Lewis Works

This open, on-line Newsletter is published weekly, every Friday Afternoon at 4:30 PM PST. It is updated with new announcements and articles each week.

Lewis Works Newsletter*

*Symbolic Framing

The E-zine of Applied General Systems Science

By Hugh M. Lewis, PhD, MA, general editor

Vol. I, No. 20

6/11/04 Copyright 2004 ©, Hugh M. Lewis.  Facsimiles of this page or parts of this page may be printed and distributed for non-profit research, consulting and educational purposes only, as governed by fair use policy.

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Our revamping of the General Systems framework continues in spite of repeated distractions. We announce the incipient organization and inauguration of an Institute of Applied General Systems as the focal articulatory structure of Lewis Works framework that seeks to become increasingly integrated on the basis of general systems applications to real world problem sets.

Criticisms/Comments, then Provide Feedback

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Our newsletter is published once a week at 5:30 PM, Pacific Standard Time, Fridays.

We are focusing this week and the next several weeks upon the problems and issues of Human Meta-systems and the application of systems-based approaches to human systems.

We invite your open involvement in our framework. We are creating a new membership program, open to all comers. The full details below, upon three levels: free membership, basic membership & premium membership. 

Mission Statement

Lewis Works is dedicated to realizing new human adaptive possibilities in order to create alternative long-term frameworks for human & biological systems development on earth and beyond.

The primary mission of Lewis Works is to fundamentally empower all human beings, without regard or reference to their individual or cultural differences, so that they may function in a more constructive and non-violent manner by means of their integration within an applied systems framework that enables them to contextualize and focus their independent developmental efforts toward comprehensive solutions to common problems in resource distribution, environmental adaptation, and social-structural interaction.

• 1. Lewis Works seeks alternative meta-systems based development through applied general systems with the main goals of:

• a. Achieving a mutually stable and harmonic balance between future human systems and earthbound biological systems.

• b. Providing all human beings in unbiased structural or cultural contexts the alternative systems-based frameworks for their individual & social development by means of increased opportunities, productivity, security and resource availability that they would not otherwise have in conventional frameworks.

• c. Developing the infra-structural context and means for the regular extension of human and biological systems beyond the boundaries of the earth.

• 2. Lewis Works is dedicated to achieving a better world for all people and for all life-forms through the implementation and articulation of an applied general systems framework to general and specific problem sets that occur in the adaptive organization of human behavior in a shared natural environment.

• 3. Lewis Works is non-exclusive, open, non-authoritarian, philanthropic and pacifist in orientation.

• 4. Lewis Works pursues a combination of both profit and non-profit programs and projects to the achievement of its main goals.

• 5. Lewis Works protects and promotes universal human rights and human responsibilities throughout its various programs and projects by the systematic pursuit of human development strategies.

• 6. Lewis Works is law abiding and honest in all its dealings and transactions in all contexts, and respects and honors the customs and manners of all peoples and all ethnocultural groupings.

• 7. Lewis Works protects and promotes the confidentiality and legitimate interests of its clients and customers under all circumstances and in all cases.

• 8. Lewis Works seeks to efficiently provide a comprehensive range of profit-based services and related product lines within an open, web-based forum of exchange that is global in scope, regional in character, and local in focus, and that serves as the basis for the development of a structurally open meta-systems based context in the world transcending local, regional and national identities and affiliations.

• 9. Lewis Works seeks to promote non-profit programs in alternative human development for the sake of alleviating human suffering, educating people openly and in an unbiased manner, and promoting pro-social human development.

• 10. Lewis Works seeks to create trans-national meta-cultural orientations in the world through various organizational frameworks that promote open, democratic principles of government, fair-play and the rule of just law, and through the development of anti-structural multi-media based systems that provide humanity a common symbolic context for their meta-cultural integration.

The worldview of general systems, of considering the whole as more than the sum of its parts, stands as an alternative symbolic frame of reference, or "paradigm," when contrasted to the worldview of conventional sciences based primarily upon the method of analytical reductionism, or of breaking the whole down into its parts. The latter view of the world is the received worldview of the conventional sciences, while the former worldview based upon the holism of systems is largely a naturalistic worldview that has been otherwise unelaborated in any methodological manner except from the standpoint of naturalistic observation and description of phenomenal event patterning.

