12 • Knowing, making, being
Our fundamental grasp is intuitive: embodied understanding of how parts are structured so they function as a whole — deeply embedded in subconscious, pre-conceptual, cognitive processing.
What does it really mean to make sense of something?
How do we actually understand what some thing really is?
If we know what it is made of, how its parts are structured to function as a whole. But what kind of knowing is that, really?
Eidos — structural-functional organization
Plato talks about… he uses a term — “eidos" — and that gets translated into the word “form". And when people hear the word "form", they hear "shape". It also gets translated into the word “idea". When they hear "idea" they think of "concept", or an idea in your head. That's not what Plato means. He's using that word — it's much closer to our word like a "paradigm" — he's using a word to talk about the real patterns that we're discovering in reality.
There's an interesting thing about these real patterns: They're both the access, the pathway we have to understanding something, the pathway we have for getting at the reality of something, because those are the real patterns. But they're not just the affordance of our knowing, the real patterns are also what make something be what it is.
This is work also from the psychology of concepts and how people understand things. We asked people what a bird is. They'll say the following: "Oh, yeah, well, I know what a bird is, right… it has wings, feathers, a beak, and it flies. There you go. That's a bird.” They give you what's called a feature list. And then you can get involved in a very long process, which I think has largely been something of a mistake (we'll come back to this). No, not totally, because it's important in science. But I'm thinking that the way I understand something is by having a definition of it in terms of the correct features.
Now there's a problem with this: Although people believe that this is how they know what a bird is, they're mistaken in an important sense, because I could satisfy this definition in the following way: I could put a couple of wings on this table, a bunch of feathers, a beak, and then throw it all up in the air. I have wings, beak, feathers, and flight. Do I have a bird? No, I don't! I have a bloody mess, because what's missing is something more important:
What's missing is the structural-functional organization — the way all those things hang together. The way they're structured together, so that the bird functions as a whole. What's missing from this is the structural-functional organization that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
The Germans have a great word for this: "gestalt". In English, we don't. The Greeks have a good word for this: the word "logos", although a word that's being discussed a lot today. I think it needs to be discussed a little bit more carefully.
Now here's the thing I want you to realize: Remember we talked about how you pick up on real patterns, and a lot of those patterns you're not picking up an explicit sense. You know what a bird is. You have some sense of the logos. But if I ask you "What is that logos? What is the structural-functional organization?" — and most of what makes a bird a bird is found in that logos — but if I ask you "What is the logos of a bird? How do these all structure together so they function as a whole in which the whole transcends simply an accumulation of it['s parts]?" You can't tell me. That's what the research shows in fact. You can't tell me. Your grasp is intuitive.
So notice something very interesting here: You often have an intuitive grasp of the logos of things. And the logos is "form", where form doesn't mean "shape", form means something more like "formula". It means the structural-functional organization. And that form, that logos, is not only how the thing is integrated together, it's how your mind can be integrated with it. This logos, this real pattern, is not only how you know something, but it's also the pattern that makes it be what it is.
This is a very different idea of knowing. […] When I really know something, I con-form to it. I become like it in some important way. I get in my mind the same real pattern that's in the thing, because that real pattern is what allows me to come to know the thing and to enter into that reciprocal realization with it.
Now this is going to be an important idea. This is an idea that's going be taken up by Plato's greatest disciple.
When you analytically think of a list of features to describe an object, don’t deceive yourself to think this is all there is that defines the object. Your intuitive grasp of an object goes deeper, beyond the levels of analytic thinking, beyond the levels of language. It is pre-conceptual. Before your consciousness is handed formed concepts that you can use to think and describe with words, your subconscious has already done a lot of work to filter and translate relevant parts of your environment as your senses perceive them.
Thinking in wholes and parts is a deep, foundational pattern our cognitive system uses — among other equally as foundational patterns — to make sense of our environment. And the way we use and interact with (con-form to) objects is an important part of making sense of them. This is why even when something completely makes sense to you, you may still not be able to explain it to somebody else.
