How do you know? Students, patients, and discovery

by Raymond Peat

“For the real world has inexhaustible splendour, the real life is full of meaning and abundance, where we grasp it, it is full of miracles and glory.” N. Hartmann

“I am myself plus my circumstances” Jose Ortega y Gasset

“因为真实的世界有取之不尽的光彩，真实的生活充满意义和丰富，在我们把握它的地方，它充满奇迹和荣耀。”

“我就是我自己加上我的环境”

Knowledge should be useful and provisional.

I think comparing the doctor-patient relationship with the teacher-student relationship can be useful, and it might suggest ways that both of them could be made more productive, with implications for the nature of learning and knowing.

40 or 50 years ago, advocates of student-centered education were encouraged by the popularity of psychologist Carl Rogers' client centered therapy. Rogers was interested in what made some therapists successful, and he found that their personality and attitude, not their theories or techniques, accounted for their success. Successful therapists had three essential traits. They offered their clients acceptance or “unconditional positive regard” and empathic understanding, and they themselves were congruent, not presenting a facade of authority or esoteric knowledge. According to Rogers, “accurate diagnosis” and “specific treatment” didn't have anything to do with helping the client.

Some therapists thought Rogers' approach was impractical, others were sure it was foolish. Medically oriented psychiatrists saw Roger's prestige among psychologists as evidence that psychology wasn't suited for dealing with the “mentally ill,” who needed authoritative diagnosis and treatment–such as drugs, convulsive shock, or surgery. Scientifically, however, Rogers' ideas were supported by evidence, and medical psychiatry had no evidence to support many of its diagnostic concepts or their therapeutic usefulness.

知识应该是有用的和暂时的。

我认为，将医患关系与师生关系进行比较是有用的，它可能会建议两种方式都可以提高效率，并对学习和认识的本质产生影响。

四五十年前，心理学家卡尔·罗杰斯的“客户中心疗法”大受欢迎，从而鼓励了以学生为中心的教育。罗杰斯对一些治疗师成功的原因很感兴趣，他发现他们的性格和态度，而不是他们的理论或技术，是他们成功的原因。成功的治疗师有三个基本特征。他们接受他们的客户或“无条件的积极关注”和共情的理解，他们自己是一致的，而不是呈现一种权威或深奥知识的假象。根据罗杰斯的说法，“准确的诊断”和“特定的治疗”与帮助客户没有任何关系。

一些治疗师认为罗杰斯的方法不切实际，另一些则肯定是愚蠢的。以医学为导向的精神病学家将罗杰在心理学家中的威望视为心理学不适合处理“精神疾病”的证据，他们需要权威的诊断和治疗，如药物、惊厥休克或手术。然而，在科学上，罗杰斯的观点是有证据支持的，而医学精神病学没有证据支持其诊断概念或其治疗作用。

Most university professors felt that Rogers' ideas were irrelevant to their educational work, and some clearly saw their own function as being a sort of Malthusian selection of the fittest, and deliberately designed their classes as barriers that only a few could surmount.

When I taught English composition, instructors were told that they must grade according to a standard scoring system for errors of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and diction. Our success was seen in terms of the number of freshmen who had dropped out by the end of the year, as evidence that the department had “high standards.” Knowing that system, most students chose to write in the style of the first grade “See Spot run” readers, hoping that they could handle the mechanics of writing if they reduced the complexity and content of their essays. It didn't work, and they didn't improve during the weeks when their mistakes were being brought painfully to their attention. Since I hated reading their meaningless efforts, I told them that I was going to grade them on content, rather than punctuation and spelling, and that they should try to write about something that was important to them. Only their success in communicating something would be graded. Their papers became more readable, and the interesting thing was that the mechanical things improved immediately. (The intention to communicate something is the real source of structure in language.) I had another teacher score some of their compositions, and he confirmed that they had improved according to the department's system. The attempt to steer a person can make it hard for them to move, because it inactivates their own guidance system.

A physics professor would notice that writing classes have a lot in common with psychotherapy, and would dismiss the possibility that such an approach could be used in serious education.

大多数大学教授认为，罗杰斯的观点与他们的教育工作无关，有些教授清楚地看到，他们自己的功能是一种马尔萨斯式的适者生存，故意把他们的阶级设计成只有少数人能跨越的障碍。

当我教英语作文时，老师们被告知，他们必须根据一个标准的评分系统来评分语法、标点、拼写和措辞的错误。我们的成功体现在年底有很多大一新生退学，证明系里有“高标准”。知道了这个系统后，大多数学生选择以一年级“See Spot run”读者的风格写作，希望如果他们减少论文的复杂性和内容，就能掌握写作的技巧。这并没有起作用，而且当他们的错误被痛苦地提醒时，他们在这几周里也没有改善。因为我讨厌阅读他们毫无意义的文章，所以我告诉他们，我将根据内容而不是标点和拼写来给他们打分，他们应该尽量写一些对他们来说重要的东西。只有他们在沟通方面的成功才会被评分。他们的论文可读性更强了，有趣的是，机械方面的东西立刻改善了。(交流的意图是语言结构的真正来源。)我让另一位老师给他们的一些作文打分，他确认根据系里的制度，他们的作文有所提高。试图引导一个人会使他们难以移动，因为这会使他们自己的导航系统失效。

物理教授会注意到写作课和心理治疗有很多共同之处，并且会排除这种方法在严肃教育中使用的可能性。

Professors of medicine see themselves as models of the authority that their students will need to apply in dealing with patients, and the physicians trained in the authoritarian style are likely to see their patients as recipients of their medical knowledge, rather than as occasions for listening and learning something new.

