1973) independently found the same bioelectric potentials [9-11]. Then, the
subject was progressively given up. It means: 1/ that they are still not di-
rectly linked to a clear physiological process; 2- that if signal transmission is
well understood at the level of electrical or chemical coupling between cells by
botanists, that of global behavior of plants - even finally becoming nowadays
a preoccupation for a majority of scientists considering the great potential of
plants in the ecosystem - is still either underestimated or not considered as a
priority. Sensibility exists, plasticity exists, communication also clearly exists
at plant level. So what? Plants are not animals, don’t move quickly and don’t
communicate with us. We have then two solutions: to wait science advances
or to treat the problem with a transdisciplinary point of view, which is one of
the purposes of this paper.
Chapter 2. Perceptive Levels in Plants: A Transdisciplinary Challenge
35
Living Organism’s Plasticity
Indeed, neglected during a long time, these hypotheses are now audible by
biologists. It is the consequence of two main discoveries. Firstly, advanced
works emerged from the XVI international botanical congress of St Louis MO
(USA, 1999) showing five main trunks of complex “nucleated” organisms, from
which four are classified as plants and the confirmation of the plants’ synthesis
and use of neuroactive chemicals typically known to mediate fast excitatory
synaptic transmission in the central nervous system of vertebrates [1] were
strong arguments in favor of the hypothesis that a primitive signaling mecha-
nism existed before the divergence of plants and animals (Baum et al., 1996;
Chiu et al., 1999) [12, 13]. Plant genomic complexity discovered during the
same time was also intriguing.
Secondly, the new assertion of plant prototypic intelligence initiated by Tre-
wavas in 2003, even controversial, had a lot of impact in the scientific world,
and, interestingly, in distant disciplines from plant biology like behavioral,
cognitive and social sciences, ecology, semiotics, autopoiesis or information
theory [14]. Indeed, the semiotics of the term ‘intelligence’ (used to describe
the sensitivity and the complexity of plant signal transduction as well as their
ability to learn, memorize, communicate and compute responses at the whole
plant level) was clearly redefined or resituated, and for the first time applied
to the complexity of plant signaling and communication. It was the same for
the term ‘cognition’ to there almost exclusively used for mental act processes
implying knowledge processes, whereas decentralized or extended cognition
take into account cellular computing, dynamic emergent properties from com-
plex systems and more precisely “plant qua information-processing systems”
as well as “plant-coupled-with-its-environment” levels (Garzon, 2007). This
recent paper is in a instructive way titled “The quest for cognition in plant
neurobiology” [15]. Another from Barlow describes the auropoietic and cogni-
tive functions of plant roots [16].
All together, these discoveries and the recent recognition of the concept of
network information in plants resulted in the development of a new paradigm
called ‘plant neurobiology’ by Balŭska et al. (2006, 2007) clearly involving a
transdisciplinary field of research in this area [2, 17]. These authors clearly
say concerning this subject: “Neuronal informational systems allow the most
rapid and efficient adaptive responses. Therefore, it should not be surprising
that neuronal computation is not limited to animal brains but is used also
by bacteria and plants”. Balŭska and Mancuso conclude, one year after the
publication of the plant neurobiology paradigm as an integrated view of plant
signaling, that plants act, as any living and evolving system, as ‘knowledge
accumulating systems [18]. that plants act, as any living and evolving system,
as ‘knowledge accumulating systems’. Our aim is therefore here to show how
the proximity of both plant and animal integrated biosystems: (1) conduct to
common protoneural dynamic behaviors including complex sensory perception
and communication (Debono, 2013), (2) is closely linked to information the-
ory and the development of different adaptive and cognitive systems during
evolution and (3) implies a transdisciplinary reading grid opening to nonlinear
dynamic analysis of biological and cognitive processes [19].
2.2 Common Sensory and Protoneural Dynamic

Networks in Plants and Animals
2.2.1 Bioelectricity as Universal Signaling Pathway used
by Biological Systems
At the beginning of the 20th century, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, that cre-
ated the first scientific research Centre in Calcutta realized before Marconi
pioneering works about electromagnetic waves. He also studied plant physi-
ology, being interested in the growth of plants and their reactions to stimuli.
He was the first to describe the neuroïd properties of Mimosa pudica, a plant
endowed with a fast motricity visible to the naked eye, about which we know
since the Riccas’ work (1916) that it is closely linked to a circulating hor-
mone [20], and more precisely to parenchymatous excitable cells propagating
action potentials before cell deturgescence and the motor phenomenon itself
(Stoëckel, 1976, Desbiez, 1985) [21].
During the 1970s, best selling authors C. Bird and P. Tompkins, a journal-
ist, as well as an US military intelligence officer cast confusion with their pseu-
doscientific assertions of “telepathic recordings between plants and humans”
obtained with the Cleve Backster’s lie detector [22]. It caused considerable
damage to this research area until now, stopping any serious research in the
area of ‘surface potentials’ and more generally to the comparison of bioelectri-
cal properties of both plant and animal cells. Happily, these times are over. All
the biological data obtained since these period, concerning as well field poten-
tials as endocellular events recorded by patch-clamp technics [23] clearly show
that electrical activity is a general property of excitable cells, and is not re-
stricted to nerve structures. Moreover, it is an evidence to assert that neurons
used electricity long after plants. Wildon, Thain et al. (1992) have published
data in Nature explicitly showing for the first time with molecular biology a
direct link between the emission of propagated electrical signals produced by
a tomato plant after a wounding (an insect playing naturally a natural role of
mechanical stimulator) and the induction of a biochemical response (protein
synthesis of a trypsin inhibitor) [24]. The authors conclude in another review
(1996) and almost exactly two centuries after Burdon-Sandersons’ discovery
of electrical signaling in plants, that “it is now clear that a wide range of plant
species can generate action potentials in response to electrical or other stimuli,
and that these action potentials can propagate through the plants’ tissues” [25].
As we stated in the introduction, many other mechanisms of action un-
derlying tropisms, high sensitivity to any kind of stimuli, “self recognition or
adaptive behaviors”, fast motor reactivity or insect-plant very fine interac-
tions are described more and more precisely every day, asking more acutely
the question of a convergent evolution between plant and animal species not
37
contradictory with the divergence of the two reigns. In other words, if evo-
lution has finalized electrical signaling in neural structures, conferring great
advantages to animal and human brains in terms of speed and precision of
the information flux, it seems likely that elementary cell properties as well as
elaborated communicative strategies are common to both living systems. In-
deed, electrophysiological data clearly show that the main difference between
plant and animal cells is the time duration of events, plants being in the same
range as cardiac cells (hundreds of milliseconds) of animals, compared to fast
synaptic transmission of brain neurons during one millisecond (Figure 1). So,
the first question that arises, related to complexity and evolution is how and
why organisms lacking high integrative functions or specialized structures like
brain cortex or central nuclei have developed such complex behavior? (Debono,
2004).
2.2.2 Complexity, Evolutionary Processes and Nonlinear

Dynamics
As we stated in this Chapter considering the entire perceptive scale, the growth
in complexity is not a single exponential [26]. We need to consider that each
integrated living systems presents: 1/ a potential degree of reactivity, of com-
munication and of informational level, and 2/ is aware of or as to be consid-
ered within its own limits. Cognitive and preconscious states in animals and
man would have then to be seriously interrogated in this way. Preceding the
classical definition of immediate or minimal consciousness in lower animals,
protoneural systems could have started the complexity process by permitting
the conditions of emergence of the access to experience. These states prob-
ably include and memorize the preceding ones. They may also correspond
to independent evolutionary steps served by identical functions at plant and
animal levels. Indeed, many examples suggest a common evolutionary tree
before the divergence of plants and animals. For instance, markers like ubiq-
uitous proteins or hormones have a common pathway before being expressed
in many species including animals and plants. Roth et al. (1986) show that
“the breakdown of the barriers for the hormonal molecules between the ver-
tebrates and the rest of the metazoans, between metazoans and unicellular
organisms, between the eukaryotes and prokaryotes, or the eubacteria and
archebacteria is concordant with findings in multiple other systems” [27]. The
case of hemoglobins present from bacteria to man, of photosynthetic proteins
of plants having their homologues in bacteria, of many common receptor gene
superfamily or of heat shock proteins of eukaryotes and prokaryotes are also
extensively studied today.
A review made by Kohorn in 1999 addresses various signaling paradigms
across kingdoms as constituting a new approach “in which characteristic pro-
teins are used in a variety of ways and combinations to transduce a signal”.
Potential ligands activated by specific enzymes regulating cell division in the
plant meristem are then described, concluding that this discovery “appears to
Figure 2.1: BIOELECTRICITY AT LIVING SYSTEMS. A: Endocellular

recordings in a giant algal cell (left) and in a squid nerve axon (right). Note the
delta observed on the timescale. B: Extracellular recordings (slow waves and
spikes in response to chemical stimulation) at the whole plant level compared
to brain EEG. This comparison is purely analogical and must be interpreted
within our plastic reading grid (brain synchronized activities being related to
highly specialized structures compared to plant sensitive organs). The new
emerging transdisciplinary field called ‘Plant Neurobiology’ is now trying to
discover whole integrated sensory, communicative and adaptive mechanisms
underlying such activities.
39
shuffle” the paradigms used for cell communication in unicellular and complex
organisms [28]. Signaling is also used like in animals for plant embryogen-
esis where positional information has a major role for sporofitic cycle and
embryonic axis (Harada, 1999) [29] or for defense signaling pathways where
apoptotic cells and conserved disease resistance genes may be related to func-
tions in animals (Pifanelli et al., 1999) [30]. Finally, as previously evoked,
recent discoveries of plants’ use of calcium binding proteins and of glutamate
receptor channels typically found in animals are a strong argument in favor
of the hypothesis that a primitive signaling mechanism existed before the di-
vergence of plants and animals (Lam et al., 1998). This discovery explains
also probably why neuroactive drugs synthesized by plants are able to work
at neuronal level, and may act as endogenous ligands regulating cell to cell
signaling in higher plants [31].
Another important point concerns, as quoted in the introduction, recent
phylogenic studies showing: 1/ that there are five main trunks of complex
“nucleated ” organisms, from which four are classified as plants and 2/ that
animal and plant kingdom are categories no longer relevant. Thus, many
authors dare say now: 1/ that plant cells could act like ‘nerves’ and 2/ that
a common unicellular ancestor before the divergence of species is confirmed.
These discoveries can be interpreted as a prerequisite for the emergence of
complex differentiated systems. They strongly comfort our experimental data
describing the common bioelectrical profiles of animals and plants. This major
kingdom has thus for us a precise message for further species. This message
can be translated as follows: our evolved treatment of the information is the
result of a series of primitive generic processes which have progressively and
non-linearly conducted to perception, immediate consciousness, and far away
to the self-conscious mind.
2.2.3 How Plants Treat the Environmental Signals?

Among these primitive processes, biosensors like plants - lacking brain - could
have progressively developed some level of integration or global states of recep-
tivity without any representation or conscious activity. That would constitute
a good reflect of the dynamic protoneural ability of the plant kingdom to react
to the environment with adequacy, using sensing effectors to translate infor-
mation into function. The original etymology of the term neuron indicates
a biological matter of fibrous nature. It fits well with the emergent plant
neurobiology paradigm taking as framework the whole integrated ability of
plant signaling, including complex behaviors. Indeed, following the algorith-
mic information theory, there is a positive relation between complexity and the
amount of information required to describe a system (Maze, 1999). This rela-
tion involves the emergence of new properties and of time-related irreversible
changes. The direction of these changes is determined by the historical bound-
aries of the system which is considered as a whole rather than its parts [32].
As both parameters are related to emergence increase, there is a concomi-
tant flow of energy and information in plants. However, the biologic differenti-
ation between animal and plant species does not always mean complexification,
inasmuch several authors like Miller et al. (2001) described very sophisticated
organic functions in plants or in co-evolving species [33]. Indeed, the complex-
ity process is not an absolute criterion because the thresholds reached by both
species are high but differentially expressed. As a classical example, plant cell
compartmentalization (several membranes) shows a more complex profile than
animal cells but their evolution or “behavior” is clearly different in terms of
complexification (organs, brain development, etc.). For these reasons, plants
have probably developed several strategies of communication without possess-
ing nervous system. These Darwinian or biosystemic strategies are basically
linked to high sensitivity and adequate responses to environmental or endoge-
nous signals influencing growth, morphogenesis and behavior, but concern also
memory or stock and recall of information. They could involve spontaneous
and preponderant electric fields that were used in the fusion and orientation
process of membrane cells and vesicles (Zimmerman, 1982) [34], and then by
whole plants, far before fast neuronal transmission use them with a great
efficacy (Turrigiano, 1999) [35]. These fields are clearly due, as in animal
cells, to the electrochemical conduction of excitation through specialized tis-
sues, including long-distance communication (via the plasmodesmata or due
to electrical propagation between adjacent excitable cells) and responses to
external stimuli.
Indeed, all these common features about the way from which plants and
animals perceive and respond to the environment would explain why the rise
in complexity is neither observed as an absolute criterion nor as a single expo-
nential (Debono, 2004). At each bifurcating node, a big evolutionary step is
made to reach a new plateau, but common pathways were taken to reach these
new states or levels, being memorized in cells and reitered in each genomic
species with respect to its descent. With this interpretation, the emergence of
consciousness in animals could be a result of the progressive nonlinear integra-
tion of previous protoneural generic systems getting faster or more specialized,
but above all differentiated. Then, the nature of complexity is probably not
uniformly extended to living systems, and following the Morinian concept of
‘complexus’ (Morin, 2008), we can assume that plants exhibit more quantita-
tive than qualitative complexity compared to animals [36].
So, plants have not only a large common genetic and biological background
with animals, but also a large communicative repertory that contributes to
biodiversity and adaptation. This panel is very useful to control their en-
vironment, their social interactions with neighboring plants or insect (as for
instance in bee pollination) or still to prevent themselves from injury or cli-
mate changes. They are also able to develop phenotypic plasticity, evolved
behaviors and cognitive abilities that were underestimated until a recent date.
It is not a proof of intelligence stricto sensu, but a proof of high perceptive and
informative level. This defines new plastic interfaces and new transdisciplinary
pathways to understand cross-species evolution and to explore knowledge and
41
information theories (see chapters 4 and 5).
2.3 The Bio-dynamics of Plants as an Upstream

Model for the Study of what precedes the emer-
gence of Cognitive Systems
2.3.1 Do Primary Centers of Sensory Integration Could
Exist at the Plant Level?
It is clear that plants do not have any nervous or conscious system correspond-
ing to classical assertions or definitions of animal or human consciousness.
However, as we had made the hypothesis in 1991, their protoneural organi-
zation allows them to develop high perceptive capacities. Recent advances
in plant biology show many evidence implicating possible primary centers of
integration located at foci of interaction of sensible and richly interconnected
zones like specialized tissues as phloem or meristem where plasmodesmata
ensure excellent intercellular communication (a symplasmic field), at roots
and/or at sensorimotor structures [2, 16]. These recent data in plant molecu-
lar biology comfort our pioneering work, showing that these integrated states
are mainly sustained by proteins, calcium channels or receptor gene superfam-
ily similar to animal neuronal systems at cellular level, and polarized tissues or
sensing effectors (like pulvini, traps, stomata or growth cone) translating infor-
mation into function at the whole plant level (wound responses, reproducing,
flowering, interspecies communication).
Several structures could thus be implicated instead of one “central nervous
system”. Our electrophysiological data particularly suggest that a primary
integration of information, whose role is probably to coordinate basic activities,
could possibly be reflected by spontaneous potential variations representing at
tissue level the mathematical algebraic derivative or summation of intracellular
activities sustained by classical receptor channels and/or electrogenic pumps.
These field potentials (FP) are assumed to be a sign of “binding activity” or of
global dynamic reception reflecting the ability of the plant kingdom to react to
the environment with adequacy and sensitivity. FP have then to be studied as
pseudo-‘EMGs’ or ‘EEGs’ i.e. like nonlinear dynamic systems able to detect
transitional states during perception and responses of living organisms (Figure
1). In brain cortical structures, we can easily separate primary regions that
treat unimodal signals like visual or auditory inputs and motor function linked
to associative structures that treat more complex information like language or
visual memory. In plants, neither attention mechanisms nor significance or
representation is possible, but does it totally exclude a certain form of sensory
integration (maybe present in several loci)? Does this integration is relevant of
a basic adaptive or selective mechanism or of more sophisticated mechanisms
implying interactive modes of communication?
Analogically, we know for instance that circadian rhythms observed as qui-

escent or dormancy states represent the slowing down of vital processes in
plants. Does an extraterrestrial would qualify that of a simple oscillation,
a sleeping state or a biological clock that progressively led to sophisticated
aware-sleep cycles including paradoxical dreaming states in vertebrates? More
seriously, these types of communication would more likely be interfaced with
the environment from which we take part in a cognitive mode. A similar
analysis of the auto-organization of living systems can be made about the de-
velopment of electrical signals in plant and animal cells. It seems clear, on
the basis of all the data presented in this Chapter that plants exhibit a well-
structured bioelectricity, and that this ability was developed far before that of
animals and man. Now, let us consider that in early brain development, gene
expression was first controlled by biochemical messengers, and only later, by a
selective addition of bioelectrical activity. This activity is considered 1/ to dif-
ferentiate the brain from other organs and 2/ to be capable of influencing gene
expression as posttranslational genomic modification (Turbes, 1993). Neurons
then use selective action potentials to “enlarge the range and complexity of
the “environment” available to self-organization process” says Turbes, con-
cluding that electric signals which convey messages are used by the brain as
information carriers for cyclical computational processes including reference,
sensory feedback and inference systems [37]. We can then consider with this
point of view that plants have exactly the same self-organization properties,
but that they are limited to immediate access to experience and non-reflective
activities.
Indeed, plants possess complex signaling paradigms and have a precursor

role in the development of further elaborated systems. To enforce this consider-
ation, we can briefly quote precise mechanisms of action at the transmembrane
level, including protein-channels complexes and symplasmic fields associated
with morphogenesis. Electrical, but also hormonal and hydraulic signals are
known to modulate gene expression through transcription and translation via
calcium-dependent cytoskeleton-protein-channels (Davies, 1993). Spatiotem-
poral and intercellular information are treated at specialized structures (Rinne
& van der Shoot, 1998) [38]. Beyond voltage-dependent ionic currents from
excitable cells (cytosolic calcium waves similar to those of animal cells), many
examples of electrocoupling of transporters involving nonlinear oscillations of
dynamic systems and providing long-term osmotic regulation are available like
in the guard cells of the plasmalemma of certain plants (Gradman et al., 1993,
2001) [39, 40]. Finally, at the whole plant level, many sensitive systems are
described from which Brionnea is an excellent example of strong and fast thig-
moreactivity to touch. Although these citations are not exhaustive, they are
intended for neurobiologists and readers misreading the high level of intra- and
intercellular communication in plants.
43
2.3.2 Could Plant be Considered as Biosemantic &
‘Embodied-Cognitive’ Entities?
“The relations that define a system as a unity, and determine the
dynamics of interaction and transformations which it may undergo
as such a unity...”
Maturana & Varela, 1980
One answer to our question about the potential cognitive precognitive abil-
ity of plants is that plants do probably possess a rich receptive field or global
dynamic perceptive states (GPS) without any central nervous system. That
this field is not comparable to animal or human perceptions is evident, but
it is probably a form of non-local integrative capacity conferring advantages
during evolution. We have now to classify this perceptive capacity (an outer
perceptive one) that could be attributed to this kingdom regarding its com-
municative mode of life. In animals, the central nervous system is the primary
transductor between receptors and adapted responses, whereas in more prim-
itive forms like plants, a protoneural network (i.e. having neuroïd properties
without elaborated nervous system) is probably responsible for that, with a
lower discriminatory window of reality. As propagated action potentials (APs)
are able to modulate the intensity or the frequency of stimuli, showing an
adaptive behavior in both kingdoms, we can argue that this common mode of
treatment of information is compatible with the observation that decentralized
or pure “embodied-cognitive entities” like plants challenge our conception of
computation of the information and of non conscious vs. conscious processes.
The distinction between autopoietic or operationally-closed systems as stated
by Maturana and Varela (1979-1980) [41] and embodied-cognitive structures
[42] in term of autonomy and level of information would be important ques-
tions to answer, particularly regarding information theory and new theoretical
bottom-up scales of perceptive, aconscious and conscious systems.
Indeed, our discovery about spectral-coherent analysis in evaluation of
plant functional activity as well as the emergent plant neurobiology paradigm
confirms that the key role of electric fields was underestimated at plant level,
probably because it was not considered in an epistemic vision of evolutionary
processes (Debono, 2004). To my knowledge, it is the first time that plants
are supposed, on the basis of bio-electrical data and heuristic arguments, to
possess some elementary degree of integrative perception or cognition. But it
is probably natural that this assertion is made (or is able to be heard) at the
time where consciousness and perception in man are really questioned by sci-
ence (Searle, 1998). Indeed, the coherent treatment of signs by plants reflect a
complex bioelectrical patterns (action potentials, field potentials, etc.) would
now be considered as a fundamental area of research to explore the multiple
faces of primitive and global dynamic outer perceptive states that have prob-
ably been used during evolution to elaborate further divergent conscious and
a-conscious constructions [43].
Soren Brier, editor of Cybernetics & Human Knowing and co-founder of
“The International Association for Biosemiotic Studies”, gives as title to his

post-doctorate thesis Cybersemiotics: why information is not sufficient by
itself? (2006) clearly showing the fundamental rule of biosemantics in the
analysis of all autopoÃŕetic and auto-organized systems. Following Pierce and
Luhman, he reallocates the information sciences creating a new cybersemiotic
field taking into account the auto-organization of closed systems to survive
showed by Maturana & Varela, but also the Luhman’s generalization of these
states to human consciousness and socio-communication and the Pearce tri-
adic semiotics (2012) [44]. Considering the biosemantics of plant life during
evolution and their active rule in the ecosystem (cell complexity, protoneural
activities, hormonal activities, social behavior, etc.) it would be urgent to
reconsider the scale of perception and information of biological systems.
2.3.3 The Phenomenological Point of View: Blind Access

to Experience vs. Structured Perceptive & Conscious
Activities in Animals and Man
Following the exploration of closure and re-entry of signals in biological sys-
tems, the phenomenological experience, as defined by cognitive neuroscience
research, is shown by Varela et al. not to be spatially and temporally homoge-
nous, but discontinuous in the brain, showing synchrony in different brain
regions whatever the activity of the neurons in these structures [42]. This dis-
continuity is described to explain global dynamic patterns of synchrony from
which emerges consciousness and related to embodied cognition and enactive
behavior. It implicates, as noticed by Kurthen et al. (1998) that “a phe-
nomenally unified experience is not necessarily based on neurophysiological
homogeneity” [45]. It is the same case for mental imagery where many experi-
ments describe the same sites of activation in brain regions whatever the type
of processes activated (perception of stimuli, memory and representation of im-
ages). So, why not speculate that GPS in simpler biological organisms lacking
brains are still remaining in the desynchronized state, explaining polymorphic
bioelectrical activities that we have recorded and several other bioelectrical
events at different loci with physiological significance different from tropisms
or survival, but not synchronized by evolved mechanisms such as centralized
sensorimotor activities or at higher levels by attention giving the alpha rhythm
of brain EEG?
GPS, including spontaneous activity and specific responses to stimuli or
injury expressed by bursts of miniature APs correlated to classical intracel-
lular APs rather than a centralized nervous activity, would typically reflect
protoneural organizations highly sensitive to environmental changes, so liter-
ally having some access and experience of the world, but not able to integrate
(and even less represent it) the semantics of these changes. This does not
exclude intercommunication and some cellular memory (for instance recorded
by proteins implicated in stress) or recall of information to be active in the
whole organism, but they are limited to the contingency of the specie, never
45
becoming ‘attentively or affectively’ related to the world. The recognition of
such dynamic ‘perceptive states’ (several organic structures could be implied)
in simpler organisms would be a great advance for the comprehension of plant
ecosystem and to apprehend cognition and the access to experience differently.
From Protoneural to Neural Activities: Brain-Mind Interactions
Even speculative, this assumption could help to answer a crucial question

today squeezed by the “correlation paradigm” or the evidence of neural cor-
relates of consciousness in man: why physiological processes are accompanied
by experience and why experience is accompanied by consciousness? It is now
clear that if considered as a protoneural one, the aconscious and silent world of
plants could nonlinearly help to answer the interrogations of the neuroscience
field about the nature of consciousness. We can then leave now without am-
biguity this vegetal world to treat the phenomenon of consciousness as a by-
product of brain activity. Recent discoveries in the field of cognitive sciences or
neuropsychology show that there is a plurality of conscious and subconscious
states. For instance, human visual consciousness may treat asynchronously
motion and color attributes whereas a hypothetical binding system is able to
link these two systems (Zeki & Bartels, 1998, 1999) [46]. Numerous plastic
behaviors of neural circuits reflect a sensorial knowledge and have some biolog-
ical substrates, but does that explain the feeling of Churchill’s dog before his
death? Self-reflective consciousness is also not easy to characterize: if aware-
ness and self are often considered as the working definition of consciousness,
the notion of self and qualia still remain unclear [47]. For Casler (1976), the
concept of consciousness is not a problem from the point of view of behavioral
scientists. It is not necessary and may be defined as “the very short-term
memory of a just completed perceptual act” [48]. So, this author considers
that the real question is not that of brain-mind interaction but that of “the
relationships between brain and perception, memory and the mental processes
that precede consciousness”. We think that it is a right frame of analysis, and
that our plant model may serve as an upstream demonstration of it (far before
conscious activities). It would also be very useful for a better understanding
of evolving systems to take into account protoneural and aconscious systems.
The hypothesis of Mitterauer (1998) suggesting multiple ontological self-
organized loci in the brain, and qualia as a self-conscious qualitative experience
may serve this view in that more simple organisms logically lack these inte-
grated states [49]. Armstrong (1989) distinguishes three types of consciousness
perceptual consciousness which is perceptual activity; minimal consciousness
which is “the occurrence of any mental activity whether or not the subject
is aware of this activity” and introspective consciousness as “perception-like
awareness of the subjects’ own current mental states and activities...” includ-
ing “introspective consciousness of introspective consciousness itself”. In this
classification, where memory and the self appears only in introspective con-
sciousness, it seems clear that plants would have some perceptual and local
memory abilities, but lack centralized nervous-like systems to integrate these

perceptions. As a heavy consequence, the brain would not be a necessary con-
dition to integrate perceptual processes, as currently admitted, but only for
higher brain functions [50]?
In other words, brain activity accompanies our perceptions and permits
us to make sense, creating a self, which is not the case for computers or for
non-cognitive entities that have only access to a basic informational level.
But plants do have strong perceptual experiences without any representation.
Moreover, as shown by Llinas and Paré (1991) to demonstrate the role of thala-
mocortical loops in binding activities of the brain [51], our working hypothesis
also challenges the Jamesian description of the brain where consciousness is
considered to be “an exclusive by-product of sensory input”, in that the in-
trinsic activity of cells (like oscillations for neuronal long-range correlations)
have a central role to play. Indeed, our findings, together with a great amount
of data in plant biology, show that the treatment of stimuli in organisms like
plants lacking centralized structures clearly identified, is very sophisticated,
and that bioelectrical measurements of macroactivities could highlight the
presence of some integrative processes. At brain’s level, Aurell (1979) more
simply separate an outer sensory-produced and an inner conceptual conscious-
ness [52]. As neural assemblies instantiate mental representations in evolved
primates or man, why would a large amount of specialized plant tissues not
be able to instantiate a perceptual event having sense in their biotope (critical
environmental information for their survival)?
Theoretically, a form of perceptual or outer consciousness or perhaps of
a restricted “core consciousness” as recently defined by Damasio (1998), i.e.
“the transient process that is incessantly generated relative to any object with
which an organism interacts”, both related to brief short-term memory, have no
reason to be excluded. Damasio associates this state “to transient core self and
transient sense of knowing automatically generated” in man, and differentiates
it from a more complex extended consciousness [53]. Plants are naturally not
concerned by this aspect of core consciousness complexification, but it is not
useless to recall that plants’ “reactivity” existed far before man’s self-conscious
mind, and that it is too easy to classify this kingdom as blindly receptive or
just showing tropistic abilities. We can hypothesize in this way that, as evolu-
tionary steps of the emergence of primary perception and interoceptors were
detectable at the brain level in higher organisms, a set of cognitive properties
potentially present in lower organisms were not actualized. The same could
apply to preconscious processing of sensory inputs existing in the waking and
REM-states in man, possibly regulated by thalamocortical loops (Llinas and
Ribary, 1993) [54].
However, from our point of view, it is more interesting to show that
breaks of some residual brain microstates are able to produce or not conscious
macrostates. It means that consciousness might perhaps have some survival
value by itself, as proposed by the interactionistic theory of James and Popper,
but also, that an intrinsic operational memory of living systems plays a key
47
role in evolution. A common tree, and probable bifurcations related not only
to complexity, but to the specific dynamic content of life processes themselves
might therefore be found to exist at this plastic interface.
2.4 Nonlinear Relationships between Perception

and Integration: the Level of Information
Another important point, clearly linked to our analysis of evolutionary pro-
cesses, concerns the central concept of the levels of information interrogated
by GPS up to CCS (complex conscious systems). Conscious activity is as-
sumed to create information, so the self-conscious mind is justified, but what
about a-conscious entities? Do they create and/or integrate information with-
out meaning and only to survive? Do they respond to stimuli and particularly
to wounding without integration of the information of wound or stress? Is the
adequacy of their responses, their adaptive morphogenesis, their sensitivity,
their states of dormancy or motor activity, their immune, hormonal and social
behavior totally blind?
2.4.1 Plants as Sensitive or ‘Knowledge’ Accumulating

Systems
To try to answer to these questions, we can assume that if consciousness is
essentially assimilated with experience, a lot of brain processes occur with-
out consciousness. Moreover, if consciousness is synonym of knowledge, we
have to define whether adaptive behavior, adequate response to stimuli and
to environmental changes are or not a part of the knowledge (Balŭska, 2006)?
Another point is that if phenomenal consciousness is different from physical
consciousness as proposed by the Gestalt approach, an isomorphic running
would be observable, not only for brain events, but also for any sensitive per-
ceptual system. Now, if consciousness “is neither structure nor function” and
has a subjective and irreducible content, as described by Chalmers (1996),
sensitive and perceptive systems would have a clear justification [55]. Indeed,
one can describe a positive feedback between complexity and the amount of
information and/or energy required to describe the world of plants. In this
way, classifying plants as, knowledge accumulating or outer a-conscious sys-
tems seems an adequate way to describe their world.
Let us now examine some other aspects of the information process. A
first classical example is the interpretation of conscious states in terms of en-
ergy levels where classical quantum sources of information are fundamentally
and qualitatively different from macrostructure experiences. We cannot de-
velop these hypotheses further, but according to quantum physics, they are
based on long-range coherent quantum phenomena (or quantum wave func-
tions) occurring as non-local communication in a holographic brain, or with
special conductivity of some biological structures such as electric dipole fields
or microtubules. However all pure physically descriptions of consciousness are

limited to an explanation of why and how some structures might play a key
role in a function, but this does not answer to the question of the genesis of
the process leading to the elaboration of conscious systems.
Another information treatment process concerns the current comparisons
of the brain to computers, which is clearly a reductionist point of view, but
is instructive in that the brain is assimilated to a computing function able
to display and monitor, for a great part automatically, through the different
senses. This ‘blind’ ability cannot be exclusive of machines and might be quite
the same for lower organisms like plants or bacteria, although they have ab-
solutely no capacity to demultiplicate this mechanism using evolved feedback
information, volition and awareness construction vectors of the self and the re-
ality. However, plants can move and communicate each other or with insects.
Except this inaugural capacity to move common to plants (in a lesser speed)
and animals, the previous selection of items represent then a clear evolutionary
step, but does not permit us to depreciate the quality of sensory inputs and of
information processing by lower organisms. In this way, plants show efficient,
harmonious and ‘intelligent’ relationships with the ecosystem.
2.4.2 Access to Experience without Representation:

Sensory Streams of Information
More generally, meaning does not seem to be definable per se. What would
be the concept of chair without the semantic and representational capacities
of it? The chair is included in a creative loop where the man is the creator
and the observer. Only, the functional association of an item with a sym-
bolic function, like the creation of life or of a significant world is available.
Baars (1993) quotes the global workspace theory suggesting “that conscious
experience emerges from a nervous system in which multiple input processors
compete for access to a broadcasting capability; the winning processor can
disseminate its information globally throughout the brain” [56]. These global
workspace architectures (parallel distributed processors) are unconscious but
able to account for different levels of consciousness from perceptual to at-
tentive behaviors. Biophysical experiments also show that the link between
matter and conscious states is more complex and dynamic compared to the
classical Cartesian cut (Rossler and Rossler, 1993) [57]. Artificial interfaces
between a biological substrate (the neuronal fluid been assimilated to an inter-
nal observer) and the rest of the world produces non-local effects and possible
microscopic changes in the perceived world. So, what is valid for nervous
system could be also valid for protoneural systems. A crucial point is now
to define perception and symbol acquisitions itself behind plant, insect and
human filters.
Another more extended paradigm would be to consider the relationships
between universal patterns of organizing principles. Indeed, one can suppose
that when consciousness exists, it is possibly one face of a state of information
49
with the other face directly engrammed in the biological substrate, i.e. the
somatic expression of a coherent subject. In this way, our concept of meta-
plasticity would be adequate to describe non conscious systems as different
to unconscious and conscious processes involving different levels of knowledge
(implicit, explicit and metaknowledge) as recently described in the literature
(Feinberg et al., 1995) [58]. The different approaches of artificial intelligence
are also very useful to understand the behavior of virtual and real thinking
systems, if they do not have as objective to reduce virtuality to reality. Shan-
non’s theory of information thus corroborate two majors ideas of this paper: 1/
the great value of early sensory processing and of global physiological percep-
tive processes (i.e. not only involving brain treatment of the information); 2/
the evidence of metaplastic levels involving vertical processes that re-express
antecedent generic states (Debono, 2008) [59].
The first point recently developed by Buracas & Albright (1999) shows the
high temporal precision of sensory streams of all systems possessing sensors
and treating changes in the environment [60]. They produce a stream of infor-
mation that is a product of the ecological niche of the organism. This stream
is essentially described for individual neurons of different species, showing the
progression of information high rates or abstraction in evolution. Indeed, if
we accept that the perceptive capacities of living systems are not linearly
related to their integrative ones, the potentiality of protoneural entities like
plants to express what precedes consciousness is fundamental to be explored.
This paper suggests that the fine comparison of macroscopic electrical fields
at the crossroads of the plant and animal kingdoms would be a first mean to
understand the common mechanism of perception of both species.
More globally, we must search all primitive signs of perception at complex
systems. At the human level, we can take the example of the acquisition of
the language. For Piaget (1950), the representation of events or objects is a
prerequisite for the acquisition of the symbolic function linked to experience
[61]. Generative semanticists suggest that the meaning of a word is based
on invariant semantic features and that children acquisition of the language
begins by perceptual and functional elements. Other theories consider “case
prototypicality as a semantic primitive” to participate in the construction of
“a non-procedural representation for word meaning” (Yang et al., 1999) [62].
Finally, neuropsychologists like Pinker (1999) suggesting reverse engineering
of the mind, or Laplane (1997) observing aphasic patients, also consider that
the language only participates to a partially pre-formed thought [63, 64]. A
positive explanation for these observations would be that qualia and cognitive
tasks admit a parallelism in the horizontal direction, but diverge in the vertical
one, explaining thought without language or the cognitive abilities of children
preceding their linguistic expression. At the level of living and non-living
systems, it would mean that the gap of materiality would always be situated
in the horizontal plane whereas the growing level of perceptivity is able to
reach the vertical plane (Debono 2004, 2008). For plants, it would mean that
experience without any meaning or representation is possible. A kind of raw
or per se experience conferring advantages for the specie, but also permitting a
fast transmission of information at the organism level, but also for interspecies
communication.
To resume this chapter, many different lines of evidence are consistent
with our basic hypothesis which is to assimilate biological entities like plants
to highly perceptive systems having an access to experience and to what pre-
cedes the emergence of cognition. Following this hypothesis, GPS could reflect
the expression of primitive generic processes that progressively and nonlinearly
led to the conscious systems of vertebrates. This classification is comforted
by recent advances in plant biology showing a common evolutionary path-
way of plant and animal species until their divergence, and that extracellular
biopotentials intensively participate to morphogenesis, cell to cell coupling and
transduction of stimuli. It suggests firstly the necessity of new bottom-up ex-
periments on such simpler organisms able to express what precedes perceptive
and conscious processes, and secondly, the consideration of a new concept of
plasticity (Debono 2007) in which all different forms of perception and infor-
mation processes are taken into account. We have shown that these plastic
interfaces bind to form dynamic complexes respecting the level of expression of
each binding state [65]. Several interfaces could be then defined following this
paradigm, from matter-form to experience-consciousness. In the light of the
present various conflicting hypotheses concerning the nature of perception and
consciousness, it would be a means to broach the neuroscientist hard problem
in a different and constructive way.
2.5 The Transdisciplinary Challenge: Defining a

Core-TD Biosemantic Research Area
One must argue that to progress in this area, we must be humble because we
do not know what exists before the emergence of consciousness. Is it a kind
of perceptive experience per se, a kind of closed communication or a kind of
identity? We must also keep in mind, as raised by philosophers like Chalmers
(1996) or Searle (1998) that science is reductionist and cannot explain all.
From tree to man we thus have to use the metaphoric mode as a philosophy and
the informational mode as a scientific model (Debono, 1991). Finally, we must
integrate the trans-objective as the trans-subjective state of natural systems
(particularly in human relations) and practice transdisciplinary research, being
careful to investigate the generic and/or ontological contents from the whole
evolutionary processes, whatever their levels of expression.
Transdisciplinarity is unambiguously adequate to describe these different
levels of knowledge and also a metaknowledge enlacing all subtypes or sub-
categories: here, specific and distinct dynamic perceptive systems of plants,
animals and humans, and global states of perception as metafields including
all steps from tropisms to emotions. Indeed, the important challenge that
remains today is then to understand the common basis of perception at both
51
species. By combining theoretical analysis of networks expressing early sen-
sory systems and primitive generic processes with it in vivo experiments at the
dynamic ‘cognitive’ interface of plants, some of the puzzling questions about
evolution and the emergence of complex systems could be uncovered.
An excellent initiative in this way was the reviewing of the fundamen-
tals in bioelectricity and the questions recently put by the organizers of the
first symposium on plant neurobiology held in Florence (Italy) in May 2005
and then the third international symposium on plant neurobiology (Slovakia,
May 2007). The researchers centered the symposia on the concept of infor-
mation in biology and the paradigm of ‘Plant Neurobiology’ treating without
taboo of plant ionic channels, sensory signals (photoelectrical, mechano- or
magneto-reception), rapid movements and neuronal-like behaviors of higher
plants, memory (insect-plant interactions), processing and integration of infor-
mation or intelligence (Trewavas, 2002-2005), but also fundamentals in molec-
ular signaling, neurotransmitters or gene involved, cell membrane activities.
We must go far away, considering plant biosemantics (Brier, 2012) in a world
of human communication of which the ecosystem is strongly threatened.
2.5.1 Metaplasticity: Defining the Levels of Information of

Knowledge Accumulating Systems at each Plastic
Interfaces
As previously shown, we need to better understand the metadynamics from
emergent behaviors of complex systems leading to the ontological human con-
sciousness, some misleading “tunnel effects” as that of brain & mind being
able to hide the real processes (Debono, 2008). As a matter of fact, on a
plasticogenetic scale, plants possess dynamic perceptive systems and animal
consciousness is obviously centered on survival whereas human creativity is
expressed as a wide kaleidoscope oriented by emotions, self and feelings. In
this way, we propose that instead of classifying conscious processes in order to
determine gradual states of perception, we must examine their actualization
into a living system as a measure of their level of epistemic access to the world.
If we accept this model, a large metaplastic scale is now available and permits
us to analyze a plurality of perceptive states containing or not consciousness,
to establish a common perspective and going beyond artificial gaps
This paper clearly shows that only an approach integrating, going through
and beyond the disciplines, taking into account a third term enclosing non-
cognitive and cognitive entities - the intelligibility of life - will be able to per-
mit such a discovery. This transdisciplinary paradigm as stated by Lupasco
(1947, 1970, 1989) and Nicolescu (2002) [66, 67] will cover system theories,
biological and genetic approaches, physics applied to the study of bioelectri-
cal fields in plant and more generally in developing systems (like growth in
plants), biosensors and energy transfer (like thermodynamics of short distance
translocation (Tyree 1969, 2003) [68, 69], but also evolutionary sciences, in-
formatics, bioengineering, information & cognitive sciences, ethological and
anthropomorphic fields and finally epistemology. We cannot treat all these

cross-disciplinary links here. It involves clearly different levels of knowledge,
of culture, of transverse approaches defining the core-TD research constituting
our collective approach. A process that turns biosystemic data into informa-
tion and then knowledge. So, we chose to treat here two levels: the phenotypic
and epigenetic plasticity recently developed at the plant level and then the
noetic plasticity as a global transdisciplinary approach of all plasticogenetic
processes (Debono, 2012) [70].
2.5.2 Phenotypic & Epigenetic Plasticity in Plants

Let us consider now the first point. This research area could indeed conduce to
seriously reconsider monolithic views upon the whole plant as a living entity
having its sensibility and interacting with its congeners and upon the “rigidity”
of the genetic code of all species, including humans. The first point regards
the consequences of phenotypic plasticity for plant communities. Callaway et
al. recently studied trait-mediated interactions (TMI) among plants regarding
variation in the abiotic environment, in the presence or identity of neighbors
and in herbivores [71]. They conclude as following “We consider how plas-
tic responses to these factors might affect interactions among plants. Plastic
responses to the abiotic environment have important consequences for condi-
tionality in competitive effects, to the point of causing shifts from competitive
to facilitative interactions.”
Because plants show a high degree of plasticity in response to neighbors,
and even to the specific identify of neighbors, phenotypic plasticity may allow
species to adjust to the composition of their communities, promoting coexis-
tence and community diversity. Likewise, plastic responses to consumers may
have various and counterintuitive consequences: induction of plant resistance,
compensatory growth, and increased resource uptake may affect interactions
among plants in ways that cannot be predicted simply by considering biomass
lost to consumers. What little we know about TMI among plants suggests
that they should not be ignored in plant community theory. Although work
to date on the community consequences of phenotypic plasticity has been
hampered by experimental constraints, new approaches such as manipulating
phenotypes by using signals instead of actual environmental conditions and the
use of transgenic plants should allow us to rapidly expand our understanding
of the community consequences of plant plasticity. This is a good example of
the consideration of the whole plant organism and its interaction with other
plants and the environment.
A second approach regards a very recent discovery from the Salt Institute
of biological studies publishing a paper in Science about transgenerational
epigenetic (TE) instabilities in plants (Schmitz et al., 2011) [72]. The re-
searchers of the Ecker’s laboratory show after a mapping of the epigenome
of Arabidopsis thaliana upon 30 generations, that successive TE methylations
were able to generate new allelic transition states altering transcription with-
53
out genetic mutations in this characteristic plant specie. As Science Daily
titles, it is the first time that a “hidden” code in DNA (an epigenetic active
and flexible code) evolving more rapidly that the genetic code is discovered.
Moreover, functional and morphological modifications were observed in some
generations, indicating a high plasticity in a short period. That could strongly
and quickly influence biological traits and be highly predictable not only for
plants, but for any organisms, including humans and their children. It could
also be the case for human twins exhibiting different biological traits with the
same DNA sequences. Other demonstrations about epimutations are clearly
needed. They can turn off or turn on some genes, so be reversible. Some con-
temporaneous genetic studies are controversial, arguing that these effects are
probably limited on long-term evolution (Becker et al., 2011) [73]. However,
new epimutations, even transitory, could give better advantages than selection
and sometimes win.
2.5.3 The Plastic Code of Life: an Epistemic Access to the

World
Together, these discoveries reflect common mechanisms at living cells and a
great phenotypic plasticity. They may lead to a new lecture of the frame sepa-
rating lower from higher organisms and to a consideration of the nature of the
plastic processes involved at every level of knowledge acquisition. We propose
this sequence: 1- consider living organisms as plastic entities evolving in the
same way - interact intelligibly with the environment; 2- consider plasticity
not only as a systemic property but as a logical principle registered in reality
(Brenner, 2008) [74] and the “complex of plasticity” (Debono, 2010) [75] as
the natural binding between matter and form, subject and object or brain and
mind, i.e. an universal co-inherent or co-signification principle (CIP or CSP)
ontologically linked to the Lupasco’s ternary logic and the Nicolescu’s levels of
reality, 3- consider inseparable plastic interfaces (PI) and plasticogenesis as a
dynamic process acting at each informational node or knowledge accumulating
system (Table 1).
Each plastic interface - from the unformed-formed to the subject-object,
from experience to consciousness - corresponds to a level of reality, as described
by Nicolescu (2011) and is ontologically linked to the other [76]. The plastico-
genetic grid that we purpose will permit to more easily articulate these levels
in a unique plastic scale. Four PI are concerned so far: the percept-concept
one, the reality-consciousness one, the matter-psyche one, the brain-mind one
and finally the noetic interface regarding a global ‘noosphere’ (Debono, 2012).
The issue could be the informed or a series of co-creating worlds. It depends
of our onto-epistemologies, of the plasticity of our memories and particularly
of the archetypal ones (Debono, 2009) [77] and finally of our trans-objective
& trans-subjective interactions with the created forms, with a-thinking (per-
ceptive) or thinking (noetic) worlds or universes.
More globally, we must consider that plasticogenesis is a generic process
55
in which we are inscribed as human beings like any living organisms. The ba-
sic sequence is linked to an observation: plasticity is a fundamental property
of the matter that could be turn into form and vice & versa, this indicating
an “evident” but crucial first plastic interface binding at the level of all mor-
phogenetic processes (a plastic code of life) Debono (1999) [78]. Contrarily
to elasticity, this binding is irreversible and dynamic, permitting co-evolution
of matter-form aggregates or complexes being able, for the most evolved sys-
tems, to induce co-signified processes (Debono, 2010). These metaplastic steps
necessarily create information, even at the lower scale, that can be translated
into ontological, epistemic or phenomenological events by biosystems. The
plasticogenesis describes all these states from minimal acquisition of informa-
tion in plants to imaginary or metalanguages defining individuation processes
and human consciousness (Table 1).
2.5.4 The Plasticity of Mind
The different grades of information were recently stated by Wu (2012): in-

formation in-itself, for-itself and regenerated information constituted by the
first two, these basic forms establishing the essence of information further de-
veloped in social communication [79]. Moreover, as Brenner (2011) said it
concerning the Wu’s metaphilosophy of information constituted by these dif-
ferent grades, it constitutes an informational stance in which “the positioning
of information as encompassing a critical component of disciplines, beyond the
scientific content specific to them” is preponderant [80]. This attitude, also
named informational thinking by Wu, allows a new glance on the rule of infor-
mation in complex systems and defines an emerging field between science and
philosophy of information fitting well with the concept of plasticity (Debono,
2007).
We have recently redefined “The plasticity of mind”, in opposition to the
classic philosophy or theory of mind, as a generic term designing the whole
process of plastic dynamic acquisition of knowledge or consciousness (Debono,
2010, 2012). The plasticity of mind acts at three main levels: the plasticity of
the process (from generic form to the plastic code of life), the plasticity of the
subject included in the world and the plasticity of the mind in its extended
noetic dimension. The plasticity of mind has as objective to transform the
informed fields that surround us, to extensively use the unique articulation
that animals and humans possess at different levels between experience and
consciousness, and also to emancipate the self, particularly through Jung’s
archetypes (Debono, 2009). The expected result could be a better appre-
hension of the collective unconsciousness of humanity and the birth of new
metalanguages or transcultures.
2.6 Conclusion
To conclude, we need to find a frame of transdisciplinary research to more
acutely study the different plastic interfaces described so far, and particularly
the informational or knowledge accumulating states reached by the so called
simple biosystems like plants. The point of attack of the problem could be
not to take into account only the biophysical properties of living organisms,
but also to consider the epistemological links between matter and form, be-
tween perception and action, between transduction and information theories,
and finally to rediscover the plasticity of life. The minimal ‘cognitive’ abilities
of plants and lower organisms showing evolved behavioral and communicative
abilities without brain is a good example to open and comfort new trans-
disciplinary fields combining at least biophysics, cybernetics, ecology, plant
neuroplasticity, behavior, cognitive sciences and information theory. We could
perhaps have then new insights about the life process itself.
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61
About the Author
Marc-Williams Debono is a French neurobiologist working in an international

center of pharmaceutical research. Member of the International Center for Trans-
disciplinary Research and Studies (CIRET), he is also president-founder of the Plas-
ticities Sciences Arts (PSA) research group that aims at developing the concept
of plasticity and opening new crossroads between sciences, arts and humanities.
Since 2005, he publishes the Transdisciplinary Review of Human Plasticity PLAS-
TIR in which the various attributes of plasticity are explored by transdisciplinary
researchers. His books or chapter of books include: ‘The Era of Plasticians’, Aubin
ed. (1996); ‘The Plastic Code of Life’ in Transdisciplinarity, acts of the 1st in-
ternational congress of transdisciplinarity, Arràbida (Portugal), Hugin ed., (1999).
‘A transdisciplinary approach towards consciousness’ in Transdisciplinarity - Theory
and Practice, B. Nicolescu Ed, Hampton Press, Cresskill, New Jersey, 2008; ‘The
plasticity of Memories. Convergences between archetypes and complex of plastic-
ity’ Acts of the International Conference ‘Jung and the Sciences’, Free University
of Brussels, Szafran, Baum & Decharneux Ed., EME, 2009. ‘Scientific Research,
Plasticity et Transdisciplinarity’ in coll. with M. Thieriot, P. Loisel, P. Ghills & U.
D’Ambrosio, in ‘The community of practices as a tool of interreligious and intercul-
tural dialogue’ published by S. Guetta & A. Verdiani at Firenze University Press,
2011; ‘The Archipelic fruits’ in ‘Glissant-World’, Boniface Mongo Publisher for Afri-
cultures nÂř87, L’Harmattan Ed, 2012. More complete information is available on
the PSA website: http://plasticites-sciences-arts.org/index.html
CHAPTER 3
The Essential Tension: Rational and
Reasonable in Science and Philosophy
Paul Ghils, Haute Ecole de Bruxelles (Emeritus), SEGNY, France.
his paper discusses some aspects of knowledge adopted in European history,

T politics and philosophy, in contrast with its own past and with other cultural
areas. Some conclusions from various subjects of research in social sciences
are commented upon with a view to assessing the relevance of a transdisci-
plinary perspective.
Keywords: comparative philosophy, cosmopolitanism, dialogism, epistemol-
ogy, global governance, language, logic, modernity, rationality, reasonableness,
relational, transcultural, transhistorical, truth.
3.1 Introduction
Most cultures in the world were by tradition keen to stick to some form of truth,
whether derived from experience, from intuitive knowledge or from beliefs in
sacred figures. The history of science and philosophy has fluctuated between a
formalized explanation based on reason and aiming at ideal truth, and the more
uncertain quest for a more comprehensive understanding of human motives
and drives (greed, fear, courage, or spirit), drawing on various disciplines into
a coherent whole. The quest for an ideal-type balance is constantly challenged
by the effective imbalance created by conflicting views between individual and
collective interests, reason and emotion, but also between diverging rational
views and opposite drives. Understanding, if not explaining those interacting
forces, consequently calls for approaches that interweave disciplines, but also
cultures and epochs.
Truth has always taken many different aspects, whose legitimacy is en-
shrined in natural phenomena, supernatural symbols or sacred characters.
With time, such realities have suffered continuous and significant changes
due to interactions among neighboring or distant cultures, the advent of new
teachers or leaders, or the rejection of past traditions and practices. In the
63
European philosophical and scientific contexts, these developments resulted

into two crucial breaks.
First, the pre-Socratic era was associated with an idea of knowledge and
philosophy which did not survive in later centuries, as Pierre Hadot has elo-
quently shown. As it existed and, more importantly, was practiced amongst
the Ancient Greeks, philosophy was then inseparable from active efforts to
determine what comprised a bios, a way of life, a method of being, rather than
a field of study in which remembering its doctrine was the theoretical goal.
So understood as sophia, wisdom, ancient philosophy was complementary with
virtue and alien to what increasingly became the passive state of acquiring and
possessing knowledge, soon to become scientific knowledge, for its own sake.
As an active pursuit of the Good, it was inseparable from the very means
employed to attain that goal. Socrates’s declarations to his interlocutors of
knowing nothing, in the writings of Plato, were the opposite of a body of work
to subsequently be studied, commented upon, and taken up as a determined
corpus of knowledge, but “merely a preparatory exercise for wisdom” which
“tend[s] toward wisdom without ever achieving it” [2], a means of exercising
freedom through the discursive method between the Master of the Academy
and his disciples and auditors.
This “parting of the ways” is convincingly illustrated by François Jullien,
who first applied comparative studies to Chinese philosophy on the one hand
and European philosophy exemplified by Greece on the other hand, then to the
historical split that occurred in ancient Greek philosophy between the archaic
and the classical periods, when sophia and thought gradually crystallized into
the philosophical search for truth, where logos lost its rhetorical function to be
set up as the rigorous discourse of truth. In his successive books, Jullien shows
that from that crossroads, the quest for truth has been adopted as an abso-
lute method by science, to be finally standardized and universalized through
globalization [3]. This method was based on the preeminence of reason in op-
position first to the ambiguity of mythical accounts, later to the uncertainty
of faith, sentiment and emotion. Locked up into its historical and epistemo-
logical context, reason initially distanced itself from myth to later fall back to
it. The intellectual evolution of Europe took a rationalist orientation which
culminated in the XVIIth century, nurturing a vision of Cosmopolis seen as
a society rationally ordered similar to the Newtonian view of nature. While
fueling extraordinary advances in all fields of human endeavor distributed in
disciplines sealed off from one another, among which philosophy, this vision
perpetuated what Stephen Toulmin called the “hidden agenda of modernity”,
referring to the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into
precise and manageable rational categories distributed into separate disciplines
[4]. His analyses show how different the last three centuries would have been if
Montaigne, rather than Descartes, had been taken as a starting point, showing
that the Cartesian quest for certainty as intrinsic to the nature of science or
philosophy is an illusion, exposing the rhetorical character of even the scientific
discourse.
Chapter 3. The Essential Tension: Rational and Reasonable in Science
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A second break in the history of ideas, albeit less significant in the history of
science, can be detected in the development of another “parting of the ways”
in physical theories, in the late 19th century, between the development of
abstract relational sets or structures on the one side, and the concept of stable
objects taken as an external world, which actually exists and is characterized
by “true” theories, but cannot be directly observed. The two orientations are
complementary, in that priority is given to representations by abstract sets
or networks observed by active observers, or real entities posited by passive
subjects. In the first case, what is observed is not predefined or predetermined,
and is limited to relative identities determined by relational sets [5].
Another break, of an ethical nature this time, was the realization that the
advancement of modern science could not be equated with human progress,
despite its unquestionable achievements, did not put an end to its ambitions
and did not halt its many developments. To take another example from his-
tory, the expansion of Europe that was made possible by the technological and
geographical discoveries beginning in the 16th century had destructive effects
since its very beginning, with the ecological damage inflicted by the transfer
of germs, plants, and animals to the New World. According to historians’ as-
sumptions, the most drastic effect of European colonialism in the New World
was not in the realm of social and political change but in the natural world.
More specifically, the transfer of people, plants, animals, and germs from Eu-
rope, and vice versa, had a transformative and hugely disruptive effect on the
local cultures and their economic viability in the Americas [6]. Rather than
give credence to claims of innate European superiority and the like, Alfred
Crosby explains the relative ease with which Europeans conquered the Neo-
Europes as being a product of biological and ecological processes. According
to them, one of the major contributors to European domination was disease,
which is a natural byproduct of human interaction with animals.
To return to the status of knowledge, the quest for the an ultimate foun-
dation, whether in natural or human sciences, has continued well into the
contemporary period and still fuels debates about the respective merits of
stark truth and tolerant cognitive pluralism, and the idea of a final explana-
tion of the Universe by hard science. However, the decline of this assumption
does not eliminate the implied question about the assumed “universality” of
knowledge, science and philosophy, even if science has undoubtedly become a
global concern of human history. This also raises the question whether the
cultural context was relevant to the origin of science and, at the other end of
the spectrum, the significance of knowledge and the social and political impact
of human action eventually derived from science and technologies, an indirect
consequence of the former question. For some time now, serious concerns have
been expressed about such implications, particularly through civil society ini-
tiatives such as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Medicine, conflict and
Survival or the association of Concerned Scientists. Parallelly, the first two
points are being revisited, as both science and philosophy have taken more
precautionary approaches about anything concerned with such concepts as
“truth” or “foundation”, implying that the autonomy of science and scientists

and the objective reality supposed to justify research and technological inno-
vation are also questionable. The threat of a nuclear war and the actual use of
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki first made physicists conscious of
their social and political responsibility, and the pervading effects of scientific
knowledge, technological applications and human impacts on the ecosystem
have reduced to very little the myth of free science and neutral technologies.
A different picture has emerged from the interactions between social, political
and natural regularities, bringing new relevance to the strong linkages between
cosmos and polis as part of a global and complex cosmopolis.
3.2 Incommunication
Further to the autonomy/heteronomy of science, the expression and under-
standing of scientific theories should be considered, whether in natural or
human sciences, as well as its perception and dissemination in ordinary com-
munication and lay opinion. Among those which are worth mentioning to il-
lustrate the gap between scientific theories and their translation into ordinary
language, the experiments carried out at CERN (European Organization for
Nuclear Research) near Geneva, the world’s largest ever physics experiments,
offers a striking example. It is interesting to note here that the (provisional, as
is usually the case in labs) conclusions have generated misunderstandings, such
as the confusion between physical time and the human perception of time, the
misinterpretation of a rereading of Einstein’s relativity and the reformulation
of the speed of light, or the elusory interpretation of a physical explanation of
the big bang as the discovery of the origin of the Universe. One physicist work-
ing with the organization, Etienne Klein, explains that time meant nothing
more than its mathematical representation, i.e. just a letter t. which differs
from time as we imagine and experience it through ordinary discourse. Con-
sidering such ambiguities, physicists are reluctant to translate their findings or
hypotheses in ordinary language: when experiments in a physics lab showed
subatomic neutrino particles breaking what Einstein considered the ultimate
speed barrier by traveling a fraction faster than light, did this lead to falsi-
fying, or just reformulating Einstein’s theory to account for the limit of light
speed within a broader theoretical framework? Etienne Klein does not shrink
from talking about “selling metaphysics” considering communication and its
common assumptions as rhetoric, if not sophistry, in any case as meaningless
discourse [7].
The same could be said about the chain of metaphors supposed to build
up a “natural logic” like that of Schrödinger’s cat to account for two simul-
taneous phenomena in quantum physics, or the contradiction in terms that
appears in “Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty” to actually express what is
more accurately described as the concept of indeterminacy (the relative inde-
terminacy of quantum particles’ positions to the precision with which their
momenta can be measured). Another example is the origin of the Universe
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(point 0 in general relativity), in so far as the big bang as a scientific concept
cannot be translated in ordinary language, because the latter is not the “zero
hour” or the origin of the Universe, but a given moment corresponding to a
initial state with maximum density. As a matter of fact, the idea of origin im-
plies some previous nothingness, an unthinkable concept that destroys itself.
Any potential explanation would presuppose a preceding vacuum state from
which it would have emerged, something equally unthinkable. This is why the
point zero of time and space as used in mathematics has no significance in
physics, where it does not appear in equations because it just describes the
first moments after the Big Bang.
3.3 Science and Culture

