Making Models

In my meditation I seem to have come up with the beginnings of an intuitive biographic navigation system. To the three concepts I started with, time, destiny and achievement, the process of meditation has produced two more; destination and economics. For the moment I have assembled these as a five-pointed psychic compass to orientate me within the notional environment I am creating.

Another way of representing my mind-map is set out in the next figure. It provides a holistic model indicating an interplay between three 'outer' realities - my 'close reality' (personal and local), my 'intermediate reality' (regional and national) and my 'distant reality' (the wider world). The three are inter­woven; each dependent on the others for its particular form and direction. The arrows reflect the dynamic relationship between different spatial levels. The diagram also stands for a constant interplay between past, present and future. My present is shaped by my past but is also informed by my hopes and expectations for the future. I am also seeking opportunities to study, reflect upon and discuss possible, probable and preferred futures. The shaded area on the diagram represents the predominant focus of attention of education. It deals mostly with the 'close and immediate reality' in the past and present with a nodding, usually careers-oriented, reference to the immediate future.

Left unshaded is my 'inner' reality, which, the diagram suggests, is in constant interplay with my multi-layered 'outer reality'. What I am affects my picture of the world and what the world is affects my picture of myself. My emerging awareness of the world goes hand in glove with a growing self-awareness. It is a characteristic of building a personal body of knowledge as a voyage of discovery that the explorers learn as much about themselves as about the new landscape they create with their mind maps. The outward journey is also the inward journey. The two journeys are complementary and mutually illuminating.

In a general sense this is a comprehensive model of education in its widest sense. A student is brought face to face with new perspectives, new ways of seeing the world, and alternative visions of the future. In fact, this world says that application of knowledge should no longer be in the hands of specialists. Specialists are needed to tunnel through detail to detail, but people with a natural bent towards synthesis of detail into useful wholes are also required. This is something I recognized in the late 1950s, when I began to champion boosting the status of Honours degrees for generalists. Also, an individual learning that life is inextricably bound up with the problems and prospects of peoples and environ­ments thousands of miles away, will inevitably begin to critically examine personal assumptions, perspectives, values and behaviour. The journey outward is the journey inward. Likewise, carefully and sensitively coaxed, the journey inwards is the journey outwards.

There may be a sudden moment of revelation when the process of growing more introspectively inquisitive about the deep powers of the personality bursts to the surface. In this emergence into close reality, ethical concerns may become more universal than ever before. Practically we may strive to embrace the natural beauties and all sentient beings.. At the same time personal awareness burrows deeper into itself and our sense of belonging reaches out further. It all happens at once, the concentration of mind, the expansion of loyalty to people, other living things and even places. The following is a fragment of a poem, which burst to the surface in T.S.Elliot after visiting the obscure church of Little Gidding. It has a special significance to me because my great grandfather was born in its neighbouring community of Great Gidding.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

As a person/planet relationship this diagram has enormous implica­tions for schools. Once understood, it is not possible to promote a global consciousness in the classroom without the corresponding promotion of self-discovery. True environmental understanding must be informed by feelings, emotions and personal involvement so that students can learn to see themselves in new ways through contact with the natural world. Peace educators have emphasised the importance of exploring our inner reality as an 'inner ecology', whilst others have developed activities for finding 'inner peacefulness'. Those at the leading edge of teaching global understanding have each in their own way arrived at the conviction that the well-being of the planet is inextricably bound up with the achievement of full and authentic personhood. However, at the moment there is no subject with these aims that is anywhere near the centre of national curricula.

I have produced the diagrams as pictures of my thoughts. They are models because my thoughts reside in the continuous ordered passage of nerve impulses back and forth between the cells of my brain. The two models are a gross simplification of the biochemical processes that create, maintain and develop the ideas. In this sense a model is never the real thing. It is either a scaled down, simplified version of something that is going to be created, or a means of communicating using symbols in words and pictures, which stand for a complex idea. In the first part of this chapter I have been communicating using models. In fact, modelling in picture language has always been an integral part of my life as a researcher and teacher. To get to grips with the ideas at the frontiers of biological science I had, from my school days, to learn to make pictures of my inner reality. Indeed the term model was used first in studies of scientific language and then imported into theology. The brevity of the word probably accounts for some of its popularity, making it possible to avoid cumbersome phrases such as patterns of intelligibility, principles of interpretation, and categories of understanding. However, the apparent simplicity of the word must not blind us to the fact that it is capable of a variety of meanings. Initially the most important distinction, which must be drawn, is between descriptive and analogical models.