To extend the general systems worldview to reality and to all of nature is to see the entire universe as a single integrated system or "meta-system" that contains simultaneously many subsystems at many levels of articulation. It is as well to apprehend the role of the human perceiver and thinker in this worldview, as observer and as an intrinsic subsystem of the larger scheme of things. It leaves us something of a paradox to try to unravel for how can we presume as scientists to be able to stand apart from something of which we are part, and which engulfs us like small fish in a vast sea. Any kind of panoptic perspective we may adopt must ultimately be a pretend point of view, an imagination or at best a speculation, unless we can adopt means of triangulating viewpoints in such a way as to better objectify our apprehension of reality. If perchance we could create telescopes on very distant planets in our galaxy and have instantaneous communications between them, we might be able to generate a map of the universe that depends upon more than the one point perspective of the earth traveling around the sun. It is apparent that multiple points of view, that can take into account the error of parallax, provides us with a means for resolving the paradox of being engulfed in the system of which we are a part, though not in any final or complete way.

The worldview of general systems is inherent I believe to a perceptual construction of the world--a naturalistic flow of phenomenal imagery that we associate with things in our range of experience. This flow of phenomenological experience is epiphenomenal to the actual structure and emergence of systems. Our conceptual understanding of reality was largely constrained by presuppositions about systems that we attribute to our experience of reality, and based upon the connections we make between events in the world. Lacking the deductive inferences forthcoming from a scientific worldview, this apprehension of the natural world and of reality was given largely to speculation and to analogical relationships.

The first view of the whole refers to a method of examining a living organism in terms of its life-processes and behaviors--the second view refers to the attempt to dissect and analyze a dead organism by means of its component tissues. This example is apropos because the process of life that was once thought the product of divine miracle, or the possession of supernatural spirit, or the "ghost in the machine" is very different from the processes of death which is most associated with decay. The vital process of life still cannot be easily explained except in gross terms of the natural integrative functioning of the many parts--in the biological sense the cells and tissues that constitute an organism. The phenomenon of life is an example of systems par excellence, and the properties of life that we attribute to living systems is the best and easiest example we can find of the emergence of organismic properties as the result of the integration of component subsystems (cells, tissues, organs & organic systems). 

An animal, for instance, a dog, functions as a whole unit--only when we find disease or distress to a part of a dog do we find the whole organism affected. We find a system in normal equilibrium when its parts are functioning in an expected manner. If we go to dissect the dog, we discover an amazing order of tissues arranged in distinct and vital subsystems-skeletal tissue, muscle tissues, veins, nerves, digestive organs, respiratory organs, sensory organs, etc. All collective organized together create the dog--the dog could not exist in a whole or completely effective manner if it were lacking or deficient in any one of its vital subsystems. But neither could any of the tissues found within the dog long exist outside of the protective environment and supportive context of the internal organs of the dog as a whole. We see therefore a deep structural and functional interdependence between the parts and the whole.

General Systems can be summarized simply as a theory of everything. This is especially the case when we realize that all natural or possible phenomena are organized in terms that are amenable to systems-type explanation. As such, superficially, its conceptual belt is so loose and open it becomes quickly a theory about nothing in particular. This is soon apparent when dealing with very large or very complex kinds of problem sets, where even mathematical formulations breakdown in the explosion of near-infinite possibilities of outcome that would all require resolution before the problem can be considered solved in some optimal manner. 

Our conventional scientific worldview approaches the problem of complexity, or rather complex problems, by a standard analytical method of attempting to break things down into as many parts as possible, and trying then to understand the role and behavior of each part as constitutive of the whole. This was Galileo's "resolutive" method. Indeed, as a general methodology, it is a necessary approach to especially large and complex problem solving and has lead to great success in many fields of science.

If the aim of systems modeling is accurate and reliable representation of the minutiae of phenomenal detail in the unfolding epigenetic patterning of reality, then its effectiveness quickly breaks down under the weight of the information explosion of the search-solution space made possible by any given problem set. Computer simulation in modeling, with the rise of faster and larger super-computers, has to some extent permitted us much greater resolution of pattern and detail than previously ever thought possible, especially to certain kinds of problem sets such as turbulence or wave development on planar surfaces, weather patterning or the simulation of the behavior of subatomic structures.  

But what has been lost sight of in the attention to detail is the picture of the larger whole, and the role that the part plays, not only in relation to the whole, but as a consequence of being a part of the whole. Aristotle's famous dictum that the "whole is more than the sum of its parts" was as a potential theoretical framework never developed in light of the analytical progress of our sciences. What has never been paid attention to is the possibility that the parts are largely defined in terms their behavior, their range of instantaneous states, and their outcomes of trajectory, as a consequence of the integrative and directive relation of the whole, or the larger sense of order or structure by all the parts working together as if a single coherent whole. We may thus assert that the whole is not just more than the sum of its parts, but the part is the product of the whole. Another way of saying this is to assert that the part serves the whole.