George Lakoff in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (highlights mine):
Our knowledge at the basic level is mainly organized around part-whole divisions. The reason is that the way an object is divided into parts determines many things. First, parts are usually correlated with functions, and hence our knowledge about functions is usually associated with knowledge about parts. Second, parts determine shape, and hence the way that an object will be perceived and imaged. Third, we usually interact with things via their parts, and hence part-whole divisions play a major role in determining what motor programs we can use to interact with an object. Thus, a handle is not just long and thin, but it can be grasped by the human hand. As Tversky and Hemenway say, "We sit on the seat of a chair and lean against the back, we remove the peel of a banana and eat the pulp."
Tversky and Hemenway also suggest that we impose part-whole structure on events and that our knowledge of event categories is structured very much the way our knowledge of physical object categories is. Their suggestion is in the same spirit as Lakoff and Johnson (1980), where it is suggested that event categories and other abstract categories are structured metaphorically on the basis of structures from the realm of physical experience.
The way we make sense of the world can not be reduced to propositional knowing in the form of descriptions and rules. Our intuitive grasp is embodied. We participate in it. It is participatory.
Growth — how potentiality becomes actuality
Aristotle picks up on Plato's notion of the eidos. […] A bird is much more than a set of its features. It's not just a beak. It's not just some feathers. It's this gestalt. It's that structural-functional organization, such that all the parts function together as a whole and so what you have is something that acts as a bird.
And that pattern, that "logos", that “eidos", is very hard, actually, to put into words. But it's very much what does two things for us:
It's what makes a bird a bird.
And it's also the pattern by which we come to know what a bird is — when we can grasp the structural-functional organization, that eidos, then we understand what a bird is.
Now Aristotle was very impressed by that, but he wanted to give it a more dynamical approach. He wanted to talk about it in terms of development. And so he was very interested in how things grow. And he noted the role that form had in growth and development.
He first started with an analogy: He would use the analogy of artifacts — human-made things — and then use that to try and understand biological things.
So, for example, I can have a block of wood, and I can make it into a chair, or perhaps a table, or if it's a big enough amount of wood I can make it into a ship or a boat. And Aristotle asked “What makes the wood behave like a chair, as opposed to a table, or to a ship?"
Actuality
And this is where we get the notion of actuality from. We often use the word actuality, in fact, as a way of talking about realness: "It's an actual something" is way of saying "it's a real something" as opposed to a fraud or a simulation.
So, what makes a chair act like a chair? Why does the wood act like a chair here, act like a table here, and act like a ship here? Aristotle said “This is important change, and it's a good analogy for development." When I'm making a chair, that's somehow analogous for how an organism is growing.
So what is it? What makes the wood act like a chair here and act like a table here? And his argument was “Well, it's the form!” Again, where this means eidos, not shape, although you can use shape as an analogy. This is the structural-functional organization. The wood is structurally-functionally organized in such a way that it will act like a chair. Whereas here it will act like a table, and here it will act like a ship.
Potentiality
Now, Aristotle's point is that it's not that [the wood] doesn't play any role. But he invents this really important idea: He invents the idea that the wood is potential.
These terms "actual" and "potential" actually come from Aristotle. We use them every day. We think they are just part of our natural grammar, but they're actually an invention of Aristotle. We're gonna see how important they are.
The idea is: Wood is potentially a chair. Wood is potentially a table. Wood is potentially a ship. Now when that potential has a particular form given to it, then it starts acting like a chair, it starts acting like a table, and acting like a ship.
In-form-ation — actualizing potential
And this is where we get the notion of “in-form-ation” from: You put a form into something, and you will actualize its potential, namely you will give it a structural-functional organization so it will start to act in a particular manner. […]
And then what Aristotle argued is “What you see in living things is that they are basically doing this for themselves. I just mean this is an analogy: a living thing is like a chair that is making itself. Imagine that a chair could somehow start to impose a structural-functional organization on wood, so that it started to turn itself into a chair. That's what a living thing does.
Food — food is potential you. You put food into you, you in-form it, there's a code in your DNA that ultimately puts a particular form in it that gives it a structural-functional organization that becomes you. Now of course this unfolds across time. It doesn't happen like that, and that's why we see it as change and development. Now this is really important as we'll see, because it's going to be foundational to understanding a lot about how you connect to the world.