Descriptive models are used when we have, or think we have, an exact knowledge of the real thing. They are used to depict things, which already exist. A railway enthusiast, for example, may attempt to construct a replica of a particular section of line on a small scale and go to great lengths to reproduce what he has observed. On the other hand, a model may depict something, which is not yet an observable fact. An architect often has such a model constructed in order to show a client the kind of building it is proposed to erect. In this case the subject of the model is not yet a fact but a picture in the mind of the architect. Yet again, we may have a picturing model in our minds when we imagine what something is like, which we can never observe. We have, for example, a mental picture of the solar system although we cannot see it as we picture it in our minds. What all these have in common is that they rest on the assumption that we can describe something, which either is, or could be, an observable fact at some future date, or from a particular vantage point. They are believed to represent exact knowledge of something.

Compared with these descriptive models, analogical models are used when we do not possess a clear picture in our minds of how something would look if we could observe it, or when we wish to speak of something, which could not be observed at all. My diagrams are analogical models. An analogical model, therefore, makes no attempt to provide a direct and undistorted picture of the real thing. It indicates certain characteristics in a graphic manner, but is not expected to provide a description of each and every feature of the original. It is called a model and not simply an analogy because this indicates that the analogy is being used to suggest a correspondence, not merely between one particular thing and another, but between one set of circumstances and another. The analogy is extended to cover a wider field, and the thing is depicted as if it were like something else that we already understand. In this context, both scientific and spiritual models are analogical myths.

One of the greatest barriers to an understanding of a spiritual myth is the fact that we may no longer share the kind of faith that gave rise to it. These myths embody a notional outlook on the world. If this is not shared by one who seeks to interpret the myths, there is at least a strong possibility of misunderstanding. In many studies on primitive religion, in fact, we can often detect a polemical attack upon religion as such. Often the attribu­tion of naivety to mythological man is the means used by a propaganda aimed at notions that an author wishes to discredit, and he often believes his purpose accomplished merely by showing ideas to be extremely ancient.

A most important result of the recognition that mythological thinking is distinctive has been the growth of respect for pre-scientific modes of thought. We are now beginning to under­stand that the pre-scientific mind was not necessarily savage, barbarous or backward, but capable of real insights into the nature of what it means to be alive. While myth was judged exclusively in relation to scientific accuracy, an appreciation of mythological insight was precluded. When intelligence is exclusively equated with the use of modern scientific techni­ques there naturally results such a denigration of ancient man that it is impossible to take seriously anything, which he produced. A sympathetic understanding, on the other hand, reveals that while much may have been gained by the advent of science, much has also been lost.

It is only since the middle of the last century that academic studies have entirely altered the situation and given us some real insights into the nature of myth. For example, a large number of scholars have investigated the thought and life of societies in which myth appears to be alive. This has resulted in an entirely new appraisal of mythological culture. When myths are seen in their effect upon a people's way of life, we gain some insight into the purpose of these stories. Moreover, when we have gained knowledge of certain basic ways in which myth operates we find that the familiar ancient texts begin to speak in quite a new way. Meanings, which we might never have guessed, become plain. Perhaps the most important discovery, which has resulted from this, is that we are no longer able to assume that a people must be either mono­theistic, polytheistic or animistic; they may be all of these at once. Also, a scholarly movement in Christianity has surfaced to comfort people who have difficulty in accepting Biblical ‘facts’. Even Bishops now take the view that Christ’s virgin birth and His empty tomb are myths created by the gospel writers to reinforce the beliefs of people in a pre-scientific age. God on high with His heavenly hosts is a myth for a human relationship with the cosmos that can never be understood. This makes the point that the myths of religion are constantly under review from within in order to adapt them to contemporary society. In this process, it turns out that unacceptable forms of behaviour of previous generations, such as adultery, are now judged by the Church according to the state of mind of the participants.

These church leaders are really making the analogical character of the Christian model more explicit. It is not claimed that any notional model gives more than a partial insight, or assumed that it tells the whole story. In consequence, the use of one model does not preclude the use of others to illuminate the subject from a different point of view. They are simply templates that can be used, discarded or modified by individuals in search of a meaningful pattern of knowledge. In this case the analogical character of the model is fully recognized. On the other hand, the analogical character of a model may not be acknowledged. It then becomes a pseudo-descriptive model and its use creates the illusion that an exact and complete understanding has been attained when in fact this is not true. Moreover, such a usage creates considerable difficulty, because no other analogical model is accepted as valid or necessary. The user believes that his model excludes the need for complementary concepts. It becomes an irrefutable dogma.