Students entering these disciplines must expect to be disciplined. This means that they learn not to ask silly questions about the fundamental assumptions of their profession. Their common sense of meaning, their original guidance system, must be inactivated to keep them from asking questions such as “is that a disease or a theory?” Some patients find that their physician has little patience for their questions, but most patients don't want to ask questions, because they have been taught to respect the authorities.

Our nervous systems are made up of physiology and culture.

That can be a philosophical problem, because our experience is governed by our composition. In people like Heraclitus, physiology was in the foreground, and in people like Plato, culture was in the foreground. (Heraclitus understood that things are always becoming, Plato believed that change wasn't real.) To change someone's mind, it's necessary to change the way they experience themselves and the world, and that requires changing their substance.

In the 1950s a group called “Synectics” was formed to study the creative process. They found that having an expert in the group could be useful, but it could also often stifle the group's ability to find a good solution to a problem. W.J.J. Gordon described their method as “trusting things that are alien, and alienating things that are trusted.” They used metaphorical thinking to help them to see the complexity and potentiality of a situation, and to go beyond the existing understanding.

医学教授认为自己是权威,学生需要的模型应用在处理病人,和医生训练有素的独裁风格可能会看到他们的病人作为医学知识的接受者,而不是场合听和学习新的东西。

进入这些学科的学生必须受到纪律的约束。这意味着他们学会了不去问关于他们职业的基本假设的愚蠢问题。他们的意义常识，他们最初的指导系统，必须失效，以防止他们提出诸如“这是一种疾病还是一种理论?”一些病人发现他们的医生对他们的问题没有耐心，但大多数病人不想问问题，因为他们被教导要尊重权威。

我们的神经系统是由生理和文化组成的。

这可能是一个哲学问题，因为我们的经验是由我们的构成决定的。像赫拉克利特这样的人，生理学是最突出的，而像柏拉图这样的人，文化是最突出的。(赫拉克利特明白事物总是在变化，柏拉图则认为变化是不真实的。)要改变一个人的想法，就必须改变他们体验自己和世界的方式，而这需要改变他们的物质。

20世纪50年代，一个名为“Synectics”的组织成立，研究创造过程。他们发现，在团队中有一个专家可能是有用的，但这也经常会抑制团队找到一个好的问题解决方案的能力。戈登(W.J.J. Gordon)将他们的方法描述为“信任陌生的东西，疏远信任的东西。”他们使用隐喻思维来帮助他们看到情况的复杂性和潜在性，并超越现有的理解。

Professors and physicians too often present themselves as having “definitive knowledge” about a subject. For people who already have “definitive knowledge” about something, anomalous facts (if they are perceived at all) will simply remain anomalous and will be quickly forgotten. The things they produce will be extensions of what already exists. For others, things that aren't easily explained have special interest, and cause them to ask new questions. New perspectives can lead to new possibilities and new realities.

Once during a lecture, Alfred Korzybski offered his students some cookies, which they seemed to enjoy, then he showed them a label on the bag, “dog cookies,” and some of them felt sick. “I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter.” Hypnotists have often demonstrated that words can have physiological effects.

Many of our institutions use language as a system for preserving culture, that is, for preventing change. Korzybski wanted to correct the cultural habit of making abstractions seem like objects or “elements,” by making people aware of the degree of abstraction in their words. This can be useful, but his book has been used to promote an extreme linguistic relativism in the theory of knowledge and science, placing “meaning” entirely within the nervous system.

This approach evades the fact that patterns exist objectively, and that they can be perceived as they unfold through time. Although Korzybski thought he was teaching people to overcome the limitations of thinking in the style of Aristotle or Plato, he was supporting an attitude that would make it impossible to perceive in the style of Heraclitus.

If Heraclitus said it's impossible to step in the same river twice, his comment was directed to those who ignore the rich complexity of experience because of stereotyped “elemental” thinking. He was pointing to the abundance of the world, but elemental-concept thinkers have felt that he simply negated their objective meanings.

To perceive another person accurately requires the ability to perceive the person as a pattern unfolding coherently through time, as a potential realizing itself. Carl Rogers' insight was that one's awareness of being perceived in this way encourages the unfolding of potentials.

教授和医生们经常把自己表现得对某一学科有“确定的知识”。对于那些已经对某件事有了“确定的知识”的人来说，反常的事实(如果它们被察觉到的话)将仅仅是反常，并将很快被遗忘。他们生产的东西将是已经存在的东西的延伸。对于其他人来说，那些不容易解释的事情会让他们产生特殊的兴趣，并促使他们提出新的问题。新的视角可以带来新的可能性和新的现实。

有一次在课堂上，艾尔弗雷德·科兹布斯基(Alfred Korzybski)给他的学生们一些饼干，他们似乎很喜欢，然后他给他们看袋子上的一个标签，“狗饼干”，一些学生感到恶心。“我刚刚证明了，人们吃的不仅仅是食物，还有语言，而且语言的味道常常被后者的味道所掩盖。”催眠师经常证明语言可以产生生理效应。