This concept carries systems theory to a new level of phenomenal experience because it deals directly with the notion of emergence in nature, or of the realization of emergent properties that we associate with the integration of systems as "wholes" rather than as parts, and that is often referred to as synergy or superorganic effects. Furthermore, the principle of natural emergence is also associated with the stratification of natural reality, that is so like "Russian nesting dolls" or rather like the layers of the skin of an onion. This is the basis of the relativity of general systems, because the properties evident upon each distinctively emergent level of stratification of reality are generally unique to that particular level of occurrence, and that level alone, and in a particular sense are unique to that particular instance or context of occurrence at that given level, and to no other.

A worldview of general systems, I believe, is part and parcel of the electronic information revolution that the world has been undergoing in the late 20th Century. We have for the first time a global view of the order of the world as a single system, less or more, with many parts and subcomponents.

We recognize that in all real systems, whether natural or artificial, integration is never complete nor completely determined in the sense of being completely predictable, without some degree of randomness and uncertainty involved in the outcomes of interactions and relationships between parts. The global system of life, of humankind, of the world, is included in this dictum of inherent indeterminancy of all systems. Thus a worldview of general systems is based upon an understanding that all working systems are inherently underdetermined and ultimately unpredictable in outcomes. We see this in our chronic inability to accurately forecast future events, no matter how good our understanding of past or present event structures. The inherent uncertainty of future outcomes puts a limit to the efforts of our conventional sciences that seek perfect predictability of deterministic systems, and thus sets a general systems worldview at fundamental odds with a conventional scientific worldview where the goals of prediction and control are the main framework of all methodologies.

Another discrepancy between a systems based perspective of the world and a conventional scientific worldview that is based upon analytical reductionism is that while the latter tends to seek directive, causal relationships in rules of order governing event structures in the world, the former tends to construe complementary relationships between alternative frames of reference governing event structures, with alternative outcomes being possible based upon the point of view adopted. The latter viewpoint is known as deterministic, the former, relativistic and by and large these are mutually incompatible points of view in a comprehensive sense except in as much as the former tends to be broader and encompassing of the latter perspective. Within complementary event structures we can find instances of causal relationships, though these causal relationships become construed in a cyclical rather than in a strictly linear manner.

Relativistic frames of reference therefore are inherent to an alternative general systems worldview, and in fact are part and parcel of such a worldview. There has been a general reluctance and even rejection of relativistic viewpoints by the sciences, even though the physical sciences have largely embraced such perspectives in a fundamental and general way very successfully. Relativistic points of view are seen as being antagonistic to deterministic models that have as their basis the isolation of linear cause-effect relationships even if such models tend to grossly oversimplify the complexities of physical realities involved.

There is a difference as well in terms of the valuation and prioritization of forms of knowledge and especially of quantifiable measures which tend to be the manifest expression of physical realities, but less and less central to the theoretical or methodological articulation of the biological or human sciences. Within a conventional scientific worldview based upon the discovery of deterministic order in the world, there has been a prioritization and valuation of mathematical forms of knowledge over almost any other form of verbal expression. Because only physical quantities are truly amenable to such forms of mathematical description and explanation, those fields of sciences dealing with natural phenomena that tended to defy sufficient mathematical description and explanation tended to be underrated and devalued as truly "scientific" and thus within these areas there has been an emphasis upon the use of mathematical formulas and models even if such use may have been in fact only superficial or even inappropriate to the problem under consideration. This has led to a distinguishing between "hard" and "soft" approaches in science, with the connotation that only the former approaches were truly scientific while the latter could only approximate a "scientistic" or "science-like" approach.

Thus, a general systems worldview entails a broadened view of science that is capable of encompassing in a sufficient and non-exclusive manner a broad range of knowledge that falls within the purview of natural systems description and explanation, but that are notably lacking in the kind of systematic mathematical formulations that so characterize work at the physical level. This is especially so at the level of human systems, but applies in a general way as well to all biological systems as well. We find forms of applied mathematics in the biological sciences that permit usually partial modeling of relationships or processes that are known to occur, but which usually admit of only approximate and inexact solutions with rather wide margins for error. Attempts to apply mathematical formula to the description of such system at any level representative of the true complexity of such systems quickly breaks down in an information explosion. Only supercomputer simulations have the hope of partially resolving this state of affairs in the analysis and description of biological systems in favor of applied mathematical models.

General systems may largely be called a theory in need of a methodology, or a set of methods as well as a general set of operational instructions in the deployment and articulation of methods. If it is to be more than a theory of everything, then general systems must also become a methodology for all possible problems in all seasons. If this is asking too much from any single paradigm, perhaps this is so, but at the same time we can expect no less than a comprehensive set of applied methodologies from a purported comprehensive framework of general understanding.