In summary, myths are models, which express ideas in a form that is drawn from what we know about the external world. Scientific ideas are myths until they are proven to coincide with external reality.

Models are not only distinguishable on the basis of their claim to be descriptive or analogical. Both of these types of models are divided according to the extent of the task they are considered capable of performing. A model may be seen to have only a limited relevance. It is not taken as offering an explanation beyond a defined and restricted field. The phenomenon of radiation, for example, is a complex one, but some idea of its nature can be given by the use of a model in which it is compared with ballistics. Albert Einstein attempted to depict the nature of radiation by comparing it with the flight of arrows. Max Planck compared high frequency radiation with the firing of massive bullets and low frequency radiation with the firing of small shot. In these expressions we note that one basic comparison underlies a number of particular analogies. We can therefore speak of a model being in use. It is, however, a model whose relevance is seen to be restricted to the problem of defining the nature of radiation. The users of the model do not imply that it would necessarily be of use in a different context.

Another example from a specifically religious body of language is provided by the Old Testament. Here we frequently come across phrases, which are linked together by a common idea, which constitutes the model being employed. Yahweh is referred to as a lover in search of his bride and as a husband caring for his wife. Israel is described as the beloved bride of Yahweh who becomes an adulterous wife. The model provides a pattern of language, which enables the prophets of Israel to characterize certain aspects in the relationship between Israel and her God. No claim is made that the model is exhaustive; on the contrary, it is complemented by a number of imageries, which point out other aspects in the relationship.

On the other hand, a model may be used as a general, or control model of a basic interpretative idea. In this case little limitation is placed upon the relevance of the analogy being used and it is allowed to exert a dominating role and become a control model. The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel provides an example. In the nineteenth century Hegel used a model of history derived from the mechanics, or procedures of a learned debate. He saw the course of history as being like a constant argument in which each creative moment represented the statement of a proposition, and each revolutionary event a counter-argument. The conflict between opposing sides usually resulted in a compromise or synthesis of their views, but this merely prepared the way for the next stage in which the compromise became the proposition to be challenged. Hegel thus saw history as informed by a dialectical movement. Although he intended in his own mind merely to describe the facts, he did in fact impose upon given data a model or interpretative idea in order to make sense of the confusing mass of historical facts. The model proved its possibilities in that Hegel was followed by men who found it fruitful in a number of different contexts. Hegelian theologians followed his lead in using the model as a way of stating certain Christian doctrines such as the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Ascension and used it in the interpretation of New Testament history. Others took Hegel's model along quite different lines and developed a materialistic dialectic of history, which provided a starting-point for programmes of economic and political revolution, and led notably to Communism.

These two uses of models, as of limited or of general application, are not unrelated. Whenever a limited-relevance model is employed it is likely that there is an underlying control model embodied in the very methodology, which has led to its construction. How we understand the particular is largely determined by the way in which we think of the universal. The control model is the key to the language system being employed. It determines the kind of limited-relevance model, which is used and thus controls all our attempts to capture the truth. For example, the division between a scientific and a religious approach is traceable to the employment of distinctive control models. They lead to quite different questions being asked and to quite different kinds of answers being accepted. The scientist is likely to use models derived from such things as radiation, whereas religious literature makes plentiful use of analogies drawn from the field of human relationships. This indicates that each is dominated by a control model very different from that used by others. But the controversy which has frequently raged between science and religion has not simply been due to the existence of dissimilar control models. Argument has only developed when one side or the other has claimed that its model is exclusively relevant, or when the analogical character of the model has not been avowed. Even a control model is subject to limitation in that it only looks at the whole of things from one perspective and its fundamental analogy has to be supplemented by models constructed from another perspective.

