Toward an Aesthetic Epistemology – Slideshow Overview

Toward an Aesthetic Epistemology – Slideshow Overview

In February 2014 I successfully defended my PhD dissertation, titled "Toward an Aesthetic Epistemology: Transforming Thinking through Cybernetic Epistemology and Anthroposophy." The following is the abstract and a slideshow presentation that pulls out the crux of my arguments. Abstract The complexity, subtlety, interlinking, and scale of many problems faced individually and collectively in today’s rapidly changing world...

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Embracing the paradox of Being: A relational view of epistemology, ontology, logic and difference.

Embracing the paradox of Being: A relational view of epistemology, ontology, logic and difference.

Let’s get right to it, shall we? With respect to ontology, let us say that there is no “it,” no independent reality that is exclusive of the observer.  This is a basic insight from second-order cybernetics: the observer must always be included in the observed.  Despite this, of course, we do have much talk and...

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The New Sacred Geometry of Frank Chester

The New Sacred Geometry of Frank Chester

This article was recently written for the Science to Sage International eMagazine. It introduces the work of Frank Chester, artist, sculptor, and geometrician, and explores how the special seven-sided volume with faces of equal area -- the Chestahedron -- relates to the traditional Platonic Solids. Download a high quality PDF here: The New Sacred Geometry...

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Video Games and Spiritual Development, a preliminary analysis

Video Games and Spiritual Development, a preliminary analysis

Introduction Video games are a huge global phenomenon, driving well over $70 billion dollars in sales in 2011—a number that is only rising year by year.  For comparison, global music sales in 2011 was about $16 billion, while global theater tickets was about $33 billion.  This has consequences—largely unexplored—for people that are interested in spiritual...

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Sleep, Dreams and Video Games

Sleep, Dreams and Video Games

How you use your attention in waking life has definite effects in your dreaming life.  The following is my distillation of some insights from anthroposophy in this regard, which I offer as one way of looking at this phenomenon, specifically around the issue of video games and dreaming.  This post should provide an appropriate...

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Patterns in Process: Transdisciplinarity as a Background for Working with the Elemental Cycle of Transformation

Patterns in Process: Transdisciplinarity as a Background for Working with the Elemental Cycle of Transformation

Abstract This essay outlines connections between the Elemental Cycle as an archetype of transformation, transdisciplinarity, and  cybernetics.  A number of questions are addressed: the nature and importance of connecting these fields, an examination of resources and the dominant disciplinary discourses for the associated fields, and a critical examination of my assumptions, beliefs, and position. Introduction How often...

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An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #6

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #6

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) We ended the last installment by discussing the esoteric nature of the injunction.  We continue this exploration, and bring this series to a close. LoF p. 81 In the command "let the crossing be to the state indicated by the token" we at once make the token doubly meaningful, first...

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An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #5

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #5

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) We ended the last installment with a recognition that the Laws of Form naturally led GSB to an understanding of both the necessity and importance of the realm of imaginary numbers.  We will continue this elaboration. You are likely familiar with the paradoxical sentence: "This sentence is...

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An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #4

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #4

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) We ended the last installment having come to realize something of the esoteric significance of the taijitu, or yin-yang, form, in something of an extended tangent. We return now to the text. GSB himself seemed to understand the importance of the Laws of Form, even if there...

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An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #3

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #3

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) We ended the last installment noting that the first distinction must be of distinction, but this must be considered as a complex, recursive creation and simultaneous crossing of a boundary that is just precisely the boundary between that very activity of its creation and the fact...

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An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #2

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #2

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) Let us continue our beginning: LoF p. 1 We take as given the idea of distinction and the idea of indication, and that we cannot make an indication without drawing a distinction. We take, therefore, the form of distinction for the form. If this doesn't strike you as having a "mystical"...

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