advanced pattern theory for pattern engineers

Advanced Patterns Theory for Patterns Engineers -- Kent D. Palmer

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ADVANCEDPATTERN THEORY

FOR PATTERNENGINEERS

Chapter 5 of the Anti-thesis

Kent D. Palmer, Ph.D.

P.O. Box 1632Orange CA 92856 USA

[email protected]

Copyright 2002 K.D. Palmer.All Rights Reserved. Not for distribution.

Version 0.05; 02/10/26; sd04v05.doc

Keywords:

Pattern, Schema, Meta-system, System,Process, Engineering

Summary:

None yet.

Worlds and Patterns

The worlds schema and the Pattern schematogether have an internal resonance. This isbecause they define the limits of experienceon both ends of the spectrum at least withregard to the schemas. We could defineeverything within the world as patterns if weso wished. For instance, Ben Goertzel doesthis in his book Chaotic Logic. For him

everything is a pattern and all higherschemas within experience are reducible tothis schema. However, we do not subscribeto this reductionist view. Instead we thinkthat each schema is an emergent threshold oforganization with its own unique propertiesthat cannot be reduce to the other schemas.But certainly we must recognize that this isone possible way of looking at things whichhas a fair appeal to many theorists. Forinstance, Lawson's Closure could beinterpreted in this way. We talk about fabricas material, and we talk about the texture ofsuch a material and the openness of itsweave. In other words his terminologysuggests he has something like the patternlevel in mind when he conceptualizes histheory of Closure in relation to openness.Focusing on pattern is a standard way toproduce an universal theory. It avoids thepitfalls of focusing too much on Form, andone does not have to consider System or anyof the higher level schemas which complicatethings seemingly unnecessarily. In theNineteen Seventies this ruse was pursuedunder the name Structuralism. Structuralismseeks to produce a theory at the level of thecontent of forms without considering theforms themselves. Levi Strauss was themajor theorist in this movement which wassummarized in The Savage Mind. There isnow a History of Structuralism to which onemight refer to reprise this intellectualmovement. Structuralism moved from thehard sciences into the social sciences and outto effect most disciplines among thehumanities, including Systems Theory.Goerge Klir's work Architecture of SystemsProblem Solving is an excellent example of aGeneral Systems Theory that takes intoaccount the Pattern level. It has already beenexplained how his work might fruitfully becompared with Baudrillard's Critique of theEconomy of the Sign. By combining the twotheorists work we produce a morecomprehensive theory of pattern that can beseen as having at least four different kinds,value, sign, structure and flux. Each of theseare composed of discontinuities. Structure is


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a discontinuity of space of contents. Flux is adiscontinuity of the time of contents. Value isa discontinuity of the Utility of contents. Signis a discontinuity of the meaning of contents.These four different kinds of patterning mayhave chiasmic relations with each other ofthe type that Klir discussed in hisepistemological hierarchy and Baudrillardhinted at. We use this idea as a basis for adeeper theory pattern theory which takes intoaccount all four kinds of discontinuity at thelevel of content. Baudrillard only consideredthe difference between economic value andsocial significance of commodities. Klir onlyconsidered the actual deformations of thespace of data contents in terms of space andtime that could be construed as a FormalStructural System to produce anarchitectonic of the system. But note that thecommodity may be seen as the thing withinthe meta-system of the general politicaleconomy and that it can also be seen as asignifier within the social meta-system aswell. But the commodity can also be one ofthe things within the system, as a figure onits ground, that are related to other thingswithin the system which can be seenarchitecturally in terms of space and timediscontinuities of content. So the two theoriesfit together very conveniently. It is interestingto note that Jung defines the psyche as theconjunction of signification and value. In hislater theorizing Jung also introduces thepsychoid which are objects outside thesubject that mirror its own processes andexpress archetypes via synchroniety. Wemight see that psychoid realm in terms ofpatterning of discontinuities in space andtime. Thus it is interesting that Jungiantheory relates to these theories ofcommodities on the one hand and formalstructural systems on the other. The Jungiantheories gives us a way to understand howthe other two theories might be seen from apsychological perspective rather than anexternal objective perspective. When werecognize that the Unconscious might betreated as the Meta-system, the generaleconomy of Bataille, in relation to

consciousness or the system, the restrictedeconomy of Bataille, then it is possible to seehow a theory of patterning of thepsyche/psychoid in terms of associations ofwords, feelings, images, concepts etc. canmirror our relation between the contents ofspacetime and the contents within ourconsciousness.

This is a point where it might be wise tobegin to introduce the ideas of Deleuze andGuattari from Anti-Oedipus and ThousandPlateaus. In that book there is a devaluationof the individual organism by the focus on adifferent ontological level called desiringmachines. Desiring machines are contrast tothe Socius which is a social field. DesiringMahcines are defined as partial objects in thesense of M. Kline. They are said to exist inpatterns of flows across bodies and to makeup a unstructured mass called the rhizomewhich is not hierarchical and has nobeginning or end. The rhizome is somethingwe are always in the midst of. What isunique about Deleuze and Guattari'streatment of Desiring machines is that theyare seen as orthogonal to each otherexemplifying directly the unconscious, whichis named the "body-without-organs". Thedesiring machines hang off of the body-without-organs like the medals of a general ata military parade. Like the theories of Klirand Bataille we want to modify this theorysomewhat. We want to introduce the oppositeof the desiring machine which we might callthe avoiding machine. These together areopposite another pair that might be called thedisseminating machine and the absorbingmachine. When Deleuze and Guattari say"machine" they mean something that is priorto the split between organism and machine,something on the order of dasein. But it isvery disconcerting to continue to use the termmachine in this context, so I would prefer touse the term practice following Foucault.Thus we can see that there are desiringpractices, avoiding practices, disseminatingpractices, and absorbing practices, and ourpoint here is that these practices operate on