To return to the interplay between scientific knowledge and its cultural or his-
torical context, the Chinese history of science is not without relevance to an
adequate perception of its European counterpart. Although the Chinese admit
that it originated in the West, they frequently ask the question: why was it not
born in China? The common view is that in Antiquity scientific knowledge was
of equivalent advancement, if not status. It was not until Western Renaissance
when science began its rapid expansion, at a time when China was still stag-
nating because of its propensity to study the human mind or heart (Xin) and
innate nature (Xing). Ever since, the gap widened further until the recent poli-
cies set up by successive authoritarian governments. Joseph Needham would
not disagree with this assumption, showing that Chinese science was steadily
developing in ancient China, whereas Western science was proceeding by leaps
and bounds, unlike the stable and continuous course followed in China [8]. In-
cidentally, this may have been one of the reasons for the Western ascendency
over the Middle Kingdom. Furthermore, the assumption that science was born
in a given cultural and social context should not exclude some features asso-
ciated with them, which is the particular concern of this paper. One remark
in this respect was made by Isabelle Stengers and Ilya Prigogine who, even
though the scientific journey is undoubtedly international and transcultural
and is based on rational criteria belonging to all, remind us that its European
impulse cannot be dissociated from such serious issues as the intricate inter-
actions between scientific knowledge, industrial development and democratic
choices [9]. The scientific enterprise as such consequently includes specifics of
culture and history, in this case instability, conflict and philosophical dissent.
As these two philosophers of science say, “... without the extraordinary faith in
the powers of human reason which undermined the legitimacy of institutions
and traditions, and ultimately resulted in the revival of the European idea of
democracy, how would a few thinkers with no personal power have succeeded
in setting the Earth in motion despite the triple authority of our senses which
make us feel it as motionless, of the Scriptures and of philosophy, and in hav-
ing recognized the autonomy of a research method accountable to no other
authority than the scientists who took part in it?”[10]
The interacting components of rationality are differently exemplified in

the Indian cultural area, in so far as perceptions of rationality cannot be lim-
ited to epistemological aspects but should also include interactions with social
and political dimensions. To take just one example from the wide array of
philosophical and logical schools, the Jaina logic developed by the 2nd cen-
tury philosopher Kundakunda included the following ingredients: an ultimate
distinction between “living substance” or “soul” (jiva) and “nonliving sub-
stance” (ajiva); the doctrine of anekantavada, or nonabsolutism (things have
infinite aspects which no determination can exhaust); the doctrine of naya
(there are many partial perspectives from which reality can be determined,
none of which is, taken by itself, wholly true but each of which is partially
so); and the doctrine of karma, in Jainism a substance, rather than a process,
that links all phenomena in a chain of cause and effect. As a consequence of
their philosophical openness, the Jaina logicians developed a unique theory
of seven-valued logic, according to which the three primary truth values are
“true,” “false,” and “indefinite” and the other four values are “true and false,”
“true and indefinite,” “false and indefinite,” and “true, false, and indefinite.”
Every statement is regarded as having these seven values, considered from
different standpoints. It should also be noted that the intercultural dimen-
sion is not absent from scientific and epistemological developments in India,
as their peculiarity did not prevent Arab thinkers like Alberuni from having
a large number of Hindu collaborators with whose help he mastered Sanskrit
and studied contemporary Indian treatises on mathematics, philosophy, as-
tronomy, sculpture, and religion. His work had great influence in continuing
the Arabic studies (well established by the eighth century) of Indian science
and mathematics, which reached Europe through the Arabs [11].
As a whole, what can be concluded from comparative studies is the peculiar
orientation taken by European science as focusing on ideal values and models.
François Jullien illustrates this from a Chinese viewpoint, where “ideal” ap-
pears to be a European word, whether in English, German, French, Spanish,
Italian, and also in Russian or Polish. Referring to Xunzi among other thinkers,
Jullien notes that speculation is usually rejected as a way to understand na-
ture, time or the Universe. In contrast with the Western method imposing
a mental model, a plan, on the chaos of life, and striving to the utmost to
make the chaos fit the plan, the Chinese approach tends to build a unitary
notion different from Platonic idealism immune to the emotional dimension,
the “idea” to be discovered as the ultimate truth [12]. The former method,
favored by the Chinese, seeks a relation between conditions and consequences,
whereas the latter establishes the relation of means to ends with which the
West is more familiar. Among the illustrations of these contrasting logics,
Jullien refers to Chinese strategists, who consider that a situation evolves in
such a way that, if one allows oneself to be carried along by it, the effect results
naturally from the accumulated potential of the situation. Such a strategy no
longer needs to choose between means or to struggle in order to attain an
“end.” He opposes the logic of model-making founded on the construction of
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an ideal end commonly practiced in a Western approach to the dynamic logic
of a process. In the former the process is closed, and its result implicit in its
evolution, while in the latter the causal system is open and complex, and an
infinite number of combinations are possible. The efficacy of the two logics
can be assessed through the ways in which success is perceived: as inevitable
on the one side, as hypothetical on the other [13]. As Xunzi said: “If I know
my opponent and I know myself, in a hundred battles I have nothing to fear”,
meaning that if I know enough about the relationship of forces between my
opponent and myself, I can insist on not joining battle until such time as I
am certain that the potential of the situation operates completely in my favor
[14].
3.4 The Fluctuations of Scientific Knowledge

If we take the varying approaches mentioned above in a coherent whole, we
can adopt new definitions and methods reflecting fundamental changes in the
ways scientific is being produced in social, political and cultural fields. The re-
sulting traits will be complexity, hybridity, non-linearity, reflexivity, plasticity,
heterogeneity, and transdisciplinarity, as rightly observed by Michel Maffesoli
[15]. As to the components and objects of knowledge, a first effect is that
the interplay between disciplinary competences is the inclusion in research
methods of a mixture of reason and emotion, hate and love, certainty and un-
certainty, predictable and unpredictable data. Of course, the initial landmark
of social sciences as autonomous disciplines was first the recognition of reason
as a prominent criterion to establish its scientific status.
To take political science and more specifically the discipline of international
relations as another case in point, I will cite the classical Treaty of Wesphalia
in 1648, which put an end to the Thirty Years’ War, one of Europe’s most dev-
astating, longest series of wars involving most European countries, and was
deemed to provide a rational structure to the anarchic world of European poli-
ties. It was also history’s first great international (the word did not exist yet)
congress, held to settle what had been a deluge of emotions that engulfed Eu-
ropean societies to the point of exhaustion. What should be retained from this
is that three centuries later, students of international politics are still learn-
ing that states and governments are applying rational rules to keep irrational
emotions at bay. In so doing, “scientific” realism as a political theory is still
following the path opened in the 1850s by other social and human sciences,
such as sociology with Max Weber (1864-1920), who rejected the historicist
and descriptive methods and argued that social research proceeded by ab-
straction and generalization in the same way as natural sciences, or Ferdinand
de Saussure (1857-1913) in linguistics, applying the same method to establish
language as a scientifically defined object of study, the fixed “langue” as op-
posed to a flowing “parole”. As Richard Ned Lebow remarked, “this method
could apply not only to external behaviours, but also to the underlying mo-
tivations. Whereas the researcher’s attitude was value-bound, the method of
social research was value-neutral,” [16].

The same applies to morality is based on an ‘ontological’ conception of
the world: phenomena, situations, identities that are intangible and sure of
themselves. By contrast, plural ethics are essentially changing and provisional.
Still, rather than deploring this mobile, uncertain, non-institutional side of the
phenomena in question, can we not see in it the expression of an authentic,
full humanism, a conception of the human that is dynamic, including both its
constructive and destructive aspects. To take an instance of this debate in
political science, the conflicting views about what is posited as rational and
what is described as reasonable or irrational may generate competing theo-
ries of international relations, granting priority to rational sovereign states
as sole actors, or opting for pluralist constructivism with a plurality of ac-
tors where non-state agents and subjective factors play a significant role. The
model of Cosmopolis advocated in the 17th century as a natural outcome of
both the origins and the prospects of the modern world evoked phenomena
concerned with “being”, and were driven by the quest for a rational, specific
substance: God, the State, the Institution, man, rights. Its distant origin
can be traced back to Plato’s claim that the world exists independently of
our mental categories and that man’s only possibility is to find out “truths”
our there waiting to be discovered. This conception still thrives in contempo-
rary political theories, specifically in the discipline of International Relations.
Although conventional realists, following Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz,
Raymond Aron and others who acknowledge that there are many actors other
than states, and that states engage in all sorts of economic and social inter-
actions which have nothing directly to do with creating a balance of power,
their basic argument remains determined by two essential principles. First,
these interferences in non-state fields of activity do not undermine the basic
assumption that in the absence of effective world government the international
system is anarchical. Second, even if Waltz denies that he makes any kind of
assumption about the rationality of states, most of his successors do assume
that because states want to survive they will act rationally to increase their
security, despite the paradoxical assumption since Hobbes that the security
of individual sovereign states implies the absence of security, or anarchy, in
international relations [17].
Opposed to these theories, the sociology of international relations has
turned to the plurality of actors with different motivations, whether ratio-
nal or not [18]. Far from sticking to the monologic of states posited as rational
actors, theorists of the field have proposed operational definition of non-state
actors in different veins, as referring to renewed conceptions of Cosmopolis, to
social life organized according to inter/transnational civil society with its own
logic, especially the logic of association, to supply its own economic, cultural
and political dynamics, or a mixture of all those. Despite the four-century
oblivion to which it was consigned by the Cartesian program of modern scien-
tific disciplines, rationalist theories have consequently be questioned by new or
updated ideas reappearing in the recent attempts at founding a cosmopolitan
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law, actually a counter-trend in international law developments. Today, the
resurrection of the Janus-faced concept of humanity and human being is at the
center of the international law of human rights, which culminated with such
regulatory instruments as the International Criminal Court founded in 2002.
These legal instruments cannot be get rid of if we want to channel the shaping
of a transnational society diversely defined in terms of cyberspace, scientific
and technological rationality, international democracy or global civil society. A
distant echo of the Stoic views, the adoption and implementation of a univer-
sal jurisdiction by “like-minded” states conceived of as standardized identities
highlights the continuing relevance of basic transdisciplinary concepts such as
human being and humanity. Considered from such perspectives, the current
inter/transnational landscape sends social and human sciences back to the in-
tellectual inquiries with which Montaigne was familiar, before René Descartes
separated nature from humanity, reason from emotion, and distributed knowl-
edge into autonomous disciplines. Descartes’ rationalist system establishes
philosophy and the sciences upon a secure metaphysical foundation, exempli-
fying an attitude characteristic of the Enlightenment, whose basic tenets are
that the investigator ought to doubt all propositions that can be doubted –
short of the existence of God, whose cosmic plan was to be explained thanks to
the new philosophical method – with no other authority than the researcher’s
own conviction, subjected to rigorous skeptical questioning. As strongly ex-
pressed by Stephen Toulmin, “The culture and society of 17th century Europe
were transformed by changes that set aside the tolerance of late Renaissance
humanism for more rigorous theories and demanding practices: these changes
culminated in the new cosmopolis built around the formal structure of math-
ematical physics,” [19].
By contrast, Montaigne’s perspective would be better illustrated today by
a “geopolitics of emotions” [20] including some specific affects rather than rea-
son only. Peter Sloterdijk, to take one of the leading contemporary thinkers,
refers to the suggestive alliteration of Zorn (anger) and Zeit (understood here
as historical time), displacing Heidegger’s magnum opus from 1927, Sein und
Zeit. Firstly, Sloterdijk connects anger, and not being, with time, displacing
the terrain of the investigation regarding the essence of time from ontology
to something like a philosophical psychology, focused on a very specific affect.
Secondly, whilst Sloterdijk presents anger as what Heidegger would have called
a “fundamental attunement” (Grundstimmung), or an affect that reveals a fun-
damental situation, whether existential or historical, Heidegger himself never
identified anger as one such mood. Thirdly, the title itself seems to suggest
that in order to understand time, our time as well as our conception of time,
and both are at issue in Sloterdijk’s book as we need to turn to anger not as
one mood or affect amongst others, but as the most adequate and defining
affect, here considered as a way into the implicit dynamic of European history
[21].
True, in ancient times hegemony came before balance in so far as hegemony,
in the guise of empire, meant order, culture and civilization. The outside world,
for both Europeans and Chinese, was peopled with barbarians, equated with
chaos and instability. However, if empires have generally been static, they have
also protected a degree of plurality in their ethnic and cultural composition
from the start. This is due to many factors, among which the very extension
and variety of occupied or controlled territories, which made it impossible to
standardize or homogenize cultures, languages and political power. This frag-
mentation, or more positively the encounter between so many peoples, may
have contributed to the cosmopolitan idea, i.e. the idea of human beings as
citizens of the world understood not as an idealized building block in a Euro-
pean representation of the Universe, but as a complex, asymmetrical pattern
calling for a wider perspective capturing the interactions between the variety
of actors and factors involved. The underlying vectors of tensions associated
with such an imbalance can be related to both the quest for an emerging world
order and the chaos resulting from competing models of world order. The set
of actors and factors so constituted may refer to state interests and community
values, local and global views, moral and legal norms, charitable and economic
aims simultaneously, calling for an inevitable cross-disciplinary outlook.
3.5 From Pre-Modern to Modern to Post-Modern

It should be noted here that, far from this notion of a potential, complex
and plural world order, the United Nations is an illustration of the traditional
system of “modern” states, following Machiavellian principles and a realist be-
havior of strict sovereignty and raison d’état, in an attempt to establish law
and order according to the principles enshrined in the UN Charter. However,
this also means that its aims to maintain order by force is strictly limited, the
veto power ensuring that the UN system does not infringe on great powers’
interests and privileges, destroying by the same token its original aim of con-
sidering all states equal. Although the UN was conceived to stabilize the order
of states, it did not create a fundamentally new order, notwithstanding some
developments since its inception. In a way, the collective-security element of
the UN Charter represented an attempt to throw the weight of the interna-
tional system behind the status quo, so that the international community as
a whole would become the balancing actor in the balance-of-power system.
Nevertheless, in the absence of any obvious alternative the interstate system
has survived, and what emerged in 1945 was not so much a new system as
the culmination of the old one, with the old multilateral balance-of-power in
Europe becoming a bilateral balance of terror through deterrence.
In contrast with the modern system epitomized by the UN, the European
model is the most developed example of a new rationality, variously called
postmodern, postmodern or transmodern. Based on interdependence, the EU
is more a transnational than a supra-national system, a voluntary association
of states rather than the subordination of states to a central power. Aban-
doning the ideal of a “European state” or “European empire”, it rests on the
assumption that nation states are fundamentally unsafe and that the only way
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to tame the anarchy of nations is to impose hegemony on them. However, if
the EU considers the sovereign nation-state as a problem, the super-state is
not necessarily a solution. The postmodern system does not rely either on
balance, as it does not emphasize sovereignty or the separation of domestic
and foreign affairs. On the contrary, the EU has become a highly developed
system for mutual interference in each other’s domestic affairs. In the field
of defense, under the CFE Treaty parties have to notify the location of their
heavy weapons and allow inspections. The shared interest of European coun-
tries mirrors the paradox of the nuclear age where to defend itself a state had
to be prepared to destroy itself, overcoming the strategic logic of distrust and
concealment. Instead, it recognizes such characteristics and practices as mu-
tual vulnerability, mutual transparency, the breaking down of the distinction
between domestic and foreign affairs [22], mutual interference in (traditional)
domestic affairs and mutual surveillance, the rejection of force for resolving
disputes and the consequent codification of self-enforced rules of behavior,
which naturally translates into the growing irrelevance of borders [23].
In other words, the creation of this post-modern, post-national system
is the recognition that Europe is not an empire in the conventional sense,
but both a supra-national and transnational organization which brings order
but rests on the voluntary principle confirmed in the Lisbon Treaty stating
that any member state can leave the EU, as a consistent alternative to the
fact that “there has never been a European empire” [24]. Thus conceived, a
plausible explanation for this novel fact of international life is the hypothesis of
the non-empire, an oligopolar trans-polity and quasi-polity, if the comparative
method is to ascribe some significance to European history. Again, the feature
appears more clearly when situated in a comparative historical perspective:
the political fragmentation and cultural pluralism that characterize Europe
can be contrasted with China, where competition and conflict between several
of the great kingdoms during the fourth and third centuries BC gradually made
way for a rational theory of State power aimed at strengthening the military
and the economy by concentrating all power in the hands of the prince. As
Jacques Gernet notes, this centralization was accomplished by eliminating the
power of the old hereditary aristocracy, setting up instead an independent
administration run by objective rules and regulations, hierarchically ordered
and whose tasks were rationally distributed among various specialized services
subjected to regular control and exercising in turn direct control over all the
territories [25].
Obviously, the idea of empire still survives in Europe in the image of peace
and order through a single hegemonic power. The former dreams of the restora-
tion of Christendom has given rise to proposals for world government which
would emerge from the United Nations, and calls for a United States of Europe.
But the UN was never intended to be a cosmopolis of this kind, as it strictly
preserves state sovereignty and has no democratic constitution, and the EU
project is not comparable to the United States of America. The Federalists at
the end of the eighteenth century in Philadelphia were engaged in inventing
a new political regime without historical precedent, whereas more than two
hundred years later, the EU is both to conserve the democratic achievements
of the nation-state and design, beyond its own limits, what Jacques Delors
called a “non-identified political object” heir to a long-established practice
of constitution-making, for which the future of Europe is more the province
of economists, sociologists and political scientists, rather than the domain of
constitutional lawyers and political philosophers [26].
For its part, even if the state is assumed to be the sole rational actor, we
should admit that it no longer fulfills Weber’s criterion of having the legal, let
alone legitimate, monopoly on the use of force, in so far as it has in the past
abused that monopoly. In other circumstances, it may be a fragile structure
whose authority is not only restricted by commitments under the UN Charter
to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any other state, but also undermined by complex
urban and industrial societies organized in private networks, whether nonprofit
(civil society organizations) or for-profit (corporate players). The so-called
failed states may even be completely overwhelmed by drug trafficking, criminal
networks or terrorist syndicates using non-state (that is, pre-modern) legal
instruments to weaken states and interstate organizations. As a result we
have, for the first time since the nineteenth century, a terra nullius between
anarchic globalization, demised or powerless states and unofficial syndicates
operating without hindrance.
3.6 Pragmatist Alternatives

In other sectors of social sciences, the quest of rationality and scientific truth
has been equally undermined by Thomas Kuhn’s thesis that successive sci-
entific paradigms develop in history on the condition that they can reach
consensus and are not opposed by some ideological or institutional obstacle.
Paradigms, a term and a concept Kuhn apparently borrowed from Gaston
Bachelard [27], were justified by the need to protect scientific knowledge from
opinion so as to guarantee the transference of a community’s paradigm, a move
radicalized by Kuhn who considers that a paradigm is so much attached to a
given community that it becomes internalized and invisible. Logically, a crisis
occurs in a discipline when the paradigm becomes self-reflexive and a subject
of debate and the community is no longer in a position to remain immune to
criticism and controversy [28]. The scientific truth principle was further weak-
ened by Karl Popper’s thesis that no scientific theory is definitely valid as it is
always and necessarily open to falsification. The principle of contradiction can
thus play an empirically active role to that end, as a rational motivation to
revise theories, which will be eliminated as soon as a new and more adequate
theory has been chosen [29].
In the field of social sciences, pragmatism appeals primarily to those re-
searchers who understand the many limitations of positivism but are never-
theless committed to a scientific approach to the social world. Often accused
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of a “physics envy” associated with objective truths as allegated by Lebow
against political scientists [30], many contemporary social scientists turned to
what I would call a “polis envy” to respond to such attacks, but also as a
consequence of the increasing complexity of data collected in all subject mat-
ters, from anthropology and linguistics to sociology, psychology and cognitive
sciences. Confronted with variable and unstable contexts, pragmatist theories
reject scientific objectivism associated with abstract objects and binary logic,
in an attempt to reconcile social, cultural or global data with the more homo-
geneous or universal knowledge associated with biological or genetic processes.
In so doing, they also try to preserve the unity of science and the autonomy
of individual disciplines, at the same time as hard science itself, and notably
physics, are retreating to a more modest position freed from the search for an
absolute truth. Remembering that Kant had already stated that knowledge of
synthetic a priori truths about space and time is only explicable if they are for-
mal elements of sense-experience rather than properties of things themselves,
we should not be surprised to hear that quantum mechanics has established,
with Bohr, Pauli, or Heisenberg, that isolated, ideal objects as understood in
conventional metaphysics do not exist as such in quantum physics in so far as
the observer and the object are never separated but are interacting within a
relational, coherent set of events [31].
3.7 Language as a Relational Set

Considering these new epistemological openings, it may be surprising to find
that the older method based on ideal, metaphysical knowledge continues to
flourish in contemporary social science. The best known case is probably the
genetic determinism extended to language. Once the most celebrated advance
in social sciences, Noam Chomsky’s linguistics formalized a theory grounded
in biology, describing universal grammar as a “hypothetical component of ge-
netic inheritance applicable to any language” [32]. The relation between the
assumed innate language organ, or device, and the languages we acquire is seen
here as no more than the adjustment of parameters. Even though Chomsky
says he never uses the term “inneist hypothesis”, which is said to be used only
by his critics like Hilary Putnam, it would not be surprising since his episte-
mology is literally “natural” [33] . The ideological function of the language
device is reduced to turning its neural substratum into absolute determination
in a first stage, which makes the study of language a monodisciplinary subject
first reduced to psychology, and second to biology [34], including the more
recent functionalist and cognitive theories. In formal terms, this translates
into the axiomatization of an autonomous syntax, the transformational gen-
erative grammar (TGG), entrusted with providing models for other processes
of cognitive psychology such as visual perception and other models relating
to the processing of external stimuli, based on the fundamental properties of
learned cognitive systems and mechanisms used for acquiring and applying
such systems [35].
In a second stage, the conception of a “mental organ” central to cognitive

structures will confirm the demise of language as the subject of an autonomous
linguistics, causing this science to be dependent, beyond psychology, on biol-
ogy or neurosciences. Finally, both operations will lead to mentalism as a
further step to the annexation of psychology and linguistics by physical sci-
ences [36]. Language as a central of philosophical enquiry is then identified
with the mental content of an ideal speaker-hearer in a completely homoge-
neous speech-community studied by a new fashion philosophy of spirit, later to
be translated into the homogeneous mind-brain research topic as the TGG was
evolving into a scientific theory of the substantialist family. In philosophical
terms, this meant that the intellectual climate had entirely changed since the
1960s, empiricism was now submerged by rationalistic assumptions, linguistic
or social systems were no longer understood in internal terms to make compar-
ison possible, and particular aspects or traits of a system could be definitely
isolated to outline a universal structure for language and cognition. It marked
the return to Max Müller’ claim in the 1860s that linguistics was a science
whose methods were comparable to those of geology, botany or astronomy:
“The science of language, one of the physical sciences” [37].
These epistemological tenets suggest, rather than an epistemological rev-
olution, what amounts to a step backwards can be traced back to an older
scientific and philosophical Western tradition: arguing the necessity for pos-
tulating innate ideas to explain the possibility of language, generativists, in
the same way as immanent language for structuralists, convey Platonic con-
ceptions that man is inhabited with true opinions about realities he does not
know or he has not learnt yet. To the extent that some followers of this school,
invoking Frege’s Platonic doctrine initially conceived as an antidote to psychol-
ogism [38], engaged in a declaration of loyalty to Platonism. Jerrold J. Katz,
one of the staunchest defenders of Chomsky’s school, first supported psycholo-
gism or conceptualism in linguistics [39], according to which linguistic theory is
identified with the theory of knowledge of language, and later mentalism [40],
then rejected in favor of (Platonic) realism, according to which languages are
abstract objects considered for themselves independently of our knowledge of
them [41]. He described this change as follows: “I had been wondering about
how well Frege’s realism about senses, to which I was committed, squared with
Chomsky’s psychologism about language, to which I was also committed. I
reached the conclusion that ... a theory of abstract senses could not be fitted
into a theory of concrete syntactic structures in the human mind. My solution
was to adopt a realist view of grammar as a whole, a move that seemed the
right choice in light of the fact that the words and sentences that grammars
are theories of are plausibly regarded as types and hence as abstract objects,”
[42].
On the formal side, Chomsky’s method is one of the most systematic en-
deavors to transfer logical principles into linguistic theory, provided logic is
restricted to classical logic, as he rejects all non-classical or paraconsistent
logics commonly used today to represent language and cognition processes in
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pragmatic contexts [43]. His method is radical if compared with Pos’s posi-
tion, a logician who inspired his work but restricted the link between logic and
language to an analogy, whereas Chomsky bases both systems on a structural
identity, making therefrom the concept of grammar “correctness” a derivative
of the principle of logical generation which defines true and false [44]. We
can recognize here the bivalence that characterizes Chomskyan linguistics as
based on the classical binary logic since, as Chomsky clearly says, the logic
of language “is” classical logic (with variables, i.e. the predicate calculus),
and not some intentional logic (with no variables). However, some critics have
noted that presenting the TGG as an instrument to “explain” the speaker’s
competence in the same way as theories in physics explain physical phenomena
is a serious logical mistake. Indeed, theoretical physics as a predictive tool is
analogous to Chomskyan performance (actual speech), whereas compe-tence
(assimilated with physical theory) has never been presented as a theory of
performance [45].
Again, as propositions are independent from empirical verification because
they are based on concepts of necessary and universal concepts, Chomsky’s
logic is far from engaging in any “revolutionary” epistemology but rather goes
back to the idealistic tradition of Western philosophy faithful to classical, bi-
nary logic at a time when most of his colleagues in linguistic pragmatics have
long lost their interest in this logic and opted for “adaptive” logics and the
forms that better explicate dynamic reasoning, a central concern today for
philosophy of science and epistemology. Although Chomsky refers to the em-
pirical adequacy of a formal universal grammar to actual languages, with a
view to opposing the empiricist thinking that dominated the 1950s [46] exem-
plified by Leonard Bloomfield behaviorist psychology and linguistics, but also
Edward Sapir’s and Benjamin Lee Whorf’s anthropological and comparative
linguistics. His reference to Saussure is more ambiguous and will be used, in
a first stage, as an ideological weapon against American structuralist behav-
ioralism, then departed from it to enhance his own original approach defined
as generative and subjectivist. Part of the explanation for such a return to
reifications constructed on models recalling Platonic Ideas or the Aristotelian
forms is a response to language theories drawing on the social or cultural envi-
ronment, including later pragmatic approaches based on Austin’s speech acts,
Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory, theories of discourse arguing that
interaction with other speakers is the critical dimension in learning language,
or Vygotsky’s psychology, which argues that all cognitive processes, includ-
ing those involved in language, arise from social interaction. Chomsky also
opposed the kind of constructivism elaborated in Jean Piaget’s psychology,
as illustrated in the famous Royaumont debate in 1975 between Piaget’s and
Chomsky’s followers. The initial tenet inspired by rationalism ascribes no in-
trinsic structure to the environment, because any law of order belongs to the
subject. In Piagetian terms, this means that of the two terms of equilibration
– accommodation and assimilation – only the former would be maintained, but
it would be entirely and absolutely controlled by the subject. Additionally, in
Piaget’s theory there is no need whatsoever for an innate language device, due
to the fact that neural structures and psychological processes are entirely suffi-
cient to account for cognition and language [47]. In a way, the language device
refers to a hypothetical mechanism, possibly genetic but which would then
describe no more than a sub-linguistic mechanism and could equally underlie
non-linguistic processes. This view is supported today by comparative research
on neural substrata of language and music, showing that similar (as well as dis-
tinct) processes are active in understanding language and in perceiving music.
Concerning language, an interesting finding is also that cognitive operations
associated with meaning are specific to semantic treatment, i.e. distinct from
syntactic processes, which clearly appears not to cover the whole of language
neural mechanisms. Although the latter differ from those used to treat melodic
and harmonic structures, it is equally relevant to note that the treatment of
some syntactic dimensions of language is associated with electrophysiological
processes similar to those implied in the treatment of certain harmonic aspects
of music. This means that syntactic functions of language and harmonic func-
tions of music may be governed by common mechanisms which analyze the
structural features of a sequence of organized events, whether they are part
of a sentence in speech or accords of a melody. Similar conclusions have been
made when comparing aspects of prosody in language and rhythm in music,
all of them supporting Piaget’s view that language cannot be reduced to a spe-
cific language device, but that common, deep mechanisms underlie different
cognitive functions [48].
3.8 Return to Reason

True, contemporary researchers have brought more experimental data to sup-
port the theory of inborn competences, like the famous FOXP2 gene supposed
to be the core of language structure [49]. The strong impact of the rationalist
model still prevalent in social sciences in the 19th century culminated in the
demonstration by Berlin Kay of the language-independent saliency of “basic
colors”, which was taken as a decisive anti-relativist finding, and effectively
terminated investigations into the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis conceived from his-
torical roots. Although some recent studies based on non-industrialized soci-
eties still contest the existence of cross-linguistic universals in color naming,
suggesting that color categories may not be universal, comprehensive objec-
tive tests have been conducted to resolve this issue, concluding from data from
languages of both industrialized and non-industrialized that strong universal
tendencies in color naming do exist across both sorts of language. However,
the power of the genetic explanation declined as research was refining its find-
ings: Evelyn Fox Keller argues that the very success of genetics has radically
undermined its main thrust, the very gene concept. Originally presented as
the driving force in the faithful replica of genetic traits from generation to
generation, the stability of genes was actually hiding a great number of en-
zymes contributing to metabolic networks. Crick’s central dogma in 1957 that
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“DNA makes proteins, and proteins make us” has gradually been questioned
as the gene was reformulated in dynamic terms to account for the chromo-
some structure on which it depends and on its developmental and cytoplasm
environment [50].
Universal language standards can also be officially imposed, in contrast to
ordinary language in which form and content make up a unit usually created
unconsciously, establishing an artificial “universality”. In the field of natural
sciences and technology, the aim of terminology is to oppose any free play
of language and for scientific communities to agree on unified (standardized)
concepts and terms endorsed by an authority such as a national or preferably
international standardization institute. So conceived, the analytic concept
theory in terminology science is another instance of an infinite regression to
Aristotelian philosophical ideas, consisting in defining concepts as the result
of the necessary predications of referents and being represented in a term or
name or conventionalized in a sentence stating the characteristics in their rela-
tionships. This conception ascribes to concepts a universal role in recognizing
and constructing the world and is objects, categorizing and classifying them,
while at the same time considering concepts as “units of communication” in
the semiotic sense, summarized in definitions based on the classical logical
equation definiendum - definiens [51]. The basis provided for dealing with the
concepts formed and used in science and technology is a form of objectivism,
which posits the existence of independent objects, regards our consciousness
as a passive recorder of data. Its language of observation should, then, desig-
nate aspects of observable physical relations and events taken as valid for all
possible referents belonging to a given class, consequently rejecting any con-
textualization for the purpose of elucidating the meaning of concepts. In line
with the physicalist programme of the Vienna Circle, this view implies that the
unity of science is reductionist in the sense that the observation of objective
realities in makes it possible to build a uniform language of description (based
on logical empiricism) that can be applied to the human sciences as well [52].
Obviously, this position has long been questioned by epistemologists not
only in the field of the human sciences, but also in natural sciences, one as-
sumption being that some events are intrinsically paradoxical [53]. Critical
theorists in both fields have also argued against the validity of an indepen-
dent, context-free facticity that provides the basis of assertions that are true
by virtue of correspondence. The Frankfurt school and other philosophers in-
fluenced by the interpretive tradition of inquiry argue on the contrary, that
human experience is apprehended on the basis of categories that have mean-
ing in the cultural context of the analyst/observer. Experience is thus always
contingent on the normative standards that are presupposed in the possible
selection and constitution of “facts” [54]. Resorting to “open-textured” terms
and concepts in relation to empirical theories [55], or to non-standardized ter-
minologies in the social sciences, are two attempts among many others to deal
with conflicting views of conceptual analysis. The aim is to integrate opposite
assumptions usually believed to be mutually exclusive, if not empirically, at
least logically. One such attempt is the creation of the so-called sociotermi-
nology by François Gaudin [56], to deal with the sociological aspects of termi-
nologies. In a pluralist approach, terminologies address concepts as they are
disseminated in human societies and perceived by speakers to conform to the
relative dependence of conceptual systems on contexts within which concepts
are developed, interpreted and named. The explicit view of this approach is
to account for ambiguity, homonymy, synonymy, extensional vagueness, opac-
ity and contradiction, otherwise eliminated from conventional terminology.
Ironically, scientific organizations, standardization institutes or terminologi-
cal banks as autonomous transnational institutions pursue these goals in the
full awareness of the underlying cultural values, namely that “technology and
its dissemination is a product of culture, because its development depends
less on technical capabilities than on its social and cultural desirability and
acceptability” [57].
These claims legitimize the analogy between the aims and structures of
these organizations and the language network intracultural model proposed
by Milroy [58]. The rather radical view expressed by the Milroy’s [59] about
similar processes in an intracultural context can easily be referred to an inter-
cultural level: only in written language standardization can true standard be
achieved, and the “ideology” is all that gets transferred from the written to
the spoken channel. To this we could add that, as commented by J.E. Joseph,
what is transferred to the standard language is something much more signif-
icant: an entire way of thinking about language, as a medium composed of
discrete units, able to be isolated in time, that is a meta-awareness of language;
the means for those who have this power to consciously determine language
functions to spread their views within the linguistic community; a form of
graphicentrism which strengthen language’s political force (what is material
can be possessed), etc. [60]. In other words standard languages, which are
acquired primarily through educational assimilation, acculturation and other
prescriptive actions, reflect a cultural intervention against the way in which
one’s native language is normally acquired. The very notion of a standard
language thus implies much more than a mere semantic convention, since it
appears to be the product of a unified culture which, in addition to prescrip-
tivism and culturocentrism, implies value judgments associated with the role
of standardized concepts considered as the “true” representation of objective
entities.
Reductionist epistemologies should not be rejected, but they obviously do
not explain wider aspects of language development which always remain de-
pendent on interpersonal relations and social context. Syntactic parameter
may be inborn, but they will never explain or minimally make understand
that language learning, formation and use is dynamic, self-organizing, and
epigenetic. Universal grammar or, deeper cognitive mechanism which make
the linguistic device hypothesis useless, may constrain the collective evolution
and individual learning of language, but they will never explain discourse,
dialogic, rhetoric games or literary creativity. Conversely, the anthropologi-
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cal framework suggested by Geertz and many other anthropologists describe
conventional understandings of humanity rested on reified images of man as
a model, of gods as archetypes, of Platonic ideas or of Aristotelian forms,
all of them dead identities disconnected from the intimacies of a lively en-
vironment and substantive human universals [61]. Instead of a modular or
“stratigraphic” view of culture as a layer superimposed over biological, psy-
chological, and sociological phenomena, he points out the interdependencies
and coevolution of biology and meaning as interacting within experience. The
anthropological picture thus firmly situates culture and biology as a unitary
phenomenon, as otherwise suggested by human evolution: the neocortex grew
up in great part in interaction with culture, a feature called “co-evolution” in
an intermediate thesis between the nativist and culturalist theories. Referring
to the explosion of symbolic artifacts in homo sapiens after a very slow acqui-
sition of communication skills, this view proposes an integrational, “cognitive”
theory compatible with pragmatics against the innatist, modular paradigm of
language research. Drawing on neurobiology, evolutionary theory, linguistics,
and semiotics, Terence Deacon and other teams of anthropologists suggest that
language (inseparable from social life) and the brain (whose development in
man is inseparable is equally inseparable from social communication) evolved
in continuous interaction, generating a loop between the environment and
genes, biological competences and the evolution of human culture [62].
3.9 Conclusion
The arguments above support the idea of an extensive, cross-disciplinary ap-
prehension of most, if not all phenomena observed and studied in the many
subjects of human and social sciences. In contrast with the “physics envy”
mentioned at the start of this paper, they evoke openness to a “polis envy”.
The former could actually be addressed to many, if not all disciplines in social
and human sciences, which one time or another have been committed to an
ideal-type, or “common principals” imported from natural sciences. Taken
as prescriptive criteria, these are somewhat analogous to a compass to estab-
lish the boundaries of the set of fields or subjects that can be considered as
scientific, and consequently as a reliable source of knowledge. As to the “po-
lis envy”, it can readily be associated to the coexistence of plural subjects,
whether citizens in this case or subjects or agents in other contexts, with no
immediate or permanent definition of what could be taken as common, general
or even universal. In this sense, the dream of scientific realism that underlies
Western ideals of “progress”and “development”, whose damaging sociological
and ecological consequences are now widely recognized, together with the log-
ical rationality shared by philosophy and science from Plato to Descartes and
Popper, would give way to “humanist” and “reasonable” views, as expressed
by Paul Feyerabend: “The appeal to reason is empty, and must be replaced
by a notion of science that subordinates it to the needs of citizens and com-
munities,” [63]
Arguably, Feyerabend’s remark radicalizes the view that of the quest for
scientific truth is not only truth, but the motivation implied by its quest. Does
this exclude reason? Not necessarily, if we remember Akbar the Great’s point
that “even to dispute reason one has to give a reason for that disputation”
[64]. The object is then invariably underlain by the subject’s choice, which
requires a relational epistemology. Motivations and drives have been theorized
by political scientists and philosophers, referring to such notions as honor, fear,
spirit, courage or other emotions [65], showing that underlying social “facts”
are interpretations of concepts used to name them. As Lebow says, in the
physical world objects exist independently of our behavior or knowledge of
them: “Molecules were features of the world before they were ever imaged
by humans and the earth continued to revolve around the sun despite the
insistence of the Catholic Church for many centuries that the reverse was
true. This cannot be said for the balance of power, the state or even society,”
[66].
As can be seen, the two polarities of thought mentioned in the introduction,
which can be called logos and tao and coexisted in Archaic Greece and in China
in the same period of history, can no longer be clearly identified with Western
culture on the one side and Chinese culture on the other side, as both modes of
thinking existed on both sides and have intermingled in history. What is visible
today is rather that the prominence of logos in Western thinking and science is
being increasingly questioned by plural rationalities as the systems studied in
social sciences are becoming more and more complex. The consecutive demise
of the sole predominance of formal explanations aiming at “truth” has been
compounded by the new uncertainty about progress conventionally associated
with rational thinking and governance, as scientific knowledge, or at least
its applications, is increasingly accused of undermining the sustainability of
the ecosystem, to the point of exposing the senseless vainglory of a “Strong
Anthropic Principle” belief that “the Universe must have those properties
which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history,” [67].
True, genetics has made great strides in terms of increasing the potential
value of the core assets we wish to rely upon, but human communication re-
mains obscure as long as it is reduced to the syntactic treatment of its written
constituents or the basic mechanisms of sentences isolated from the complex
input of discourse, rhetoric and semiotics in producing and understanding hu-
man interaction in all its varieties. Formally, we are sent back to a logic of
“both” and the plausibility of contradiction, the pre-platonic rhetoric of “dou-
ble speech” of speakers/hearers playing with dissonance, far later expressed by
Diderot when he sensed the exhaustion of Cartesian modernity, showing how
human practice was generating a society made of individuals with multiple loy-
alties instead of sovereign, isolated subjects. “... we have not many mouths”,
he said, “But in the mind there is not the successive development we observe
in speech; if it had twenty mouths, and each mouth able to say a word, all the
above ideas would be expressed at once,” [68]. This idea has been theorized
in many disciplines familiar with cultural diversity, the rhetoric of discourse
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and plural voices. “Polyphony” was theorized in the 1920s by literary analyst
Michael Bakhtin from Dostoevsky’s ‘dialogical principle’ to counter monolo-
gism, for which truth as a referential object is constructed abstractly from
the dominant perspective and denies the subject any autonomous meaning in
a closed discourse, in favor of dialogism, which recognizes the multiplicity of
perspectives and voices in evolving interaction, each of which engaging with
and informed by other voices. It draws on the history of past use and meanings
associated with each word, phrase or genre, as well as on the anticipation of
future statements [69].
On their side, social sciences can be expected to adhere to the same stan-
dards of evidence and theory-building as the natural sciences in so far as they
remember that they are far more falsifiable than their supposed model, that
rules are not laws, that reason is the ability to set up stable theories but also
to make decisions, making reasonableness a more adequate concept than one-
dimensional rationality. Concepts may migrate from one subject to another,
but in so doing they are rebuilt with different components and contradict the
fixed meanings they had at the start, a sufficient demonstration that disci-
plines are doomed to interact, losing some of their sovereignty in the same
way as subjects and collectivities cannot stick indefinitely to their identities.
If dialogism is typical of everyday language use and literary writing, it is
also deployed in social and political contexts where players are skeptical to
identities, in an emerging transnational system of plural actors and complex
factors interacting in an ordering which did not exist to that extent before the
turn of the twentieth century. Not only do the few examples before suggest that
there is no way out of the transdisciplinary approach, but they also imply that
“transhistorical” elements derived from comparative history are inescapable,
examining arguments in favor of the multi-perspectivism that thrived not only
in Greece before the reduction of Sophia to episteme, of wisdom to science and
one-dimensional reason, but also in non-Western cultural areas. Expressing
and communicating knowledge in science can avoid a number of inconsisten-
cies and misinterpretations providing they adopt a theory of transformative
dualities, where symbols and theories are not static, ontological objects, but
restore their pragmatic dimension in fluid circumstances.
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About the Author
Dr. Paul Ghils is a professor emeritus of the Haute Ecole de Bruxelles. He taught
language sciences and international relations in Algeria, Mexico, Iran and Belgium.
From 1985 to 2005, he edited Transnational Associations, the journal of the Union
of International Associations (UIA, which also publishes the Yearbook of Interna-
tional Relations). He is currently the Editor in Chief of Cosmopolis, a Journal of
Cosmopolitics he created in 2007 in cooperation with the Canadian Encyclopédie
de l’Agora and a Belgian e-encyclopedia. He has written many essays at the inter-
face between philosophy, language sciences and international relations. His latest
book is Le langages est-il logique ? de la raison universelle aux diversités culturelles
(L’Harmattan/Academia, Paris-Louvain-la-Neuve, 2012), an innovative thinking on
the interactions between cultures and languages in time and space and potential
universal values.
CHAPTER 4
Transdisciplinarity and Biomimicry
Sue L. T. McGregor, Mount Saint Vincent University, 166 Bedford Highway, Halifax Nova
Scotia, Canada, B3M 2J6.
apitalizing on the emergent movement towards integrating transdisciplinar-

C ity with biomimicry, this Chapter provides an overview of the biomimicry
approach, including discussion of its three basic dimensions: (a) nine prin-
ciples of life; (b) nature as model, measure and mentor; and, (c) the Design
Spiral methodology. If the intent of transdisciplinarity is to understand the
world in all its complexities, and the world includes humans, non-humans and
nature, then it makes sense to gain insights from non-humans (other species)
and nature, the intent of biomimicry.
Keywords: transdisciplinarity, biomimicry, design spiral, complexity.
4.1 Introduction
Studying nature to get ideas to solve transdisciplinary problems has recently
received new attention from the field of biomimicry [1]. An intriguing discus-
sion has emerged in the literature during the last five years about transdisci-
plinarity and biomimicry. Those engaged in this intellectual discourse argue
that humanity is encountering powerful new insights from the foundations of
transdisciplinarity: quantum physics, chaos theory, complexity theory and liv-
ing systems/ecosystems theory. They further suggest that those engaged in
transdisciplinary work can benefit from employing the principles of biomimicry
(and vice versa). They maintain that sustainable products, processes, services
and institutions are needed as catalysts to the transition towards a sustainable
human civilization. They believe that solutions to the world’s problems re-
quire the transdisciplinary integration of multiple perspectives and knowledge
bases, augmented with insights from biomimicry [2, 3, 4, 5].
I find this idea intriguing. If the intent of transdisciplinarity is to under-
stand the world in all its complexities [6, 7], and the world includes humans,
non-humans and nature, then it makes sense to gain insights from non-humans
89
Figure 4.1: Nine Life Principles from Nature.
(other species) and nature, the intent of biomimicry [8]. Madni [9], when dis-
cussing Daimler Chrysler’s transdisciplinary application of biomimicry princi-
ples to design a Concept Car, observed that “humans have much to learn from
Mother Nature”[9:7]. Transdisciplinarity arose from the increasing demand for
relevance and applicability of academic research and non-academic knowledge
to societal challenges [10]. Biomimicry arose from the increasing demand for
deeper innovations and inspirations [8]. It has witnessed explosive growth as a
new concept [11]. This paper provides an overview of biomimicry, anticipating
insights for future conversations about the synergy between transdisciplinar-
ity as a methodology [12, 13, 14] and biomimicry as an approach to solving
problems [8].
Biomimicry claims that the laws of nature can be applied to modeling so-
cial systems, that we can adopt natural laws and logics to human needs [15].
Jucevicius [15] observes that analogical thinking (transferring ideas from one
context to another) is at the heart of creative solutions to complex human prob-
Chapter 4. Transdisciplinarity and Biomimicry 91
lems. Successful biomimicry thinkers are inherently transdisciplinary thinkers

[16]. The time seems ripe for further discussions around the idea of solving
transdisciplinary problems of the world using insights from biomimicry, espe-
cially since “[m]any of the currently envisaged solutions to the global challenges
facing humanity are in paramount contradiction to the ‘approach’ of nature”
[16: 9].
4.2 Biomimicry Explained

The term biomimicry is from Greek bios, life and mimesis, imitation. It repre-
sents the new focus on mimicking natural processes to find innovative solutions
to complex problems; instead of focusing on what can be extracted from na-
ture, biomimics pay attention to what they can learn from nature. Those
inspired by biomimicry study nature and then imitate or take inspiration
from the designs and processes inherent in nature to solve human problems.
Biomimicry occurs at the juncture where ecology meets agriculture, medicine,
manufacturing materials science, energy, computing and commerce [8]. It uses
an ecological standard to judge the rightness of human actions and innovations.
The overall approach is grounded in three dimensions, discussed below: (a)
nine principles of life; (b) nature as model, measure and mentor; and, (c) the
Design Spiral methodology that informs biomimicry-inspired practice [8].
As a caveat, Jane Benyus [8], the founder and genesis of the idea of
biomimicry, has deeply and critically engaged with each of these nine prin-
ciples as a preamble to including them in her biomimicry approach. There
is no question that they really work. Indeed, many others are applying this
approach to their own work. Also, I purposefully chose to cite her book [8]
and the work of the institute she founded, the Biomimicry Institute, as the
primary sources for ideas about “what is biomimicry” as a concept and as an
approach to design, development, science and research.
4.2.1 Nine Principles of Life from Nature

Benyus [8] encourages people to engage in behavior that is in harmony with
earth processes. To that end, she offers a primer into nature’s secrets. Indeed,
many who have analyzed her work conclude that these secrets are hiding in
plain sight and have been so hard for us to see because they are so familiar, so
obvious [17, 18]. Benyus holds that nature has nine basic operating principles
that can be used as a beneficial model for human behavior. She [8] further
posits these laws, strategies and principles have been found to be consistent
over generations, and over cultures. More importantly, they can be observed
by anyone who is interested in perpetuating a high standard of living in har-
mony with nature. These life principles reflect the inherent characteristics of
ecosystems (see Figure 1). In effect, nature:
• rewards cooperation and integration and makes symbiotic relation-

ships work because nature is all about connections between relationships.
Nature knows that we do not always have to go it alone. In fact, some-
times we cannot do it alone. Moreover, nature allows predation and
competition to exist through cooperation. Natural ecosystems operate
on a symbiotic, complex network of mutually beneficial relationships.
Working together is rewarding and necessary.
• always fits form to function, efficiently and elegantly - nature builds

something that works because it was built within the confines of available
resources. Also, the shape that something takes depends upon what it is
intended to do. Furthermore, nature’s designs are organic and only as big
as they need to be to fit their function, rather than being linear (squares
and blocks) and oversized, with a focus on form. Nature optimizes rather
than maximizes. Organisms in nature co-evolve, adapting to the changes
of others (i.e., they fit form to function).
• depends on and develops diversity of possibilities to find the best

solution(s) (rather than a one-size-fits-all, homogeneous approach). Na-
ture also depends upon randomness, more so than reason, because ran-
domness creates anomalies that open opportunities for diversity. The
randomness of entropy (the breakdown of order) allows for flexibility. A
wide variety of plants and animals creates the bank of diversity. The en-
tire habitat is used, not just bits and parts of the system. Also, a system
must be as diverse as its environment in order to remain viable. Systems
respect regional, cultural and material uniqueness of a place. Systems
are flexible, allowing for changes in the needs of people and communities
- allowing for emergent diversity.
• recycles and finds uses for everything. Everything becomes recy-

clable; everything has a use. Waste should be a good thing because it
will be reused again for another purpose. Nature wants waste; it needs
it to sustain itself (waste equals food or sustenance). Nature does not
generate waste, per se; it does not foul its own nest because it has to live
in it. In closed systems, each co-existing element consumes the waste of
another as its lifeline! From this perspective, the word waste goes away
because waste means to fail to take advantage of something.
• requires local expertise and resources. Just as nature requires

a rich bio-diversity to adapt to change and to grow, local ecosystems
require a rich range of interlocking resources and the involvement of
many local species to create a vibrant natural community. Locals are
familiar with the boundaries within which they are living and are familiar
with other species who share this space and who have developed their
own adaptive expertise. Nature does not need to import from outside.
If it is not there, it cannot be used. Natural ecosystems are tied to the
local land; hence, sustainability requires reliance on local expertise and

indigenous knowledge.
• avoids internal excesses and “overbuilding” by curbing excesses from

within. Nature has no ego to drive it. It remains in balance with the
biosphere, that part of the earth and its atmosphere in which living
organisms exist, that is capable of supporting life.
• taps into the power of limits and manages not to exceed them.
Species flourish within the boundaries that surround them. They do not
seek elsewhere for resources, and they use existing materials sparingly.
Nature depends upon its constant internal feedback mechanisms for in-
formation on how to maintain balance. Nature makes the most efficient
use of its surrounding resources. Nature uses limits as a source of power,
a focusing mechanism, always conscious of maintaining life-friendly tem-
peratures, harvesting within the carrying capacity of the boundaries and
maintaining an energy balance that does not borrow against the future.
Otherwise, she would perish at her own hand. Learning to live with
finite resources is a source of powerful creativity. Limits create power.
This idea is the opposite of seeing limits as a dare to overcome the con-
straints due to scarcity and to continue our expansion. Nature teaches
us to flourish within boundaries.
• runs on the natural sunlight and other “natural sources” of energy,

such as wind. All energy is sunlight. Nature knows how to gather en-
ergy efficiently. Leaves follow the sun and photosynthesis is 95% efficient
(plants use the sun to turn light into sugar, the natural food that the
plant lives on - and then humans eat the plant). The photosynthetic pro-
cess also uses water and releases the oxygen that everything absolutely
must have to stay alive. But, nature does this by using contemporary
sunlight rather than heirlooms of sunlight (fossil fuels).
• uses only the energy and resources that it needs. Nature draws
on the interest rather than the entire natural capital at its disposal. It
does not draw-down resources, meaning it does not deplete resources by
consuming them unnecessarily. In order to make optimal and maximum
use of the limited habitat, each organism finds a niche, using only what
it needs to survive and evolve.
4.2.2 Nature as Model, Measure and Mentor

Biomimicry is a new way to view and value nature. Benyus [8] posits that
if people want to consciously emulate nature’s genius, they need to look at
nature differently. In biomimicry, people look at nature as model, measure,
and mentor. Consulting life’s genius brings nature’s wisdom to bear [8] on
today’s pressing, messy, wicked problems (see Figure 2).
Figure 4.2: Nature as Model, Measure and Mentor.
Nature as model
People would draw on nature to model new forms of behavior. Nature can
provide insights into the quest for new ways to frame day-to-day life. In nature,
there is no waste, and there are no borders separating things. There are just
nested systems wherein each part of the system supports the existence of
the other parts. Modeling this interconnectedness and interrelatedness would
respect the needs of the other species. As Benyus [8] affirms, humans are
one vote in a parliament of 30 million other species. Human being’s long
standing arrogance (hubris) would no longer be the model for human behavior.
Communities modeled on nature learn how to stay put without bankrupting
their ecological capital. They learn how to optimize rather than maximize.
The latter focuses on increasing measures such as revenue, profits, and margins
while optimizing involves making a system or design as effective or functional
as possible.
Nature as measure
People would turn to nature for guidance for standards to use to judge the
“rightness” of their innovative behaviors and decisions. Are they life promot-
ing? Does the resultant action fit with nature? Will the results or the impact
last in a positive way? These questions are judged using an ecological stan-
dard, what Benyus [8] refers to as the Nine Laws of Nature, Life’s Principles
(discussed earlier). When a natural ecosystem reaches maturity, it is pop-
ulated by mature living organisms that act in life affirming ways, grounded
in the nine laws of nature. One measure of rightness is ensemble living. In
nature, an ensemble is a group of complementary parts that contribute to a
single effect. Ensemble living means organisms (humans and other species)
learn to maintain a dynamic stability, like dancers, continually interacting
without harming or compromising each other (stepping on each other’s toes in
the dance). The parts of the ensemble that manifest (raise up from the whole)
are still enfolded in the whole.
Nature as mentor
People’s relationship with nature would change from master to teacher and
mentor. This new relationship would mean people have to steward nature
if they want to continue to have something from which they can learn, a
source of ideas, innovation and inspiration. Nature is a source of knowledge
fit for imitation. Mentors are trusted friends, counselors or teachers, usually
a more experienced person. Nature has had 4.2 billions of years to evolve
and gain experience of living systems in evolving complex, efficient, resilient
and adaptive systems. Humans would do well to watch and learn rather than
exploit and destroy. The answers are there in nature if we take the time to
discover and apply innovations. Nature has figured out what works, what is
appropriate and what lasts. Nature has a spirit of cooperation, flexibility and
diversity that has made her a reliable and long-term survivor. As mentees,
humans would be guided by humility (rather than arrogance) as they begin to
learn “from” nature so they can learn to fit in alongside the rest of nature.
4.2.3 Biomimicry Design Spiral

