POLARITY AND ANALYTICS - THE TWO LEVELS OF COGNITION HYPOTHESIS (s. Illustration)

[Nold Egenter]

Working with this hypothesis of basically two levels of cognition, namely "categorical polarity" and "analytics" could explain difficulties in anthropology to understand traditional cultures.

'Polarity' creates a world in which all is perceived in a general framework of harmonious or disharmonious (balanced/ disbalanced) objects or environments irrespective of their functional meanings, a world in which all things have the tendency to be harmonious and thus in a basically aesthetical framework are the same (gr. 'hen kai pan'). In many ancient cultures we find indicators of this type of world view: Egypt (Ma'at), India (OM), China and Asia in general (YinYang, Daoism).

In the West this concept seems to have existed too, e.g. in pre- and early dynastic Ancient Egypt, but later it was dissolved, beginning with Akhenaton's extension of the Aton-cult into macro-cosmic dimensions, similarly with Moses' Pentateuch and later with presocratic thought, in particular between Heraclitus, Parmenides and the Atomists and finally with the Attic schism of Platon's idealism and Aristotle's empiristic rationalism.

If this concept is applied, it could explain why scientific anthropology has difficulties to understand cultures of the primary type of cognition.

[Huon Wardle]

Could you give an example of the kind of difficulty you have in mind? I am thinking here that in many 'traditional' cosmologies there exist disharmonies between divinities and humans which go beyond their occupying polar positions; or between how things were to begin with and the problems people must now resolve; or between dreaming states and waking interactions.

[Huon Wardle]

Ah Nikos, I am glad you have joined this discussion. Could you clarify for me the relationship between Mesotis and formal harmony in Greek art, for example how the temple column is tapered so that the entire building appears to conform to perfect geometry when viewed from a certain distance?

[Nold Egenter]

One of the main problems of cultural anthropology is: it projects our 'civilised' European history and its fragmented disciplines on pre-/non-historic traditions.

I try to give an example with my own studies into 'anthropology of habitat and architecture'. One of my most important topics is "semantic architecture". It implies basically that, beyond what is considered primary in architectural theory, the hut, the protection of early humans against climatic impacts, rain, snow, heat, etc. there is something much earlier, a fibrous construction which is used as a sign for food control (collecting, hunting, fishing etc.) or as traffic sign (which has been observed already among Bonobos). We have a lot of indicators, drawing on durable sources, paleolithic signs, later, neolithic 'lifetrees' and the like and - as a Neolithic survival - present day traditions in Japan where Christian influence was minimal.

Conventionally such signs, which are considered sacred, or even as deities, are classified under primtive religion. Missionaries were shocked when they found primitvely made fibrous constructs as divine centres of sacred rites among traditional societies. Anthropology even today has taken over this classification and the corresponding methods to deal - or not to deal - with such phenomena. They are dealt with only superficially in the context of primitive belief.

As someone with a basic formation as an architect, I studied these "fetishes" in Japan empirically as "semantic architecture". The results are entirely different. Evidently the fibrous constructions are primitive, but in the positive sense. We obtain informations about very ancient ways of architectural construction with plant materials which can even be rooted. The hands are the first tools. A tremendous new insight. And for the locals they have a value like gold, because the construction indicates that these demarcations are a very ancient tradition.

Second, their primary function is not religion, belief, but territory. They are initially made by somebody who went off from the place where he was born and goes out to found a new settlement for his own. If we assume that early agriculture was related to river valleys we can generalise: the village founder moves through reed fields and - usually close to the mountain-woods (in Japan), using rooted materials and some simple bindings makes a reed sign with one grip of the hand. This form must have been of a tremendous importance because with no effort and no preconceived intention it produces an aesthetic artefact which shows two antithetic categories in the same form: static triangles below and dynamic stalks protruding in the upper part. They are moving mysteriously with the slightest wind.

Of course this object did not last long. After one year it looked quite rotten and miserable. The new reed grew around. Important answer: it was remade each year, and thus was always new again. And this became a fixed tradition, a ritual practice to renew the ephemeral form annually. Cyclic time was born.

In the meantime the village founder had built his hut or house, had founded a family, had children. Others came to dwell, huts or houses were built, soon there was a whole village with fields to grow food at the foot of the mountain covered with woods considered holy.

The annual renewal of the founder's demarcation had become a great local festival. The whole village gathered at the sacred place where the reed sign stood below the holy woods. After hundreds of successful years the sign had become holy. It had created the local world, had created sedentary life, agriculture, local nutrition, stable conditions for all. The sign became "highly" valued, in Japanese 'above' verbally also means 'divine'.