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the pattern level which may producestructures, fluxes, values and signs. Whenwe combine the concept of these fourpractices with the concept of the four kids ofpattern I think we get a very powerful theoryof patterning which might serve as a basisfor understanding patterning engineering asthe practical result of patterning theory. Ofcourse, the formal theory that we will appealto in order to define pattern theory isGrenander's Theory of Patterns. Grenanderhas the only known mathematical theory ofpatterns known by the Author. It allows us tobe very precise about the nature of PatternTheory when combined with the ideas of Klirin his Architecture of Systems ProblemSolving. But these theories don't allow us todevelop the practical reason related to patterntheory as easily as we can if we combineDeleuze and Guattari's theory of the desiringmachines and Foucault's theory of practices.In a way this is the bedrock of our schemastheory, because this is the level at whichschemas first come into contact withexperience at the smallest increment. Muchof the critique that leads to this is that ofWilliam James who noted that there is aspecious present, i.e. that content itself asisolated is really an abstraction and we neverexperience it as monads. So Husserl's hyle asthe object of the intentional morphe is just aconcept with no experiential determination.This is one of the things that drives Gurwitchto explore the fringes of consciousness andamorphousness in consciousness. Monads ofcontent of consciousness are just never seenin isolation even though we project them, asLeibniz so famously did. So we see patternsin things and we relate to these patternsthrough our practices that can be desiring,avoiding, disseminating, and absorbing. Wedo not see monads, or their facets inconsciousness except as elements of ourrepresentations.

We place the patterns we see and producewithin the context of the world. If we onlyhad these two schemas we could construct agood theory of how we relate the patterns we

see to the world in which we live, ourlifeworld that we relate to as dasein made upof patterns of practice which were not yetbroken into subject and object. Of course wewould like to extend this theory to the levelof Hyper Being and Wild Being which wewould do by projecting monads and facets orby projecting kosmos and pluriverse beyondexperience of patterns contextualized withinthe lifeworld. However, we would also haveto project forms and domains in order torepresent Pure Being, as both the world andpattern are established at the level of ProcessBeing. That is in Process Being we havethese ready-to-hand proto-things calledpatterns in the world. We call the ready-to-hand a mode of being-in-the-world of dasein.Dasein is proto-subject/object. Theunderstanding, talk and discoveredness ofDasein is in terms of patterns within theworld. That is patterns of understanding, i.e.schemas, patterns of talk that describe whatis seen via the schemas, and patterns ofdiscovery which goes beyond the schemas, asin science that recognizes anomalies andreorganizes emergently to deal with thoseanomalies in paradigm changes, epistemechanges, and reinterpretations of Being.Heidegger's phenomenology is a study in thepattern formation prior to the arising of thesubject/object forms embedded in the world.Foucault's Order of Things is a study ofepistemic patterns. Kuhn's Structure ofScientific Revolutions is a study ofparadigmatic patterns, i.e. patterns ofassumptions that lie at the roots of theories.All of these patterns exhibit emergent effectsof the nature of the emergent eventsdescribed first by G.H. Mead. One way toattempt to understand these emergent effectsis to study as Wolfram does in his A NewKind of Science cellular automata whichexhibit the emergent effects of rule changesand the way local effects generate globalpatterns. Cellular Automata Theory is aprime example of how Grenander'sgeneralized mathematical theory of patternmight be implemented and operationalized. Itgives us small worlds of pattern production


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and recognition that we can experiment within order to try to understand global patternformation based on local rules. Rules aresign structures that set values of the cellcolor. The cells exist in a lattice which isstepped through time. The pattern is seenbecause of the discontinuities that areproduced as the rules fire in the entire field ofthe cellular automata network over the timesteps producing color values that weapprehend globally in spite of the localinfluences that produced them. Theproduction or dissemination of the colorpatterns that evolve in the cellular automatais balanced against our absorption of them.The desire for titillation is what drives ourcontinued viewing of the scene. In order tosee that scene we must not look too closely,or stop the clock, but must instead lookacross the whole field concentrating on thosefleeting designs that catch our fancy. Ourinteraction with the Cellular Automata is afusion of the various practices we havedescribed as the Cellular Automata itself is afusion of the various kinds of pattern wehave discussed. It is a prime examplebecause it brings together in a singlemechanism all the various aspects ofpatterning devices and patterning relatedpractices. Wolfram's point that complexity ofpatterning can be understood in terms ofsoftware programs that execute rules in ANew Kind of Science is well taken. This issupported by Goertzel's idea in ChaoticLogic that we should seek the smallestpossible algorithm to produce a given patternand by Grenander's Mathematical PatternsTheory of which is a sort of abstraction ofcellular automata made up of a lattice ornetwork of generators. Many theorists areconverging on a similar understanding of thefact that pattern is a basic schema forunderstanding the organization of things.

Patterns and Things (and Stuff)

Something should be said about the relation

between patterns and forms of things. Formshave shape which encompasses oursurrounds or serves as a basis for content.Content here means the "sensory data" whichfills up the form, or covers the form, orsurrounds the form, depending on the kind ofform we are talking about. This sensory datais qualitative for the most part. Usually inscience the primary qualities are associatedmore closely with the form itself, such asposition, mass, velocity, etc. But we canseparate the quantitative definition of theform as something countable from most ofthe qualitative aspects of the content of theform. The content is what is patterned. Thereare cases like a bolt of cloth where the rawmaterial lacks any specific form but acts as amedia for the content. Media are broadlyspeaking a tabula rasa for certain types ofcontent and forms. Sometimes as with cloththe content comes as part of the media, whilein other cases the media is imprinted with thecontent at the same time it is imprinted withthe forms, as in photography for example.