The Biomimicry Institute [19] (founded by Janine Benyus) created a Design
Spiral methodology to help people learn and practice biomimicry. It comprises
five or six iterative phases (see Figure 3, used with permission) based on the
assumption that “after solving one challenge, then evaluating how well it meets
life’s principles, another challenge often arises, and the design process begins
anew” [19: 1]. This section of the paper is shared using second person narra-
tive,you, because each reader is presumed to be part of the transdisciplinary
narrative.
The spiral process begins with you identifying a problem that has to be
resolved. Rather than asking “What do I want to design, to come up with?”,
you would ask “What do I want people to do?” and continue to ask why
you want them to do this (distill the problem) until you get to the bottom of
the problem. You also have to be concerned with who is involved with the
problem, who will be involved in the solution, its consequences, where is the
problem and where will the solution be applied.
Figure 4.3: Design Spiral Methodology (used with Permission).
The second phase involves you translating the question so it can be ap-
proached from nature’s perspective, “What would nature do here? What
would nature not do here?” This reframing of the question will yield ad-
ditional key words and will involve placing the issue in broader contexts and
conditions so as to better translate life’s principles into problem solving pa-
rameters. You need to know the climate, social, temporal and other conditions
of the problem. The Biomimicry Institute [19] refers to this as biologizing the
question.
Now you are ready to look for champions in nature, to observe what is avail-
able to answer or resolve the challenge you have identified, distilled and trans-
lated into nature’s terms. In order to answer “What would nature do here?”
you can consider literal examples from nature or you can use a metaphorical
approach. The former entails literally going outside and looking at nature to
find examples of organisms that offer insights. They are often those aspects of
nature that appear unfazed by their milieu, despite its challenges (e.g., tree,
stream, field, an ant’s nest), and are often on the extremes of the habitat you
are observing. You can also open your discussions to other disciplines and
specialists, turning the problem inside out and on its head, the true spirit of
transdisciplinarity. Scour the literature and brainstorm solutions.
These third-phase strategies will move you into the fourth phase, wherein
you discover and report repeating patterns and processes that nature has used
to achieve success. Chronicle these discoveries and create a taxonomy of na-
ture’s genius, her life’s strategies, selecting those most relevant to your problem
or challenge.
The next step is to develop ideas and solutions based on nature’s models
and apply these solutions to your problem; that is, emulate nature. Your
solutions will apply the lessons you have learned from nature, your mentor
and teacher (see Figure 2). You may decide to mimic a form from nature,
one of nature’s functions or a natural process (e.g., an ecosystem). Whatever
strategy you settle upon, endeavor to apply the lesson(s) as deeply as possible.
Ensuring this depth will likely entail resorting back to the discovery phase so
you can find more patterns and processes that repeat in nature, indicating
they have worked in the past to ensure survival and evolution. You will also
want to consider the merit of chimera designs, those created as a result of
purposively integrating two or more things together [19].
In the final phase, you evaluate how well your ideas and solutions (i.e.,
what you designed to address the challenge or problem) reflect the successful
principles of nature. Ask yourself, “Does my solution(s) create conditions
conducive to life? Are my solutions flexible, and able to adapt and evolve?
If not, how must I change my solution(s) so that I can best emulate nature
- apply life’s principles to solve the problem?” This approach entailed using
life’s principles to develop these questions that you can now use to question
your proposed solutions. As you pose these questions, the design spiral begins
to unfold again and the iterative, inclusive process continues. New questions to
explore emerge, and these questions tend to refine the concept you initially set
out to explore in such a way that life’s principles are respected and emulated.
4.3 The Fit Between Biomimicry and

Transdisciplinarity
In summary, transdisciplinary problem solving from a biomimicry perspec-
tive means recognizing organic patterns and natural connections, understand-
ing the causes and effects of competing and interrelated components, and
then making appropriate modifications. People intuitively problem solve with
deep respect for flexibility, adaptability and universality. They plan space for
growth, restructuring and contraction. From a biomimicry perspective, people
inherently adapt, deconstruct and recreate as needed, a process that mirrors
the actions of living organisms [20].
The nature of problem solving from a biomimicry perspective reflects the
very essence of the transdisciplinary methodology used for creating new knowl-
edge. First, transdisciplinary knowledge is complex and emergent, meaning the

knowledge is continually changing as it is created, an idea which parallels with
biomimicry’s assumption that people have to adapt, deconstruct and recreate
as needed. Transdisciplinary knowledge is alive because the problems being
addressed are alive, emerging from the life world [12, 13, 14]. In the case
of biomimicry, the solutions emerge from nature (which is alive as well), as
discovered and interpreted by humans.
Second, the creation of transdisciplinary knowledge entails the Logic of
the Included Middle wherein as many perspectives as possible are integrated.
In the case of biomimicry, there is a special focus on insights gained from
nature. Transdisciplinary problem solving happens in the fertile space between
things, in this case between people and nature. Finding new knowledge in the
fertile middle ground is possible when everyone’s ideas are heard. Regarding
biomimicry, the agenda is to discover and listen to ideas from nature as well,
ideas that present as life principles from which complex human problems can
be posed and solved. The fertile middle ground is ripe with possibilities, as
is nature. People have permission to wonder, experience awe [13] and seek
nature-inspired, far-reaching solutions to the world’s pressing problems.
Third, transdisciplinarity assumes that many levels of reality are central to
knowledge creation, including the internal mind of humans (their conscious-
ness) and their external world (including nature) (information flows). Just
like transdisciplinarity, biomimicry-inspired problem solving, with a deep em-
phasis on how humans from all walks of life can learn from nature, focuses on
the processes and energy flows inherent in deep, complex interactions among
people’s internal world and their external world, mediated by such factors as
culture, art, religion and spirituality. Transdisciplinarians refer to the latter
as The Hidden Third, the place full of potential where people’s experiences,
interpretations, descriptions, representations, images, and formulas meet and
new insights, perspectives and indeed, new knowledge, can emerge [12, 13, 14].
The fit between biomimicry and transdisciplinarity is elegant, ripe with
hope and potentialities. Within its iterative solution-creation process, biomimi-
cry aims to produce both new knowledge and technical artifacts (innovations)
[3]. In concert, transdisciplinarity strives to produce new knowledge that can
be used to create innovative solutions to pressing world problems, innovations
in thinking as well as in actual artifacts to solve the problems [11]. Transdis-
ciplinarity aims “to make knowledge products more pertinent to non-academic
actors” [21: 170]. The synergy between these two approaches is encourag-
ing, warranting further reflection and deliberation. Both strive to create new
knowledge to inform innovative solutions to human problems.
If transdisciplinary solutions to world problems necessitate a holistic cou-
pling of the human and the natural, as well as the inclusion of many voices
and perspectives [12, 22], it makes sense that transdisciplinarity gain inspi-
ration from biomimicry, with its focus on nature. Transdisciplinarity based
on the principles of nature (biomimicry) is promising. It supports visionary
approaches to solving complex messy problems that require people to “rethink
and reorient human’s relationship with the planetary environment, leading to

society being able to work together with nature” [23: 484, emphasis added].
Society working with and through nature, in order to solve wicked problems
affecting the human condition, is a provocative concept, invoking synergistic,
emergent, integral thinking, the hallmark of transdisciplinarity. Readers are
encouraged to follow through with any thinking inspired by this paper, espe-
cially thoughts about what key research questions can be asked, what prob-
lems can be posed, what research designs and methods can be employed, what
results can be anticipated, even which disciplines and civil society members
could participate in biomimicry-informed, transdisciplinary work.
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About the Author
Sue L. T. McGregor PhD (Professor) is a Canadian home economist (40 years) in

the Faculty of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada. She has a keen
interest in transdisciplinarity, integral studies, complexity thinking, moral leadership
and transformative practice as they relate to home economics and consumer stud-
ies. She is a TheATLAS Fellow (transdisciplinarity leadership), a Docent in Home
Economics at the University of Helsinki, the Marjorie M. Brown Distinguished Pro-
fessor in home economics leadership, and she received the TOPACE International
Award (Berlin) for distinguished consumer scholar and educator in recognition of her
work on transdisciplinarity. She is principal consultant for the McGregor Consulting
Group Http://www.consultmcgregor.com, [email protected]
CHAPTER 5
Transdisciplinary Pragmatism?
Maria F. de Mello and Vitória M. de Barros, Center for Transdisciplinary Education

– Cetrans, São Paulo – Brazil.
n this Chapter we will carry out an ongoing exploration of a phenomenon we

I chose to name Transdisciplinary Pragmatism/TD–P. This phenomenon will
be addressed by recognizing our intellective capacity as a continuous unveiling,
an opening, a movement towards a reality that is by nature muti-dimensional
and multi-referential. In our investigation, we revisited the writings of Charles
Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), the epistemolog-
ical, methodological and ontological pillars of Transdisciplinarity, as well as
three archetypal roots that invoke and evoke core principles of the proposed
pragmatism: Tao Te Ching, Prometheus and Percival. We view TD–P as an
event of appropriation: a creative and free act, original, present since forever,
open to possibilities, but yet to be unconcealed. TD–P demands the articu-
lation of the phenomenal method and the “trans” dimension inscribed in the
transdisciplinary system of thought. We will also touch some aspects of the
structural situation that make such pragmatism possible.
Keywords: attunement, ereignis1 , language, logos, ontology, phenomenon,

pragmatism, rift, thought, transdisciplinarity.
5.1 Introduction
Two routes of philosophic traditions. Some thoughts about the iconic
landmarks of a contemporary philosophic tradition would be an initial possible
approximation to understand what Transdisciplinary Pragmatism/TD–P may
come to be. This because it manifests the existence of two routes of different
natures and temperaments, characterized by the method they use and by their
1 German word for event, event of appropriation, appropriation that takes place, “enown-
ing”.
103
démarches: “logical method which associates the analysis of concepts and

mental experiments in the Anglo-American tradition; historic method which
allies formulation of problems and history of philosophy in the continental
philosophic tradition” [1]. Continental philosophy is here understood to mean
European, and specifically, the one cultivated in France and in Germany.
Each of these directions of philosophic tradition are expressed by two cur-
rents: the analytical current and the experimental one, marked by the English
utilitarianism and by American pragmatism; the current of historicity and
that of reflection, the philosophic thought of the French and German schools,
with a historic method and systematic spirit.
Both philosophic traditions mentioned herein contain limitations within
their core. Ivan Domingues states that the limitation of the logical method
is its logicism and attachment to the universal, leading the philosopher to
distance him/herself from the space–temporal context, of the real historicity
of systems, of the author’s personal marks. The limitation of the historic
method, due to its contextualism, is attached to what is particular-specific
and factual, impeding “philosophy from attaining higher peaks, overcoming
the limits of time and space and providing a universal discourse” [2].
Based on contradiction A – no A eminent in these two currents of philo-
sophic traditions mentioned herein, what becomes patent is the need for a new
path or route to emerge, a third way, one able to encompass a transdisciplinary
perspective to come closer to reality. This way would be an emerging T term
able to go beyond the limitations of the logical and historic methods: be it from
the logical method translated by its attachment to the universal, regardless
of the temporal context, be it by the historic method, with its contextualism
and attachment to the particular and factual.
As part of this proposal, the logical method, a tool of philosophy, and
the historic method, a tool of biology, history and philosophy, are deemed
as tools and propedeutic, in the sense of instruments and of preparation put
underway for the exploration of truth, and not as an end in itself, but as a
process for unveiling reality. In this sense, we would be entering the field of
meta-philosophy, and would be led to come ever closer to epistemic patterns
or standards, of a new philosophic approach that would make possible the
emergence of a new pragmatism we would call TD–P.
Our investigation led us to revisiting the body of philosophy created by
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and
some archetypal roots that invoke core principles for the emergence of a TD–P.
Undeniably, we come closer to these possibilities for having been inspired and
founded, during decades, on the research of eminent transdisciplinary thinkers
from the XX and XXI Centuries, such as Barasab Nicolescu (1942), Francisco
Varela (1946–2001), Hélène Trocmé-Fabre (1931), Michel Camus (1929–2003),
Michel Random (1933–2008), Patrick Paul (1948), Raimon Pannikar (1918–
2010), René Barbier (1949), Stéphane Lupasco (1900–1988), among others,
and also on our experience with everyday living.
Chapter 5. Transdisciplinary Pragmatism? 105
5.2 Pragmatism
Since 2010, the research and actions we have carried out at the Center for
Transdisciplinary Education (Centro de Educação Transdisciplinar) – CE-
TRANS, founded in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1998 has challenged us to articulate
a vision, a mindset and transdisciplinary practice. Based on our “hands on”
experiences, it became evident we needed to better understand what the trans-
disciplinary work was all about. This concern led us to the following questions:
What is Pragmatism? And what would a TD–P be?
Pragmatism is a philosophy which came about in the United States in
the middle of the XIX Century, in the post civil war period, a stage of de-
velopment and consolidation of industrial capitalism, when the cultural and
historic horizon allowed for the emergence and subsequent development of this
new thought, which responded to the desires of an intellectual American elite,
and, up to a certain point, those of society. Three of their main representa-
tives are: Peirce, William James (1842 - 1910) and John Dewey (1859 - 1952).
As part of the scope of this article, we will dwell on Pierce’s pragmatic vision,
despite acknowledging the work of other philosophers who, in the XX and XXI
Centuries, contributed to the reflection and deepening of Pragmatism.
Peirce, upon coining the name Pragmatism in 1878 defined it as the maxi-
mum rule to clarify the content of a hypothesis and its practical consequences.
In the same way, he introduced fallabilism in his epistemological view, an
anti-Cartesian stance, as an essential standard for the exercise of investiga-
tion. Twenty years went by, at a conference imparted in Berkeley, James
brought Peirce’s innovative thesis and his name to the attention of a seasoned
and enshrined circle of philosophers, at a lecture that he called: Philosophical
Conceptions and Practical Results. Since that time, James gave a personal
interpretation to pragmatism, distancing himself from the original conception
given by its creator.
Peirce states he coined the name Pragmatism for the theory according to
which a given conception, what it means, the rational meaning of a word or
of a given expression, consists solely and uniquely in its conceivable reach
in leading life. Peircian pragmatism implies experimentation and, refers to
thought, that is to say, to a reflection of how people think, how to make ideas
clear and how to set forth beliefs. The principles of this pragmatism lie, in
essence, upon the need to obtain clarity in our thoughts, and for that, it is
necessary to consider the conceivable practical effects that objects may have,
as well as the sensations we can expect from them, and also, which reactions
we can anticipate. For him, the final test of what a given proposal means, in
its truth, is the behavior it dictates and inspires.
Peirce’s pragmatism is a sound reference to think about a TD–P, as this
pragmatism articulates sensible reason – feeling and imagination; reason aris-
ing from experience – experiences and memories; formal reason – theories,
concepts, rules and generalizations. To each reason, its logic, its inferences
and its methodologies. According to Denoyel [3], the processes of inference
interwoven or overlapped with the three reasons, do not place impenetrable

borders between then and communicate with the pragmatism of the three
peircian categories: firstness, secondness and thirdness as pointed by him as
shown in Table 1.
Our reflections led us to consider that even the term pragmatism be ex-
panded, its original make up, defined by Peirce upon creating, should be pre-
served. For Peirce his pragmatism is interwoven into a philosophical system
and aims to make that philosophy a science. Understanding the meaning of
the three categories, which permeate our entire existence, allows for a fertile
dialogue with the levels of reality, one of the pillars of the transdisciplinary
methodology.
5.3 TD–P Inspired by Peirce’s Thought

In the article The Fixation of Belief Peirce points out that the object of rea-
soning is based on what we know, to find what we still do not know. He states
that whenever hope is not verified by experience, it can lead to extravagant
results, that because we are inclined to fulfilling our pleasurable visions re-
gardless of their true value, that is why he deems the strength of foundation
thought as a decisive factor for the world’s evolution.
Peirce warns that whenever conceptions are the product of logical reflec-
tions or are mixed with our common thoughts, there is great confusion and
this result is never the object of observation. Exemplifying: he says a thing
may be blue or green, but the quality of being blue or green are not things
we see, they are the product of our logical reflections. Thus, common thought
that emerges outside of what is practical, has a poor logical quality and is
called metaphysical, because of this his criticism of metaphysics.
For Peirce our beliefs guide our desires and configure our actions and,
because of that, they should be understood. Our beliefs determine our habits.
Doubt is a state we want to get rid of so as to go on to a state of belief.
All in all, doubt never changes our beliefs, but enables us to revisit them.
Doubt impels us into action, until it is dissipated, it struggles until a new
state of belief is attained. We resort to investigation to leave this state of
irritation caused by doubt. In that sense, we perceive that because life has
that old pragmatism under doubt and questioned, there is the chance for a
new pragmatism to emerge.
In the second article, How to Make our Ideas Clear, Peirce refers to the
differentiation that exists in the treaties on logic between the conception of
clear and obscure and between the conception of distinct and confused. Says
he: “A clear idea is defined as one which is so apprehended that it will be
recognized wherever it is met with, and so that no other will be mistaken for
it. If it fails of this clearness, it is said to be obscure” [4]. Moreover, the issue
of the feeling of subjectivity can distort this clearness or clarity. Due to that,
the idea of clarity should be supplemented with the idea of distinctiveness.
Chapter 5. Transdisciplinary Pragmatism?
* Gérard Deledalle distinguishes three types of mediation as it relates to the interpretant’s

trichotomy in Peirce (Deledalle, 1979, p.64 ).
107
Peirce writes: “A distinct idea is defined as one which contains nothing which
is not clear” [5].
Peirce points out that the limitation of these two visions is that they are
given in abstract terms. According to him, this intellectual activity of log-
ics, for centuries left aside the engineering of modern thought, and because of
that, it would be necessary to set forth the method to obtain greater clarity
of thoughts. Another idea on the notion of clarity and of distinctiveness in-
volves and understanding that “Nothing new can ever be learned by analyzing
definitions” [6].
Said in another way, Peirce want to move forward regarding three pro-
posals set forth previously: 1) that of Descartes, which discards the method
of authority as the apogee of the source of truth and goes on to an a priori
method which it professes to find in human mind, in whatever is agreeable to
reason, as a source of truth; 2) that of Kant, founded on a priori and, 3) that of
Leibniz, on abstraction. Thus Peirce states that the highest level of clearness
of any idea merges and will be found in its highest expression, considering
that “what effects, that might be conceivably have practical bearings, we con-
ceive the object of our conception to have” [7]. Furthermore, beliefs and order
are the essential elements for intellectual economy, so much so as the other
elements approached. He therefore points to the need of going beyond the
notion of clearness and distinction proposed by the logic of Descartes, Kant
and Leibniz.
The issue that is set forth here is the importance of knowing what we think,
of becoming the masters of our own senses, so as to create a sound basis for
what we think. Another relevant issue for Peirce is that the mind can merely
transform knowledge, but never originate it, unless it is nurtured by the facts
of observation.
In his understanding, the moment has come to set forth a method able to
clarify thought, as is already being announced in some of the thinkers which
are his contemporaries. This method for the clarity of ideas should have a
higher level and go beyond the idea of distinction proposed by the logics up
to that point. For Peirce, differently from sensations, “Thought is a thread of
melody running through the succession of our sensations” [8].
The philosopher says that the action of thought is excited, motivated by the
irritation of doubt and ceases only when belief is attained. For him, the only
role of thought is the production of belief. Irritation, doubt, belief, fallibilism
– that through which we believe that all existential truths, theoretically, if
revisited by experience, offer the possibility of having something novel or better
appear –, are sine-qua-non aspects for his pragmatism. Quoting Peirce:
And what is, then, belief? âĂę first, it is something that we are
aware of; second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and third, it
involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say
for short, a habit [9].
Belief herein is understood as a rule for action and, as such, as an applica-

tion which instigates new doubts and new thoughts. Belief inherently contains
a contradiction: it is at the same time a place to stop and a starting point;
a thought at rest and in action, despite the fact that thoughts or thinking is
always essentially an action that consists in relation, as a consequence of the
action. This being the case, the function of thinking is to produce habits for
action. Each distinction in thought has a tangible and practical result, said in
another way, each tangible and practical result has its roots in thought.
For Peirce whatever is added to thought, if disconnected from its purpose,
cannot be deemed as part of it. In the same fashion, if there is a unit in our
sensations that cannot be used as a reference on how to act at a given moment,
we cannot call that thought. It is the identity for the habits which guide us
on how to act. Thus, what is created is a causal enchainment where “... our
action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the
same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception
the same as our belief” [10]. Thus, thought has no independent meaning from
its sole function. For Peirce, the third rule on the clarity of ideas is knowing
that we can only speak about which is the object of our conceptions when we
consider the possible effects that its practical purposes may potentially have.
The operationalist maxims as a theory of meaning and the pragmatic max-
ims proposed by Peirce are valuable for the emergence and comprehension of
TD–P. For him, any hypothesis has meaning in so far as it specifies what
needs to be done, so that effects pre–configured by the hypothesis itself can
be observed, the effects it has on other people and in the changes it processes
in the environment. Even considering that the formulation of the structural
situation of the TD–P is at the beginning, a deep reflection on the issues of
the nature of logics and ethics formulated by Peirce are fundamental to think
about the dynamic of such pragmatism. Peirce writes:
“We have hitherto, not crossed the threshold of scientific logic. It is

certainly important to know how to make our ideas clear, but they
may be ever so clear without being true. How to make them so, we
have next to study. How to give birth to those vital and procreative
ideas which multiply into a thousand forms and diffuse themselves
everywhere, advancing civilization and make the dignity of man
as an art not yet reduced to rules, but of the secret of which the
history of science affords some hints” [11].
A paradigmatic rupture implicit in Transdisciplinarity and the advances

of science at the beginning of the XX Century announced changes posited
by Peirce, the birth of what he calls vital and procreative ideas. TD–P is
born from this rupture. Although the priority of such pragmatism cannot
be deemed proof of its truth, simply through its exercise, constant analysis
and renewal, we can, in a stepwise manner, come closer, remembering that
here truth is understood as that which is closest to reality, to the origin, to
singularity. To develop, understand and carry out TD–P is a choice. But,
as Peirce writes, what we choose depends on if we are prepared to admire
and this is the gesture which takes us to an aesthetic, differently from what we
approached previously, that falls within the realm of logics and ethics. Without
logic and ethics, TD–P cannot be set up, and it is worthwhile recalling that
for Peirce ethics arises from contradiction, from the tension between a pair of
opposites: logic-aesthetics.
5.4 TD–P Inspired by Heidegger’s Thought

To know means to have seen, in the widest sense of seeing, which
means to apprehend what is presents, as such. For Greek thought
the essence of knowing consists in aletheia, that is, in the revealing
of beings. It supports and guides all comportment towards beings
[12].
Can the phenomemic approach by Heidegger contribute to understanding

the phenomenon TD–P? Upon remarking on the concept of phenomenon, the
philosopher explores the Greek roots of this word. They refer to showing one-
self - and also to that which shows itself, to that which reveals itself. To bring
to the light of day for him is what should be maintained as the meaning of the
expression phenomenon, that is, that shows itself. Heidegger points out that
manifesting oneself is a non–showing oneself. The self-showing that makes
possible the manifestation is not the manifestation per se. Thus, the concept
self-showing is not delimited, but an assumption, an assumption that remains
concealed or unveiled. To manifest oneself is understood as announcing oneself
through something that is shown. There is ambiguity and a contradiction in
the word to manifest oneself, as it is at the same time what is announced and
what is shown, as what is announced is not shown, it merely indicates some-
thing which is not shown. These ideas inspire and nurture the understanding
and formulation of the pragmatism proposed herein.
Phenomena are never manifestations, and all manifestations are remitted
to a phenomenon. It is necessary to understand the concept of manifestation
to understand what the phenomenon is. All in all, there is another meaning
for – manifestation, manifest oneself –, that is, something that emerges, that
radiates, in that which is being announced and manifests itself, as that which
can never reveals itself. Heidegger says: “Every disclosure of being as the tran-
scendens is transcendental knowledge. Phenonenological truth (disclosedness
of being) is veritas transcendentalis” [13].
The phenomenology of Heidegger shows two meanings: 1) method to ex-
hibit the fundamental structures; 2) theoretical framework to be able to re-
spond to the crisis in contemporary science. These two meanings are elucidated
through the understanding of the term he created DASEIN, impossible to be
translated in a definition, as it is about a structural situation that lies upon
subtle nuances of interpretation: DAsein and daSEIN, be it in the sense of
THEREbeing or of BeingTHERE as an unconcealing of being.
Dasein can further be understood as the individual non-existence, with

presence, meaning, the set of all possibilities, that which is taken from the
masses, the subject as maximum and ulterior authenticity, truth as uncon-
cealed, as absolute silence, as pure moving, pure mutant, a continuous quest
for that which is more one’s own. Dasein also refers to the cure as care –
as expressed in the meaning of curator of a museum – that has the role of
bringing together, harmonizing, preserving. Dasein is not a rational animal,
it is not the intentionality of consciousness, it is not monad, it is not idea, has
no gender, nor species, nor categories, it is not logos, it is not res cogitans, it
is not will and representation, it is not the will for power, it is not collective,
it is not developing roles, functions. Dasein is imbalance par excellence, as it
is a constant movement in the search for what is more authentic to one’s own.
The world is the coming into effect of Dasein.
Investigation and thought are two phenomenological horizons for Heideg-
ger, even when it is about a work of art. Heidegger is not concerned with the
work of art from the viewpoint of the object, nor about the creator, nor about
the spectator. For him, a work of art is not an aesthetic, nor the subjective
fruition as posited by Baumgarten, Kant and Schiller, nor a creating event as
wanted Nietzsche, but a structural position which transcends. Art is a dis-
placement which makes possible to unconceal that which is most authentic at
a given instant, in the wink of an eye.
The substance of the work of art, its qualities – extension, form, color,
weight - do not reveal it. Albeit color is a semantic filter, even so it does not
reveal the initial or the rightly an origin. A work of art goes much beyond that,
as we can never determine what it is fully. Heidegger states that we can use a
work of art as a utensil – be it as social or orgiastic representation, profits or
gains – however, a work of art as a utensil, in the sense of serving for something
that will not lead us to Being. The foundation of art is to lead mankind in
the direction of Being, contrary to technique which hampers and distances the
unconcealing of Being. A work of art is not subjective, it is the product of
the potentialized collective, that helps respond to the question about Being,
about the genesis of ontology, not positioned in the realm of beings[seiend]. A
work of art is deemed by him as being a possibility of going in the direction
of the essence, of the origin, of the idea of opening to Being[Sein].
The focus of a work of art for Heidegger is not existence, but truth. Despite
beginning not as a phenomenon, but as a product, it should lead us to the
original phenomenon. Being is not a substance, nor a utensil. But within the
utensil is the proof of how it is in itself, as well as how it is in the original
horizon, what it was before being positioned by the artist or the spectator.
Which is the network of references that is set up when faced with a work of
art? Is it ontic or ontological? How far can it lead us? The work of art itself
encapsulates a given network of references. The work of art point towards itself
and to its original phenomenal field. In the work of art, through the network
of references, truth of the beings is setting–into–a–work. The function of a
work of art for Heidegger is: “Setting–into–a–work–of truth”. He writes:
Truth is the unconcealment of beings as beings. Truth is the truth

of Being. Beauty does not occur apart from this truth. When
truth sets itself into the work, it [Beauty]appears [14].
The work of art waves to the abyssal dimension. Truth is that experience,
the experience of Being. This revealing of oneself always conceals something.
In this sense, the work of art is a event, not a substance. The event demands
a complete dis-appropriation of oneself to receive one’s own Dasein. Art for
Heidegger is the place of truth – the historic power and the horizon where the
one’s interior, the oneself is founded.
If the transdisciplinary method is phenomenological, be it at the ontic exis-
tential level [existenziellen] or at the ontologic existential level [existenzialen],
Heidegger’s phenomenal approach is a great contribution to configuring the
phenomenal field of TD–P. Such pragmatism addresses events with a high de-
gree of complexity and of complexity of a high degree. It recognizes reality in
its ontic dimension, that which refers to loved ones and the being of loved ones
and, in its ontological dimension, that of Being. Thus, in it, in vivo, different
levels of reality are articulated: macro-physical – emotional, psychic, mental
– mythical, symbolic and of the soul – and the level of nonresistance, that is,
the realm of what is sacred, of the indescribable, intangible, ineffable, where
concepts do not exist, nor substance, nor loved ones. It is in this continuous
being that transdisciplinary evolution is thought of in TD–P.
5.5 TD–P: Three Archetypal Roots

Our thinking led us to exploring the archetypal roots of thinking, as it is our
understanding that the origin of our way of thinking, understanding and acting
in the world dates back to teachings that arise from the traditions of wisdom
of the East and the West. The history of thought is a constant summing up
of instances that were set up in time and formed a complex structure that
came up to us, after a long trajectory. In this line of thought, to elucidate the
TD–P, we have chosen three archetypal currents: the first, from eastern origin,
Chinese – the Tao Te Ching; a second and a third, of Western origin, European
– with the myth of Prometheus, and the saga of Percival respectively.
What led us to choosing the Tao Te Ching? We chose this text for
its attunement with the thinking of philosophers that we chose to work with,
and because of its affinity to the guiding principles of TD–P. What does the
Tao mean? The Tao can at the same time be a path in the direction of some
place, a trajectory, trail and also a way in which we do things or lead our lives.
Tao can further mean a discussion, a text or a way of thinking and speaking.
It may refer to the fundamental nature of reality, that which things really are,
the way in which the universe exists. Human life is centered on thought and
language, in making distinctions, discriminations, Tao also means thought and
language.
Tao is first of all the Tao of life, a way of life, a way of living in harmony
with the universe. Tao is the fundamental nature of all things, that is to say,
the right way for life to happen. Thus, Tao is the way we should think about
the nature of the universe, and how to live according to the nature of the
universe, and how to live according to those movements. These are necessary
principles for the emergence of TD–P.
Some other highly relevant points in the Taoist tradition also dialogue and
have that direct link with TD–P. Among them we highlight:
• Life demands constant pruning, a clipping, reaming, that requires cutting

and throwing out, lapidating, getting rid of additions in its form to make
it possible to return to the natural state, therefore, it’s a return to the
origin and valuing the primeval. Culture is always an addition which
inhibits our natural state. For Taoism, we become better the more we
denude ourselves of culture and regain our primordial state.
• In this path, the emphasis is placed on the background on the concealed
plane, the backdrop, the forerunner, in the depths and not on the fore-
ground. It is not about building a spontaneity, but instead recovering an
effortless spontaneity we carry within us since our birth.
• In Taoism the recommendation is to return to the primordial state of
thinking, which is prior to and more fundamental than that which sur-
rounds logical thought. It is shown to us clearly that a basis of non-
discursive primordial experience is necessary, one that considers not only
the signs and thought, but also simple language as instruments for a
common life.
• Tao Te Ching, shows exhaustively that the world is open for what is
across and beyond, for a sort of coming into awareness, a state of per-
manent presence where everything that takes place has to be taken into
account. It prioritizes calmness and openness to receive what comes, as
what happens ends up like all good or bad things end up [15].
Tao Te Ching [16] further presents the idea of mutual relativity of all things,
the mutual dependence of opposites which makes us, many times, characterize
something through them. But above all, it points to our preference for choosing
one of the two pairs of opposites, in detriment of the other when, in truth,
there is not privileged pole that defines objects, situations, things. This trend
shows us that we are constantly comparing, judging the appearance that we
project on things and forgetting there intrinsic quality. It is our concerns that
make objects what they are, reality is not previously sculpted for us in beings.
Tao Te Ching in chapter two says the following:
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there are
ugliness,
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together;

Difficult and easy complement each other;
Long and short contrast each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow each other.
Therefore the wise go about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand rise and fall without cease, Creating, yet not
possessing, Working, yet not taking credit. Work is done, then
forgotten. Therefore it last forever.
Therefore the wise go about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not possessing,
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotte
Therefore it last forever.
For Taoism, a man who knows how to live recognizes that actions do not
iniciate with him, it is up to him merely to begin them. Everything is part
of a vast set of processes. He does not claim for himself what he fulfills or
achieves, as fulfillments or achievements are a consequence of the confluence
of a vast network of events, and that causal network is built by many people
through many, many years. The life of each person is a particular fact, it is
merely the extraction of a moment taken from the background, from a greater
plane and it would not be different for the emergence of TD–P.
What led us to choosing the myth of Prometheus? There are several
versions of the myth of Prometheus in Greek mythology [26-28], and one of
them says he is a late descendant of the titans. His name, in Greek, means “the
one who sees before, foresees”. As a titan, he is a figure that is born from the
earth and the fire of the sun, his nature is dry and a source of fire, and because
of that, far from aging and deterioration. A great friend of Zeus, Prometheus
helped the supreme god to dribble the fury of his father Chronos, who was
dethroned by him. In exchange, Zeus granted him his friendship. However,
Prometheus enjoyed the company of men, which left the god indignant and
full of rage.
Prometheus fools Zeus twice: firstly, when he, wishing to mislead him and
benefit the men, sacrifices an ox and offers Zeus the largest and worst part,
setting aside for the men the smaller and better part. Nonetheless, the supreme
god, upon perceiving what has happened, is infuriated and takes away from the
men the control of fire, and symbolically deprives them of nous, of intelligence.
For the second time, when Prometheus, wanting to benefit the men, steals the
fire through lightning, which is an attribute of Zeus, cunningly placing it in a
hollow of narthex. This plant has a combustible nature and there men once
again have fire at their disposal, no longer depending on Zeus’s lightning to
be granted fire. Prometheus, upon stealing the sacred fire to give to the men,
granted them the power to think and reason. Hesiod [17] writes:
...from then on, never forgetting the trick, he would not give the
strength of untiring fire to ash-trees for mortal men, who live on
the land. But the great son of Iapetus deceived him and stole the
far-seen light of untiring fire in a hollow narthex; this bit deep in
the spirit
of high-thundering Zeus and his heart was angry when he saw the
far-seen light of fire among men.
Zeus’ anger mounts even more when he discovers that his purported friend
has betrayed him and decides to punish him, decreeing that his son Hep-
haestus, the blacksmith god, imprison him with chains at the top of Mount
Caucasus, during 30 thousand years, during which he would daily be pecked
by the beak of an eagle, that would destroy his liver. The tragedy Prometheus
Bounded narrates:
...for he stole and gave to mortals thy honor, the brilliance of fire
[that aids] all arts. Hence for such a trespass he must needs give
retribution to the gods, that he may be taught to submit to the
sovereign of Jupiter [Zeus], and to cease from his philanthropic
disposition [18].
As Prometheus was immortal, his organ regenerated constantly, and the

cycle of destruction would begin anew every day. He simply frees himself from
this destiny when Chiron exchanges his own mortality for his release. Zeus
allowed Chiron to rid himself of the suffering caused by the poison arrow of
Hydra who wounded him, thus Chiron became mortal and died serenely.
We can comprehend this myth in several ways and approach it different
ways and, as a myth, its meaning will never be depleted, beginning with the
name Prometheus that gives it a fundamental characteristic: that of metis –
keen and wily intelligence, provident and practical –, metis warped. In this
story there is an evident imbalance: Zeus is the father of the men and of
the gods and is sovereign, as, he has not only metis but also nous, reflexive
intelligence, the spirit. Prometheus is a titan, and his metis has a different
nature, he is impulsive and skillful in the art of plotting. There is therefore
an opposition between intellect and spirit.
Continuing to punish men and in response to the plots suffered, Zeus
makes Hephaestus responsible for fabricating a woman to give to Prometheus’
brother, Epimetheus, which means “what came after”, the imprudent one.
Thus, Pandora was created, the first woman and with this transforms the an-
thropoi (primordial man) dividing them in andres (men) and gynaikes (women).
Pandora therefore brings separation. She carries a jug containing all evils and
also ElpÃŋs – expectation, pre–science, waiting, hope – and with Pandora the
human conditions sets in. It inaugurates another era marked by separation,
where sexuality is the form of creation that requires two opposites to give
life to a third. Paradoxically, upon bringing separation she also brings the
possibility of union, of reunion.
In the myth of Prometheus, the new creature, Pandora, was shaped from
a mixture of earth and water and received two attributes: the first, auden
(potential human language), the language of the andres, necessary for this
new conditions, as that of the anthropoi no longer sufficed for an understanding
with the gods; the second, strength, physical vigor of man. In her making, this
woman should be similar in her face to the immortal gods and in her body,
similar to a beautiful virgin. With Pandora therefore the process of imitation
comes about, she is the imitation of what already exists, and at the same time,
by not being completely novel, she is the first of her species. She is a product
of thecnē, of the arts, whilst the primordial man belongs to the physis, he is,
besides the gods, the original element. All of those who are born from her, are
copies.
The TD–P mandatorily has to deal with this ancestral break, this reality
designed archetypically in this myth. We are heirs of Prometheus when we
were granted metis and the nous; we are also from Pandora and the technique
that made it possible to create her, acquiring a meaning of fabrication and
copy. The phenomenon of the technique becomes a part of our history as a
constructive mechanism, without a return to the primacy of functionality, of
total oblivion of the Being that transforms itself into something. To remember
who we are we need to go back into our original experience and understand
ourselves through that nature. As reported in the book A Escola de Kyoto e
o Perigo da Técnica, São Paulo [The School of Kyoto and the Danger of the
Technique]:
Quem sabe disso é Heidegger, por ter visto que o esquecimento

da experiência do primeiro começo pode e deve ser rememorado já
em vista a apropriação (Er-eignis) do homem pelo desolcultamento
que se oculta no e pelo outro começo do pensamento do Ser, que
está por vir. [19]
The one who knows about this is Heidegger, for having seen the
oblivion of the experience of that initial beginning can and should
be remembered in view of the appropriation (Er-eignis) of man
through the unconcealing that is concealed in and for the other
beginning of the thought of Being, that is about to come.
Heidegger speaks to that regard:
But might there not perhaps be a more primally granted revealing

that could bring the saving power into its first shining-forth in the
midst of the danger that in the technological age rather conceals
than shows itself? [20]
From the same poet Holderlin from whom we heard the word of salvation:2
2 The word salvation in Heidegger’s approach means to fetch something home into its
essence, in order to bring the essence for the first time into its proper appearing.
"But where danger is, grows

The saving power also."
He further tells us:
"...poetically
man dwells on this earth" [21].
Inspired by the Prometheus’ myth we realized that we are thrown into
the world to connect future, past and present: future as a flight towards a
becoming, which is a transgression of the established order, a boldness to
innovate; past as destines that have been inaugurated long ago and in which
we find ourselves immersed in; present as presence and our ability of being–in–
the–world and being–with. This horizon of possibilities call out to be disclosed
if TD–P is to be effective.
What led us to choosing Percival? This saga takes place in the ontic
existential world, in which there is no unification of kingdom, but, in truth, it is
about the quest for unification that takes places at the ontological existential
world and, such search is an awakening process. This was the reason that
led us to choosing it. Percival narrates the story of a young man who has no
knowledge of his origins and who goes on the quest of the potential of becoming
a knight in King Arthur’s court, becoming engaged in the legendary search for
the Holy Grail. We based ourselves on two versions of this text: the French
by Chrétien de Troyes,Perceval ou le Roman Du Graal and the German by
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Perzival, both written in the XII Century. Percival,
whose name in itself is revealing, as it refers to crossing the valley or going
through the veil, is about the construction and the destruction of the temple,
the invisible castle, the cure of the wounded Fisher King. The version by
Troyes falls into the Judeo-Christian tradition of the quest for the Grail and,
that of Eschenbach, in the mythical Germanic tradition of the Grail from
Munsalvaesche. In the version by Troyes, King Arthur begs Merlin, the court
magician, for the unification of his kingdom, that will be consummated by
the cure of the Fisher King. In the version by Eschenbach, the unification
intended is in the kingdom of Amfortas, the wounded King, son of Frimutel,
grandchild of Titurel, and uncle of Percival, creatively celebrated by Wagner
in his opera Percival.
The line of narration of this saga is a field of successive experiences that
map the road of initiation, a long journey. Finding the Grail means receiving
the universal language, it is the re-appropriation of a much higher level of
reality that brings the fragrance of what is Real. Percival lives many stories,
each of them is a part of the whole. He does not know what he is living,
he ignores his wisdom. He lives with complete detachment, presence in life.
His experimenting will have the capacity of fixating something that is on the
way and will culminate through the connection of his existential and spiritual
body.
Percival reveres the Lady, an inspiring figure, the inspiration. This path
shows the need to enhance and to set out a dynamic to revere Beauty, as the
opening to a spiritual dimension that implies being in attunement with what

is Beautiful.
Countless passages of this experience are laden with meaning, with signs
and signal to a destination. Among these, a strong scene where heads are cut
and roll. Cutting the head means opening up to another dimension, it means
establishing a new tie or link with life, it is birth into imagination, intuition,
spontaneity, creativity. Heads are cut to lose human blood and open up to the
emergence of royal blood.
Thus, Percival’s experience is an energetic process, initiatic and not moral.
He finds his own vital energy, experiences the world based on the spiritual
path. He neither refuse, nor retreat when faced with confrontation. If there
is no real confrontation, there is no path. Percival, listens in the first place,
later sees, and does not shun, he is vigilant. His link is primarily with reality,
and then with life, then with death and in a continuous purging, purifying
the experience of living the path arises. Percival’s experience is a passage, an
opening to the field of Light.
Would the great experience of the TD–P lie in this archetypal root? Based
on this saga, would it be possible to understand much more on the transdisci-
plinary attitude in the exercise of TD–P?
5.6 What else makes Pragmatism be Transdisci-

plinary?
TD–P is an event of appropriation in the heideggerian sense of that which is
original, already present, but not yet thought of. It is based on this event that
things begin to be thought of and are not remittable, as they are founding
and cannot be founded, they originate. This moment is given, it is an open
possibility, and it is up to each of us to accept it or not. This calling is
silent, it gives us no explanation, no response, it is a calling that if we are dis–
appropriated from the everyday occupation, we hear it or not. The difficulty
which appears is that this calling presents itself to us as something peculiar,
despite the fact its origin lies in the deepest part of ourselves, in truth: it is
our interior self that calls us. It summons us to where we already belong and
convenes us and provokes us to a creative act. To be faithful to this calling
is an option, a choice. What calls us is the most authentic to one’s own. It
withdraws us from the everyday life and requests to be heard. It is based on
this calling that we articulate new possibilities, more authentic to our being.
If we understand transdisciplinarity also as an epistemology, as an expe-
rience of incompleteness, as something that is at the same time between –
across – beyond disciplines, things and people, as a transversal crossing of the
borders of formal and tacit learning, academic and non-academic that aims at
the emergence of the subject in his/her multidimensionality – how to foster
a pragmatism that could cope with such complexity? Or what would render
such pragmatism be called Transdisciplinary?
To imagine what a TD–P would be like, based on the transdisciplinary

paradigmatic model, requires to understand what logics, art, cognitive refer-
ences and heuristic instruments could lead the practice of the trans dimension
to its excellence. This is a sine qua non condition for TD–P to emerge. How-
ever, this structural conjuncture cannot be confused with a recipe nor with a
check list, as it has to be attuned, contextualized and articulated to the reality
that has demanded it.
The logic of this pragmatism sets in within a fluid non-binary dynamic.
It is inherent to it contradiction and paradox, transductive and abductive
inferences, the dynamics of potentialization and actualization, with its inter-
mediate stages of semi-potentialization and semi–actualization as posited by
Stéphane Lupasco. This theory also posits a successive generation of third
terms included that sets themselves on higher levels of reality. Each third
term included is constituted by other laws and materialities that differ from
those where it originated from. This logic has the role of clarifying our ideas
and elucidating the consequences of our choices, forging and reformulating our
conceptions, beliefs, habits and actions.
The art of this pragmatism is a setting-into-a-work-of-truth, that is, of
Being and contemplation, in the sense of acting for the benefit of knowledge
and of the pulsating wisdom in the trans dimension of Transdisciplinarity.
This idea evokes the original, in the sense that Heidegger ascribed to this
term: “The origin of something is the source of its essence” [22]. The cognitive
frames of reference able to nurture the TD–P have as their dwelling place: the
humanization of science, the multidimensionality of reality, imagination, Art
as the expression of Being, the emergence of the subject, phenomenology in
its ontologic existential level, the sacred and the ineffable.
Among the heuristic instruments of TD–P are: operational models; proce-
dural pragmatism: experience–reflection–everyday living; triadic alternation:
sensible, experiential and formal reasons; Art as opposed to technique.
The meaning as destiny, direction, orientation, signification, feeling and
viability that fosters the TD–P emerges from the want of belonging and the
search for plenitude. It is engendered by deaths as transformation, by the
perception of emancipation through Beauty and what is Beautiful, and by the
possibility of coming–into–Being. Conceived in this manner, TD–P operates
in high complexity systems, that need to surpass themselves.
The Surplus is a type of device or activity of a cultural nature or of knowl-
edge not directly related to a system. Whenever introduced into a system it
forces the system to exceed itself. The surplus promotes the broadening of
the spectrum and widens the margin of choice. This occurs due to the fact it
makes available to the system resources that are vaster than those needed for
its self–reproduction, of what it already has as unique in itself. In this sense, it
increases the power of the system over itself, giving it greater autonomy. The
surplus instigates curiosity, stimulates the imagination, enlarges the horizon
of investigation and innovates the dynamic present in the system. The author
writes that surplus is:
..cette partie de la matièresociale que le système potencialise

pour se reproduire comme système. Le surplus social c’est donc
aussi cet individu ou ce groupe qui a plusde culture qu’il n’en
faut Ãă son rôle, une plus value pourtant indispensable à la tenue
de ce rôle [23].
...a given part of the social “matter” that the system potencializes
to reproduce itself as a system. The social “surplus” is therefore
this individual or group that has a “plus” of culture, that it does not
take into account for his role, a plus value however indispensable
to sustain such role.
As regards the TD–P it is our understanding that the concept of surplus

goes beyond the sociologic dimension, the social network, and can be applied
to different levels of reality.
Transdisciplinary thought articulates the four paradigms – mythological,
philosophic, theological and scientific – that have been known since long ago
[24] which were slightly touched herein. However, we are continuously faced
with the challenge of articulating thought and action based on a transdisci-
plinary vision. To think about TD–P is a gesture in that direction and a
possible way to respond to the personal and collective flooding of suffering
that continues to grow ever more and whose origin remains concealed. As
Heidegger says:
The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways
into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we
become. For questioning is the piety of thought [25].
The philosopher further adds:
... The lasting element in thinking is the way. And ways of thinking
hold within them that mysterious quality that we can walk them
forward and backward, and that indeed only the way back will lead
us forward. [26]
5.7 Concluding Remarks

In this article, by revisiting the path already tread by many transdisplinary
thinkers we reactivate and revere in our hearts and in our minds that invisible
thread woven by our forerunners and thus, recognize its value for the emergence
of what is novel. We trust we have somewhat moved forward in the reflection
of what constitutes the TD–P. We also trust that the strength itself of this
initial reflection will open up a rift and will create its own movement, in such
a way that the status of this pragmatic utopia will be continuously enhanced,
revised and updated.
References
1. Domingues, Ivan, 2009. O Continente e a Ilha - duas vias da filosofia contem-
porÃćnea, São Paulo, Edições Loyola.
2. Idem.
3. Denoyel, Noël, 1999. Alternance tripolaire et raison expérientielle à la lumiére
de la sémiotique de Peirce: l’alternance - pour une approche complexe, in
Revue Française de Pedagogie, 126, juin-août- septembre, pp. 35-42.
4. Peirce, C. S., 1998. Edited By Peirce Edition Project, The Essencial Peirce -
Selected Philosophical Writings Volume 1. Bloomington, Indiana University
Press, pp. 124.
5. idem, pp. 125.
6. idem, pp. 126.
Press, pp. 338.
Press, pp. 129.
Press, pp. 129.
10. Idem, pp.131.
11. Idem, pp.141
12. Heidegger, M, 2008. Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, New York,
HarperPerennial Modern Thought, pp.184.
13. Heidegger, M, 2010. Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh, Albany,
State University of New York Press, pp. 36.
15. Garfield, Jay L., 2011. The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from The World’s
Great Intellectual Traditions Virginia, The Teaching Company, 2011 - Lectures
13, 14, 15 and 16.
16. Lao Tsu. Tao Te Ching, 1989. Translated by Gia Fu Feng and Jane English,
Vintage Books, New York,. Kindle Edition.
17. Hesiod, Theogany and Works and Days, 2009. Translated by Stephanie Nelson
and Richard Caldwell, Boston University, Kindle Edition.
18. Aesclylus, Prometheus Bound and the Seven Against Thebes, Theodore Alois
Buckley, c 1897 by David McKay. Kindle Edition.
19. Loparic, Zeljko, 2009. A Escola de Kyoto e o Perigo da Técnica, São Paulo,
DWW Editorial, pp. 221.
HarperPerennial Modern Thought, pp. 339.
HarperPerennial Modern Thought, pp. 340.
23. Barel,Yves, 2008. Le Paradoxe et le système, Grenoble, Presses Universitaires,
pp. 163-164.
24. Sommerman, Américo, 2012. A Interdisciplinaridade e a Transdisciplinaridade
como Novas Formas de Conhecimento para a Religação de Saberes no Con-
texto da Ciência e do Conhecimento em Geral. Ph. D Dissertation, Univer-
sidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Bahia. http://cetrans.com.br/wordpress,
accessed: November 22, 2012.
26. On the Way to Language, 2012. translated by Peter D. Hertz, New York,
HarperCollins Publishers, pp. 12.
About the Authors
Maria F de Mello is a consultant working on transdisciplinary projects and pro-

grams including the one being implemented by the Sustainability Center at the Fun-
dação Getúlio Vargas, São Paulo (GVces-SP), a business school that offer programs
in economics, public and private administration, law, social sciences and information
technology management. Active member of Center for Transdisciplinary Education
– CETRANS in São Paulo, currently coordinates its Unit of Action/Formative Ed-
ucation. Member of CIRET. She was a co-founder of CETRANS in 1998, developed
projects and programs at the Research Center School for the Future at the University
of São Paulo – USP between 1998 – 2010, co-organized of the II World Congress of
Transdisciplinarity, in Brazil, 2005, co-organized the books Educação e Transdisci-
plinaridade I, II published by UNESCO and TRIOM in 2000 and 2002 respectively,
co-organized three Transdisciplinary Catalytic Encounters in 1999, 2000 and 2001.
She is a retired professor from Pontificia Universidade Católica – PUC of Rio de
Janeiro and São Paulo. Formative education: Linguistics and Traditional Knowl-
edge.
Vitória M de Barros Publisher and editor of TRIOM for the transdisciplinary

session. Active member of Center for Transdisciplinary Education – CETRANS in
São Paulo, currently coordinates its Unit of Action/Publishing. Member of CIRET.
She was a co-founder of CETRANS in 1998, developed projects and programs at
the Research Center School for the Future at the University of São Paulo – USP
between 1998 – 2003, co-organized of the II World Congress of Transdisciplinarity,
in Brazil, 2005, co-organized the books Educação e Transdisciplinaridade I, II , III
published by UNESCO and TRIOM in 2000, 2002 and 2005 respectively, co-organized
three Transdisciplinary Catalytic Encounters in 1999, 2000 and 2001. Formative
Education: Sociologist, Mythological Studies.
CHAPTER 6
On the Relationship of Metaphysics to
Transdisciplinarity
Eric L. Weislogel, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
his essay shows the parallels between metaphysics and transdisciplinarity,

T both in terms of their aims and methods and in terms of their place or role
in academic institutions. It attempts to define metaphysics, addresses criti-
cisms of metaphysics, and indicates the necessary relationship of metaphysics
to transdisciplinary endeavors.
Keywords: metaphysics, philosophy, method, transdisciplinarity, hermeneu-

tics, deconstruction.
6.1 Introduction
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle recognizes that “each person judges
rightly what he knows, and is a good judge about that; hence the good judge
in a given area is the person educated in that area.” No more succinct state-
ment can be given as the basis for our traditional disciplinary way of thinking,
researching, and educating. This insight is no more than common sense. But
Aristotle follows this reasonable thought by claiming that “the unqualifiedly
good judge is the person educated in every area,”[1]. If the requirement for
being an “unqualifiedly good judge” is that one be “educated in every area,”
then the most reasonable conclusion to be drawn from this is that there are no
unqualifiedly good judges. If this is so, then disciplinary thinking–its methods
and procedures, its practices, authorizations, and certifications–are all we are
reasonably entitled to. For who could possibly be “educated in every area”? It
is no longer possible–if indeed it ever really were–to be a Renaissance person,
engaged in the widest possible array of scientific, philosophical, and cultural
pursuits. In our age of analysis and specialization, one who posed as such could
be seen as no more than a dabbler. Perhaps only an Aristotle, who wrote on
physics, logic, rhetoric, ethics, zoology, meteorology, poetics, politics, and so
125
on, could make such a claim, but it seems far too late in the scientific and
cultural evolution of humanity for us to expect another Aristotle to arrive on
the scene.
But just exactly what did Aristotle mean by this insight that Terrence
Irwin translates as being “educated in every area”? Did Aristotle mean by
this that one would need to have developed “expertise” in every area, that
(in today’s terms) one would have to major in every subject, earn PhD’s in
every field, in order to be the “unqualifiedly good judge”? And what does that
latter phrase really signify? The word translated by “unqualifiedly” means “as
such,” a good judge as such, without regard to any particular field or fields of
expertise. It would not intend one who is qualified (certified) as a competent
judge in some specific field rather than another, but one who is competent to
judge per se.
Let me note that if there were no such persons, the prospects for transdis-
ciplinarity are dim. But could there be such persons? The key to answering
this question lies in our interpretation of the requirement to be “educated in
every area.” The Greek words do not reference “areas” (or fields or disciplines).
They say that one must be educated “about all” The all is not qualified, not
referred to as the all insofar as it is considered as this rather than that. Is
there a way of approaching the all, of grasping the all in this unqualified sense,
of coming to the all as such? In other words, how can we know the all as the
whole as such in addition to knowing the parts?
6.2 What is Transdisciplinarity?

Basarab Nicolescu has provided us with a brief and useful history of the appli-
cation of the term “transdisciplinarity,” [2]. He traces its earliest appearances
in the work of Jean Piaget, Erich Jantsch, and André Lichnerowicz. In a crit-
ical synthesis of their various understanding of transdisciplinarity, Nicolescu
summarizes the intent of transdisciplinarity by keeping close to the meanings
of the Latin prefix, trans-: across, between, and beyond. The transdisci-
plinary way of understanding rests on the traditional and newly developing
disciplines or regions of research and knowledge generation. It cannot mean
simply to overcome or leave behind the power and productivity of disciplinary
practices. Further, transdisciplinarity recognizes the fecund interplay between
disciplines, which often-times leads to the conception and development of new
disciplines with new research projects.
But transdisciplinarity envisions more. What is this “more”? What does
“beyond” mean in terms of transdisciplinarity? Before attempting to answer
this question, let us first note the motive for this desire for something “more.”
In an earlier essay, I wrote:
The economic, moral, political, environmental, technical, intellec-

tual, scientific, and even spiritual challenges we face demand ap-
proaches that are suitably rich in resources for tackling them. We
Chapter 6. On the Relationship of Metaphysics to Transdisciplinarity 127
need to learn how to take the full measure of our knowledge, to

find out what it is we really know, now that we know so many
disciplinarily distinct things. We need to find a way of recaptur-
ing a vision of the “forest” and not just the “trees.” The negative
consequences for failing to do so are obvious. Our disciplinary
practices inevitably give rise to the fragmentation of knowledge.
This fragmentation of knowledge leads to the fragmentation of the
university, which has a significant impact on its mission to educate
the next generation. The fragmented university leads–consciously
or unconsciously–to training students (and faculty, too) to com-
partmentalize their thinking, their reality, and hence their lives.
Our situation demands we respond to the “transdisciplinary im-
perative,” an approach to research and teaching that would serve
to mitigate the consequences of this fragmentation [3].
What I call the “transdisciplinary imperative” stems from our concrete re-
ality, our present situation in which the traditional policing of knowledge and
education hamstring us in our struggle to solve pressing real-world problems.
We have found that a generalized fragmentation in ourselves, our communities,
our institutional practices, and our world at large–a fragmentation resulting
in a significant way from philosophical commitments–is no longer acceptable,
that the gains we have made via our analytic prowess have come at a cost of
debilitating fragmentation that needs to be addressed with alternative con-
cepts and practices. Our sense of the root of the problems points to the
fact that we will need “more” than our disciplinary practices and the institu-
tions that support them if we are to have hope for a better future. We must
not only continue our discipline-based research and not only look for fruit-
ful cross-disciplinary initiatives; we must also look beyond disciplinary ways
of encountering and appropriating reality, which may include moving beyond
the institutional embodiments of disciplinary practices in order to cope with
complex problems.
But Nicolescu is right, in distinguishing his views from those of, for in-
stance, Michael Gibbons and Helga Nowotny, to say that transdisciplinarity
and the “beyond” that it seeks are not solely about solving the problems that
confront us–as important as those efforts are [4]. There is more to the “more”
than that; the transdisciplinary imperative goes beyond that, important as
that is.
It is in this that I would like to tie transdisciplinarity to metaphysics. I
will not argue (in this essay, anyway) that those working in a transdisciplinary
mode need be committed to any particular metaphysical position or system.
Rather I want to argue against any attempt to avoid metaphysics or down-
play its ultimate importance for getting to the more, for getting at the all. In
short, I want to tie the transdisciplinary imperative to a metaphysical imper-
ative (an imperative to metaphysics). Metaphysics pursues the “more” that
transdisciplinarity demands, and it is in this that they are allied.
6.3 What is Metaphysics?