The old one was set afire. The whole village was excited: the symbol of the order of the village dissolved. Chaos breaks out, for one night! The most precious symbol, the sign of the founderhouses local hegemony was about to disappear. Young men get naked, excited, drunk, the social order disappeared. Women had brought food, the whole night was a wild ek-stasis.

Then the next morning. All the men of the old houses came to the place, and remade the sign at the same place where it had always been. The representant of the founders-house, at the same time locally the priest, the "owner of the deity", the local hegemon, was the most important person. When the new sign is finished he visits each house, where he is received with great honour. Evidently a primary type of social hierarchy, the origins of which is still functionally clear and reasonable.

Finally, seen in this framework we can conclude: the western interpretation was completely wrong. The whole system is of absolutely local origins. What western concpets considered as religion is in fact an immanent value system of secondary importance based on values which can be well understood. The imperial myths found in Japan were diffused from central institutions. And early texts in Japan show clearly, particularly with some deities' names related to reed or 'standing in place' (ashi kabi no hikoji, kuni no tokotachi no kami), that what we find today in present farming villages existed already in the 8th century, the period of the imperial state formation of Japan.

Describing the whole phenomenon as a Neolithic evolution of sedentary life and agriculture we can understand the cultic event around the local village protector deity quite differently as a local evolution instead of projecting western historistic concepts of religion and at the same time devalueing it as primitive belief. If we explain it from the local conditions, it gains a rather important, highly complex context which can be understood as the basic roots of civilisation

The divine sign gains a great importance from its functional implications.
1) It is a nuclear border. Territory is not defined by peripheral 'stones' and the like, but is put up in the centre of the village. The outer borders are projected from inside out through the polar aesthetics of the demarcation: the upper dynamic part is projected on the woods, on the mountainous area. The lower static and technologically characterised part defines the village, its housing area and the agricultural fields.
2) The aesthetic structure of the sign is some sort of age old teacher within the village. Categorical polarity is used to define the environment. Similar demarcations are used in the house, the hearth in the kitchen, the open hearth in the elevated dwelling part of the house, the 'place of the gods (kamidana) at the corner diabonally located opposite the entrance door of the house, the central pillar in the centre, the entrance door with its two posts. All these sacred points have similar festivals through the year, the corresponding demarcations being renewed, the house being a territorial cluster of the same type of demarcations like the village. But the aesthetic structure of these signs appears also in clothing (kimono), in hairstyle, and other types of behaviour. Also on the roof ('chigi'). Further, many tools used show that they are derived from this aesthetic principle.
3) What the Western interpretation thus devalues as primitive fetishes and primtive belifs, is in fact objectively of highest importance and helps us to understand the evolution of Neolithic processes and also of follwing developments of civilisation, history, monumentality, state formation and urbanisation
4) Note that we find exactly the same phenomenon in earliest cities of Mesopotamia. One of the most ancient cities, Uruk, had a representative city deity, Ishtar with name, which was depicted physically as a reed bundle! Which means that we can assume similar processes in Euro-Mediterranean cultures. Babylonian 'creation myths' tell us clearly that in those times what was considered as 'creation' was in fact not on a macrocosmic level, it happened as settlement foundation in the reed field domains of the Euphrat and Tigris rivers as the foundation of a habitat unit (Winckler 1906)
5) If we assume that Neolithic conditions were very similar in many places of the world, because there were relatively limited conditions in neolithic cultures, then we can generalise what we have found in Japan.
6) We have found a culturally elementary object which has important functions in regard to the territorial security of local village clusters. At the same time we are aware that the structural conditions of the objects have some influence on the human mind in many respects (spatial structure of environment, temporal structure, local craft and architecture, social relations, art, music etc.). Consequently we can generalise that there is a connex with the formal polarity of the territorial demarcation and the primary cognitive system, which could be considered as an important theoretical approach to anthropology.
7) However, Western cognition with its Attic analytic schism (from Heraclitus to Platon and Aristotle) has difficulties to understand this approach because in their own system categorical polarity - whether mental or objective - is fundamentally irrational: it is in fact aesthetic! Evidently science has problems in this domain. See
In the "science of the arts" aesthetics has remained irrationally left to everchanging personal taste or theoretically reduced to style! Our cities speak of this vacuum of know-how.