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However, all this assumes we are dealingwith countable things, but masses also havecontent. The body of the mass, its instancesare generally thought of as the content of themass. Masses overall have global forms, saya surface upon which we see waves. Butgenerally in masses the content is emphasizedover the form. We might also speak of theipsities that are juxtaposed in conglomerateswere form and content might be merged, saywhen we talk about molecules whose formsare determined directly by their contents. Inany case it is important to keep separate inour minds the patterning of content verses theform, even though we can choose to see theform as just a higher level of contentpatterning. Normally the form and contentare separable as in a glass and the decorationon the side of the glass. But there are manyelements in which the form is made up of thearrangement of the content, as in manyfamous Dali paintings, or in faces that aremade up by arrangements of fruit, and thelike.

Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach -- Salvador Dali-- 1938

Giuseppe Arcimboldo -- Summer -- 1573

These instances are of course anomalous,and they are the exceptions that prove therule concerning the orthogonality of form andcontent.

Structure and Organization

Maturana and Varela in their theory ofAutopoiesis distinguish organization fromstructure. Organization is a persistent patternwhich overrides the shifting of content atsome lower level of abstraction calledstructure. This raises the issue ofinterembedding of pattern within pattern, andthe fact that on level of pattern may be influx while another higher level of patternmay be maintained as persistent, even thoughthe actual content being organized is shiftedout and been replaced. Each schema can behierarchically embedded in itself, so theremay be a nesting of forms like Russian Dolls.Likewise there may be a hierarchy ofpatterns within patterns within patterns


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which is fractal. The interesting thing is thatboth interembedded forms and patterns mayhave fractal dimension.

Teleology and Teleonomy

Jacques Monod distinguishes betweenTeleology and Teleonomy. Teleology isknowing the goal before handwhileTeleonomy is a goal that is discoveredby approximation along the way. One of thefour causes of Aristotle is the Final cause.Another is the formal. Then there is thematerial and efficent causes. These fourcauses may be related to the kinds of Being:

Pure Being = Formal Cause

Process Being = Efficient Cause

Hyper Being = Material Cause

Wild Being = Final Cause

Here the material cause is the content whichmay be patterned. Form is a separate cause.Efficiency is what relates the Form to theMaterial Content. The Final Cause is the endwhich is assumed to be pre-given. Teleonomyis when the cause is discovered n the processwhich Monod says can happen if there isboth chance and filtering working together.Monod's theory is an excellent example of aFormal Structural theory because thestructures within the hierarchy of chance andnecessity is seen as what produces theteleonomy of evolution. It is interesting howdifficult it is to think of another kind of causeat this same level of abstraction other thanthose that Aristotle names.

Pattern Language

Alexander's Pattern Language1 has become afamous way to approach software design. It 1 http://patternlanguage.com

started out as an approach to architecturalbuilding and town planning. What we cansay about the pattern language is that it is aninversion of the schema, in the sense that wenormally think of patterns of content appliedto or within forms as shapes. But the patternlanguage deals with patterns of forms atvarious hierarchical levels of the builtenvironment. This is an excellent case to seehow schemas can interact in surprising wayswhere a lower level schema like pattern canbe used to understand the ordering of higherlevel schemas like form. Alexander evidentlygoes on in his new books2 to talk aboutsequences for applying patterns to buildingprojects. He is looking at unfoldinggenerative sequences by which patterns arebuilt up, this could be similar to the latticesof generators talked about by Grenander.Alexander makes the interesting point thatthe number of sequences are exponential butthe number of sequences that work withoutbacktracking in a particular context are veryfew comparatively. This idea of generativeunfolding of sequences to produce patternsare exactly the theme that I would like topursue. I call this the meta-essence which isat the level of Hyper Being up from theessences that exists at the Process Beinglevel. Meta-essences are timing constraints oressential constraints of attributes. Meta-essences determine genetic unfolding ofthings like patterns, or forms etc. Anyschema can fit over something thatgenetically unfolds. The schema includes thehigher meta-levels that appertain to it. Forinstance in pattern at the meta-level two hascategorization as its essence. At meta-levelthree there is a spectra. At meta-level fourthere are singularities. What is meant by this.As Schlegel says in his aphorismscategorizations are definitions of definitions.A categorization is a classification intotaxons of the various contents that are foundin a pattern. All patterns can be reduced tocategorizations by the postulation of monadsand then the classification of those monads 2 The Nature of Order Series


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and their various groupings synchronicallyand diachronically or in term of value andsignification. The categorizations withrespect to patterns are similar to the ruleswith respect to systems. The categorizationsare the essence of the pattern. But at theHyper Being level where the properties existin systems we see in patterns spectra.Spectra means that the various categorizedcontents produce a pallet say of colors orshapes or tones out of which the pattern isproduced. Categories of contents of a patternare given dynamic meaning by their array inspectra that are constructed out of thesecategorized contents. What is important hereis that at the level of pattern there does nothave to be any continuity of the kind thatproduces forms, in fact there does not have tobe any continuity of media either. In otherwords for patterns continuity is not essential,and in fact we define patterns asdiscontinuities in space, time, value andsignification. It is the discontinuities that areabstracted to produce the categories, meta-definitions. Sometimes these discontinuitiesare such that they are actually singularities,i.e. anomalies that cannot be seen to fit in thepatterns at all. Patterns it must be stressedare like gestalts in the eye of the beholder.They are projected schemas. Of course whenwe categorized the pattern contents we areimposing a set-like countability on the massof the contents of the pattern. But we wouldprefer to think of the contents as ipsities thatare juxtaposed into conglomerations whichare seen as patterns. The patterns may befocused on discontinuities of space, time,value or signification, or chiasmiccombinations there of. When we attempt tocategorize the contents and realize theirspectra we are really treating them like sets.On the other hand if we merely take in thecontents in a global picture we areconsidering them as a mass. But if weconsider each element of the pattern in itsuniqueness both as content and in relation toits neighbors spreading out to further andfurther neighbors then we are considering thepattern in its ipsity.