Making something is the process of putting a form in it, in-form-ing it, giving it a structural-functional organization. Over the course of this process, the thing being made unfolds, changes, develops, grows, evolves.
To really know something, is it sufficient to just look at its current form?
Be-cause — making as causing something to be
We have got a view in which we think, we largely conceive of "knowing" as being able to give a very accurate description of something. I "know" what a chair is, if I can really describe it very well to you.
Now, there is a challenge to that, if I were to ask you the following: "Who knows better what a chair is: Somebody who could describe a chair very well to you, or somebody who could actually make a chair?" And many people would say "well, the person who can describe it doesn't really understand…” — and they'll probably struggle for words here and they'll use words taken from Aristotle without realizing — "…they don't get the essence of a chair, because if you can make a chair, then you've grasped something more." And this is again related to this notion: If you can cause a chair to be, if you can cause it to be [be-cause], then you deeply understand what a chair is.
Aristotle then asked "What is it that the chair maker has that the accurate descriptor does not have?" And again it goes back to what we saw before, when I gave you my description of the bird: it has wings and beaks and all this stuff, and I was lacking the eidos, I was lacking the form, the structural-functional organization. So Aristotle says, what the chair maker has that the good describer doesn't have, is the chair maker actually has in their mind the eidos.
Think of it like an architect that has a blueprint. The architect has in their mind the structural-functional organization that is actually going to be shared in the building. The architect has the eidos, the chair maker has the eidos in their mind, and they can actualize, they can use that eidos to actualize the potential in the wood to make the chair. So to know something is to possess the same eidos as it.
Now, the architect, when he has the eidos for the building, he doesn't have a material building in his mind. You couldn't go in, house a family of five inside his mind. When we say that it has the same pattern, we don't mean it's actualizing the same matter as wood and metal in a building but the same form is there.
So for Aristotle, when I know something — and this is the original meaning of this word — there is conformity. I share the same form with it. So when I know some object or know some thing, my mind takes on the same structural-functional organization as the thing, such that if I could take that eidos from my mind and actualize it in some potential, I could make an instance of the thing. I could cause it to be.
Conformity theory — knowing = being
So, if you'll remember, shape is not the same thing as form, but we can use shape — as Aristotle does — as an analogy for form. So when I know the cup, I could know it by standing away from it and describing it, trying to describe its shape — and I'm using shape as an analogy for form.
Or I can actually con-form to the cup [grasps the cup, wrapping his hand around it]. I'm actually taking the same shape. And notice how this enables me to causally interact with the cup in a much more intimate and complex and sophisticated fashion.
So when you know something, for Aristotle, your mind is in conformity with it. Now, that's really important because that means in Aristotle's theory of knowing there is no distinction — as we typically have — between knowing and being.
What do I mean by that?
Again, using the analogy, here's the modern view: I'm over here describing it. It's over there, independent. I'm over here describing it.
Here's Aristotle's view [with cup in hand]: I'm actually changing my structure. I'm not just knowing and having beliefs, I'm being changed. This is a change in my being, not just a change in my knowing. The conformity theory doesn't just change your beliefs, it changes the very structure and functioning of your being.
The conformity theory is a very different way of thinking about how we know things. Charles Taylor, who I've mentioned before, Hubert Dreyfus, and others, they talk about the conformity theory as a contact epistemology. To know something is to be in contact with it, is to actually participate in the same form as the thing.
I'm going to come back to this sense of participatory knowing: Participatory knowing is when I shape myself in order to know the thing, and I know it by conforming to it. This is different from descriptive knowing where I stand apart and I generate propositions about the thing.
So, the conformity theory has this very powerful idea of an intimate connection between the mind and reality. And it's based on a very powerful idea and, as I mentioned, Aristotle is going through a significant revival in our understanding of living things, understanding of mental things. We are increasingly coming to see that this kind of contact knowing, this participatory knowing, is much more central to how cognition works than we previously thought. […]
What we need to notice right now is how this theory of knowing, which is also a theory of being, satisfies that desire of being in contact with reality as opposed to being separate from it and merely pointing at it with my words or my propositions.
If I'm in conformity with the world, that tells you something very interesting: The structural-functional organization, my patterns of intelligibility […] — How I make sense of things, the pattern of intelligibility, is the same pattern by which the thing is organized. When I'm making sense of things, there's a structural-functional organization in my mind that is shared with the structural-functional organization of what I'm making sense of.