Science based upon a general systems paradigm will not come fully of age unless and until its own distinct set of methods or methodology can be more carefully worked out and made to work in a practical manner. One of the most important aspects of developing a general systems methodology that is a method for everything is to come to terms with and deal with the problem of the anthropological relativity of our own understanding of systems, large and small. This comes to play especially I think in our identification and definition of "problem" sets with which we must deal, when we speak of applying always limited means to virtually unlimited possibilities. 

To understand general systems methodologies, we must seek general purpose methodologies that are appropriate to a wide range of different kinds of systems. We must also seek to understand the general nature of the kinds of problem sets to be solved by such methodologies--the purpose of methodologies are primarily to conduct research through the solution of complex problems. 

A problem may be defined as an unresolved question or condition of reality that requires a solution at some reasonable level of acceptability. A problem exists as a discrepant state of affairs between existing states or conditions and ideal or desired states and conditions, seen primarily from a human or anthropological standpoint. 

How a problem will be understood, or even what problem occurs, will be largely a condition of the frames of reference adopted by the problem solver. What may seem problematic about reality for one person may not be so problematic for another individual or group of people. We may therefore distinguish also between primary or direct problem sets with deal with immediate, instantaneous conditions of reality, and secondary or indirect or derivative problem sets that are the consequence of the differential or parallax of perception of primary problems or other secondary problems. I would also distinguish what I would refer to as "tertiary" problem sets that are distinguishable as "pseudo" problems or false problems that arise as the result of error of processing or recording, the transmission of misinformation, or erroneous apprehension of either direct or indirect problem sets.

General systems methodologies then are concerned with the solving problem sets in a deliberate and systematic manner, being whatever it is that a person or group of people construe as being problematic based upon some calculus of ends, whether such a calculus of ends is explicit or left unstated.

Methodologies come into play as a set of possible means when the calculus of ends creates a search-solution space for the resolution of problem sets identified by these ends. This is a complex way of saying that methods attempt to marry means to ends in problem resolution. We work with the understanding that, especially with complex problems, solutions, though hopefully simplifying, are unlikely to be perfect or simple.

As I've been engaged in articulating systems approaches for some time now, there are some sets of methods and methodologies that seem pertinent for consideration of "general systems methodologies." I would designate two general classes of methods pertinent to general systems methodologies. The first set I would call general systems methodologies and this are a set of methods that apply generally to a broad range of systems, but which are not necessarily designative of any particular kind of system. The second set I would call special systems methodologies, and they are sets of methods that are appropriate to a certain class or kind of system, but not necessarily to any other class or kind of system.

To list the set of general systems methodologies, I would include: 1. symbolic representation & strategic planning; 2. design modeling & heuristic simulation, especially involving computing and supercomputing; 3. non-linear dynamics and set-theoretic representation & manipulation; 4. inter-correlative analysis; 5. experimental prototyping of designs. I believe that for applied systems, this model automatically leads to a production or processing sequence, as well as to issues of recycling and repair/replacement of systems as well as to systems growth and regeneration. Thus I have elaborated a basic development cycle for general applied systems within which theoretically any form of applied system may be developed. 

To list sets of special systems methodologies, we need first to categorize general types of systems in some kind of logical or natural schema based upon natural stratification. In general all methodologies that are deployed in the normal sciences at each level of systems stratification are pertinent and appropriate to that level or sub-level of system, albeit usually in a fairly specialized manner. Any or all tools of the trade of any particular scientific discipline or field of inquiry are pertinent methods to be employed within the area of stratification of natural systems--though some kinds of methods may be more relevant and generally deployable than others. General systems methodologies therefore encompass fully the range of analytical and investigative methods that are deployable across all fields of science.

We can generalize a methodology to a framework of applied systems of all kinds, with the recognition that all applied systems will have at least their physical, biological and human components, as well as their outcomes and consequences for the larger world. We recognize that the problem of the anthropological relativity of systems, and its influence in determining problem solving frameworks, need to be taken into account in the defining of possible search solution spaces and the realization of possible solutions in a system. The frame of reference we adopt in defining a problem and a methodology of solution will determine the range of possibilities and thereby predetermine and constrain the outcome of the process.

Applied general systems therefore seems to entail a multi-purpose design development framework that is capable of taking a project through a series of steps in its development as part of a larger design cycle. It should be also capable of starting and maintaining multiple design-development cycles simultaneously, and upon different levels, interlinking these cycles or the components of these cycles, in a meaningful way. The design-development project cycle for any single system or kind of applied system, represents therefore a general methodology for the solution to the problem set that is related to that system or kind of system. It provides a manner of constructive application and work that allows us to investigate alternative systems and explore the possibilities for their developmental refinement and evolution as adaptive systems.