For the structure of 'anthropology of habitat and architecture' see URL:
http://habitat-anthro.ning.com/forum/topics/theory-in-anthropology

Huon Wardle said:

Could you give an example of the kind of difficulty you have in mind? I am thinking here that in many 'traditional' cosmologies there exist disharmonies between divinities and humans which go beyond their occupying polar positions; or between how things were to begin with and the problems people must now resolve; or between dreaming states and waking interactions.

[Huon Wardle]

Nold, I wonder whether you have come across and or would like to comment on PJ Wilson's work on building in social evolution, The Domestication of the Human Species. He argues that our thought processes and practices are littered with building metaphors, such as the notion of an 'architectonics' of thought etc. and that the discovery of structural possibilities such as the beam/lintel initiated step changes in human cognition.

[Nold Egenter]

Huon, thank you for your kind comment. It is fine that you mention Wilson's book. I know it since quite some time and thought it quite important, so important that I wrote a review, which was not published officially however. I made it for the website of our Zurich office (DOFSBT, Documentation Office for Fundamental Studies in Building Theory) and also sent it to friends.
The Domestication of the Human Species! An interesting title and anthropologically a clearly defined topic. As far as I know, it became some sort of a bestseller in the anthropological field. On the other hand - seen from my side - the focus was on the house, thus limited to some extent on the conventional "fauna" of knowledge. This is what I tried to communicate in my review. Namely that the house is part of the wider circle of architecture and that this wider circle of an 'anthropology of habitat and architecture' may shift some arguments regarding the house. Important also: the wider circle of architecture and organization of environment can anthropologically be understood as a wider evolutionary process which might give new hints regarding the evolution of the house, and consequently also for human domestication.
I also used Wilsons book in the framework of a paper I wrote in those times for the 14th International Congress of the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA, for a forum on "Architectural Anthropology" organized by Mari-Jose Amerlinck, an anthropologist from Guadalajara University, Mexico. This article later was published in her book with the title "Architectural Anthropology" Bergin & Garvey, Westport/London 2001. My paper has the title: The Deep Structure of Architecture: Constructivity and Human Evolution (pdf-format, 39 p.). You can find the paper in a new network I have started with some papers of mine --> http://habitat-anthro.ning.com/

The Book-Review on Wilson is added here as attachment below. It can also be found in the internet in our website under AdobeAcrobat Archives/ Leaflets and 'Reviews'. Title: Homo Domesticatus? P. J: Wilsons 'The Domestication of the Human Species'
--> http://home.worldcom.ch/negenter/015hReviews.html

Huon Wardle said:

Nold, I wonder whether you have come across and or would like to comment on PJ Wilson's work on building in social evolution, The Domestication of the Human Species. He argues that our thought processes and practices are littered with building metaphors, such as the notion of an 'architectonics' of thought etc. and that the discovery of structural possibilities such as the beam/lintel initiated step changes in human cognition.

[Huon Wardle]

Thanks Nolde, I read this with interest. I was especially interested in your criticisms regarding Wilson's difficulty in treating space and the result that various metaphors appear in the text which are not grounded in any prior reasoning. Could you elaborate how you view the concept/factuality of space? One obvious route is to say that spatial reasoning is somehow a priori in the way individuals think, another is the circular proposition a la Durkheim that spatial thinking is an imprint of empirical social relations which are then refashioned by how people think. In certain respects your argument above has a Durkheimian or perhaps Comtean feel to it in its emphasis on religious objects as focii for human building and dwelling; is that a correct interpretation?

[Nold Egenter]

Huon, thank you for your reply. Wilson's book is doubtless important because it emphasizes - I think for the first time - the house in the frame of domestication as a complex anthropological topic (Most books on "domestication" are focused on animals 'domesticated' by humans!). One can not reproach him for not being aware that the interpretation of space is a problem. That space is a micro-/macro-cosmological continuity is a fairly established concept in our modern society. Think of Eliade who worked with the assumption that spatial environments in religion were micro-cosmological realizations based on macro-cosmological models. It is without doubt the merit of O. F. Bollnow to have fundamentally questioned this modern self-evidence based on physics and astronomy by confronting it systematically with an anthropology of space, in fact an evolution theory of human space perception. Bollnow's book 'Man and Space' (1963) was not translated into English until now (it should be out now), therefore I have written a review in English quite some time ago (In Japan it was translated very early!). You can find this review below as an attachment.