Patterning Patterns

The archetypal pattern media is cloth. Into itswarp and weft by the intertwining of threadspatterns have been created by women overmillennia. So much so that in Greek myth thearchetypal roles of women were weaving andwater gathering at the well. Both of theseactivities are related to the primal scene ofthe Indo-Europeans called the Well and theTree3. It is interesting that the firstprogrammable device was the Jacquard loomwhich could be programmed to producepatterns in cloth being woven by machines. Itwas the Jacquard loom that was the basis ofBabbage's programmable calculatingmachine which was never completed.Ultimately the programmable calculatingmachines were produced as electronicgadgets rather than mechanical ones whichachieved universal computability. These weredescribed by the Turing machines. If we looka Turing machines and their duals, UniversalTuring machines, we see that these machineshave tapes. One end is infinite and the otheris finite. On the tape are readable andwriteable signs. Each place on the tape has avalue from among the possible signs perhapsrepresented by the pattern of bits that areturned on in a sequence of bits, for instancelike the ASCII code. So the place thatpatterns show up in computing is as thepattern of bits on the tape of the Turingmachine. The ASCII code relates these bitpatterns to the forms of letters, numbers,punctuation, and various symbols. Note thatthis translation from the patterns to ASCIIequivalents actually happens in our heads,the computers actually only work with the bitpatterns and they are oblivious to themeanings we project by coding onto these bitpatterns. So we see there that the transitionbetween bit patterns and forms of letters inthe ASCII code occurs not in the computeritself but in our interaction and interpretationof what the computer is doing and our 3 See The Fragmentation of Being and the Pathbeyond the Void by the author.


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interpretation of pixels on its screen. But thattransition from pattern to form is welldefined in the Turing machine representationand in the architecture of the general purposecomputers that we interpret as Turingmachine equivalent. In fact, we can see thatthe transition from form to system is alsowell defined, because the whole Turingmachine is a system where as the symbolsare forms. So there is another well definedtransition between pattern to form to system.The same can be said for the transition to themeta-system that is equivalent to theuniversal Turing machine. That is a Turingmachine that has other Turing machinesrepresented on its tapes which it loads andexecutes thus being able to change fromsimulating one Turing machine to another asa meta-program. What is so strange aboutthe meta-system is that it is exactly the sameas the Turing machine except the programthat it is executing is itself a Turing machinenot merely an algorithm, but rather anapplication to which the universal Turingmachine is acting as an operating (meta-)system. No wonder we have difficulty seeingthe difference between systems and meta-systems, if their difference is so subtle. Notethat the distance between pattern and form isless than the difference between form andsystem, note that the difference betweenmeta-system and system is less than thedifference between pattern and form. Thesemeasures of difference between schemasshow us that the schemas are themselves verydifferent in how they interact and nest witheach other. Ultimately our model of pattern isbits in a computer. They have a sort of ultraefficiency because they can be set and resetso easily, and fit into such a small space thatit allows great leverage of computing powersuch as we have been experiencing throughthe playing out of Moore's law over the lasttwenty years or so. Babbage's mechanicalcomputer eventually led to IBM sortingmachines that were controlled by electronics.But the real leap was when computingmachines were developed that hadgeneralized architectures that made general

purpose computing possible. All this relieson the recognition of electronic bit patterns,and execution of operations based on thatinput to produce an output pattern of bits.This is of course the functional model ofcomputing in which there is input and outputthrough functions implemented in software.Machines deal with the patterns of bits andwe humans interpret the inputs and outputsin relation to forms and symbols. This iswhat produces the whole problem ofArtificial Intelligence which is that themachines do not really understand what theyare processing unless we build in some sortof knowledge into them, and then still they donot really understand that knowledge butonly mimic such an understanding. Turing'stest for Artificial Intelligence is that weourselves cannot tell the machines are fakingit.

Now why is it necessary for machines to faketheir understanding of forms out of patterns.The reason is that the machines cannotcomprehend the transition between schemas.For a computer everything happens at the bitlevel of patterning, everything above thatlevel is an artifice, the symbols of thecomputation are an artifice, the system of theprogram is an artifice, the meta-system ofcomputing, i.e. the operating system is alsoan artifice. By artifice is mean a sterileconstruction that does not involve its ownsynthesis. You see discontinuity is built intothe schema of patterning. This discontinuityis inherited as we move up the variousconstructed levels of schemas. So thecomputer does not really have thecontinuities that allow us to comprehendform. That would require something analog,and the computer is by definition digital. Itsdigitality is that inherent discontinuity that isinherited from the pattern level and persistsin all higher levels in spite of their needingsome other basis for synthesis in order to begenuine representations of schemas such aswe as humans possess. So computerprograms will always be elaborate illusionsat the schema levels higher than pattern. The


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question is whether we can tell they areillusions with our in-built capability forunderstanding the schemas based on ourorganically based continuums that provide astaging area for our own understanding ofthe schemas. We could argue that our owncontinuities by which we recognize formsand systems and even meta-systems are alsoin some sense illusions created by our neuro-circuits. This is in fact what many of thefindings of contemporary cognitive sciencepoint toward. But as we live within our ownillusion and it seems real to us, then thequestion is whether other illusions conform toour illusions which must remain for us thetouchstone of our ratification of experience.

