Aphanipoiesis

Abstract

Aphanipoiesis

Abstract

The multiple entities of a living system are always mutually responding to the shiftings of each other in ways that constitute both stability and change. It may be possible to name the changes that form, but before such naming, deeper abductive possibilities have already begun to quicken. Gregory Bateson sometimes described abduction as the way one context describes another. Charles Sanders Peirce more often described it as a way to hypothesize between contexts.

A New Word to Describe an Aspect of Living Process: Aphanipoiesis

Pathology and vitality in living systems may be observable and describable; however, the ways in which they come to occur are at least in part unseen. “Insidious” describes dangerous outcomes that “creep up” through the combination of unseen contributing processes. But a way to describe a parallel but opposite process, by which vitality, healing, and creativity come into being by the coalescence of multiple unseen factors, is lacking. 

Aphanipoiesis (n.) combines two words from ancient Greek to describe this way in which life coalesces toward vitality in unseen ways. (Aphanis comes from a Greek root meaning obscured, unseen, unnoticed; poiesis is from one meaning to bring forth, to make.) Other words which also carry the root aphanis include phantom, diaphanous, and phenomenon, while the root poiesis is familiar from the word poetry, along with Maturana and Varela’s autopoiesis.

Hypothesis and Aphanipoiesis

According to Peirce, abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis and is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea.

Central to abductive process is the notion of hypothesis. But what does a hypothesis say about the anticipatory systems of perception of any given observer? In noticing aphanipoiesis, it becomes relevant to explore the realm of unseen contributors coalescing to produce the foundations of hypothesis itself. Hypothesis is limited by pre-existing anticipatory patterns. If one listens only for what one knows to listen for, that is what will be heard. In the study of aphanipoiesis, hypothesis is an indicator of those pre-habituated perceptions through which new information will be filtered. Familiarity with something in one context enables a kind of description of another context to become a basis for experiencing newness. A new flavor is explored through the experience of known flavors; a new form of music is explored through the understanding of other forms. Ultimately, abductive process becomes a zone of untamed, unnamed, unseen, and essential contributors to what may later be called emergence.

Keywords: abductive process, anticipatory systems, transcontextual mutual learning, aphanipoiesis