Introduction

The notion of context thus far

I have used the notion of context more often, from the very start in fact, without especially stopping to ask myself how linguists interpret it. At the outset I introduced it as a new idea in the structure line, as inner context in contrast with the external context. Subsequently, when investigating the duality of the, for the process subjective and objective contexts, I have deepened the notion. Earlier, when thinking about relationships within a network, the external context emerged as an indispensable condition for the development of processes. In this part, in transit from building stone to relation, I want to explore the notion context a bit farther.

Links to
inner context of space and time - structure #6/2 and its tables,
limits of processes - structure #19/6.
on potentialities and the relations between processes - structure #26/8.
 

survey - The building materials of a process

If everything is process then a context must be one too. In order to study a process as context and to further develop the universal relation I again want to give a survey of its building stones. With building stones I mean the elements which, within the structure of a process and also in a process 'context' or in a process 'world' (world in the sense of 'surrounding world', not of cosmos or  universe because I do not know how the universe looks like from the outside and I do not want to fall into the trap of the paradox), are being combined:

• spatiality in time and motion (which we also know as 'the double character' of light that posesses both particle- and wave-properties [ note ]) which form the basis of the process:
  • the four static elements of space and time, in polarity,
  • the three dynamic elements, in dialectic,
• a given inner world and a learning environment approached from there, both indispensable for the process which finds itself in a context:
  • the two points of view subjectivity and selectivity, in symmetry,
• the co-ordination of a process, over time seeking consistency both in itself and in relation with its environment:
  • the oneness, in ongoing reflection or mirroring.

Links to
the foundation of my thinking about the structure of the process - structure #6/2
the plain list of components - structure #23/7.
 

The cosmos, a whole of contexts

Within the framework of the cosmos as a whole and so necessarily as context of everything inside it I first want to look loosely at what I already know about the phenomenon. What comes to my mind when asking myself what a context is?

The context of a process is its learning environment. A process cannot run away from its context. The process depends on it in order to develop itself by getting involved in it and to be able to realise its purpose or function.

Due to its unique purpose every process has a unique individual viewpoint from where it observes the environment: the perception of a context is therefore by definition different for every process.
Every process is selective in its approach to the actual context because, seen from its subjective standpoint, the actual context consists only of that which at that moment is needed for the process; it perceives only that which it needs at that moment.

Every process in turn is itself part of the context of other processes and therefore plays its part in both the entanglement and in the development of other processes.

The context of a process extends, is spatial, according to the character of the process and according to the situation of the moment.
The spatial context of a process can be passively varying, like for example the weather moves across a mountain, a human being or a group of people, but it can also be actively changed by people and other animals when they move to another place or join another group. So I am thinking here of climate, a neighbourhood, a nation, a political party, et cetera.

The context of a process is volatile, variable, progressing in time: the context of a process is therefore, in addition to being different and selective, always once-only.
The context breathes the spirit of the time (after the German 'Zeitgeist'), it shows the prevalent spirit or mentality of a certain period, it is the character of a period. It is an actual tendency which occupies a certain space.

The world as context is a set of contexts existing of and for its self-generated processes.
The context, (part of) the world or the cosmos, holds - only at that place and time - the suitable circumstances for the perfect support of that singular process.

The sum total of all contexts is an entirety: the world is an organic unity, a system of processes and their contexts.
The system consists of processes that have been generated and, continually generating, become.
The system consists of overlapping, individually interpreted, surrounding worlds or contexts, as a process a context generates processes.
 

Around the relation between context and process

The relation between context and individual process is, as I said, a relation of oneness.
The actual context determines the character of that one occurrence, the unique character of that process at the time of its initiative to start. The actual context bestows every process with its singular character.
The context, progressing in actuality, adjusts itself continually and transforms itself, both in range (mother, home, neighbourhood, group, city, region, country, race, work, state, politics) as in character and ambition (by nature of its constituent parts: mental, linguistic, intellectual, emotional, ethical, idealistic, cultural, historical). It presents a process with every amplification of resistance and support it needs in order to develop and reach its destination. It gives every new initiative a singular character: its own inner space and its inner time.
The world has generated every process with a purpose; a process is for the development of that given purpose entirely dependent on its actual context. Surrounding world and individual process cannot do without each other, they are mutually dependent. Processes cannot but use other processes.