我们的许多机构把语言作为一种保存文化的系统，也就是防止变化的系统。Korzybski希望通过让人们意识到他们语言中的抽象程度，来纠正把抽象概念看得像物体或“元素”的文化习惯。这可能是有用的，但他的书已经被用来推广一种极端的语言相对论的知识和科学理论，把“意义”完全放在神经系统。

这种方法回避了模式客观存在的事实，以及随着时间的推移，它们可以被感知的事实。尽管柯日布斯基认为他是在教导人们以亚里士多德或柏拉图的方式去克服思维的局限，但他所支持的一种态度将使人们无法以赫拉克利特的方式去理解。

如果赫拉克利特说不可能两次踏入同一条河流，他的评论是针对那些因为刻板的“基本”思维而忽视经验的丰富复杂性的人。他指的是世界的丰富性，但元素概念思想家们觉得他只是否定了它们的客观意义。

要准确地感知另一个人，需要有这样一种能力:把这个人看成是一个在时间中连贯展开的模式，看成是一个自我实现的潜力。卡尔·罗杰斯的观点是，一个人以这种方式被感知的意识会鼓励潜能的发挥。

The refusal of institutions or individuals to perceive others in this way is an imposition of their way of understanding, and is itself a form of oppression. People who think in terms of “professional training” often describe learning in terms of “conditioned reflexes,” producing a desired response to each stimulus.

The terms “conditioned reflex” and “conditioning” were introduced into psychology by the behaviorist J. B. Watson, who mistranslated and misrepresented Pavlov's ideas, and who insisted that the ideas of consciousness, volition, and self should be eliminated from the science of psychology.

The orienting reflex, the alertness provoked by something new, was described by Sechenov in 1863, and explored by Pavlov (who also called it the “what is that? reflex” and the “exploration reflex”) who considered it to be our most basic and most powerful reflex. The fact that novelty powerfully arouses our exploratory systems means that we have a mental image of our familiar environment, and that a change in that environment requires us to investigate the properties of the new thing, to see whether it can be explained by the things we already know, or whether it requires us to change our basic ideas about our place in our surroundings. For Pavlov, the study of psychology or physiology without consciousness was simply crazy.

Pavlov said that he studied nutrition to understand consciousness and the nervous system, because eating is our closest interaction with the world. Our brain is part of our digestive system. But eating has become highly institutionalized and influenced by our cultural beliefs. If people begin to think about the meanings of eating, they are beginning a process of cultural and philosophical criticism.

机构或个人拒绝以这种方式感知他人，是对他们理解方式的强加，本身就是一种压迫。那些用“专业训练”来描述学习的人通常用“条件反射”来描述学习，即对每个刺激产生所需的反应。

“条件反射”和“条件反射”这两个术语是由行为主义者j·b·沃森引入心理学的，他错误地翻译和曲解了巴甫洛夫的观点，并坚持认为意识、意志和自我的观点应该从心理学中消除。

1863年，谢切诺夫描述了定向反射，即由新事物引起的警觉，并由巴甫洛夫(他也称其为“那是什么?”他们认为这是我们最基本、最强大的反射。新事物有力地激发了我们的探索系统，这意味着我们对熟悉的环境有一个心理形象，而环境的变化要求我们研究新事物的特性，看看它是否可以用我们已经知道的东西来解释，或者它是否需要我们改变我们在周围环境中所处位置的基本观念。对巴甫洛夫来说，没有意识的心理学或生理学研究简直是疯了。

巴甫洛夫说，他学习营养学是为了了解意识和神经系统，因为吃是我们与世界最密切的互动。我们的大脑是消化系统的一部分。但饮食已经高度制度化，并受到我们文化信仰的影响。如果人们开始思考吃的意义，他们就开始了一个文化和哲学批判的过程。

Helping people with physical problems (such as obesity, headaches or joint or nerve pain, or named diseases) and helping people who want to understand something about the world beyond themselves, are structurally similar, but in the issues of health the questions and the potential answers are more clearly present and immediate.

The Synectics group began with the study of artistic creation, but they found that it was easier to evaluate their progress when they concentrated on technical invention. They found, as Pavlov had, that consciousness and meaning could best be studied in concrete situations. The process of goal-seeking was to be studied in action.

I see the therapeutic or educational or productive situation as a goal-directed biological and social interaction, and the goal can be either the creation of something new and better, or simply the preservation and application of something already existing.

Until just about a generation ago, “teleology” (especially in biological explanation) was considered to be metaphysical and inappropriate for science. Norbert Wiener, who coined the word “cybernetics” (from Greek for “proficient pilot” or “good steersman”) helped to change attitudes toward the word when he used the phrase “teleological mechanism” to describe cybernetic control systems.