An interesting example is DouglasHofstadter's book on analogies4. In that bookhe describes Melanie Mitchell's5 Copycatprogram, the architecture of which attemptsto understand very simple analogies. It isinteresting how much programming work isnecessary to do even this very simple task.The architecture of copy cat has some thingsin common with Holland's Complex AdaptiveSystems6 in which there are multiple agentsworking in an environment together. Manysuch simulations are now being producedunder the rubric of artificial life7. This is awhole realm of inquiry that we will leaveaside because here we are trying tounderstand the nature of the schemasthemselves and are not so interested in theirexpression in various fields. But the keypoint made above is that there is afundamental level of discontinuity that arethe basis of all these simulations, of life orintelligence or the social8 which cannot beovercome because the illusory continuities on

4 Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: ComputerModels of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought5 http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~mm/6 cf Emergence (Addison-Wesley, 1997), HiddenOrder: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Perseus,1996)7 http://biota.org/8 http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html

which the synthetic comprehension of theschemas are built in our human organism andsociety is missing in the simulations. All thiscomes from the fact that they are based onpatterns that build up simulations of higherlevel schemas but do not leave thediscontinuities associated with the patternlevel behind. These discontinuities betweenbits in memory, or bytes, etc are fundamentaland all continuities that are projected athigher levels are merely illusory becausethese gaps cannot be closed by analogsynthesis such as those built into ourphysiology and our social matrix whichmakes us organisms not machines.

Variables and Values in Time andSpace

If we are going to understand patterns in anyfundamental level then, we must understandthe value in the variable as it is situated intime and space. This means going back tobasics and looking carefully at the variablewhich is a piece of computer memoryaccessible to software. That variable as weknow has a pattern of ones and zeros amongits bits. That variable is external to othervariables in memory. Here memory is spaceand cpu cycles are time. This externality andnon-relation between variables is the deadlyaspect of discontinuity in space which ismimicked by the discontinuity in time of thecpu cycles governed by the program variablethat tells what line of the program is beingexecuted at any one time. So we havediscontinuity in both space and time whichwe attributed to the pattern schema in thearchitecture that guarantees theseparableness and continuity in hardware ofthe variable as a memory location. But let usalso look at the values that the variablesassume. These values are conceptuallydistinct from each other, determinably so. Asis their significations to us as programmersand users of computers programs. In otherwords there are two pieces to this puzzle.There is one in the hardware and software of


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the computing device, and there is another inus. Value and Signification are in us whileStructure and Flux are in the computer. Weassociate the value with the pattern of bits inthe variable by inventing a code like theASCII code. We associate the significationof the input and output of the function by aprojection of meaning onto the behavior ofthe computer program. But in both casesthere are externalities. Inventing codes andcomputer science structures is separate fromthe projection of meaning on the behavior ofthe program. There is this fundamental splitbetween design and implementation on theone hand and execution and validation on theother. So not only is there absolute space andtime separated in the computer in a Kantianstyle as memory and cpu cycles, but there isalso a radical separation of these from valuesand signs which are in turn separated eachother. These separations are continuallyglossed over but they are crucial becausethey make the essential interaction betweenhumans and computers a patterning, but theymean that what is going on at the mostfundamental level in both the computers andthe humans as they interact with computers.For artificial intelligence to occur the valuingand the signification would have to occurwithin the computer itself rather than asmerely a human projection. Let us considerthat Jung defined the psyche as our valuingand signification that occurred insideourselves. Since we do not know how we dovaluing and signification then it is going tobe difficult to figure out how to project thosefundamentals of our cognition outside ofourselves. Also let us just remind ourselvesthat Nietzsche's great innovation was to askabout the value of value. Similarly IARichards asked about the meaning ofmeaning. We do not know very well whatthese meta-level cognitions are even inourselves.

But let us pretend that we understand at leastthe structure of present day computers andour own discrete concepts by which we codethem and the discrete states that they take as

they execute. Looking at these externalitieswe see that all four kinds of pattern cometogether at the executing variable that is usedto simulate a turing machine. We can quicklysee that there are two types of relationbetween variables. One is that we can seemany of them at a time changing with valuesrunning through them in parallel in which wesee a global pattern. The other is that we cansee values moving along from variable tovariable perhaps transforming as they movein a way that we recognize as a local pattern.

There is a similar thing on the value andsignification side. We can construct ahierarchy of values where one valuedecomposes into another value at a lowerlevel. There can be state transitions betweenthese values at either level. We can imaginethat there are higher level states that areconnected with lower level transitions ORthere are lower level states that are connectedwith higher level transitions. By consideringtwo levels at once we note that there arethese dual ways of looking at the state spacewith its transitions that produces a tensionbetween them which are dual views of thewhole containing both levels. If we think ofsignification as something that comes from areference from one thing to another then wecan see these duals as two ways to producesuch a reference. These are the four waysthat variables can come into conjunction withhierarchical state networks. And these takentogether are also a simplified version of theTuring machine. A Turing machine is a statemachine and a stack. The state machine isexecuted on the stack. Here the two views ofthe hierarchical state space (higher stateswith lower transitions OR lower states withhigher transitions) are ways that value andsignification might be married. When lowerlevel transitions occur what is the higherlevel state that is produced? When higherlevel transitions fire what are the lower levelinput and output states that are gatheredtogether in that function? Similarly we canlook at global values of variables across a setof variables, or we can trace values from


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variable to variable locally. These are thefour possibilities for breaking up the TuringMachine in terms of its variables and its statenetworks. What is interesting is that if wetake these in pairs then they underlie theminimal methods at the formal level andprovide us with slices of a Turing machine.The minimal methods are based on thepairwise composition of these fundamentalelements for modeling data and event andbecause of that the minimal methods becomeslices of a Turing machine. This is whatmakes them able to represent in simplifiedform the basic structures of realtime softwaresystems9 and systems in general.

