Returning Home to Wholeness by Starting Afresh at the Very Beginning The view of a systems architect The overall purpose of this book is to establish the truth that Consciousness rather than the physical universe is the primary reality. In other words, this book seeks to complete the revolution in science that has been taking place during the past few decades, just as Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy completed the Copernican revolution some three hundred years ago. Consequently, this is a rather technical book. This is necessary at this time because if we are to remove the constraints that the materialistic and quantitative sciences, the economic ideologies, and the organized religions impose on our learning, and hence on the awakening of consciousness, we need to use the language of our times, the language of information technology. There will be time enough in the coming years to express the essence of what this book contains in less technical language. At present, I do not see this as my task. I shall leave that for others who come after me in a natural evolutionary manner. This is a seminal book. Its purpose is to plant a seed in as nourishing a soil as possible and to provide some shoots showing how this seed might grow in the coming years. It is not the purpose of the book to describe the great tree that will emerge in the fullness of time. Its principal intention is to lay down the gnostic, epistemological, ontological, and scientific foundations for the serving economy, in particular, and the transcultural Paragonian epoch, in general. In writing this book, I see myself rather like a systems architect designing information systems in business. As the etymology of architect indicates, systems architects are the chief or master builders of business systems. They are the people who have the big picture; they can see how all the parts fit together as a coherent whole. In order to design information systems, systems architects need tools and technologies to do so. Surprisingly, the theoretical foundation for these modelling methods hasn't come out of the universities. This groundwork has been done, for the most part, in business research laboratories and by innovative designers abstracting the theory from the tools and technologies themselves. This work has evolved in the natural way of differentiation and integration over the past thirty years. Today, it has converged into a single modelling method called the Unified Modeling Language (UML). In parallel with these developments in the business world, relational logic has been evolving within my own consciousness. I can best describe this nonaxiomatic, nonlinear way of reasoning as a universal modelling method, which enables me to see how the Universe as a whole is designed. Before we can use this universal modelling method to design the serving economy that will emerge following the collapse of capitalism, I need to describe the theoretical foundations of the method. That is what this book will provide. On this solid transcultural and transdisciplinary foundation, I then see that Life is guiding me to act as the systems architect of the serving economy, which is one reason why I am planning to set up the Paragonian Institute. Now, when systems architects design information systems in business, they cannot possibly have knowledge of every detail of the system. So they work in teams alongside people who have the detailed knowledge of the workings of specific departments and processes. In a similar fashion, in developing a synthesis of everything, I cannot possibly have a detailed understanding of all the world's knowledge. To fill in the details, I need the help and support of specialists in many different disciplines and cultures. So I would welcome any comments on my writing that will enable me to present this work in as simple, clear, and honest way as possible. If you have any comments, do please contact me at paulh@algonet.se or post a comment in my guest book. The view of the reader So who is this book for? Well, this is a question that has been troubling me for twenty years, ever since I began my researches into what is causing the pace of change in society to accelerate exponentially. This is a book about everything, which cannot be classified in any existing category of knowledge, and which requires its readers to start afresh at the very beginning if it is to be fully understood. What I can say about such a challenging book from an individual point of view is that it is the product of a lifelong search for Wholeness and the Truth. Or rather, the being that I am is the product of this great longing; the book is merely an expression, a very limited expression, of this long process of awakening. And this great longing is, in turn, the product of some twelve to fifteen billion years of evolution. In a sense, therefore, this all-inclusive book about everything is for everyone; nobody is excluded. For it is a fundamental law of Life that all roads lead to the pathless land; everyone has a deep yearning for Wholeness and the Truth within them, albeit unfulfilled in many instances. So in the fragmented, deluded world we live in we make do with substitutes, with partial truths, with partial wholes. This book, therefore, is really for those who feel ready to go the full Monty in their own unique way. But even if it is not time for you to go all the way, I trust that you will find something helpful in your own search for Wholeness and the Truth. For myself, my own developmental process is far from being complete. One of the signs of this is that this book at the present time (September 2000) is not yet a coherent whole. It consists today of some 300 pages, which have been written at various times during the past twenty years, and so reflect widely differing states of consciousness. So, in a way, I am writing this book, first and foremost, for myself. To do this, I need to start afresh at the very beginning and write it anew. I don't know how long this will take me. We must just wait and see where Life leads me. Synopsis This book is divided into four parts, with a preface and