This section contains the following subsections (use the links in the Table of Contents to navigate)

• 5.1. Cyclic self-organization requirements
• 5.2. Encompassing system dynamics
• 5.3. Encompassing varieties of form

In discussing the dilemmas of the organized society, Charles Handy, a management scientist, distinguishes three types of management problem: (a) steady-state, programmable, predictable problems that can be handled by systems; (b) development problems designed to deal with new situations; and (c) exceptional problems or emergencies where speed and instinct are essential (125, p. 45)

Edgar Taschdjian has recently suggested that if cybernetics is to move byond its current preoccupation with the "simplified world of abstract models", it appears to be necessary to develop a "nonlinear cybernetics able to handle regulations which are time-dependent and dialectic rather than mechanistic". (64) Many world modelling exercises are based on such simplified models.

A philosopher of language, Antonio de Nicolas, has studied the limitations of single languages as a vehicle for complex, action-oriented, human-centred meaning. His use of "language" corresponds to "answer" as used here. For him one of the most widespread misleading misconceptions is the implied existence or possibility of one universally adequate language. The problem becomes more crucial when within a culture everything that is said is necessarily reduced to what can be said by only certain criterion of one particular language (30, p.190).

In a remarkable series of articles, Magoroh Maruyama has studied patterns of cognition, perception, conceptualization, design, planning and decisions processes (51, 52, 53, 54). His central concern is the role of epistemological types, especially as they affect cross-disciplinary, cross-professional, cross-paradigm and cross-cultural communications (5).

In discussing the conditions for inter-paradigmatic dialogue, especially in the social sciences, Kinhide Mushakoji, Vice-Rector of the United Nations University, argues for the need to move beyond the accepted limits of formal logic:

The concern with alternation cycles arises because of a collective need to obtain a more conscious awareness of integration in a developing world system. It is therefore appropriate to take account of the insights of psychoanalysis. Marie-Louise von Franz, in pursuing the work of C G Jung and linking it to modern physics, makes points which bear a strong relationship to the distinctions made by Fuller. She presents material indicating the fundamental role which number plays in ordering both the psyche and matter.

The interrelationships of circles has been extrensively studied by Buckminster Fuller (46), an architect, as the basis for a model of the non-transient existence of energy and material systems. He makes the point that:

Oscar Ichazo, founder of an internationally-active human development institute, formulates an interesting progression in the interpretation of the basic laws of logic. These are in sympathy with the arguments of the previous sections. The points he makes (146) can best be summarized by a table of the following kind:

The fact that social conditions are very much subject to cycles (e.g. Kondratieff), and that policy "breakthroughs" (such as centralization or decentralization) are periodically rediscovered with enthusiasm, suggests that alternation should be explored as a cyclic phenomenon. In fact, as any physical model will illustrate, a pattern of oscillation is not stable unless it is accompanied by some form of revolution of which the observed alternation is often a consequence (e.g. night/day on the revolving Earth; seasons on the Earth revolving around the Sun).