Polylectic

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Polylectic

There is a problem with human thinking and communication.  Well, many.  But I’m thinking about one in particular.

The particular problem is linearity.  Thinking, and words, tend to happen one at a time.

That’s any language, verbal, symbolic, mathematical, etc.

One symbol, letter, concept at a time.

But that’s not how the world is structured.

I mean, look around you.  Whatever space you’re in as you read or listen to this.  And try to put it into words.

Can’t do it, right?  The reason is that there’s a holism to the experience, the gestalt if you will (and hold that thought!!!), that is a unified whole, rich with superimposed systems and networks not easily disentangled, and insufficiently captured by the linearity of language.

And yet, language is so powerful!  That’s a digression, but worthy of note.

The concept I’m introducing here has deep implications for the creative process, education, the development of ideas.  Because everything fits into this.  Existence is not linear.  It is holistic.

But, I’m proposing an intermediate between indescribable holistic unity and the reductive linearity of thinking and language.

I call it “polylectic”

Let’s break that down.  There are two parts, both Greek:

Poly, a prefix meaning “many”

Lectic, meaning “tongue” or “speech”

So, polylectic means many tongues, speeches, languages.

There are resonances of polymath, which is a person who has mastered comprehensive topics, and also dialectic, which characterizes Western philosophy from the dialogues of Plato to the rational unfolding of Hegel.

But polylectic is a bit different than either, because even those feel too linear.

Polylectic refers to:

The ever-generating cross fertilization between ideas and schools of thought that weaves the history of human creativity and innovation through time.

And there may be natural equivalents among the plant and animal kingdoms, perhaps even cosmology and geology, but I don’t know.  Fertilization is a biological metaphor of course, commonly used across a vast number of domains to describe processes of growth and collaboration.

I like to think of the history of ideas as polylectic, and perhaps you do too, although you haven’t yet had this word because, so far as I know, it does not exist.

It’s easy to default to linear thinking, communication, and pedagogy in regard to human history.  In many ways it is pragmatically demanded due to budgetary constrains of time and resources.

But make no mistake, history is polylectic, a vast interweaving of threads that dart through all disciplines.  Each of us is a polylectic node, and there is no true separation between disciplines.

Here are 3 examples, one from music, one from religion/philosophy, and one from psychology/philosophy.

And, do you see?  Both the religion and psychology examples draw from philosophy.  Already the distinctions are blurring.

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Example 1

Mozart

If you study a little bit of Western music history you will find it broken into a handful of discreet categories, ordered by time period and attending style, which are Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern.

While this entire, luminous body of work is often compressed into a grand, overarching category called “classical music”, classical actually properly refers to the period lasting roughly from 1750 until 1820, which spans from the death of J.S. Bach to the last days of Beethoven.  The music composed within these years can be considered classical, and classical music is characterized by its clarity of form, order, proportion, and grace.  Now, it’s not that simple, but in the linear introductory kind of education we typically see, that’s how it starts.

Mozart is the most famous and best-loved composer of that style by a considerable and uncontested margin, and this would be acknowledged even by musicians who don’t care for Mozart, and they are out there!

But, Mozart’s music is much richer than this simple, linear label.  If we consult the Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, something of a gold standard for academic music research, we find this in its opening paragraph:

“His style essentially represents a synthesis of many different elements, each taken for a while into his idiom, then in part rejected, in part absorbed.  His mature music, distinguished by its melodic beauty, its formal perfection and its richness of harmony and texture, is deeply colored by Italian opera though rooted in Austrian and south German traditions.  Unlike Haydn and Beethoven, he excelled in every medium current in his time (especially in chamber music for strings, in the piano concerto and in opera: he thus may be regarded as the most universal composer in the history of Western music.”

Recognition of universality aside, did you catch the polylectic?

1. Italian opera

2. Austrian folk music

3. South German traditions

4. There is counterpoint

5. Catholic liturgical forms

6. French flavors

All from his many tours of the continent.  Fused into this one individual that is the epitome of a “classical” composer.

