ABSTRACT: This research generated a formal method for global ‘situation modelling’ of near-critical and critical phenomena. The new paradigms and the construction of mental reality or social spaces do not explain the damaged world we leave to our children and the degeneration of health. The ‘physical’ was explored experimentally through the reputed imperfection of the body in daily living and the ecology of its health. An ‘integral’ methodology allowed combining this with a study of general perspectives in many fields. This theoretical and empirical study was framed according to a third-order logic: (1) The variety and inconsistency of perspectives on the unclear notion of ‘health’ required a generalist (meta-)classification or organising principle applicable in particular to health. The method of ‘perspectival analysis’ is based on the field- and domain-specific vocabularies, number of categories, and image types used in formulating explanation/ experience in each framework, in both scientific and human domains. This theoretical study was (2) grounded in a ‘radical empirical’ study of the effects of nutrition and healing techniques on a low-grade chronic syndrome (not life threatening but connected to stress, inflammation, swelling, tissues wasting). A ‘local-case’ experimental research design (representative of an aspect of health), and new topographic ‘gauging’ techniques were devised to observe small spatial changes (positioning, distortion, distribution). The results and concrete/ practice models led to the same conclusion as the abstract study: all our perspectives on health, body and space, have some underlying systemic form, and have in common two unifying frames – duality and polarisation –, characteristic also of point-set theory derived frameworks. Using them allows ‘circumnavigating’ the essential of all possible perspectives, without becoming lost in their details. However, they leave non-local effects, anomalies (or ’bad behaviour’) and periodical instability unexplained. (3) These were investigated by studying behaviour (irrespective of whether internal or external), and ‘not well understood’ induced health manifestations, and by mapping their topologic properties of small deformation through (a) a ‘local’ cognitive consideration of experience construction, the research process itself, and the intellectual skill of model-making, (b) etymologic studies to track forward semantic developments and perspectival shifts and inversions, (c) a graphic study of the universal symbolic forms in models, traditions, and dreams, tracing them back to ‘world-origin’ models (appearance/occurrence), and shape-icons (mental, cultural), such as tree, ladder, mountain or vortex-vertex spiral. This thesis examines health disturbance, physical distortions and cultural deformations, their usual descriptions as timed changes, and shows how two fundamental parameters of direction and motion (or movement, energy, 'Wind') define geometries of binding, or directional activation (or active projection). These culturo-mental geometries produce generic images of locally induced phenomena, and represent boundary phenomena globally as 'natural' in the spatial-physical world, and as 'hidden' or latent in the human world. Their downside is to introduce systematic instability in our expressions, models of culture/civilisation, as well as in health manifestations. All these are found to be rooted in modelling styles derived from the 'local' geometry of observing – framing – a field in 'perspective', mostly based on vision, audition, and skin surface (touch). These geo-Metries are used to explain and justify in particular the instability and recurrent crises of health in chronic syndromes and ageing, and the ‘badly behaved’ health of childhood and adult females (eg consequences of pregnancy). The conclusion imposed itself that the ‘physical world of humans’ is shaped through critical response and boundaries, and it appears that physical integrity, including sound health, sanity and even safety, cannot be preserved but by conscious alert attention or voluntary practice or effort (eg ‘workout’). Some experiences recounted in this work (some from the literature) led to an opposite presupposition. Three possible logics rule deployments of perspective into flat, spherical, and hyperbolic geometries (a known basis of mathematics). Which is used depends on the ‘local’ state of criticality (sense of urgency, emergency, pressure) of the observing body-brain-‘system’. It correlates with this universally assumed vertical axis, with the exclusive use [instruments too] of the senses of the head and of ‘skin-encapsulated’ derived systemic definitions of ‘the world’ and ‘the observer’ (self or body). These allow localising and attributing properties to one or the other or their combination. However, they can also be considered as undifferentiated properties, ‘non-local’ but governing, of the ‘physical world of humans’ as it is apprehended in daily living, manifesting in a surface-related sense of swelling and gravity. A simple form of geometric topology ‘without hole’ (without discontinuity), here introduced through two cognitive experiments, animations, and images, can describe this. The method of ‘nexial-topology’ produces an ‘animated imaging’ that can be used to model (but not ‘represent’ in word, number, or realistic/ naturalistic images) the situation reaching ‘critical boundary’. It then shows auto-reinforcing self-organisation and auto-destruction in ‘passing’ it. Yet, it can also be used as a ‘native gauging’ expressed in gesture or body posture, related to intuition, instinct, and the rare ‘thinking in image’. As such, it describes approaching ‘critical boundary’ (versus ‘reaching’) as auto-limiting. A crucial finding is that ‘spontaneous’ behaviours (non-induced, non-intended) can ensure the integrity of health under operation in most conditions, and stop extremes. Yet, they are usually deemed meaningless, random or useless, and are systematically suppressed by enculturation and prevented by civilised lifestyles. ‘Nexial-topology’ gives a clear meaning to them, and can model the ‘ease’ of health and of daily living. It gives access to more basic options, with wider effects, more immediate than all our solutions, often ignored because too obvious. For example, ‘global warming’ could be addressed as a non-local property and a deployment into crises to ‘stop’, rather than separate problems of water, resources, heated behaviour, inflammatory and ‘water diseases’. KEYWORDS: Interdisciplinary research, cross-disciplinary methodologies, modal logic, fundamental problem, general relativity, localisation, physicalism, geometric quantization, occurrence, appearance, extension, projection, attribution, distributed, anthropic principle, anthropomorphism, unified, unbounded, left, right, spiral, viral, genetic drift, natural, life, human nature, human pressure, limit, extreme, threshold, validity, value, critical decision making, apperception, child cognition, sense, semantic drift, Four Elements, symbolic inversion. THIS IS A MULTI-MEDIA THESIS. FOR A SITE MAP OF THE NAMES AND DISPLAY ONLINE OF THE 52 FILES OF THIS THESIS, PLEASE CONSULT THE SECTION: ORGANISATION OF THE MULTI-MEDIA MATERIALS IN THIS THESIS, IN THE FRONT PAGES FILE (SOURCE 2), BEFORE THE TABLE OF CONTENTS. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216336 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Bouchon, Marika, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, Centre for Social Ecology Research |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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