Within such a framework, specialization of systems or subsystems would follow on the heels of the development of the basic applied design-development cycle, and would represent the elaboration of such a cycle and its splitting into multiple sub-cycles. We can imagine therefore as well the higher level organization of such a framework of cycles within cycles as a single comprehensive meta-systems framework by which all projects and programs are interrelated to one another and made coordinate in their development.

Symbolic Linguistics

The word is a verbal or linguistic symbol. It is technically defined as a morpheme, or the minimal unit of language that carries meaning. The kind of meaning carried by a word is symbolic, and this is defined as the ability for the word to represent something else, or, usually, a number of different things other than itself.

All known languages are constituted by words as symbols. Word symbolisms may be elaborated phraseologically or summarized holophrastically by a single word sentence, depending upon our need and intentions for communication. Word symbolisms therefore have an inherent malleability about their structure and their use in language that permit them to be deployed in a wide variety of ways.

Disambiguation of meaning is usually the primary communicative function of language, though not always, and deliberate ambiguity is sometimes the goal. But symbolic ambiguity in language will be induced and increased when and if a word is found representing more than one set of meanings at the same time in a single phrasal context, or alternatively when the representational meanings of a word are not apparent, vague or clearly specified at all. Words bereft of context, or decontextualized, either internally or externally, are usually received as inherently ambiguous and therefore meaningless.

In the theory of symbolic meaning, ambiguity is like noise in an informational system. Noise is indeterminancy of pattern that results in interference of communication. Loss of meaning is found to occur when symbolic systems break down or no longer have adaptive relevance in the environment in which they are articulated. This can result in psychological distress and disorientation, as well as in a breakdown of social order and integration.

In this process of the disambiguation of meaning we find clearly the gestalt pattern recognition of words as figures against a background of context--the symbolic meanings represented by a word in context constitute the relationships between the figure of the word and the background of the context in which the word is embedded. Native speaker intuition therefore can be described as the "aha" experience of sudden gestalt pattern recognition in a set of words in which the figure/ground relationship suddenly becomes disambiguated and its significance immediately apprehended to the listener.

The pattern recognition processes tied to word recognition and in turn to feed-forward word production are complex and are related to the hard-wiring and software programming of the brain and the primary sensory and speech production apparatus. For spoken words, it begins with auditory recognition and I believe somewhat spontaneous memory association that allows meanings of a spoken word in context of the speech event to be "unpacked" and searched for relevance. Task associations reveal that, for new language learners, the ability to hear the word correctly and clearly rests upon the ability to make the phonemic-phonetic distinctions of the sound modulation pattern of the word, and this becomes reflected in the spontaneous spellings of words by second language learners. It seems highly correlated with the phonetic-phonemic pattern of speech recognition that is common to the learner in the learner's own mother-tongue or primary language. Once a word is learned, this recognition of the sound pattern unique to a word and to a speaker becomes almost automatic or what I would call cerebrally reflexive in the mind. Reinforcement of the word, by chronic usage and learning, sets the program in the mind in a definite manner.

Memory associations, as well as behavioral associations, appear to reinforce pattern recognition processes even at the base perceptual level of auditory pattern discrimination and speech articulation. Representations of symbolic meanings are undoubtedly tied and consonant with such memory and behavioral associations, and it is suspected the basis of symbolic meaning is a relational system based upon words and the pattern associations connected to words. The human mind can be thought to be programmed around and for the purpose of processing and using human language for the purposes of thought and behavior. 

This argument is not to confuse a strong case for linguistic determinism with a modified form of linguistic relativity of experience--those who are deaf or otherwise without language will still think and see the world in terms of perceptual experience the same as those who use language, but it is thought that the range of this experience and the capacity for articulation and manipulation of experience will be drastically effected as a consequence of the lack or loss of language. I suspect that language has a great deal to do with the organization of the mind, being the basis for the "software" programming of the brain. Two speakers of different and mutually unintelligible languages see and experience the world in similar ways, but think about the world in terms of different programs. It is like trying to cross a Microsoft word processing program with a Aldous word processing program--the two sets of code are incompatible to one another. The two programs are probably more or less equally efficient in being able to digitally process words, and are capable of producing more or less the same documents, but the structures and topography of meaning that is found in each program will not be identical at all.