帮助人们与物理问题(如肥胖、头痛或联合或神经疼痛,或叫疾病),帮助那些想要了解世界上超越自己,在结构上相似,但在健康的问题和潜在的问题答案都更清楚和直接。

Synectics小组从艺术创作的研究开始，但他们发现，当他们专注于技术发明时，更容易评估他们的进步。他们发现，正如巴甫洛夫所说，意识和意义最好在具体的情况下研究。寻求目标的过程将在行动中加以研究。

我把治疗或教育或生产的情况视为目标导向的生物和社会互动，目标可以是创造新的更好的东西，或者简单地保存和应用现有的东西。

直到大约一代人以前，“目的论”(尤其是在生物学解释中)还被认为是形而上的，不适合科学。诺伯特·维纳(Norbert Wiener)创造了“控制论”(cybernetics，源自希腊语，意为“熟练的飞行员”或“优秀的舵手”)这个词，他使用“目的论机制”来描述控制论控制系统，帮助改变了人们对这个词的态度。

A goal-directed system is one that senses its actions and makes adaptations so that its actions can be refined to achieve a purpose. Between 1932 and 1935, a student and colleague of Pavlov's, P.K. Anokhin, developed this idea of self-regulating systems, and originated the concept of feedback, in describing the ways organisms guide themselves and their adaptations. Building on Pavlov's work, and investigating the origins of innate reflexes, he found principles that would explain the origin of organs and their functions, and that would also apply to the interactions between individuals. The functional system on any level, in embryology, psychology, or society, is a sequence of interactions with a useful result. Movement towards a goal is adaptive, and the system is shaped by the adaptations it makes in moving toward the goal. Resources are mobilized to meet needs, changing the system as it moves towards its goal.

Since there is always novelty in the real world as contexts change, the exploratory function is causing us to continually revise our understanding. Every question forms a functional system, and our brain adapts as we find answers.

This kind of systems theory and self-regulation theory developed along with the field theories in embryology, psychology, chemistry, and some branches of physics. Pattern and analogy were central to their approach. The functional systems are processes that occupy time and space.

The “field” idea in biology (wholes shaping themselves) can be understood by considering its opposite, the belief that cells are guided by their genes (producing a mosaic of parts). That idea, in its extreme form, claimed that cells contained an internal map and an internal clock telling them when and where to move and how to change their form and function as they matured and aged. In reality, cells communicate with surrounding cells and with the material between cells. The existence of long-range ordering processes between atoms, molecules, and cells threatened some of the central dogmas of the sciences.

目标导向系统是一种能够感知自身行为并做出调整的系统，从而使其行为得以改进以达到目的。1932年至1935年间，巴甫洛夫的学生兼同事p·k·阿诺欣(P.K. Anokhin)在描述生物体自我引导和适应的方式时，提出了自我调节系统的概念，并提出了反馈的概念。以巴甫洛夫的工作为基础，对先天反射的起源进行了研究，他发现了解释器官起源及其功能的原理，也适用于个体之间的相互作用。在胚胎学、心理学或社会的任何层面上，功能系统都是一系列具有有用结果的相互作用的序列。向目标的移动是适应性的，系统是由它在向目标移动过程中所做出的适应性所塑造的。调动资源以满足需要，在系统朝着目标前进的过程中改变系统。

由于随着环境的变化，现实世界中总有新奇的事物，探索的功能使我们不断地修正我们的理解。每个问题都形成一个功能系统，我们的大脑会随着我们找到答案而适应。

这种系统理论和自我调节理论是伴随着胚胎学、心理学、化学和物理学的一些分支的领域理论而发展起来的。模式和类比是他们方法的核心。功能系统是占据时间和空间的过程。

生物学中的“场”概念(整体塑造自身)可以通过考虑它的对立面来理解，即细胞是由基因引导的(产生部分的镶嵌)。这种观点的极端形式是，细胞包含一个内部地图和一个内部时钟，告诉它们何时何地移动，以及在它们成熟和衰老时如何改变它们的形式和功能。事实上，细胞与周围的细胞以及细胞之间的物质进行交流。原子、分子和细胞之间长期有序过程的存在威胁到了一些科学的核心教条。

Although Norbert Wiener popularized some aspects of the “teleological” approach to regulatory systems in the 1950s, and saw analogies between the teleological machines and the way the brain functions in Parkinson's disease, by 1950 the digital approach to information processing, storage, and transmission was displacing analog devices in computation and engineering, and was compatible with theories of intelligence, such as neo-Kantianism, that believed that human intelligence can be defined precisely, in terms of discrete rules and operations. Field thinking in embryology, cancer theory, psychology, and other sciences effectively disappeared–or “was disappeared,” for ideological reasons.

Wiener's goal-directed machines, like Anokhin's functional systems, worked in space and time, and the idea of steering or guidance assumes a context of time and space in which the adjustments or adaptations are made. Analog computers and control systems in various ways involved formal parallels with reality. The components of the system, like reality, occupied space and time.

Digital computers, with their different history and functions, for example their use for creating or breaking military codes, didn't intrinsically model reality in any way. Information had to be encoded and processed by systems of definitions. A sequence of binary digits has meaning only in terms of someone's arbitrary definitions.

Parallel with the development of electronic digital computing machines, binary digital theories of brain function were being developed, by people who subscribed to views of knowledge very different from those of Anokhin and Wiener. (Anokhin argued against the idea that nerves use a simple binary code.) These computer models of intelligence justify educational practices based on authoritative knowledge and conditioned (arbitrary) reflexes. Neo-Kantianism has been the dominant academic philosophy in the U.S., turning philosophy into epistemology to exclude ontology. “Operationism” and logical positivism share with neo-Kantianism its elimination of ontology (concern with being itself).

In the 1960s, Ludwig von Bertalanffy developed a theory of systems, defining a system as an “arrayed multitude of inter-linked elements.” Although it was intended as a description of biological systems, it reduced the teleological factors, needs and goals, to a kind of mechanical inner program, such as “regulatory genes.” “Following old modes of thought, some called this orderliness of life 'purposiveness' and sought for the 'purpose' of an organ or function. However, in the concept of a 'purpose' a desiring or intending of the goal always appeared to be involved–the type of idea to which the natural scientist is justly unsympathetic” (von Bertalanffy).

