The Unification Story

The Origin and the Root Hierarchy were difficult to discover, identify and name for many reasons. These difficulties constitute much of the background to discovering THEE, and they have not all disappeared.

Social Convention Pressured a Young Inquirer

Discovery work commenced deep within THEE and the social environment at the time generated heavy pressure to view those discoveries as «fundamental». My academic environment offered no protection or sympathy. Although little may have changed academically in the succeeding decades, the awareness of the general public appears to have been transformed, if we can believe the evidence of bookshops and the Internet.

There are many fundamentals within THEE: indeed it is a taxonomy of essences. But as to what is fundamental to THEE itself? Well, that is a different and difficult matter to clarify. However, inquiry commenced in 2013 within the Architecture Room.

My Own False Conjectures Led Me Astray

While various disparate frameworks were being identified and explored, I found it impossible to assume that all the frameworks were unified. It was just too great a conjectural leap, given my scientific background and the patchy picture of disparate structural forms.

For a long time, I assumed there was some sort of parallel system in operation with an underlying abstract controller determining similarity of structure. It may sound ridiculous now, but it seemed a reasonable conjecture at the time. You can see more of my mistaken conjectures.

Disparate Nature of the Structures Confused Me

In the initial decades, frameworks were discovered through the pressure of consultancy and a determination to assist rather than impose my latest framework. The result was that I developed a number of useful frameworks with differing structures.

Any structure takes time to elaborate and crystallize, so there was much overlap in their emergence. Still, as I recall, the order of discovery was approximately as follows:

The hierarchy was the first structure (levels of work), but the number of Levels was uncertain…

→ then came the Typology (decision-making methods) …

→ then came awareness of two forms of hierarchy (levels of purpose with nesting in L6, and levels of work without nesting in L6) …

→ then came Dualities (oscillating initially, and then the dynamic duality, with other types coming later) …

→ then came the Tree (management processes) …

→ then came the Spiral (strengthening the management culture) …

→ then came the Structural Hierarchy (realizing values in society)…

→ then came the Style Hierarchy and Q-complex … and so on.

Each of these discoveries generated much checking and many blind alleys. The process of architectural discovery has continued even after having discovered the unification: e.g. the TET was identified early on in relation to decision-making but further implications developed while preparing Interacting-for-Benefit for posting, and during later invesetigations. The internal duality only properly firmed up as a major feature with the exploration of Politics.

I wish to emphasize the value of delaying judgement. If I had jumped the gun with some theory about how it all worked, I doubt that I would have been capable of continuing to discover all these distinct forms. As it happened, there was no danger of any breakthrough, as I was mostly bewildered and surprised by whatever was emerging.

The Critical Juncture and Breakthrough

The critical discovery, which eventually led to unification, emerged as I was puzzling over the Spiral trajectory for strengthening the management culture. For the hundredth time, I noted that some decision systems looked a lot like inquiring systems. I had noticed something similar in regard to choices: control over «values in pure action methods (L1-4)» was handled by «values of inquiry-like methods (L5-7)». Suddenly I extrapolated: inquiry-as-a-whole being a discontinuous level above Action-as-a-whole, with some sort of overlap which integrated two disparate domains. It did not take me long to check other frameworks and conclude that other similar patterns probably existed or could be rather easily found.

To re-state this technically: Closed Any Principal Typology can be transformed to become holistic via a Spiral by converting Types to Modes. This Spiral reveals a Hierarchy that possesses an internal dualitywhich condenses to two adjacent Root Hierarchy Levels—whose lower Level spawned the Principal Typology in the first place. The full explanation with diagrams is provided here in the Architecture Room .

Getting Validation and Confidence

It was reasonably straightforward to determine and name the Root Levels, but there were still many puzzles and errors along the way. After identifying and naming all Levels in the Root Hierarchy, it was necessary to validate via various methods, especially structural corroboration. It took me about 10-12 years to finalize and become confident enough about the Framework of Endeavour based on the Root Hierarchy to go public.

Structural corroboration is relevant to this Satellite because the elaboration of the architecture generated many unexpected and illuminating results. Most recently, there was the unexpected discovery of correspondences with other architectural forms, which opens new vistas of puzzlement.

It is likely that there will be errors of identification and formulation in the material posted to this Satellite.

Expositions are designed to make ideas look rather simple and obvious, but the recognition and naming of the Root Hierarchy Levels was arduous and uncertain for more than 20 years. I frankly doubt it would be possible for anyone to confidently postulate and develop the Root Hierarchy just from observation and reflection.

There have been numerous attempts to do just this in esoteric traditions, philosophy, and psychology. Many have followers. None have stood the twin tests of time and usefulness. More recently, attempts to do something similar using the Internet turned into a disaster for the proponents. I have sought to make the present approach as safe, sensible and scientific as it is possible to be. But, of course, more could be done.

Originally posted: 27-Jan-2011. Amended 22-Jun-2023.