What is metaphysics? The answer depends on who is doing the defining.
The term metaphysics has had many meanings over the course of the his-
tory of Western philosophy, and any two philosophers can run into all sorts
of insoluble problems if they happen to start with two different notions of
what metaphysics is. Blackwell’s A Companion to Metaphysics, edited by
the eminent philosophers Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa, begins its entry on
“metaphysics: definitions and divisions” (which you’d think would be pivotal)
as follows: “There is no clear and generally accepted definition of metaphysics,
no agreement on its tasks, scope or divisions” [5]. If that’s right (and it is),
then whatever I am about to say about metaphysics is likely to be arguable
if not thoroughly controversial. I can do no more in this essay than to point
to some of the key points or elements of metaphysics and must leave so much
that would need to be said unsaid. Again, this essay is meant to suggest the
broad outlines or at least the motives of what might be considered a research
project at the service of a deeper understanding of transdisciplinarity.
It would pay us to recall the origin of the term “metaphysics.” Aristotle,
who gave us our start in so many disciplinary practices, inaugurated (from
within a long-standing context, of course, dating to the Presocratics) the field
of physics. The Physics launched a project that is still with us today, namely,
to explain things in terms of their causes. In essence, that is what we still
attempt to do today in physics. Aristotle discovered in the course of this
pursuit that it seemed that one could not fully understand anything unless
one traced the chain of causality back to the beginning (arché, principio),
to what must be, to that which, though the cause of all else, has no cause
itself. But to speak of such things required a new language, a new method.
One cannot “explain things in terms of their causes” (physics) if they have no
causes. Thus a book appeared in Aristotle’s name that addressed such things
as the arché, the beginnings, the first things, the necessary things, the unmoved
mover and uncaused causer, etc. This book has come down to us through the
ages bearing the title, Metaphysics. Aristotle did not, himself, name this book
this way, nor does the book contain the term “metaphysics.” Were Aristotle to
describe what he was doing in that work, he would say that he was pursuing
either “first philosophy” or “theology.” It was “first” philosophy not in the
sense that one needs to know about this particular subject matter prior to
exploring, say, physics or biology (i.e., natural philosophy), but only that it was
an exploration of the first things (arché) that were operative whether anyone
recognized them or not. As John Stuart Mill (no metaphysician himself) would
put it much later,
The truths which are ultimately accepted as the first principles

of a science, are really the last results of metaphysical analysis,
practised on the elementary notions with which the science is con-
versant; and their relation to the science is not that of foundations
to an edifice, but of roots to a tree, which may perform their office
equally well though they be never dug down to and exposed to

light [6].
Aristotle would also call his project “theological” not in any religious sense
of the term but in the sense that in order to fully understand anything (and ev-
erything, all) one must make reference to a Prime Mover, an uncaused causer.
Reason seems to demand it. Again, physics is not competent to address such
questions according to its own method. Something more is needed.
But it was not until at least a century after Aristotle’s death when an
editor or librarian, Andronicus of Rhodes, tried to catalogue this work that
the name Metaphysics was applied. The term simply signified the set of books
that comes “after the Physics books”–ta meta ta physika. Something should
be said about this word/prefix, meta. In time, as we shall see, thinkers came
to confuse a cataloging position of the text with the subject matter of the
work, coming to see the focus of metaphysics as that which is “beyond the
physical.” Meta can mean not only “after” but “beyond.” However, the word
meta can also signify, according to Liddell and Scott, “in the midst of” or
“between”, [7]. We can start to see, then, that the Greek prefix meta- bears
a family resemblance to the Latin prefix trans-. Both terms convey beyond,
in the midst of, between, across, through. The term “method” itself, to which
we have referred, derives from the Greek meta- and hodos, meaning in the
midst of a certain way. There is a relation (and tension) between metaphysics
and method and between transdisciplinarity and method. Further, we should
note that the disciplines derive from the nature (physis) of things themselves.
The tension is felt in the fact that we cannot get beyond things to “things”
beyond (unnatural natures?) nor can we simply leave disciplinary methods
behind (as we attempt to go beyond disciplinarity?), and yet both metaphysics
and transdisciplinarity demand more. We will return to the discussion of the
interweaving of metaphysics and transdisciplinarity.
But first we must continue our discussion of metaphysics itself. Classically,
metaphysics is defined as the study of being qua being, i.e., the exploration of
being or existence just insofar as it is being/existence at all. We could think of
this as the most “general” or “abstract” science (defined as any organized body
of knowledge). It is not the study of this or that type of being–that’s what
we do in the natural and social sciences. For instance, we study living beings
in biology; we study material beings in physics; we study vegetative beings in
botany. But we study any kind of being–animal, vegetable, mineral, or even
abstract beings–in metaphysics. This view sees metaphysics as abstracting
from any given object only what pertains to its being at all, to the fact that it
is. I might suggest that metaphysics is, in fact, the most concrete (if concrete
is taken as the opposite of abstract) in the sense that nothing particular or
idiosyncratic is abstracted from being to be focused upon. In other words,
metaphysics does not abstract from being as a whole in order to focus on, say,
the kind of thing a thing is (i.e., a thing’s particular form). Being is what
all beings have in common and does not distinguish between types of being.
In any event, we could say that in any science, we’re looking for patterns,
that which stays the “same” in all the various instances of any type of thing.
So, for instance, in psychology, we study the pattern of human mental and
emotional behavior. Any reference to particular persons and their particular
behaviors are meant only to illustrate or give an example of some general
pattern (say, aggression, shame, etc.). Metaphysics, in some way, tries to find
the pattern of patterns. To put it in Platonic terms, it attempts to understand
the “forminess” of forms. Classically, metaphysics asks: What does it take to
be a thing of any kind at all? (Note here that there is a presumption in this
definition that reality is a field of things but that this is, in fact, a questionable
assumption.)
This basic understanding of the metaphysical endeavor would be shared,
more or less, by Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas. To get an in-
depth understanding of what metaphysics is all about, we’d have to elaborate
all the differences between these thinkers. We’d also have to trace the history
of metaphysics into our present day. Were we to do that, we’d find that there
are in fact various meanings for the term, metaphysics. Some thinkers dis-
cern a difference, for example, between “being” and “existence.” Some equate
“metaphysics” with “ontology,” which term comes from the Greek words ontos
(entity, “thing”) and, of course, logos (meaning “study of...,” but of course sig-
nifying much more than that). Some thinkers think metaphysics includes but
is a wider term than ontology. Some see the job of ontology as to elaborate
all the various types or kinds of things there are (this is the understanding of
“ontology” that is used in computer science, database design, artificial intel-
ligence, etc.). Philosophers who see it this way think that “metaphysics” (as
its name might suggest) is supposed to be about “things” that are somehow
beyond the physical (or at least beyond “thingness”). Opinion about whether
there are such things is, of course, divided.
By metaphysics I mean an attempt to articulate the basic or fundamental
structure of reality, the way, at base, things are. The classical definition of
metaphysics is the study of being qua being, the study of things (any thing,
broadly construed) in terms of the fact that it is at all and without regard to
the type or kind of thing the thing is.
So is being, then, on this reading a univocal term or is it analogical? Is
the being of any given being the “same” as the being of any other being? Or
are there “manifold senses of being,”?[8].
The fact that we can formulate this as a question points to the fact that,
historically, there has been confusion in the pursuit of metaphysics. One way
to try to lessen this confusion is to distinguish and define a set of terms that
sometimes are used interchangeably. Those terms are being, existence, and
reality.
First of all, the word “being” can be thought of in a couple of different ways.
We can “hear” it as a noun (a gerund). As in: “a cat is a being.” In this sense,
being = thing. But we can also “hear” it as a verb, a present participle, as a
word signifying ongoing activity or action. As in: “the cat was being patient
while waiting for his dinner.” There are plenty of other examples of taking a
verb (action/activity) and making it into a noun (thing). For instance,
“Joe is skating.” (verb)

“Skating is something Joe likes to do.” (noun)
Martin Heidegger focused his attention, first of all, on the question of being,
noting the ontological difference between beings and Being. A being (noun,
an entity) ought not to be confused with its Being (verb). Or, better, Being
ought not to be thought to be a being (or entity). This would amount to what
Heidegger called “ontotheology,” the confusion of a “what” with a “way.” A
being or entity is a thing or an object. Things are thought to have essences
or that which makes them to be what they fundamentally are. St. Thomas
Aquinas could be accused of “ontotheology” in his claim that God’s essence is
existence, which term here is meant to be synonymous with being.
But can we distinguish being from existence? Some philosophers have
argued that while all real things are (i.e., “have” being) only some exist. On
this view, exist means literally to “stand out.” Stand out from what? Being.
So a rock, for instance, “has” being and a human “has” being [to explain these
“scarequotes,” note that being is not a predicate (Kant) and is not something a
thing could have or not have; if something is a thing it “has” being; there could
not be a thing that then acquires being or which could lose being and remain
a thing]. But only the human exists, stands out from and over against being–
even its own being–and must take a stance towards being. As Heidegger would
put it, human being (Dasein) is the being whose being it is to be a question to
itself [9]. In fact, Heidegger prefers the term Dasein over “human” and takes
a critical stance towards "humanism" just because even “human” is a question
and a project, as can be seen in his quarrel with Sartre [10, 11].
Thus Dasein or “existence” in this conception is a sort of being, a particular
kind of what. We might say that the particular kind of what is a who, in other
words, Dasein or existence is or is the basis of personal being. But then not
all being (verbal) is univocal in that the way of being of a rock is not the way
of being of a human. Both ways entail that the different types of being in
question here are, but they are not in the same way. Being (verbal) must be
an analogical term rather than an univocal term.
In any event, the point here is to note that reality/being/existence is the
focus of metaphysics, that reality/being/existence has a richness or essential
diversity to it, and that thus there are what have been called “levels of reality”
that must be recognized in any metaphysics. This insight militates against any
reductionistic view or “levelling” of reality/being/existence. And if that which
metaphysics pursues is that which serves as roots of the various sciences and
their disciplinary practices, then there is prima facie evidence for seeking the
“more” of transdisciplinarity.
But there have been objections to the very project and prospects of meta-
physics.
6.4 Objections to Metaphysics

The fundamental questioning of the possibility and validity of metaphysics
can be traced to the “epistemological turn” inaugurated by Descartes. From
Thales until Descartes, philosophy was grounded in the metaphysical questions
of what there is really and why. Philosophy, at bottom, was metaphysics. But
with Descartes, the fundamental question changed from “What is there?” to
“What can I know with certainty?” Philosophy became epistemology. At first,
this was a matter of emphasis. Descartes applied his radical methodological
doubt to the various sources of knowledge to see if anything could withstand
withering skepticism. He found that the I, the ego, the thinking thing that
he himself is, proved indubitable, and further that the nature of the experi-
enceable “world” was such that it gave itself as extension, as extended things
consisting of parts outside of parts. With a proof of a good God acting as a
basic guarantee against radical skepticism (while still allowing for the errors of
finite minds), Descartes could rebuild the edifice of knowledge based on these
two substances: thought (res cogitans) and extension (res extensa).
The question arises, though, concerning the meaning of “substance” with
which Descartes was operating. For it had changed. The ancient and medieval
thinkers understood substance as that which was apt to exist in itself and not
as an intrinsic part of another. On this view, there were many substances,
many real things, each with its own eidos, its own form or idea, and its own
telos, its own aim, goal, or purpose according to its kind. But for various
philosophical reasons (and theological interests), the definition of substance
changed. The definition with which Descartes was working held that substance
is that which is apt to exist by itself, i.e., that which needs nothing other
than itself in order to exist. Clearly, on this definition most (and perhaps
all) of the substances (substantial beings) recognized by ancient and medieval
philosophers would no longer qualify. Whereas previously both ships and
sailors would count as substances (i.e., as real things), neither would count
any longer. Ships need something other than themselves in order to exist
(shipbuilders, trees, etc.), as do human beings (parents, air, water, food, etc.).
These could no longer be considered the real constituents of reality.
But res cogitans and res extensa, as Descartes saw them, were genuine
substances, the real things constitutive of reality. Thinking substance needs
nothing other than itself in order to exist. The famous hypothesis of the “Evil
Demon (or Genius)”–that legendary thought-experiment–demonstrated that
even an all-powerful malevolent force is incapable of shaking the certainty of
the existence of the I as a thinking thing. This is the conclusion of the famous
argument: “I think; therefore, I am.” But I am...what? Only a “thinking
thing.” The “Evil Demon” could be making me think I am an American
citizen, philosophy professor, husband and father, but all of that might well
be an illusion. The “Evil Demon” might even lead me to believe that I need a
brain in order to think, but of this we have no absolute certainty. But I cannot
be misled about my existence–no matter what the “Evil Demon” may try–so
long as I am doubting, which is a mode of thinking. So this thinking needs

nothing other than itself in order to exist. And when I experience, say, this
coffee cup, the “cause” of the experience may be that there is a coffee cup in
front of me, or that I am remembering a coffee cup, or that I am imagining a
coffee cup, or that I am hallucinating a coffee cup, or that the “Evil Demon” is
making me have this experience of a coffee cup. But no matter what the cause
(if any), I cannot be having an experience of this coffee cup unless it comes in
the “way” of extension, of parts outside of parts, or to put it another way, if
it were not to have “dimensionality.” It is not possible to have any experience
of a coffee cup without it having a top, bottom, left, and right, and for some
duration. Otherwise, it is not experience of a coffee cup (or anything else)
at all. Thus extension, extended substance (res extensa), needs nothing other
than itself in order to exist.
This is Cartesian dualism, the idea that there are just two substances (plus
God, of course): thought and extension. This leads to the intractable mind-
body problem, viz., the question of how immaterial and thus un-limited mind
can influence or operate on material, finite bodies. It views the human being
as fundamentally thought (consciousness, mind, or soul) that has a body. It
is a metaphysical schizophrenia, a condition brought on by an epistemological
anxiety: the need for certainty (defined in a particular way based on particular
assumptions). For Descartes had clearly not abandoned metaphysics–after all,
his most important work is entitled, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641),
“first philosophy” as we saw being Aristotle’s designation for what he was
after in the work known to us (but not to him) as the Metaphysics. Rather,
metaphysics was transformed due to a change in a metaphysical point of view
regarding substance coupled with a drive for a rigorous epistemology based on
particular premises.
The aftermath of Cartesian dualism is well-known. Descartes’ methodolog-
ical skepticism is applied to his own project, the result being Humean skepti-
cism and empiricism (a philosophical view that claims to eschew metaphysical
speculation). Kant, in his horror at the implications for science, morals, and
religion of this radical skepticism, developed his critical philosophy to try to
have things both ways. A Kantian “critique” purports to show both limits and
the conditions of possibility of its subject matter. For instance, the Critique of
Pure Reason (1781, 1787) shows both the conditions of possibility of experi-
ence (which was meant to be the foundation of knowledge for the empiricists)
and the limits of reason in terms of its drive to have metaphysical knowledge.
Those limits are severe. According to traditional metaphysics, “cause,” “soul,”
and “God,” were thought to be realities about which we can have knowledge.
Hume’s empiricism rejected the possibility (How can one possibly experience a
“cause” or a “soul” or “God”?). Kant accepted that “cause,” “soul” and“God”
(along with time and space) are not “out there” in the world waiting to be
experienced; rather, he ingeniously placed them all in the structure of reason
as constituting the conditions of possibility of experience anything at all (tran-
scendental subjectivity). We cannot have knowledge of these–knowledge can
come only from experience, and these are impossible to experience. Rather,
they make experience itself possible and so make possible what knowledge we
might have. Metaphysical speculation, however, transgresses the limits of rea-
son by positing as objects for experience that which is a formal and constitutive
structure of transcendental subjectivity.
This Kantian critique has been at the base of all subsequent criticisms and
rejections of metaphysics, through positivism, scientism, phenomenology, and
deconstruction. The problems many philosophers see for metaphysics are as
follows:
1. Metaphysics, as its name implies, attempts to investigate that which

is “beyond physics.” As there are no such things, metaphysics has no
subject matter and is empty.
2. Metaphysics claims that there are things such as “causes” and “God,”
but such things cannot be experienced in any verifiable way.
3. The claims of metaphysics are such that one could both prove and dis-
prove the same claim, leading to antinomies, confusions, nonsense.
4. There is no way to ultimately justify the principial (may I use this lo-
cution as the adverbial of principle?) or foundational claims of meta-
physics; therefore, these principial claims are matters of choice, putting
metaphysics on the same footing as aesthetics (which has diminished
status in the aftermath of Cartesian dualism).
5. The natural (and social) sciences are perfectly able to carry on their busi-
ness without reference to metaphysical claims. Therefore, the legitimacy
and justification of our knowledge have “no need of such hypotheses”
as metaphysics alleges to provide. Metaphysics, in this sense, is akin to
religious claims.
6. Metaphysics attempts to define or delimit essences as if these were time-

less and unchanging. Metaphysics privileges the timeless and unchanging
over the temporal and changing as the perfect over the imperfect, as the
truth over opinion. Metaphysics is about stasis. But all is flux. All
things are the effects and the flow of evolutionary processes. There are
no timeless essences. The pretensions of metaphysics are false.
7. But not only false. When it comes to delineating the metaphysics of

human persons, metaphysics is also dangerous. It is behind the notion
of set natures of things, leading to claims of natural law. A division is
made between that which is natural (appropriate to a particular nature)
and that which is unnatural. This thinking has been the basis of all
racism, sexism, nationalism, speciesism, etc. Metaphysics is ethically
and politically abhorrent.
6.5 A Response to the Charges Against

Metaphysics
Quite a bill of particulars!
Again, philosophers agree that “metaphysics” is a tough word to define
and yet everyone carries around some kind of working definition of it in their
heads, including those who deny the possibility, plausibility, or desirability of
metaphysics. So let’s just start with some of those working definitions, in-
deed, let’s just combine them. Metaphysics studies being/existence/reality as
such; metaphysics studies that which must be; metaphysics studies that which
does not change; metaphysics studies the first causes/principles of things. Be-
ing/existence/reality; that which must be; that which does not change; first
causes/principles: Are these, themselves, things, things like other things? And
are there such “things” (if they are, in fact, things)? And what are these like?
If you address yourself to these question, you are engaged in metaphysics. The
way to not be engaged in metaphysics is to not be engaged with these and
allied questions. However, it seems plain to me that whatever philosophical
questions you choose to engage with in lieu of these sorts questions will in
fact lend themselves to raising these sorts of questions anyway. So that means
we cannot fully and finally escape metaphysics. We can only shift from one
more or less consciously held, more or less richly detailed metaphysical posi-
tion to another. There is no “end of metaphysics,” in the sense of “cessation,”
short of death. But what is the “end of metaphysics” in the sense of its te-
los, its aim, goal, or purpose? As already mentioned, the end of metaphysics
is to explore being/existence/reality; the immutable; the necessary; and first
causes/principles. But is there more to the aim of metaphysics? That is the
question, more than any other, I think, that leads to opposition to metaphysics.
In other words, the opposition is not to metaphysics per se (it is, in my view,
un-opposable in that sense); rather, the opposition is to its purported aims, to
what it wants to say or tries to do beyond the formal (let’s call them) aims of
metaphysics just mentioned. Another way to put this would be to point out
that there can be no absolute opposition to metaphysics, but only opportu-
nities to point out problems and make trouble for the metaphysical endeavor
undertaken for this or that particular aim.
Does this imply, then, that there are some legitimate or acceptable or
benign aims for metaphysics but also some illegitimate, unacceptable, or dan-
gerous aims as well? And, if so, is it possible to determine whether a given
aim falls into one category or the other?
I would want to answer in the affirmative. But to do so, I’d have to get back
to something Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno insisted upon: that
philosophy (which is metaphysics) is “owned,” so to speak, by the person of
flesh and blood. It is that person who determines the character of metaphysics
(not the formal aims, of course). Would this leave metaphysics in a position
that is hopelessly subjective, perspectival, and relativistic? I would say, first,
it depends on what you mean by “hopeless.” And, second, I would point
out that “subjective” is, itself, a metaphysical determination, a determination

that might, itself, prove unacceptable or even dangerous, as compared to other
metaphysical determinations one might adopt.
Let us review the objections to metaphysics noted above. One, it seems
to me, rests on an unexamined presupposition, that what there is are things,
and that metaphysics deals with a particular class of things (“existence” as
a supreme thing, necessary and immutable; forms-as-things; causes-as-things,
etc.); and that, in fact, there are no such things, and so metaphysics is talking
about nothing, i.e., it is nonsense. That is one criticism of metaphysics that
starts with Kant and is continued by modern empiricism, positivism, scientism,
phenomenology, and deconstruction. But, as I said, this all rests on the as-
sumption that metaphysics addresses itself to certain kinds of things. Second,
an objection to metaphysics rests on the claim that we cannot really ever know
that about which we speak and write while engaged in metaphysics, that one
could write up a marvelously sophisticated, intricate, ingenious metaphysical
system that is based, at bottom, on the will and imagination of the philosopher
himself. Such systems have no real connection to reality, or no more connection
than competing systems. Hegelianism, Thomism, Begsonism, Whiteheadian-
ism, etc., are all fine intellectual constructions that one could dabble with, but
one system is as good as another because none touches reality in a real way
(it is claimed). In short, there is no epistemological legitimation for meta-
physics. This complaint, of course, rests on the unexamined assumption that
epistemology is primary and, in its foundations at least, problem-free. This
is highly debatable. This complaint stems from Cartesian thought which lost
no time in transforming itself into radical skepticism. This complaint further
assumes that it counts against metaphysics that there are many plausible (or
should we say equally implausible, on the critics’ terms?) metaphysical po-
sitions, as if the multiplicity itself militates against metaphysics, instead of,
for instance, pointing to something arising archaically/principially, necessar-
ily, and unchangeably from being/existence/reality. Now I think that in both
these objections there is a problem the critics have with the non-formal ends
of metaphysics. That is, I think the objectors think the metaphysician wants
to have something she is not entitled to (in their minds). The metaphysician
has an aim in mind, which is to know something true about the whole, which
the critics say she ought to forswear. She ought not to want what she wants.
But want it she does.
The other complaints against metaphysics follow from this last point. The
critics seem to infer the reason the metaphysician wants what he wants, which
is to know something true about the whole. They seem to think that this
knowledge would give some sort of power and that the power is insidious
and it would be used for nefarious purposes. This is not a wholly unfair
complaint, by the way. Historically, there have been numerous cases that
would count as evidence in the critics’ favor. For instance, metaphysicians
want to know something true about human beings as a whole, and when
they believe they have discovered this universal truth about humans and then
articulate that truth, that truth hardens into a doctrine or an ideology that can
be used politically to serve certain interests rather than others. So once you
have discovered human being’s timeless, unchanging nature, then any actual
human being who does not fit neatly into that particular articulation of human
nature becomes something other and therefore less than human (other seems
to be always less). Racism, sexism, nationalism, speciesism, ableism, and on
and on, all rest on what critics call a metaphysical assumption rather than a
metaphysical fact, as it were. Metaphysicians claim to know what they cannot
know, and as we learn from Diotima’s warning about fools in the Symposium,
believing you know what you (don’t realize you) don’t know is dangerous. But
does this danger in itself de-legitimate metaphysics? There are, of course, lots
of dangerous things that are worth doing despite any dangers that might be
attendant upon their pursuit. The lesson of courage is neither to give into our
fears nor to ignore them but to learn to cope with that about which we are
rightly fearful. It is a lesson that teaches eternal vigilance, not defeat. Either
there is something that human beings are (or “are like”) or there is not. But
both of the possible answers are potentially “metaphysical” in the sense that
the critics mean it. Any answer is dangerous. Life is dangerous. But that is no
argument against metaphysics and is actually evidence for acknowledging the
ineluctability of metaphysics. Reality is fearsome, but that does not mean we
ought to (or even can) recoil from it. Reality is also awesome, awe-inspiring,
and to paraphrase Aristotle (without falsifying or disagreeing), philosophy,
which is metaphysics, begins in awe.
In order to address two powerful would-be opponents to metaphysics, al-
low me to refer to Jean Grondin’s biography [12] of Hans-Georg Gadamer (the
hermeneuticist) as he describes the latter’s debate, such as it was, with Jacques
Derrida (the deconstructor). Grondin does a nice job in few words of charac-
terizing the two thinkers’ points of view. First, Derrida and deconstruction.
Derrida’s grammatology held that
there is no meaning beyond the signifiers but only a ceaseless defer-

ring of meaning, which is never accessible outside the signs project-
ing only the illusion of its presence. We are as it were ‘imprisoned’
within a pregiven sign system that we never entirely understand;
only within it do we understand, find meaning, and experience
truth. Truth and meaning are never given independent of a sign
system. Thus the task is to deconstruct, where possible, the pre-
determinations of the linguistic framework, so as not to be misled
by them. A respectable ethos of ideology critique, then, lies very
much as the heart of deconstruction.... [13]
I want to note the end or aim of deconstruction, according to this view

of deconstruction (which seems accurate to me): “The task is to deconstruct,
where possible, the predeterminations of the linguistic framework, so as not to
be misled by them.” What could “misled” really mean here? It can only make
sense to worry about whether one might be being misled if one could be rightly
led. What would it mean to be rightly led? To be misled, according to decon-

struction, is to think that one’s truths and the institutions that spring from
them and in turn reinforce them have dropped from the heavens fully formed,
that they reflect and reproduce and hence are the way things are and must
be. To think that is to be misled. Truths and their corresponding institutions
have a history, a genealogy, a contingency that is masked by “metaphysics’
hypostatization.” It is the false claim that these contingent constructions are
necessary and unchanging (metaphysical things). That is what is false. Be-
lieving that is to be misled. But where ought we to be led? If this is the
wrong path then what is the right path? If there is no right path, then there
are no wrong paths. If there is no place you mean to go, then any map will
do, because no route could be wrong. But deconstruction has “a respectable
ethos of ideology critique” at its heart. So there is a motive. We do not wish
to be misled. Who does? But now we must tread carefully. If there is no right
road, then I might as well stick to the one I’m on if it should turn out that
only Jacques Derrida happens to have a problem with it. As a flesh and blood
man myself, I can have whatever problems I choose or that choose me, and
they might not be identical with Derrida’s. If my path works well enough for
me, who is Derrida to warn me off of it? But what if Derrida does in fact think
there is a right path (or a right-er path)? Then we need to know what it is. It
can be framed negatively: there are no timeless, eternal things; as Heraclitus
taught, “all is flux.” But this is a claim about the all, which is metaphysics,
which is about the way things are, now and forever, without change. All is
contingent just means that contingency is a metaphysical character of reality,
and as real beings ourselves, it is that with which we need to cope (and not
cower in the face of). The enemy here is finality, the idea that metaphysics,
in grasping for the timeless and unchanging, is hoping to put an end to some-
thing. But what about the idea of, shall we call it, contingent necessity? A
paradox? An oxymoron? Or is it a metaphysical insight? If all is construction
and all is susceptible to deconstruction, then deconstruction is not adequate
to ideology critique in some sort of final way, either. Say we realize that some
particular institution has a genealogy and serves some interests and not others
and could be deconstructed. So what? Unless you have some idea of better
or improvement, you have made a claim equivalent to “everything is made of
matter.” What does that even tell us, who are men and women of flesh and
blood who have to live? There is in fact no praxis lying behind deconstruction,
nor does it arise out of praxis. It just claims that things do not have a final
set meaning. To put it in the terms of Richard Rorty (and in opposition to
his view), no one can take up an ironic stance with regard to the whole of
one’s life. My life is contingent, perhaps, but given that it is my life it has a
necessity about it that is inalienable.
And what about Gadamer’s hermeneutics? Grondin explains that
Gadamer had to show that the experience of meaning that he was
talking about has nothing metaphysical about it. For hermeneutics
too there is no such thing as a final, fixed (metaphysical) meaning,
only a meaning borne along by unpredictable effective history in

which we stand and which we can try to deconstruct. [...Gadamer
said] ‘It seems to me that aspects of Derrida’s conceptual forma-
tions such as dissemination might be viewed as structurally similar
to historically effected consciousness, or différance to fusions of
horizons’ [14].
Grondin continues:
Derrida was suspicious of the hermeneutic concept of horizon, be-

cause it seemed too close to an all-encompasing horizon of mean-
ing [i.e., it seemed “metaphysical” to Derrida]. In 1993, how-
ever, Gadamer tried to explain to Derrida that the horizon is
rather something that is never reached. [...] Gadamer’s universal-
ist hermeneutics was never meant to imply that we can understand
everything but at most that we are beings that try to understand
and often enough fail. Indeed, it is precisely because we fail in
principle that we are always in search of understanding and mean-
ing. This failure is one manifestation of the human finitude that
Derrida too wants to insist on. [...] Yet [Gadamer] must have felt
challenged by Derrida’s charge that the will to understand oper-
ates by way of (imperialistically) appropriating otherness to the
understander. For, crudely put, do I understand the other when I
understand him? Or is it precisely then that I miss understanding
him. In fact, does not the gap in understanding, the jump beyond
understanding, get us further along? [15]
Grondin explains that Gadamer’s thoughts were honed by this engagement

with Derrida and deconstruction such that in his later work he came to think
that “it is not the case that understanding can always find words for what
we are trying to comprehend. Rather, ‘we can never say everything that we
would like to say’–from now on, this is the ‘highest principle of philosophical
hermeneutics.’ Because we are finite, language always leaves us in the lurch.
In this situation, hermeneutic openness to the other–to the possibility that the
other is right–succeeds in achieving a new dimension, indeed a dimension of
world-historical importance.” [16] Taking hermeneutics in its widest possible
sense as strategies for understanding in terms of an horizon (perhaps ever-
receding), then hermeneutics is metaphysically engaged. The deconstructively
chastened Gadamer is still making claims to the way things are. “We can
never say everything we’d like to say.” That’s just the way things are and they
are not going to change. Things have a necessary contingency. A paradox?
An oxymoron? Or is it a metaphysical insight?
Perhaps I am concluding that there is actually less squabble here than
one who attends philosophy conferences might think. All these philosophers,
careful as they may be, are engaged in metaphysics in the sense the term has
always had. Problems arise not from its formal ends but from the contingent
ends of its practitioners and its would-be critics, all persons of flesh and blood.
The objectionable end is the end of ending metaphysics, either by concluding
it, as if your articulation of it is undeconstructable, or by attempting to avoid
it all together. One side purports to finish it; the other side purports to finish
it off. But it is, for us men and women of flesh and blood, never finished until
we, ourselves, are finished. The end of metaphysics is death.
And now one more turn: The end of metaphysics is death in the sense
of the finish line. But what about a claim that says the end in the sense
of aim or purpose of metaphysics is death? On a cursory reading of that
claim, I’d say stay away from metaphysics if you want to live! But our own
end (finish line) is death. It is the way things are. Eventual not-being is
the way things necessarily and unchangingly are. They say the only sure
things in life are death and taxes, but if we were to elect an anarcho-capitalist
libertarian government, not even taxes would be a sure thing. But death
remains. Necessarily. We are all already as good as dead. Metaphysics might
seem deadly (at least deadly boring) to some people because of their aim
to bring things to an end when in fact all is flux. This would, as I have
argued, not be an argument to avoid metaphysics (that can’t be done) but
to avoid this interpretation of metaphysics and to avoid adopting this end
of metaphysics. Instead, we could adopt the vision of metaphysics as a way
(meth‘hodos) of living as men and women of flesh and blood. This vision would
see metaphysics, as life-affirming, as contingency-affirming. It would see the
necessary as contingent because of the necessity of contingency. It would not
be seeking closure but living in the time before closure, at the beginning or
principle of that closure called death. Metaphysics would be a kind of virtue,
perhaps the highest virtue. Metaphysics, which is philosophy, would be about
the love (which is open, not closed) of wisdom, which we are driven to seek,
each in our own way of flesh and blood.
Thus metaphysics is ineluctable. As a practical matter, of course, one could
always do something else beside metaphysical reflection. And should one take
it up, one could always reject certain metaphysical systems or positions or
resist certain aims that other thinkers might have for metaphysics. But if one
wants to understand the all, the whole, even if just of one’s own life, sooner
or later one comes down to those questions that have constituted the core of
metaphysics. If one is honest with oneself, as a person of flesh and blood–
and who engages in any scientific, artistic, philosophical, or spiritual pursuit if
not persons of flesh and blood?–one will find oneself in one’s essential nature
(physis) always in the midst of (meta) metaphysical questioning.
6.6 On the Parallels between Metaphysics and

Transdisciplinarity
In his 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, Marx complained that philosophers had only
been interpreting the world but that the point is to change it. Let us, for
simplicity’s sake, take this complaint to be a sign of tension between theory

and practice. Marx was saying that all along philosophy took itself to be at-
tempting to see (theoria) how things are. By “are” is meant the way things
not only are but have always been and will always be, that fundamentally how
things are is eternal and unchanging, despite the flux of everyday experience.
That was to be the mission of philosophy, to penetrate the flux of experi-
ence to discover the eternal, to pierce through the changing to the underlying
unchanging. In other words, philosophy is metaphysics. The presupposition
is that one could know the way things are without affecting the way things
are. The presupposition is that things are, at bottom, unchanging, and so not
changeable in principle. Thus human appropriation of reality leaves reality
“untouched,” so to speak. Things are of necessity.
And of this, Marx complained. The basis of his complaint can be traced
to the “Copernican revolution” of Kant, to the turn to transcendental sub-
jectivity, to the notion that reason does not “discover” a world ready made
but in fact makes a world according to its own structure. I.e., reason forms
a world for reason according to reason. Still, Kant did not view philosophy’s
mission as being to change the world. The structure or reason was set (eternal
and unchanging), and so the world of reason’s making was also set. This is
the genius of Kantian thought: it is a bulwark against the skepticism that
stems ineluctably from Humean empiricism. We can know things (and hope
for things and know what we ought to do) because, though the world is always
for us rational beings the phenomenal world, that phenomenal world is the
way it is for us (and the way it would be without us or for that which is other
than us is unknowable and absurd). Even for Hegel, who introduce history
into philosophy, who, in effect, put the structure of reason into motion, still
recognized that, as he put it, the Owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk
[17]. In other words, philosophy comes along after the fact to see that what
has become must have been. Philosophy’s mission is to understand, to simply
stand under the sway of how things are and appropriate it.
But not for Marx. For Marx, the point of philosophy is to change the
world, to see that the world is always a world we make and that we must be
prospective rather than, as always had been the case, retrospective. It implies
a non- or anti-metaphysical position, a sense that things do not have to be
as they are and always have been and always will be. We need not be mere
spectators but actors.
Old habits die hard, however, and it is at least arguable (and likely prob-
able) that historical materialism still harbors necessity within it, even in its
revolutionary pronouncements (the so-called “inevitability of communism,”
e.g.). But if Marxist-inspired thought were pushed to logical limits, then we’d
have to admit that, if the world needs to be changed, there is not, in fact, the
guiding star to lead us in the way of change. In other words, if the world is as
plastic as this position would have to hold, then the malleability of the world
would have to be truly infinite. In still other words, we would be free to change
it in any way and no one way would have any preeminence over another. In
the words of Sartre, we would be in “despair.” For Sartre, despair “means

that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our wills, or
within the sum of the probabilities which render our action feasible,” [18].
But for Sartre–at least early Sartre–the “sum of the probabilities” and what
is “feasible” would be freely determined by our will. Despair simply means a
radical freedom for which, absurdly but inescapably, we are fully responsible.
In short, we can change the world any way we want, but we lack a guiding
star to show the way. Literally, a dis-astrous condition [19].
But what if philosophy made still another turn? The advent of philosophy
was characterized by seeking wisdom as a kind of knowledge for knowledge’s
sake, a knowing without doing. The full implications of the modern turn led to
a kind of practice, a pragmatism, a doing. But in its disavowal of metaphysics–
thought to be a condition of non-doing–modern practice comes down to doing
without knowing, a sometimes quite sophisticated and impressive yet never-
theless mindless doing. But if, in a dialectical turn, in a kind of an Aufhebung
of the pre-modern and modern worldviews, we come to understand that we
can only know by changing and change by knowing. In other words, what
if philosophy were simply to be praxis? For reconsider the tension described
earlier between “theory” (theoria, sophia), on the one hand, and “practice”
(techne, phronesis), on the other. In his functional analysis of the human soul,
Aristotle distinguishes the rational functions that have as their object the im-
mutable things (nous, episteme, sophia) from the rational functions that have
as their object the things which change or that which may lead to change
(techne, phronesis). But, for the modern critic, each of these functions (ergon)
when functioning or actualized (energeia) remains a doing which is a thinking,
a reasoning which may lead to other action (through deliberation and decision
and choice) but which is, in the end, a function of (better or worse) theoria.
There is something prior to thinking for Aristotle, and for a doing to count as
an action it must be deliberate or deliberated. For the modern, the point is to
do, that our actions, in effect, be our thinking, that our acts do our thinking
for us. This is technology, the logos or reasoning or rationality of the techne,
the skillful doing. It is inevitable, on this conception, that technology lift off
from its being in rational beings and become a rationality of a sort in itself.
One can readily see this without having read Heidegger’s reflections on tech-
nology in how information technology re-arranges and re-patterns the thinking
of its users. But one could see it already in the mechanistic manner in which
Marxist thought quickly and inevitably became a party ideological practice
that subsumed adherents and opponents alike. For all its sophistication it was
nevertheless a mindless doing.
Further, in a deep sense, the disciplinary fragmentation with which we
have become ensnared is a function of this mindless doing, a doing for do-
ing’s sake that parallels a knowing for knowing’s sake. Neither emphasis has
been salutary, and indeed it seems fair to say that the former has been much
more dangerous for humanity than the latter, despite the latter’s drawbacks.
We now face issues of environmental sustainability caused by the progression
of mindless doing. At a deep level, this can be traced to the disavowal of

metaphysics.
But this disavowal arose for understandable historical reasons. While Aris-
totle’s distinguishing between the dual objects of thought (the mutable and
immutable) did not imply a real distinction or possible separation (a point
missed in the alleged tension between theory and practice, between knowing
and doing), Aristotle did saddle himself with presuppositions (inherited from
his teacher Plato) about the essence of reality, that reality consists of substan-
tial things with unchanging and eternal essences, thereby larding becoming and
change with an inescapable (and misleading) stasis. And this had all the prac-
tical, not to mention political, ramifications that its modern critics complain
about.
The insight that this discussion provides is that a recovery of metaphysics
is necessary to habilitate genuine praxis, a practice that is not a mindless
but a mindful doing, not an ideological driven mechanistic practice, but a gen-
uinely thought-filled doing and an active, actualizing knowing. The separation
of thought and action leads to acting in such a way as to compartmentalize
knowing, i.e., to the vulgar essentialization of departments of knowledge and
the generation of academic silos of disciplines with their border guards at
the ready. Thus the advent of metaphysical praxis or, better, metaphysically
informed praxis and praxically informed metaphysics, demands the concomi-
tance of transdisciplinarity.
I do not wish to reduce transdisciplinarity to metaphysics as the latter has
been carried out in academic philosophy departments. Clearly, even a cursory
look at the literature stamped with “transdisciplinary” belies such a reduction.
And I certainly do not mean to plant my flag in the term “transdisciplinar-
ity” and claim it for my own. It is obvious to anyone who cares to look that
the term is used in a variety of senses. But I do wish to say, first, that I do
not think–despite all the texts, journals, conferences, research projects, and
so on that have been generated in its name–that transdisciplinarity is another
academic discipline. It may masquerade as a discipline or be festooned with
all the trappings of one. It may even be that some desire that it become one,
such that one could study its “methodologies” and be awarded degrees and be
certified as a “transdisciplinarian”-it might turn out this would make a good
career move. But it will not change the fact that transdisciplinarity is not a
discipline at all. It’s very name betrays it. As noted earlier, transdisciplinarity
operates by means of disciplines, between disciplines, and beyond disciplines.
And this means that it operates by means of, between, and beyond the insti-
tutional practices that manifest disciplinary divisions. And that means that
transdisciplinarity cannot be domesticated strictly within the academy. It is
not essentially academic. And if it is not essentially academic, then it is not
strictly beholden to the academy’s rationality. This does not mean–although
many might argue the point–that transdisciplinarity is “irrational.” It is, in-
deed, transrational, a rationality according to the logic(s) of the trans.
And in this it is parallel to philosophy, which is metaphysics. Although we
treat philosophy/metaphysics as if it were just one discipline among others,

that is an illusion. “Philosophy” has been domesticated within the academy
for economic and political reasons, for purposes of command and control. But
domesticated “philosophy” is not philosophy at all but a discourse about phi-
losophy. The academy is a “knowledge factory,” but the very name philosophy
shows its aim to be wisdom and not knowledge. Wisdom may be thought of as
metaknowledge or metascience, again, according to the logic of the trans. The
confusion of these two is the undoing of philosophy and a barrier to wisdom.
Both proponents and opponents of philosophy/metaphysics have miscon-
ceived the relationship between the sciences and metascience. Some propo-
nents have tried to see the difference as demanding a separation, giving the
sense that philosophy/metaphysics can live on without the sciences. This leave
its opponents with the sense that philosophy/metaphysics is “otherworldly”
and irremediably abstract, and thus can be safely discarded. The sciences
alone will suffice. And some proponents, chastened by this criticism, hoped
to reconfigure philosophy/metaphysics to simple be a science, as if an act of
humility before the grandeur of the sciences. Philosophy/metaphysics needs
to be defended both from its (mono-) cultured despisers and its well-meaning
but misled friends.
If I may put it this way, what we need is an undisciplined philosophy/
metaphysics in order that it might serve as transdisciplinary metascience. But
this is not in any way to say that when it comes to philosophy just “anything
goes”! There is a method to philosophy/metaphysics, just as there is a method
to transdisciplinarity. A meta hodos: a way or journey along side of, after,
and beyond. It is the method of more. It is a way of knowing more. More
knowledge and more than knowledge (but not other than knowledge). It is
a way of attending to the ancient saying, meleta to pan, of “taking into care
beings as a whole,” as Heidegger initially translates the Greek. [20] It is
a way of getting at the all or the whole, knowing that that is an infinite,
open horizon, knowing that there will always (structurally) be more. And
there is a rigor to this way, as rigorous (at least) as any found in disciplinary
practices. But in another way, a way that is, let me call it, “an-archic,” a way
that denies there is a single, containable, manageable, arché or principle or
foundation to knowing/doing. We are so used to, culturally and institutionally
speaking, the way of the disciplines (analysis and fragmentation) that we no
longer understand this other way (an an-archic holism or synthesis without
homogenization, reductionism, or leveling). We must relearn it.
6.7 Conclusion
In this essay I have argued for understanding metaphysics as a way of getting
at the whole, the all, or the more that transdisciplinary thought endeavors
to pursue. I have tried to think transdisciplinarity as essentially oriented
by metaphysical praxis or praxically informed metaphysics, without however
delineating the elements of a metaphysics that would be adequate to this
vision. That is a project for another day, of course. For now, I can only
suggest that there are post-modern critical engagements with metaphysics
that hold resources for such a project. These might include Whiteheadean
process thought and Xavier Zubiri’s philosophy of reality; speculative realism
and object-oriented ontology (Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, et. al.);
Basarab Nicolescu’s scientifically informed epistemology and alternative logics;
Roberto Poli’s conceptions of levels of reality (influenced by N. Hartmann);
and even non-academically-disciplined thought such as Ken Wilber’s integral
philosophy might prove, if critically engaged, fruitful for honing metaphysical
praxis. And a philosophy of the beyond (meta-, trans-) would not be worthy of
the name if it failed to engage that which is beyond philosophy (new sciences,
spirituality, etc.).
References
1. Aristotle, 1995. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Irwin, T., Hackett Publishing
Company, Indianapolis, I.3.5 (1095a1-2).
2. Nicolescu, B., 1996, 2002. Manifesto of transdisciplinarity. State University of
New York, Albany. Also, Nicolescu, B., 2007. Transdisciplinarity as a method-
ological framework for going beyond the science-religion debate. Transdisci-
plinarity in Science and Religion, 2, pp. 35-60.
3. Weislogel, E., 2011. The transdisciplinary imperative. Transdisciplinary Stud-
ies: Science, Spirituality, Society, 1, pp. 219-225.
4. Nicolescu, 2007. p. 39.
5. Kim, J., and Sosa, E., 1995. Blackwell’s companion to metaphysics. Blackwell,
Oxford, p. 310.
6. Mill, J.S., 1863. Utilitarianism. The classical utilitarians: Bentham and Mill.
Hackett, Indianapolis, pp. 95-96/.
7. 1989 An intermediate Greek-English lexicon founded upon the seventh edition
of Liddel and Scott’s Greek-English lexicon. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
8. See Brentano, F., 1975. On the several senses of being in Aristotle. University
of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
9. Heidegger, M., 1962. Being and time. Trans. Macquarrie, J., and Robinson,
E. Harper and Row, New York, p. 32.
10. Sartre, J.P., 1946. Existentialism is a humanism. In Kaufmann, W. 1956,
1975. Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre. Penguin Group, New York,
pp. 345-368.
11. Heidegger, M., 1947. Letter on humanism. Basic writings. Harper and Row,
New York, pp. 189-242.
12. Grondin, J., 2003. Hans-Georg Gadamer: a biography. Yale University Press,
New Haven.
13. Grondin, J., 2003, p. 327.
14. Grondin, J., 2003, p. 327, and there is a typo in the spelling of différance here.
15. Grondin, J., 2003, p. 327-8.
16. Grondin, J., 2003, p. 328.
17. Hegel, G.W.F., 2005. Philosophy of right. Trans. Dyde, S. W. Dover, Mineola,
New York, p. xxi.
18. Sartre, J.P., 1946, p. 357.
19. Caputo, J. D., 1993. Against ethics: contributions to a poetics of obligation
with constant reference to deconstruction. Indiana University Press, Bloom-
ington and Indianapolis, pp 5-6.
20. Heidegger, M., 1993. Basic concepts. Trans. Aylesworth, G. E.. Indiana
University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, pp. 21 ff.
About the Author
Eric Weislogel, Ph.D., is adjunct professor of philosophy at Saint Joseph’s Uni-

versity in Philadelphia, PA, and at Delaware County Community College in Media,
PA. Dr. Weislogel holds a BA in liberal studies from West Chester University, an
MA in philosophy from Villanova University, and a PhD in philosophy from the
Pennsylvania State University. Prior to joining the faculty of Saint Joseph’s, Dr.
Weislogel held teaching positions at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Penn State,
St. Francis College, and Chestnut Hill College.
Dr. Weislogel’s main philosophical interests include issues in metaphysics, philo-
sophical anthropology, and virtue ethics. He has published a number of philosophical
essays and reviews in such journals as Philosophy Today, Transdisciplinarity in Sci-
ence and Religion, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy in Review, Science and Theology
News, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Additionally, his arti-
cles have appeared in the online journals Metapsychology, Marxism and Philosophy,
the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, and the Global Spiral.
Dr. Weislogel served as the executive director of the Metanexus Institute from
2006-2008, as well as the director of the Metanexus Global Network, with hundreds
of projects in more than 40 countries. He was also senior contributing editor of
Global Spiral, the online journal of the Metanexus Institute.
Prior to joining Metanexus, Dr. Weislogel worked as manager of business process
assessment for the engineering division of the United States Steel Corporation in
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Dr. Weislogel is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he
was awarded the Diplôme d’Honneur by the Centre International de Recherches et
Études Transdisciplinaires (CIRET) in 2007. He is an active member in a number

of scholarly societies, including the American Philosophical Association, the Society
for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, the American Catholic Philosophical
Association, and the Metaphysical Society of America.
CHAPTER 7
The Transdisciplinary Carats of Patristic
Byzantine Tradition
Doru Costache, St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College, Sydney, Australia.
his article presents three samples of transdisciplinary-like approaches within

T patristic Byzantine tradition, namely, Chalcedonian Christology (in conver-
sation with Lucian Blaga’s notion of dogma), the multilevel interpretation of
Scripture in St. Maximus the Confessor, and the Maximian and Palamite
ideas of the rapports between science, technology, theology and the spiritual
life. The contention of this article is double. First, it proposes that within
Byzantine tradition there can be traced a series of transdisciplinary features,
which up until recently have remained unknown and which, to be rightly ap-
preciated, require a new appraisal through the lens of current transdisciplinary
methodology. Second, and related, it contends that contemporary transdisci-
plinarity has deep roots within the Christian tradition, as exemplified by the
Byzantine antecedents analyzed herein, and that in order to understand better
the cultural process that led to transdisciplinarity such roots can no longer be
ignored.
Keywords: dogma, hermeneutics, included middle, levels of reality, levels of
perception, transdisciplinarity, worldview.
7.1 Introduction
As a fully articulated object, transdisciplinarity is an intellectual construct for
which we are indebted to Basarab Nicolescu, to whom I dedicate this article.
Apart from its technicalities, simply put transdisciplinary methodology rep-
resents perhaps the most generous framework for holistic thinking, having as
its foundation a vision of the dynamic complexity of reality, a vision which
integrates and enunciates the mysteries of being, existence and knowledge, in
all their amplitude. As a contemporary worldview, transdisciplinarity largely
builds upon quantum physics and its philosophical ramifications; nevertheless,
it likewise draws its power from archetypal grounds, the universe of tradition
149
[1, pp. 196-205]. It is unfortunate that a serious transdisciplinary exploration

of these traditional grounds is still yet to be undertaken, a lacuna that herein
I endeavor to partially address. A transdisciplinary interpretation of tradition
is urgent today, in a time when the dichotomy of modernity and tradition
jeopardizes the understanding of the very roots of Western culture, together
with obscuring the Christian origins of the transdisciplinary methodology and
worldview. It is the contention of this article that transdisciplinarity brings to
light - or actualizes, in the language of classical philosophy - unknown poten-
cies within the forgotten, or just superficially interpreted, abysses of tradition
and the human spirit. Transdisciplinarity therefore gives a clear voice and
an articulated expression to tendencies that can be found, true, very often
without a conscious exercise, within various traditional cultures. In doing so,
it renders a great service to humankind’s experience and wisdom. For in-
stance, and to enter the theme of this article, through the intermediary of
such concepts like the levels of reality and perception, and the highlighting of
the unifying function of the sacred, transdisciplinarity decisively contributes
to the clarification of the modus operandi of the Byzantine mind, and of many
paradoxical positions exhibited by the Church Fathers.
Indeed, the patristic Byzantine tradition, which I shall explore in what fol-
lows, makes no exception in regards to utilizing principles of a transdisciplinary
nature [2, pp. 82-84], principles which can be found in most of its theoretical
propensities and practical attitudes. I qualified as ‘patristic’ the aspect of the
Byzantine tradition explored herein given that my examples refer primarily
to the thinking of some Church Fathers from the Byzantine period; likewise,
by the Byzantine era I understand the cultural history of Constantinople and
its afferent regions. More precisely, I shall discuss the Christological doctrine
of the ecumenical council of Chalcedon, in conversation with the concept of
dogma in Lucian Blaga; this analysis will be followed by a review of some
aspects pertaining to the multilevel scriptural hermeneutics of St. Maximus
the Confessor; finally, I shall address the Byzantine understanding of the re-
lationships between various areas of knowledge and experience, as illustrated
by the thought of St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Gregory Palamas. My
aim is double. First, it is a matter of highlighting transdisciplinarity as a
logical and natural outcome of a process of cultural evolution, which, after
being inaugurated by the syntheses of Philo and the early Christians [3, pp.
204-210], at some point in history included the patristic Byzantine tradition.
Second, and related, throughout this article I shall point out the significant
contribution of transdisciplinarity to the field of patristic studies, since it clar-
ifies certain forgotten and misunderstood aspects pertaining to the tradition
of the Holy Fathers of the Byzantine epoch. Given that my effort primarily
represents an act of remembrance, and consequently my approach is histori-
cal, analytical and interpretive in nature, I have no intention of discussing the
possibility of applying my findings to current issues, whether theological in
scope or otherwise.
Chapter 7. The Transdisciplinary Carats of Patristic Byzantine Tradition151
7.2 The Christological Dogma

Among his precursors in transdisciplinary thinking, Basarab Nicolescu men-
tions as an important contributor Romanian philosopher Lucian Blaga, a gen-
uine ‘man of the included middle’ who discovered ‘the contradictory comple-
mentarity’ of reality even before Lupasco [4, pp. 62-63]. The reference to
Blaga in this context allows me to reiterate his understanding of dogma not
as formulated doctrine but as a way of thinking or a methodological approach
to truth [3, pp. 198, 263], and as a ‘transfigured antinomy’ [3, pp. 216-227].
This highly nuanced concept is crucial to the understanding of the logic behind
Chalcedonian Christology. But why do we need to visit Chalcedon? Chris-
tological logic lies at the very core of the entire intellectual, axiological and
practical system of Byzantium, which in the rich diversity of its expressions
offers innumerable samples of a transdisciplinary–like, nuanced and inclusive
thinking. More precisely, it is the logic of unions and distinctions, of unity
in diversity and of diversity in unity, a logic that Nicolescu considers to be
characteristic to Tradition in general [1, pp. 179-180] and which I found to
have been consciously embraced and consistently utilized by the Byzantines.
In the case of the Byzantine synthesis, this at once contradictory and inclusive
logic led to the emergence of a whole culture of paradoxes, whose signposts
are manifest as we shall discover below in the zenith of theory, in the nadir
of the practical life and everywhere in between; a culture of antinomies that
are at the same time irreducible and reconcilable. By far the most obvious
expression of this culture is Chalcedonian Christology, to which I shall turn a
little later. What matters for now is that by understanding the structure of the
Christological formula of Chalcedon we are led to comprehend the tradition it
represents. This is where the recourse to Blaga’s concept of dogma proves to
be very useful, a concept that should not be assimilated with the current idea
of dogma as an ecclesiastical decree on faith.
According to Blaga [3, pp. 264-265; 5, pp. 315-320, 389-403], there are
two kinds of thinking and therefore two ways of knowing reality. The most
common is the enstatic intellect, reductionist in nature and ironically associ-
ated with the ‘paradisal’ manner or, technically, the way of ‘plus-knowledge,’
a way of thinking that operates by accumulation of information and by filling
the gaps in the data. Reduced to the basic operations pertaining to the hu-
man mind, the enstatic intellect rejects the mysteries, denies antinomies and
avoids their paradoxical expressions, thus producing a unilaterally sketched
and non-contradictory image of reality. In turn, as a less common way of
thinking, the ecstatic intellect, illustrative of the ‘luciferian’ manner or the
way of ‘minus-knowledge,’ is contradictory and inclusive in nature, breathing
the pure air of the various mysteries and the problems they entail; in other
words, the ecstatic intellect deftly moves within the paradoxical world of the
antinomic objects. In line with the above, Blaga perceived the morphology of
heresy (i.e. God is either one or three; Christ is either God or man) as typical
of the enstatic or reductive thinking; the‘paradisal’ extinction of all the mys-
teries through overtly simplified representations. In exchange, he considered

the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas, which are antinomic in structure
and paradoxical in expression (God is both one and three; Christ is both God
and man), as bearing the signature of the ecstatic intellect and the ‘luciferian’
kind of knowledge [3, pp. 212-215], dubbed by the Byzantines as mystical
and apophatic. In a transdisciplinary translation, Blaga referred to the two
types of logic, binary and ternary. The enstatic intellect arrogantly operates
by simplifying the mysteries, and thus allowing the slumber of reason to con-
tinue untroubled by the fact that it accepts only the objects it could represent
according to the narrow canons of binary logic, the logic of the excluded mid-
dle. In turn, the ecstatic intellect stems from a spirit that is both alert and
humble, operating by the means of ternary logic, i.e. of the included middle,
exhibiting the capacity to accept reality as it perceives it, in all its paradox-
ical and contradictory complexity, without needing‘to logically formalize the
contradiction’ [4, p. 63]. As a consequence, when it ‘dogmatizes’ the ecstatic
intellect aims at transcending its own limitations, at defeating the tempta-
tion of reducing the mysteries of reality, and their logical contradictions, to
facile depictions [3, p. 265]; thus it secures the permanence of all mysteries,
and furthermore empowers or radicalizes them [5, pp. 384-389, 398-399]. In
this fashion, by changing the direction of knowledge [5, p. 392] it arrives to
‘dogmatic’ or radically antinomic representations of reality – paraphrasing our
philosopher, dogma is the articulation of a mystery as mystery – antinomies
that reach paradoxical forms through a process of scission or transfiguration
[3, pp. 216-224]. Blaga found this last stage of the ‘dogmatic’ or intellective
process, namely, the ‘ecstatic’ transfiguration of antinomies, to be a concession
made to the human mind and its weaknesses [3, p. 221]. For instance, and to
bring the discussion closer to our topic, in the Christological dogma about the
Savior as both one and double [3, pp. 218-219], the process of transfiguration
polishes the edges of the antinomy, or hides it to some extent, by discerning the
level of the (one) person and that of the (two) natures. Nevertheless, precisely
this stage of the ‘dogmatic’ process is of interest here since, in my opinion, it
illustrates a transdisciplinary kind of thinking, as we shall see in the analysis
of Chalcedonian Christology. Before that, however, a few more notes on the
operations of the ecstatic intellect are in order.
In a pontifical manner, etymologically speaking, dogma (as defined by
Blaga) illustrates the tremendous endeavors of the mind to circumscribe di-
verse and more so contradictory aspects, and therefore to bridge various levels
of reality. In order to account for these levels, the ecstatic intellect walks
the path of humility and challenges the fundamentally reductionist nature of
the human mind, a mind that finds its natural expressions in the Aristotelian
non-contradictory logic, in the Cartesian clear and distinct ideas, and in the
empirical representations of positivism. Thus, moving outside its comfort zone,
the ecstatic intellect seeks to position itself simultaneously on various levels
of perception. The ecstatic intellect knows that both the binary logic of non-
contradiction and disciplinary limitations will remain forever overwhelmed by
the complexity of an otherwise paradoxical reality; it knows that finitum non

capax infinitum and that therefore it needs to sacrifice its peace in order to
make sense of things [3, p. 203]. This realization determines it to attempt the
transcending of all excessive specialization, albeit not by annulling disciplinary
competences, so that it is enabled to consider the objects of its interest from a
variety of epistemological angles. It is as if, when looking at a mountain – the
metaphor to which I shall turn in the next section – the ecstatic intellect, typ-
ical of a transdisciplinary thinking, has the simultaneous intuition of all of the
mountain’s sides; it is able to circumscribe the mountain of reality from above
and below, giving an account of each and every level of reality by considering
them through the lens of various levels of perception.
True, it is hard to believe that a single human mind could arrive at math-
esis universalis or be capable of all the levels of perception, although I do not
doubt that in the existential and cognitive metamorphosis known as the expe-
rience of holiness, that remains an open possibility. It is more likely, however,
that such an achievement is in hand for a community that operates within
the parameters of the ecstatic intellect, a community which I unrestrainedly
designate as transdisciplinary. Perhaps the best traditional illustration of a
transdisciplinary community – guided by the principle called by St. Max-
imus the Confessor synexetasis, ‘careful consideration in togetherness’ [6, col.
960B] – is the synod or council, be it local, regional or ecumenical. The very
concept of the synod (from the Greek synodos, ‘common way’ or ‘traveling
together’) expresses with great accuracy the foundational principle of a trans-
disciplinary community. Within such ecclesiastical gatherings the objects of
contention, usually doctrinal antinomies, are considered from a variety of per-
spectives and eventually are formulated in paradoxical terms. The classic case
is of course the council of Chalcedon (451 CE) [7, pp. 33-45]. The impor-
tance of this council consists in that it articulated the Christological dogma
in two different theological languages, which illustrate the perceptions of the
two main schools of the time, that of Alexandria and of Antioch. The rivalry
and the oppositions between these two schools are well documented. Existen-
tially motivated, Alexandrine theology was interested in the person of Christ
and the complex unity of his ‘hypostatic’ structure, whereas the Antiochene
school, hermeneutically motivated, focused on the rapports between the two
natures of the Lord. More precisely, the discord referred to the personalist
orientation of the former, which found in Christology the interpretive key for
the experience of holiness, and the ontological propensities of the latter, which
found in the metaphysical approach to the two natures of the Savior a key
to comprehending some problematic passages in the gospels. Both demarches
came to be genially synthesized at Chalcedon.
Resulting from the encounter between the two theological methods, Chal-
cedonian Christology proposed in anticipation, beyond its doctrinal content,
elements of an intellectual schema typical of the transdisciplinary approach –
thus representing a genuine dogma, in the sense ascribed by Blaga. More pre-
cisely, whilst proclaiming the Christological antinomy of unity in distinction,
normative for the Byzantine mindset, this dogma discriminated the plans of
the contradiction by presenting the mystery of Christ in the ‘transfigured’ form
of a hypostatic or personal unity (‘one person and one hypostasis’), echoing
the Alexandrine sensitivities, and physical duality (‘in two natures’), which
addressed the Antiochene criteria [8, p. 180]. The instruments of this dis-
crimination were four famous adverbs, of which two, ‘undividedly’ and ‘in-
separably,’ typically Alexandrine, referred to the complexity of the person of
Christ, whereas the last two, ‘without confusion’ and ‘immovably,’ typically
Antiochene, signified the permanence and the undamaged aspect of both na-
tures [8, p. 180]. In this fashion the four adverbs made possible a harmonious
and creative synthesis of two different theological approaches. Thus, by be-
ing of one essence with both the Father and the humankind, the Byzantine
Christ is ‘truly God and truly a man’ [8, p. 180]; nevertheless, at the same
time he is an existential or personal unity situated beyond the two natures,
divine and human, ‘the way what is above nature is higher than the natural,’
as later clarified by St. Maximus [9, col. 1097C]. In arriving to this conclu-
sion, whilst making concessions to the human mind by the distinction between
person and natures, the Chalcedonian dogma both contained and transcended
the specific representations of the two aforementioned theological traditions;
it transcended the two representations by harmonizing their main views and
tenets, which before were considered as irreconcilable. This exploit was pos-
sible only given the capacity of the ecclesial – genuinely ecstatic – mind to
utilize, be it implicitly, the transdisciplinary principle of the included middle.
Indeed, the Chalcedonian mystery of Christ referred to the Lord as being both
one person and two natures. In turn, the heretical mind, illustrative of the
enstatic intellect, undertook to speak either of two persons because of the two
natures or of one nature because of the single person [3, pp. 218-219]. For the
reductionist mind, which operated along the lines of the binary logic of the
excluded middle, the notions of unity and duality were incompatible. Instead,
at Chalcedon unity and duality were perceived as equally true and mutually
consistent, although on two different levels of reality. Thus the Byzantines
walked into the valley of astonishment, and, to paraphrase Blaga, they did so
without destroying the world’s corolla of wonders and without extinguishing
by their thought the mysteries encountered therein. The same ‘Chalcedonian’
capacity transpires through their other accomplishments, as we shall see in
what follows.
7.3 Levels of Interpretation