If we go back to Klir's structuralism ofGeneral Systems we will see that it is madeup using the building blocks of variables inwhich data are carried, the changes in thesedata are seen as events. The combinatorics ofvariables gives us the fundamentalarchitectural possibilities of the systembecause the variables can represent theinputs and outputs of the system. What wemiss in this is the fact that outside of thestructural system reduced to variables thereis the value and sign shadow that is seen inthe human response to that system, whichshows up as process.

Energy, Matter, Information, Entropy

At this point it behooves us to discuss therelation to this nexus of the basic processesof the fundamental elements of physics andthermodynamics, of Being and Becoming.When we look at the hardware of a computerwe immediately see the relation betweenenergy and matter as the physical presence ofthe machine. We are of course talking aboutElectromagnetism which was the greatdiscovery that made computers feasible in away that completely mechanical computerswere not as the experience of Babbageshowed. Computers are very complex

9 See Wild Software Meta-systems

deterministic electromagnetic gadgets. Theyare information processors. They can takemany data streams and compare and contrastthem to wring information from the data andpresent that information to humans viavarious human-machine interfaces. The keypoint is how entropy is seen in the working ofthese gadgets. Entropy is not so easilyspotted. It takes quite a bit of human work toget data into and information out ofcomputers. The entropy is mostly in theinterface between the human and thecomputer. Computers are the great wastersof time. They appear to make things better,until you realize how much down time theyentail when they are broken, or workingwrong, or giving out garbage because theywere fed garbage. The gain in efficiency thatcomes with using computers is offset by aloss from the disorder that they create as theenvironment needs to be changed toaccommodate them, or from technologicalincompatibilities, or from other sources oflost effort. There is also some entropy in theactual degrading of the computer systemitself, and the waste of power that is neededto run them, but this is minor compared withthe entropy of the human-machine interface.

So if we can locate the four elements ofinformation, entropy, energy and matter, thenit falls upon us to think about thereopposites. Negative Entropy is seen when acomputer program takes input data andintroduces order to it so that the output ismore ordered than the input. NegativeEnergy and Anti-matter do not appear in thecomputer explicitly, unless we think aboutthem in terms of virtuality. The computerultimately produces a virtual world whichhas its own seeming materiality and its ownkind of energy which we might see as theinverse of the energy and matter in ourworld. We have noted that anti-matter doesnot appear normally in this universe. It hasall been annihilated, and if any anti-matterappeared it would soon vanish. But the anti-matter world is a possibility that is definitelythere within our physical world. When we


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produce a virtual environment it is like aproduction of the shadow of that possibility.We can walk through walls in virtual realityand break all kinds of physical laws. We cantry experiments that would be too dangerousor impossible in our own world. Virtuality isa kind of anti-matter and a kind of anti-energy in as much as the virtual world iscomposed of the shadow of matter andenergy of our world. That shadow is differentfrom the anti-matter and negative energy ofthe real world, but still it is some distantrelative of them perhaps. Negative energyappears as attractive or repulsive forces invirtual reality. Negative Matter appears asgrids of invisible lines that become solidthrough software produced constraints. Theother element that I would like to talk aboutis negative information. You never hearabout negative information, but we knowthat, dissimulation, lies and secrets have avalue within human society. Negativeinformation such as computer viruses, suchas trojans, and mountains of spam exist incyberspace as well.

Now let us go down to the variable inspacetime with its value that has significationfor someone. In order to talk about theseelements we need to take at least twovariables at a time, so that the externalitybecomes significant. Energy appears aselectromagnetic force as contained andchanneled by the silicon computer chips thatare glass matter. Information comes from thecomparison of at least two sources of data inthe variables of the computer. Entropy comesfrom wasted heat and from the sheerfrustration of trying to interface withanything so small as a computer chip.Negative Entropy comes from the ability ofthe program to order the information in thevariables increasing its complexity andcoherence. Negative Information comes fromits ability to be out of sync with theenvironment in some way so that it in factbecomes a lie, deception, or secret. NegativeEnergy and Negative Matter appears in themirror world of virtuality that can be

produced based on the functioning of thesoftware system in a way completely cut offfrom the external reality. By this reckoningvirtual energy and virtual things are negativeenergy and negative matter.

Computers have their own internal clocksand thus these clocks can be related to eachother relativisticly. But for computers toparticipate in the realm of quantummechanics they must become quantummechanical themselves as David Deutschsuggested in The Fabric of Reality. Suchcomputers operate within quantumsuperimposition until they are observed andthus have the kind of uncertainty that existsbetween the particle and the wave.