For deaf people who are fluent in a sign language in a community of deaf signers, it is apparent that sign language occurs in similar regions of the human mind as that for normal verbal speech, and therefore the consequences of a sign language would be very similar for those with a verbal language as a primary pattern. For those lacking any language or means of communication though, it is likely that the capacity to organize and comprehend experience must be severely restricted and limited.

It is important to understand that symbolic meaning of the software program of the mind, encoded in human language and reinforced through memory and behavioral associations, and deposited in a distributed manner in the brain in intricate, complex and malleable neuronal networks, as a web of interconnections with numerous nodes, may occur at several places and at several stratified layers simultaneously, and it is this layering and the simultaneous and consequential co-occurrence or activation of these stimulated webs in different parts of the brain that produces symbolic meaning and links this meaning to words.

It is a mistake to believe that linguistic relativity is based on the notion that a word determines one's experience at some level--such as the word red allowing us to see or facilitate our ability to see red. The word as a symbol is arbitrary by design, and thus meaning associated with a particular word is non-obligatory--the facilitation of  the experience of the color red through the word "red" is an evocation or elicitation of the memory and behavioral associations that are tied to the word. Any word would be a suitable substitute for red. Of course, having a clearly distinguishable word for a particular association or set of association does facilitate the capacity to think about that set of associations, even in a reflexive or automatic manner, but it is possible to think about or imagine for instance the color red even without having a name for the color, though without a direct name for the experience, I suspect that such a thought pattern is very emphemeral or transient, and somewhat inherently ambiguous, just as the background of experience is ambiguous without a figure to contrast it to.

In this sense, words as symbols have a clear indexical function in the filing system and organization of information in the brain. It must be so, or otherwise the flood of experience in the mind would be overwhelmingly chaotic. This indexical function of the filing system is efficient in the sense that it saves the brain from devoting an otherwise disproportionate amount of energy to think about all the things it would need to think about to make sense of the world. The use of a word allows the mind almost immediate, reflexive access to a given profile of experience across a spectrum of meaning, or association complex, even to the point that in normal speech processes the word itself may replace and stand for the experience and association complex it represents in a nominative fashion, implicitly suggesting or invoking the meanings without having actually to activate the full range of experience subsumed by the name. I believe words are normally deployed and articulated in just such a manner in the course of normal speech, with the option always being there of begin able to zero in on the elaboration of key words and their meaning associations.

Words in phrasal and sentential context create a new level of meaning containing its own context and having its own synergism, and thus words in phrasal or sentential strings are part of a system of language that is built upon the linking together of individual word-symbols in larger constructions. Symbolic meaning that emerges as the result of such linguistic constructions is different and more explicit than the kind of rudimentary and largely unconscious meanings that are associated with word symbols in isolation. Constructive meaning is largely conscious and to some extent explicit. There occurs therefore multiple overlapping layers of symbolic meaning attached to any single speech event or set of speech events, the ground being the memory and behavioral associations that are unconsciously and somewhat reflexively attached to single symbol words, and the figure of speech being the linked, mutually constraining meanings that arise from the phrasal or sentential construction of a string in context, mostly conscious and deliberate and therefore requiring greater focus of attention and effort. I think in the neural pathways of the brain, the associations between words become the shared networks occurring between and branching out from multiple successive sources of the brain, creating a kind of animation effect of the mind, like a set of movie frames being run past one's eyes and made to look as if an active image occurs. I think the brain works fairly much in this way, and is capable of removing the sense of the gap and break between words to foster the illusion of the phenomenological continuity of experience.

Sometimes words are merged in the course of speech to an almost continuous set of sounds and normal speech in many languages often flows with but brief or even absent pauses between words. For a non-native speaker to listen to a foreign language, with the inability to recognize the sound or meaning pattern of the language, the language tends to be perceived holophrastically as a single continuous, punctuated string of sounds. In the vast number of instances, the connection between the word, its sound and form, and the things it represents is ultimately arbitrary and largely a matter of convention. Only in a few instances may we infer an onomatopoeic function to a word, or trace a word to an onomatopoeic root. Words can have a sonorous quality, and it is the sonorous quality of similar or complementary words that is the basis of meter, song and poetry. The challenge of course in these artistic forms are to match sound pattern with meaning in a consonant and provocative manner.

The basic symbolic function of a word is to name something, or the nominative function. The most basic word takes the form of a "name" and even other syntactic categories of words may ultimately be understood in their basic form as "names" or intrinsic nouns. Naming is the most basic form of symbolic representation we have, and it goes almost without saying that the same name may refer to multiple things, and multiple names may refer to the same thing. Names are the most prototypical word forms, and the most basic function of word symbols.

