INCLUSIONALITY:
The Science, Art and Spirituality of Place, Space and Evolution
Narrated and Compiled by Alan Rayner
Dept of
Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY,
U.K.
Inclusionality is an awareness that space, far from passively surrounding and isolating discrete massy objects, is a vital, dynamic inclusion within, around and permeating natural form across all scales of organization, allowing diverse possibilities for movement and communication. Correspondingly, boundaries are not fixed limits - smooth, space-excluding, Euclidean lines or planes - but rather are pivotal places comprising complex, dynamic arrays of voids and relief that both emerge from and pattern the co-creative togetherness of inner and outer domains, as in the banks of a river.
At the heart of inclusionality, then, is a simple shift in
the way we frame reality, from absolutely fixed to relationally dynamic. This
shift arises from perceiving space and boundaries as connective, reflective and
co-creative, rather than severing, in their vital role of producing
heterogeneous form and local identity within a featured rather than
featureless, dynamic rather than static, Universe. We move from perceiving
space as ‘an absence of presence’ – an emptiness that we exclude from
our focus on material things – to appreciating space as a ‘presence of
absence’, an inductive ‘attractor’
whose ever-transforming shape provides both the coherence and creative
potential for evolutionary processes of all kinds to occur.
To make this shift does not depend
on new scientific knowledge or conjecture about supernatural forces,
extraterrestrial life or whatever. All it requires is awareness and
assimilation into understanding of the spatial possibility that permeates
within, around and through natural features from sub-atomic to Universal in
scale. We can then see through the
illusion of ‘solidity’, to which we are predisposed by our human physical
senses and terrestrial nature, that has made us prone to regard ‘matter’ as
‘everything’ and ‘space’ as ‘nothing’ and hence get caught in the conceptual
addiction and affliction of ‘either/or’ ‘dualism’. An addiction that so
powerfully and insidiously restricts our philosophical horizons and undermines
our compassionate human spirit and creativity.
In reality, this simple shift
changes everything - or, rather, how we might regard every ‘thing’. When space
is included in our perceptions of boundaries, it becomes inseparable from the
energy that makes us alive. Darkness is included with light, gravity with
electromagnetism, and time and matter cannot exist as separable, absolute
quantities in their own right. We neither see the world and Universe about us
as an incoherent assemblage of isolated objects
surrounded by emptiness, nor do we lose ourselves in oceanic infinitude.
Instead we feel ourselves, with others, as inhabited places, distinct but not discrete expressions, ever-transforming through
the dynamic, reciprocally breathing relationship of inner with outer through
intermediary space. Aware now of our place as local expressions of everywhere,
we are not alone – we belong with,
but decidedly not to one another,
together, coherent through the connectivity of our common space, unique in our
individually situated identities. Identities that we can both assert and let
go, as needs arise for differentiation and integration.
When we comprehend our inner and outer worlds, and hence our
Selves as relational places,
expressions of the energy-space of everywhere
rather than isolated objects, our
scientific, artistic and spiritual world views transform and complement one
another rather than conflict. We appreciate that to ask ‘what is the meaning of
Life, the Universe and Everything’ is
an inapt question. To pursue a ‘Theory of Everything’ as the ultimate quest for
a treasured object, excommunicated
from space, is a false Trail to the Grail. When we include the Space, the answer’s Everywhere - Commonplace.
When one ‘thing’ - 'a place somewhere' -
moves, everywhere transforms. And this transformation is
experienced and ‘felt’ uniquely at every location as a shift in the inductive
‘pull’ of a potential energy field that is invisible and intangible to the
external observer.
The compilations contained within these three volumes contain
the findings of an ongoing co-inquiry, by a small group of people with very
different backgrounds, into the implications of inclusionality, from
scientific, artistic, social, environmental, governmental and spiritual
perspectives. We hope that this inquiry can help us to re-examine our most
deeply held ideas about Our Human Place in the World and rediscover, where we
may have lost it, what we have always known when our Emotions join with our
Reason in the Spirit of Spatial Togetherness.
