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EMERGING ENTITY – COMMON FEATURES OF ROOMS OF PERCEPTION

Virtual and somatic rooms of perception have yet another very distinct common ground. They jointly created images and texts but also thoughts and feelings are always only of importance for all those who are within the room of perception. Only then can each participant consciously and unconsciously send and receive impulses of information.


That means for a somatic room of perception there must be at least one physical contact. And in a virtual room of perception, there must be at least one digital contact. If neither a physical nor a digital contact exists, no information can be exchanged.


Like the human body or a field of perception, virtual and somatic rooms of perception can be regarded as temporarily closed systems that can be opened in a pulsating manner. 


Closed rooms of perception are created in the desire for stability by forming the lowest possible entropy with a highly structured system of order. Open rooms of perception are created in the desire for liveliness by exchanging as much information as possible, and a weakly structured system of order is sufficient for this.


Only by pulsatingly opening and closing rooms of perception can grow. During a growth phase, as many common images, dialogues, thoughts, and feelings as possible are integrated and anchored together in a room of perception. If this process continues, the common thoughts, images, and feelings gain independence that is similar to an entity of perception which shows parallels with the psyche of the human body. 


Both the human psyche and the entity of perception can be experienced as an abstract construction, either as a purely personal treasure of experience or as a jointly developed preciousness of experience.


The entity of perceptual space is thus the psyche of a group, which often takes place only on a mental (e.g. workgroups), emotional (e.g. family communities), or physical level (e.g. sex, war). But there are also entities that can connect all observable levels with each other.  For example, religions or simply very active and successful groups.


In a civilized society, such an entity can grow into a paradigm through the constant repetition of certain common images and dialogues. Thereby, the collective consciousness establishes itself as a generally accepted cooperation and a basic way of thinking similar to a human attitude.


However, the entity of a perceptual space can appear not only as group dynamics, team spirit, or group cohesion but also as a state.


The frontispiece of the work Leviathan, published by Thomas Hobbes in 1651, depicts a sovereign whose body consists of many non-human figures. This representation symbolizes a group of people who have agreed to a social contract. It is one of the first visual representations of the state that captures the totality of diversity of a population that creates stability under common rules.


If one views a state as a somatic room of perception based on gatherings, conventions, public appearances, and meetings, the results of the common images and dialogues in terms of legislation can be seen as a virtual room of perception.

Two Definitions of EMERGENCE: 


Jeffrey Goldstein: Emergence is "the raising of novel and coherent structures, patterns, and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems" 

Goldstein, J., (1999). "Emergence as a Construct: History and Issues". Emergence. 1 (1): 49–72. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327000em0101_4

 

Peter Corning: "The common characteristics [of emergence] are: (1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); (2) coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); (3) A global or macro "level" (i.e. there is some property of "wholeness"); (4) it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and (5) it is "ostensive" (it can be perceived)."

Corning, P., A., (2002), "The Re-Emergence of "Emergence": A Venerable Concept in Search of a Theory", Complexity, 7 (6): 18–30, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.10043

Fig. 29: Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, engraved by Abraham Bosse in 1651, modified by the author