I turn now to a special case of the widespread metaphor of the mountain, here
Tabor, the place of Christ’s transfiguration, as interpreted by St. Maximus
the Confessor (d. 662). Although the event of transfiguration was already the
object of a lengthy contemplation in his Ambigua [9, cols. 1125D-1137C], the
Confessor returned to this topic in a section dedicated to the exploration of the
mystical meanings signified by the two prophets present there, i.e. Moses and
Elijah [9, cols. 1160C-1169B]. Of relevance are the perceptions of the three
disciples that witnessed the event, in the interpretation of St. Maximus [9, col.
1160B-D]. I pointed out elsewhere [10, pp. 287-288] how, whilst interpreting
the significance of the event, he depicted the two prophets as illustrating two
ways of the spiritual life, i.e. marriage and celibacy, which, although very
different in their scope and method, are equally venerable since both lead to
Christ when approached through virtue [9, col. 1161D]. In commenting on
my material referred to at [10], Adam G. Cooper observed that when consid-
ered within its immediate context the symmetry I perceived in the passage is
relativized by the preference of the Confessor for celibacy and other aspects
related to this status [11]. Now, whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, Cooper
was right to note that the rapport between marriage and celibacy cannot be
properly considered outside the whole section dedicated to the contemplation
of the two prophets; in fact he found in this section eight such pairs. More
precisely, and according to him, in a symbolic key Moses represents the le-
gal word, wisdom, knowledge, praxis, marriage, death, time and the sensible,
whereas Elijah illustrates the prophetic word, kindness, education, contem-
plation, celibacy, life, nature and the intelligible. Cooper was likewise correct
to observe that for St. Maximus the aspects signified by Elijah were more
important than those illustrated by Moses. Nevertheless, before moving any
further I would like to observe that the imbalance noted by Cooper between
the two series of aspects refers in fact to the different ways in which they lead
to Christ, easier and in a more difficult manner, respectively; the series associ-
ated with Moses was not altogether discarded by the Confessor, an aspect with
which Cooper agreed. That said, what matters is that within the Maximian
vision the aspects signified by both Moses and Elijah point to Christ, reaching
a synthesis and finding fulfillment in him, a theme to which I shall return.
Given the transdisciplinary carats of this approach, which I shall address
soon, of interest here is the fact that St. Maximus highlighted a variety of
nuances implied by the two prophets and also that he made no special ef-
fort in bringing these aspects to a total accord. We recognize features of
Blaga’s ‘luciferian’ knowledge, which is primarily concerned with the rough
contours pertaining to the mysteries and their associated problems, not with
making them palatable [5, pp. 317-318]. And indeed, far from imposing the
vertical reading seemingly suggested by Cooper, e.g. a reading of the Moses
series in which the principle or spirit of the law would correspond to wisdom,
knowledge, asceticism, marriage, life, time and the sensible creation [9, cols.
1161A-1164A], the saint rather proposed a problematic horizontal reading, in
polarizing pairs, as he also did elsewhere [12, cols. 684D-685A]. For instance,
in a horizontal reading, and without these pairs losing their edges, the spirit
of the law corresponds to the prophetic spirit, wisdom to kindness, knowledge
to education, asceticism to contemplation, marriage to celibacy, and so on and
so forth. Although a vertical reading would be consistent with the bridges the
Confessor built elsewhere [9, cols. 1304D-1308C] over the abysses separating
realities, our text does not explicitly attempt a vertical harmonization of the
eight aspects; instead, and anticipating the transdisciplinary perspective of

the levels of reality and perception, it proposes their horizontal unification, in
pairs, of which four make reference to Christ and/or God as pivotal for their
respective syntheses. More precisely, these pairs highlight Christ and/or God
as their ‘higher’ points of convergence.
To be more specific, the passage proposes from the outset the presence
of Moses and Elijah next to Christ as pointing to the fact that the Lord,
as Logos and God, is the origin and content of all the proclamations of the
Law and the Prophets; literally, Christ is ‘the one from whom [originate] and
about whom’ are all those proclamations [9, cols. 1161A, 1164A]. Similarly,
the second interpretation shows wisdom and kindness as united to Christ both
directly and through the two prophets who symbolize them [9, col. 1161A];
further down, both marriage through Moses and celibacy through Elijah are
in the proximity of divine Logos and lead mystically to him [9, col. 1161D];
even further down, the two saints signify the fact that both nature and time
are close to God, who is their ‘cause and creator’ [9, col. 1164A]. All the other
pairs, namely, knowledge and education, asceticism and contemplation, life
and death, sensible and intelligible, are discussed only as signified by the two
prophets, with no regard to their possible unification. Nevertheless, this does
not mean that they could not be ‘bridged’ to form higher syntheses; it just
means that St. Maximus was not interested in addressing such matters within
this context. In various other places, the Confessor showed at least some of
them as brought to a synthesis [12, cols. 668C-669D; 13, col. 681ÎŚ]. Such
Maximian parallels confirm the interpretation of the whole section in terms
of a horizontal unification or synthesis, and as unification with reference to
the ‘higher’ point represented by Christ, the latter being within, between and
beyond these pairs [9, cols. 1164A, 1165D-1168A] – an idea that pervades the
Ambigua [see e.g. 9, cols. 1129CD, 1152CD].
There is no need to address the specifics of the eight pairs. In turn, note-
worthy is the significance ascribed to the two prophetic figures within St.
Maximus’ interpretation, a significance which was considered from eight differ-
ent viewpoints, antedating the transdisciplinary levels of perception. Indeed,
within the Maximian multilevel approach we identify various disciplinary com-
petences, from the study of Scripture to the contemplation of the cosmos, from
ethics to epistemology, and from theory to being, all of which are complexly
inferred from the symbolic figures of the two prophets; moreover, the compre-
hensive symbol of the two prophets present on the mountain appears to signify
an overarching framework where the various perspectives converge into depict-
ing a multilayered reality. Through symbols and beyond them, the Confessor
sketched the elements of a method endowed with high transdisciplinary inten-
sity, although he could in no way apply these elements along the lines of the
modern exigencies pertaining to transdisciplinary methodology. Although in
the brief prologue of the section St. Maximus reiterated that such perceptions
are available only to those who, like the apostles, contemplate the mysteries
of reality ‘in ways that are truly gnostic’ [9, col. 1160A], his hermeneuti-
cal system could be readily represented through the typical transdisciplinary

metaphor of the mountain of knowledge [1, pp. 187-189; 14, pp. 46-47], as a
methodical approach to reality. This metaphor conveys the message that dis-
ciplinary competences – like the various sides and altitudes of the mountain
– and their outcomes should be interpreted within the framework of a whole
that traverses them, is present in and between them, and likewise goes beyond
them. This conclusion is confirmed by the reference to Christ, in four of the
eight pairs and throughout the Maximian corpus [see e.g. 13, 620C-621C], as a
‘higher’ mediating principle in which can be identified the transdisciplinary in-
cluded middle. For the Confessor, therefore, Christ is the ternary mediator of
all polarities, which brings to synthesis all the levels of reality and perception
without melting them into an indistinct whole.
The great lesson of St. Maximus’ multilevel interpretation of the two
prophets consists precisely in presenting the dynamic unity of the whole as
effected without a reduction of the levels of perception and reality – the hall-
mark of a dogmatic attitude in the sense given by Blaga, and of a trans-
disciplinary approach for Nicolescu. As a matter of fact, it seems that the
Confessor already worked out that transdisciplinary hermeneutics centered on
Christ, which Nicolescu is seeking [2, p. 84].
7.4 Science, Technology, Theology and the

Spiritual Life
The complexities pertaining to the Byzantine synthesis cannot be reduced to
the diaphanous zones of the spiritual progress and of contemplative accom-
plishments, even though the value of these aspects for the human experience
in general and transdisciplinarity in particular could not be ignored. In the
following I shall provide examples of a practical transdisciplinary attitude in
Byzantium by referring to two patristic paradigms, namely, the Maximian
bipolarity of civilization and the spiritual life, and the tripartite epistemology
of St. Gregory Palamas.
We have become familiar with St. Maximus the Confessor, almost unan-
imously considered as the most significant Byzantine theologian. One of his
fascinating contributions is the elaboration of a theory of everything [15; 16],
a generous multilayered representation of reality [9, 1304D-1316A; 13, 436AB]
as understood by the Byzantines. This encompassing worldview, which was
explored by many contemporary scholars [17; 18; 19; 20; 21], yet not in a
transdisciplinary perspective, proposes five polarities or levels of reality, each
level containing two elements that are either contradictory or at least engaged
in tense relationships; from the viewpoint of this pattern, the five polarities
look identical to the eight pairs discussed above in regards to Moses and Eli-
jah. The five polarities (uncreated and created, intelligible and sensible, sky
and earth, paradise and civilization, and male and female) appear as chal-
lenges addressed to the human conscience, the latter being called to achieve
its transcendent destiny (signified by the term anthropos, the being that both
gazes and grows upwards) [9, col. 1305B] by synthesizing all these polarized
levels. The process of unification unfolds in the inverse order of the list of
polarities, thus beginning with the anthropological synthesis and continuing
with the terrestrial unification of civilization and the paradise, and so on up
to the highest communion, of the created and the uncreated. It is true that
for our purposes the entire theory would be relevant, since it confirms the
transdisciplinary carats of Byzantine thinking; however, I shall address here
only the second unification, which falls within the scope of this section.
The five Maximian syntheses do not entail a fusion of the elements per-
taining to the five polarities [15, pp. 139-140]; unification or synthesis takes
place through the building of existential bridges between the various elements,
so that both their specific differences are protected and their convergence is
secured. We recognize here the traces of the Chalcedonian logic of unions and
distinctions [22, pp. 22-23, 49-51; 23, pp. 200-201, 203-205]. Before address-
ing the content of the second synthesis, it is useful to identify the issue that it
undertakes to solve within the framework of Chalcedonian logic. Behind the
idea of the second synthesis there is the tension, sometimes unbearable even in
our age, between the spiritual life and the world of science and technology; it is
a matter of evidence that most scientifically minded people ignore spirituality
and, likewise, that most people that are on a spiritual quest fear science and
despise technology; however, this is not a new issue, and since it was present
in his own time the Confessor felt the need to offer a solution. To depict this
tension, St. Maximus chose the metaphor of paradise and the inhabited or civ-
ilized space [9, col. 1305A,D]. It must be noted that the Maximian paradise is
not just an allusion to the scriptural narrative of Adam and Eve; most often
it refers to the spiritual life in general or rather the experience of holiness [10].
In the days of the Confessor, still affected by the extreme spiritualism of
the later Origenist tradition, certain monastic circles cultivated a kind of civ-
ilizational decontextualization that was characterized, among other aspects,
by the prohibition of technology. Technology was despised for belonging with
the ephemeral things and more so to the fallen state of humankind. True,
following in the footsteps of St. Gregory the Theologian, the Confessor des-
ignated the paradisal or spiritual experience as ‘non-technological life’ [9, col.
1356A; 24, col. 632C] yet in full agreement with the Cappadocian theologian
he understood by this the independence, the freedom of Christ and the saints
from all tools or instruments, without implying a negative connotation in re-
gards to technology. As a matter of fact, against the monastic milieus that
displayed reticence toward science and technology in the name of detachment
from things material, and likewise against those completely dependent on tools
and technological means, for whom the spiritual journey was meaningless, St.
Maximus proposed the integrative perspective of a paradisal life within the
civilized world. Civilization, science and technology, are not inherently evil;
taken at face value, most instruments created by humankind are neutral from
an ethical viewpoint; the only thing that could impose on them a negative con-
notation is their incorrect, irrational employment; their misuse. The Confessor

insisted on the process through which the misuse of things and instruments
becomes possible. It is the unfolding of human activities in a mindless way
and against nature, through orientation towards things ‘lesser than the human
being,’ upon which the human being was divinely appointed to rule [9, col.
1308C; 13, col. 253A-D]. Somewhere else St. Maximus returned to the idea
with even more intensity, by construing an antithesis between the ‘original’
freedom of human beings from things under, around and within them, and the
present human existence that unfolds under the tyranny of necessity; necessity
coerces humankind to explore the ‘principles of arts/techniques’ in order to
make tools, upon which it depends for its survival [9, col. 1353C]. Beyond
the scriptural suggestion it contains, this contrast is not about the lack of
usefulness of tools; it actually refers to the fact that ultimately the human
being should be the master of technology and not dominated by it, or by any
anonymous powers for that matter.
Given all of this, the second synthesis cannot come as a surprise; the spir-
itual life and technology are not fundamentally incompatible and therefore
paradise can thrive in the midst of the civilized world [9, col. 1305D]. This is
precisely the message of the second Maximian unification, a synthesis which
was effected by Christ who sanctified the civilized world [9, col. 1309B] and is
continuously achieved by the human beings that adopt a life of holiness (‘a life
befitting the saints’) [9, col. 1305D]. We can safely surmise from the above that
for St. Maximus human perfection cannot be reached unilaterally on account
of either the inner life or the civilizational progress. By promoting both aspects
without advising their fusion, the Confessor reconfirmed the transdisciplinary
propensities of the patristic Byzantine tradition. His solution, of a holistic
kind, anticipated and made possible the Palamite articulation of the complex
rapports between science and/or technology, theology and spirituality.
St. Gregory Palamas (d. 1359) followed closely in the footsteps of St. Max-
imus, in more than one matter. A practitioner of hesychast mysticism, i.e. the
Byzantine way of the inner peace, and a theoretician of humankind’s partic-
ipation in the divine uncreated energies [25, pp. 234-242], Palamas was also
an encyclopedic mind, like the Confessor himself and almost all the scholars
of the time. The alliance between these two sides of his formation, scientific-
philosophical and theological-spiritual, permitted him to undertake creative
excursions into most of these areas [26; 27; 28; 29]. Relevant here is the fact
that, without abandoning it St. Gregory displayed an incredible freedom from
the constraints of the Aristotelian logic of non-contradiction and the excluded
middle. For instance, Yangazoglou [30, p. 10] observed that in discussing
demonstrative syllogisms Palamas affirmed that they are both applicable and
inapplicable to God. This approach, denoting the ecstatic logic of the included
middle, recalls Blaga’s transfigured antinomies; indeed, further nuancing his
statement Palamas discriminated the plans of the contradiction by showing
how demonstrative syllogisms can be utilized in regards to divine energies but
not with reference to the inner life, or essence, of God. The same goes for St.
Gregory’s reference to God as ‘one’ and ‘not-one,’ discussed by Bradshaw [25,

pp. 240-241].
We encounter a similar freedom in the manner in which St. Gregory op-
erated within an integrative schema of a hierarchical type, where the word
‘hierarchy’ does not signify an ordering of the objects in terms of superior
and inferior. More precisely, Palamas worked in the parameters of a stratified
worldview for which, in a transdisciplinary rendition, the various levels of per-
ception corresponded to the respective levels of reality. For example, in writing
A Hundred and Fifty Chapters [31] the saint evidenced the polygonal charac-
ter of his vision, by showing his acumen as both a theologian and a scientist,
according to the measure of that age. What we find in this writing, perhaps to
the surprise of a reader who would expect some sort of syncretistic approach, is
not an amalgamation of scientific and theological data; instead, we discover a
clear disciplinary demarcation of the topics discussed and the methods utilized
by the author. Indeed, therein it is as a scientist that St Gregory addressed
matters such as the natural energy of created things, against the mythologiz-
ing tendencies to ascribe to their movement animistic qualities [31, pp. 84-86,
88, 96-98]; also, it is as a scientist that he manifested reservations toward the
questionable information gathered by sensorial perceptions [31, pp. 98-102].
Furthermore, he highlighted the usefulness of scientific research that leads to
technological innovation [31, p. 102; 30, p. 14], which in turn contributes to
the quality of human life. Free from any disciplinary confusion, throughout
the Palamite chapters dedicated to natural knowledge there is almost no ref-
erence to theology. Similarly, in the chapters on theology – which basically
constitute an overview of the classical narrative about creation, fall and salva-
tion [31, pp. 114-150], Palamas made no reference to the sciences. The saint
operated consciously on two disciplinary fronts or levels of perception, which
he understood as autonomous in regards to their specific competences. In his
terms, it was about the plan of natural knowledge (physike), which explored
the diversity of cosmic phenomena, and the spiritual knowledge (pneumatike),
competent in things ‘pertaining to the Spirit’ [31, p. 102; 29, pp. 40-43]. This
disciplinary demarcation corresponds to the distinction, fundamental for the
Palamite demarche, between knowledge within the limits of the created, and
mystical knowledge, which operates beyond such created parameters [32, pp.
226, 230; 25, pp. 236-237].
What matters here is that whilst clearly demarcating the two epistemolog-
ical fields, Palamas adopted a transdisciplinary attitude and did not hesitate
to situate himself within both of them, in order to consider the objects at
hand. In the light of this very accomplishment, Palamas himself could be con-
sidered the ‘higher’ point for the synthesis between theology and science! To a
large extent his approach corresponds to the Maximian multilevel hermeneu-
tics, discussed above, St. Gregory showing the rare capacity to attack the
mountain of knowledge from various cardinal points; more importantly, he
displayed an ability to understand the disciplinary boundaries perhaps better
than anyone before him in tradition. Furthermore, by adding a third dimen-
sion, he consciously proposed a tripartite methodology that allowed him to

explore nature scientifically, to interpret theologically the meaning of both hu-
man and cosmic existence, and to promote the spiritual life as a privileged way
to achieve human perfection. In other words, this tripartite hierarchical, or
multilevel, schema refers to scientific information, theological formation and
spiritual transformation, as the perfect algorithm of a holistic progress [28,
pp. 50-51; 29, pp. 41-42], in which we trace, amplified, St. Maximus’ program
of unifying civilization and the paradisal experience. In so doing, Palamas
proved consistency with his notion of the three types of perception, i.e. empir-
ical, reflective and mystical [31, pp. 156-158; 32, p. 236], and likewise with St
Basil the Great’s provisions concerning the qualities required from a Christian
researcher, namely, personal purification and contemplative capacity, scien-
tific inquisitiveness and a theological mind [33, col. 4A]. The result of this
approach was not the chaos of syncretism; the three levels of perception con-
stituted together a tree, or a mountain, of knowledge whose regions preserved
their distinctiveness whilst converging into a stratified map of reality.
St Gregory Palamas’ message is as generous as that of his predecessors in
the Byzantine tradition; within the hierarchical schema of St Gregory, trans-
disciplinary in nature, each field of knowledge can bring unhindered its specific
input, thus contributing to the great effort of construing a multilevel repre-
sentation of reality. More so, this approach affirms the possibility for a person
from the sphere of theology and the spiritual life to be able to make scientific
and technological contributions, and vice versa, the possibility of a scientist
or engineer to undertake the spiritual transformation. As a matter of fact,
this program, which functioned more or less implicitly in the Byzantine world,
proved to be a factor that generated amazing innovations that still wait for a
proper appraisal [34; 35].
7.5 Conclusion
We have seen above how, through a series of theoretical accomplishments,
some of the most prominent Holy Fathers of the Byzantine tradition have
exhibited, more or less instinctively, the ability to utilize principles pertaining
to what is currently known as transdisciplinarity. Among these principles,
they copiously referred to the complexity of reality, which they contemplated
as structured on various levels. These findings confirm Basarab Nicolescu’s
intuitions regarding the transdisciplinary propensities of the Church Fathers.
We have seen also how their theoretical choices found practical echoes in the
integrative attitude of the Byzantines, who learnt to respect the competences
of the various disciplines, granting to all of them autonomy, the right to be,
within a holistic worldview. As a result, they formed a generous concept
of the possibility of experiencing a spiritual life within the context of the
civilized world. The cultural history of transdisciplinarity should enshrine
these contributions within its hall of fame. True, given that, according to
an observation of philosopher David Bradshaw [25, pp. 263-264], the West
obstinately ignored Byzantium and its accomplishments since the threshold of

the first two Christian millennia, it is no surprise that it likewise forgot about
the transdisciplinary carats of the Byzantine tradition. Transdisciplinarity is
the way for our culture to remember what was forgotten both in the West
and among those who are the ostensible inheritors of the Byzantine tradition,
namely, contemporary Orthodox Christians.
Another noteworthy aspect that emerges from the above analyses is the fact
that the transdisciplinary potential of the patristic Byzantine tradition could
not have been highlighted in all its power if transdisciplinarity did not literally
irrupt in our day and age. As the messianic significance of Hebrew Scripture
was evidenced by the advent of Christ, likewise the transdisciplinary poten-
tial of Byzantine tradition comes to light when considered through the lens of
contemporary transdisciplinarity. In this sense, both the patristic Byzantine
tradition in particular and the traditions of the world in general profit signifi-
cantly from the light projected by transdisciplinarity upon their quests, values
and aspirations.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this article was presented for the symposium ‘Basarab
Nicolescu – 70,’ held at the Romanian Academy (Bucharest; November 12,
2012). I would like to express my gratitude to David Bradshaw, for kindly
reading my article in such short a notice, to the TJES reviewers for their
pertinent suggestions, to Adam Cooper for allowing me to peruse his still
unpublished paper, cited herein, and to Mario Baghos, for his careful and
patient rectification of my stylistic shortcomings.
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33-45.
8. Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, ed. Pelikan,
J. and Hotchkiss, V. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003.
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1417.
10. Costache, D., 2013. Living above Gender: Insights from Saint Maximus the
Confessor. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 21(2), pp. 261-290.
11. Cooper, A.G., 2013. Maximus on the mystery of marriage and the body: a
reconsideration. Paper presented for the international symposium on Saint
Maximus the Confessor, University of Belgrade, 2012; forthcoming in the pro-
ceedings of the symposium.
12. Saint Maximus the Confessor, 1963. Mystagogia, in PG 91, cols. 657-717.
13. Saint Maximus the Confessor, 1865. Quaestiones ad Thalassium, in PG 90,
cols. 244-785.
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gion: Antagonism or complementarity?, ed. Nicolescu, B. and Stavinschi, M.
Bucharest: XXI Eonul dogmatic, pp. 37-48.
15. Costache, D., 2006. Going Upwards with Everything You Are: The Unifying
Ladder of St Maximus the Confessor. In: Science and Orthodoxy: A Necessary
Dialogue, ed. Nicolescu, B. and Stavinschi, M. Bucharest: Curtea Veche, pp.
135-144.
16. Costache, D., 2011. Seeking Out the Antecedents of the Maximian Theory of
Everything: St Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 38. Phronema, 26(2), pp.
27-45.
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19. De Angelis, B., 2002. Natura, persona, liberta: L’antropologia di Massimo il
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nation according to Some Early Christian and Byzantine Writers. Dumbarton
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24. Saint Gregory the Theologian, 1858. In sanctum Pascha, in PG 36, cols. 624-
664.
25. Bradshaw, D., 2004. Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division
of Christendom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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God, Freedom and Nature, ed. Laura, R.S., Buchanan, R.A. and Chapman,
A.K. Sydney – New York – Boston: Body and Soul Dynamics, pp. 132-138.
27. Costache, D., 2011. Experiencing the Divine Life: Levels of Participation in
St Gregory Palamas’ On the Divine and Deifying Participation. Phronema,
26(1), pp. 9-25.
28. Costache, D., 2011. The Other Path in Science, Theology and Spirituality:
Pondering a Fourteenth Century Byzantine Model. Transdisciplinary Studies,
1, pp. 39-54.
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in St Gregory Palamas’ One Hundred and Fifty Chapters. Transdisciplinarity
in Science and Religion, 3, pp. 27-46.
30. Yangazoglou, S., 1996. Philosophy and Theology: The Demonstrative Method
in the Theology of St Gregory Palamas. The Greek Orthodox Theological
Review, 41(1), pp. 1-18.
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Chapters – A Critical Edition, Translation and Study. Studies and Texts no.
83. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, pp. 82-256.
32. Gregory Palamas, 1983. Hapanta ta erga, Vol. 3, ed. Panayiotis Chrestou.
Thessalonika: Gregorios ho Palamas.
33. Saint Basil the Great, 1857. Homiliae in Hexaemeron, in PG 29, cols. 4-208.
34. Tatakis, B.N., 2007. Christian Philosophy in the Patristic and Byzantine
Tradition, tr. Dragas, G.D. Rollinsford: Orthodox Research Institute.
35. Spanos, A., 2010. “To Every Innovation, Anathema” (?) Some Preliminary
Thoughts on the Study of Byzantine Innovation. In: Mysterion, strategike og
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Oslo: Novus Forlag, pp. 51-59.
About the Author
Dr. Doru Costache is Senior Lecturer in patristics at St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox

Theological College, Sydney, and Presbyter under the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese
of Australia. He holds a ThD from the University of Bucharest and is a co-convener
of the St Andrew’s Patristic Symposia. He has published and edited a number of
books in Romanian, dealing with theology and the field of science and theology, and
numerous articles, in both English and Romanian, in patristics, theology, and science
and theology. He is currently working on a book dealing with the creation narrative
(Genesis) as represented within Byzantine tradition.
CHAPTER 8
Vision and Experience: The Contribution of
Art to Transdisciplinary Knowledge
Danielle Boutet, St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College, Sydney, Australia.
he author presents the practice of art as a form of knowledge and asks:

T What can one know through art? What does art contribute to transdis-
ciplinarity? From an epistemological point of view, what is the nature of
knowledge available through art? Here, art is described as a material, aes-
thetic, experiential and visionary form of knowledge, sharing similarities with
alchemy. While science studies facts, art creates meaning using metaphors
and correspondences. The Chapter also discusses modes of knowing: physics
and biology, for example, belong to the scientific mode. Psychoanalysis and
mythology use a hermeneutic mode. Philosophy is speculative and rational.
Within the social sciences, there are quantitative and qualitative modes. To
approach transdisciplinary complexity, a dialogue between and across modes of
knowing is more difficult, yet as important as dialogue across disciplines. Art
is a significant source of knowledge, and a transdisciplinary conversation needs
artists as much as scientists and philosophers.
Keywords: Art, Transdisciplinarity, Epistemology, Modes of knowing, Alchemy,

Art as experience.
8.1 Introduction
Goethe insistera sur les différences entre la connaissance de l’artiste et celle
du savant. Celui-ci procède par analyse: il divise la totalité en ses éléments
constitutifs; celui-là par synthèse: il saisit la totalité dans une intuition globale.
. . . Mais il s’agit bien dans l’un et l’autre cas de connaissance.
Todorov [1].
Einstein’s space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh’s sky.

Koestler [2].
The Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, introducing a collec-

tion of Goethe’s writings on art [1], highlights a qualifying difference between
167
two forms of knowledge, that of the artist and that of the scientist. Where a
scientist proceeds through analysis, taking a totality apart into its most basic
elements and looking at them separately, an artist knows through synthesis,
apprehending a totality in a global intuition. While the scientist uses deduc-
tion and induction to study the facts of nature, the artist uses metaphors and
correspondences to reveal the meaning in nature. Science and art are comple-
mentary, not contradictory, and Todorov insists that both forms are knowledge
in their own right.
There is something obvious in this idea. As quantum physicist Werner

Heisenberg puts it, “who could question that the spiritual content of a work of
art too illumines reality for us and makes it translucent?” [3] Yet it is rare that
knowledge from an artistic source is taken seriously in academic or scientific
contexts. We are not used to thinking of art as a form of research; not used to
deciphering and knowing what to do with the knowledge content of art works
and art processes; and not used to seeing the artist as thinker and knower –
other than as a specialist of art itself. The difficulty is not only a matter of
cultural stereotypes about art, for the epistemological challenge is real. I have
in mind a situation where an artist had been invited to contribute an artistic
perspective in a science-religion conference. He installed a series of his abstract
paintings, with no other form of explanation, implying that the artwork speaks
for itself. I also remember an article advocating the idea that an artwork is
equivalent to a text: “Drawing on the works of phenomenological philosophers
such as Croce, Dewey and Ricoeur, I argue that the artwork is a text or
work that is equivalent to the written text, and, as such, it should be seen as
the appropriate form for a fine art doctoral thesis” [4]. Personally, I would
rather maintain that an argumentative essay (such as a doctoral thesis) and
an artwork are completely different semiological and epistemological objects,
and that the artwork cannot be a “thesis” in that sense. If one writes an essay
based on one’s analysis of an artwork, then certainly the essay is a thesis;
the artwork itself, however, as aesthetic artifact, is a very different thing. We
cannot just amalgamate essays and artworks; the problem is more complicated
than that. I think the difficulty is worth diving into, however, for art – as
investigative process – is indeed a significant source of important knowledge,
and a transdisciplinary conversation needs input from artists as much as it
does that of scientists and philosophers. As an artist myself, I look here at my
own part of the challenge: how do I understand what art “says,” what kind of
epistemic modality it is, and how can I make my own knowledge accessible to
other researchers in the transdisciplinary movement?
Chapter 8. Vision and Experience: The Contribution of Art to
169
Transdisciplinary Knowledge
8.2 The Transdisciplinary Forum

In the 1990s, researching the interdisciplinary phenomenon in the arts1 led me
to posit a unity of art beyond the different disciplines, and to look for what
is common to all artistic mediums or disciplines, both traditional and new.
I began to see a certain general structure in the arts; a common process, a
common function, how the arts make meaning, a common experiential nature.
This suggested some kind of abstract category of “art,” of which the various
mediums in different cultures are specific applications. For example, if oil
painting on canvas is by no means universal, there is nevertheless a concept
of visual creation existing beyond visual mediums; it can even apply to other
mediums such as dance (one can “draw” with one’s body in space) or poetry
(one can “draw” a scene in poetry). An “arabesque” is a linear pattern found
in Islamic art and in music. Architecture can be understood as music, and
vice versa. Numerous examples can be found: if art forms and mediums are
culturally specific, some notions of composition and staging, some musical,
theatrical and choreographic principles, are universal. This general category
of “art”, albeit conceptual, enables us to distinguish what is art and what is
not art, and understand new types of work in a new medium. In this essay,
the word “art” refers to this general category.
A parallel can be drawn with knowledge, where one can also envision a
general, transdisciplinary category beyond the specific actualizations that dis-
ciplines are. We can also envision fields of knowledge that are not yet institu-
tionalized “disciplines,” but could be. Asserting that disciplines are comple-
mentary and mutually enrich one another, the transdisciplinary view aspires
to apprehend the cosmos, history and human life in their complexity as well
as their unity. The International Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies and
Research, the CIRET2 , brings together artists, writers, physicists, biologists,
physicians, psychologists, philosophers, theologians, monks, engineers, sociol-
ogists, economists, anthropologists, etc. The diversity of its membership in
itself illustrates the transdisciplinary perspective: we believe that a global vi-
sion of the world is only possible, if at all, through the dynamic articulation
of the methodologies and epistemologies of all scientific disciplines, the hu-
manities, philosophy, and the more hermeneutic, introspective and creative
modes that are literature, psychoanalysis, art, mysticism, etc. In their Moral
Project, the founders of the CIRET write: “Founded on a spirit of scientific
rigor, the activity of the International Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies and
Research will encourage the establishment of a dynamic exchange between the
exact sciences, the social sciences and art and tradition” [5]. My participa-
tion in the CIRET made me wonder about art’s specific contribution to the
transdisciplinary vision. I already had sensed from my own creative practice
1 By this I mean various situations in which the creative process involves using more than
one medium, shifting from one’s habitual medium to another, transferring methods or forms
from one medium to another or using non-traditional mediums.
2 Centre international de recherches et d’études transdisciplinaires, http://ciret-
transdisciplinarity.org/
that artistic creation is a mode of knowing [6]. Although I had never studied
the natural sciences, philosophy or social sciences seriously, I was aware of
knowing something about the world, aware that as an artist I am holding a
piece of the whole: a non-explicit yet intense intuition of the world’s invisi-
ble unity. Discussing the notion of research in an art practice, Laurier and
Gosselin remark,
When the artist is fully engaged in creative practice, there is a sense

of having access to a special kind of knowledge; one feels “knowledge-
able” and, in this sense, understands oneself to be contributing to the
elaboration of knowledge of a special kind [7]3 .
But what is the nature of that intuition? How to define that “knowledge
of a special kind” elaborated through creative practice?
8.3 Modes of Knowing

Despite the word’s etymology, trans/disciplinarity is not occurring only through
and beyond disciplines; more importantly, it occurs through and beyond modes
of knowing. For example, while biology, physics and chemistry are distinct dis-
ciplines, all three belong to the same mode of knowing, the scientific mode.
Psychoanalysis, art history and mythology, three relatively distant disciplines,
all use now and then a hermeneutic mode. Philosophy, itself subdivided into
several specialized fields, is essentially a speculative and rational way of know-
ing. Within the social sciences, quantitative and qualitative methodologies are
two deeply different modes. To approach transdisciplinary complexity, a dia-
logue between and across the different modes of knowing is just as important,
if not more important, than dialogue across disciplines. But it is also a lot
more demanding. It is one thing for medicine to understand and incorporate
the findings of biology; it is a whole other challenge to embrace how religion
or psychoanalysis view human life.
We are not used to seeing art among these modes of knowing and disciplines
of knowledge. We more often see it as a mode of expression, and in the
university we study art as subject matter and know-how; we are only just
beginning to study something else through art, as a methodology [8, 9, 10,
11, 12, 13, 14]4 . To the modern mind, art is the antithesis of science. We are
moved by the world vision expressed through works of art, but we consider
that vision to be subjective and thus devoid of scientific value – the value of
artistic works is more a matter of the emotions, feelings and visions they make
us experience5 . But to think that an artistic vision is not a form of knowing,
3 The original French reads: Quand il est pleinement engagé dans une pratique de créa-
tion, l’artiste éprouve souvent le sentiment d’accéder à un type particulier de connaissance ;

il se sent “connaissant” et, en ce sens, il comprend qu’il participe à l’élaboration de savoirs
d’un ordre particulier.
4 See arts-based research and new ideas about art as material knowledge [8 to 14].
5 This was John Dewey’s leading idea [15].
171
one has to have equated “knowledge” with “objective truth,” an equation that
is neither obvious nor natural. As if we can only know objective facts. As if in
order to qualify as “truth,” something we grasp in the mind should be grasped
unambiguously the same by everyone, beyond individual subjectivities.
8.4 The Separation of Objective and Subjective

According to the Oxford Dictionary [16], “to know” means “to have informa-
tion in your mind,” with this important precision: “as a result of experience or
because you have learned or been told it.” Yet in the last century or so, knowl-
edge has progressively become equated with only the second option: “learned”
information. In contemporary culture, knowledge is scientific knowledge, the
result of scientific research, some set of data that can be printed, exchanged,
quantified. It comes from reading and studying rather than from experience.
To get a sense of that gradual shift from an experience of the mind to trans-
missible information, it is useful to remember a few key points in European
intellectual and cultural history:
1. The scientific revolution, which through the new “scientific method” pro-
duced knowledge as we understand it today: objective and detachable
from its context and the mind which knows it.
2. The industrial revolution, coinciding with the beginning of capitalism,
which (among other things) separated work from the product of work:
the worker no longer being the maker of his work, no longer the author,
but rather a mere link in a production chain controlled by a firm that
owns and exchanges these products for profit.
3. Cartesian dualism, which establishes an irreconcilable (irreconcilable be-
cause it is ontological) distinction between the external, spatio-temporal
world of matter and stuff and the subjective experiences of consciousness.
4. The invention of art in its modern form, based on the relatively new
concepts of author, autonomous work and the general public.
To these four points, we could add a fifth yet invisible one, for it is not the
emergence of something, but rather a disappearance:
5. The rejection of alchemy, until then a major mode of knowing [17] whose
main characteristic was to be, as Françoise Bonardel remarks, “at once
meditative and operative, rather than speculative” [18]. The alchemist
knew through the Work, through working, a kind of embodied or mate-
rialized knowledge, difficult if not impossible to translate into writing.
Together, the above five points map an image: that of a separation between
work and its products, and between the mind experiencing the illumination of
knowing and what bits of information it will be able to share. This separation
is a reduction and an objectification: human work is reduced to the production

of freestanding objects to be exchanged, sold, collected; knowledge is no longer
an experience, no longer the state of an enlightened mind, it is reduced only to
the part that can be written down and exchanged. In that context, knowledge
of the scientific and technological kind presents an obvious advantage over the
other forms (embodied, experienced): that of producing those objective pieces
of information that can be detached and transmitted.
The problem is not that such objectified knowledge exists. On the con-
trary, we are most impressed by the generative power of that epistemology:
the technological and scientific advancement of industrial societies is entirely
built upon it. The problem is rather that this epistemology has become the
paradigm, the very definition of knowledge itself. In the arts, we have the
same kind of separation between the art object and the context of its making,
between the artwork and the experience of its maker. This makes possible a
flourishing art market, and the overwhelming majority of art history books
are in fact the history of artworks. In the end, the paradigmatic view is that
art amounts to the collection of artworks available throughout the world, and
knowledge is the total sum of what information is available through libraries
and websites – not the illumination in people’s minds, not the quality, breadth
and complexity of their understanding. This reduction of knowledge and art
to their tangible products may be what discredited alchemy if, as an “art of
knowledge,” it made the alchemist more intensely conscious and more knowl-
edgeable but failed to produce objective information or material objects (or
substances) usable by an external person.
8.5 The Experiential Nature of Art and Knowledge

But if, by knowledge, we were to mean the noetic and intuitive processes by
which we know something as much as the sharable contents of what we know;
if instead of seeing science, art and the various crafts as productive (in the
sense of manufacturing) activities, we were to see them as domains where
individuals pursue their own questions and projects in hope of enriching their
personal life experience; if we were to see knowledge as a state of consciousness,
as an experience of the mind; then the non-scientific modes of knowing would
appear more clearly as full-fledged epistemologies. We would see, too, that
knowing has an effect on the knower’s consciousness and intelligence, on the
refinement of his or her senses and sense of being alive and an integral part of
the world.
The Greeks had two distinct words for “knowledge”: γν ώσις and έπιστ ήµη.
The former, “gnosis,” is related to an Indo-European root (g0 en-, g0 nÅŊō-) [19,
20] which also led to the English knowledge, the Latin noscere and the French
connaissance (conoscere). The other Greek word has given us epistemology,
a more recent term meaning the science of knowledge. Gnosis refers to the
type of knowledge we have of a person, a place, a phenomenon: to be familiar
with, to know from experience, from the senses [21]. Episteme, on the other
173
hand, means the knowledge we acquire through studying and exercising [21].
The verb (epistamai) means to know in the sense of having the knowledge of
something, to know how to do something, to hold information in our mind.
The first type (gnosis) is intimate and difficult to put into ordinary discourse,
while the other on the contrary is all very transmissible. It is knowledge of
the episteme kind which is objectifiable and verifiable, while knowledge of the
gnostic kind is experienced and integral.
Naturally, we find the two types, in varying proportions, associated with
any subject. But the scientific ideal hopes to purge the episteme type of knowl-
edge of any contamination by the subjectivity of gnosis. And it is precisely
because of its pursuit of objectivity that science appears to be the opposite
of art, for art is as “gnostic” as science is “epistemic,” so to speak. We know
through art as we know a person or a place; that is, through relationship,
participation, intimacy. If one wants an objective view of some place, then
scientific studies and climate and geological data would be more informative.
But if one wants to know something about its beauty and its atmosphere, then
one needs the work of a painter, a photographer, a filmmaker, even a dancer
or composer. Yet these artists would express those subjective dimensions not
through structured discourse, but through immersion: they would not tell us
something about the place; they would propose an aesthetic experience. Ac-
tually, the verb “express” in the previous sentence may be misleading; in the
end, each person has their own experience, commensurate with the intensity
and the level of their engagement with the work. In other words, art leads
to experiential knowledge, while science leads to objective knowledge and the
speculative method of philosophy leads to rational understanding. As Susan
Sontag remarked,
A work of art encountered as a work of art is an experience, not a statement
or an answer to a question. Art is not only about something; it is something.
A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the
world.
The paradigm of dualistic opposition that structures Western thinking and

the Western worldview makes a distinction between the nature of a mode of
expression (such as art, dance, poetry and so on) and that of a mode of knowing
(such as science, philosophy and other forms of investigation). But while it
is necessary at times to distinguish between expression and experience, there
is no reason to see that distinction as mutually exclusive. Art is neither only
one nor only the other: it would be more appropriate to view art as a mode of
manifestation – an idea already implicit in the concept of creation. Art does
not express something external or remote; it is not “about something.” It is
itself that something, as Sontag said. Unlike the ideas, feelings and impressions
that we verbalize or describe, the meaning of a poem or piece of music does
not pre-exist: it comes into existence with the work. This is why art can be
at once a mode of expression and a mode of knowing. Artists, through the
images and the forms that they generate, the structures and relations they put
in place, set the parameters of an experience to be lived in a spatio-temporal
dimension that the artwork carves out of ordinary space-time, giving it form
(in/forming it).
8.6 Alchemical Mediation: Integral, Holistic

Knowledge
This experience is possible because art is material; it happens in real life, in
space, time and matter. Although its logic is poetic, metaphorical, aesthetic
and subjective, the creative work confronts the artist with all the ordinary laws
of physics, especially for the manipulation and organization of the materials,
but also – more importantly perhaps – for achieving the aesthetic effect, the
interplay between harmony and dissonance, balance and imbalance, etc. The
laws of classical mechanics, acoustics, geometry, chemistry, etc., continue to
apply in the creation of art projects. More broadly, there are all the contin-
gencies of reality: time, space, budgetary and relational constraints, etc. Art
cannot exist only in the mind, in Idea form (a major difference, here, with
philosophy); it has to materialize whatever idea it is “about,” or otherwise
give it shape, as in the case of non-material forms such as music and poetry.
These material and spatio-temporal contingencies and constraints are not
unfortunate limitations to the clarity or quality of a so-called “message” the
artist may have wanted to convey, had she had access to the infinite possi-
bilities and subtleties of language. Art is not some imperfect or imprecise
language, and certainly not a primitive form of language compared to philoso-
phy or mathematics.6 On the contrary, technical limitations, a certain lack of
skillfulness, chance occurrences, accidents and material resistance add power
and complexity to the meaning of the work. This mandatory passage through
matter and external reality adds important layers of meaning. The laws of
mechanics, acoustics and chemistry, and all the constraints of reality, actually
help the work reach beyond the artist’s imagination: the artwork is the result
of a confrontation between the artist’s idea and reality. It is here that art and
alchemy, as Michel Caron and Serge Hutin remark, seem to share a similar
epistemology:
To the traditional alchemist, the oratory and the laboratory are always inti-
mately joined: the originality of alchemical gnosis is that it rests on an absolute
correspondence between the stages of illumination and the successive material
operations. [25]7
Like the alchemical Work, the artwork realizes this “absolute correspon-
dence between the stages of illumination and the successive material opera-
6 This, I believe, is what Hegel thought when he professed the absolute superiority of
philosophy over art.

7 The original French reads: Pour l’alchimiste traditionnel, l’oratoire et le laboratoire sont
toujours indissolublement liés: l’originalité de la gnose alchimique, c’est qu’elle s’appuie sur
une correspondance absolue entre les étapes de l’illumination et les opérations matérielles
successives. Nicolas Bourriaud [26] also mentions this conjunctio between the oratory and
the laboratory in art.
175
tions.” In a remarkable book on alchemy and art [18], Bonardel described the
dynamic relation between the respective potentials and limits of Matter and
Spirit, imagination and the real, as a form of “balancing.” More than balanc-
ing, in fact, I think it is a question of activating one through the other. The
various arts, in that regard, effectuate a different balance: music, dance, visual
arts, sculpture, theatre and literature each involve a different ratio between
material and spiritual components, between space, time and ideas, between
human and form, between imagined and real, and so forth. Different works
set in motion different proportions of matter and spirit, technique and inspira-
tion, tradition and innovation, technology and mythology, concept and chance,
preparation and improvisation. But it is in the various articulations of the ra-
tio between human genius and the forms that structure reality, that art makes
happen (in lived reality) an illuminating moment, a heightened meaning, a
unique or new feeling.
In this way, we might consider art and alchemy as two domains of a single
mode of knowing, for they share the characteristic of being at once “opera-
tive and meditative,” as Bonardel puts it [18]. That is, they share a rigorous
conjunctio of the material and the spiritual. Because artistic creation requires
a continuing conciliation (or balancing) between aesthetic and symbolic intu-
itions and material resistance, it is a mediation between the physical world
and the psychic or spiritual world. Bonardel [27] explains that alchemy “cor-
porealizes the mind” (the coagulating function) and “spiritualizes the body”
(the dissolving function). For Hegel, art is the visage of the immaterial in
the physical world, the manifestation of the spiritual [28].8 And Sontag [22]
insists that art does not represent something invisible or immaterial, it IS that
invisible or material thing.
8.7 An Experience of Integration and

Meaningfulness
In order at once to materialize and spiritualize, operate and meditate, art pre-
supposes an integrated universe, a monad, where the psychic and the material
are not separated. According to Umberto Eco, the medieval mind defined
aesthetic pleasure as being that “state of mind when the spirit recognizes in
something material the same harmony that is inherent to its own structure”
[29]. In other words, we experience grace and beauty (aesthetic integration)
when we perceive in something – a work of art or some natural or architec-
tural arrangement – an inner coherence resonating, harmonically so to speak,
with our own psychic structure. The homology between matter and spirit and
8 As philosopher S. Pierre states, “Au cœur du spirituel, l’art est un compromis entre
l’esprit et la matière; il opére la spiritualisation du sensible.... Hegel amène un troisième

terme dépassant le dualisme de l’idée et du sensible. L’art, par la manifestation, occa-
sionne ce dépassement. En tant que rencontre, l’art ne saurait se réduire à une simple
reproduction. Il est la manifestation de la fusion du spirituel et du sensible.”
between world and self, the correspondence between the structure of man and
the structure of the universe, is a great archetype of traditional, pre-scientific
philosophies, from ancient hermeticism to Renaissance philosophers (such as
Paracelsus [30]). “That which is below is like that which is above, that which
is above is like that which is below,” says the opening sentence of the Emerald
Tablet.
As Bonardel points out, if this is indeed an archetypal way of envisioning
the universe and our place in it, then it cannot have disappeared from culture.
It must still be living somewhere, in new forms: “in such places,” she says,
“where the impulse to Work, and the act itself, still endures”[18]9 . And I
agree with her that one place where its persistence can be traced is modern
and postmodern art and literature. This way of thinking, which is about
correspondence, reverberation and resonance, allows us to feel and experience
underlying connections, an underlying unity in the world. As John Dewey
remarked,
A work of art elicits and accentuates this quality of being a whole and of be-
longing to the larger, all-inclusive, whole which is the universe in which we
live. This fact, I think, is the explanation of that feeling of exquisite intelli-
gibility and clarity we have in the presence of an object that is experienced
with esthetic intensity.... [The] work of art operates to deepen and to raise
to great clarity that sense of an enveloping undefined whole that accompanies
every normal experience. This whole is then felt as an expansion of ourselves
[15].
To “know” something does not imply only having information, it implies

understanding it – which means seeing how it connects with the rest, where it
is located in the big patterns of the world. While an analytic process gives us
information, a synthetic, integrative one leads us to understanding, to mean-
ing. Meaning is a gestalt; it is something we feel, that we grasp as a whole.
Our current culture prefers the concept of meaning to the old concepts of
beauty, grace and integration, but ultimately they all point to the same thing:
to sensing an underlying coherence in the world, of which we are also a part.
In addition to all our scientific information, we also need to feel a coherence, to
feel that we live in a meaningful world, that we are meaningful in that world.
Contemporary art has put aside art’s traditional association with beauty and
harmonic proportion, but it has kept meaning, or more precisely, meaningful-
ness as its main project.
The systems theorist, anthropologist and naturalist Gregory Bateson wor-
ried about the fragmented and parcelled results of scientific research and began
looking for another approach, one that would allow us to grasp the unity of
man and the universe [31, 32]. In a brief posthumous article entitled “Our
Own Metaphor” [33], he states a perennial question as a general problem – an
even more important question than Leibniz’s “why is there something rather
than nothing?”: “What can we know?” Bateson sees two possibilities. The
first says:
9 In original French: Ne faut-il pas s’enquérir aujourd’hui du Grand Œuvre sur les lieux
où perdurent encore le désir et l’acte mêmes d’Œuvrer ...?

177
If epistemology must always come between me and my organic perception of the
world, and similarly must always come between me and any understanding of
myself; if my epistemology is the organizing principle of all my understanding;
then I can never know anything. My machinery and processes of knowing
simply constitute one enormous blind spot. A spot through which I cannot
even see that it is blind [33].
This is a familiar position, and one that makes scientists, philosophers and
ordinary people shrug powerlessly: our sense apparatus (eyes, ears, touch,
brain, etc.) is so limited that we can only know a ridiculously narrow slice
of the nature of the universe. We realize that all experience is ultimately
subjective, that our epistemological machinery is “systematically fallible [33].”
Having stated that, however, Bateson emphasizes the word “systematically”:
if there is anything systematic about our subjective perceptions of reality, then
another pathway is possible:
There is the interesting possibility that we might attach meaning to the word
“systematically.” If the “self” as a perceiver were randomly fallible, then there
would be no hope of any knowledge or understanding. But I am (personally)
sure that neither perception nor even dream or hallucination contains more
than a very small random element – and that random component always only
indeterminate within a limited subset of alternative possibilities [33].
Thinking that our sense apparatus might be, not a random collection of
limited perceptive abilities, but a systematic arrangement of specific capabil-
ities, leads Bateson to that other, fascinating, possibility: What if our inner
world is “our microcosm; and our microcosm is an appropriate metaphor for
the macrocosm?” [33] There are thus two possibilities: one is that our sensory
apparatus limits and prescribes too much of what we are able to see of the
world, so we cannot know the world or ourselves in any real sense. The other
possibility is that our sensory apparatus, being the creation of nature, is a
reflection of it. Our senses and our mind have evolved from natural processes;
we are wired according to those processes. So we can know the world because
our perceptions are not hopelessly random. They are in systematic correspon-
dence with the world; the form of our thinking is metaphorically related to
the form of the world.
Bateson then adds: “And now, it begins to look... as if there is a macro-
cosmic natural history with which all the little natural histories are so con-
formable that understanding a little one gives a hint for understanding the
big one [33]”. His thinking here meets the Emerald Tablet and resonates with
Renaissance philosophers who hypothesized a homology among the natural
world, the heavenly plane of stars and planets and the spiritual plane of soul
and God – all three planes, or “cosms,” being reflected within the human
person, as the microcosm containing all three [34]. Dismissed by Cartesian
thinking and scientific positivism, this hermetic principle is at the root of div-
ination systems such as astrology, the I Ching and the Tarot. It also inspired
nineteenth-century Romantics – Schelling, for instance, explicitly established
the correspondence: “Spirit is invisible nature, nature is spirit made visible.”
It is interesting that Bateson did not want to choose between his two op-
tions. Rather, he wanted us to entertain both, for each one corresponds to a
different way of knowing: we recognize science and a lot of twentieth-century
philosophy in the first option, and poetry and art in the second option.
8.8 Art among the Creative Modes

Man has a visible and an invisible workshop. The visible one is his body, the
invisible one is imagination (mind) [35].
Following a proposal by Heisenberg [3], I will call art, myth, poetry and
religion the “creative modes” of knowing. They are creative not because they
involve imagination and imaginary content (although they do), but creative
in the sense that they “make happen” their vision, and that vision is a shap-
ing force in the human world. Heisenberg, who borrowed the term “creative
forces” from Goethe, sees religion as the leading example of this epistemic
category. Religion’s strength, here, is that its view of reality is shared by large
groups of people. But while the experience of art (making or contemplating
art) tends to be more personal and intimate, it is not of a wholly different kind
from religious experience. If we accept the definition of these creative modes,
or forces, as being when the mind changes or affects reality, then what we
have is a huge category, one that should include religion, psychoanalysis, phi-
losophy, literature, art and myth, as well as qualitative research in the social
sciences. And we have subcategories, in which we find at least five different
modes of knowing: speculative (philosophy), hermeneutic (psychoanalysis, re-
ligious studies, exegesis, art history), phenomenological (qualitative research),
revelatory (religion and mysticism) and imaginative/material, such as art and
possibly alchemy. Art is special in the sense that it does not interpret or
analyses personal experience that has happened or content that is present in
the mind; it creates or sets conditions for such content to emerge from an
experience.10 As I remarked above, art doesn’t tell, it makes happen.
Within its own subcategory, art also differs from alchemy in that it does
not search directly for a hypothetical truth about the self and the world; it
seeks rather to generate new possibilities, to explore new emotions, affective
states and ways of being, to make visible, audible or perceptible something
that is a priori invisible and perhaps not yet in existence; to extend the realm
of what a human being can feel. Dewey speaks of “an expansion of ourselves.”
As the twentieth-century composer Karlheinz Stockhausen puts it: “The role
of the arts is to explore the inner space of man; to find out how much and how
intensely he can vibrate, through sound, through what he hears, whichever it
is. They are a means by which to expand his inner universe” [36]. Art and
poetry are concerned with what is not yet visible, what is not yet realized,
10 We could certainly debate to what extent this is not what psychoanalysis and self-
discourse also do.