It is polylectic, shaping this music at a very deep level.  I always found Mozart very hard to sum up when I taught music history.  Sure, we could call him an exemplar of the classical style, but that doesn’t quite capture it.  That’s the polylectic at work.

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Example 2

Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome

Is it so simple to express your religious and philosophical views?  Because these traditions are massively deep polylectics.  Let’s look at the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions.

1. The Greeks develop rationality as preserved in the tradition of Athens through Plato and Aristotle.

2. The Ancient Hebrews record their testimonies of divine revelation which shape society and law.

3. Philo the Jew synthesizes the Hebraic tradition with Platonism into what is called Middle Platonism.

4. Saul of Tarsus, a Hellenized Jew (already combining the Hebrew and Greek traditions) has an experience of the resurrected Christ.  He says that this is actually what Hellenistic philosophy seeks.

5. Clement of Alexandria, an early church leader, sees the workings of divine covenant in the ancient Greeks.

6. Plotinus refashions Platonism into a new structure of thought called Neoplatonism.

7. Augustine combines Christianity and Neoplatonism into a rich theological and philosophical synthesis.

8. Thomas Aquinas christens Aristotle into a theological system that is still dogmatically current.

Did you follow all of that?  Can you trace the threads as they twist and turn?  How many of those figures read Plato and assimilated him anew?  Where do new threads begin?

Are you a Christian, a Jew, a Greek thinker?  Can we tell where one ends and the other begins?

That is polylectic

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Example 3

The birth of modern psychology and existential philosophy

This is the one I have most recently discovered, and that which truly drove home this point for me.  It is after learning about this that I coined the term “polylectic”.

Those disciplines and genres that we call psychology, philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, are not so separate.  And there has been extensive cross-fertilization.

Ready?  Follow me if you can.

1. Franz Brentano leaves the priesthood as a reaction to the authoritarian tendencies he sees emerging in the papacy from Vatican I.  He becomes an academic philosopher and psychologist, innovating within scholasticism.  His dissertation is about modes of Being in Aristotle.

2. He teaches many students, among them Sigmund Freud, and Carl Stumpf.  Sigmund Freud needs no further development here.

3. Carl Stumpf teaches Kurt Lewin and Edmund Husserl.  He influences Hornbostel.

4. Hornbostel founds the modern study of musical instruments with Sachs.  I learned about the Hornbostel -Sachs catalogue studying music in college.

5. Kurt Lewin becomes active in the founding of Gestalt psychology and psychosocial experimentation.

6. Husserl, a mathematician, founds the field of phenomenology, even though it was Stumpf who coined the term.

7. Husserl teaches Heidegger.  Heidegger is influenced by Brentano’s dissertation on Aristotle.

8. Heidegger is a major figure in existential philosophy and influences a generation of psychotherapists.

9. Emmy van Deurzen, a key figure in existential therapy, says that existential therapists talk about philosophy a lot.  But I think all therapists do, and this lineage proves it, because both phenomenology and existentialism are ultimately outgrowths of Brentano’s scholastic philosophy.

Where are the boundaries?  This polylectic combines medicine, philosophy, cognition, perception, mental health, music, technology, mathematics, literature, and more.

To me, the central figure of this polylectic is Carl Stumpf.  He must have been a significant, powerful, unifying intellect and persona.  His influence indelibly shaped at least 3 fields, psychology, philosophy and musicology.  As such, he emerges as a central polylectic node.

After learning about Stumpf I was delighted to find that he has an entry in the aforementioned Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, not as long as Mozart’s but still there.  Stumpf shows the polylectic alive in me, unifying my personal interests in music history and psychology through this one node, and flowing through this one set of reference texts.  This was a deeply inspiring discovery for me.

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Do you get the picture? 

Human knowledge, discovery, innovation, and influence is a tapestry, and we do it a disservice when we shape it into linear transmission.  It is a necessary evil of course due to the nature of our language and pedagogical cognition.  But, look around.  You are immersed in a polylectic, a node in the grand tapestry.  A rich, immersive, interwoven, self-knitting fabric of vision and discovery that reaches from the past and stretches into the future.  Through you.  Through all of us.

That’s the polylectic.