Science and technology have turned us into good describers, and have taught us that coherent descriptions are all we need to understand the world. We may be able to describe things well (and as software engineers we have taken that skill to another extreme), but can we really claim to understand them?
Deep understanding requires more than just a good description. We need to con-form to it, be in touch with it — in an embodied sense. Whenever we talk about the world, we talk about our experience of it. Even if there exists a scientific model that can accurately describe mechanisms in the world, these descriptions are separate from our experience. Our knowing is merely propositional, not participatory.
George Lakoff in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things:
What determines basic-level structure is a matter of correlations: the overall perceived part-whole structure of an object correlates with our motor interaction with that object and with the functions of the parts (and our knowledge of those functions). It is important to realize that these are not purely objective and "in the world"; rather they have to do with the world as we interact with it: as we perceive it, image it, affect it with our bodies, and gain knowledge about it.
This is, again, a matter which has often been misunderstood, and Rosch has written at length on the nature of the misunderstanding. "It should be emphasized that we are talking about a perceived world and not a metaphysical world without a knower" (Rosch 1978, p. 29).
We can generate many objective propositions and have many beliefs about things, and yet not possess their eidos. We do not con-form to them. We are not in touch with them. We are independent observers and describers out of touch with the world we observe and describe.
But it does not have to be like that.
Alexander’s beings
Christopher Alexander’s view on living centers integrates well with Aristotle’s conformity theory. In The Nature of Order, book 4 he calls living centers “I-like beings”. For centers to become alive, to cause them to be, we — as their makers — need to possess their eidos, we need to be in touch on this participatory level:
The beauty of a living structure made of beings can, in my experience, only be fully understood once a person has struggled to create this structure, found out how hard it is, failed, failed, failed again, and then succeeded.
Creation does not happen easily. But I have found out that readers of this book often believe, from the text and from the examples, that it is actually not to hard to do. They assume they understand what is involved. “A center, after all — what is so hard about making that!” But the “something” they create, while assuming they understand it, is then shockingly unlike the real thing, because it lacks beings — often almost entirely.
In nature this seems to happen by itself, merely through unfolding. In things made by human beings, it happens when the maker concentrates deeply — intently — on the I itself, as far as it exists in him, in her, as far as he or she can perceive it, focus on it, draw on it, draw it out, and make a thing which comes from it, is of it, is of its form, is of its origin. This is not different from doing what has to be done to be practical. The farmer who mends his fence and makes it I-like is far more intently tuned to the harmony of nature than he will let on to a city person who does not understand.
That original I-like matter has then been composed to embody unity, and shows us what we are ourselves. It is this focus on each living center as an I-like being, elaborated, intensified, which brings the emergence of life to a building. That is the main task: to connect to the I, the creation of a being.
If you are to grasp the argument, it is imperative that you concentrate on this idea of beings and thoroughly understand what it means. In that way you will have access to your own intuitive knowledge, and you will develop an uncomplicated ability to tell when centers are beings and in what degree each center is a being, by knowing when they are related to your self — when they are truly I-like — and when they are not.
The I-like character of living centers is crucial; it is at the core of everything. And yet, although it could be easy for the reader to nod agreement, and could also be easy to dismiss it out of hand as absurd, actually to understand it, to grasp it, to experience it, is hard. It takes perception, care, and a willingness to be connected with your own feelings. And it takes concentration and effort to make such a structure appear in space. It requires, too, an operational willingness. It is easy enough to say to oneself that it is clear: but immensely hard to transform that intellectual understanding, into a daily operational willingness to make this I-like structure appear, in every center, throughout the vast fabric of a building or something else which you are making.
To create I-like beings, living centers, we need to be in touch with what we are creating. We need to con-form to it, as we in-form it. We need to transfer the eidos in us into the matter we shape to make it come alive, so that it can be-come a be-ing.
A deep connection between us and the thing we are making — and that connection is pre-conceptual, subconscious, ineffable, almost mystical.
Yet, it is real. And it can be understood.
If you are new to this series, start here: A secular definition of sacredness