Compound processes continually generate processes which they affix to the context and use for their purpose. Compound processes may be able to stop the processes they generated but they cannot remove them out of the context, they continue to exist in history and memory of both.

Every occurrence or process, be it a telephone call, the flu, a greeting or an idea, has been generated and, with that, has received a purpose.
A process, because it is dependent on its context, is therefore also dependent on other processes in that context in order to develop its potentialities and realise its given purpose.

Every process does what it, according to its task or function, is best at and keeps doing that while it develops itself. Behaviour consists in fact of a number of processes which the original process has generated in its actual context. Whilst it develops itself in its context it will adjust its manners to the level of its development whereas its purpose never changes. It shows adjusted new behaviour in new processes.

A process does not per se satisfy the expectations of the generating or principal process, after all the concrete purpose is being affixed to the process by the actual context in a broad sense. A process can undertake several attempts to make sure that a certain purpose will be realised.

Individual citizens and farmers have, by reason of their need, together commissioned the collection of garbage, the construction of roads, the supply or the production and sale of goods, the transportation of people, the safeguarding of their community, to mediate in conflicts, to secure quality in the form of education, care of the ill, cultural facilities and recreation, information, to create space for meetings, et cetera. Commissioners have, at various levels, formed communities and set up governing bodies. Citizens give their community its reason for existence and its rights.
An administration process has received its commission and reason for existence from this context.

A collection of complex processes, a crowd of people, a swarm of birds, a colony of ants, has a broader contact with the actual context and is by that a more obvious representative of the spirit of the time, which is the character of the context which renews itself constantly, than compound processes individually.
A collection of compound processes has in its joint acting a more marked effect on a broad context than one of its processes individually.
Both individual processes and collections of processes are susceptible to influencing and manipulation by another process; the collection is more vulnerable, merely because it returns a bigger effect when the intention of the manipulator to steer the needs is successful.

Customers as community (process) and individual (process) have power to and are responsible for the supervision of their institutions.

The notions of dependence and mandate raise questions on ethical issues. The relation between processes is symmetric, both poles are equivalent.

How is context defined by linguists?

I want to close this language-episode with the view of linguists of context.
The Oxford dictionary defines the notion as ' the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood'.
The English wikipedia says: 'the context of an event, word, paradigm, change or other reality includes the circumstances and conditions which surround it; and: In case studies (psych.), the context of a case is the history and geography that do not form part of the case proper but the understanding of which is nevertheless necessary in order to understand the case'.
The Dutch wikipedia says: 'the context is the background or reference of every expression or idea or event in which it was expressed, in relation to which it obtains a particular signification'.
The German wikipedia says (shortened): 'with context (latin con-textus >Cohesion<, plural "contexts") is meant a cohesion or environment for example of a word or an action (contexo = interweave, contextus = intertwined, continuous. Textura, in English "the texture")' [ note ].

So, an event needs context in order to be fully understood. But the question remains, whatever a process (an event in the full meaning of the word, including statements and ideas, feelings, values and rocks) may do, does it always come about in connection with one context or another? Because I concluded earlier that a process cannot exist in isolation I want to further examine the connection.
I want to pay attention to the notion of context in relation with becoming. For that purpose I shall first work again upon the notion of a process as a system.
 

Context as a system

Above I have spoken about swarms, masses and communities which are contexts of one individual compound process like a single fish, person, business, church. I could add the examples of a language with an individual word or a cell with the single molecule. The step from a compound process like an animal, to a compound context, like a family or a class, may perhaps have been a rather big jump, an enlarging step which can do with some explanation. A person as system may be familiar but how a mass uses and maintains its relations needs some clarification. The question is how such a system can in fact determine its survival and its development, how its memory works and how it receives and holds energy. It is therefore necessary to briefly return to the nature of systems.

I am not alone in my opinion that a process works with a space and time of its own and has its own lifetime. I use the words process or system whereas natural scientists almost exclusively use system. My conception of process is in accordance with the ideas of Whitehead, who in his philosophy of organism gives a very theoretical explanation a) of process as actual event which is the concrescence of an actual entity, b) of process as nexus which is a set of actual entities and c) of process as society which is, for each of its members, an environment with some kind of order in it and that cannot exist in isolation. He considers context to be an ordering element in evolution, as a complex system or organism [ note ].