179
what does not exist yet – “fabricating solid worlds that answer to immaterial
truths,” in Annie Dillard’s words [37].
Naturally, one could argue that all truths are inventions, that religions and
scientific theories are great myths.... Indeed, in Mircea Eliade’s L’épreuve du
labyrinthe [38], we read that he viewed religions as great artistic works11 .
But unlike these creations of a collective genius, art is conscious and delib-
erate with regards to invention, and this intentionality, the systematic aspect
of art-making in consciously creating situations to be experienced, makes a
world of difference with the other modes. There is also an aspect of individ-
uality and singularity, even intimacy, related to art, especially in the making:
the artwork is the creation of one or a few individuals. But the argument is
interesting; if we were to admit more widely the fictional and even artistic
nature of religion and science and start exploring the consequences of that
realization, it would be a complete revolution in human culture and certainly
a major step for the transdisciplinary movement.
8.9 Transdisciplinary Dialogues beyond Modes

of Knowing
I will end this too-succinct presentation with a few remarks on the possible di-
alogue between and beyond modes of knowing. Science, philosophy, the social
sciences and art each have their own language and worldview, specialized jar-
gon and symbolic systems such as chemical formulas, mathematical equations
or music scores. When Heisenberg wanted to speak with non-physicists about
how our minds order the profusion of reality, he wrote a philosophical essay.
I could never begin to understand one line of Heisenberg’s equations, but I
understand his 1942 manuscript. In a way, the present essay is a response
to his: a physicist and an artist speaking the same language – non special-
ized discursive language. In the arts, the “content” is in the object itself and
the process of its making. But for a transdisciplinary dialogue to take place,
the different modes must explicate how they work and how they know what
they know; their system must be made visible and understandable beyond the
specialized vocabularies and conceptual specificities of their respective fields.
Everyone, artists included, needs to understand the premises, assumptions and
workings of their own epistemology. What can we know through art, which
cannot be known otherwise? What does science allow us to know and what is
irremediably out of its reach? What is visible to me that is invisible to you?
Simply put, I do not think that it is enough for artists to offer their works
to other thinkers, saying “here, look for yourself”: it would only put them in
a position of receptors and hermeneuts; it would not inform them about the
epistemic potential of art or its limitations or, by comparison, about their own
11 Roquet remarks that “Les religions [pour Eliade] sont des œuvres admirables, pleines
de sens et de valeur: tout autant que L’Odyssée, ou La Divine Comédie, ou l’œuvre de

Shakespeare.”
epistemology. And so, they will not know when to turn to artists for specific
questions that are not answerable in their own field. The point is not to de-
termine what one can know about art, but rather what one can know through
art.
8.10 Remarks
A transdisciplinary conversation is always grounded somewhere in the field of
epistemology. Artists must find ways to describe or give access to the inner
workings and the noetic processes of the artistic poiesis. And to achieve this
with any degree of specificity and precision, one needs to write and share in a
conversation on transdisciplinary epistemological issues which is happening in
discursive language – the already available, albeit imperfect, lingua franca of
transdisciplinarity.
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1. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1996. Écrits sur l’art. Paris: Flammarion, p.
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art. Quebec City: Presses de l’Université du Québec.
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itative Research. Sage Publications.
10. Leavy, P., ed., 2009. Method Meets Art. New York: Guilford Press.
11. Levine, S. K., 2004. Arts-based research: a philosophical perspective. The
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d’art Le Sabord.
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13. Barrett, E. and B. Bolt, eds., 2012. Carnal knowledge: towards a ‘new mate-
rialism’ through the arts. New York: I.B. Tauris.
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plinarity in science and
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the sacred. New York: Macmillan.
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Collins, pp. 226-27.
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Casterman, p. 284.
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Bombast of Hohenheim, known by the name of Paracelsus. New York: Lovell,
Coryell & Company, p. 171.
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About the Author
Danielle Boutet, Ph.D., is a music composer, interdisciplinary artist and professor

researcher at the Université du Québec à Rimouski. Her research questions center
around the phenomenology of the artistic experience, the creative process and art
making as a way of knowing. Boutet is a consultant on questions of interdisciplinarity
in the arts and a member of the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research
– CIRET. She was also the founding director of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts
Program at Goddard College, VT, USA, which she directed for more than ten years.
CHAPTER 9
Educating for Joy
Antonella Verdiani, researcher and trainer, France.
he disciplinary fragmentation matches with the dangerous fragmentation of

T the human being, the body becoming separated from his emotions, separated
from the intellect, which is separated from the spiritual mind. The most ob-
vious consequence is the loss of the joy of learning, of teaching ... the joy of
simply living. My thesis is that education can bring humans back to their true
nature, which is joyful. Educating for the sake of joy is possible; many experi-
ences exist that can be reproduced. This article will highlight those offered by
a system known as “integral education”. But above all, what do we mean when
we speak about “joy”?
Keywords: education, training, joy and happiness, educating for Joy.
9.1 A “nonsense” in a world in crisis: the Joy1

Every day experts analyze the world’s crisis in terms of their science: from
the economic clashes to the environmental pollution and to the loss of ethical
values, we are over-informed, aggressed, often driven to despair by various
data, theories and predictions, mostly catastrophic, that scientists produce in
order to alert the mankind and its planet. Logically, the time has come for
humans to take refuge underground, to raise food reserves in the bunker or,
worse, to prepare for a mass evacuation to other planets ... My proposal here is
not to succumb to such a pessimism, not to follow only the voice of the scientific
reason (although necessary), but by a real shift, to take the opportunity [1]
offered by the crisis in order to include in our lives a value forgotten by the
modernity, that of joy. As a journey of hope, education has to rediscover its
initiatory role in the evolution of humanity.
The school system is getting every day worse, and the reforms of the educa-
tional Western systems seem to be resistant to any innovation that takes into
account the “existential” dimension of the individuals, the students and the
1 Copyright: L’Harmattan, 2010.
183
teachers; such negligence could be one of the reasons for the present malaise.
In addition to that, we might also consider the increasing fragmentation of
the disciplines in the schools and universities today: from 50 specializations
in 1950, we moved to 8000 in 2000 [2]. In these “towers of Babel” of the
knowledge, the students learn to study the reality through a magnifying glass,
analyzing the world from different disciplinary angles. Therefore, by focusing
their minds on separate fields of the knowledge, they risk to interpret the re-
ality as an “unstructured” set of puzzle’s pieces. The university in particular
is heading for a subdivision and fragmentation of knowledge, which becomes
more esoteric and anonymous [3].
The disciplinary fragmentation matches with the dangerous fragmentation
of the human being, the body becoming separated from his emotions, separated
from the intellect, which is separated from the spiritual mind. The most
obvious consequence is the loss of the joy of learning, of teaching ... the joy
of simply living. My thesis is that education can bring humans back to their
true nature, which is joyful. Educating for the sake of joy is possible; many
experiences exist that can be reproduced. This article will highlight those
offered by a system known as “integral education”. But above all, what do we
mean when we speak about “joy”?
9.2 Joy and Happiness

In everyday language, the word joy is associated to an emotion, a transient
state. Yet, its original meaning is anything but ephemeral as the distant San-
skrit etymology takes us to the root word yuj (the same as yoga), usually
translated as “union of individual soul with the universal spirit. [4]” There is
here a sense of reliance (connectedness) between the earthly and the heavenly,
from the human to the divine and amongst men, which gives to the joy a
sacred place that is lost in time, especially in the Western culture. When the
connection is restored, the joy indirectly enters in all the aspects of life and
creates the feeling of happiness (joie de vivre), a feeling of exaltation expe-
rienced by the totality of the consciousness, all the dimensions of the being.
From a simple state of emotion, joy becomes a state of mind, a manifestation
of the reliance of the individual soul with a higher dimension. Consequently,
it pervades the whole being and connects itself from top to down, from inside
out, the subject and the object, the self and the others.
It is important to make a semantic distinction between joy and happiness
(often confused) in order to deeply explore our field, that of education. The
word happiness, as a state of (mainly) material wellness, is very popular today.
Over the past ten years, the researches on this subject are at the core of several
disciplines and domains, concerning not only the health, the medicine and the
psychology, but also the economic and social sciences, including therefore the
science of education. In the modern psychology in particular, the research on
this subject develops increasingly in the ‘80s. To quote a few names among the
best known, Veenhoven, published in 1984 the World Database of Happiness
Chapter 9. Educating for Joy 185
where he measured the level of happiness world-wide (121 cases in 32 countries)

[5]. At the same time Diener, another world-renowned psychologist, establishes
some correlations between the welfare and the theoretical (abstract) progress
made by individuals [6]. A little later, Csikszentmihalyi [7] brings the research
forward in defining happiness as a state which is independent from external
conditions, but rather dependent on “how they are interpreted”, because they
arise from the orientation of individuals to material or intangible interests [8].
We can also quote the Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman, who first
had the merit of bringing psychology and economics together with his concept
of National Well-Being Account [9]. What is remarkable in his classification
is the difference between the measures of well-being and those of economic
performance, hence the conclusion that very little material comfort comes in
the perception of happiness [10].
9.2.1 Neuroscience and Philosophy

The research on happiness concerns different disciplines and theories, such as
the cognitive psychology or the neurosciences. For example, the theory of the
two brains [11] point out that the emotions andthe feelings of joy, [12] love
and compassion are located in a specific area of the cerebral cortex, the same
which is stimulated in a deep state of meditation and peace. This discovery,
fundamental for the sciences of education, opens up to another level of reality,
a peaceful state that can be achieved through methods like non-violence and
peace education [13]. Therefore, a question maybe raised: does this sense of
joy and the attitude to peace come from the same source of the human being?
Neuroscientists Beauregard and Damasio try to answer this specific ques-
tion by focusing on the observation of more complex states of mind and emo-
tions, such as the trance or the mystical experience of compassion, and achieve
results that distant themselves from their predecessors. According to Beaure-
gard (and his test case on Carmelite nuns in a state of meditation), there is
no specific brain region that is activated during the mystical experience. In
other words, there is no “God spot” in the brain [14]. For the purposes of
this article we agree with Damasio [15] (related to the Spinoza’s immanence)
when he affirms that, considering the capacity of the human being to produce,
think and act on his emotions, the consciousness can spring from the meeting
between emotions and the rational brain.
9.3 Philosophers of the Joy: from Spinoza to Sri

Aurobindo
“Because it aims at something eternal and infinite, love fills the soul of pure
joy, a joy free of sadness,” [16] says Spinoza (1632 - 1677), whose clear thought
continues to inspire modern philosophers [17]. For him, philosophy is the
love of truth and love is the truth of joy while its aim is to create an ethic of
happiness and freedom. Spinoza gives to joy a central place, a “transition from
a state of lesser perfection to a higher perfection,” [18] related to the fulfilment
of the desire (conatus), which is the most powerful state for the human being.
In his Ethics he describes joy as an affect (an emotion investing the whole
body, object of the Spirit), as Transitio (because it is unstable, in becoming)
and as Love (because a non-loving joy would stay ignorant). Joy is about,
Spinoza says, “loving everything in the eternal necessity of the whole that is
God,” through an ethic of love which is not the Plato’s Eros, but rather the
philia of Aristotle and Epicurus, or the agape of Jesus or St. Paul. This brings
us to the spiritual and religious traditions of humanity, while renouncing to
the transcending character of the religions. For Christianity in particular, joy
is a state of enlightenment that can be achieved only in a celestial dimension,
the “Kingdom of Joy” where the eternal alliance between God and man is
restored [19]. This confers a power to a higher reality, while according to the
immanent visions of some, all reality is created by nature.
Equally in contrast with the transcendent vision, the materialist ideology
brings back to the individual a complete freedom of action. From the per-
spective of the secular and positivist education, joy primarily rises from the
freedom of learning (as the French movement “Education Nouvelle” reaffirms,
for example) when the child is free to act, create, observe and to understand
in working together with others. The principle of freedom has also influenced
one of the few contemporary educators who has worked on the concept of joy
at school, the French researcher George Snyders who sets up his approach
on a materialistic vision. According to him, school is the theatre of the so-
cial change, a place where joy becomes “proportional to the efforts and the
obligations” [20] . “We must struggle, hold on” [21] in order to study, for
example, the masterpieces of literature; by this sacrifice, students will discover
the joy of loving the style of writing and may thus contribute to the progress
of humanity.
9.3.1 Ananda, the Divine Joy

So far, our exploratory journey has taken into account mainly the Western
philosophical vision. In the East, which is non dualistic, the separation be-
tween being and the cosmos does not occur, and the link with the totality of
reality continue to exist. In this regard, the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo
(1872 - 1950) is an important reference because he establishes a bridge be-
tween spirituality and education. His concept of integral education is born of
the experience of integral yoga, the Purna Yoga, which is based on Ananda,
the divine joy.
In Sanskrit, the word Ananda means the joy and the radiation of soukham,
the state of inner well-being, the highest spiritual experience “... which illumi-
nates the present moment of bliss and is perpetuated in the following moment
until its forms a continuum that could be called joie de vivre.” [22] It’s the
sat-chit-ananda, the continuum “existence - awareness - bliss”, the “happiness
of becoming”, the perfect expression of Lila, the “Game of the Lord” [23]. Sub-
jacent to human nature, in ordinary life this truth is hidden: everything in the
student’s work is thus to learn to live “inside” in order to awaken to the calm,
joyful and powerful presence which is “in us, our Self more real”. Educator
above all, Sri Aurobindo identifies in the attendance of art and poetry a way
to approach this “delight of the universe” which is the true flavour of life. The
final freedom will be acquired by the confrontation of “all the shocks of exis-
tence” and not by the withdrawal or a passive renunciation. Become neutral
in contact with the pleasures and pain, the soul is thus led to an invariable
state of rapture, the divine Joy.
The descent of spirituality in the matter is the sense of integral yoga and
Mirra Alphassa, known as the “Mother” (1878 - 1973), will continue the task
initiated by Sri Aurobindo, translating it into educational practices at the
Ashram in Pondicherry. In her yoga, she describes the joy as immanent and
transcendent at the same time, intrinsically linked to human nature, since
“all existence is based on the joy of being and that without that joy of being
there would be no life [24].” Here, the higher (transcendent) dimension is a
fundamental aspect of the human being, living in the present (immanent) and
therefore accessible to everybody through a process of continuous education.
The reliance with this joyous transcendence is possible without necessarily
implying any religion or dogmatic path [25]. Recognize the joy in its dual
nature of emotion and state, this is the task of the teacher.
9.4 Educating for Joy

Several happy experiences exist worldwide, in Eastern and Western schools;
nevertheless I decided to cross the borders of Europe, looking for the source of
“integral education”. In this Chapter I will limit myself to one example (among
others who are also relevant) as a possible response for educating to joy. My
assumption is that integral education through a transdisciplinary approach is
one of essential path to inner Joy. The case studied by my research in India
from 2006 to 2008 [26] is the “Free Progress”, which was created in 1960 in
Pondicherry at the Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education (SAICE),
currently being reintroduced in the modern multicultural schools of Auroville
[27].
The educational system of “Free Progress” is still considered as one of
the most original concept in terms of experimentation, based on the following
principles:
• education has the task of guiding the individual in the exploration of
self- discovering;
• the growth of awareness and consciousness is proposed to be the unique
way for humanity to go beyond the current crisis which arose from an im-
balance between a disproportionate material progress and an inadequate
spiritual progress;
• the most important issue of human existence is ontological, because it

concerns the ultimate aim of life.
With reference to the last principle, the notion of integral approach is

intended to develop all the dimensions and aspects of the human being: the
physical, the vital, the mental, the emotional and the spiritual.
9.4.1 The “Free Progress”
The “Free Progress” experienced a new pedagogy which was free from tests
and exams in order to create an atmosphere through joyful learning [28]. The
system was called “free”, because students would be given the choice to study
individually with a teacher or in a group, and choose their own subjects, while
they can “progress” toward the highest expression of their inner power and
knowledge. The study subjects and topics were selected according to their
own interests, under the guidance of the teacher. Here the teacher embodies
the role of “the one who dispels the darkness” (in Sanskrit Guru), in an attitude
defined as being close and distant. In the traditional and experimental school
of the Ashram, the “Free Progress” system is currently available from the
higher secondary level students, while in Auroville some schools experience it
right from the elementary grade. My investigation led me to note the dramatic
positive impact of such pedagogy on students of all ages: the sooner they are
free to move towards their inner interests, the more they will be able to build
a confident personality, curious and open to the world. “Freedom means being
able to choose. Choice means that everything is proposed and that the student
decides what its nature needs for her/his progress” [29]. Therefore, it is not
necessary in such context for the teacher to “pre - guide the student or require
him to converge to a curriculum that does not fit his own interests.” as Sri
Aurobindo affirmed [30].
The common element in such schools is the sense of wellness and the joy
which are visible in the luminous eyes of the children. Students and teachers
agree: “the basic culture of this method is about guiding the child to the joy
of learning. It is far from any form of punishment, or the desire to get good
grades, or to be “the first”. It is about learning for the joy of learning” [31].
By observing the behavioural pattern in the classroom, we can affirm that
the “Free Progress” is an educational process which gives joy and satisfaction
both to the student and the teacher. Some questions arise at this stage: would
it be possible to achieve such a goal in our (Western) schools? And if the
answer is yes, by what means? What should be the attitude to assume in
the relationship between teacher and student, a fundamental basis for every
educational method?
9.5 A Path for Innovation

Few preliminary indicators are needed here in order to start a process of in-
novation in our schools as well. The first one defines the learning path as an
experience of the indefinite and the infinite, which is about “to allow the gifts
of universe to enter in ourselves” [32] in a way that is not fixed beforehand,
but also implies the possibility of making mistakes, [33] incorporating uncer-
tainty and complexity, “knowing through the unknown” [34]. The subject’s
participation, defined as the binomial partnership “teacher / student”, founds
the basis for this transdisciplinary methodology. Both of them are involved in
the learning process, assuming that:
• nothing can be taught (the teacher is a guide, he learns with his stu-
dents);
• the student is not a recipient to fill in, he has his own interests, his
desires, which require to be recognized and promoted at any age;
• the spiritual dimension, as well as the mental and physical, has its place
in the educational process and must be integrated into an approach that
goes beyond religions. This means that the existential questions asked
from the students, even the younger, must be listened;
• the time, with its rhythms, has an educational value in itself, where the
slow and rapid growth is allowed.
This will naturally lead to a pedagogy that can, in an unprecedented way,

be based on a new concept of education and learning process, and that can
be described as fractal [35]. Concerning the learning process in particular,
the fractal way of teaching will no longer follow a succession of linear and
rigid steps, but as a system complete in itself, a smooth and uninterrupted
concentric spiral (as the fractal image shown in Figure 1). According to this
method, the teacher will introduce the students to a general overview of the
new program in order to make them sensitive to its richness and complexity.
In this manner students will be able to establish a connection with the rest of
the existing disciplines and further deepen the individual interest by a set of
specific modules, following a program designed for each one. For this pedagogy
to become “fractal”, these modules must reflect the entire program, as well as
the holographic vision (in which every detail contains the vision of the whole).
9.5.1 The Joy, “emotion – guiding thread”

What happens to the role of the joy in this journey? We might ask at this
point. It will serve as our pathfinder, an “emotion – as the guiding thread”.
Even when ephemeral, this educational process can work with the emotion of
joy, although, we leave room for its reception and allow it to follow. This is the
first task for the master, a task which he can do by following the main thread
of joy in himself, while he will recognize such an emotion as the expression
Figure 9.1: Fractal.
of emotional capital defined in a variety of colours. But we must be careful,

because joy contains also suffering, so it is “integral”. The state of joy is a
“founding element”, “independent,” and “paradoxical” as Nicolas Go states, it
can arise from anywhere, even in dramatic situations. Thus, “a joyful person is
neither essentially exuberant nor over enthusiastic, and also he never detracts
from the joy, including - indeed, we should say – even when in grief and sorrow,
and even when in the very heart of barbarism” [36].
At this stage, we could imagine an ideal new path in education, where the
presence of a “joy – emotion” could be the starting point toward a “Joy – state
of mind”. The central moment of this process is represented by the relationship
between the teacher and the student which, based on mutual respect, which
will be developed in four main steps:
1. Acknowledging
2. Resonating
3. Revealing
4. Joy as awakening
1) Acknowledging in order to reveal (“entering

in oneself while opening to the other”)
To be emotionally touched means to be open to “move inside” and change our
inner attitude. To arrive at this, we should return to the school of emotional
intelligence,[37] to that of the intelligence of the heart, [38] while the heart is
the only place where the necessary link with joy can be restored. We must first
recognize the role of “joy – emotion” in the fluidity of the learning process,
because it plays on the learner’s abilities to memorize, retain information,
concentrate and focus the attention. The master as well as the student should
first recognise it in themselves: it would mean teaching and communicating
with joy and pleasure. This reminds us of the indispensable place of Eros in
education, an ensemble of desires, pleasures and love of transmitting knowledge
to the students, which will enable us to “overcome the enjoyment attached to
power, for the sake of the fulfilment of the joy of giving” as Edgar Morin says
[39 ].
Then there will be the joy of acknowledging when students, for example,
will be in contact with the Arts (Sri Aurobindo, Georges Snyder, Nicolas Go,
etc.). They will create their own masterpiece (Steiner) or they will be amazed
by Nature (Ecole Nouvelle, constructivism, etc.); or moved by sharing with
others (education for peace, conflict prevention). In this triangle between
the attitude, the mastery of the subject and the discipline, the teacher will
have to adopt a transpersonal posture, which is “the domain of Art, if not
as much as that of Science” [40]. During this initial phase, he will spot out
the attitudes of students, their tendencies, passions, difficulties, mistakes, but
without judging or evaluating them in close grids. One must recognize in
order to know: the progress through acquiring knowledge will reveal itself
in the educational process and, in case when an assessment (without giving
notes!) is necessary, it could be mutually realized in this dialogue between
students and teacher.
Often remaining in the background, while engaged in his own activities
in the classroom (of the primary school), the task of the master would be
to stimulate curiosity in the students: he is also reading, writing or painting
and using other materials. While letting himself being guided and he will
rely on his own intuition, according to an inspiration comparable to the state
of enlightenment of the artists [Ramirez [41]. The sense of perception also
plays a role as an important tool in this process, as the manas of Indian
psychology, centralizing and coordinating actions of mind, such as telepathy,
clairvoyance, listening capacity and intuition. These tools enable the master
to awaken the others, according to the concept of teacher’s role described also
by Krishnamurti. Acknowledging in order to reveal to oneself and opening
to others is founded on the attitude of seeing, observing, not judging, and
encouraging the awakening of curiosity.
2) Resonating (“to hear with the ear of the other”
Resonance is a phenomenon to be understood as not only physical hearing,

but also intellectual, emotional, that pervades the mind and it must be upheld
in the entire being. Thanks to this resonance, the teacher will understand if
the activity chosen by the student experience any joy. This implies that, to
put it in the words of professors of the Free Progress school, the teacher is first
connected to his own “presence”, in tune with himself, and that he is fully
aware about his own truth before he is able to hear the other, “hearing with
the ear of another [42]”.
Empathy, a value on which all the methods of education for peace and non-
violence, are based, is the key to understanding what other people experience
and establishing harmonious relations. It demands that one listens to oneself
with one’s entire being, in full spirit, which requires emptying one’s mind.
When this condition is met, one succeeds in capturing directly what appears
before oneself, that which can never be heard by the ear or understood by the
mind. When one connects to this sensation it causes joy, a joy which is no
more of the realm of emotions but that of the being itself. It is the joy which
“can be conceived and experienced in the present. (...) It is a resonance, an
ethic, the source of all creation .... ” [43].
3) Revealing
At this stage, a closer relationship could be established with the student to
understand if the activities in which he is engaged, reveal his true nature. It is
for this reason that the previous step – that of resonance - is fundamental: the
teacher will use here not only his capacity as a psychologist and educationalist,
but he will apply also his intuition. Thus, he will not encourage his students
to choose activities that peremptory or permanent, but he will rather lead the
students’ curiosity towards creative activities. The joy one experiences that
causes self-discovery, the teacher will never forget to incorporate not only the
successes but also their difficulties. These difficulties are not considered as
failures, but seen as challenges during their educational growth.
If there is no joy for learning, doing or studying, this will reflect immedi-
ately in the student’s behaviour and the teacher will then intervene the process
to discuss with the students. Otherwise, if the students feel that they are in
resonance with their real nature, the joy will automatically reflect. The joy as
the guiding emotion is not a superficial one, it is not an excitement but rather
an appeasing force.
4) Joy as Awakening
For the master to rediscover his role as a consciousness raiser, the first step
would be to raise his own consciousness. In a perpetual mood of creation,
he will be a seeker of truth, not necessarily a perfect yogi, but a being that
never hides from himself, as mentioned by Auroville teachers. In this education
system, acts are as important as their as their behaviour, because, “being an
educator, it is finally showing the way by what we do, what one is” [44]. This
signifies that one remains in the attitude of humbleness, and that “one knows
that one does not know.” He knows that while he discovers himself, he is also
in the learning process, as Jacotot, the “ignorant Master” of Jacques Rancière
[45]. Far from being trivial, this is about a radical change in the approach to
teaching which can transform our way of thinking not only about the education
but also about the world.
The aim is to gradually reveal the joy, it must be stimulated through activi-
ties that involve all dimensions of being: the physical body (through relaxation
and movement in consciousness), the mental being (by the concentration, the
stimulation of imagination and creativity) the spiritual being (by the open-
ing of the heart, silence of mind and meditation). It is a journey discovering
of the higher Self that “educating for joy” offers, which corresponds more to
the choice of “secular spirituality” (Barbier, Compte Sponville), rather than
a religious one. This will be about “a practice of wisdom which goes beyond
reason, and accomplishes itself in Art, Laughter and in the Sacred, and ques-
tions itself on the possibility of a singular joy” as reflected in the wonderful
words of Nicolas Go [46]. It is the joy that emerges from the realm of emotions
and becomes aspiration of the being to unite with the Absolute.
Different from the “joy – emotion”, the “Joy - state of mind” will be recog-
nized from its durability and its autonomy, independent from external causes
that determine it. It is for teachers and students, to open up to the inner
dimension that is broader than the domain of psychology, because it contains
the whole, in the process of awakening. The Joy of Awakening is the ultimate
aim of education: its nature is transcendent and immanent at the same time,
becoming thus trans-immanent. It is the integral part of the living, of the
body, of the matter, of the reality and it travels not only through all these and
goes beyond the Nature, but also surpasses the boundaries, while connecting
to the wider a wider dimension.
Guided by the transdisciplinary approach, we could now recognize the na-
ture of the subject in its “joyous essence”, non-fragmented, the One with the
Whole. The Joy finally finds its original meaning, a union between individuals
and also between the individual and the dimension of the Absolute. The word
education rediscovers its lost meaning, it “leads”, it “nourishes”, and it “brings
out” what is best in us. Applied through participatory processes in schools,
with the engaged involvement of all parents and teachers, “educating for joy”
will have the task to guide present and future generations. It will highlight
what they conceal most valuable in their being, the joy of living life fully.
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31. Interview with an Auroville teacher, February 29, 2006.
32. L’Autre marche, (The Other Step) an installation by Trinh T. Minh-ha and
Jean-Paul Bourdier at the entrance ramp of the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.
33. In this posture, errare (from the Latin word) will not necessarily mean to be
wrong, but to experiment, to “go here and there”, looking for new leads.
34. Trinh T. Minh-ha and Jean-Paul Bourdier, op. cit.
35. Therefore, Professor Joel de Rosnay evoked the image in a 1996 interview to the
magazine Vers l’Education Nouvelle (Towards New Education), No. 477-478,
where he first mentioned the concept of “fractal education”. The father of the
fractal is the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot who described the irregular
structures created by following specific rules, in a homothetic process. In the
philosophical field, the program FractalKey developed by Aurosoorya, also

uses the image of the fractal (www.aurosoorya.com and www.fractalkey.com,
accessed: November, 14, 2012).
36. Go N., 2004. L’art de la joie. Essai sur la sagesse, Buchet Chastel.
37. Daniel, G., 2005. Emotional intelligence. Why it can matter more than IQ
Bantam; 10th Anniv. edition September 27.
38. Filliozat, I., 1998. L’intelligence du coeur : Confiance en soi, créativité, aisance
relationnelle, autonomie (Poche) Marabout.
39. Morin, E., Motta, R., Ciurana, E-R., 2003. Éduquer pour l’ére planétaire.
Editions Balland, Paris.
40. Barbier R., 1983. La recherche-action existentielle. Pour, La recherche-action,
Paris, Privat, No: 90 (July).
41. Ramirez, Y., 2006. L’enseignement en tant qu’art dans le curriculum Waldorf
(December) : Sciences of education : University Paris 8. ( http://www.steiner-
waldorf.org/index.html, accessed: November 14, 2012).
42. Sri, A., 1990. On education Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust. Pondichëry.
43. Trinh T. Minh-ha and Jean-Paul Bourdier, op.cit.
44. Mallet, J., 2003. Ethique et éducation, Aix, Omega Formation.
45. Rancière, J., 1987. Le Maître ignorant. Cinq leçons sur lémancipation intel-
lectuelle, Fayard.
46. Go Nicolas, op. cit.
About the Author
Former staff at UNESCO, Antonella Verdiani holds a Ph.D. and a Master in

Education. Member of the CIRET, she is an international researcher and consul-
tant. She also provides transdisciplinary training workshops on education, addressed
to teachers, parents and children. She is the author of many articles and publications
on education for peace and joy. In 2012, she published a book Ces écoles qui rendent
les enfants heureux, Actes Sud, which describes several examples of schools and edu-
cational projects all around the world which make children happy. She is also involved
in a new initiative “Printemps de l’éducation“ (www.printemps-education.org) which
aims to stimulate actions and research on innovative schools and projects in France.
Web site: www.educationalajoie.com.
CHAPTER 10
Transdisciplinary Methodology in Research
and Education: The EMMY Case
Liviu Drugus, researcher and trainer, France.
his paper sums up some of my previous ideas on transdisciplinarity applied

T during the last years. My pedagogical experience enriched with situations
solved by me through transdisciplinary methodology/ thinking, i.e. the levels
of reality paradigm, theory of Complexity, and the logic of the third included.
These three pillars of transdisciplinary methodology are used in the sense de-
scribed by Basarab Nicolescu. That is why I consider EMMY is a quite concrete
application of transdisciplinarity to a better understanding of human behavior.
Here are some of my ideas I am using in the teaching process: a) there is no
more “science”, but only the triadic process of research, cognition and (new)
knowledge; b) EMMY is an application of transdisciplinarity as a methodolog-
ical tool; c) there are no “social sciences”, but a united and interconnected
corpus of relevant knowledge on humans and their behavior.
Keywords: transdisciplinarity, methodology, End Means Methodology (EMMY),

transdisciplinary research, transdisciplinary teaching and evaluation, post-
modern logic, triadicity.
10.1 Introduction
Time is more and more proving that modernity has (almost) closed its eyes
and that postmodernity asks for its own life and identity, i.e. for new ways
of thinking, of teaching and evaluating of human knowledge. My PhD thesis
[1] (Drugus, 1998), written in manuscript form in 1984 and sustained only in
1996 when political framework changed (a bit...), contained an embryo of my
End Means Methodology (EMMY). EMMY is a para-disciplinary way of think-
ing and an alternative way of teaching economic disciplines, combined with
managerial, entrepreneurial, anthropological, political, ethical, psychological,
sociological, historical and legal dimensions of any human action. Since the
197
80s my teaching was not at all a classical one, but a perpetual dialog (Q & A)
on things around the main humanistic themes, with the accent on creativity
and alternative answers to older problems. My preoccupation was to better
understand and define human action (thinking and sensing – as preparatory
phases towards an effective and efficient action). The very essence of any con-
scientious human action/ behavior is decision. How people make and take
good decisions in order to attain their desires/ wants/ purposes/ aims/ ends
is the most important tool a graduate may have in her/his mind in order to
make a good living for her/him and for her/his family. My first published
article (1972) was on “Information and decision” [2] (Drugus, 1972) and its
humanistic essence is still valid nowadays.
Since then (1971 – 1976) my research activity at Romanian Academy (Iasi

branch) was not only on economic issues, but represented a humanistic view
on individuals’ desires & purposes (i.e. ends), ways of satisfying these (i.e.
means), and ways of improving the results (effectivity) of any human action.
As a consequence, I was interested in American (economic) radicalism and
have chosen this theme as main subject for my PhD thesis (1976 – 1996).
American (left) radicals underlined their preoccupation for human dimension
of economic activities (anthropocentrism). To better understand the roots and
essences of (American) radicalism I have read both sociological, philosophical,
historical etc. branches of this research trend and realized that only an inter-
disciplinary and holistic view may help me to understand any of its particular
preoccupations. Interdisciplinarity was my preferred research theme and it
was my meeting with Basarab Nicolescu in 2000 (in Iasi) to channel my in-
terdisciplinary interests towards transdisciplinary research, with his historical
contribution of defining the three pillars of transdisciplinarity: levels of reality,
complexity and the logic of the third included. As a member of CIRET (2000)
I dedicated all my research efforts to apply the transdisciplinary vision to my
university courses. It was quite natural to observe that my triadic vision on
human essence (the human continuum of end-means-end/means ratio) was a
transdisciplinary one. In 2005 I founded at George Bacovia University in Ba-
cau, Romania, a new journal called “Economy Transdisciplinarity Cognition”
(www.ugb.ro/etc) with Basarab Nicolescu as member of the Editorial Board.
All of these motivated me to use more and more the transdisciplinary method-
ology in almost all my courses at George Bacovia University. One of my master
degrees taught courses (“Research methodology and management of research”)
is, as a matter of fact, applied transdisciplinarity, i.e. End-Means Methodol-
ogy as a research transdisciplinary tool applied to research activity. Although
the “official” name of this course was “Methodology of scientific research”, I
changed not only its name, but its content as well.
Chapter 10. Transdisciplinary Methodology in Research and Education:
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The EMMY Case
10.2 Words, Words, Words... From the Confus-

ing Words: “Science” and “Discipline” to
the Integrative Word “Knowledge”
I suggested to my students that the word “science” is, nowadays, a quite con-
fusing one, due to its overuse, misuse and abuse of its presupposed self induced
“power”. Nor any research is “science”, nor any academic discipline is a “sci-
ence” and not every university teacher is a “scientist”. Reading John Horgan’s
book “The end of science” [3] (Horgan, 1996) stimulated me to enlarge the
demonstration of the inappropriateness of this word (“science”). Finally, I con-
cluded that the problem is a nominal and semantic one, a problem of definition
and of adequacy between a word and its content. My solution was a radical
one, i.e. I cut the Gordian knot by simply eliminating the confusive word and
replacing it with another one, at a higher level of reality and generality. I pro-
posed to use, instead of “science”, knowledge (the old name/ meaning of the
Latin word “scientia”). This simple replacement of a confusive word is itself an
application if transdisciplinary thinking, i.e. of using the first pillar of it, levels
of reality. The segmentation of knowledge into “scientific” and “nonscientific”
was a break/difficulty to unification of “science” with religion, philosophy, art
etc. As a matter of fact, it is not about putting together two different things as
“science” and religion, but about interconnecting two or more kinds of knowl-
edge (empirical and transcendental) under their common name – Knowledge.
As a result, instead of “science” we may use empiric research and cognition
and instead of religion we may use transcendental cognition (knowledge). Put
together these two kinds of empirical research and transcendental knowledge,
it comes that we are studying things at a higher level of reality. In my opinion,
art is the third included among, across and above them, just because this way
of knowing things is empirical and inspirational/ transcendental. As a result,
I obtained a new knowledge continuum called empirical research-art-religion.
All of them are truly inseparable and part of the holistic vision on our en-
vironment. All these three are under sign of generality, i.e. of philosophy.
Modernity generated (ultra)specialized knowledge (disciplines and “sciences”)
and postmodernity is obliged now to stimulate integrative knowledge.
Much of the debate focused on how to obtain more new info, new knowl-
edge, new methods and new methodologies is, as a matter of fact, and first of
all, a discussion on words’ meanings. As a result, a lot of efforts are made to
define and redefine concepts, with the unpleasant consequence of a bigger and
bigger relativity of these concepts, theories and paradigms. A lot of confusion
was growing instead of heaving more clarity and simplicity. That is why, at my
first visit in Western Europe, at Paris, Sorbonne University, in August 1900, at
the First International Conference of ISINI (International Society of Intercom-
munication of New Ideas) – a society founded by the Romanian thinker Anghel
N. Rugina, in Boston, 1988 - I communicated my (older) proposal to redefine
the essential concepts and the main disciplines studying the human behavior.
I multiplied half of A4 sheet of paper with the following content: Politics =

ends; Economics = means; Ethics = end-means adequacy; and added a trans-
disciplinary equation: Economic = Politics = Ethics. In my mind the three
former distinct disciplines are similarly with a trilateral pyramid: every of
three triangular faces of the pyramid are quite identical as compared one with
another, although every one is situated in a different place. For sure, this
abrupt way of radical change generated resistance and ignoring. But, little by
little my theory (EMMY) was more and more known and accepted, both in
Romania and abroad. Google showed me that in USA there is learned, used
and applied a new vision called Means-End Theory. Anyone can see it is about
End Means Methodology written other way... Very recently (November 2012)
an American professor taught a lesson about entrepreneurship using as a main
idea a scheme about goals and means, quite similar with my article from 1972.
It is not my intention to claim any priority or merits. My declared end is to be
of some help in improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning, improving
human life and behavior by making and taking good decisions using EMMY
and its schemes for evaluating the human action results.
Although that times I hadn’t such a philosophical perspective in my mind,
for sure that preoccupation for concentrating information in simple and few
words is an expression of what it is called today in poetry as minimalism.
Otherwise, my vision could be named as maximalism, just because a maximum
of information should be concentrated into one and single concept/ word. In a
convergent vision, minimalism and maximalism are presupposing each other,
so it is possible to speak about a mini-max cognitive vision, i.e. minimum
of words and maximum of meaning. Concerning meanings I add that it is
a pity that American culture is using “knowledge” and European culture is
using “information” for one and the same reality. These differentiations may
cause confusions in a much globalized world. It is not only about words, but
about meanings and their very clear definition. The confusing terms (science,
social, knowledge, information etc.) should be clarified by common efforts. In
my opinion, the lack of free competition in academic & research sector (or,
similarly, the excessive support offered by state to this sector) is one of the
principal causes for generating confusion, for lack of preoccupation to really
adding something new to the already acquired knowledge
In my vision, the postmodern age is characterized by the ever growing role
and importance of information/ knowledge, research/ searching for knowledge
and of cognition/ adding new knowledge. Transdisciplinary thinking is part
of this revolutionary change that would radically transform our lives. Here
is a very good description of this cognitive context in which transdisciplinary
thinking may and must develop as quick as possible: “This revolution recog-
nizes the changed world in which we live. A world in which: information is
readily and easily accessible; where change is so rapid that traditional methods
of training and education are totally inadequate; discipline based knowledge
is inappropriate to prepare for living in modern communities and workplaces;
learning is increasingly aligned with what we do; modern organizational struc-
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The EMMY Case
tures require flexible learning practices; and there is a need for immediacy of
learning” [4], (Hase & Kenyon, 2000).”
10.2.1 From Complexity to Simple, Essential and Compact

Ideas. Complexity May Be Solved Using Levels of
Reality and the Included Middle (the Logic of the
Third Included)
Edgar Morin [5], (Morin, 1982, 1990) wrote a lot about complexity and how to
deal with it, opposing this paradigm of complexity to the paradigm of simplic-
ity. As far as I understood that, simplicity is defining disciplinary modernity
(Cartesianism), and complexity refers to transdisciplinary postmodern knowl-
edge. But, one description of the principles that describe the “paradigm of
simplification” is: “the principle of reduction (narrowing the understanding of
a whole to the knowledge of the basic elements which constitutes it) and the
principle reducing the knowledge of organizations to the principles of order in-
herent to them (laws, invariants, consistencies, etc.)”. See: [5] (Morin, 1982,
1990) apud: [6] (Alhadef-Jones, p. 479).
Here appears a contradiction between what Morin and I do understand
by complexity. In my opinion, modernity was that one which generated not
only a lot of (new) disciplines and sub-disciplines, but generated a fabulous
growth of every discipline at such dimensions that no human being may know
its real and integral content, all ideas proposed or demonstrated a.s.o. Let
me take the example of Economics. Since Hesiod, Aristotle, Smith, Rothbard,
von Mises and Marx and until the growing number of Nobel prizers there is
a huge amount of writers, professors, researchers and practice people that use
concepts in function of their own beliefs, contexts and audiences. This created
a real complexity concerning (for the beginning, with) one discipline, not to
mention the thousands of disciplines that are not able to properly communicate
among them and establish links, bridges or common spaces for dialog. Day
by day the complexity is artificially (but inherently) and unnecessary growing
inside disciplines and among them.
Value is a presupposed quite clear concept, but discussing on added value,
surprisingly, there appears a lot of meanings and definitions of value. For ex-
ample, in my vision any value is defined by the ends (goals, purposes, targets,
aims etc.) someone is wanted to be reached as a consequence of a certain com-
bination and consuming of means, able/ adequate to the desired ends. Other
people consider value simply as “something important for me”. Of course,
personal desires are important for everyone, but sometimes they do not have
the degree of acceptability from the human context they are living in. There
are desired ends that are destroying a lot after their accomplishments (e.g. ex-
tracting oil is destroying Earth underground). I consider end/means definition
of value is open to be operationalized and to help people to understand the
actions of others and to take “right” decisions from different points of view.
Economy and Economics do not refer to the same “values” people have in
their minds all over the world. For example, Western cultures depict economic
activities more rationally, in terms of ends and means, but Eastern (Asian)
cultures depict economy more in terms of environment and the human life
connected with a specific natural context. In my opinion there is no real
conflict among these two visions.
What to do? To let them (disciplines, theories) die under the huge pressure
of the immense quantity of concepts meanings and systems of thought spe-
cific to every discipline, i.e. under the quasi infinite complexity? My answer
is: simplification, reduction of all these immensities of artificially multiplied
knowledge to small and manageable dimensions, able to make more sense in
comparison with the previous complexity. Finally, my proposal is not to re-
duce or to annihilate complexity, but to extract senses and essences from it and
to work with them. For example, Economics could be reduced at its essence
which is “combining means in order to attain desired ends”. As a result under
the name of Economic “sciences” we have Accountancy, Statistics, Macroeco-
nomics, Finance, Marketing etc. etc. Similarly, Politics could be reduced at
“proposing ends in function of usable means”, and all knowledge about this
item should be unified under the name of Politics. Ethics could be reduced
at “permanently adequating ends to means and means to ends”. Of course all
these refer to human beings and their behavior/ action/ activity. These three
disciplines are easily to be seen and considered as ONE or as a continuum,
concerning ALL human aspects, but only through their (common) essences.
I also applied here the transdisciplinary solution of getting a higher level of
reality, above complexity, starting from disciplines until integrative knowledge.
Andrew Sage [7] (Sage, 2000) is putting an equal between transdisciplinarity
and “integrative knowledge” and I do agree with him and with the editors of
the book that includes his article.
Let me use a quite common example to prove the utility of my above pro-
posals. Writing this article concerns a lot of human dimensions: a political
one (defining my end – writing this article - in function of my means: time,
ideas, ability, desire to publish etc.), an economic one (using and combining my
means/ resources), an ethical one (fitting/ matching/ adequating my means to
my end and to others’ ends), a managerial one (thinking, feeling and writing
as a concrete activity of using my ends, my means and my way of adequat-
ing them), a legal one (respecting rules, laws and regulations imposed by the
Editorial Board) etc. Finally, writing an article has its own history (and this
article will be history soon, no matter if published or not), has its psychologi-
cal and sociological dimensions etc., etc. As a result, I’ll concentrate a lot on
(correlated and integrated) knowledge about my and general human behavior
describing the process of writing an article (a human action). That is why
I do consider/ think that education should start up (gymnasium, grammar
school) with this kind of transdisciplinary, less disciplinary, essentialized and
compacted kind of knowledge. Only faculties will/ may introduce students
to certain (narrow) disciplines (but still using transdisciplinary methods and
methodologies) and only master and PhD degrees will create specialists in a
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The EMMY Case
narrow field of reality, but with the big gain of having the simplified com-
plex background in their minds. Nowadays, specialization (I mean teaching
through specialized disciplines) begins in the first year of gymnasium and only
postdoctoral studies try to enlarge again the complexity of the domain and to
make connections with strange disciplines. It is interesting to mention here
that it is not about a fight against disciplines but about an intelligent and use-
ful equilibrium between disciplines and transdisciplinary vision. The old Latin
name of the discipline was disciplina/ discipulina and this meant instruction,
knowledge. Finally, both disciplina and scientia referred to knowledge and this
is an extra argument to the necessity to name all of them with a single word:
knowledge. We need now more and more global/ general/ unified knowledge,
just because all is globalizing nowadays: economy, political activity, ecology,
research, monetary and many other dimensions of reality.
In a quite interesting book, Paul Heyne [8], (Heyne, 2011) explained
why there is not a good economist that one who is only an economist. He
said that “A better economist should understand that (s)he can obtain some
gains in negotiations with other specialists from other domains. A special-
ist with a good economic thinking is studying the human condition and may
enrich herself/ himself from changing ideas with other specialists which are
studying the human condition, beginning with philosophers, political scientists,
and sociologists and ending up with literary critics, art historians and cultural
anthropologists. If you intend to continue your studies, then you should not
ignore and completely eliminate the other humanistic disciplines” (my trans-
lation from Romanian edition) [8]. My conclusion is that Heyne is making a
plea in favor of general knowledge on human, not in favor of a quite specialized
homo oeconomicus. But, my point of view is not to let this getting of new
knowledge from negotiators or colleagues from other fields, but from school
itself, and not necessarily as part of specialized disciplines but as part of a
general knowledge (transdisciplinarity) on human behavior and ways of cor-
rect thinking. Fortunately, in Romania there is a bigger and bigger quantity of
experiments, articles, pleas and mass-media articles able to generate more and
more favorable attitudes towards transdisciplinarity. I’ll give some examples
in the following chapter of this article.
10.2.2 Using Transdisciplinary Thinking Based on Levels

of Reality in Solving a Quite Complex and Paradoxal
Problem: Which was First, the Egg or the Hen?
At a course lesson on transdisciplinary methodology, two years ago, I in-
sistently asked students to put questions, be those strange ones or compli-
cated problems to try to solve them using the components of transdisciplinary
methodology. A student put the very old problem of “which was first: the
egg or the hen”? Many laughed at, some tried to explain how simple is this
problem to solve, and I remembered that only some days ago I listened to ra-
dio about a very serious research that implied many Nobel prizers in physics,
chemistry, biology and medicine. They were asked to have a special holidays
having fun in a tourist residence, but to work hard and give “scientific” answer
to an ancient problem: which was the first, the egg or the hen? They seriously
worked and offered interesting and lucrative hypothesis and demonstrations.
Finally they reached a consensus and offered to the entire world the much
waited answer: it was the egg at the very beginning of the evolutionary pro-
cess, just because without this “seed” it was impossible to have a hen. I was
quite amused hearing this answer and remembered that in grammar school a
teacher asked us the same question and I and other people gave the same an-
swer as the Nobel prizers... Students were a bit amused and a bit disappointed
that the answer was so naive and well known... But I denied this answer and
told to students I simply did not agree it. Why? How? Smiles appeared
on students’ faces: “this professor have an excessive good impression about
him...”. Immediately, I used the transdisciplinary methodology with its three
pillars founded by Basarab Nicolescu. I said that the answer is not accept-
able just because we may ask: but before the egg, who gave birth to it? Who
was the primordial HEN to create at least an egg? The answer offered both
by any schoolboy or schoolgirl and a strong team of scholars was generated
by a linear thinking at one and the same level of reality. But, at a superior
level of reality we may find another answer. So I did, and invited students to
climb up at a superior level. I suggested them to think at a pre - Big Bang
time, when our Universe was quite concentrated with all Information, Energy
and Substance in it. All planets, seeds, beings, ideas, energies and substances,
beings (hens included...), vivid things (eggs included) were there. At that level
of reality it is a nonsense to ask which part of that primordial Atom was first,
which one the second, and so on. All components co-existed simultaneously
and continuum; no one was differentiated and no sequence existed. It is the
same thing as asking which molecule of water is prior to a molecule of wine in
a glass of wine & soda. So, we have to compare the two answers: the pre –
Big Bang and the post – Big Bang. Of course there are two different realities
(levels of reality). In pre – Big Bang situation both hens and eggs were there
without any temporal sequence. In post – Big Bang situation, time and suc-
cession appeared. In this new level of reality the ancient question makes sense
and the logical answer is based on this. As a result, Nobel prizers were right
in a temporal pre-Big Bang sequence, but this sends us to the pre-egg time.
To conclude, we have two true and non-contradictory answers at two different
levels of reality. Of course, a lot of new consequences appear from here.
10.2.3 Logic of the Third Included - As a Solution to

Problems from Different (More Complex)
Levels of Reality
The included middle (third included) is a logical operation by which two rel-
atively opposed things are better understood and interconnected by a third
one that links the previous two. This eternal seeking for harmony was de-
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The EMMY Case
layed by the binomial thinking and the study of the opposites. Modern times
accelerated this disjunction tried to separate things in order to better know
them (analysis) although a synthesis was all the time recommended. Post-
modern times (after 1950) tried to deconstruct this way of obtaining new
info and proposed a synoptical and synthethical vision, in which not only
the opposites were on the first plane, but the third medium term that linked
them. In such a way a dyadic view was replaced by a triadic one, with a
deeper and better understanding of things. Although this view increased
complexity, this is to be preferred just because complexity may be solved
with the help of new soft and technologies. See, in this respect, a Romanian
contribution to complexity problem: Radu Dobrescu [9], (Dobrescu, 2005)
http://ace.ucv.ro/sintes12/SINTES12− 2005/COM
PUTER%20ENGINEERING/06.pdf .
End Means Methodology (EMMY) [10] (Drugus, 2011) is based on tri-
adic thinking, simply because we are living in a three-dimensional space and a
three-dimensional time. “Trans” is the old name for three. As a result transdis-
ciplinarity is based on a special triadic logic called logic of the third included.
Logic of the third included is an intrinsic part of End Means Methodology
(EMMY) when establishing the set of triads describing human existence and
its environment. For short these triads are:
• temporal: past-present-future
• spatial: micro-macro-mondo (or: smallest-medium-biggest)
• structural/ existential: Information-Energy-Substance
• human action essence: ends-means-ends/means ratio
• theoretical description of any human action: politics-economics-ethics
• practical description of human action reality: policy-economy-morality
• transcendental Christian reality (Holy Trinity): Father-Holy Spirit-Son
(“Tres unum sunt”)
A lot of triads there exist and built up our world and its understanding
(e.g.: point-line-plan, introduction-content-conclusion, etc.). It is easy to ob-
serve that the first component of every of these seven triads appears as most
important to us, but the middle term is the unifying one and it may be consid-
ered as the third included, a third one element which is the common essence
of all three. This explains why our world is built as it is known to us. More
than that, the medium term (third included) cannot have a distinct/ isolate
existence apart from the other two elements. But it is quite interesting that
every one of the three elements may play the role of the included middle among
the other two, just because all three elements are part of a unified entity. This
observation helps us to seek for the unity of things and not for their separa-
tion and segmentation (as modern Cartesian wisdom learned us). This kind of
thinking is not necessarily a postmodern contribution, but as Basarab Nico-
lescu recently said in an interview afforded to Iulian Boldea and published in
“Familia” / (“Family”) magazine (which appears in Targu Mures, Romania),

it is well known from Aristotle and Stefan Lupasco [11], (Boldea, 2012).
10.3 Transdisciplinary Teaching and Evaluating

My older proposal in favor of proposing/ imposing transdisciplinary teaching
not at the academic and post academic levels, but at the gymnasium and high
school levels could be simply put as such: kindergarten, grammar school, gym-
nasium and high school should have transdisciplinary/ holistic/ general knowl-
edge level; and specialization could appear only beginning with academic level.
As a matter of fact it is not to oppose or contradict the two ways of teaching:
disciplinary (specialized) teaching versus transdisciplinary (non-specialized)
teaching, but most important is to use specific ways of combining them with
different charges. In favor of my proposal comes a quite genuine experiment
led by prof Mirela Muresan [12], (Muresan, 2010) at “Moise Nicoara” na-
tional college from Arad, Romania. The alternative learning meant a new way
of teaching: without disciplines, without marks and evaluators tests, but with
team teaching and creative learning. It is worth mentioning that a specific
structure was created ad-hoc. It is called The Transdisciplinary Center of
Educational Applications from “Moise Nicoara” National College,
Arad, Romania. Here is a short description of a transdisciplinary successful
experiment, description made by Professor Mirela Muresan herself: “During
the last 5 years more than ten TD projects were conceived and performed at
the “Moise Nicoara” National College, from Arad. The first one started in
2008 and its outcomes are described in a book published in Romania, with a
foreword written by Basarab Nicolescu (1). The last one took place this year in
the frame of “the different school week” provided by our Minister of Education.
It was called A Transdisciplinary “Reading” of the Water and it is described
in our “T” Journal (2). All these didactical experiments attempted to apply
the TD methodology in the classroom. The experiments of “Moise Nicoara”
College were the first ones performed in Romania in the field of the high-school
education. These experiments proved that transdisciplinarity is not a utopia.
Transdisciplinarity can be transformed in a current practice in school; but to
pass from theory to practice means new problems and questions searching for
new answers. In my opinion, the most valuable thing is the fact that these
didactical transdisciplinary experiments succeeded to identify some important
reflection points which are absolutely necessary for applying the transdisci-
plinarity in public education. Some of these questions are: what a transdisci-
plinary curriculum means? What does it really implies? Could we practice the
transdisciplinary methodology within the frame of a disciplinary designed cur-
riculum? Could we conceptualized the “didactical border” between inter/pluri
and transdisciplinary approach in the teaching-learning process? Which is the
difference between the “transversal competences”, “cross-curricular” ones and
the “transdisciplinary competences”; or could we speak about TD competences
without enlarging the definition of the concept? Which would be the correct re-
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The EMMY Case
lation among information, competences and values in the educational process?
the right balance among to know/to do/ and to be?All these questions were
also refreshed during the recent International Colloquium organized in Arad,
Romania, the first one of the kind in our country. (3)
1. Muresan, M., coord. (2010), Transdisciplinaritatea de la un experi-

ment spre un model didactic, Junimea, Iasi, with a foreword written
by Basarab Nicolescu
2. Muresan, M.,( 2012) A Transidsciplinary “Reading” of the Water, in “T”
Journal, no.2 edited by The Trasdisciplinary Center of Educational Ap-
plications from “Moise Nicoara” National Colege, Arad, see http://www.
moisenicoara.ro/t-journal-no-2/
3. International Coloquium “Transdisciplinarity in Primary, Secondary and
High School Education”, http://www.moodle.ro/edutd ”.
Another example is that of Adina Sorohan, professor at the National

College “Lucian Blaga” Sebes, Alba, Romania. Here is her contribu-
tion to transdisciplinary thinking at pre-academic level, depicted in her own
words: “In 2010 I started to apply the classes I teach a series of workshops
which enable students to perceive different levels of reality, to develop the types
of intelligence: analytical, emotional and bodily, to learn to communicate, to
acknowledge the existence of diversity in unity and of unity in diversity, to
rediscover nature as the origin of everything that surrounds us, which leads to
the regeneration of senses, emotions and thoughts. In The lyrical text: a
transdisciplinary approach (high school level) (2011), efforts are made
to discover, understand, analyze and interpret the lyrical text from several
perspectives, against a background of labyrinthine recesses which intertwine
and complement each other from playful activities, methods of synthesis, all
to uncover the sublime beyond what the lyrical universe appears to be at first
reading. In The perception of the lyrical text through the sense (2012),
I proposed an initiation in the perception of the lyrical text through the senses,
varying the methods of perceiving the poetic message, interpreting the levels of
the lyrical text, corroborating personal experiences with the emotions transmit-
ted by various layers of the poetic text”.
It is interesting to observe that the pro-transdisciplinary activity in Roma-
nian education (under the guidance of Professor Basarab Nicolescu) gen-
erated a lot of preoccupations to implement the new transdisciplinary vision
in teaching in this country. Even the concrete measures are still to be taken,
the Minister of Education, professor Ecaterina Andronescu [13] seems to
be in favor of transdisciplinarity in recent declarations since October 2012.
I’ll translate some of these thoughts and hope they will be transformed into
practical attitudes and methods of teaching: under the title “The teachers
are those who are overcharging the curriculum” she underlies that “textbooks
should contain only the essential things for a certain discipline. Teachers are
those who overcharge the content of a discipline; they try to tell pupils all
things they know. A lot of info could be obtained from alternative sources as
is internet. A textbook should comprise the skeleton of a certain theme, and
after that the pupil may add new info on it. It is necessary to start dialog with
universities in order to prepare them for a transdisciplinary teaching”. Un-
fortunately, this seems to be only an electoral discourse just because nothing
happened since then.
The traditional education (teaching and evaluating) is under fire all over
the world. When things are not going well the main cause is found in the
education court. That is why even American education system is criticized
and some proposals to change it are already done. Here is an announcement
of this kind recommended to future entrepreneurs: the accent is put on free
thinking, self confidence, initiative and creativity.
Debbie Ruston posted a job: CONSULTANTS/HIGHER EDUCATION
PROFESSIONALS - An ACCREDITED Curriculum That is RE-Inventing &
Transforming Education -’“According to the US Dept of Labor: 65% of today’s
grade school kids will end up at jobs that haven’t been invented yet. As an
Educator, or someone that works with Educators, you probably recognize the
changes needed in our educational system. A recent study determined that
80% of college grads can’t find work. The dropout rate is massive. Generation
Y are moving back into their parents homes after college. We are seeing a
massive shift in thinking and individuals are realizing that to take control of
their futures in this changing economy, they must stop relying on employers
and governments to provide solutions. We must prepare for the new economy
by creating self reliant, visionary entrepreneurs, which provide opportunity for
themselves and others. How can educators effectively teach students how to
successfully move into entrepreneurship, and take this control of their futures,
when they have never been an entrepreneur, and are only trained in tradi-
tional forms of employment? Our Multi-Award Winning Curriculum offers
proven, dramatic results which will prepare students to successfully enter into
Entrepreneurship. We offer a Success Education curriculum that will trans-
form the thinking of the students and prepare them for an entire lifetime of
success. Users will learn to let go of ego, take on a higher level of personal
responsibility for their own lives, learn how to set meaningful goals and a plan
of action on the achievement, create a stronger sense of teamwork, improved
attitude and commitment, a higher level of integrity, ethics, co-operation, will
build confidence, leadership skills, and strengthen decision making skills, which
will prepare students to create a successful, self reliant future for themselves
- important in today’s economic world, where individuals can no longer rely
on corporations/government to provide solutions for them. Students will also
learn how to utilize Social Media to build their own business brand. Our
virtual community provides a private platform for the organization to commu-
nicate, recognize and incentivizes, to build a more committed, more positive
interaction among users.” (This Ad was extracted from internet)
I’ll try to expose here my own experience in teaching transdisciplinarity or
using transdisciplinary thinking in teaching and evaluating. I consider trans-
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The EMMY Case
disciplinarity as a new way of thinking reality and its complexity by intercon-
necting ideas, things, concepts and methods in specific and creative modes,
without limiting or bordering “domains”, “fields” or “feuds”. Modernity exag-
gerated and extremised the Aristotle idea of discipline, later on called “science”
(or “scientific” disciplines). The so called “scientific” research proves not to be
so “scientific” as it pretends to be. Not every PhD thesis is a real contribution
to the growth of “science”. “Science” comes from Lat. scientia = knowledge.
In my opinion it is better now to use other two words instead of “science”,
i.e. to specify some of phases that are describing the process of production of
new knowledge: a) research is the first phase of observation, formulating of
hypothesis and testing them; b) cognition (or the cognitive process) c) (new)
knowledge is added to the old one. As a result of replacing “science” with one
or more of these stages, we may speak about researchers but not about scien-
tists/ scholars, i.e. not any/ every scientist is a researcher (see serendipity in
research), and not any/ every researcher is a scholar (adding new knowledge
to the old one). Using the right word to describe the right quality/ status/
position of someone implied more or less in research activity.
I use transdisciplinary methodology when teaching Management. I gave
up the hundreds of definitions to this activity (and theoretical approach) by
re-defining it simply as thinking-feeling-deciding continuum concerning estab-
lishing ends, choosing means and continuously supervising the degree of ade-
quating/ equilibrium between the proposed ends and the chosen means. This
way of understanding and describing human action could be called Machi-
avellian Economics (a book with this title “Machiavellian Economics” was
written by Alan F. Bartlett [14] in 1986, republished (revised edition) in 1987
and bought by me in September 1990, but with different content from my
EMMY. See [14], (Bartlett, 1987). I may call it Machiavellian Management,
just because the essence of management was clearly essentialized by Machi-
avelli: “ends justify means”. Of course, Machiavelli was not published and
teached in communist Romania, but my EMMY put this managerial essence
in other words: “end-means-end/ means ratio”. I must recognize here that
I was attracted by the harsh criticism addressed in that period to the “hyp-
ocrite and bourgeois” writer Niccolo Machiavelli, but I often suggested that
Machiavelli was right.
10.4 EMMY as a Transdisciplinary, Postmodern,