Derivative from names are two basic types of word form, and these are the class of nouns that name a person, place, thing or a quality, serving as a main subject and an object and a second class of verbs generally naming a relation, an action, a state or condition, used to link a specific noun or "noun-topic" to a larger context of relations. 

In English, derivative of nouns are a special class of modifiers referred to as adjectives, and derivative of verbs are a special class of modifiers referred to as adverbs. The class of adverbs and adjectives overlap due to the fact that bound morphemes like the suffix "-ly" added to an adjective generally allows it to be used as an adverb. Derivative of or at least proximally related to adjectives are another special class called determining articles. 

Words are organized into multiple overlapping sets that accomplish communication of information about the world, primarily by establishing a relationship between a word and its symbolism. These sets are aspectual in designation.  Though words are often used singly, if this is not done in context of its specific reference and intention, then the significance of the word may be ambiguous and lost to the audience or receiver. Words set in strings serve to create their own context, and the string construction of such context is necessary to the disambiguation of symbolic reference in words, as well as to the designation of relationship between word symbolisms. Sentential strings carry their own intra-sentential context that allows the meaning of the string as a whole to achieve displacement from the actual speech setting itself. It creates flexibility and the possibility for precision and generalization in the use of words.

We may identify in the constructive articulation of any language two general phenomena--the processes of elaboration and summation of meaning. This refers on the one hand to the phrasal structure of word strings primarily involved in the process of elaboration, and the nominative or holophrastic structure of names primarily involved in the process of summation of meaning. The articulation of any string in any language involves the expansion or reduction of the length of the string, and an alteration of the communicative value of the string accordingly. There is a trade-off between communicative efficiency and communicative efficacy that is achieved through the dual processes of elaboration and summation. Since summation is the most basic structure, we assume that communicative condensation for the achievement of efficiency tends to be the basic modality of speech--elaborative code aiming at achieving communicative efficacy tends to be the derivative modality of speech.

I would tentatively distinguish language stratified at the following levels:

1. word symbol--holophrastic meaning

2. phrase structure--phraseological elaboration

3. sentential structure--inter-phraseological constructions

4. inter-sentential constructions

Linguistic development and acquisition may occurs in this way, in this set of stages, and  for any language there may be a set of implicit and explicit rules, or operating instructions, which govern the pattern of articulation of speech at each of these four main levels of the stratification of speech and language.

We may speak of the phraseological structure of language, and the ready interchangeability of words with alternative phrases. A phrase may be defined as a natural unit of language that is rooted in oral communication, and that involves a string of words that stand in substitute to or modify a single word. Expressive elaboration in any language is always achieved through the modification of sentences through phraseological modification. Phraseology is an effective manner of embedding and elaborating meaning in a sentence frame. In general a phrase is an incomplete sentence, or a sentence that does not stand on its own, but may be embedded within another sentence.

The acquisition of language by children generally replicates this process, as young infants quickly move from a holophrastic stage of one word sentences that merely designate or indicate a thing in the environment, a mood, a relationship, a need, to the formulation of simple phraseological strings with drastically reduced grammar and inappropriate use of symbolic reference, to increasingly well organized and correctly structured sentential strings that largely replicate the speech of adults. This is achieved by about 5 years of age in the child, and is the precursor to the child's first efforts at learning to read, spell and write.

Rules of order emerge in the organization of a language as a system of expressive communication that constrains or sets limits on how we may use words and phrases in relation to other words in the construction of strings. These rules of order are known as the phrase structure syntax or grammar. They allow us to effectively use words in terms of a larger system of symbolic meaning and communication that has predictable structure and pattern in its organization.

A universal "deep structure" of the brain, referred to generally as the language acquisition device, is held to be based upon an inherent transformational grammar of human language. This inference of an LAD may miss the essential point that phrase structure constraint is necessary to any language as a communication system that is based upon the designation and elucidation of symbolisms through words. Such a system resides primarily in a community of speakers who share the same words with similar meanings, more or less, and do not arise as the result of biological processes but as a function of mutual agreement and achievement of convention in the course of development of a speech community. We are referring to rules that are part of cultural linguistics, or what we may call a language culture.

Such syntax or rules of order generally arrange words into types or categories of meaning, depending upon their function and position in the construction of sentences. Rules are arrived at by implicit agreement that is achieved through common usage. I believe that we cannot really investigate the origin of this system, as it has been a process of continuous development from the period of earliest proto-language, and I suspect that we may find a single tree of human language with a trunk that derives from the remotest periods of the past to the present, and within which all contemporaneous languages are represented by one branch or another. The form of the languages that human beings have spoken has changed dramatically in every possible way, and there are in fact an infinite number of different language systems possible in human terms.