尽管诺伯特·维纳在20世纪50年代推广了“目的论”方法的某些方面，并发现目的论机器与帕金森症患者的大脑功能有相似之处，但到1950年，信息处理、存储、和传输正在取代模拟设备在计算和工程，并与智能理论，如新康德主义，认为人类智能可以精确定义，在离散的规则和操作。由于意识形态的原因，胚胎学、癌症理论、心理学和其他科学领域的思维实际上消失了——或者说“消失了”。

维纳的目标导向机器，就像Anokhin的功能系统一样，在空间和时间中工作，而引导或引导的想法假设了一个时间和空间的背景，在其中进行调整或适应。模拟计算机和控制系统在许多方面都涉及到与现实的形式平行。系统的组成部分，就像现实一样，占据了空间和时间。

数字计算机有着不同的历史和功能，例如它们被用来创建或破译军事密码，但本质上并没有以任何方式模拟现实。信息必须通过定义系统进行编码和处理。二进制数字序列只有在某人的任意定义下才有意义。

与电子数字计算机的发展并行的是，大脑功能的二进制数字理论也在发展，这些理论是由那些认同与Anokhin和Wiener截然不同的知识观点的人提出的。(阿诺欣反对神经系统使用简单的二进制代码的观点。)这些智能的计算机模型证明了基于权威知识和条件反射的教育实践。新康德主义一直是美国学术哲学的主导思想，它将哲学转变为认识论而排斥本体论。“操作主义”和逻辑实证主义与新康德主义共同具有对本体论的消除(对存在本身的关注)。

20世纪60年代，路德维希·冯·贝塔朗菲(Ludwig von Bertalanffy)发展了一种系统理论，将系统定义为“大量相互关联的元素的排列”。尽管它的目的是描述生物系统，但它将目的论因素、需求和目标简化为一种机械的内部程序，如“调节基因”。“按照旧的思维方式，一些人把生活的这种有序称为‘目的性’，并寻求一个器官或功能的‘目的’。”然而，在‘目的’的概念中，对目标的渴望或意愿似乎总是包含在内——这种类型的想法自然科学家是完全不同情的”(冯·贝塔兰菲)。

His system theory was highly compatible with programmed digital computers, that could define the interactions of “elements,” but unlike Anokhin's definition of functional systems, it lacked a pattern-forming mechanism. In Anokhin's view, the system is formed by seeking its goal, and perceiving its progress toward the goal.

Carl Rogers' approach to person-centered processes recognized that the interacting therapist and client or teacher and student were a formative system, rather than just an occasion for one to inform the other.

In the Synectics group, they learned to identify the types of deeply involved interaction that would lead to the best inventions. As in Anokhin's functional systems, resources are mobilized or generated as they are needed. Like Anokhin, they showed that the process of creating something new can be understood and controlled.

Every meaningful interaction involves formative systems.

Stimulation of sensory nerves can cause cells to move into the stimulated area, causing the organ to grow. Environmental enrichment causes brains to become larger, and to metabolize at a higher rate. All of these processes, from the level of energy production to the birth of new cells and the creation of new patterns in the brain, are called up in the formation of a functional system.

他的系统理论与可定义“元素”相互作用的程序化数字计算机高度兼容，但不同于Anokhin对功能系统的定义，它缺乏模式形成机制。在Anokhin看来，系统是通过寻求其目标，并感知其朝着目标的进展而形成的。

卡尔·罗杰斯的以人为中心的过程认识到，互动的治疗师和来访者或教师和学生是一个形成系统，而不仅仅是一个告知对方的场合。

在Synectics小组中，他们学会了识别能够导致最佳发明的深度互动类型。与Anokhin的功能系统一样，根据需要调动或生成资源。像Anokhin一样，他们证明了创造新事物的过程是可以理解和控制的。

每一个有意义的互动都涉及形成系统。

对感觉神经的刺激会导致细胞进入受刺激区域，导致器官生长。环境的丰富使大脑变得更大，代谢速度更快。所有这些过程，从能量生产的水平到新细胞的诞生和大脑中新模式的创造，都在功能系统的形成过程中被调用。

The studies of organismic coherence by Mae-Wan Ho and Fritz Popp appear to support the idea that even the alignment of molecules in cells is responsive to the state of the entire organism.

The reason this seems implausible to most biologists is that cells are commonly still seen as analogous to little test-tubes in which chemical processes occur as the result of random collisions between molecules floating in water. But Sidney Bernhard's study of glycolysis showed that the reactive sugar molecules are passed individually from one enzyme to the next, in an orderly manner.

In this system, the flow of energy, a series of oxidations and reductions changing glucose into other substances, effectively “pulls” the molecules through the system, contributing to order on a molecular level. Function creates structure, which supports function.

Self-regulating systems are self-ordering systems. When a person is allowed to function freely as a goal-directed, questioning system, the formation of patterns in the brain will be spontaneous and appropriate, and orderly. Knowing is the ability to hold patterns in awareness. Knowledge, rather than being stored like money in the bank, is something that is regenerated, or generated, as we need it.