We have taken the four types of pattern andhave connected them to the foundations ofcomputer science by looking closely atvariables and their values. But then we havewoven around that the concepts of entropy,information, energy and matter that werebreached in the last chapter. We have seenhow that is a short step to the quantum andrelativistic computer. But we must also thinkabout this computer in relation to the logosand the physus. We can see it in terms ofphysics. But our own organism owes just asmuch to thermodynamics as to particlephysics. The physus is the organisms thatgrow and develop unfolding according to theplan inscribed into the meta-essence.Opposite this is the logos which is theunfolding of language with the core of logicwhich is the physus within the logos. We cansee the core of the physus as the logos withinthe physus which we understand as theschemas. Between them stand the nomos,order that is the non-dual that unites them yetseparates them. We participate in theunfolding of physus and the unfolding of thelogos. We use as our measures the schemasand the logic. Our theories relate to ourexperiments via the ordering of the nomos.When we put it in that light we see that


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computers have a long way to go if they areto spread their functions into the realmswhich we find so natural, which are that ofthe unfolding physus of the growingorganism, the unfolding logos of thought.Just imitating the recognition of objects in theworld via the schemas and ordering theprocessing of information based on logic isnot enough. And we have not mentioned thedeeper non-duals such as right, good, fate,source and root which show up so naturallyin human life as we deal with thefundamental dualisms of our worldview.Patterning is a fundamental way of looking atthings. Computer science has madepatterning its own as a basis for theconstruction and running of software. But wecan see how narrow the use of computers arein relation to what we ourselves encompassas human beings.

Aspects of Being and Categories

We are focusing on the variables with valuesembedded in spacetime which are significantfor some observer. We already noted thatEnergyMatter represents Being whileInfoEntropy represents Becoming in thispicture. It is interesting that for a generalcomputer we need to imagine negativeEnergyMatter as virtuality. EnergyMatter isa differentiation of the physus. Contrary tothat is the logos which is the root of idealismrather than materialism. The most notableidealism is that of Kant, but we couldmention Hegel and others. Betweenmaterialism and idealism there is a richspectrum of positions. The key questionconcerns the relation between the aspects ofBeing and the duality of physus and logosinscribed in Being that underlies the variablegiven a value of significance in spacetime.Let us first consider identity. There isdifference though time, at each moment thepattern of bits in the variable might change.There is the question of repetition when thesame variable appears again in the variableduring a different cpu cycle. There is the

identity of the pattern in multiple variables atthe same time or at different times. There iseven the possibility of re-coding in which thesame pattern means something different indifferent contexts, for instance is EBCDICand ASCII. There are many differentcontexts for the application of identity anddifference within the context of a network ofvariables with values. Presence also meansdifferent things. It could mean the presenceof the pattern in the variable. It could meanthe presence of the pattern to the programthat looks at the variable or changes it. Itcould mean the presence on the screen orprintout of the contents of the variable. Thereare many different ways that a pattern couldbe present, and then there is the presencethough the mediation of the codes, or otherintermediate interpretations by programs. Asto truth there are also many different ways toverify the pattern against different criteria inorder to establish truth. We can verifyagainst requirements, we can verify onevariable against another, we can verifyagainst an output or input. With respect toreality this is normally established byverification with the outside world in someway, i.e. what is beyond the system in whichthe variable exists in the context in which itoperates. Testing is the normal way toestablish reality in the context of theenvironment. We can test many differentaspects of the system against many differentaspect of the environment. So when we lookat the aspects of Being we see that each ofthem can be applied myriad ways to thesimple situation of a small network ofvariables with value given significance withinspacetime by someone. The network ofvariables gives us a multi-aspectival situationwhen they operate together. And we need totake seriously this multi-aspectival situationbecause there is no way to reduce its inherentcomplexity.

A similar thing can be said for the Kantianpart/whole categories. Plurality and Totalityand Unity apply in many different ways tothe variable with value given significance by


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someone within spacetime. The pattern canbe seen as either totality or unity or pluralitydepending on the point one wants to make.However, the one thing we would withhold iswholeness. It is hard to see wholenessexemplified in the situation. In fact, theradical separation that is inherent in thecomputer at the level of patterning thatcarries on up through the simulation ofhigher levels of organization seems to barwholeness from being achieved except assomething that we project upon thecomputational situation.

What we are seeing here are morelimitations to the computational milieu whichwill cause us to insist on its embeddedness inthe human environment. This goes againstthe prevailing cognitive metaphor of thecomputer as the equivalent to humanintelligent processes. We need to take thatdeficiency in the metaphor seriously as well.The computer appears at one level of theworldview to produce a determinate system(application) and meta-system (operatingsystem) combination. It appears in thecontext of the deeper levels of duality andnon-duality which it does not relate to and itis also multi-aspectival and multi-categoricalat the same time still not achieving wholenessexcept in terms of projections by us.

Pattern Theory

In this essay we will take Grenander’sdefinition10 of the pattern algebra ascanonical. The definition is composed ofdifferent elements that are necessary toproduce patterns. The first of these is thegenerator:

A generator is something that produces 10 Grenander, Ulf. Elements of Pattern Theory (JohnHopkins UP, 1996) pages 81-94 excerpts scanned

something else. It does work and thusconsumes exergy. Klir has generators in hisFormal Structural Systems theory which hedescribes after the object, source, and datasystems. In math generators are functions.However, we can take them to have themeaning of generators as they appear inUNICON as a routine that will produceevery possible combination of a pattern. Inother words we can take generator in thestructural sense which would produce everypossible permutation of a given pattern.Grenander is not being so specific but we canextend his definition easily in this way. Thegenerators that Grenander posits areequivalent to the Peirce-Fuller category ofFirsts.

The key point concerning patterns is thatthey preserve certain invariances andsymmetries that are repeated. Grenandermoves in his definition to take care of thesesymmetries and invariances first. This isequivalent to the Peirce-Fuller category ofFourth which stands for synergy.