All the types of models which I have so far considered may come to have symbolic value. Just as anything may become a symbol because it has the power to evoke a personal response in me, so a model may become a powerful symbolic pattern of my thoughts. The way in which descriptive models come to have symbolic significance can be illustrated by the impact which changing ideas of the solar system have had. In the ancient world the sun was normally thought of as being small in comparison to the earth, and the earth itself was regarded as being in the centre of the system with the sun circling round it. The Copernican revolution in astronomy placed the sun at the centre, and the earth was then understood to be quite small in comparison to the sun and to revolve round it along with a number of other planets. Later the enormous size of the cosmos was increasingly realized, and the solar system in which the earth is placed was then seen to be but one of a large number of such systems. From a purely scientific point of view these changes in our knowledge of the universe were clearly a steady progression towards a deeper realization of the truth. On the other hand, we note that each change has been greeted with a great deal of emotional language. The assertions of astronomers have been contested or enthusiastically taken up with an intensity, which betrays personal motivation. Human beings appear to have felt very much involved at the personal level with astronomical discovery. In other words, the descriptive models of astronomy have been symbolically powerful.

The reason for this is not difficult to discern. Even a casual study of iconography shows us that there have long been two ways in which it is possible to suggest the importance and value of something. One is to place a symbol of it at the centre of a picture, especially in such a way that a number of lines converge upon it. The second is to depict the central object as being much larger in size than everything else in the picture. Ptolemaic astronomy produced a pictorial model of the world which corresponded perfectly with these traditional icono-graphic ideas. The earth was at the centre of creation and it was the largest sphere in the system. There was a perfect correspondence between man's sense of his own importance, value and responsibility in the universe and the current worldview. When the Copernican revolution placed the sun in the centre and made it the larger object, this seemed to imply a radical reassessment of man. At this point the symbolic significance of the earlier world-view becomes apparent. Post-Copernican man has felt that he cannot really be of any ultimate value simply because he is relatively diminutive in an infinitely large universe and an inhabitant of a minor planet which is merely one among countless others. He has continued to assert his own value and responsibility, but has been forced as it were to do so in defiance of the model, which he himself has constructed out of his observations. The model was not created for symbolic purposes but was the picturing model demanded by the scientific evidence. It was not intended to say anything about such subjective matters as man's search for the meaning of the universe or of his own role within it. However, as a fundamental tool of human thought, the heliocentric model had, inevitably, powerful symbolic value.

Before the rise of a scientific attitude some two thousand five hundred years ago, man appears to have had a different order of priorities. Today we construct our theories first and afterwards discover what effect they are having on our souls. In ancient times, on the other hand, there was little desire to know about things in and by themselves. Man was determined by his own subjectivity. He had not yet learnt to think about the universe without concern for his own place within it or even to hold such concern in abeyance until he had completed his investigations of selfhood.

Consequently we find that the models, which he created, were not intended to be taken as descriptive; indeed, their paradoxical nature makes this impossible. They were symbolic models attempting to portray reality as he experienced it as a subject.

At this point, one simple illustration of a model created solely for symbolic purposes must suffice. In the mythology of the ancient world we frequently hear of land, air and sea routes, which traverse the whole of creation. One cannot read very far through one of its stories without hearing of the sun riding his chariot through the sky or his ship of the night along the dark river beneath the earth, of gods descending to earth on a rainbow or of men taking the road which leads through a cave in the mountains down into the darkness of the netherworld. It would seem that the universe possessed a whole network of routes so that one could travel to any part of it with more ease than is today advertised by our travel brochures. Yet it is clear that the roads are not such as could be surfaced with tarmac and the subterranean passageways are not imaginary equivalents to underground railways. Because they constitute a symbolic model it is impossible to set out simply the ideas and emotions, which these routes through the cosmos conjure up. One suggests the meeting of the sacred and the mundane, another speaks of the meaning of death, while yet another tells of the pride in which a man would elevate himself above his kind and be a god. They speak of many things, but together form a model which, though it has nothing to do with the shape, size or weight of the universe, nevertheless depicts aspects of the world as it offers itself to man's consciousness. In it he may find a god as well as a demon, a heaven as well as a hell. It is a world in which above all man is never alone, because there are roads along which he may travel to meet the meaning, which is seeking him out.

The scientific study of man, therefore, has not contributed the basis for any kind of theological model, because it eliminates that with which religion is concerned. In fact religion constantly protests at the reduction of man to physical or animal terms. One suspects that much of the uproar which greeted the work of Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century was much more a protest against the reduction of man by the elimination of his distinctive subjectivity than a protest against Darwin's theory of his origins. The theory of evolution seemed to argue that as man was descended from ape-like ancestors, he was therefore no more than an animal. This was of course an example of 'the fallacy of primitivism', but it was a conclusion generally drawn.