Regarding your questions: I don't think we can ask for a general concept or factuality of space. Homogeneity is lost insofar as the human condition is involved. On its largest dimension it can be considered as a homogeneous condition, but this is not real for humans. The terminology changes into 'half-spaces', 'center-markers', 'fixed-points', 'river systems' (Ganges in India!), etc.. On the other hand, the transition to the modern condition: 'loss of center' (Sedlmayr)!

I think the most important point is: Bollnow outlines an evolutionary system based on human space-perception. And the most efficient field to show this is the field we call religion: did it evolve from neolithic territorial demarcation systems? I have been working on this primary field of "village monotheism" in Japan, an will write on this later.

Huon Wardle said:

Thanks Nolde, I read this with interest. I was especially interested in your criticisms regarding Wilson's difficulty in treating space and the result that various metaphors appear in the text which are not grounded in any prior reasoning. Could you elaborate how you view the concept/factuality of space? One obvious route is to say that spatial reasoning is somehow a priori in the way individuals think, another is the circular proposition a la Durkheim that spatial thinking is an imprint of empirical social relations which are then refashioned by how people think. In certain respects your argument above has a Durkheimian or perhaps Comtean feel to it in its emphasis on religious objects as focii for human building and dwelling; is that a correct interpretation?

[Nold Egenter]

Sorry, I put an rtf copy of my review on Bollnow. Here is one in pdf format.

[Huon Wardle]

Dear Nold thanks very much for your thoughtful reply,

I don't think we can ask for a general concept or factuality of space. Homogeneity is lost insofar as the human condition is involved. On its largest dimension it can be considered as a homogeneous condition, but this is not real for humans. The terminology changes into 'half-spaces', 'center-markers', 'fixed-points', 'river systems' (Ganges in India!), etc.. On the other hand, the transition to the modern condition: 'loss of center' (Sedlmayr)!

It seems intuitively true to say that 'space' itself is not 'real for humans'. But while there might not be a concreteness to 'space' that we can point to and say 'look this is the real space 'within' which the other concretenesses find their commonality', do not all these myriad, non-homogeneous conditions group themselves when we think about them? Your reply suggests that they do, which then may 'lead' us to an 'underlying' or 'overarching' something (space) that groups them. Supposing we said that our ability to group and organise in this way is only post-hoc and a result of evolution, would this not nonetheless imply that the further we 'go' in time, the more capacity we have to talk of 'space' as the 'big' concept vis-a-vis the 'small' concepts such as 'river-system', 'center-marker' and so on? This might then mean that, as we reach further and further back in time, the thinking of the people concerned becomes more and more concrete until it disappears into its own concreteness, ceasing to be 'thought' - a kind of regress which is itself difficult to comprehend.

I will try to read your rtf ASAP because I am very interested in how you deal with this concern.

[Nold Egenter]

Huon, on one hand I admire your seriousness to clarify the situation, on the other I have the feeling that you - maybe subconsciously - want to protect your conventional thought-pattern system.

Regarding "space". In dictionaries a great number of definitions are listed (mathematics, physics, philosophy, architecture, geography, phenomenology, sociology, law, military etc.!). Evidently space has a wide significance, is important in many cultural domains. I will try to outline two concepts in the following.

1) On closer sight three basic groups can be assumed:
--a cosmological dimension which in Europe, 16th century, created a relatively dramatic history with emphasis on astronomy and physics, with its great names and their relations to the historical concepts of religion/ creation/ and the breaking up of the geocentric astronomical system by Copernic's helio-centric system.
--a philosophico-historical line, emphasis on cognition but basically influenced by the cosmological discussions. Reference to "intelligibility" reflecting the world of the human mind.
--a rather practical or technical condition close to the human and cultural dimension, evidently the most important concept of space for human life, most explicitly expressed by architecture and urbanism. These are fields for which space is fundamental in regard to its very practical definition (walls, roof) and characteristics (space for humans, space for animals etc.).

Surprisingly this third type is simply not discussed because, compared to the other two it is too common, does not offer anything sensational. Even in the professional field of architecture itself 'space' is not a term to be discussed. The treatment of the walls, the furniture etc. are much more important for defining "space", because they are physical, sensual (colours, materials), where as the term 'space' is abstract, sensually empty, merely a matter of the intellect. It plays an important role in the plans drawn for the constructor, though!

Thus on one hand we have this 'phenomenology' of space its importance being based on some sort of popular dramatization, the result being that those aspects which are of least importance for the human condition are those who enter into the human consciousness, whereas those which are of fundamental importance for the human condition have become of secondary importance.

Bollnow emphasizes the priority of the latter, shows its importance for the human condition.

