Networks

[Corrie van Wijk]

From: Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science

Wolfram Media, Inc. ISBN 1-57 955-8, 2002, page 193

Network Systems
"A network system is fundamentally just a collection of nodes with various connections between these nodes, and rules that specify how these connections should change from one step to the next.

At any particular step in its evolution, a network system can be thought of a little like an electric circuit, with the nodes of the network corresponding to the components in the circuit, and the connections to the wires joining these components together.

And as in an electric circuit, the properties of the system depend only on the way in which the nodes are connected together, and not on any specific layout for the nodes that may happen to be used.

Of course, to make a picture of a network system, one has to choose particular positions for each of its nodes. But the crucial point is that these positions have no fundamental significance: they are introduced solely for the purpose of visual representation."

Many of you have an NLP background and probably started to work clean with symbolic modelling. So perhaps you tend to understand one thing in terms of something you already know.
The quote above makes it clear that clean space is not about picturing a symbolic landscape in space, as I noticed it seems to be taught, not even picturing a network. What happens in the brain is like an electric circuit where some nodes connect and others don’t and how you can (perhaps?) change that by triggering them, allowing weak ties to communicate.

And clean space may just be about retrieving memories in a state dependent context.

[phil]

I agree that Clean Space is a network process and not a symbolic landscape pictured in space. Penny and James teach it as the former, as do I.

What is also sometimes taught in Symbolic Modelling trainings is another spatial concept called Perceptual Space, older than and different to Clean Space. In their article Clean Language Without Words (http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/8/1/Clean-Language-Without-Words/Page1.html) from 1999, Penny and James describe the concept:"When our mindbody-space contains symbolic content we call it a Metaphoric Landscape. You can think of the client having a perceptual space around and within themselves. Their body will indicate where symbols are, in what direction they are moving, and how these symbols interact. It is the relationship between the client and their Metaphoric Landscape that prompts their body to dance within its perceptual theatre." Clean Language Without Words, Penny Tompkins and James Lawley, www.cleanlanguage.co.uk
They go on to describe an aspect of working with a client's perceptual space they call 'Physicalising Metaphoric Space':"Some clients' relationship with their Metaphoric Landscape is such that they prefer to explore it by moving around, rather than by sitting and describing it. They may need to walk around the room, occupy the location of symbols, or enact elements from a scene. By 'physicalising the space' the client can access information, gain further insights and derive a better understanding of the structure of their perceptual space." Ibid
This is is indeed different to Clean Space where each 'space' or node holds 'knowing' instead of symbols.*

In the Clean Space process, more important than what any individual space holds is the multiplicity and configuration of the nodes and their relationship to each other. This is what makes Clean Space a network process - and iteratively moving around the network, as Corrie highlights as important, is what makes it a dynamic, systemic process.

Phil


*Well, actually it may hold anything - in the case of the Clean Space process, the question asked of a person when they have found a space is about what they know there or what the space knows, so 'knowing' is what emerges.

[Corrie van Wijk]

Thank you Phil for clarifying this.

As for your note at the bottum, you also referred to this in your thread ''there is no knowing, you know" in this section:

"Both processes, and perhaps particularly the Po6, presuppose that 'knowing' is the requisite learning to be sought. I wonder what would happen if 'know' were replaced by 'notice' or 'perceive' or 'feel' or some other word. Different in each case perhaps?"

What does your dictionary know about 'to know', 'to notice', 'to perceive' and 'to feel' (no doubt you have a more eleborate one than I do).

"Well, actually it may hold anything - in the case of the Clean Space process, the question asked of a person when they have found a space is about what they know there or what the space knows, so 'knowing' is what emerges."

I think 'to know' asks about the (conscious) episodic memory of the person in this space now. The pronoun knows what it perceives, feels, thinks etc.

P.S. From the thread Clean Groupspace/symbolic modelling in this section:

(Corrie) ... "the clean space process as such. The latter is designed to retrieve memories by using possibly different sensory combinations in different spaces to trigger state dependent memories, which is important in therapy. By intuitively moving among perceptual spaces retrieval cues may bring into conscious mind memories that connect self and being-in-the-world, which is a function of episodic memory. Hence we use 'to know' and as soon as a pronoun is used David would ask how old it is and what it is wearing."