Religion is of the greatest importance in taking societies on notional voyages into a vast cosmos. Art also functions as a notional lifeboat on the same scale but at a very personal level. This modelling role of art became obvious at the turn of the last century with the sudden outburst of the so-called modern movements. These movements were really attitudes of mind of individuals and small groups who attempted in their works to model the ambivalence of contemporary existence. Suprematism is a good example of such a one-man performance. Kasimir Malevich was its guiding spirit. It appeared about 1913 in Russia. Malevich's inten­tion was to express ' the metallic culture of our time', not by imitation, but by creation. He disdained the traditional iconography of representational art. His elemental forms were designed both to break the artist's conditioned responses to his environment and to create new realities 'no less significant than the realities of nature herself.

Malevich's geometry was founded on the straight line taken as the sup­remely elemental form which symbolized man's ascendancy over the chaos of nature. The square, never to be found in nature, and rarely used in art of the past, was the basic suprematist element: the fundamental germ of all other suprematist forms. The square was a repudiation of the world of appearances, and of past art. In 1915, along with other such fundamentalist canvases, his painting of a black square on a white ground was first exhibited in Petrograd, then the capital of Russia. But in his mind it was not merely a square, and Malevich was annoyed with the intransigence of critics who failed to grasp its true nature. Empty? It was not an empty square, he insisted. It was full of the absence of any object; it was pregnant with meaning, like the empty gaps between thoughts.

Furthermore, the more subtle implications of Suprematism did not reside in the paintings but in the small drawings of suprematist elements, made by Malevich between 1913 and 1917. Not black, but grey, they were carefully and deliberately shaded in with a pencil. The square and its permutations: the cross, the rectangle, was meant to show the signs of the personal hand-brain relationships as an assertion of the human agency. The latter is central to the philosophy of Suprematism. But although the geometric forms were intended to convey the supremacy of mind over matter, it was also essential that they demonstrate another quality. Why have I blackened my square with a pencil? asked Malevich. 'Because that is the humblest act the human sensibility can perform.'

The signficance of the empty white fields in which suprematist forms hover is that they model the illimitable reaches of outer space; more so, of inner space. Malevich believed that the blue of the sky was the blue of tradition, a coloured canopy that blinded his view to infinity. It had to be torn apart.

'I have broken the blue boundary of colour limits,' he proclaimed. 'I have emerged into white. Beside me, comrade pilots, swim in this in­finity. I have established the semaphore of Suprematism. Swim! The free white sea, infinity, lies before you.'

This cosmic transcen­dentalism echoes the metaphysical language of his contemporary artist Wassily Kandinsky, and the theosophical speculations of the legendary Madame Blavatzky whose germinal spirits loom large behind the personal development of both thinkers.

Art, Malevich believed, was not meant to be utilitarian. It should never seek to satisfy material needs. The artist must maintain his spiritual independence in order to create.

Finally, to finish this introductory map of my forthcoming meditations, I know that I have to find a place for literary models. I cannot say that I am widely read. Reading other than scientific literature was a distraction when there were always so many rapidly emerging new scientific facts to assimilate. However, for some reason, which I have yet to understand, I have returned time and again to Thomas Hardy and Tolstoy and, less frequently, and in a more selective state of mind, to Dostoevsky. At the moment, to stake a claim on literary activity as a modeling process I would like to consider three passages from War and Peace.

The first is the famous portrayal of Prince Andrew in the moment in which he is struck down at the Battle of Austerlitz:

'What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way,' thought he, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, and whether the cannon had been captured or saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was nothing but the sky - the lofty sky, not clear yet immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds gliding slowly across it. 'How quiet, peaceful, and solemn, not at all as it was when I ran,' thought Prince Andrew - 'not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it that I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy am I to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God! ...'

The second passage (from the twenty-second chapter of Book VIII) is an account of Pierre's feelings as he drives home in his sledge after assuring Natasha that she is worthy of love and that life lies all before her:

‘It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty ill-lit streets, above the black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared to the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the centre of it, above the Perchistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of the year 1812 - the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet, with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having travelled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly - like an arrow piercing the earth - to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining, and displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life’.

The third selection is a short passage from the relation of Pierre's captivity in Book XIII:

‘The huge endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the crackling of camp-fires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the red camp-fires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the lit sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling stars in its far away depths. 'And this is me, and all that is within me, and it is all I!' thought Pierre. 'And they caught all that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!' He smiled, and went and lay down to sleep beside his companions’.

