Book III. The Geometry of Becoming: 7. Reflexivity

Place two mirrors opposite one another.

At first we notice the reflections.

Then something curious happens.

The reflections begin containing reflections of reflections.

The image is no longer simply repeated.

It has become organised in a new way.

The mirrors are not merely reflecting.

They are participating in one another's reflections.

The example is imperfect.

Yet it hints at something remarkable.

Reality sometimes becomes capable of participating in its own organisation.

We usually imagine organisation as something imposed upon activity.

First there is an organisation.

Then there are events that occur within it.

But organised reality often behaves quite differently.

The organisation itself becomes part of what is organised.

This is the beginning of reflexivity.

Consider a conversation.

At first we simply discuss a topic.

Then someone says,

"Perhaps we're talking past one another."

Suddenly the conversation has become one of its own subjects.

Nothing has left the conversation.

The conversation has begun participating in itself.

The same occurs in learning.

At first we learn mathematics.

Later we learn how we learn mathematics.

The organisation of learning has itself become available for participation.

Or consider science.

Scientific inquiry does not merely investigate the world.

It continually reorganises its own methods, questions and standards.

Inquiry becomes capable of investigating inquiry.

Again, nothing has escaped the organisation.

The organisation has become one of its own possibilities.

We have quietly encountered this throughout the trilogy.

When we first questioned the idea of things, ontology became capable of questioning ontology.

When we reconsidered meaning, meaning became capable of reorganising meaning.

When we explored information, information no longer appeared merely as transmitted content.

It became capable of reorganising the very possibilities through which future information could emerge.

Each time, the same geometry quietly appeared.

Organisation participated in its own organisation.

This does not create an infinite regress.

It creates a richer organisation.

A language illustrates this beautifully.

Language does not merely allow us to describe the world.

It allows us to discuss language.

To invent new expressions.

To reinterpret old ones.

To reshape the very organisation through which meanings become possible.

Language participates in its own becoming.

The same is true of culture.

Every tradition inherits previous organisations.

Yet each generation reorganises the tradition through participating in it.

The tradition does not merely continue.

It becomes capable of reorganising the conditions of its own continuity.

Perhaps this is why organised reality is so extraordinarily creative.

Novelty need not arrive from outside an organisation.

It may arise because the organisation becomes capable of participating in itself in richer ways.

Perspective becomes reflexive.

Constraint becomes reflexive.

Continuity becomes reflexive.

Differentiation becomes reflexive.

Participation becomes reflexive.

Each geometry reorganises the others.

This, perhaps, is what maturity looks like.

Not greater complexity alone.

Greater participation in the organisation of participation itself.

The child learns language.

The adult learns to reshape language.

The student acquires knowledge.

The scholar reorganises fields of inquiry.

A community preserves its traditions.

A civilisation reimagines the principles through which traditions continue.

Reflexivity therefore does not lift us outside organised reality.

Quite the opposite.

It draws us more deeply into it.

Reality becomes capable of participating in its own becoming.

Perhaps this is why reflexivity has so often been mistaken for abstraction.

We imagine ourselves stepping outside reality in order to think about it.

Yet we never leave.

We simply participate differently.

Organisation has become capable of reorganising itself.

This is not the end of becoming.

It is becoming discovering that it may continually become otherwise.

Wherever organised possibility becomes capable of participating in its own organisation, reflexivity is already there.

Not standing above reality.

Helping reality discover new ways of becoming itself.