When our own steering system is commandeered by the authorities, our patterns of knowledge will be compartmented, and arranged in a fixed pattern. This kind of knowledge either deteriorates, or it seeks more of its own kind.

While self-regulation and the generation of knowledge are pleasurable, having knowledge imposed isn't.

Korzybski was right in warning about the dangers of letting names become “elements.” This perception led Paolo Freire to emphasize the educational importance of critically giving things their appropriate names, rather than just “banking” the names given by an authority. “To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Human beings are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.” “. . . to speak a true word is to transform the world.” “'Problem-posing' education, responding to the essence of consciousness–intentionality–rejects communiques and embodies communication” (Freire, 1993).

Having the power to assign names is a source of power and wealth. The pharmaceutical industry has been accused of inventing new diseases to sell new drugs for treating them. Old definitions of cancer are hard to change, when the medical profession has invested so much in treatments–radiation and cytotoxic chemotherapy–which conflict with newer biological understanding of cancer.

Mae-Wan Ho和Fritz Popp对有机体一致性的研究似乎支持这样一种观点，即即使是细胞中分子的排列也会对整个有机体的状态作出反应。

这对大多数生物学家来说似乎难以置信的原因是，细胞通常仍被视为类似于小试管，在试管中，化学过程是漂浮在水中的分子之间随机碰撞的结果。但是Sidney Bernhard对糖酵解的研究表明，活性糖分子以有序的方式分别从一种酶传递到下一种酶。

在这个系统中，能量的流动，一系列将葡萄糖转化为其他物质的氧化和还原，有效地“拉动”分子通过系统，在分子水平上促进秩序。函数创建结构，结构支持函数。

自调节系统是自定序系统。当一个人被允许作为一个目标导向的提问系统自由地发挥作用时，大脑中模式的形成将是自发的、适当的、有序的。认知是在意识中保持模式的能力。知识不是像货币那样储存在银行里，而是在我们需要的时候再生的东西。

当我们自己的驾驶系统被当局霸占时，我们的知识模式就会被分割，并安排在一个固定的模式中。这种知识要么会变质，要么会寻求更多的同类知识。

虽然自我调节和知识的产生是令人愉快的，但拥有知识却不是。

Korzybski对让名字成为“元素”的危险的警告是正确的。这种看法促使保罗·弗莱雷强调，批判性地给事物取合适的名称，而不是仅仅把权威给的名称“银行化”，具有教育意义。“人类的存在，就是给世界命名，改变它。一旦命名，世界就会再次出现在命名者的面前，成为一个问题，需要他们重新命名。人类不是建立在沉默中，而是建立在言语、工作和行动中——反思。“……”说一句真话，就是改造世界。“‘问题提出’教育，回应意识的本质——意向性——拒绝公报，体现沟通”(Freire, 1993)。

拥有命名的权力是权力和财富的源泉。制药工业一直被指责发明新的疾病来销售治疗这些疾病的新药。对癌症的旧定义很难改变，因为医疗行业在放疗和细胞毒性化疗等治疗方法上投入了如此之多，这与对癌症的最新生物学理解相冲突。

The person who is learning is critically interacting with both nature and culture, with practical issues and theories.

Applying this to practical problems of health and nutrition, a first step is to begin to think about which things are theories or deductions from theories, which are habits, and which things are felt needs or appetites, and to get in the habit of watching processes or things–such as “signs” and “symptoms”–develop through time.

With practice, people can begin to see themselves as functional systems in their main activities, such as eating, and to watch how their needs influence their actions, and what effects different ways of eating have on their other functions, such as sleeping and working. Do appetites govern the timing of meals and the choice of foods? How does the time of day or time of month affect appetites? People often watch for effects of foods, but usually only for a few minutes or hours after eating. Some foods can produce symptoms days after they were eaten, and the activation of the digestive system by a recent meal can cause a reaction to something eaten previously.

Our traditional cultures, and advertising and schools give us definitions and expectations relating to foods and symptoms and physiology, and they teach us to think of our bodies in terms of an “immune system,” “endocrine system,” “digestive system,” “nervous system,” and “circulatory system,” which are mainly anatomical concepts that are more useful to the drug companies than to the consumer of culture. Both conventional and alternative approaches to medicine and health are likely to let those arbitrary ideas of systems cause them to overlook real, but unnamed, processes.

学习的人与自然和文化，与实践问题和理论进行批判性的互动。

应用这种健康和营养的实际问题,第一步是开始考虑这东西是理论从理论或扣除,这是习惯,都觉得需求或欲望,要看过程或事情的习惯,如“迹象”和“症状”——通过时间开发。

通过实践，人们可以开始将自己视为主要活动(如饮食)中的功能系统，并观察他们的需求如何影响他们的行为，以及不同的饮食方式对他们的其他功能(如睡眠和工作)有什么影响。食欲决定吃饭的时间和食物的选择吗?一天的时间或一个月的时间是如何影响食欲的?人们经常观察食物的影响，但通常只在进食后几分钟或几小时。有些食物在吃了几天后就会出现症状，最近一顿饭激活了消化系统，可能会对之前吃过的东西产生反应。

我们的传统文化、广告和学校给我们关于食物、症状和生理的定义和期望，他们教我们从“免疫系统”、“内分泌系统”、“消化系统”、“神经系统”和“循环系统”的角度来看待我们的身体，它们主要是解剖学上的概念，对制药公司比对文化消费者更有用。医学和健康的传统方法和替代方法都可能让那些武断的系统想法导致他们忽视真实的、但没有名字的过程。

When the organism is seen as a mosaic of parts, rather than as a system of developing fields, medical treatments for one part, such as the “circulatory system,” are likely to cause problems in other “systems,” because the “parts” being treated don't exist as such in the real organism, with the result that the treatments are seldom biologically reasonable.