Looking for how natural scientists think about system I ran into the fact that several science fields, among others chemistry, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and biology are concerned with the subject. The field has not yet been clearly defined [ note ]. I concentrate mainly on the information of Ilya Prigogine, chemist (Nobel prize chemistry 1977), physicist (thermodynamics, irreversibility and entropy, physical chemistry), statistician and interested in philosophy, duration of time and music. He considers systems to be cybernetic (self-organising) dissipative mechanisms, as complex and chaotic systems, which display spontaneous self-organisation. In relation to my question about context it is interesting that he speaks of unexpected manifestation of 'disorder-order' processes in systems. He presents a solution for the problem of irreversibility (the second law of thermodynamics) by stating that instable systems dispose of intrinsic inner time and inner age. According to Prigogine inner time is very different from clock time [ note ].

The issue of the transference of knowledge (like thoughts, ideas, agreements, mentality) between parts of a context or members of a community I have as yet not sufficiently studied. Whitehead uses as an example of a society 'the collection of people who speak Greek' and says that 'we may (expand Newton's phrase and) state that the common sense of mankind conceives that all its notions ultimately refer to actual entities' [ note ]. It was already understood that actual entities constitute space and time, in everyday language: are concrete. I conclude now that knowledge processes are carried by existing entities, for instance in the concrete form of movement patterns in a body.

I experience my body as the system that offers me continuity by temporarily holding food in order to extract energy of it or to help replace parts, by offering a storage place for my history in order to let me have an identifiable place between relatives, other animals and other things. I experience it as the context which keeps my preferences and dislikes for me in order for me to recognise myself, which keeps my memories and the emotions which I had at the time for me in order for me to comprehend myself. I also experience it as the context which is mine.
I look at my body as the system that enables me to actually relate with various contexts and in which I try to order and direct these relations. I look at it as the whole of body parts and properties which seem to me at times just loose pieces, that forces me to adjust and keep in balance, in which I can get entangled by discrepancies or incomprehensible things. I also look at it as the context in which I have made my home, in which I feel comfortable and which stores my process.

Link to
a world view, the world seen as an open system - structure #23/7
 

Continuity and historical context

A process does not appear out of the blue. The context, the environment of a process, plays a conjoining role. The context takes care of continuity. A process has a previous history, it emanates from something. The context constitutes the relation with the members of its species, the historical context of a process contains the characteristics of it. I have in mind the transfer of genetic information - the experience of the species - of animals and plants which follows a purely physical route. The properties of the species and the gender are being transferred in a number of processes preceding the process in its solitary relation with the world. Those preceding processes are for a human being the ancestors and parents, the processes of conception, pregnancy and birth. [ note ].
The vehicles of this information are the cells of the body with in their nucleus the genome, consisting of genes and (for the human species) switches to some of these genes. The circumstances in the environment can affect the genes, from very slow (influence of natural environment), via relatively fast (influence of human environment and behaviour on the human switch-gene) to direct (influence of human manipulation of organs, cells and genes). With other animals, notably with some insects, other methods of information transfer are found. Of worker bees is known that they determine the gender and with that the function of the eggs by dispensing specific diets.
The properties of for instance mountains, tea cups, rivers are recorded, simply, in the materials involved in their existence. It is clear that the history of mountains lies enclosed in the form itself of the rocks and can be read through streams, from the folding of layers of rock, from the crevices and worn down valleys and from the materials of the moraines. The tea cup follows the properties of the porcelain, the character of the Rhine follows the water with everything it carries on its flow towards the lowest point over the bed and along the borders. And always there is a broader context involved: respectively the tectonic plates, the potters with their skill in their time, the landscapes with their history.

These were the genetic and the physical ways of continuity. But what all this is really about is the fixation of experience, the relation between then and now and about the red thread of comprehending. I return to man and animal. It turns out that an experience brings about connections in beings with brains, customs and routines wear down and leave their traces behind. Antonio R. Damasio in his rather recent report of research of the brain [ note ] has confirmed this capacity in human bodies to represent. Thoughts and emotions cause connections and movements, they are physial situations which are recorded by the body. Not only brains show these traces of experience, every physical body shows in course of time traces of experiences in all of its parts in the form of muscle formation, virtuosity, fat formation, wear, deformation, erosion and the like, as the examples above already indicated. Remembering is the capacity to be able to revert to physical, emotional, intellectual and intuitive information about earlier conditions of a body which it has physically retained in its memory.