Rules of language structure render the linguistic system orderly and predictable. It makes possible native listener intuition, especially in situ of the conversational or communicational setting. Rules of language are so well worked out in fact that they are capable of fairly precise discrimination and designation of terms and their meanings. This function of specification and clarification is necessary if a language system is to achieve the degree of coherence and consistency it needs to be effective in its essential function of coordination of human behavior.

In terms of symbolic linguistics therefore, we cannot ultimately separate semantic from syntactic or pragmatic functions in the expression of language--all these functions remain bound up in the language system as a whole. We analytically separate them in terms of designation of aspect of a word--in English the word "run" generally is used as a verb to designate the fast motion of an animal sprinting, but it can also be used as a noun to designate either an area over which one runs, or a period of time during which a run occurs. These functions are aspectual features of the word "run" as symbolon in the linguistic culture of English.

It is the system as a whole that changes through a process of continuous point by point modification. These modifications may occur at many different places throughout a language system and because such systems are multi-level in their articulatory patterning, changes may occur simultaneously upon several levels. We may in fact see the typical syntactic categories of a language as basically semantic aspects or features that are applied to words. 

We must in terms of systematic language change inquire about the possibilities of certain selective factors operating upon language dynamics. It seems for instance that some aspectual features of a language are preferably selected over others and that certain directions of change in a particular language achieve a kind of momentum that seems largely irreversible if not quite inevitable.  Because languages are relatively undetermined in their structure, as with many functional communication systems, the same thing may be said in more than a single way, and the same words may carry multiple meanings. At each point in the articulation of a sentence, for instance, an alternate set of words or word constructions are possible, and the outcome of the sentence will depend upon the terms selected. Such alternation enhances the flexibility of the structure of language as a general purpose system of communication, and is keeping with the idea that it is the structure of the sentence as a whole, and by extension, the language as a whole, that is important. 

The basis of most language change is the addition of new words or the modification of old words by the accretion or loss of meanings. We should not discount the loss of old words by their disuse or replacement by new words. Linguistic displacement, or replacement of old words or expressions by new words, or the replacement of old meanings by new meanings, entails that a language remain functionally streamlined and unencumbered by too much basic choice.

For any active language system, we can probably designate a core vocabulary of less than a thousand words that will be used more than 90 percent of the time in most ordinary circumstances in a language, and we would be surprised to find that the majority of these words point to the same basic symbolic referents in most languages. There is probably a range of 3 to 5 thousand other words that are necessary to permit flexible communication in a language system to be deployed under most circumstances and in most behavioral settings of the language context. Most of these words will be used far less frequently and their use will vary widely depending on context--we expect less agreement of these terms by their symbolic referents between different languages than with the core vocabulary. Together, these auxiliary and core vocabularies can be said to constitute the practical or working lexicon of a language.

Languages typically function by the use of bound morphemes that carry no intrinsic meaning but modify the words to which they are attached. The function of such bound morphemes is largely to designate or mark the syntactic part of speech that the composite morpheme takes on as an aspect of its meaning--determining what kinds of words it may come before or after within a sentence.

To understand and be capable of using a distinct linguistic system is to have fully incorporated that language system into the hard-wiring of the human brain and nervous system and the software programs of the human mind. Because speech is generated on the fly, feed-forward, there is little time for the brain to anticipate or prepare the ordering and selection of words, and as much as possible, this entire process of speech production is back-grounded as something that occurs in a more or less automatic and even "reflexive" manner. We do not generally need to think about every next word we choose--if we did our conversations would be slow and very boring. We have a way of by-passing the need to make conscious decisions regarding word selection in sentence construction by the fact that we base our construction on received templates of various kinds, and we select alternative templates in also a semi-automatic manner entailing minimal choice or fore-thought. The templates themselves can then be evoked and modified as needed in a fairly plastic manner to achieve the correct or desired form of expression. This entire process seems to be ultimately guided by higher order mental structures of the human mind, and the entire speech apparatus appears ultimately in control of either one's own higher order brain structures, or in indirect control by the brain structures of other speakers.

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We will be offering an increasing array of type of service and product we can make available to our clientele within the consolidation period. This services will include:

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We have several non-profit domains organized, though these have not yet been developed for content:

Human Coop: promoting development of non-exploitative, grass-roots based, cooperative development & resource exchange network frameworks.

Aid Systems: organizing and deploying critical resource management & rehabilitation teams

Human Development Systems: promoting programs for alternative human development.

Lewis Library: promoting conventional & electronic literacy worldwide, developing an open, distributed-integrated common reference resource & comprehensive knowledge compendium resources.

Human Synergetics: promoting health in holistic, alternative lifestyles

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