Besides learning to perceive one's own physiology and becoming aware of the processes of perceiving and knowing so that they can be improved, it's important to seek information to expand the interpretive framework, and to look for new contexts and implications.

Reading with a critical imagination is as important for science as it is for literature or advertising. Good literature often opens expansive new ways of seeing the world, and good science writing can do that too, but too often scientific publications have ulterior motives, and should be read the way advertising propaganda is read.

Some publications now require authors to state their conflicts of interest (such as receiving money from a drug company while testing a drug), but editors and publishers, who choose which studies will be published, seldom reveal their conflicts of interest. As Marcia Angell showed, editorial choices can turn statistical randomness into statistical significance. Private ownership of science journals permits control of their content.

Besides being aware of the conflicts of interest and the frequent insignificance of “statistical significance,” it's possible to recognize some features of the style of argument which is often used in science propaganda. A deductive style, rather than a descriptive and inductive style is extremely common in technical writing, and it should always lead the reader to question the principle from which deductions are made.

当有机体被看作是由各个部分组成的马赛克，而不是一个由各个领域组成的系统时，对其中一个部分(如“循环系统”)的医学治疗很可能会对其他“系统”造成问题，因为被处理的“部分”在真实的有机体中并不存在，因此这些处理在生物学上很少是合理的。

除了学习感知自己的生理，了解感知和认识的过程，以使其得到改善外，寻找信息以扩展解释框架，并寻找新的上下文和含义也很重要。

用批判性的想象力阅读对科学和文学或广告一样重要。优秀的文学作品往往能打开一种全新的视野，优秀的科学作品也能做到这一点，但科学出版物往往别有用心，应该像阅读广告宣传那样阅读。

一些出版物现在要求作者陈述他们的利益冲突(比如在测试药物的同时接受制药公司的钱)，但是选择哪些研究将被发表的编辑和出版商很少透露他们的利益冲突。正如马西娅·安吉尔(Marcia Angell)所展示的，编辑选择可以将统计的随机性转变为统计的显著性。科学期刊的私人所有权允许对其内容进行控制。

除了意识到利益冲突和“统计显著性”的不显著性，还可能认识到经常用于科学宣传的论证风格的一些特征。演绎风格，而不是描述性和归纳风格，在技术写作中是非常常见的，它应该总是引导读者质疑做出演绎的原则。

“Membranes are made from Essential Fatty Acids, therefore those fatty acids are nutritionally essential.” But cells can multiply in a culture medium that provides no fats. In biology, the most popular “principles” are simply dogmatic beliefs about genes and membranes.

In physics, where testable inferences can be drawn from arbitrary assumptions or doctrines, predictions that may be made based on different assumptions are often ignored for ideological reasons. This ideological quality of physics can permeate the other sciences when they use reductionist explanations.

Korzybski felt he was helping humanity to escape “word magic” and to advance to a mathematical view of the world. But the same processes that caused people to “confuse words with things” can cause people to confuse mathematical descriptions with reality.

“Chaos theory,” which was a faddish excitement about the ability to generate unpredictable output from a simple rule (which could be endlessly repeated by a computer), has been suggested to explain many things in biology, including heart rate variability. It doesn't. Instead, it has probably had a slightly harmful effect, by distracting attention from real biological pattern- forming processes.

Real substance can sometimes be modeled by descriptions of randomness, but substances at all levels have intrinsic pattern-forming tendencies, and context-dependent histories. Water, for example, has structure and structural memory that can affect even simple chemical reactions, and even gases have internal complexities that are often ignored. Real observations shouldn't be displaced by theories. The ideal and identical atoms of the reductionists are a crude fantasy, invented, more or less consciously, to serve their ideological purposes. One purpose has been to justify their abstract models of reality. A particularly noxious way of modeling reality has been based on the assumption of randomness, justifying a statistical view of all things.

“膜是由必需脂肪酸制成的，因此这些脂肪酸是营养必需品。”但是细胞可以在不提供脂肪的培养基中繁殖。在生物学中，最流行的“原则”仅仅是关于基因和膜的教条主义信念。

在物理学中，可测试的推论可以从任意的假设或学说中得出，基于不同假设做出的预测往往因为意识形态的原因而被忽视。当其他科学使用还原论解释时，物理学的这种意识形态性质可以渗透到其他科学中去。

柯日布斯基觉得他是在帮助人类摆脱“文字魔法”，以数学的视角看待世界。但是，导致人们“混淆单词和事物”的相同过程，也会导致人们混淆数学描述和现实。

“混沌理论”是一种流行的令人兴奋的理论，它是关于从一个简单的规则(可以被计算机无止境地重复)中产生不可预知的输出的能力，它被建议用来解释生物学中的许多事情，包括心率变异性。它不是。相反，它可能产生了轻微的有害影响，因为它分散了人们对真正的生物模式形成过程的注意力。