This part of the definition allows patterns tohave parts which act independently anddifferently. Generators can be either masslike instances if all the generators are copiesof the same generator template, orinterpenetrated masses if all the generatorinstances are of different types but mixedtogether probabilistically. For generators toapproximate set particulars the tags are usedto collect the generators of different typeswhose essence is determined by the sorts ofinputs and outputs they will accept, i.e. by


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their particular attributes. We can think ofthe generators as an ipsity if we find themiddle between the obsession with samenesson the mass side and the obsession withdifference on the set side. Generators that arejuxtaposed but not connected via their bondsare conglomerated ipsities that arejuxtaposed which is the non-dual between theset and mass extremes.

Here Grenander introduces relations betweengenerators so that he can describe the bondstructure, which he distinguishes from tagswith values, Tags values signify something tosomeone beyond the bond and generatornetwork. Notice that the idea of the generatorassumes that it operates though time, so thegenerator itself represents flux, while theexternal relations between generators viabonding equals the discontinuities in spacethat the bonds traverse. Then the tag valuesrepresent signs to someone observing theconfiguration of the generators. Thus we cansee in the definition the four kinds of pattern:structure, flux, value and sign. The bonds ofthe generators represent the Peirce-Fullercategory of Secondness.

Molecules of generators are built up throughthe bonding process. This is the extension ofSecondness. But how generators themselvescome into existence and go out of existence isnot covered. Emergence is the appearances of

firsts not just the chemistry-like combinationof generator atoms into configurationmolecules to get new combinations. Howeverthis idea of exploring adjacent possiblemolecular reaction spaces where newcombinations become possible is what S.Kauffman suggests in his Investigations11.He says that there is a potential energytoward expansion of the actual reactionspace into the adjacently possible. Yet theadjacently possible is predicated on reactionsbetween existing molecules composed ofexisting atoms. However, what happenswhen new generator atoms come intoexistence, as happens in supernova withregard to real atoms. Turns out big atoms ofphysical substance are unstable. But here weare talking about generators of patterns.Those generators are idealization, notmaterial objects. The production of newgenerators are not restricted in the way theproduction of atoms of mater are restrictedphysically. So emergence of new generatorsis always a possibility, which expands theadjacently possible, but makes thediscontinuity between actuality and theadjacently possible more a starkdiscontinuity of the nature of an emergence.

11 pp 142-157 (Oxford 2000)


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Here Grenander adds a Cartesian productbetween the bonds and assumes that eachpoint in the table can be either true or falsebased on whether the bonds will connect. Inthis way he produces configurations ofBonds, i.e. a second order connection. Wecan imagine third and fourth, etc orderconnections as well between the bonds.

Note that the bonds can sense each other andconnect to each other if they can. Thispropagation of bond values can be seen asoperating somewhat like a cellular automata.Adjacent bond values are sensed and thatleads to the correct bond values connecting.This produces stable patterns among thegenerators.

Non-regular rhizomatic graphs are alsopossible.


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Let us note that Bateson relates physical

movement to the kinds of Being. Stasis isPure Being, movement is Process Being,acceleration/deceleration is Hyper Being andjitter is Wild Being. We note here thatpatterns may be moved and transposed anddisplay all these kinds of movement. Batesontalks about levels of learning as opposite thephysus of movement. He discusses learning1

as Pure Being, learning to learn (learning2) asProcess Being, learning3 as Hyper Being andlearning4 as Wild Being. Thus the types oflearning that exemplify logos are opposite thetypes of movement that exemplify physus.Learning patterns, i.e. pattern recognition, isthe dual of pattern generation.

Grenander here talks about pattern templates.This is where we see patterns becomingtemplates of understanding or schemas.

Now we see the images were Grenanderproduces the representations based on theconfigurations of generators. The imagespace is an exemplification of a Peirce-Fullerthird, because it is based on continuity.Notice that in the image the discontinuitiesbetween the generators vanishes and we get


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continuous representations of patterns all beit perhaps deformed. It is the images that areobserved by the one who understands via thepattern template or schema and also the onewho based on their pattern recognitionprojects significance on the seen image of apattern.

Now we see where Grenander introduces theidea of the pattern. Pattern means a repetitionbased on similarity, which is a play ofidentity and difference. We note that identityand difference is an aspect of Being. We seepresence in the concept of images which aredifferent from the configuration space whichis hidden from the observer so that presenceand absence also plays a profound role in thedefinition of the pattern schema. In terms ofTruth and Falsehood we saw that appear inthe bonding arrangements. Truth andFalsehood are used as markers for the abilityof bonds to produce connection types.

Reality and Illusion appear in the relation ofthe pattern generator complex to the actuallyobserved patterns. There is pattern synthesisand analysis that are meant to be the twoways in which we connect pattern simulatorsto the world and derive the pattern generatorsfrom the world. Thus reality comes from atesting of the pattern simulators against theworld of actual patterns. This is very similarto Klir’s idea of producing generators thatcan create patterns of data exactly like thosethat appear in the real world. Completeunderstanding of a pattern is based onsuccess at being able to simulate that pattercompletely.

Grenander says that what we are mostinterested in are minimal patterns whichcontain no sub-patterns and that we need todistinguish the templates that produce theseminimal patterns in each case. Of course, inactuality this may be very difficult and mayneed to be done in different ways in eachcase. But what is good about Grenander’sdefinition is that it shows most of the featuresthat we have been discussing. For instance,


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his definition steps through the Peirce-Fullercategories. It displays the four kinds ofpatterning. We can see how it relates tometa-levels of movement and learning. Hismathematical definition aligns well with whatwe have been saying about the aspects ofBeing and the kinds of Being. Themathematical definition of the pattern schemais driven by the sorts of metaphysicalconsiderations that we have been elaborating.Pattern’s become the basic schema uponwhich all other schemas are built as we moveup through there emergent levels ofunfolding.

advanced pattern theory for pattern engineers

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