2) However, there is another potential for the interpretation of the two components which are indicated with the term 'half-spaces', namely that the two elements, the space concept of emptiness and its contrast, the space manifested with any kind of compact materia represent an earlier type of perception in terms of categorical polarity or elementary aesthetics, or what was the initial topic of the present discussion: that our modern cognition had a precursor which tended to harmonize phenomena by organizing two contrasting fields into any perceived form or domain. A way of perception we have difficulties to understand because our perception has been analytically split apart with the 'Attic schism" (Plato's idealism and Aristotle's rational empirism).

I wonder what you think. For me this makes sense. I think we have to be aware of the fact that cultural history plays an important role.

Huon Wardle said:

Dear Nold thanks very much for your thoughtful reply,

I don't think we can ask for a general concept or factuality of space. Homogeneity is lost insofar as the human condition is involved. On its largest dimension it can be considered as a homogeneous condition, but this is not real for humans. The terminology changes into 'half-spaces', 'center-markers', 'fixed-points', 'river systems' (Ganges in India!), etc.. On the other hand, the transition to the modern condition: 'loss of center' (Sedlmayr)!

It seems intuitively true to say that 'space' itself is not 'real for humans'. But while there might not be a concreteness to 'space' that we can point to and say 'look this is the real space 'within' which the other concretenesses find their commonality', do not all these myriad, non-homogeneous conditions group themselves when we think about them? Your reply suggests that they do, which then may 'lead' us to an 'underlying' or 'overarching' something (space) that groups them. Supposing we said that our ability to group and organise in this way is only post-hoc and a result of evolution, would this not nonetheless imply that the further we 'go' in time, the more capacity we have to talk of 'space' as the 'big' concept vis-a-vis the 'small' concepts such as 'river-system', 'center-marker' and so on? This might then mean that, as we reach further and further back in time, the thinking of the people concerned becomes more and more concrete until it disappears into its own concreteness, ceasing to be 'thought' - a kind of regress which is itself difficult to comprehend.

I will try to read your rtf ASAP because I am very interested in how you deal with this concern.

[Huon Wardle]

space essentially becomes pluralistic and qualitatively bound to human environments.

Dear Nold,

I am sure you are right and that I am trying to protect my conventional thought-pattern! but I am also very interested in what you have to argue because, if what you say is true, it would presumably make thought-pattern versus environmental field an irrelevant distinction. I quote a sentence above from your discussion of Bollnow which is very thought-provoking for me. Now we could see this as a 'pre-modern' view of space or we could see it as a very 'modern' view that is available in many approaches that take an evolutionary standpoint whether we mean Darwin or Daniel Dennett. The analytic view would have us claim that there is a pure space vis-a-vis empirical spaces or perhaps better, places: these places cannot evidence themselves except according to the pure space which constitutes their possibility. Spengler pointed out that this kind of thinking can have a 'Faustian' effect at a certain point of elaboration - space being infinite means that the individual mind is set the challenge of filling infinite space with its own activities.

I am a little guilty of hankering after Faustian analytic space (an infinite sin?). But, joking apart, two things come to mind: are we overly dichotomising the traditional and the modern: for instance Nikos made the point that in pre-classical myth there seem to exist conflicts that go beyond the management of polarity. Also, the second question: there is the question of transformation of information/category. For instance, for most of human history human beings moved more or less slowly across landscapes: can we assume that this always resulted in a smooth enfolding of concept and materia into polarity (such that the category/information distinction is in fact an irrelevant anachronism? What if what has been learnt up to now is struck down by its irrelevance in the new setting? (Polarity is fine if environment stably equilibrates). Other animals seem to be capable of what is usually described as analysis (e.g. chimps who invent a technique for spatial manipulation for example). How would you redescribe this capacity? Thanks again for the chance to discuss these ideas.

[Huon Wardle]

As an afterthought, it makes good sociological sense to me that large overreaching civilizations should develop a grandiose 'cosmic' philosophy of space with regard to which the individual life becomes an insignificant instantiation; it is interesting that the Enlightenment reverses this - the individual mind takes on potentially cosmic spatial proportions; Newton's sensorium and so on.

this concept... later... dissolved, beginning with Akhenaton's extension of the Aton-cult into macro-cosmic dimensions, similarly with Moses' Pentateuch and later with presocratic thought, in particular between Heraclitus, Parmenides and the Atomists and finally with the Attic schism of Platon's idealism and Aristotle's empiristic rationalism.