真实的物质有时可以通过对随机性的描述来建模，但所有层面的物质都有内在的模式形成趋势和上下文相关的历史。例如，水的结构和结构记忆甚至可以影响简单的化学反应，甚至气体也有经常被忽视的内部复杂性。真实的观察不应该被理论所取代。还原论者的理想和相同的原子是一种粗糙的幻想，或多或少是有意识地为他们的意识形态目的服务而虚构出来的。目的之一是证明他们对现实的抽象模型的合理性。对现实建模的一种特别有害的方式是建立在随机假设的基础上，为所有事物的统计观点辩护。

The neo-Kantian philosophy that has dominated US universities for more than a century argues that our senses (even when extended instrumentally) are limited, so our knowledge must be limited–we can only speak of theories or interpretations, not of being. The world we see is, according to them, only an artifact of our senses. A popular example is that the flower a bee sees is different from the flower a human sees, because the bee's eye is sensitive to ultraviolet light. (The triviality of the example is shown by the fact that when a person's lens is removed because of a cataract, ultraviolet light becomes visible, because it is no longer blocked by the tissue that is many times thicker than a bee's lens.) There is a straw-man quality to their arguments against philosophical realism and empirical science: No one claims that our senses deliver complete knowledge all at once. What the realists claim is that interacting with the world is an endless source of valid knowledge.

When reading science articles, or listening to lectures, and even while privately thinking about experiences, it can be useful to watch for the improper use of assumptions. Our understanding has been shaped by the assumptions of our culture, and these assumptions present an attitude toward the nature of the world, in some cases even about the ontology that our philosophers have said is beyond our reach. “Evolution is shaped by random mutations,” “nuclear decay is random,” “the universe is expanding,” “entropy only increases,” “DNA controls inheritance,” “membrane pumps keep cells alive,” and all of the negative assumptions that have for so long denied the systematic generation of order.

Every communicative interaction is an opportunity for the discovery of new meanings and potentials.

主导美国大学一个多世纪的新康德哲学认为，我们的感官(即使是工具性的延伸)是有限的，因此我们的知识肯定是有限的——我们只能谈论理论或解释，而不能谈论存在。他们认为，我们看到的世界只是我们感官的产物。一个常见的例子是，蜜蜂看到的花与人类看到的花不同，因为蜜蜂的眼睛对紫外线很敏感。(这个例子很简单，因为当一个人的晶状体因为白内障被摘除后，紫外线就可以看到了，因为它不再被比蜜蜂的晶状体厚许多倍的组织所阻挡。)在他们反对哲学现实主义和经验科学的论点中，有一种稻草人的性质:没有人声称我们的感官一下子提供了全部的知识。现实主义者声称，与世界的互动是有效知识的无穷源泉。

在阅读科学文章或听讲座时，甚至在私下思考经验时，观察假设的不当使用是很有用的。我们的理解被我们文化的假设所塑造，这些假设呈现了一种对世界本质的态度，在某些情况下，甚至是关于我们的哲学家所说的超出我们能力范围的本体论。“进化是由随机突变形成的”，“核衰变是随机的”，“宇宙在膨胀”，“熵只会增加”，“DNA控制遗传”，“膜泵使细胞存活”，以及所有长期以来否认秩序的系统生成的负面假设。

每一次交际互动都是发现新意义和新潜能的机会。

Aristotelian motto: If the knower and the known form a functional system they are substantially the same.

亚里士多德的格言:如果知者和被知者形成一个功能系统，那么他们本质上是相同的。

REFERENCES

P.K. Anokhin: 1975, The essays on physiology of functional systems.

1978, Philosophical aspects of the theory of functional systems.

1998, Cybernetics of functional systems: Selected works, Moscow, Medicine, 400 p., (in Russian).

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire. New York: Continuum Books, 1993.

Synectics, W.J.J. Gordon, Harper & Row, 1961.

Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields : Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology, Donna Jeanne Haraway, 1976.

We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, Myles Horton, Paolo Freire, 1990.

Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski, 1933.

Alfred Korzybski, “The Role of Language in the Perceptual Processes,” in Perception: An Approach to Personality, edited by Robert R. Blake and Glenn V. Ramsey. 1951, The Ronald Press Company, New York.

Marshall McLuhan: “…the devil is in the media,” quoted by Derrick DeKerkhove, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto.

Biochemistry and Morphogenesis, by Joseph Needham. Cambridge University Press, 1942.

Cybernetics–or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Norbert Wiener 1948

The Human Use of Human Beings, The Riverside Press (Houghton Mifflin Co.), 1950.

“…the rules of the war game never catch up with the facts of the real situation.” “The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence.” Norbert Weiner, God and Golem, Inc., 1964.

Digital thinking sees the organism as a mosaic of parts, making rigid and specific naming essential; analog thinking sees the organism as fields in development, making flexibility in naming essential.

PS: When defense lawyers collaborate (collude) with prosecutors, it's considered a crime. What if physicians, instead of covering up for each other, used the adversary system that is supposed to produce the best knowledge in law and science, to evaluate their patient's diagnoses and treatments?

J Intern Med. 1999 Jan;245(1):57-61. Decreased heart rate variability in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus is related to arterial wall stiffness. Jensen-Urstad K, Reichard P, Jensen-Urstad M.

Eur J Appl Physiol. 2010 Apr 23. Heart period sensitivity to forced oscillations in ventilatory pressure. Quint SR, Vaughn BV.

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