Pansystems: A Philosophy Unconforming to God’s Model

Citation

Xiaolu, Z., Yongli, L. and Beifang, C. (1998), "Pansystems: A Philosophy Unconforming to God’s Model", Kybernetes, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 98-101. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1998.27.1.98.1

The book is a new generalization and development of pansystems theory by an author who has combined philosophy, mathematics, sciences, technology, medicine, literature/aesthetics/poetics, sociology, history into a unified entity. This includes an original style of the author’s own in 20 or more sub‐branches/topics. Conversation and informal discussion are mixed with poems, and its “essay flavour” suits both refined and popular tastes. The contents really reflect the 20 years’ achievement of a new discipline and realize a milestone in the construction of new thoughts, meanwhile mirroring the hard and suffering course of the birth and development of the Chinese pansystems community. The book presents 100 or more practical principles, methods, models or theorems that are available for various circles.

The book consists of five chapters: “Dream or non‐dreams”; “Egos or non‐egos”; “Mathematics or non‐mathematics”; “Technology or non‐technology”; and “Poems or non‐poems”. The concrete contents include: “Philosophy or non‐philosophy?”; “Odd encyclopaedia‐connecting‐interpromoting and independent network”; “Unification of monism and pluralism”; “The 20 disputes of Chinese philosophy”; “The 35 dualities of difference between the east and west philosophies”; “The 24 items about the poverty and crises of modern philosophy”; “Pansystems Zen‐theory: the 70 schools”; “Egos or non‐egos pansystems relativity”; “Pansystems mathematics”; “Pansystems cybernetics”, “Pansystems medicine”, “Pansystems sociology”, “Pansystems aesthetics”, “Pansystems poetics”, etc. The author investigates, discards and develops various philosophies, and many theories are developed into ones with certain new trains of thoughts: ontology, epistemology, methodology, category theory, unification theory of the true‐good‐beautiful‐zen, philosophical logic, anthropology, meta‐philosophy, non‐philosophy, history of philosophy, systems philosophy, nature philosophy, etc. and many fields are explored from some new views; analysis philosophy, art philosophy, social philosophy, technical philosophy, Buddhism philosophy, existentialism philosophy, etc. In pansystems philosophy, there are about 20 kinds of second or third philosophies to be replenished with new contents. Furthermore, the author extends the thought of relativity with fractals to various fields or topics outside the physical sciences and established a new type of theory ‐ pansystems relativity including many tens of concrete models which discover certain deep connections of various different methodologies: philosophy, mathematics, logic, science, technology, literature and arts, religion, qigong, etc. and discover certain potential unifications of principles of various schools: Confucius, Daoism, Sunzi, Hui Shi, Gongsun Long, Buddha, Huayanzong, Su Dongbo, Einstein, Bohr, Poincaré, Whitehead, Tarski, Godel, von Neumann, Freud, Whatson, Maslow, etc.

Based on these investigations the author presents many generalized dynamical co‐ordinate systems of higher dimensions which provide 100 or more schedules of unifications for encyclopaedic fields or topics, including some new interconnections of various monisms and pluralisms. Pansystems philosophy realizes a new generalization and certain intertransformations of encyclopaedic knowledge and cultivates really exploration to modernization, practicalization of philosophy. The generalizations in pansystems philosophy are relatively concrete, mathematizing or technicalizational.

A special chapter is provided to develop pansystems mathematics/ logic/physics, where 20 pansystems views, 45 categories, 38 theorems of mathematics are presented. Pansystems mathematics realizes certain new transfieldness and intertransformations among various sub‐branches or topics of mathematics, and investigates interderivatives of mathematics and other encyclopaedic fields. Many methods and philosophical principles for development and creation and problem solving of mathematics are extended: Infinitesmal calculus, Function theory, Functional analysis, Systems of generalized numbers, Fuzzy mathematics, Discrete mathematics, Operations research, Clustering analysis, Systems mathematics, Universal algebra, Metamathematics, Non‐linear analysis, etc. Pansystems mathematics presents ten or more mathematical definitions or axioms of generalized systems which realize unifications of various definitions of systems, and consequently realize a unification between mathematics and systemology. Furthermore, pansystems theory investigates various relations of generalized systems and extends the relations, operations, principles, models, theorems of set theory and various branches or topics of encyclopaedic knowledge to generalized systems and so realise a certain superunification. Pansystems logic develops meta‐logic methodology, presents 11 models of negations, and promotes some new mathematical researches on dialectical logic, analysis, synthesis, concept‐forming/extending independence method of axiomatic systems. The interrelations among pansystems theory, mathematics and computers are investigated. Eight new principles about thinking, many methods of strengthening thinking, including 20 panoptimizational analysis models are presented in pansystems logic. Consequently, making certain promotions to research cognition science and the new foundation of artificial intelligence. In the investigation of pansystems physics, the pansystems concepts, principles and methods in various branches of physics are discussed, and the categories such as hierarchy, divisionability, phenology law, time, space, particle‐wave duality, indeterminacy, etc. are investigated from certain new points. Meanwhile, the pansymmetry methodology and strength theory of mechanics are researched. The author presents a strength model called quasi‐friction fracture, one which can be used to strength estimation of rock materials or fracture materials. The book introduces also 15 theorems about the so‐called equivalence theory of dynamics of electromagnetic media which is another creation of the author. Furthermore, the author presents in pansystems physics the six models of the so‐called panentropy in order to summarize various entropy extended researches in the past 130 years.