Holistic and Integrative Vision on Human
Action in the Knowledge Based Society
10.4.1 Towards a New (Postmodern) Theory of Efficient Hu-
man Action
Human action is and will be a permanent component of any human context,
although in postmodern times human thinking will be extensively computer-
aided. In this case, the prime and decisive element of obtaining better re-
sults will still remain the human brain, respectively the human action in its
theoretical-projective phase. In consequence, we will approach the human
action theory from a postmodern perspective with inherent nuances and dif-
ferences as compared with the human action theory as it is defined in the
classical works of libertarians L.W. Mises and Rothbard Murray.
The modern theory of efficient human action (praxeology), with well-known
predecessors, such as T. Kotarbinski and others uses the theory of human ac-
tion applied strictly to a defined economic context, in a narrow sense as sec-
tor of production of material goods. Therefore, the optimization of human
action by classical praxeological approach strictly aimed the increase of the
value of some indicators, such as: productivity, economic efficiency, industrial
and agricultural output etc. Without denying the utility and functionality of
such specific approaches in my postmodern vision, I will enlarge the area of
economics, with direct consequence of emphasizing other dimensions of opti-
mising human action. Thus, instead of the modern concept of optimization,
we suggest the use, on a large scale, of the concept of adequation. The differ-
ence between the two concepts consists in the fact that the first one is mainly
quantitative while the latter is mainly qualitative. Moreover, while the con-
cept of optimization supposes the exact measuring and even an elaborated
set of mathematical tools, the concept of adequation appeals to ineffable and
difficult to measure elements, such as: intuition, imagination and inspiration.
All these dimensions are not opposed to those elaborated by econometricians,
statisticians and economists in the classical sense, but they are complementary,
integrative, part of the postmodern holistic and transdisciplinary epistemology.
For the elaboration of the concept of adequation, a series of stages were
developed:
• The redefinition of some disciplines, both quantitatively and qualita-

tively; quantitatively - by enlarging the area of a certain discipline and
qualitatively - by extracting essences of every discipline and by redefining
their concepts.
• The redefinition of the relations between disciplines and adding, along
with the disciplinary approach, the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
approaches.
• The permanent concern to integrate the analysed contexts into neigh-
bouring ones, with a larger or narrower area. However, the rule will
be the concern for the integration in larger fields, which supposes both
a holistic vision and the finding of new epistemological visions. For
example, the logic of the included middle generates permanently and
continuously new levels of reality, respectively larger contexts able to
help understand previous contexts.
An example of transdisciplinary, postmodern vision in the field of human

action theory is my 35 years old “End-means methodology” (EMMY) which
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The EMMY Case
suggests a triadic approach, a compacting and essentializing of certain dis-
ciplines from the so-called “social sciences” (This term of “social science” is
already obsolete, confusive and with too many definitions to be accepted. A
critique of this pair of words will be the content of another article). The start-
ing point of this new vision was represented by the attempt to essentialize and
find the defining elements of human being, of human action respectively. In
time, there has been consolidated my conviction that it is quite specific to all
human individuals the idea of finality, instrumentality, and subsequently, of
adequation between the aimed finalities and the used instruments. The final-
ity can be suggested by the concept of “purpose” or “end”, the instruments by
the concept of “means” or “resources”, and the compatibility between them is
suggested by the phrase “end-means adequation”. Moreover, for every of three
essential characteristics of human being (end, means and end/means ratio) is
necessary to establish three theoretical approaches/ fields. Thus, the field of
studying ends is subject of the field (discipline) called Politics, the field of col-
lecting, combining and consuming means being subject to Economics, and the
field of adequating ends and means, both at individual, group and society level
being subject to Ethics. This has given rise to a rather strange conclusion at
first sight, but perfectly logical and explicable in further phases, that the three
dimensions/ fields (politics, economics, and ethics) have a common substance,
that is the binomial pair “end-means”. In order to make this conclusion more
comprehensible, I offer the following demonstration:
• Politics is the field of establishing ends in accordance with the existing

means;
• Economics is the field of collecting, combining and consuming means in

order to reach a pre-established end;
• Ethics is the field of simultaneous and continuous adequation of ends

to means and/or means to ends.
It is obvious that the three fields defined by means of the concepts “ends
and means” are inseparable and impossible to understand their significance
without considering them as a unitary whole. That is why I called this triadic
complex as the politics-economics-ethics continuum. In order to better suggest
the very essence of this continuum I called it End-means methodology, for short
EMMY. I have appealed to this vision on the human existence and action in
order to emphasize the concept of adequation, which I considered a more
integrative and knowledge-generator one in comparison with the concept of
optimization.
This new EMMY vision has also generated another audacious hypothesis,
that of equalizing EMMY and management. This new hypothesis has deter-
mined the redefining of the concept of management, under the form of triads,
having in their centre the concepts of ends and means.
10.4.2 Management as a Specific Way of Optimizing

Human Action
There are a lot of definitions for management as a theory and a human practical
action. Theoretically, management describes the essences of human being and
of human action. These essences were considered: finality, instrumentality and
the permanent adequation of instrumental aspects to the teleological ones (or
vice-versa). For short, I consider a triadic approach which aims to be holistic,
postmodern and transdisciplinary, as well. In this respect, the fundamental
structure of any human action is end, means and end/means ratio.
I mean by ends the broadest category of teleological aspects, which is all
intentions, desires, hopes, plans, strategies, visions, aims, purposes, targets
and so on. In short, any purposeful and consciously-intended action is part
of this large category - ends. I realise that the common meaning of ends
makes direct connections with finitude and with something which implies no
continuation. In my vision, ends refer simply to something to be fulfilled in
the future. Of course, this accomplished human action (initially viewed as
an end) transforms immediately into a means that may be used to attain a
lot of different purposes. In my definition of ends I imply unconditionally
the necessary means to attain a specific end. This restriction is essential for
defining future ends in a quite determined connection with the necessary means
to attain it. In other words, it is improperly said that someone is establishing
an end without immediately adding the necessary means. Otherwise, such
ends could be simply dreams or - better - utopias. I take as a companion
to this short demonstration Stephen Covey [15], (Covey, 1989) with his well
known book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. The second habit
is: “Begin with the End in Mind”. For a summary description of this formative
book you may see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The− Seven− Habits− of−
Highly− Effective− People
On the other hand, the means are defined as all kind of instruments (things,
ideas, energies, techniques, combinations, resources etc.) meant to contribute
concretely to attaining a specific end. Like in the case of ends, the means
could not be defined if some misses to mention “What for?” This is a quite
clear distinction which differentiates EMMY by the libertarian theory where
the Austrian schools economists are using ends and means separately without
connecting them immediately and specifically. In this case I may call my new
vision as neo-libertarianism, or as I told it some lines before – Machiavellian
Management (in spite the negative attitude towards Machiavellian thinking
some may have).
As about the third term end/means ratio, this is viewed as a simultaneous
and continuous act of having in our minds ends and means in order to compare
the degree of adequation among them. This triadic process helps us not to
forget the interrelationship between ends and means, on the one hand, and
the necessary adequation among them.
Management theory, defined in a neo-libertarian and EMMY style tradition
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The EMMY Case
is defined as “thinking, feeling and acting/ deciding”. All these three categories
are strictly connected with ends, means and end/means ratio. Defined in such
a way, management could be easily applied to practical day-by-day activities
and not only to firms, corporations or states. Families, groups and institutions
are practicing management in a quite “scientific” way...
The process of continuous and simultaneous adequation of ends and means
is the best way to harmonize human action, to reduce any waste and to be
able, at any moment, to know where you are. The process of adequation/
harmonization is, as I already mentioned above, a mental one and not a me-
chanical or mathematical one. More than that, the literary expression of ends
and means needs a more complex training of managers, including: communi-
cation techniques, precise writing, essay writing, report writing and literary
style. Sometimes, a metaphor or a comparison may help more than any so-
phisticated mathematical demonstration that could be true for some seconds
or for a very short period of time.
10.5 Conclusion
This paper is not only a synthesis of some of my previous ideas and arti-
cles. The attentive reader may found here new proposals, classifications and
clarifications that may help improve our dialog on Management, Politics, Eco-
nomics, Political Economy, Ethics, Law to mention only some of the older
modern disciplines which could be usefully melted into EMMY or – same –
Management. Many professors felt scared with the spectre of not having their
beloved discipline in curriculum. I suggest there is no reason to be scared;
there is reason to be scared only for maintaining this strange educational sys-
tem more and more professors and graduates are denying for its inefficiency,
waste of time and less of openness to creativity and innovation. Of course,
transdisciplinarity and its new visions are not panacea, but at least is trying
to offer new solutions and a large terrain for debate.
References
1. Drugus L., 1998. Radicalismul economic american, Editura Institutului Na-
tional pentru Societatea si Cultura Romana, Iasi. (English version, not yet
published, is offered at request).
2. Drugus L., 1972. Informatie si decizie, Flacara Iasului (local newspaper in Iasi,
Romania). The article is republished in my blog: www.liviudrugus.wordpress.com
at: http://liviudrugus.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/infor
matie-si-decizie/
3. Horgan J., 1996. The end of science: facing the limits of science in the twilight
of the scientific age. New York: Broadway Books. For a more general evalua-
tion ot this book see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John− Horgan−
(American− journalist)#.22The− Death− of− Proof.22

− and− The− End− of− Science.
4. Hase, S. and Kenyon, C., 2000. From andragogy to heutagogy. Ultibase

Articles, Australia: Southern Cross University.
5. Morin, E., 1982/ 1990, Science avec conscience, Paris Fayard.
6. Alhadef, J.M., 2010. Challenging the limits of critique in education, through
Morin’s paradigm of complexity. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 29 (5),
pp. 477-490.
7. Sage A., 2000. Transdisciplinarity Perspectives in Systems Engineering and
Management. Sommerville M. A. and Rapport D. J. (editors), Transdisci-
plinarity: recreating Integrated Knowledge, EOLSS Publishers Co Ltd., Ox-
ford, UK, p.158.
8. Heyne P. et al., 2011. Modul economic de gandire (The economic way of
thinking), Editura Bizzkitt, 12th Edition, Bucuresti/ Bucharest, pp. 479-480.
9. Dobrescu, R., 2005. http://ace.ucv.ro/sintes 12/
SINTES12− 2005/COMPUTER%20ENGINEERING
/06.pdf
10. Drugus L., 2011. (Paper communicated at the 11th Conference onf ISINI,
Sonora, Mexico). http://www.liviudrugus.ro/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket
=51heEJ9lMzk%3D&tabid=57&mid=419&language
=en-GB
11. Boldea I., 2012. Interviu cu acad Basarb Nicolescu, in Vatra nr 11/ 2012.
12. Muresan, M. (coordinator), 2010. Transdisciplinaritatea. De la un experi-
ment spre un model didactic (Transdisciplinarity: from experiment to teaching
model), Junimea, Iasi.
13. Ecaterina Andronescu in: http://www.gandul.info
/news/de-ce-crede-ministrul-ecaterina-andronescu-ca-programa-elevilor-este-prea-
incarcata-10222813, accessed: November 2, 2012.
14. Bartlett, Alan F., Machiavellian Economics (1985, 1987), Second, revised edi-
tion, Ashford Press Publishing, 138 pages, accessed: November 2, 2012.
15. Covey R. S. 1989. The seven habits of highly effective people, Franklin Covey
Company. Ed in limba romana “Cele 7 deprinderi ale persoanelor eficace” Ed
Allfa, Bucuresti, 2011.
About the Author
Dr. Liviu Drugus was born in January 6th 1950 in Gorbanesti, Botosani district,
Romania. In 1971, he has studies Good English Diploma at London International
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The EMMY Case
Correspondence Schools, Faculty of Economic Sciences, “Al.I.Cuza” University IASI.
In 1996 he earned his PhD degree in Economics.
He is an active member of Centre International pour Etudes Transdisciplinaires
(CIRET), Paris. He has written over 1000 articles on social, ethic, economic andpo-
litical aspects, on Management and Health Economics, Methodology of (economic)
science, transdisciplinarity, International Finance, Global and European Inegration
and European Union. Dr. Drugus is the author of a number of books, among
them: “Managementul Informatiei si Informatizarea Sistemului de Sanatate”, Ed
As’is Iasi, 2004 (Editor); “Economia Romaniei in tranzitia postsocialista” Ed Ju-
nimea, Iasi, 2004 (Coautor); “Economie politic. ǎ Mondoeconomie”, Ed. a II-a,
Editura Polirom, Iaşi (tema 1: “Globalizarea economicului”), 2004; “Managementul
Sǎnǎtǎtii”, Editura Sedcom Libris, 2002 – Ed I., 2003 – Ed II-a , 2003, Iaş.
CHAPTER 11
Practicing Transdisciplinary Methodology
within the Frame of a Traditional
Educational System
Mirela Mureşan, “Moise Nicoara” National College, Arad, Romania.
verybody knows that the present educational system is mostly built on dis-
E ciplinary teaching-learning basis: disciplinary curriculum and assessment,
disciplinary specialization of the teachers, disciplinary diplomas etc. The topic
of this study-case offers the opportunity to look for some proper answers to the
following problems: could the transdisciplinary methodology be applied within
the frame of a disciplinary system of education? How could it be done? What
would be its challenges, limits and perspectives? The case represents the trans-
disciplinary didactic experiments conceived and performed at “Moise Nicoara”
National College from Arad, Romania, during the last five years. The term
and concept of “transdisciplinarity” will be used as it was defined by Professor
Basarab Nicolescu.
Keywords: transdisciplinary education, curriculum design, transdisciplinary

teaching and learning, competences, values.
11.1 Introduction
Conceptual Guidance
Transdisciplinarity (TD) is a term and a concept that is largely used today, in
many fields and all over the world. Presumably, it is most frequently used in
the educational area. Yet, unfortunatelly, this term is used in various meanings
which bring about conceptual deviations, semantical slippings that give rise to
dangerous confusions. The present day scientific community has not yet a ter-
minological and conceptual consensus on “TD”. The most frequent and incon-
sistent uses of this term and concept, entailing errors in understanding and ap-
plication – aim at the confusion between pluridisciplinarity-interdisciplinarity,
217
on the one hand, and TD; on the other hand, on the relation among them as
well. Paradoxically, the same phenomenon happens in Romania too, all the
more as the “father” of TD , the author who consecrated the new concept of
TD in the international area, professor Basarab Nicolescu is Romanian.
Therefore, we do consider that a minimal updating of the concept of TD
is absolutely necessary, taking into account the given definition in Basarab
Nicolescu and CIRET group view. According to this view, TD is a method-
ology. This methodology is based on the already known three axioms that
design it. Greek philosophers believed that an axiom is a claim that is true,
without any need for proof. The truth of an axiom is taken for granted [1].
Hence, in Basarab Nicolescu’s view the three axioms the TD is based on [2]:
a. ontology - Levels of Reality and the Hidden Third,

b. the Logic of the Included Middle,
c. epistemology – knowledge as an emergent complexity.
TD cannot be understdood and applied in the absence of full consideration

given to the above mentioned axioms. To ignore or to eliminate one of them
triggers about the risk of a falsification of the TD concept, the risk of erroneous
slippings, and applications of the latter, in all areas.
Theoretically, the possible need of a fourth axiom, with reference to axiol-
ogy was discussed [3] Nicolescu, believes that the TD methodology does not
require a separate axiom for axiology while others feel that this issue is not yet
resolved, that we need to have further conversations about the need for a TD
theory of values (a TD axiology pillar) e.g., Cicovacki, [4]. Nicolescu’s position
on the matter is clear: “there is no need to introduce values as a 4th axiom”
[5]. In more detail, he believes “we have to limit the number of axioms (or
principles or pillars) to a minimum number. Any axiom which can be derived
from the already postulated ones, has to be rejected” [6].
A new clarification we intend to outline comes from the mistaken or mali-
cious interpretations of TD. Therefore: What TD is not? Firstly, TD is not
another discipline. According to Nicolescu’s consecrated definition, “Trans-
disciplinarity concerns what is at the same time between disciplines, inside
various disciplines and beyond any discipline. Its aim is the understanding of
the current world and one of its imperatives is the unity of knowledge” [7].
Secondly, as I have already stated, since TD has to be looked upon as a
methodology, there is no place for confusion between TD and a method,
as it happens many times when one tries to apply it, mostly in education.
Reducing TD to a method implies a flagrant amputation of its own essence.
“Methodology” is not just a “method”; methodology is the philosophical basis
for method. Method and methodology are sometimes used as though they were
synonyms - but they aren’t. Methodology is the study of methods and deals
with the philosophical assumptions underlying the research process, while a
method is a specific technique for data collection under those philosophical
Chapter 11. Practicing Transdisciplinary Methodology within the Frame
219
of a Traditional Educational System
assumptions. A methodology is a system of methods and principles for doing
something, for example for teaching or for carrying out research.
Thirdly, TD – as methodology – is not a religion, or a dogma, an ideology
to serve some group, economical, social or political interest. This is obviously
transparent for anyone who tries to understand TD basic axioms and has a
good faith.
Consequently, we can firmly state TD to be the conclusive factor in knowl-
edge paradigm changing for the 21st century. New methodological keys are
hence offered by the recuperation of the Subject place in knowledge, by the
logic of the included middle, by a new understanding of Reality – according to
the ontology of Reality levels and the Hidden Middle – and by the realization
of the incompletness of knowledge. These outcomes open a large opportunity
for many applications in various fields: education is a privileged one.
In our opinion, TD can offer a sustainable solution to the educational crisis
mankind is facing nowadays; we dare say that it could be the only solution
to this problem and furthermore; transdisciplinarity could stand as a viable
solution to the problems of the 21st century human society as well.
11.2 Transdisciplinarity in the Present Days

Education: Delors’ UNESCO Rapport on
Education
Many people might ask why an imminent change of the educational paradigm
would be necessary nowadays. Philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and
researchers in the field of education, as well as parents and students all agree -
expressing the idea in various ways – that something is ‘rotten’ in the education
aria. But they can hardly see the roots of the problem and are hardly capable
of searching possible solutions. After decades of disappointing educational
outcomes, it’s time to work on some educational possible solutions.
The present day public education in most countries is working on a curricu-
lum based on “disciplines”; it was accepted by the tradition of an encyclopedic
paradigm of knowledge. Such a curricular model does not venture to build a
holistic (integrated) outlook on the world and knowledge; human knowledge
is still reduced to a truncated approach to reality, without connections; there
is a dangerous discontinuance between the inner and outer reality between the
subject and object of knowledge. Wililam Grassie proposes in his article called
“Reinventing Science Education in the 21st Century” a great change of the cur-
riculum. “The fundamental problem underlying the disjointed curriculum is
the fragmentation of knowledge itself. Higher education has atomized knowl-
edge by dividing it into disciplines, sub disciplines, and sub-sub disciplines –
breaking it up into smaller and smaller unconnected fragments of academic
specialization, even as the world looks to colleges for help in integrating and
synthesizing the exponential increases in information brought about by tech-
nological advances” [8]. In his opinion “The solution to “disconnected ideas,”
Table 11.1: Learning to know.
Actual Approach TD Approach

Fragmentary knowledge Holistic knowledge
(partial meanings) (global/general meaning)
Disciplinary Inter/pluri/transdisciplinary
curriculum curriculum
Mostly rational Balance among rational,
knowledge affective, corporal knowledge
Logic of the Logic of the
excluded middle ( or/or) included middle ( and/and)
TO KNOW TO UNDERSTAND
“dry facts,” and the “fragmentation of knowledge” may well be in recognizing

that the history of the universe, the evolution of life, and the rise of human
civilizations are in fact a unified story and best taught that way”. This Big
History curriculum has been tried with great success by a few pioneering col-
leges and disparate high schools. This approach engages students in profound
questions of meaning and purpose, virtues and values, in ways that are re-
spectful of science, supportive of thoughtful religion, and conducive to civil
societies. [8]
A lot of others experiments of changing education in the perspective of
TD methodology has been developed in many countries in the aria of higher
education system. The ones from Mexico and Brazil are mentioned by Russ
Volckmann and Sue McGregor [9].
The truth is that the same issue occurred in Europe too. The famous
Delors rapport at UNESCO has revealed the need of changing the education
according to the requirements of the 21st century society. The International
UNESCO High Commission for Education in the 21st Century presided by
Jacques Delors has written out a report (1994) where, in Ch. IV, the idea of
a new type of education that should focus on four main pillars was stipulated
:to learn in order to know, to learn in order to do, to learn in order to live
along with others, to learn in order to be [10]. This program – theoreticaly
possible even in the frame of the traditional educational system – would be
completely inefficient from the practical point of view. Hereinafter, I shall
try to sketch a connection between the TD outlook on education and the
traditional system one; I shall preserve as criteria the four basic components as
they were presented in the above mentioned report. The following synthetical
schemes will easily point out the deep changes brought out by TD educational
approach as opposed to the present day one in the school system [ Table 1, 2,
3, and 4].
In an attempt at a synthetic outlook on everything previously stated, we
feel that we are entitled to sum up the following conclusions: TD education
is an absolute, integral education for any individual, it is able to ensure self-
Table 11.2: Learning to do.

Emphasis is on professional competence Emphasis is on “life competence”
for insertion in the labor market (insertion in the society and universe)
Fragmentary evaluation Integral evaluation
(scaled competences, “hic et nunc”) (individual creative potential)
Process evaluation heavily Process evaluation heavily
quantitative qualitative
“Horizonta” formation “Horizontal” and “vertical” formation
To act efficiently To think, to feel, to act in a creative manner
Routine Joy
TO DO/TO ACT TO MAKE/CREATE
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Table 11.3: Learning to live with the others.

Importance of the individual Importance of the individual
(the difference matters) and universal (the identity matters)
Social desirable attitudes and Human desirable attitudes and
behaviors behaviors (transhumanism)
“Horizontal” integration “Horizontal” and “vertical” integration
(a single Reality level) (a plurality of Reality levels)
WITHIN THE SOCIETY WITHIN THE SOCIETY AND UNIVERS
Table 11.4: Learning to exist.

Human existence/ life according Human existence/life according to
to moral values of the society moral values of a certain society and
culture but also universal human values
Material existence Material and spiritual life
Personal/individual dimension Trans-personal dimension
Surviving (concurrence, Living (self-harmony, with society
competition) and universe
TO EXIST TO BE
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harmony, harmony with society and the universe; so that every individual be
able to understand both the meaning of his own existence and the meaning of
existence in general. It is the only way to “cure” the specific symptoms of the
complex crisis mankind is facing today: “the loss of meaning and the universal
hunger for meaning” [11].
11.3 Romanian Experiments in the High-School

Education at “Moise Nicoara” National Col-
lege, Arad
“Moise Nicoara” National College is the best college in Arad and one of the
most well known college in Romania due to its students and teachers’ staff. It
was founded in 1873 and became famous in time because of a lot of Romanian
academicians, and important writers, scientists, musicians etc. who graduated
from this college [12].
The interest for transdiciplinarity is a consistent proof for the creativity
of the teachers’ staff and the capacity to research in order to be updated and
innovate in the field of education. A lot of interesting inter/pluri and trans-
disciplinary didactical projects were conceived and performed during the last
five years. That is why last year “The Trasdisciplinary Center of Educational
Applications” from “Moise Nicoara” National College, Arad was founded - the
very first in Romanian secondary education. One of its important instrument
of dissemination of TD didactical experiments is The “‘T Journal”. It is an
on-line journal written in Romanian and English as well which promotes the
TD applications in Romanian secondary education [13]. These projects have
practically proven that the TD approach of teaching and learning is possi-
ble and effective in a real school. From these attempts to apply the theory,
serious reflection issues have arisen. Finding proper answers to them means
contributing to the enrichment and refinement of the TD methodology itself.
The approach was not meant to tend to a theoretical contribution to TD,
but to its applications in education. We only attempted to see how to tran-
scend from theory to practice, i.e. how to adjust the theoretical aspect of TD
to the actual use of the educational issue areas. These experiments intended
to prove that the TD approach applied to the teaching-learning processes is
likely to work in school: hence, an exquisite prospect for the education of the
future generations could be generated.
The theoretical background of all experiments was of course the theory
of transdisciplinarity as it was conceived by Professor Basarab Nicolescu. In
order to have a proper idea of this projects, a detalied description of the first
and last TD experiments performed at “Moise Nicoara” College will follow.
The both experiments were coordinated by Mirela Muresan.
The first complex TD experiment started in 2008 and it was carried out
as it is described in the book published in 2010 in Romania [14]. Basarab
Nicolescu wrote the foreword of this book and he pointed out the following:
“We are in front of an event book. A blazing-the-path book. A cornerstone

which will mark the history of education in Romania.(...) We are congnizant
and follow diligently all TD experiences in the high school systems in many
countries (e.g., in Brasil, a large scale experiment took place for several years).
Hence we can state, without any hesitation, that the Arad experiment is both
the most successful and biggest potential educational product to export in any
country of the world. The great discovery achieved by the Arad experiment
participants is the fact that disciplines are masks of TD – an axiomatic truth,
able to inspire any worthy project for an education able to face the huge throws
of the century we are living in” [14].
This first experiment was also described in an article entitled “The Inter-
national Journal of Learning” written by Muresan M, and Flueras J., [15].
The article aimed to answer to the following questions: what kind of edu-
cational paradigm would be available for the future society (what would be
its “philosophical” basis) ? What would the “educational ideal of the 21th
century”’ look like? In what way could TD be applied to educational issues?
How could it be implemented to the public education? How could the bridge
between the TD knowledge and the TD teaching-learning process be crossed?
The following description of this experiment is partially taken from the above
mentioned article [15]. The project was carried out for two years, involving
activities attended by high school students and teachers. The target-group
consisted of 23 students from the 9th , 10th , 11th and 12th grades. These ac-
tivities took place in parallel with the official curriculum that was taken as a
reference frame. The activities extended over 10 weeks every Saturday morn-
ing. The 17-teachers team (Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Literature, Music,
Drawing, Geography, Religion) prepared transdisciplinary syllabus which
was applied to the target group of the students.
The TD target of this project was to show the students that a unity of the
world and knowledge exists. The main objectives in accordance with which
the content was built were the following: developing students’ interrogative
abilities (asking questions); developing students’ abilities to understand fun-
damental truths (about nature, humankind etc.).
The syllabus of the project was established after taking into account a gen-
erous topic, generous in the sense that it should belong to each discipline, it
should transgress the disciplines, and, at the same time it should be beyond
any discipline. A metaphorical title was given to the topic: “The Anonymous
Behind the Mask”. It deals with the relationship between essence and appear-
ance, between what can be “seen” and what is usually hidden, in both the
outer and inner universe, on both a human and cosmic level. The content of
the curriculum was structured on three learning unities as follows:
• The “masks” of the human being: the scientist, the artist, the religious
man, the social man;
• The “masks” of the world: the infinite, the space-time, the gold-number,
the Mobius strip, the camouflage in nature;
225
• Beyond the mask.
The weekly meetings were organized as workshops. While attending these
workshops, both teachers and students experienced unique feelings. These
workshops were all based on dialogue and debate. While attending these activ-
ities, all participants experienced amazing revelations about: the resemblance
between scientific and artistic imagery, the representations of the infinite in
Mathematics, Physics, Religion, Poetry, Music, Sculpture; about the divine
proportion of the golden number and its presence in the cosmic and human
body architecture, in painting, architecture, sculpture; about the issue of the
camouflage and its forms in nature, in the social and individual life, about the
need for camouflage in plants, animals, human beings and sacredness, as well.
The Mobius strip was another challenge: its effective manufacturing by hand
and pointing out to its properties represented the starting point for discussing
its presence in topology, physics, chemistry, biology, literature and film, music,
religion, architecture. Its presence in the ordinary life was discussed as well as
its philosophical meaning.
The relationship betweenportrait, self-portrait and mask was also a core
point of the debates concerning “the masks of the human being”. The di-
dactical scenarios we made up emphasized the subtle connection between the
aesthetic and the ontological: as God made the human being after his image
and resemblance, the work of art is, on its turn, a kind of a self-portrait of
the author. How could we rebuild the “image” of the author behind all his
creation. The art works (in literature, music, painting and sculpture) are but
different faces of the creative artist, thus the cosmos and the human being are
but different faces of the divine creator. The topic concerning the masks of
the social human being produced an ardent debate on the totalitarian periods
in the history of mankind: a fragment from the Bible’s Genesis and from An-
dersen’s story – The New Clothes of the Emperor were the starting point to
remake the need for a “mask”.
The main idea, which was progressively born during the workshops, was
the fact that, behind the mask, the essence of both the human being and the
world is the same, but in most cases it looks like a “Great Anonymous” due
to the lack in our capacity to adequately understand the truth. Sciences, arts,
religion, mythology, they all assert the one and the same truth. In this respect,
through the information they provide, and through their specific investigation
methods, the disciplines are also “forms / patterns” of knowledge, and the
truth always stays in, among and beyond them. Progressively building this idea
during the workshops could help students develop their abilities to understand
fundamental truths (about nature, humankind etc.), [15].
The last transdisciplinary project was performed this spring, in the frame
offered by our Ministery of Education: “Another School-Type Week”. Its ti-
tle was A Transdisciplinary “Reading” of the Water[16]. The project targets
focused both on experiencing a TD teaching-learning methodology and on
setting up a holistic integrative view of the knowledge of water, developing
a positive, desirable attitude able to contribute to an education for the qual-
ity of human and planetary life. The project contents were conceived and
structured in order to get a synthesizing view on many dimensions and signi-
fications of water, able to transcend the borders of the “classical” disciplines;
the main outcome was to help teachers from different disciplines to teach to-
gether, as a team. The interactive workshops alternated with explanations,
power-point presentations, debates, topic-oriented visits, artistic creations and
performances.
The syllabus of the project was structured in three learning units as follows:
1. The Philosophy of Water (sacred dimension)

• Water in cosmoghonical “scenarios”
• Water in folklore rituals, in religious rituals
• Symbols of the water: living water/dead water; holy water, healing
water
• Christening water and Flood water
• Water wisdom: syntagms, proverbs, sayings
• Water messages: crystallization experiments
2. The Water life (profane dimension)
• Water as chemical substance; properties
• Planet water: roles, functions, dangers, threats
• Water crossing the human civilization evolution
• Water and the human body; intra-uterine water
3. Aquatic imaginary aspects (artistic dimension)
• Water images in literature, music, painting etc.
The three modules pointed out many and unexpected properties and mean-
ings of water and generated a great deal of discussions and debates: teachers
and students as well were challenged to answer many questions and problem-
situations that came out from the new information issued during the presen-
tations. The answers to the final questionnaire form, which was conceived
as a feed-back, fully confirmed this aspect. Here are some problems students
confessed they will keep thinking about: the role of the water in the act of cre-
ation, the religious meanings of the water, the water in the human body, the
subjective images of the water in artistic representation, the vital link between
human being and the water, the spiritual force of the water, the significance of
the Flood, the water magic power, why does water have so many powers?, why
does water react to feelings ?, is there water on other planets ?, how was water
created?, why is man wasting so much water instead of appreciating it ?, does
water have feelings?, and so on. Moreover, a student has sincerely admitted:
every time I will use tap water, from now on, I shall think twice in order not
227
to waste the water that came in my house with such difficulty, thanks to so
many centuries of civilization.
This interrogative-reflexive part – started in students mind – seems to be
the major gain of the project. Thus, there was a privilege for all partici-
pants (teachers and students) to get and give information, to share their own
opinions, beliefs, to confront ideas, due to this different school week.
Water was “read” by their mind, heart, sensorial attitude, into a valuable
process of TD knowledge. The visit to the Water Tower of the town built in the
19th century facilitated the real knowledge of the objects and instruments that
were used during the centuries by the rural and urban civilization concerning
the use of water; the creative workshops facilitated unexpected “meetings”
between poetry, music and painting in the artistic imaginary frame of water;
the presentations revealed the magic powers of the water in the Romanian
folklore, mythology, the astonishing Bible significations of the water and its
use in religious rituals; the scientific outlook on water brought forward for dis-
cussion its physical-chemical properties, its role in the human metabolism and
in all living beings. Emoto’s experiments presentation was a great challenge
too. Students could express their artistic vision on water – by words, colors
and sounds: they selected the proper music for the poetry texts they were
reading, they painted their own “view” on water, starting from a blue drop,
and transforming it in their soul’s colors, they wrote interesting essays. They
have imagined an ocean storm as in Turner’s paintings – using the fingers
and palms only, to produce the sound of the rain drops and then the sound
of an unexpected storm accompanied by thunders; a valuable symphony was
created and performed using “water glasses”. The series of unexpected expe-
riences concerning the knowledge of water could go on indefinitely. It’s would
be worth describing each module, one by one, but it would take it much time
[16].
11.4 Limits and perspectives: Questions,

Worries and Chalenges
Different obstacles occurred while performing these TD projects within the
frame of the traditional system of education. Why?
First we had to build the teachers’ team in order to be qualified for this
kind of experiment and to accept to be volunteers. Then, we had to find the
most efficient strategy to attract the students to this new way of teaching-
learning process. But the main challenge was to decide upon the topics of
the two projects. We had to find large and generous topics, suitable to a TD
approach. The bridge between inter-, pluridisciplinary and transdisciplinary
seemed to be more difficult to build from the didactical point of view. If,
theoretically, the problem was clear enough for us, didactically, we did not
know initially how to solve it. Solutions emerged along the way, but questions
remained, as we were not yet convinced we made the intended jump completely
[15].
Another difficulty was to design the syllabus. Setting up competences
was the most difficult challenge for the teachers’ team. From a TD point
of view, competences should cover all the three levels: individual, social and
cosmic, in order to build the ultimate human being. On the other hand, these
competences should also harmonize the dimensions of to know, to understand
and to create. How can one achieve the “trans-relation” that could connect to
know, to understand and to create?
As Muresan and Flueras have already written [15] the concept of cross-
curricular (transversal) competences used in the modern theory of education
is not the same as the transdisciplinary competences in the way we understand
this concept. Transversality refers to fragments of the world (fragments of
both subject and object), and does not refer to the sacredness as a tertium
datur: “Transversality is almost always horizontal”, when transdisciplinarity,
which is at the same time across and beyond, is vertical. [17]. It seemed im-
possible to state these desiderata as “competences”. How could competences
of the ultimate human being or integral education be formulated? Are there
“competences of the being”? The common understanding of the concept of
competence is based on the idea that it concerns something which compulsory
must be “quantified”; if not, it cannot be accepted as a “competence”. The
human values, attitudes, behaviors that are built up by education, remain
out the educational system evaluation and cannot be evaluated inside the in-
stitutional, official forms of the public educational system. It is possible to
formulate competences for “to know” and “to do” but not for “to be”. So, a
virgin, vacuum area in education sciences is revealed. Crossing (transversal)
competences in the modern curricula, are also limited to “to know” and “to
do / to make” even if they cross disciplines and their afferent methods; they
focus only on “the exterior human being set up” and not the “interior human
being creating”. From my standpoint, it would be wrong to build up syn-
onymies between them and the so-called transdisciplinary. “Transdisciplinary
competences” should point to the foundation of both the interior and exterior
human being. Features of the ultimate human being are not yet set up in
competence terms, nor are they yet quantified and standardized. I wonder if
such a thing could be possible. Additionally, the targets, forms and proper
evaluation instruments are not established.
The most difficult thing in performing both experiments consisted not in
finding out the proper strategies and methods to conceive the steps of the
didactic enterprise, but in what way we could awaken the wonder, and produce
in our students that inner experience which is a fundamental component of
understanding. If we sometimes succeeded to push the “inner button”, we
have also to accept that it was a random or spontaneous or momentary case.
It could not be controlled in any way, and, even less, could be not valuated
in its depth, dimension or its consequences. All this was exclusively due to
the didactical vocation and skillfulness of the teacher, to his empathy and not
to some previous planning. In sum, we are not able to build up a pattern
229
scheme or script to replicate the effect or to decide on any didactical method
or strategy. This proves once again that the TD learning is something alive,
has no previous rules: “being” has no patterns. [15]
New problems came up: we had to prove intellectual and affective mobility,
to deal with new situations, to make use of play-related capacities, tolerance,
openness and patience, to be prepared for a continuous adaptation to our
students’ demands. The most important challenge we met, at the beginning,
was to get the students beyond their usual way of thinking. The students were
used to think in terms of yes or no, correct or incorrect, true or false terms.
They were uncomfortable with the lack of a rational conclusion or a clear,
definitive, precise answer. They found it hard to accept that there might also
be answers of yes and no, true and false type at the same time, and the fact
that reality was in a continuous dynamics. The intuition of the fact that we
are and we are not at the same moment, the universe is and is not the same,
a thing is not only what we know about it at a given moment, the fact that
there is an invariant what in all entities was an important step we made in the
dialogue with them [15].
These experiments proved that transdisciplinarity is not a utopia. TD can
be transformed in a current practice in school; to pass from theory to practice
means new problems and questions searching for new answers. To prove – in
a convincing way – the important potentialities the TD has was also a result
of these projects.But, in my opinion the most valuable thing is the fact that
these didactical TD experiments succeeded to identify some important reflec-
tion points that are necessary for applying the TD in public education. Some of
these questions are: what a TD curriculum means? what does it really implies?
Could we practice the TD methodology within the frame of a disciplinary de-
signed curriculum? Could we conceptualized the “didactical border” between
the inter/pluri and transdisciplinary approach in the teaching-learning pro-
cess? Which is the difference between the “transversal competences”, “cross-
curricular” ones and the “transdisciplinary competences”; or could we speak
about TD competences without enlarging the definition of the concept? Which
would be the correct relation among information, competences and values in
the educational process? the right balance among to know/to do/ and to be?
All these questions were also refreshed during the recent International Col-
loquium organized in Arad, Romania, the first one of the kind in our country
[18]. More than 200 participants were present: teaching staff from primary,
secondary and high school education and also from university education, edu-
cationalists, students interested in educational issues, managers and parents.
The Colloquium Transdiciplinarity in Primary, Secondary and High School
Education aimed at a basic establishing of a working team, at a national level,
able to provide hands-on solutions for implementing the transdisciplinary ed-
ucation in the Romanian educational system and, moreover, for a future cur-
riculum design guidance. The participation of Professor Basarab Nicolescu
was a great help for us in our attempt to find solutions for the TD application
in the Romanian secondary education.
11.5 Conclusions
The case study – as presented here – has tried to point out what questions
could arise from practising the TD methodology in the frame of a “traditional”
educational system: what the challenges of a such an approach are, what kind
of obstacles are to be faced, and so on. All these are aiming at identifying
possible reflections on moving the deck between TD methodology and its ap-
plications in school practice. Keeping in mind all the outcomes of this case
study, we will try to sum up.
From the beginning, we should like to focus on the limitations the TD
methodology practice implies, in the frame of the traditional educational sys-
tem in Romania. The first limitation is the coercive force of the system, totally
inadequate to the TD practice. This kind of force refuses – from the very start
– the ongoing of the TD activities in the frame of the official established cur-
riculum; hence the TD activity processes can be developed only as alternatives
to the official curriculum: optional courses, volunteer activity of the teachers
and students or, in the most fortunate case, as the “Another School-Type
Week”.
The second limitation springs from the asessment system’s incompatibility,
as it has been implemented in the present day educational system. This system
assesses quantitative aspects to the injury of the qualitative ones. The asessed
competences are standardized and scaled “hic et nunc” detrimentally to the
qualitative assessment.
The third limitation is the lack of qualified human resources able to imple-
ment a TD teaching-learning process, as well as the impossibility of teachers
to work formally as a team in the class.
The fourth limitation is the resistance, opposition force of the collective
mentality to any kind of change, actually the fear of the new and of the ex-
periment. It is, in fact, the refusal to change a structured curriculum that
was practised disciplinary for centuries; the fear to lose the disciplinary spe-
cialization because of the Td opening; this kind of fear comes obviously from
the lack of a right understanding of the TD methodology. Opposition may be
generated, on the other hand, by some social-political circumstantional inter-
ests which refuse to see the educational benefit in the long run; these interests
are holding on to the pseudo-payoffs of immediate, visible outcomes.
Obviously, this case study pointed out remarkable prospects as well: these
spring from the TD methodology applications in education ( not only at the
high school level). This last aspect would certaintly necessitate a longer time
period. A complete TD education desideratum would need to change the
whole educational paradigm that – in turn - would need a new setting of the
educational ideal, according to the TD axioms. These axioms generate – in
their turn – a new value system. All these imply the setting up of a new TD
curriculum and an adequated strategy in the human resources training such
an entreprise would entail. Last but not the least, a new “didactics” is needed:
this has to be compatible with the TD methodology.
231
How to achieve these desiderata ? There are no unique “prescriptions”.
Romania has started to set up centers and nucleuses for TD methodology dis-
semination, both in high schools and universities. One can even state there is a
“TD trend” to struggle for the implementation of TD in education: books and
journal publishings, conferences and symposia on TD topics, setting up TD
projects and programs ( of lesser or greater scope), good practicing exemples
dissemination etc. All these are due – in our country – to local initiatives which
were professionally sustained and stimulated by professor Basarab Nicolescu.
We hope to be on the right path.
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e.pdf, accessed: December 1, 2012.
11. Niclolescu,B., 1999. Transdisciplinary evolution of learning. Talk at the
American Educational Research Association (AERA), Annual Meeting, Mon-
tréal, Canada, April 1999, Round-Table “Overcoming the Underdevelopment
of Learning : A Trandsdisciplinary View”, with the participation of Leon
Lederman (Nobel Prize of Physics), Jan Visser, Ron Burnett et al.; accessi-
ble at http://basarab-nicolescu.fr/on− line− articles.php, accessed: December
1, 2012.
12. see the website: http://www.moisenicoara.ro/, accessed: December 1, 2012.
13. see the website: http:www.moisenicoara.ro/revis ta-t-nr1/, accessed: Decem-
ber 1, 2012.
14. Muresan, M., coord., 2010. Transdisciplinaritatea de la un experiment spre un
model didactic, Junimea, Iasi, with a foreword written by Basarab Nicolescu.
15. Muresan, M., Flueras, J., 2010. Towards a new paradigm of education in the
21st century society., The International Journal of Learning, 16(8), pp.207-220,
http://ijl.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.30/prod.23 43, accessed: December 1,
2012.
16. Muresan, M., 2012. A transidsciplinary “reading” of the water, in “T” Jour-
nal. no.2, edited by The Trasdisciplinary Center of Educational Applications
from “Moise Nicoara” National College, Arad, http://www.moisenicoara.ro/t-
journal-no-2/, accessed: December 1, 2012.
17. Nicolescu, B., 2006. Phantasma (Centrul de Cercetare a Imaginarului, Cluj,
Romania), http://www.phantasma.ro/dezbateri/masa/masa14.html, accessed:
December 1, 2012.
18. International Coloquium “Transdisciplinarity in Primary, Secondary and High
School Education” (2012) Arad, Romania, http://www.moodle.ro/edutd, ac-
cessed: December 1, 2012.
233
About the Author
Mirela Mureşan is a high-school teacher in the Romanian Department, of “Moise

Nicoara” National College, Arad, Romania, Europe. She teaches Romanian language
and literature to the students from the 9-th to 12- th grade; member of the National
Committee for Romanian Literature Curriculum Designing in Romania; she is one
of the designers of the new curriculum performed today in all the high schools in
Romania, according to the reform of education, which took place in the country
starting from 1997; member in the Board of the National Association of Teach-
ers of Romanian Literature (ANPRO) (see www.anpro.ro ); board member of the
national didactic review, “Perspective” (Perspectives) issued in Cluj–Napoca, Ro-
mania; coordinator of The Trasdisciplinary Center of Educational Applications from
“Moise Nicoara” National College, Arad; chief editor of “T Journal” – on-line journal
published in Romanian and English (see http://www.moisenicoara.ro/revista-t-nr1/
.Her research interests and work are in the fields of philosophy of education and
educational strategies, transdisciplinary education. She attended many national and
international conferences, symposiums organized in Romania, with various scientific
papers concerning the problems of curriculum designing, philosophy of education,
critical thinking and didactic issues. She took part in a lot of national and Euro-
pean projects for education such as Comenius, Grundvig, provided by the European
Union.
CHAPTER 12
Transdisciplinary Collaboration in
Designing Patient Handling/Transfer
Assistive Devices: Current & Future Designs
T. Batuhan Baturalp, Texas tech University, Mechanical Engineering Department,
Lubbock, Texas, 79409, USA.
any health care facilities deal with challenges associated with safe patient
M handling and movement. Back injuries are a serious problem for nursing
personnel who perform frequent patient handling activities. The main objec-
tives of this study are to demonstrate the necessity of patient handling/transfer
assistive devices, explore the economic benefits of them, review current assis-
tive patient transfer devices, and investigate design parameters of an ideal
patient handling/transfer assistive device. This Chapter also focuses on the
importance of the transdisciplinary collaboration in developing and designing
patient handling/transfer assistive devices.
Keywords: transdisciplinary research, patient transfer/handling, assistive
devices.
12.1 Introduction
Health care workers have higher rates of work-related musculoskeletal injuries
when compared to the general population. These musculoskeletal injuries can
occur due to mechanical stress placed on the ligaments, bones, muscles or
supportive tissues of the body. The comparison between health care staff and
other industries shows that between 1980 and 1992, the injury and illness rate
for nursing home workers increased from 10.7% to 18.2% among the nation’s
1,506,000 nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants (US Department of Labor,
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1994). Due to 1994 Bureau of Labor Statistics
data, nursing home workers face the third highest rate of occupational injury
and illness (221,000 cases in 1994) among all US industries. The biggest por-
tion of back injuries can be related to events that occur during the handling and
235
lifting of residents. The injury rate for the health care sector was higher than
the average for all other industries combined between 1996 and 2000 years in
Canada (Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia). Approximately
5000 nurses were surveyed in 2001 and results indicate that 85% of the nurses
experienced back pain at work (The American Nurses Association, Nursing-
World.org Health and Safety Survey, September 2001). Another example, the
injury rate per 100 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) workers for the Acute and
Long term care sectors in British Columbia were 6.4 and 10.7, respectively,
while the injury rate for all other industries in BC was 3.7 in 2001(Workers
Compensation Board of British Columbia, 2002).
A study called NEXT (nurses early exit study) [1] is also investigated in
European Union in 2003. The aim of this study was to identify why nurses
are leaving their profession earlier than members of other professions. The
study indicates that almost all European Union countries have a lack of active
nurses and the situation is expected to be worse in the next 20-30 years.
Several reasons contribute to this situation: the population of young people
in the working age will decrease, while the older people in the working age
will increase and also the number of people who need care (over 64 years) will
increase.
The procedures which involve repositioning, transferring and lifting pa-
tients are considered the most painful for care giving personnel. The main
and hardest patient handling tasks can be listed as: bed to chair transfer,
chair to bed transfer and patient repositioning task in the bed. These tasks
can have more or less risk on the musculoskeletal system with respect to patient
weight, capability of patient, frequency and duration of the lifting, workplace
geometry and environment, stability of the patient, and the horizontal and
vertical position of the patient relative to the health care worker [2-6].
Definition and solution of the patient transfer/handling problem with re-
spect to different discipline approaches is surveyed from the literature. Dif-
ferent discipline approaches, such as business and administration, health care
personnel education, engineering, and social sciences, have been found [4, 7,
8, 9-15].
Traditional prevention to this problem based on teaching workers proper
body mechanics while manual lifting, has not yielded widespread success in
reducing injury rates. A possible reason to why safe patient handling/transfer
trainings did not work in practice is the job of the health care workers can be
very hard and stressful. Thus, they cannot apply the required movements for
safe lifting [17-24].
The stressfulness of patient handling and transferring tasks can be over-
come by using today’s common assistive devices like overhead (ceiling) lifts,
floor lifts or stand-up lifts. However, there are still weak points to be de-
veloped in these devices. For example, mobility of ceiling lifts is limited by
rail tracks, and installation of rail tracks is not only expensive but also trou-
blesome. Stand-up or standing lifts are limited by their functionality on the
tasks, because they are designed to be used in only from a seated to standing
Chapter 12. Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Designing Patient
237
Handling/Transfer Assistive Devices :Current & Future Designs
Table 12.1: Physically Demanding Tasks Identified by Different Studies.

Skotte et al. [2] lifting from bed to repositioning
standing on the floor on wheelchair
Hye-Knudsen et al. [3] from lying to sitting repositioning
on bedside on wheelchair
or vice versa
Garg et al. [5] transferring patient wheelchair
from toilet to bed
to wheelchair or vice versa
or vice versa
Callison et al. [6] bed to chair bedside commode
or vice versa to bed
or vice versa
position lifting task for patients who can put weight on their feet. Mobility of
floor lifts is limited because of size of their base due to concerns of stability and
also in the literature, they are defined as difficult to use and time consuming
with respect to overhead lifts.
The purpose of this study was to identify and evaluate not only the differ-
ent disciplinary approaches to define the problem but also different approaches
for the solutions to the problem. In the light of this variety of definitions and
solutions to the problem, a transdisciplinary collaboration for the solution of
the problem is proposed. Different discipline standpoints such as economi-
cal, biomechanical, psychological, cultural, and educational are investigated,
to find a convenient solution for musculoskeletal injuries related to patient
handling/transfer tasks.
12.2 Identification of the Patient Handling/Lifting

Tasks
The definition of the problem starts with identifying physically demanding
patient handling and lifting tasks that the health care personnel encounter
almost every work day. The risky tasks in terms of overexposure of ergonomic
stress on health care staff can differ in acute care and long term care facili-
ties. Thus, both need to be investigated. Table 1 shows the list of physically
demanding tasks identified by different studies.
Physically demanding tasks have been identified in long term care facili-
ties in order to understand which tasks expose nurses to ergonomic stresses.
Patients in this type of facility need less assistance from health care personnel
than the patients in acute care facilities.
Skotte et al. [2] used a dynamic three dimensional biomechanical evalu-

ation technique to investigate the low back loading during common patient
handling tasks which are shown in Figure 1. Ten female health care work-
ers participated in the study and performed nine common patient handling
tasks on male stroke patients. Patient handling tasks were classified into three
groups: lifting, repositioning, and turning. The maximum compression on low
back in two lifting tasks (lifting the patient from bed to standing on the floor
and repositioning the patient in the wheelchair) was found to be significantly
higher than all other tasks.
Hye-Knudsen et al. [3] examined the kinematics of thoracolumbar spine
during common patient handling tasks. The aim of the study was to find the re-
lationship between musculoskeletal injuries and asymmetric working postures
which are seen more frequently than industrial material handling operations.
Ten female health care personnel participated in study by applying nine dif-
ferent tasks. A lumbar motion monitor was used to obtain kinematic data
and also muscle activity was recorded by surface electrodes. Displacements
and deflections were found significantly higher on the following tasks: from
lying to sitting on bedside, from sitting to lying on bed, and repositioning
on wheelchair. Patient handling/lifting tasks which include usage of assistive
devices are also investigated in the literature. Dutta et al. [4] measured the
peak external hand forces and external moments on the lower back while using
loaded overhead and floor lifts (see Figure 2) which are operated by one or two
caregivers. Forces and moments are estimated from the ground reaction forces
and motion capture data. Use of overhead lifts caused significantly less back
loads than use of floor lifts. However, two caregivers working together did not
reduce the loads in the use of floor lifts, when they used overhead lifts the
loads in the operation reduced. Because overhead lifts generated lower loads
on caregivers, they are predicted to reduce the risk of back injury to caregivers.
In a preference survey conducted among the caregivers, majority of caregivers
preferred overhead lifts to floor lifts. However, overhead lifts require installed
tracks to operate which makes them highly restricted in terms of mobility and
availability. Thus, there is still a need for a better floor lift.
Another nursing home ergonomic evaluation study was conducted by Garg
et al. [5] among 38 nursing assistants who performed 16 different patient han-
dling tasks related to low back pain. The data is collected by videotaping and
surveying nursing assistants. Garg et al. [5] found hardest tasks to be transfer-
ring patient from toilet to wheelchair, wheelchair to toilet, wheelchair to bed,
bed to wheelchair, bathtub to wheelchair, chairlift to wheelchair, weighing pa-
tients, and lifting patients up in bed. Transfer times, lack of accessibility, pa-
tient safety and comfort, physical stresses associated with the devices, and lack
of skill were some of the reasons for not using the assistive devices. Also, en-
vironmental barriers like confined spaces and stationary railings are observed.
Additionally, frequency of patient handling tasks is examined. The five most
frequent tasks were toilet to wheelchair, wheelchair to toilet, wheelchair to
bed, bed to wheelchair, and bathtub to wheelchair. It is noticed that the list
239
(a) Turning Patient in (b) Moving the Pa- (c) Repositioning the Pa-
the Bed from Back to tient from Sitting on tient in the Bed.
Left Side. the Bed to Supine Po-
sition.
(d) Transferring Pa- (e) Turning Patient in (f) Repositioning the

tient from Sitting on the Bed from Back to Patient Posteriorly
the Bed to Sitting in Right Side. in the Seat of the
a Wheelchair. Wheelchair.
(g) Elevate the Patient (h) Repositioning of (i) Lifting the Patient
from a Supine Position in the Supine Patient To- from Sitting on the
the Bed to Sitting Position wards the Head of the Edge of the Bed to
on the Edge of the Bed. Bed. Standing on the Floor.
Figure 12.1: Common Patient Handling Tasks, [2].
of hardness and frequency of tasks follow each other.

Since most existing studies on patient handling have been conducted in long
term care facilities, Callison et al. [6] investigated musculoskeletal injuries due
to patient handling/lifting in an acute care facility. Different from long term
care facilities, the main goal in an acute care hospital is to stabilize the patient,
treat the illness or condition, and discharge the patient home or to another
type of facility, such as long term care. Thus, generally in acute care facilities,
patients are unstable, unpredictable and their mobility can be limited by the
(a) Overhead (Ceiling) Lift. (b) Floor Lift.
Figure 12.2: Overhead and Floor Lifts with Quick Fit Slings, [4].
medical condition. Therefore, it’s important to identify patient handling tasks

in acute care facilities. Survey and work sampling methods are used to achieve
this goal. The nurses ranked the most physically demanding patient transfer
tasks as follows: bed to chair, chair to bed, bedside commode to bed, and bed
to bedside commode. On the other hand, the least physically demanding task
was side to side transfer. Also, it is observed that the majority of transfers
were handled without using assistive lifting devices.
12.3 Different Discipline Standpoints to the

Problem
According to the literature survey of patient transfer/handling related papers,
solution of musculoskeletal injuries related to patient handling/transfer tasks
includes not only an engineering perspective, but also social sciences, business
and administration, medical sciences (biomechanics, physiotherapy etc.), and
statistics (surveys, interview etc.) point of view.
12.3.1 Business and Administration Standpoint

Reducing patient handling injuries can result in considerable economic benefits
to employers, as well as prevention of significant pain and suffering for workers.
Analysis by Chhokar et al. [7] about musculoskeletal injury trends in the
interval of three years pre-intervention and three years post-intervention of
implementing use of patient handling/transfer assistive devices revealed a sig-
nificant and sustained decrease in days lost, workers compensation claims, and
direct costs associated with patient handling injuries (see Figure 3). The pay-
241
back period was estimated assuming that pre-intervention injury costs would
either continue to increase (0.82 years) or plateau (2.50 years) in the year
immediately preceding intervention. The rapid economic gains and sustained
reduction in the frequency and cost of patient handling injuries beyond the
first year strongly advocate for ceiling lift programs as an intervention strat-
egy. Figure 3 shows the economic benefits of assistive patient transfer devices
in three years after installation of ceiling lifts. Based on this rate of savings,
a payback period of 2.50 years is required to recover the initial investment of
$344,323 for the intervention. Assuming that the claims costs would have con-
tinued to increase through the post-intervention period, the extrapolated di-
rect costs for the three years post-intervention would have reached $1,559,349.
Using this approach of economic estimation, a total of $1,257,605 was saved
during the three years post-intervention, with payback of the initial investment
occurring within 0.82 years.
In another study by Randall et al. [8], the cost of related injuries can be
staggering, having a direct impact on the afflicted persons and the institution.
After evaluation of alternative means of reducing the risk of caregiver injury in
conjunction with the need for more frequent patient handling, a commitment
was made to invest in ceiling lifts as a means to an end.
Miller et al. [9] state that there was a 70% decrease in claims cost related
to health care staff injuries at the intervention facility using assistive devices,
accounting for a decrease of 18 days lost. In comparison, there was a 241%
increase in total claims costs at the comparison facility, with an associated
increase of 499 days lost during this same time period.
12.3.2 Biomechanical Standpoint

The study of approaching the structure and function of biological systems
(generally humans) with the methods of mechanics is called biomechanics.
Biomechanics is closely related to engineering because regular approach in
biomechanics is to use traditional engineering methods of mechanics to analyze
biological systems.
Loads on back of health care personnel are analyzed in two different biome-
chanical analysis papers [10, 11]. In both studies, obtained back loads are
compared with the back-compression criterion limit (3,400 N) recommended
by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH, 1981
and 1994). Movement analysis methods were used to obtain the kinematic
data, and they used force sensors on hands and feet to obtain the external
forces. NIOSH also suggests a maximum permissible limit of spinal compres-
sion of 6,400 N.
Daynard et al. [10] measured data entered to a biomechanical model by
using movement analysis methods, and biomechanical model was used for cal-
culation of the compressive and shear forces on the spine (L4-L5) by taking
into account the subject’s height, weight, and gender. This study was more
comprehensive than the study conducted by Zhuang et al. [11], because the
(a) Total Cost of Claims Pre and Post Interven-

tion.
(b) Number of All, Lifting/Transferring, and

Repositioning Claims.
(c) Claims Cost for All, Lifting/Transferring,

and Repositioning Claims.
(d) Days Lost for All, Lifting/Transferring, and

Repositioning Claims.
Figure 12.3: Economical Benefit Graphs, [7].

