The Rotating Blade of Meaning (2)

In Part One, we looked at how Arthur M. Young, a brilliant engineer and inventor, was fascinated by the ‘act of knowing’, and determined that there were four stages to this central part of our consciousness. This can be illustrated by the following search for what might be termed a ‘geometry of meaning’ in the act of seeing something:

1. There is a rectangular-shaped object across the room on the wooden floor. That means it belongs to the family (set) of things that share rectangular shapes, even if they turn out to be three-dimensional. This is an objective observation – it can be scientifically proven. Young termed it ‘objective general’ – many things are rectangular…
2.  The surface of it is not a plain texture. It appears to be a heavy canvas material. Again this can be proved, but this facet of the object is specific. Only one of these actually exists – in this form. Other examples will be slightly different. My powers of knowing allow for this. They scan, rapidly, from the general to the specific. So far, I have a rectangular object made of heavy canvas. It’s an objective, specific thing; or, in Young’s accurate terminology, an objective, particular thing.
3. Now, our perception of knowing takes a leap across the observer-observed divide. In reality, our act of partial knowing (so far) has really been observer-based, but the qualities of the observed object are sufficiently studied to allow us to attribute these objective qualities to it. But now we move into a different state of perception: one in which the observer projects qualities of their own onto the object. The object is a faded shade of green. The experience of ‘green’ is entirely subjective, that is, it is projected onto the object by me. Whatever objective qualities it has, they do not include my experience of faded green. This aspect of my object is therefore subjective and particular. Young called this type of subjective ‘projective’.
4. Finally, humans like their objects to have a purpose. I can combine the knowledge I now have of this object and know it to be my laptop shoulder bag. In doing this, I have completed the fourfold cycle of knowing this object, whether seeing it for the first time or when I have been trying to locate it.

The table from the last post is included for clarity. These concepts need to be understood before we can move onto the revelations of what Arthur M. Young discovered next.

The above fourfold process is completely inclusive for any act of human knowing. As was said last time, science is only concerned with the first aspect: the objective general, the other three aspects it leaves to the philosophers… But the whole is what happens.

Arthur M. Young was fond of diagrams. In his work, he tried to explain using diagrams, and even actual examples of objects, such as pendulums, whenever he could. He wondered whether the above fourfold ‘map of knowing’ could be more usefully represented as a diagram… and the idea of a simple cross sprang to mind.

The value of such a diagram would be to show more information than was available from the table. For example, it might show what relationship each of the four aspects had to each other – opposite on the cross-diagram could mean that they were opposite in nature…

We have assigned the attributes of general vs specific and projective (subjective) vs objective. Each aspect of our analysis has a unique combination of two of these – and they are all different permutations. We can see, for example, that the formal description of the object (objective, general) is the opposite of the function of the object (projective, particular). In like fashion, the Sense Data are the opposite of the Projected Values. Putting these into the cross diagram begins to show us the hidden relationships in our perception and knowing.

Because the diagram is logically true, we can deduce certain results from it. The first is that the above opposites are true; the second is that those values that are not opposite have a different relationship with each other. Since we are searching, ultimately, for a geometry of meaning, the angles are important to what follows: 180 degrees conveys opposition, whereas 90 degrees means that the aspects do not affect each other.

The deeper implications of this will be discussed in the next post.

Other posts in this series:

Part One, 

To be continued…

©️Stephen Tanham

Stephen Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit organisation that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.

You’ll find friends, poetry, literature and photography there…and some great guest posts on related topics.