Gestalt, Synergy, Dialectic

The world, the universe, is a complex thing. In order to simplicate it Science uses a strategy of reductionism, considers aspects in isolation, in order to make comprehensible this complex thing. But reductionism is always only an approximation because the world is so darn complex. When we look at things more fully we find they are patterns imbedded in patterns. In the 1930s a group of psychologist (including the legendary Fritz Perls) paid homage to this fact by talking of "gestalt": i.e. pattern, objects and fields. So things are patternsgestalts and are imbedded in their interconnections

and things get complex really quickly. Consider the "three body problem". In Newtonian physics if we know the relative positions and movements of two bodies, two orbiting bodies mathemeticians can calculate their subsequent position where they will be at any time till eternity, but when we introduce a third body things get complex so fast that we can not calculate how the three bodies will interact. This is the "three body problem" and it so excerised nineteenth century thinkers that the King of Sweden offered a prize to whomever would solve this "three body problem". The French mathematician, Poincaré, won the prize by demonstrating mathematically that the problem can not be solved.

Things get complex so darn fast and this is the essense of Hegel’s "dialectic".which says "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts":which is to say, when we are considering a system of interacting things we can’t just add them because they are more than their sum, the system is also the interaction of its parts. Which brings us to "non-linear systems".

A "linear system" is one that just adds up like one and one is two and another is three. It’s a "linear" system because when you plot it as a graph it is a straight line. Ripples in a pond sum linearly, and we get "interference patterns".

So where does "synergy" fit in? My concern with synergy in part arises from Dr. Austin’s new therapeutic technique, Trigenics. In Trigenics we employ three techniques (at once: a "dynamic" finger acupressure, a breathing technique, and neuromyoreflexes [principally "reciprocal inhibition"]) to relieve muscle tension and pain. Synergy comes into it because ~ in skilled hands ~ it is amazingly effective. More effective than we would expect from a simply summing the three techniques. This type of dialectic, this type of non-linear interaction where the outcome is larger then the input, we call "synergy". (Another place we typically see synergies is in herbal formulas. When we carefully combine herbs we get results that are many times more efficacious then might be expected. In herbalogy the Chinese and the western teachers agree: "the formula is the thing".)