Formulation, formulation, formulation …

The Core Effort

The core of developing a THEEFramework involves:

  • clarification—to get confidence that we understand what we are dealing with, and then:
  • formulation—to be sure we have captured and can communicate its essence: i.e. function, properties, relationships.

This work is about carefully articulating psychological and social realities in the form of unequivocal propositions that can be properly criticized and refined, or even reformulated if necessary.

Remember: You do not understand something about a complex social situation—you do not even know what you are thinking—until you write it down.

See an example of the variety of formulations that may obstruct the understanding of one single taxonomic entity.

The Necessity of Criticism

Monads and Provisional Tetrads of the Primary Structural Hiearchy of Communication.

By articulating a proposition, no matter how ill-formed or premature, you provide a target for your own critical capacities and for those of others.

Your continuing aim must be to get the formulation right or at least more right (veridical) as you move from draft to draft. In that way, you get progressively closer to a formulation that can withstand criticism. Keep at it, and eventually it will be good enough to be useful in the far harsher glare of everyday demands and difficult personalities. It will then be validated to provide support and possibly structural corroboration for additional taxonomic inquiries or scientific conjectures.

Clarification and formulation lie at the heart of determining any psychosocial reality. My tentative and provisional understanding is that they have a prominent position as Tetrads of the Primary Structural Hierarchy (sPH5) within Communication-PH5.

Formulating «formulation» is an interesting reflective example of taxonomic inquiry.

ClosedMore on THEE Inquiry Using this Example

In the Structural Hierarchy of Communication-sPH5, the lowest Tetrad was initially thought to be named «demonstration», and then «explanation». At that time, possible names for the Tetrad-G4 as a whole included «ensuring clarity» and «organizing discourse», not «developing consensus». These earlier notions may seem silly now, but it is always difficult to get a fix in a new area, and the present name may yet prove to be in error.

The critical determinant is not the name and its associations, but rather detailed formulations of the function, properties and relations.

Eventually it emerged that «demonstration» belonged in a lower Grouping of the Structural Hierarchy because it is associated with «persuasion». «Explanation» stayed at G4, but as a general feature of all Tetrads, not just the lowest one. In the current THEE formulation, we find above these two Tetrads: «interpretation»—which often precedes «formulation»; and we find below: «assertion»—which often follows «formulation». These studies will eventually be posted in the Communication Satellite.

Originally posted: August 2009. Last updated 25-Jan-2013.