Cointegrative Science

Note: this blog, which has been moved to Blogger from a previous site "Splinder", used to be called "Integrative Science". Since I don't seem to be able to incorporate the copyright info in the normal way I do so here:
Healthy Culture: Cointegrative Science is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The following post explains the name change and, to some extent, the meaning of the new name.

About the Cointegrative:

The word "integrative", although it somewhat avoids the static association for me of the word "integral", has never been totally satisfying as a description of the theoritical/cosmological aspect of healthy culture because there is still a sort of unilateral association involved in the word. Corporate concepts such as "vertical integration" and even things like "integrative medicine" still preserve a kind of one-sided accumulative model of "A" integrates "B", "C", "D" etc, and this is not very related to what I have been meaning to convey all this time by the word "Integrative". What I have meant all along, as I described in the blog post introducing the term, is a bilateral/multilateral dynamic of Inner and Outer healing, with the root "integre" being understood in the same sense as the root "holos", which is the root of "Whole", "Holy", and (through "heal") of "Health". Thus I chose the word "Integrative" to describe the inclusive process of inner/outer healing as well as the assumption of the intrinsic primary togetherness of the inner and the outer generally.

I have recently decided that this is still too misleading, and that a better way to convey my meaning is by introducing the word "Co-integrative" (hyphen optional). I think the added prefix "co" successfully signals the primarily paradoxical, non-linear, and non-unilateral essence of the idea of inner/outer healing as an understanding, intention, and an activity, and so helps to point out the difference between this conception of wholeness and healing and other views associated with the term "integral or integrative".

Having googled the word to see if it was indeed a new coinage of mine I discovered, somewhat to my annoyance, that there is a bit of possible confusion between Cointegrative and the "Cointegration" of time series variables in, of all things, Mathematical Finance, so perhaps when I need to use that form of the word I will be careful to insert the hyphen so that it is clear what I am referring to. In most cases however I am sure context will take care of that. All in all I am quite happy with this change of name and don't expect I'll have to make such a change again, though, since the whole enterprise is intrinsically dynamic and evolving, one never knows.

I might as well take this time to express some ongoing doubts regarding the use of the word "Science" to describe the cosmology of healthy culture (as in "Cointegrative Science"). What I like about the term is its connoting of open, experiential, and critical inquiry, all of which are a part of what I have in mind. But the word "Science" ultimately has roots related (to quote an online etymology) "to scindere "to cut, divide," from PIE base *skei- (cf. Gk. skhizein "to split, rend, cleave," Goth. skaidan, O.E. sceadan "to divide, separate;" see "shed". Now the paradox involved in "Cointegrative seperation" or "Cointegrative division" is not as objectionable from the paradox-friendly point of view I am coming from as one might imagine. Such a point of view, because it is paradoxical, can integrate separation and devision when to do so can be seen to serve its Cointegrative purpose. Still, the above derivations continue to rankle somewhat, and while I have decided to keep the word "Science" as part of my description of what I think is an appropriate cosmology and epistemology of a healthy culture, this might change in the future. As it stands, to speak of "Cointegrative Philosophy", or "Cointegrative Cosmology", or some such, is just as accepatible , though these terms are both also problematic for various reasons.

Further comments on Science:

To further explain the critique of Science implied above and to further clarify the different between the assumptions informing it and the Science of Cointegrative Science, I thought I'd offer this slightly edited version of some my own remarks in a long online discussion I had a while back with someone devoted to logic and "The Scientific Method" as they are presently understood (or at least as this person understood them):

"....I gather (...) that for you the superiority of reason and the scientific method (about the nature of which, as I have said, there is already considerable philosophical disagreement) cannot be a dogma because of... what? Because of "peer review" or something? Because of the so called "success" of technology? Consider this analogy:

the Scientific method is like a method of finding out about and training dogs; science has "successfully" (by by its own criterion for success) gotten the dog "nature" to do a few tricks by its approach and its "dog-training" method and this is supposed to justify both the method itself and the world view that led to that method? I mean what if there are other and better ways to train a dog that come from a completely different approach? Ways that don't involve brutality, alienation, "adverse health side effects" etc? what if there are other and better ways to learn about a dog? What if there are better tricks to teach the dog which are not so harmful to the dog and ultimately to its trainers? What if "dog training" in general is a bad idea in the first place? You seem to be saying that somehow, through just repeating this method (whatever you think the details are) we will find out what the best attitude toward dogs is? That if we keep vivisecting the world in theory and practice for the sake of "exclusive control" over it, that sooner or later the truth about the alienation, and insanity of the whole project is going to come out of a test tube somewhere?

If your whole project is fundamentally misconceived, if sciences dictum that "Knowledge is Power" (Bacon) is just he latest version of "Right is Might" (an imminently, reversible equation both logically and psychologically), it's highly doubtful that one is going to learn otherwise by just continuing with normal science. For one thing, "Power" and "Control", act like drugs to an addict, intrinsically blinkering the individual and inhibiting his or her ability to use their critical faculties "outside the box" of the assumptions governing the addictive behavior in question. Maybe Knowledge is not Power; maybe Power as well as Exclusive Control are inwardly and outwardly harmful illusions. Maybe Knowledge is really healthy bi or multilateral Relationship ("Friendship" if you will), with nature with our bodies, with each other, and with death as a part of life. Maybe the world is better "known" in some other way than by cognitively vivisecting the living wholeness of the experienced world and then further interrogating, through experiment, the (now dying) pieces. For that matter maybe its better not to think of "Nature" or the objective world as a primarily separate thing from subjective experience; maybe there is a Shared Subjectivity or Shared Self that corresponds to the shared Objective world of Nature and maybe this shared Self is not fundamentally separate from our shared Nature any more than mind and body are fundamentally separate. After all primary experience itself consists of the togetherness of the subjective and the objective; of both the inner and the outer. Anyway, These are my views but my point here is not that they are true but that they imply a different attitude toward "the dog" and cannot be disproved by any tricks you can get the dog to do by following a method based on your own assumptions about dogs and dog training."

I hope its clear that the "Science" in "Cointegrative Science" is such a science of "Friendship/Relationship" and Inner/outer healing and not the alienated cognitively fragmented science I critique above, and that, rather than embracing the epistemological fascism of the dictum "Knowledge is Power-Over" (one might also call it a "rapist epistemology" given the the gist of other Baconian metaphors referencing Nature as feminine and considering as well the archaic meaning of the word "know" in patriarchal societies and what that must have often meant in practice*) the central dictum of Cointegrative Science might be described as "Knowledge is Power-with" ;Knowledge is co-empowerment, co-evolution, even as "friendship" in some sense.


{*footnote: It is difficult to reference political and social entities like Fascism, and Patriarchy without running the risk of strengthening someones notion that these things constitute the the whole of the disease of sick culture itself rather than being two of many other major symptoms that disease; a disease which we all suffer from, though perhaps with very different symptoms. Such a misunderstanding could only lead to the usual fragmented, dissociated, and misguided motivation and treatment regimen, the effecting of which can never have anything but temporary and unsustainable "success", even against the selected symptoms, and none at all against the underlying disease, which will only be strengthened by the whole dynamic. }