introduction. These preliminary sections will most probably be based on the Welcome and Introduction pages in this web site. The purpose of the first part, 'A Brief History of Me', is to provide the empirical evidence for the framework for the Theory of Everything that is presented in the following parts. As my life experience provides me with this evidence, I therefore need to describe my own inner journey as frankly and openly as possible. The title of this part is modelled on the books of two leading writers who are attempting to create the Theory of Everything, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. This opening part is divided into three chapters, one each for the three major phases that my life has been through so far, which I call 'Autumn', 'Winter', and 'Spring', as I describe briefly in my About me page and more extensively in a longer synopsis that I have written. The next part, 'Our Changing World', is to orient the reader towards a view of the Universe that is consonant with our times, with the Information Society that we now live in. So rather than viewing the Universe in terms of space, time, mass, and energy, if we are to understand what is causing the pace of change to accelerate exponentially, we need to look at the Universe in terms of the meaningful relationships that arise between forms as they evolve into ever more complex structures. Part II is in four chapters. The first, 'The World of Form', seeks to show that all forms and structures, whether they be material or nonmaterial, can be looked at in essentially the same way. The second chapter, 'The Life and Death Cycle', looks at the way that structures grow and decay, most especially at the S-shape of the growth or learning curve and the bell shape of the life and death curve. It will also show, using the findings of complexity theory, why we human beings are poised on the threshold of the most fundamental change in the twelve to fifteen years of evolutionary history. The next two chapters look specifically at the growth of the information technology industry, and at the tools it is using. These chapters focus attention on the passive and active aspects of data. They are called 'Organizing our Records', which looks at the way we human beings have been recording our activities from the first uses of language to the present day, and 'Automating the Workplace', which looks at our attempts to develop systems that automate as many jobs as possible in the workplace. The third part, 'Starting Afresh at the Very Beginning', describes the process of thinking and reasoning that is relational logic, the system of co-ordinates for the discipline of omniology. The key point about this experiment in learning is that it is not based on any previous system of thought, whether this be scientific, philosophical, or religious in either the East or the West. In my case, this break with the past was an explosive event; it marked a major discontinuity in my life, which I describe in part I. Whether others can perform this experiment in learning in a more gradual manner, I really don't know. We must wait and see. Learning relational logic is similar to biological growth processes. A seed is formed, which is planted in fertile ground, and which then grows into full maturity. I therefore begin this part with a chapter called 'Clearing the Ground'. For if we have not made a clearing in the jungle, the seed that we shall plant will have no chance of taking root and germinating. Having cleared a space in the forest, the next step is to prepare the ground, the subject of the next chapter, chapter 9 in the book. We are then in the position to plant the seed, to describe the core of relational logic itself. This is a little tricky because I use relational logic to define relational logic. So it is a little like picking yourself up by your own bootstraps. Once the seed has been planted, the first thing it does is to divide into two. This is the subject of chapter 11. Then, having spent many years preparing the ground, planting the seed, and nourishing it, we need to give the whole thing up. For no method or technique can lead all the way to the realization of the Truth. Thus 'Dying to the Categories' is the title of the last chapter in this part. The fourth part, 'Returning Home to Wholeness', could be any length whatever, there is so much to say. This is because omniology changes the overall context for our learning in all disciplines and cultures. The Discipline of Omniology is thus the most revolutionary book of all time. Every teaching from the founders of the major religions, through the Greek founders of Western philosophy, logic, and mathematics, through the founders of modern science, medicine, psychology, and economics, to the postmodernism of today looks quite different when viewed from the perspective of omniology. It is certainly not my intention in this book to cover all these issues. That is quite beyond my capability. So, at the moment, I plan only three chapters in this part: on consciousness studies, which have become fashionable in recent years, on human development, modifying Ken Wiber's developmental models so they fit harmoniously in with omniology, and on the Sharing Economy. I am writing three appendices. The first, 'Modelling the Programmer's Job' shows why the efforts of the computer scientists to create artificial intelligence, artificial consciousness, and artificial life can never be realized. The second appendix, 'Modelling the Syllogism', shows how relational logic can be used to model Aristotle's reasoning. The point here is that Aristotle did not use deductive reasoning in laying down the foundations of Western logic, he implicitly used relational logic. The third appendix addresses the tricky subject of information and entropy, which is just about the most confusing subject in science today. Downloads You will be able to download draft chapters of my book in Adobe Acrobat PDF format when they are complete, most probably during the period 2001-2004. Home | Introduction | Vision | Foundations | Economy | Institute Related sites | Bibliography | Guest book | About me