These three selections illustrate how an important purpose in the literary arts is to bring into being a modelled instance of a feeling of what life is about. In all three passages there is a standard technical form like a great curve of motion into the cosmos from a conscious centre - the eye of the character through which the scene is ostensibly perceived - and returning decisively to earth. This motion is allegorical. It communicates plot-values and visual actualities in its own right; but it is at the same time a means of conveying a shift of inner reality. The upward scanning of external reality of the eye results in the downward gathering of the human consciousness. To complete the motion the eye turns inward to find that vast, exterior spaces have passed into the mind. As literature they provide a remarkably accurate description of my second pictorial model of being.

All three of Tolstoy’s episodes focus on a separation between earth and sky. The vastness of the sky extends above the fallen prince; 'dark' and 'starry', and fills Pierre's eyes as he tilts his head against his fur collar; the full moon hangs in it and draws his glance into far-away depths. In a strange way Tolstoy’s world is like the pre-scientific models of the Ptolemaic universe and medieval cosmology. Celestial bodies surround the earth and reflect the emotions and destinies of men through stellar portents and symbolic projections. The comet is like an arrow transpiercing the earth, and this image hints at the perennial symbolism of desire. The earth is emphatically at the centre. The moon hangs above it like a lamp and even the distant stars appear to be a reflection of the camp-fires. And central to the earth is man. The entire vision is anthropomorphic. The comet, 'vigorously holding its tail erect', suggests a horse in a terrestrial landscape. But did Tolstoy really intend his readers to go away with this particular mental image. We shall never know, because what and author writes is an actual description of what is in his mind. It is his truth in words, and no further explanation is necessary. It is not the job of authors and artists to enter into endless dialogues with their adherents about what they really meant to say.

I am convinced that Tolsoy’s miniature cosmos proclaims, with dramatic freshness, two ancient pieces of morality: that no man can be altogether another man's captive, and that the trees of wild gardens, like the one across the road from where I live, shall murmur long after the armies of invading conquerors have gone to dust.

This is a good point to conclude my meditation, which began at dawn with trees illuminated on a mid-winter solstice. I seem to have discovered a personal stage on which are presented many ‘dramas of the soul’. The players are images from the outer world in confrontation with my mind’s inner images. It seems that the forces engaged on either side are just about evenly balanced.

In a small way, I have pushed against my twofold relationship with the world and feel that, in defining a new mental map with which to navigate my life, I have lost some potential freedom of thought. From one point of view I am a physical entity and must live in a world of objects to which I have to assign values. At the same time I am a spiritual being who must establish personal relationships with those responsible for these images and that mysterious other being who is another self within me. These two aspects of my total being confront the world in quite different ways. I have already made this point by saying that any effort which I make to understand the world as an It is accompanied by the fact that I am not only an It but also a Thou. Any world-view that I make for myself therefore has importance at the subjective level. I have to live in the world as a person and so the descriptive and analogical models that I construct usually have symbolic significance. I may attempt to conceive the world in purely objective terms, but I cannot escape my own subjectivity. Therefore, in trying to describe my particular mental pathway through life, I think I will have to describe four kinds of mental models; my scientific ones; my religious ones, and what I find meaningful and puzzling in works of art and literature.

First, how do I define the pathway? Luckily, two years ago, a piece of computer technology was invented to help people to make mental maps. The software programme is called ‘Mind Manager’ and it is based on the topic map, which is a common approach to set out relationships between ideas by drawing a framework of lines and branches to capture fleeting thoughts and linkages between them as they appear. This framework or scaffold, called a ‘mind-map’ is constructed from single starting point from which branches are automatically drawn to link with a set of related topics. Topics in this primary level may each be given branches to the next layer. In this way a tree is created where the outer branches carry the finer details or examples. This is a pictorial representation of the basic computer navigation system embodied in Windows Explorer i.e. each folder may be opened to reveal more folders until eventually the information is reached as picture or document files. Mind Manager is more useful to track the development of ideas because the primary branches may be positioned to indicate a chronological sequence of development. Also, information may be placed at each branch point to help the tracker decide which learning route to take next. A mind-map is also a very economical way of presenting a complex set of relationships, like a life story, where, at a glance, one thing logically leads to another within the greater scheme of things. I hope the advantages of the new technology can be appreciated by looking at the following Mind Manager print out of my first recollections about the chronological sequence of my learning pathway that led to this meditation.