In the general framework of pansystems technology, the book develops the special sub‐branches such as pansystems cybernetics, pansystems medicine, pansystems games theory, pansystems sociology, etc. and investigates 20 or more topics by introducing new trains of thought: recognition, simulation, modelling, transformation, qigong, shengke, ecology, communication, traffic, architecture, city, design, creation, strategy, economy, management, large scale systems, compound control, holographic recapitulation law, Chinese traditional medicine (jingluo, wuxing, dynamical diagnosis and treatment), dynamic programming, pan‐grey systems, information philosophy, principles of rise and fall of nations, systems engineering, C3I, psychological methods, talent‐becoming and pedagogy, various schools of behaviour sciences, etc. Pansystems cybernetics with 30 theorems is revealed as a certain development of modern cybernetics, including extension of Kalman’s observocontrollability theory and its megacombination with relativity, epistemology, methodology, economics, fuzziology, games and philosophy and metamedicine.

In the establishment of pansystems aesthetics, 20 or more academic schools of western aesthetics and various theories of China are reviewed, and the categories of beauty, aesthetic feeling, aesthetic creation, and related culturology, viewpoints of value are investigated from new pansystems views. After analysis of 23 schools of anthropology, pansystems aesthetics develops new exploration to philosophical anthropology and the substance of man. Related new studies include: pansystems views of literature and arts, poetry‐arts methods, 24 models of pansystems relativity for poetry and arts, eight classes/100 factors of beauty relativities, formal beauty, science beauty, evaluation of beauty and panweighted average algorithm, fuzziness of beauty, plot theory, human nature, affinity to the people, nationality nature, class nature, locality and regional nature, typicalness, interrelations between zen and arts, etc. Furthermore, the author also points out in the book that the megatendency of aesthetics is: pluralization, diversification, unceasing reclustering and rediscoupling, constant convergence and divergence, relatively dynamic anti‐tradition, negation and renegation, various communities being of the five mutuals ‐ interconnection, intertransformation, interderivative, interpromotion, inter‐restraint.

The pansystems poetics created in the book discard and develop 52 schools of poetic views, summarize 100 or more relativity factors of poems into eight classes and ten kinds of inclinations of various poets, and present many new principles such as 20 beauty factors and 20 multi‐implicit functions for poetry, consequently a superunification of pansystems poetics is displayed for various poetic theories and tendencies. Furthermore, a mathematical model of multidimensional phase space and its various subsets or subspaces is presented to simulate various difference and identities of various schools or sects or tendencies. Within the framework of pansystems poetics, many subtheories are developed such as a theory of artistic conception, a theory of implication, a theory of creativity, poetic relativistic theory, etc. including certain mathematical models. Many techniques are presented in pansystems aesthetics, ten or more poetic methods and 100 explanatory examples of poems are provided in pansystems poetics. We believe readers will discover the original creations of philosophy, mathematics and techniques in the poetics history.

The book appends references to the titles of 400 pansystems papers, the reviews of 14 scholars and reports published in “Biographies of celebrities”.

From the book the readers may discover the pansystems characteristics: transfieldness, multilayer network‐like nature, encyclopaedia‐connecting unification melting philosophy, mathematics, technology into a unified entity. These characteristics have helped the author to realize an original style of his own in 20 or more theories or topics. These creations and explorations are derived from self‐examination, and the distillation of the experience of the author’s research in creating nearly 1,000 new mathematical results, all of which are still accepted in pansystems methodology itself.