Discover Dualities in Decision-making

Background

Decision-making was investigated and analysed nearly 30 years ago at the earliest stages of what was my voyage into THEE. At that time, I knew nothing beyond the subject I was studying: in this case «decision-making».

So I did not look for things like dualities unless they jumped out at me (as occurred with Purpose-PH6) or were noted in the literature. That is why for a long period there was no mention here of the oscillating duality or unfolding duality in the Typology.

With the knowledge of THEE that has been developed, this now looks like an omission. From a scientific perspective, identification of dualities has become part of taxonomic validation.

Oscillating Duality

All THEE 7-level Hierarchies show an oscillating duality. It is easy to see that this ensures an unequivocal discontinuity between the levels, but its true significance is not yet known. Types are discontinuous in any case, so confusion is not an issue in Typologies.

Identification of the relevant duality for PH'1-Decision-making is now (early-2015) provided here, having been stimulated by a similarity with the oscillating duality in PH'2-Research Methods.

Unfolding Duality

Only Principal Typologies and Structural Hierarchies are currently thought to have an unfolding duality. Perhaps they exist elsewhere as well. Because they are more difficult to determine, their extent is likely to remain an open question for some time.

There are two steps in identifying this duality: first what is the overall «ground state» and the overall «developmental force» for the hierarchy as a whole, and then how does that show up distinctively at each level. This investigation has not yet been commenced.


  • See how the decision methods oscillate between realism and idealism.
  • Read the basics of dualities in the Hub.
  • Read more deeply about dualities in the Architecture Room.

Originally posted: 3-Apr-2011