CONTENTS
VOLUME 1
PreFace: The Surfacing of Inclusionality, From Indefinition to
Holographic Expression
EnTrance: The Shift of Focus From Independent ‘Object’ to Relational
‘Place’ - From ‘Theories of Everything’ to ‘Awareness of Everywhere’
PHASE 1: Primary Expressions; Conversations and Manifestations, 2000
(1) ‘Spring Stirrings’ - Preliminary Exchanges amongst Doug
Caldwell, Alan Rayner, Ted Lumley and Dirk Schmid.
(2) ‘Neoteny,
Evolutionary Breakthroughs and the Emergence of Creativity’, by Alan Rayner‘
(3) ‘Indigenous Wisdom and its Lessons for the Systems
Sciences’, by Ted Lumley
(4) ‘The Challenge of Governance in an Interdependent World -
What indigenous governance can teach us’, by Martine Dodds-Taljaard
(5) ‘The Contextual Dynamics of Indeterminate Phenotypes’, by
Alan Rayner
PHASE 2: Intermediary Views; Reflections and Emanations, 2001/2002
(2) Inclusional Perspectives – Making Space For Creativity in
Science, by Alan Rayner
(3) On Being a Hermit Crab, by Alan Rayner
(4) Invisibility: The Inverse Power That Is Not Glory at PSI Bathford, by
Alan Rayner
(5) Engagement, by Alan Rayner
(6) Recalcitrance, by Alan Rayner
(7) Re-Uniting Self With Other – How the Hole in Our Hearts Can Heal, by
Alan Rayner
(8) Odd Lemming Out, by Alan Rayner
(9) Rehumanizing Education – From Authoritarian to Arthurian, by Alan
Rayner
(10)
Breathing Space, Inclusionality and the
T’ai Hsüan Ching, by Alan Rayner
(11)
Transfigural Mathematics - Number, Space
and Infinity, by Lere Shakunle
(12)
The Energy-Flow-Dynamics of Self, Ego and
Community, by Ted Lumley
(13)
Beauty and
Perfection: Rationalistic and ‘Inclusional’ Views of Symmetry and Asymmetry,
and their Evolutionary, Environmental and Psychosocial Implications, by Alan
Rayner
(14)
Recreations of a
Playful Universe,by Alan Rayner
(15)
A Letter Concerning
Exceptional Teams, by Ted Lumley
(16)
Living Space: an
‘Inclusional’ View of Trees in Dynamic Context, by Alan Rayner
(17)
The Formation and
Transformation of ‘Anti-culture’: from ‘survival of the fittest’ to ‘thrival of
the fitting’, by Alan Rayner
(18)
Inclusionality Haiku, by Yvonne Aburrow
PHASE 3: Opening Endings; Waves and Correspondences,
2003
(1) Complementary Visions, by Alan Rayner
(2) What remains unseen, by Yvonne Aburrow
(3) Sphagnum Moss,
by Alan Rayner
(4) Rationality and Inclusionality - The “Outs” and “Ins” of
Biological and Other Science, by Alan Rayner
(6) The War of the Pots and Kettles, by Alan Rayner
(7) Feeling beyond the logic of Conflict, by Alan Rayner
(8) Natural Togetherness - Reason to Love Our ‘Enemy’, by Alan
Rayner
(9)
‘Nested Holeyness’:
the Dynamic ‘Inclusional’ Geometry of Natural Space and Boundaries, by Alan
Rayner
(10)Science,
Art and the World about Us, by Alan Rayner
(11)A
Conversation between Sidney Mirsky and Alan Rayner
(12)Starlings
- Revelations of Invisibility, by Alan Rayner
(13)Restoring
the Natural Role of the Imagined Landscape in Understanding, by Ted Lumley
PostScript: New Yearnings, January 2004
(1) The Vampire Archetype in Management, by Ted Lumley
(2) Can I clarify and communicate my use of inclusional,
dialectical and propositional logics in explanations of my educational influences?
by Jack Whitehead
(3) Response to Jack Whitehead From Ted Lumley
(4) Paganism and Inclusionality, by
Yvonne Aburrow
(5) Response from Ted Lumley to Yvonne Aburrow
(6) Three Poems Exploring Inclusionality, By Ketaki Kushari
Dyson
|