243
cumulative spinal load was considered by multiplying the duration of the task
with the spinal load. Additionally, the study involved a control group, five
different tasks, and two different patients. Results revealed that both educa-
tion/technique training and new assistive handling equipment reduced spinal
loading in several tasks. Lack of training for bed to chair transfer and chair
boosts of patients resulted in spinal loading which was risky according to
NIOSH. However the examination of cumulative spinal loads showed that the
use of assistive equipment increases exposure to risky spinal loads, as more
actions are required to complete the transfers.
Zhuang et al. [11] aimed to evaluate the effects of resident transfer method
and resident weight on the biomechanical stress to nursing assistants while
performing a bed to chair transferring task. In the light of this evaluation,
re-identifying the methods could reduce the biomechanical stress to the nurs-
ing assistants. Twelve transfer methods (nine battery-powered lifts, a sliding
board, a walking belt, and a manual transfer) were evaluated. A three di-
mensional biomechanical model was used to estimate the L5/S1 compressive
force with the inputs of body posture, hand-force magnitude and direction,
and the anthropomorphic data. In the results, it is clearly mentioned that
nursing personnel were exposed to excessive biomechanical stress when per-
forming resident transfers without using any assistive device (avg. 3487 N).
Average back-compressive forces associated with using ceiling and floor lifts
were smaller than NIOSH criteria. Thus, the spine loads were reduced in use
of ceiling and floor lifts, unlike the other assistive devices and manual transfer
methods.
12.3.3 Social Sciences Standpoint

Influence of culture, experience, and psychology on decision making plays an
important role in the solution of patient the handling/transfer problem. In
this section, papers in the literature related to these effects are discussed.
Effects of training and experience on patient handling/transfer tasks were
investigated by Hodder et al. [12]. Three different tasks (patient reposition
from side of the bed, head of bed, and patient transfer from bed to wheelchair)
were performed by health care personnel both experienced and not experienced
on training. Data was collected in terms of trunk kinematics and muscle
activities. Results indicated that experienced staff use up to 18.1% (maximum
voluntary excitations) less muscle activity. Furthermore, the study revealed
that mechanical lifts are still not practical in all hospitals and home care.
Another study on the effects of caregiver experience on patient handling/
transfer tasks was conducted by Dutta et al. [4]. Peak external forces and
moments, which are generated on low back, were measured when the care-
givers used floor and overhead lifts. Twenty caregivers were categorized as
experienced and less experienced and performed five different maneuvering
tasks with assistive devices. Motion capture and ground force measurement
techniques were used for collecting the data. Findings showed that experience
significantly affects the difficulty of use of floor lifts, while it does not play a
significant role on overhead lifts.
Myers et al. [13] introduced the cultural effects on adaptation of the health
care workers to patient lifting devices. A sociological and anthropological view
of culture explored specifically how work culture or safety culture might be
involved in workplace safety. Cultural facilitators and barriers of nurses and
physical/occupational therapists in two acute care hospitals were examined
by using audio recordings and text data. Data revealed that both adopted a
“patient first” approach which includes usage of lift devices highly dependent
on patients’ benefit and not necessarily for staff safety. Another finding was
that the implied purpose of patient lifting devices clashes with the nurses’
cultural emphasis on compassion, and with physical/occupational therapists’
cultural emphasis on independence Ìű except when use increases patients’ in-
dependence. The study also discussed that cultural expressions involving the
nature of care giving in between health care professionals may affect the ten-
dency to adopt safety measures in complex ways. In this matter, the authors
suggest that workers’ understanding of the purpose of their work, and accept-
able means of conducting it, should be understood before implementing safety
interventions.
Furthermore, Chany et al. [14] explored how staffs personalities can be
linked to load on the spine during repetitive lifting of patients. Twenty four
participants were divided into two groups: novice and experienced. Spine com-
pression, anterior – posterior shear, and lateral shear were measured to define
the spine loading. Participants were categorized into personalities with respect
to Myers-Briggs personality type indicator and performed repetitive, asymmet-
ric lifts. Sensing versus intuition is one of four dichotomies in Myers-Briggs
personality type indicator, and they are the information-gathering functions.
They describe how new information is understood and interpreted. Individuals
who prefer sensing are more likely to trust information that is in the present,
tangible, and concrete. On the other hand, those who prefer intuition tend to
trust information that is more abstract or theoretical, that can be associated
with other information (either remembered or discovered by seeking a wider
context or pattern). The results indicated that intuitors are exposed to higher
spinal loads than sensor personality type. Novice lifters typically encountered
greater spinal load. Moreover, perceiver personality group received greater
spinal load than judgers’ personality group.
The psychophysical evaluation of nine battery-powered lifts, a sliding board,
a walking belt, and a baseline manual method for transferring nursing home
patients/residents from a bed to a chair was targeted in the study of Zhuang
et al. [15].The psychophysical evaluation included investigation of the effects
of resident transferring methods on the psychophysical stress to nursing assis-
tants performing the transferring task. Evaluation also aimed at identifying
transfer methods that could reduce the psychophysical stress reported by nine
nursing assistants. The results showed that the psychophysical stresses on
nursing assistants were significantly reduced with the use of the assistive de-
245
vices on resident transfers with respect to transfers with the baseline manual
transfer method. Moreover, the basket-sling lift and stand-up lift were pre-
ferred methods, and the assistive devices’ resident comfort and security ratings
were greater than or equal to the baseline manual method.
12.4 Current Designs and Solutions to the

Problem
12.4.1 Current Patient Transfer Devices
In all of the referenced papers of this section, floor and ceiling lifts are found
as the most helpful assistive patient transferring devices. A ceiling lift consists
of a ceiling mounted track, an electric motor, and a patient sling used to lift,
transfer, and reposition patients/residents (see Figure 4). One or more staff
members are capable of placing a sling on a patient/resident and hooking it
onto the ceiling lift. Ceiling tracks can be configured in numerous arrange-
ments to accommodate many beds within a single room and possibly multiple
rooms. In general, there are two different types of ceiling lift motors: portable
and fixed. Portable motors are favorable than fixed motors because of their fol-
lowing features: ease attachment and detachment from the ceiling lift tracks.
Floor lifts require much more space than ceiling lifts to operate while ceil-
ing lifts require significant structural modifications in patient’s room. Thus,
ceiling lifts are preferable for newly constructed facilities.
Hasanat et al. [16] evaluated ceiling lifts in comparison to floor lifts based
on transfer time, patient comfort, and staff perceptions in three long term care
facilities with varying ceiling lift coverage. The time required for transferring
or repositioning patients along with patient comfort levels were recorded for
119 transfers. In the three facilities, 143 health care workers completed the
survey on their perceptions of patient handling tasks and equipment. For both
transferring and repositioning tasks, staff preferred to use ceiling lifts and also
found them to be less physically demanding. Duration of bed to chair transfer
tasks in ceiling lifts was found to be less than floor lifts with 156.9 seconds
and 273.6 seconds on average.
Also, Miller et al. [9] indicated that staff perceived that using ceiling lifts
compared to manual methods put them at significantly (p<0.05) less risk of
injury. Seventy five percent of staff preferred to use the ceiling lifts over any
other method for lifting and transferring residents. This study demonstrated
that incorporating ceiling lifts into the design of a new multi-level care facility
reduced patient handling injuries and decreased perceived risk of injury among
health care staff.
12.4.2 Training Programs

Training programs play an important role in prevention of possible muscu-
loskeletal injury due to patient handling/transfer tasks, if the training program
(a) Manual Transfer (b) Walking Belt.

Method.
(c) Sliding Board. (d) Floor Lift.
(e) Ceiling Lift. (f) Stand-up Lift.
Figure 12.4: Types of Current Patient Handling/Transfer Assistive Devices,

[7]
can be successfully implemented by health care personnel. The studies in the

literature [17-24] defining and evaluating patient handling/transfer training
programs are surveyed in this section.
A method based training approach has traditionally been used to solve the
problem of back pain related with patient handling. A study was conducted by
Hignet et al. [17] to examine if the competency-based training changes the be-
havior (physical and cognitive) for patient handling tasks. Sixteen health care
organizations in the UK participated from the acute and primary health care
247
sectors. Behavioral data was collected by observations and interviews during
two patient handling tasks (sitting to standing and repositioning in sitting).
The results designated that more positive safety principles of organizations
make the tasks more complex, and thus influence the decision making about
the patient handling tasks.
Creating safer working environments for nursing staff was the aim of the
study of Nelson et al. [18]. On this matter, a multifaceted program was de-
signed and evaluated for the effect of the program on injury rate, lost work
days, job satisfaction, self-reported unsafe patient handling acts, level of sup-
port for program, staff and patient acceptance, program effectiveness, costs,
and return on investment. Twenty-three high risk units in seven facilities par-
ticipated in the study over two nine month periods, and data was gathered
through surveys, weekly process logs, injury logs, and cost logs. The rate of
musculoskeletal injuries was significantly decreased, while the total number of
lost workdays was decreased 18% which is not statistically significant. Signifi-
cant cost saving was also achieved in this study. In addition, the study states
that “over the past 30 years, efforts to reduce work-related musculoskeletal
disorders in nurses have been largely unsuccessful.” [18].
A patient handling training program was evaluated in the study of Cor-
nish et al. [19] by surveying student nurses. A survey was completed by 106
students which was 34% of overall students. This participation rate can be
considered as an evidence of the perceived low importance of patient trans-
ferring and handling. Most completed responses were gathered from child
branch students, while mental health students responded to this study by a
low percentage of 9%. Students observed if the patient handling techniques
are applied in practice, and 60% of the students observed assistive device use
where needed in practice. The students were asked if there is a difference
between training scenarios and practice, and two key findings were revealed:
poor practice and constraints on practice. Poor practice includes poor posture
of staff, use of inappropriate techniques, use of incorrect equipment for the
task, and a lack of safety checks. On the other hand, constraints on practice
issue includes a lack of appropriate equipment, lack of time, lack of staff and
perception of the situation as an emergency. The need of better equipment
for patient handling and transferring was exposed by the reported results of
students about use of equipment in practice: it was sometimes (43%), most
of the time (36%) or always used (6%) rather than never used (1%) or hardly
ever used (14%).
12.5 Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Assistive

Device Design and Development
Effective research activities in an inclusive setting require intensive and con-
tinuing collaboration of all members of a research team. There is a move-
ment away from the traditional multi and interdisciplinary models, in which
researchers work jointly but from each of their respective disciplinary perspec-
tives to address a common research problem. Within many fields, such as
medicine, biosciences, and cognitive science, there is growing awareness of the
need for transdisciplinary approaches [25-27].
As the complexity of new patient assistive device development processes in-
creases, the design process must include transdisciplinary collaborative knowl-
edge synthesis provided by a large number of experts (actors) for integrated
solution. Transdisciplinary research teams (patients, nurses, medical doctors,
engineers, medical technicians, clinical psychologists, physical therapists, and
architects) confer a distinct advantage and play an important role in developing
a good design that complies with human factors and ergonomic principles [28].
In this model, actors work collaboratively for the common goals (designing an
assistive device), using shared methods and techniques, sharing responsibility
for planning, sharing of information for problem solving and decision-making,
and assessment. The design that does not consider collaborative efforts of
actors along with the use of poor technology may result in poor quality, and
unsafe, inefficient, and high cost design. Approximately, 5,000 types of med-
ical devices that are used by patients around the world have device-related
problems [29].
Although new technologies are an essential part of our global information
society and they play an important role in our daily lives, the values of a
specific technology may not be realized due to four general drawbacks [29-32]:
• poor technology design that does not adhere to human factors and er-
gonomic principles,
• poor technology interface with the patient or environment,
• inadequate plan for implementing a new technology into practice, and
• inadequate maintenance plan.
User (patients, nurses, physical therapists, and others) involvement that in-
corporates human factors within the assistive device design and development,
offers many possibilities that allow the development of safer and more usable
medical devices that are better fit to users’ needs. User involvement of assis-
tive device design and development at different stages of the design process
such as design concept development, testing and verification and deployment
stages are the key elements for successful design. This process is crucial for
capturing users’ perspectives and their inputs during the development stages.
Assistive device users are dissimilar in several characteristics, such as needs,
skills and working environments. This is also an important consideration for
incorporating users’ perspectives in the design and development process.
Medical doctors, as part of the collaborating team, also play an important
role in the transdisciplinary effort to provide appropriate assistive technology
or prescribe a particular device for different patients.
Figure 5 shows transdisciplinary collaboration to design new assistive de-
vice between designers (design team, architects, and medical technicians), ser-
249
Figure 12.5: Transdisciplinary Collaborative Design Process.
vice providers (medical doctors, occupational therapist, nurses, rehabilitation

specialists, social support professionals “clinical psychologists”), and users (pa-
tients). As shown in Figure 5, the design process begins with an identified
need that can be satisfied by assistive device as a result of collaborative effort.
Considering alternative solutions at beginning of the design process, during
the concept stage is the most important. In the transdisciplinary collabo-
ration process, service providers serve as a communication channel between
designers and users. Designers and service providers make initial contact with
users to create ideas. After feasibility study and a thorough selection, these
ideas go into research development by designers [33, 34].
As with any design project, the design of an appropriate assistive device
benefits from a cross-disciplinary collaboration. This transdisciplinary collab-
oration may even include social, cultural and religious considerations during
the design process.
12.6 Design Parameters of an Ideal Patient

Transfer Device
Besides the features of the current designs, the new design of assistive de-
vice for patient handling/transfer should be retrofit-able to a conventional
patient’s bed. It should be user friendly for ease of use and should require less
training than current designs. It should be capable of multi tasks like toilet
to wheelchair transfers and transferring to patient cleaning facilities, and to

utilize the device for more cases, portability and mobility must be increased.
Moreover, abortion of process in case of emergency should be included for
safety reasons. The durations of the tasks should be reduced, because the
duration of the tasks is directly related to risk of being exposed to excessive
spinal loads and duration is pretty high in floor and ceiling lifts [16]. The assis-
tive devices can be made more time efficient by replacing the sling with grips
or handles since preparing patient for sling is one of the most time consuming
parts of the process. Installation costs should be reduced. For example, in-
stallation cost in ceiling lifts was estimated by OHSAH (2003) as $3,500 per
bed [9].
Randall et al. [8] describes the process that was used for the selection of a
ceiling lift manufacturer to be partner in reducing the risk of caregiver injuries
and to fulfill the need of more frequent patient handling. The important design
parameter outputs of the ceiling lift selection process can be summarized as:
Lift weight capacity, vertical lifting distance, simple and smooth operation,
the battery charging system, scale features, lift utilization diagnostics, easily
disinfected surfaces, sling variety, staff education and training and ease of
maintenance.
Eight design parameters were found for assistive devices in the study of
Radovanovic et al. [35] as follows: weight, height, level of consciousness, mo-
bility in bed, transfers from bed/stretcher or bed/chair and vice versa, walking,
catheters and equipment, and patient environment. The assistive device va-
lidity was established based on content and construct validity. Surveys were
used to validate the product. The results of the study showed that the assistive
device seems to be reliable and valid for patient handling assessment.
12.7 Conclusion
The National Institute of Standards and Technology estimates that 20.6 per-
cent of Americans have some sort of disability. For disabled people, assistive
devices are essential to help them perform everyday tasks. Many simple de-
vices were used to create superior independence for people with disabilities.
Assistive devices range from something as simple as a bar attached to a bath-
room wall to assist disabled people getting on and off a toilet.
In this Chapter, the importance of patient transfer assistive devices is
demonstrated. Then the importance is supported by two biomechanical analy-
sis papers from literature. Also, economic benefits of patient transfer assistive
devices are shown by related papers in literature. Moreover, social sciences
standpoints are examined. Limitations of current designs are found and de-
sign criteria of new devices are determined. Finally, the distinct advantages
of transdisciplinary collaboration in assistive design and development are dis-
cussed.
251
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About the Author
Turgut Batuhan Baturalp received his B.S. and M.S. degree in Mechanical En-
gineering from Yeditepe University, Turkey in 2009. Since September 2010, he is
a Ph.D. student in Texas Tech University, Lubbock. His current research investi-
gates design of artificial muscle activated blood pump and mock circulatory system
testbeds. He has research interest in health care design including anthropomorphic
bipedal walking robots, artificial muscles, and assistive devices. He has extensive
research experience in robotics, biomimetic and biomechatronic design.
CHAPTER 13
Major Language, Minor Destiny? The Space
of Francophone Liberty: The case of the writer
Marius Daniel Popescu
Simona Modreanu, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi, Romania, Bd. Carol I no.11,
Iasi 700506.
s a semiotic being, producing sense, man lives in a symbolic universe, where

A language plays an essential part. For a writer, the choice of a “major” lan-
guage, like French, is problematic because it represents the beginning of a com-
plex process, sometimes conflicting, involving two or several cultural traditions,
history and life experience. But it is also a chance to define a francophone poly-
phonic “space”, beyond all geographical or institutional considerations, beyond
physical space or concrete time, where a writer (like the Romanian-Swiss one,
Marius Daniel Popescu) feels free to develop, throughout a language which is
different in many ways from the classical French, a new literature, disregarding
traditional genres and usual constraints.
Keywords: Francophone literature, dialogism, polyphony, in-between, lin-
guistic over-awareness, deterritorialization.
13.1 Introduction
Man is a semiotic being, an enunciating subject [1] who generates sense and, in
his turn, interprets the meaning of the words and gestures of another person.
In spite of the material appearance which surrounds us, man lives in a symbolic
universe in which language plays an essential part. Since a very long time –
not to say since always – the social being has no longer found himself in the
immediate presence of reality, his knowledge is intermediated by language,
which has as a consequence the fact that, according to Ernst Cassirer, he
“converses constantly with himself. He has so much surrounded himself with
linguistic forms, artistic images, mythical symbols, and religious rites, that
255
he cannot see or know anything without interposing this artificial mediating

element.” [2]
It is by means of language that man inherits a complex system of values
in the form of traditions, religions, morals, arts, etc., a system he carries on
and/ or transforms. This process is especially obvious in the field of literary
creation which, transposed in a “major” [3] language, may touch and influence
a greater number of persons and, little by little, change their mental frames
or the life vision.
Another direction of our approach focuses on Francophonie, especially fran-
cophone literature, which we consider to be problematic in more than one
respect. To begin with, the Francophonie seems to engender paradoxes: on
the one hand, it reunites around one language, a major one – French –, on
the other hand it expresses more than ever before the linguistic and cultural
diversity of people. The Francophonie is also problematic as, seemingly glos-
socentric, in reality it configures an identity starting from multiple and not
always convergent or harmonious elements. Dressed in monolingual arrays, but
in order to speak about multiculturalism and otherness. Fiercely defended in
its virginal purity at home, but in other regions constantly and deliberately
associated with the most creative activity, the one which gives a language
its primary liveliness and richness. The supreme paradox is perhaps the one
of this logic of exclusion: the Hexagon turned the French language into an
enclave surrounded by academic and legislative walls, while elsewhere it is a
fertile ground, a generative matrix, a flexible and malleable flesh, promised
to all, accepting sacrileges and twisting in the name of the liberty of thought
and writing. Nothing is more refined but also more difficult to get to than
the classic French, nothing richer and more effervescent than this creolized
language, born from the mix of all the frustrations, the humiliations and the
dreams of beauty. The French does not really feel at ease with the French
language, the francophone does. The former hardly has the right to touch the
language, to feel it, to abuse it, to love it, and to hate it. He has to respect
it, to look after its eternal endurance, to contemplate it on a pedestal. The
francophone may undertake any audacity that his language often forbids and
discovers with wonder a space without fixed strings, a moving root.
It is in this area of exceptional liberty given only by language, without
geopolitical or institutional limits, that one can find the specificity of the
“francophone space”, brilliantly illustrated, among others, for several years,
by the Romanian writer established in 1990 in the French-speaking Switzer-
land, Marius Daniel Popescu. He did not know any French before arriving in
Lausanne, today he writes all his texts directly in this “no man’s langue,” as
it was called by another great stateless Romanian, the poet Gherasim Luca.
He feels free and he refuses any literary yoke – a type of liberation which did
not manifest itself in his first writings in Romanian. Perceived as an area of
cognitive, pragmatic, and emotional freedom, the Francophonie is open to the
linguistic and even symbolic delights forbidden to native speakers. As the con-
tours of this notion remain vague, the great writers who illustrate it (Kundera,
Chapter 13. Major Language, Minor Destiny? The Space of
257
Francophone Liberty: The case of the writer M. D. Popescu
Makine, Chamoiseau or Mabanckou, for example) take advantage of it in order
to create for themselves a fictitious because fictional identity, relatively free in
comparison with the mother tongues as well as with the adopted tongue. A
word-play, a play with time, with the “I,” everything is allowed. It seems that
we have more freedom in the language of the other, which, after all, very soon
is no longer completely the language of the other, as it receives a transplant
of cultural weight and becomes embellished.
13.2 The Constraints of a Major Language

The meeting of two different cultural areas, although related, belongs to the
field of cross-cultural semiotics which encounters the set of issues belonging
to deterritorialization [4], and favours the notion of the in-between. It seems
that this non-space has always been a fertile ground and an area privileged
by the archaic Romanian mentality and, later, by these writers who knew the
glory in and by means of French as an adoptive language, like Cioran, Ionesco,
Panait Istrati and many others.
Daniel Sibony [5] defines the in-between as “a type of break-link between
two terms, with the distinctive feature that the space of the break and the one
of the link are greater than we believe them to be.” In other words, in the space
of the in-between the break appears where the space of another link opens,
the one of recruitment and of integration. Any piece of writing practices the
in-between of two languages, a symbolic and mythical area where the source
language, silenced and relegated, is potentiated, it invests the field of the
unconscious, while the linguistic code of the new language of expression is
actualized, giving birth to a new language and to the author’s style.
For the francophone writer, the existence of this intermediary area with
vague contours brings to the front the issues of the écart in the novel. What is
this frontier writing, floating between fragments reminding of its strangeness,
either by its ontological charge of a vision nourished by the experience which
is unknown to the receiving language, either by a metalinguistic plunge to the
primary roots of the word? Lise Gauvin [6] has already discussed about the lin-
guistic over-awareness of which the francophone writers testify in various man-
ners, in the sense that they offer, at the heart of their identity issue, an analysis
of language and the manner in which the connection language/literature is ar-
ticulated in different contexts. According to Gauvin, these complex relations
are at least competitive, if not conflicting, an opinion with which we disagree,
as the scope of the reasoning of those who choose French as literary language
is much beyond the agora of a bilingual confrontation. A proof, among others,
is this example of ars poetica by Marius Daniel Popescu:
You tell yourself that you have just written a text with a girl and a
woman, with poetry and prose in its words, before the words which
you have just written, before the words that you are going to write,
there is a sort of embryo of the text to come, of the text which
can be published-the published text and you place this embryo

before the words begin to inscribe themselves somewhere: any piece
of writing needs perceptions, plans or mental spontaneities which
form in your case the beginning of every text: once you begin to
transform the embryo of the text into words, you subject yourself
to rules which disrupt this embryo, which invite it to grow, to
become a text which can be published following the traces which
we call words and which, strangely, join together without forming
crossroads, squares, sidewalks.
The genes of literature, of a published text, poetry or prose, are not the
words; words represent only one of the means undertaken by human beings
until now in order, at the same time, to translate, express, keep, interpret,
form, and develop this embryo made of perceptions, which is the root of all
forms of language. [...] Any word, all by itself, is an accomplished literary
text which can be published. It is you, the embryo of the text, and you try
hard, as many others did, do and will do, to transform this embryo into words,
to define, by means of words, everything that this embryo represents before
words, without words; fortunately, you are an embryo among other embryos,
there is an infinity of embryos, there isn’t an infinity of words [7].
A study of the Eastern European discourse in the novel in general, Roma-
nian in particular, underlines the mechanisms of the crossing of languages and
cultures which are very different from the ones which characterize the African
literature of French expression, for example. It does not have, for example,
the inferiority complex of the dominated as, far from being the language of
the colonizers, the French language represents (or, at least, it represented) an
elitist aesthetic choice, a royal road to “play in the backyard of the power-
ful”. However, there is still ambivalence, fueled by the strangeness felt in the
in-between of the two languages, two cultures. In other words, the imaginary
and the expression of these writers are marked at the same time by the desire
of opening to the world and by the growing of roots in the original cultural
territory. It is not always comfortable to become a moving root and this causes
a permanent conflict between authenticity and readability. This struggle man-
ifests itself, on the one side, by a kind of systematic breaking-in which consists
of subverting the French language so as to make it short of breath and the
odor of hay and dung, this wild malleability of the Romanian language, on
the other side, by a paradoxical disarray, formulated by Panait Istrati in the
following manner: “I have come to the French literature with a Romanian
soul, but I had to lend it a French mask. When I tried to give back to this
soul its Romanian face, I was no longer able to do that; it had distanced itself
because of the foreign face” [8].
In addition, the original language revenges like an abandoned mistress and
rejects the body which has become estranged. This has been the emblematic
case of Istrati, warmly welcomed by the French, while the attitude adopted by
the Romanian critics before and after the war proved to be extremely diver-
gent, depending on the socio-cultural horizon of expectation. Essentially, the
259
attacks against the writings of Istrati are based upon the idea of the mysti-
fication of the Romanian realities, which this writer accomplished in another
language than his own, a reason for which, according to great critics such as
Nicolae Iorga or George Călinescu, he cannot be considered a Romanian writer,
in spite of the literary qualities that everybody agrees that he possesses.
Envisaging a field of study for the novel largely opened to the relations be-
tween cultural products coming from different civilizations, Semunjanga [9] in-
troduces new operative concepts which he names transculturality andtransgen-
erity, with the purpose of studying the transversal relationship negotiated be-
tween different cultural products in a novel, the manner in which an artistic
work unveils the culture of the Self and of the Other.
It has been obvious for a very long time – even before the concept of in-
tertextuality was coined – that every artistic work is influenced by its relations
with other works, on the formal plan as well as on the thematic plan. Based
upon this postulate, many researchers contemplate the study of the franco-
phone discourse in the novel as a transcultural object which is formed in the
margin of the French language and culture. It is obviously true for the fran-
cophone African literatures, but it is not the case of Romanian francophone
writers, who do not bear upon their shoulders the weight of a traumatizing
history with the French language and do not conceive, when leaving, any need
of a revengeful alteration of the vocabulary, only the pleasure of variations,
rephrasing, and word plays [10] with, in the writing of the text, an easiness of
increasing and intertwining several types of discourse and several enunciating
instances.
Marius Daniel Popescu told us that he had often been asked, in Switzer-
land, why he inserted poems or word plays based on sounds in his writings.
The interviewers thumbed their noses at the beginning, as if it had been a
lack of taste or clumsiness resulted from his insufficient familiarity with the
uses and the habits of the space of francophone literature. But the author has
always answered, with the most matter-of-fact air in the world, that it was in
this manner that he felt and that he was perfectly free to follow his inspiration,
even if it meant offending “the orthodox” of the novelistic style. It is his own
style:
This girl had back shoes, the sidewalk was asphalted, it had been raining
for half an hour, she was walking between the road and the high barrier of a
private propriety, you believe that one word contains all the other words, you
tell yourself that all the words can be concentrated in only one word, any word,
you take the word girl, this girl you have just seen, she must have a mother
and a father, somebody who waits for her at home, home is an apartment, in
this apartment she has her own room, she walks with her pink schoolbag held
above her head toward the entrance of the building where she lives with her
parents or only with her mother, or only with her father prose – “1. Ordinary
form of spoken or written language, which does not submit itself to the rules
of rhythm and musicality specific to poetry. 2. Manner of writing which is
specific to somebody, a school, etc. – Fam. Spoken or written words, no
matter which.” – who is there with you and this little girl who has finished
her second-grade classes today, she went out of her class then out of her school
then she lifted her arm holding the schoolbag, she protects herself from the
rain as she can, you keep looking at her in some area of your memory these
words and their syllables and their letters, you say “g from girl who has left
school, the rain is not a fool, g from greed of the soil for water, the rain on
the schoolbag: g g g g g g gleaming g g g giddy g g g g great g generations g
g g g g g g g g g g g girl” who doesn’t care at all about poetry and prose and
she doesn’t care about these literary genres, she goes home in this rain, she
hasn’t been educated indoctrinated emancipated manipulated lead into this
labyrinth without exit which offers along its way the walls poetry and prose
[11].
Conformism amuses him, as he does not feel any false modesty in front of
a “major” language. He uses it as he pleases, he feels at ease inside this new
mental and linguistic space he has created, but he does not see any chain and
he could not bear any hindrance in the crystallization of his creative drive.
The tension center-periphery as regards the languages, he does not know it.
Certainly, he is a minor writer, but there is no trace of pejorative connotation
in this epithet, on the contrary, as in the case of music, the presence of a semi-
tone in a major, Olympian structure, which risks becoming tedious, introduces
this original and disquieting note which, far from breaking the harmony of the
whole, elevates it. After a breaking wave of words which swirl and gush from
everywhere, he thrusts phrases like: “The most disagreeable thing is that we
have to use words in order to prove the uselessness of words” [12]. Or, if he is
ever pompously asked about “the truth of words,” he has a staggering answer:
“My words, all the words, shouldn’t exist!” [13]. Which does not prevent him
from speaking during the same interview about the “vibration” of words and
about the fact that they are “always signifying” for him, who has chosen to
“move away from their non-sense, their absurdity” [14].
It is the case of an ethnical contamination of the French imaginary by
the imaginary of the Romanian language. In the former, it is practically
unthinkable to mock the aesthetic force of the word which creates a stable
universe, according to the Aristotelian law of the excluded third. For the
Romanian, the actual and the virtual of the words’ connotations, fixed by
speech, have an equal force and the same ontological value, as they do not act
separately or in an opposing manner. Essentially, the absurd does not exist in
the Romanian vision of the world, as nothing could contradict a logic which
allows (without naming it thus) the included third and several levels of reality,
which maintains, consequently, an organic relation with time, non-linear, of a
natural come-and-go between conventional delineations. Popescu’s narratives
are confusing to an occidental reader, as he uses with ease and at every moment
these temporal shifts, without any warning, following the functioning of his
associative thinking, without caring to know whether “it is done” or not. The
forma mentis of his texts is circular, but not of that circular symmetry of
the circle which turns on itself, it would rather be the open one of the spiral.
261
A kind of “endless colum” by Brancusi. In addition, Marius Popescu drops
apparently at random, at the end of a phrase, that: “The word ‘end’ should
not exist” [15]. Another one. But the wave of words nonetheless submerges
us in his texts. He is another paradox.
13.3 Literary Francophonie under the Sign of

Freedom
The notion of francophone literature(s) has been much discussed, as in spite
of its singularity, it corresponds to a vast heterogenic body which resists any
simplifying grid. It is the world-wide case of young literatures, and their
writers find themselves at the “crossroads of languages” [16] and in cases of
“culture contact” [17]. It is however difficult to define this phenomenon, to
which Michel Beniamino attaches three main factors, i.e. space, history, and
language. We cannot speak about literary Francophonie as a space, the insti-
tutional borders being questioned and having little in common with the open
dialogue of cultures at this time of globalization. As to history, it is not a
better criterion, as even the title of francophone studies sends in the subtext
to a relation of dominating/dominated, centre/periphery. Incidentally, all the
literature written in French should be integrated in the category of French
literature. And wouldn’t it be easier to speak about French literature simply,
in the sense used by Salman Rushdie for the English literature (“which I have
always understood to mean simply literature written in English”) [18]?
The recent theories concerning language as a common denominator for the
francophone writers, especially the ones of Lise Gauvin, talk about a certain
paradigm of the ratio of foreignness to the language. This is certainly true
for this category of “minor” writers, but is it not an emblematic case for any
authentic writer? Wherever they come from, they have an exacerbated and
fertile relationship of love-hate with the common language, that they cultivate
incessantly, that they re-invent, in order to come – to use Gilles Delueze’s
words – to “make the language itself shout, stammer, stutter, murmur.” [19]
The writer who expresses himself in another language than his native one has
a unique experience of interiority-exteriority, which is unknown to the native
speaker, for obvious reasons. The foreigner is “condemned” to think the lan-
guage, actually the languages, as any linguistic questioning arisen from the
intimate contact with another universe sends him back in a loop to his own
language, of which he acquires an extended vision. We believe that the linguis-
tic over-awareness mentioned by researchers does not apply only to the new
field of expression – with this area of creative casualness and of not knowing
innate taboos –, but also to the old sphere, of which the weaknesses and the
incredible resources become evident to the one who has detached himself from
it.
In this respect we partly disagree with authors such as Michel Beniamino,
who defines literary Francophonie as:
The modern form of a set of phenomena related to seeking the

perspective of the Other – of whom we can question the historic
origins (perhaps the Renaissance) – but whose specificity – that
which marks its break with previous issues – would be to link
the perspective of otherness to the issue of language in the socio-
symbolic and socio-linguistic sense in a perspective of domination
[20].
Thus considered, francophone literature is not the spearhead of a cultural

dialogue, based upon the use of the same idiom, which would transcend na-
tional forms of expression, historically determined, but a sly, perverse way of
dominating by means of what we call the “cultural influence”. Or, as we have
already seen, there are thousands of nuances other than the ones with a colonial
stench in the choice (voluntary or imposed) of the French language by foreign
writers, including in the former colonies, where the new generations do not
hold the same grudge, the more so in the countries which have never regarded
the French language as an instrument of the oppressor, but as the means to
obtain access to universality. Certainly, it is difficult to escape from the histor-
ical context, and in this sense, the term of “francophone literature” seems to
be tainted by the imperialist seal, bearing heavy misunderstandings, this is the
reason for which an important group of writers writing in French, having as
promoters Michel le Bris and Jean Rouaud, launched in 2007, during the Fes-
tival “Etonnants Voyageurs” in Saint-Malo, the concept of “world-literature,”
which led to the writing of a book [21]. We do not insist on the force and the
real interest of this phrase, which produced as many enthusiastic followers as
hostile reservations. The fact is that in discarding the direct reference to the
French language, it creates another ambiguity and a conceptual vague which
eventually complicates things even more.
Theoreticians have built arguments which are valid on paper, but which
do not hold in front of the dynamic of the writer’s own discourse, as our epoch
forces us to change the mental coordinates. See, for example, the words of
Nimrod, writer, essayist, and poet from Chad:
We are hybrids; it is no use trying at all costs to track down the

African in us. On the contrary, let us use this great probes which,
following the comma and the phrase, inform us about the acclimati-
zation of Rimbaud and of Claudel, of Chateaubriand and of Proust
under the tropics. (...) This literature named African owes every-
thing to the French literature. In any case, it owes it the beginning
of a modern tradition [22].
This new understanding of literature implies the abandoning of the dialec-

tics centre/periphery, and of entering in the era (or area) of the literature
written in French (or other literature, opened to the world, but also aware
of the diversity of its influences, and which aspires to move elsewhere and in
other ways than the frame which has been traced for it for a too long, even if it
263
is a prestigious one. The result is a process of rewriting the traditional genres
from it, a cross-genre outburst and especially an understanding of the novel
in terms of diffraction; it is at the level of the fracture in the discourse, of this
impossibility to inhabit completely the French that we may notice the unique
adventure of francophone writings, a literature of cultural, linguistic, and on-
tological crossroads, an interbreeding which does not lead to an impasse, but
to an infinitely flexible and malleable space.
When the French, as a literary language, does not correspond to the native
language of the author or if the language of writing and the first language do
not coincide, there will be of necessity a discrepancy to the widely acknowl-
edged norm. A new type of novel tends to emerge on the margins of canons
established by the French literary tradition, between the classical perfection,
heir of the Belles Lettres, and the creative tension marked by diffuse non-native
elements. The consequence is a different treatment of space, time, characters,
actions, and especially of the words which designate them.
The emergence of the ethno-linguistic substratum in the narrative fabric
produces complex works, which belong to the tradition of dialogism character-
istic for the discourse in the novel developed by Bakhtin [23], for whom “the
novel is the social diversity of speech types or the specific social dialogue of
speech types.” In other words, discourse in the novel is the place where living
and various genres meet and interact, the result of which is that “the novel
as a whole is a pluristylistic, plurilingual, plurivocal phenomenon” [24]. It is
a widespread phenomenon of dialogism, which is designated by Bakhtin by
the concept of heteroglossia, stating that the power of the novel originates in
the coexistence of and from the conflict between different types of speech: the
speech of characters, the speech of the narrator and even the speech of the
author. He defines heteroglossia as “another’s speech in another’s language,
serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way” [25]. It is exactly
what we discover in the two novels of Marius Daniel Popecu (La Symphonie
du loup- The Symphony of the Wolf and Les Couleurs de l’hirondelle - The
Colours of the Swallow), the speech types which form its heteroglossia com-
prising voices of the past and of the present, as well as voices coming from
different, meaning divergent, cultural environments.
A writer can always assimilate a literary genre from the world to which
he adheres, as was the case of, for example, Hélène Vacaresco and her poetry
with heavy Parnassian influences, or for Cioran and the borrowing of short,
aphoristic forms, or for Eliade and his Gidean existentialist narratives. But in
our days the writing of novels falls more and more in the line of what we already
designate as the “francophone tradition,” which allows us to speak about a
hybrid production of novels, bringing together different symbolic universes,
aspiring to a synthesis which guarantees the richness of culture interactions.
Thus, the ethnic stereotypes from the two sides overlap in order to con-
tribute to the building of one world, autonomous, representative for a no man’s
land and of a no man’s language which come into being and state their dif-
ferent but recognizable status. Here are, in the form of a summary which
is both ironic and tender, which says much about contemporary mentalities
and realities in Romania, some of the 19 reasons identified by Marius Daniel
Popescu for staying in the “country of there,” as he calls it:
1. Because you can always leave the country, no matter when... Nobody
forces you to stay in the country.
2. Because in the country everybody is ready to share with you everything
they have: the stupid songs played at maximum volume in their cars, flu
in public transportation, their women who stay at home [...]
3. Because only in our country there are more Jeeps than millionaires and
more millionaires than firms.
4. Because only in our country it seems normal to receive without giving
anything in exchange.
5. Because our country is the only country where if you do nothing more
than look at those who work, you receive a spectator’s bonus called
“supervising allowance”. [...]
6. Because we are the only people in the world for which “thief!” is an
endearing word. [...]
7. Because only our country can organize the World Championship of 3000
km slalom with having as obstacles: carts, hen-nests, hungry stray dogs,
drunkards.
8. Because in our country snow is considered to be a saint only because it
falls from the sky; once it falls on the roads, nobody dares to touch it.
9. Because in our country the working day begins with a break. [...]
10. Because when all the places in Hell are taken, our country will become a
destination to replace Hell; those who will remain in our country won’t
have to pay transportation expenses to Hell” [26].
The other world – France, in this case – is well oiled and functional, only
that people, even in couples, even in groups, feel lonelier than ever and a
discreet indifference reigns in their hearts:
People who sit at their table at the terrace do not mind the man
who is alone in the street, passers-by do not look at him, cars slow
down and overtake him, he makes pirouettes, he kneels, he gets
up, he jumps in the air. It is the first time that I see such a scene
in Paris, I have the feeling that this man wants to revenge himself
on the entire planet, I see him making signs to passers-by, I drink
coffee and I think about the miseries of the human race [27].
The assumption that we defend is that the space- at the same time confined
and unlimited-offered by the French language to foreigners leads to original
265
modes of writing, to the use of figures of speech such as the mix of genres and
speech types, producing eventually a renewing of the depth of the novel. The
polyphony is articulated around memories – conscious or involuntary – of the
socio-cultural and linguistic universe of the “country from there.” The link is
never completely broken, on the one hand the root is never deeply fixed, and
on the other hand, we are dealing rather with a rhizome-like structure, to recall
the epistemological model defined by Deleuze and Guattari [28]. Any element
can influence another element and vice-versa, without having hierarchical pre-
suppositions and without the suffocating co-existence of the specificity of the
one or the other. The image of Marius Popescu’s library appears to us as an
edifying metaphor in this regards (our underlining):
I arrange my books, my library, it feels as if I’m moving away.

There are several hundreds of books in Romanian and maybe two
thousands in French. I will make separate book-shelves for the
Romanian books, they will be together and they will touch the books
in French only through the wooden wall of the bookcase. I take these
bilingual books in my hands and I shake with my hands the dust
which has covered them. I had mixed the books in Romanian with
the books in French [...]. I will translate for you the titles of books
in Romanian and I translate from Romanian to French. Here is
another title that I have just translated: “Treatise on the Blind
Blind”. As I have many books in French, I quote for you the title
of a book in French: “Poems of Youth” [29].
13.4 The Francophone Audacities of Marius

Daniel Popescu
He writes novels as he used to glue posters in the beginning, after his arrival in
the “country from here,” Switzerland. He writes juxtaposing episodes which
flow all along the temporal spiral, in all directions, trying very hard the atten-
tion and the judiciousness of the reader, loosening Ariadne’s thread in order
to prompt him to find the exit from the labyrinth all by himself.
In La Symphonie du loup and Les Couleurs de l’hirondelle, Marius Daniel
Popescu offers unusual autobiographic narratives, actually deconstructing them
– in comparison with the traditional image that we have of them – and giving
them back in the form of a puzzle. A little in the manner of Julio Cortazar, or
of Jean Genet, he creates a kind of textual hopscotch, disdaining the chrono-
logical order of events, jumping from one subject to another, at the mercy
of fanciful associations of ideas or even sounds. The two books begin with
dramatic moments: the death of the father, in La Symphonie, the death of the
mother, in Les Couleurs, the two texts end with the beginning of a new game.
Between death and life, under the sign of the ludic, unrolls the entanglement
of thousands of scenes which tell, bit by bit, with a seriousness never exempt
of irony, about life during the communist regime, the liberty regained, love,
family, children, in the “country from here.” From the one to the other, he
traces a path that we could call, to paraphrase Lise Gauvin, a road of the
“unrest,” [30] with the difference that he does not distance himself from the
French language in particular, but from any language, the literary field ap-
pears to be a place where an affirmation of identity and a type of liberation
express themselves at the same time. The setting free of the word by the word,
as suggested by the last metaphor used at the end of La Symphonie, the one of
the schoolbag made of white iron that his daughter is supposed to show to her
classmates and “if they ask her why she has a schoolbag made of white iron,
she will answer them, as you taught her, that it is because words shouldn’t
exist” [31].
With Popescu, we have the feeling that the word is a mental construct
we can do without, in the same manner as the francophone space is a mental
construct of France, as Orientalism was invented by the Occident. It remains
however dependent and fascinated, following the example of any other writer,
and he yearns for, paradoxically, silence, by increasing the power of the words,
by breaking up any daily gesture into thousands of verbal sparks, like the
labels of Swiss products, all of them written in three languages. Certainly,
his writings remind us inevitably of the New Novel, of Le Clezion making
the inventory of Monoprix in his The Interrogation, and nonetheless, in this
“sacralisation of the commonplace,” [32] it is not the accumulation of things
which hails the author, but the accumulation of words which chase the concrete
which, in its turn, eludes us. And this experience is completely personal, man
is confronted with things in his quality of “enunciating instance,” individually,
every verbal person being a specter of virtual values which is activated in a
particular context, but this referential oscillation is not at all collective.
In the polyphonic narratives that he offers, there is no sign of the doxa,
there is never one (and even the we and the you which designate the plural
are rather rare). The existential adventure and the bookish adventure are
experienced with all the suffering and the passion of a bodily being which
gives itself in the flesh of the words, proving that literature does not force
us to associate it with a principle of territoriality, opening on the contrary
on a great area of contact, of the in-between, where the imaginary of the
languages makes the law. The texts of Marius Daniel Popescu are inhabited
by plurilinguism in a subterranean manner and by dialogism in an obvious
manner, in the constant symbolic journeys between “the country from over-
there” and “the country from here,” the temporal serpent which often uses the
written word as a vehicle:
This book, I no longer remember when and where I bought it. It is
old and worn like one of my great-grandfather’s belts, its pages are
yellow and fragile on the last page which contains where the literary
text is printed “231” then there are seven more pages of which
the seventh is “PRINTED ON THE TWENTYETH OF MARCH
NINETEEN SIXTY SEVEN IN THE PRINTING PRESS OF H.
267
MESSEILER IN NEUCHZTEL.” I was almost four years old and
my mother and all the other members of my family didn’t think
and couldn’t even dream that one day the kid that I was then was
to see another country and in a more conclusive manner than as
a tourist or a student [...] I read in the language which is not my
mother tongue but which has become my language. I always read
very well in the language I have learned since my childhood but for
the past twelve years I have been reading mostly in French. [...] I
do not search pleasure in words. [...] Loving books does not mean
taking pleasure in words. [...] There is no layout for words or a
page layout that could allow me to feel pleasure [33].
Marius Daniel Popescu presents us this French language in which he has

plunged body and soul, moving in a kind of linguistic Moebius band, hav-
ing a view at the same time exterior- neuter, impartial – and an axial view,
which goes to the root of words and searches for the reason of their existence.
Neither a straight jacket, nor an object of silent dull adoration, the French lan-
guage is for him a here-elsewhere, a nice comfortable jacket, the fundamental
usefulness of which remains questionable, as with any language. He does not
suffer because of this any more than it makes him happy. His heteroglossia is
pronominal, the latent tensions of his personality, the aspects of his relation
with the world and with language are translated in this unpredictable shifts
of I, you, he...Multiple points of view, certainly, but no clear sign of shifting
from one instance of discourse to another, this constant game builds a mas-
terly composition, to take one’s breath away, from lack of stable landmarks.
There is no use in trying to see in the distancing due to the use of you or he a
wish to distinguish between the I of the present and hypostasis of the past, or
vice-versa, as Popescu cheats all the time: I is now the omniscient narrator,
now the voice of the grandfather, now in a kind of mise en abyme, the narrator
of another text; you is either the narrator, or the natural person addressed in
speech, with the difference that the real dialogue hardly exists; he is now the
narrator, now a non-person exterior to the conversation talk but enjoying a
surplus of referential determinants. Here are several examples:
He sent me a text typed at the writing machine, he would like me

to publish his text in the literary journal “le persil,” he wrote to me
several words on a postcard, he is a writer, he has published several
texts, he tells me “it is a fragment from my next novel,” I read: “I
began my days looking at the objects placed on the bedside table.
[...]” (CH, 171)
I’m telling you, son, that neither objects nor beings are responsible
for the miseries in the world. The only misery in the world comes
from words. (SL, 127)
You are in the street with your two girls, at your right you hold
the older one by hand, and the younger one has her arm around
your neck [...] (SL, 367)
He reads sever newspapers a days, some of them he buys in kiosks,

others he receives in his mailbox, by subscription. He reads them
from one end to the other, he spends around two hours to read
them. The titles and the subtitles of every heading, he pronounces
them in a loud voice, until he finds for them a linguistic charm or
a deontological flaw. (CL, 34)
The polyphonic mosaic which results from this produces an impression of

multiplication of “corporal” characters, this various connotations coming from
areas so different the one from the other from every point of view, creating
an atmosphere which mixes casualness and dreams, the funny and the absurd,
smiling lucidity and heavy anxiety. This pronominal linguistic dissipation is a
proof of a need of equal recognition of multiple points of view, not necessarily
opposing which reflects a personal, poetical approach of the world across a
multiple I which refuses to surrender in front of the request of the unique
option. The internal coherence of the universe of Marius Daniel Popescu is
not at all affected.
13.5 Conclusions
The literary francophone space is a good opportunity. The opportunity of a
meeting between two cultures, two ways of thinking, two (or more) languages.
The opportunity of transcending them towards a new horizon. Words are there
in order to express perceptions, not to impose them, and it that is exactly what
it is about: becoming aware of what life is, in its unity and diversity, in its
mental, affective, physical manifestations. It is made of these little and great
realities which man perceives in his conscience and in his unconscious, in the
memory of his spirit and body, which travel like a bird which is given the colors
of time. Facts and objects. It is in them, by them, with them, apparently given
in a raw state, in reality divided with minuteness like notes on a musical sheet,
that emotion is created, by the intervention of numberless words populating
the phrases of a narrative which are forever extended by memory.
Taking into consideration the multiple debates and nuances evoked, we
believe that the francophone space is a “free zone,” beyond a concrete spatiality
and geo-historical temporality, a complex area in which the writer who plunges
inside lives a major experience: the dismay in front of the strangeness of the
language and the pleasure of creating a new one.
Acknowledgement
This article is the partial result of a more complex research conducted within
the project Identitary space in Francophone contemporary literature (PN-II-
269
ID-PCE-2011-3-0617), financed by the Romanian State budget through CNC-
SIS UEFISCDI.
References
1. Notion defined by Coquet, J.P., 1997. La quête du sens. Le langage en ques-
tion. Paris : P.U.F., p. 224.
2. Cassirer, E., 1975. Essai sur l’homme. Paris : Minuit, pp. 43 and 44.
3. We borrow from Gilles Deleuze this taxonomy major language/ minor liter-
ature. See, among others, Gilles Deleuze G., Guattari, F. 1975. Kafka pour
une littérature mineure. Paris : Minuit.
4. Idem.
5. Sibony, D., 1991. Entre-deux : l’origine du partage. Paris : Seuil, p.11.
6. Gauvin, L., 1997. L’Ecrivain francophone Ãă la croisée des langues. Paris :
Khartala.
7. Popescu, M.D., 2012. Les couleurs de l’hirondelle. Paris : José Corti, p. 64.
8. Jutrin-Klener, M., 1970. PanaÃŕt Istrati, un chardon déraciné : écrivain
français, conteur roumain. Paris : Librairie François Maspero.
9. Semunjanga, J., 1999. Dynamique des genres dans le roman africains. Élé-
ments de poétique transculturelle. Paris : Harmattan.
10. “CENTO FRANCHI and CENT FRANCS. in the snow there are blanks with
the mountain – tunnel go to Switzerland, to a parcel of the bank and of a libel,
bring me twenty beagles salt halt assault basalt asphalt vault exalt default walt
mault stringhalt.” (Popescu, M.D., 2012 : p.172).
11. Ibidem, p. 62.
12. Popescu, M.D., 2007. La Symphonie du loup. Paris : José Corti, p.168.
13. Interview with Abeline Majorel, http://chroniquesdelarentreelitteraire.com/
2012/03/prix-du-web/entretien-avec-marius-popescu-pour-les-couleurs-de-
lhirondelle
14. Idem.
15. Popescu, M.D., 2007 : p. 168.
16. Gauvin, L.,op.cit.
17. Beniamino, M., 1999. La Francophonie littéraire. Essai pour une théorie.
Paris : L’Harmattan, Coll. Espaces francophones.
18. Rushdie, S., 1993. “La littérature du Commonwealth n’existe pas,” in Patries
imaginaires, translated by Aline Chatelin. Paris : Christian Bourgois.
19. Deleuze, G., 1993. Critique et clinique. Paris : Minuit.
20. Beniamino, M., “La Francophonie littéraire,” in D’Hulst, L. and Moura, J.-M.
(ed.), 2003. Les études littéraires francophones : état des lieux, papers from
the conference in May 2002. Lille: Scientific Council of the Charles-de-Gaulle
University, p. 20
21. Le Bris, M., Rouaud, J., 2007. Pour une littérature monde. Paris : Gallimard.
22. Nimrod, “La nouvelle chose française : Pour une littérature décolonisée,” in
Le Bris, M., Rouaud, J., 2007. Pour une littérature monde, p. 232-233.
23. Bakhtine, M., 1978. Esthétique et théorie du roman. Paris : Gallimard, p.89.
24. Ibidem, p.87.
25. Bakthine, M., 1981. Discourse in the Novel, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four
Essays. University of Texas Press, p.XXVI.
26. Popescu, M.D., 2012: pp. 120-121.
27. Ibidem, p.144.
28. Deleuze, G., Guattari, F., 1972. L’Anti-ÅŠdipe : capitalisme et schizophrénie.
Paris : Minuit, p.13.
29. Popescu, M.D., 2007 : pp.299-300.
30. She suggests naming the francophone literatures “literatures of unrest,” be-
cause they distance themselves from the French language (in Bertrand, J.-P.,
Gauvin, L. (dir.), 2003. Littératures mineures en langue majeure. Bruxelles:
Peter Lang, p.19.)
31. Popescu, M.D., 2007 : p.399.
32. Interview with Abeline Majorel, op.cit.
33. Popescu, M.D., 2007 : pp.365-367.
About the Author
Dr. Simona Modreanu is a Modern Letters PhD of the Paris 7 University in

France and professor of French contemporay literature and Cultural Studies at the
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iasi (Romania). She is also manager of Junimea
Publishing House in Iasi, an active member of CIRET (Centre International de
Recherches et Etudes Transdisciplinaire), Paris and Co-director of the Center for
Transdisciplinary Studies of the “Al.I.Cuza” University in Iasi ; she was Director of
the Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris between 1991-2001. Main publications :
Eugène Ionesco ou l’agonie de la signifiance (Iasi, Axis : 2002), Le Dieu paradoxal de
Cioran (Paris, Ed. du Rocher : 2003), Cioran (Paris, Oxus : 2004), Lecturi nomade
/ Nomad Readings (Iasi, Junimea : 2006), Lecturi sedentare / Sedentary Readings
(Iasi, Junimea : 2010).

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ATLAS Publishing, 2014

This is an open access book publishing from Academy of Transdisciplinary

ISBN: 0-9778129-7-9; doi: 10.22545/2021b/B7

1 Systems and Information: Transdisciplinary Study by Joseph

2 Perceptive Levels in Plants: A Transdisciplinary Challenge

3 The Essential Tension: Rational and Reasonable in Science

4 Transdisciplinarity and Biomimicry by Sue L. T. McGregor 89

5 Transdisciplinary Pragmatism? by Maria F. de Mello and

6 On the Relationship of Metaphysics to Transdisciplinarity

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9 Educating for Joy by Antonella Verdiani 183

10 Transdisciplinary Methodology in Research and Education:

11 Practicing Transdisciplinary Methodology within the Frame

11.2 Transdisciplinarity in the Present Days

12 Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Designing Patient Han-

13 Major Language, Minor Destiny? The Space of Franco-

of metaphysics to transdisciplinary endeavors.

paper prepresents the transdisciplinary didactic experiments conceived and

his Chapter summarizes some current views of transdisciplinarity, in par-

way of potentially correlating scientific capabilities with human individual and

1.1.2 Rationale and Objective of Chapter

1.1.3 Outline of Chapter

1.2 Transdisciplinarity in the View of Nicolescu

• Transdisciplinarity is a process that offers a new vision of nature and

1.2.2 The Pillars or Methodology of Transdisciplinarity

• Complexity is a property which is exemplified or attached in some way

More recently [3], Nicolescu has reformulated the methodology of transdis-

• In our knowledge of Nature and society, according to the ontological Ax-

a) Levels of objectivity – Levels of subjectivity – Levels of complexity

a) Levels of objectivity – Levels of subjectivity – Levels of complexity

In the remainder of this Chapter, I will be focusing on the analysis of the

1.2.3 The Logic of Transdisciplinarity and Logic in Reality

1.2.4 Logic in Reality and Information

1.3 The Dialectical Methodology of Lupasco

The dialectical methodology proposed by Lupasco involves looking, in any

1.4 Systemology. the Origin of Systems in Basic

I have previously discussed Lupasco’s “systemology” in [6], but I believe that

1.4.1 Axiomatic Statements

The Relation of Contradiction

The Principle of Antagonism applied to Energy

Logical systems of energy thus apply to all phenomena or aspects of experi-

1.4.2 Systems Science and Complex Systems in Morin

in the GST. In my view, although standard mathematics is necessary, it is not sufficient to

organization, as well as the ambiguity in the term ‘self’.

1.4.3 Systems and Emergence

1.4.4 Transdisciplinarity and Systems Thinking

Azad Madni has stated that what distinguishes transdisciplinary system

While the lack of formalism in the complex systems approach serves to

1.5 An Informational Paradigm

1.5.1 Transdisciplinarity and Information

By any definition, the domain of information, consisting of information theory,

1.5.2 What is Missing from Theories of Information?

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Society: A

b) Potential Societal Function

(global sustainable Information Society); 3) tackle the complex problems of

1.6 The Philosophy of Information. Informational