Continuity is certainly not the same as constancy. Apart from the fact that constancy is at variance with the nature of matter - and thus of every organism, body, system - which always holds energy (E=mc²) which always fluctuates and tends towards situations of instability, the constancy of 'constant' simply does not exist (for instance the 'constant' c, the speed of light, is not constant). Ilya Prigogine concludes that a 'body', an instable system, thanks to its intrinsic steering-mechanism (operator), inner time and its related inner age or memory, can anticipate future events [ note ]. As example of internal age he uses the global estimate which we have, from the outside, of the place of a thing in its time.
Nevertheless, a process disposes of the constancy of its given end in the form of a purpose and suitable instruments to put it into effect.

Transference of energy, including information on experience and about emotions, can on account of the examples given take place through physical means. The universal integrating relation is the co-ordinating connection which takes place in the actuality between a process and its context and between a process and its cycles. The relation must for that purpose be able to have the disposal of a physical collective memory which enables the development of species, recollection and the preservation of experience. Therefore I assume that a context, which is a process, is capable of retaining experiences and has a memory at its disposal to refer to. Just as unlikely as it is that a process materializes from nothingness, so will a process not just disappear without a trace.
 

Actuality and cyclicity

The development of a process which is in itself continuous, takes place in the actuality and in the cyclicity of actual processes. The context, the environment of the process, undoubtedly plays an important role in this too. I'll start with the gathering of some facts about actuality.

I take the mandate to be the one constant magnitude of the process. Developing itself towards a given purpose implies expanding, unravelling, unfolding, evolving itself. Developing out of which complications and involvement? Out of the confusion and involvement which results from relations with contexts, with an environment which appears as very volatile, inconstant, fickle? A compulsory relation, because every process needs energy from outside. With impulses and resistance which provide folds, tangles, knots and wraps that set a process to work. An environment which supplies animals with nourishment. It is the interaction between processes which leads to folds, tangles, knots and wraps, which compels to recollection and challenges to anticipate and steer towards a solution. It is the process that is in need of situations of instability. Exchange of energy disturbs the balance of a durable process that, anticipating possiblities, shall strive after the realisation of its commission. Entanglement and development belong together, as was to be expected.

From a disturbed equilibrium a process strives for the development of its purpose. The idea that a 'body' has a steering mechanism of inner time is not new for me. Nor that a 'society' is steered by the joint ideal of order of its members. For me this is not strange because I started precisely from the principle that every process, a body or a mass, as well as a society or a context, posesses and handles its own intrinsic internal space and time. That it is consistently at work on growth.

Thinking about disturbance of equilibrium and about development means thinking about cyclic processes. How is that? A cycle is a process that makes one passage through a certain time-scale along the characteristic phases and parts, according to its pattern. The time-scale can vary from the total life cycle of an animal to parts thereof like a day cycle, or the cycle of a body-cel, or some activity from beginning to end, like eating an apple. Every cycle in that period passes along the pattern of one of the functions which the process has available, the cycle happens in interaction (exchange of energy) with the actual context. Cycles are unique processes, not repetitions or spirals. An example: the different functions wield different time-scales and can have different ages. In a young child it is clear that its development concentrates on one function at a time, roughly either on physical or intellectual or emotional growth. A time-scale can, to some extend, be interrupted and later continued again.

The conclusion is that becoming and growth consist of series of tiny processes which are each unique. The context of these processes is located at a specific place and at a specific time. At that point 'here and now', the context with the spirit of the time and its collective memory is present, the context is in one-time interaction with a single process. This is what is meant here with actuality, it is spatiality progressing in time. Because of this progression it is true that the 'now' passes quickly but it is also a graspable dividing point, a fluctuating energy which presents the process with indispensable volatility. The standard astronomic data of time and place serve as indicator of actuality, the 'volatile' intrinsic internal space and time of the surrounding context, the pendant of the 'constant' intrinsic internal space and time of the inner context. Not the context as process is instable but the context as volatile and changing supplier or attractor of interactive processes.
The context is a variable challenge for an in itself constant process. A process can grab onto one of the fast changing possibilities out of the collection of possibilities in actuality. That results then in a new process with the actual character which for that process will be a constant magnitude. The process in this manner anticipates both the coming development of its context and plans the future development of itself therein. The process - selective from its intrinsic inner space and time - estimates its possibilities in the progressing context.

As human and individual processes we are continually accompanied by the dilemma of an immutable private purpose surrounded by a (chaotic) world of actual contexts which continually presents itself in different ways. We communicate with it and, anticipating our possibilities, we steer our development. Our internal age is the distance we have covered on the path to our goal.
The evolution of time is the stream of relations which a complex process, a 'body' or 'matter', maintains with its actual contexts for its development in its own intrinsic time. That stream of relations is the exchange of energy between the enduring individual process and actual contexts. Prigogine used the expression 'stream of influences'.
It seems to me that the moment has arrived to formulate a new survey of the structure.

Links to
an individual spacetime system - structure #9/3
orientation in space and time - structure #13/4
individuality, dynamics and clones - structure #16/5.
 

The relations between a process and the actual context

The universal relation is the (general) dynamic connection with the co-ordinates space, time and as many others as there are, which a process as a self-organising system needs in order to perform its function.
 

survey - The elementary relations

In the layout of this survey I'll try to combine the formal and the informal approach in order to get more lucidity. Where context is given in bold print the actual context is meant. The process that commissions the purpose, the commissioning process, shall be indicated in the sequel of this chapter by c.p. With 'actual' is meant: existing here and now.

The purpose for the new process is simple: "send this sms with 'yes'". The message has been written, the device is ready. The commissioner is ready to send. The first contact to be laid is the connection with the environment.
 

Some final remarks

Here I need to add a remark on what is missing from this survey. Because this survey was intended to shape the logical necessity of subsequent relations and the role of the context in a process, I had to make choices. At first it was a purely linear ordering with in turn a relation concerning the environment and one concerning the singularity, continually in the dialectic wave-motion. But by cutting the list in two and placing the parts next to each other it also became possible to visualise more expressly the six relations between the polarities of space and time.
All other relations, and there are many, are absent. As they are important, though not in this framework, I'll come back to it later.
The functions could not be included either. They are missing because the concrete relation with space and time of the c.p. is not given and because of that neither the pattern nor their place therein is known. This makes the above list pointedly into an impersonal theoretical construction, in which it is at best possible to imagine the impossible, that the functions would be located in the allied relations. Perhaps thanks to the lack of individuality it has become clear where in a process, in this case and in all cases, the crucial timekeeping of action lies: in the tenth relation. The allied consistency function can be in fact found in every domain and will be able to intervene from that phase in the course of a process. The typical sequence of, in this case, the actual choosing and the consistently planning of its autonomy come out clearly in these relations. This sequence is workable thanks to the cyclicity of the process and emphasizes the distinctive character of the connections.

The purpose of "sending this sms-message 'yes'" looked like a simple thing to do, but that was a mistake. In order to generate that process the c.p. must, after some preparation, let go of it and let it get in contact with the context all by itself. It resembles a wave front propagating. In order to reach implementation work has to be done by both c.p. and context in the form of enormous amounts of these minute actual events.

For me this has obviously been a process in which theoretical possibilities were considered, a thinking process. Thus I could answer the earlier question of how non-physical information can land in the memory of a physical body: such a non-physical process of information exchange takes place with the help of connections between parts of that physical body. And that in turn answers the more general question of whether information exchange only happens between humans: I may have introduced myself as a human viewpoint but I am replaceable by any physical process, inclusive of a compact combustible gas bubble. Sorry, I forgot these individuals do not use GSM's.

Links to
the basis of my thinking about the structure of the process - structure #6/2 and its addendum,
the list of components - structure #23/7,
the basic elements and their relations - addendum to #26/8,
addendum: a general survey of the structure of processes: the relations.
 

Proceeding to the internal network of relations

The universal relation is not an end, it integrates continually. The continuous connection contains the interest of a process in its purpose for which it serves, but the manner in which it is to be realised is only indirectly given, in actual events. The future of a process and the future of its contexts develop jointly but according to their own tempo and time-scale. Thus the constancy of a compound process 'human' will dedicate its steering arts piecemeal (freely taken from Karl Popper) and, zigzagging between all sorts of extremities of good and evil, finally reach in itself the perfect harmony of all its constituent parts.

The description of the external relations, of the agreement as it works itself through in the course of time, will only come up in part three of the architecture of the relations of the process. Because, all in good time, I'll first continue to analyse the structure that underlies the patterns, the individual everyday practice of the network of relations.