On Waves of Aging and Renewal: Progress Orientation in Combination with Jungian Aspects




1. Two paths of development

1.1. General philosophical interpretation

In philosophy, the word development is taken to mean spiral-like progression from simple to more complex forms. Two vectors influence the trajectory of this development. The first vector is a horizontal one. It leads to cyclical repetition and is based on the internal rhythms of the system. The second vector is a vertical one. This vector ensures that there is no stagnation and overcycling within the system. Every turn stands above the previous one. Rhythm of the progression of these turns has a probabilistic factor.

Development as ontogenesis is essentially a programmed unwinding of the existing potential. The Latin word evolution in its semantics represents this path of progress very well, consisting of unwinding, unpacking, of quantitative growth of the existing embryo.

On the other hand, development as epigenesis is the very birth, the appearance of qualitatively new forms, sudden outbreak of a new life [1]. The Latin word involution conveys the essence of this process - it is the folding, the packaging, the build-up of a critical mass of energy.

Thus, evolution unwinds the spiral of development into a straight line, while the involution, conversely, winds it back up, thereby creating new frontiers of growth within the system. If development is imagined not as a spiral but as a broken line stretching from left to right, then the break points and the areas that surround them represent epigenesis, involution.

It is interesting to compare socionic connotation with mathematical meaning of these terms. The word evolution in mathematics denotes the operation of deriving the root; involution has the reverse influence - raising to the power. The meaning of these two ...

Notes: This is Gulenko's early work that preceded his writing on cognitive styles.

Introduction

General logic, structuring, will be denoted by function L. Its varieties will then be called specialized logical functions. If one considers that not a single sociotype is same as the other in its logical thinking, from this follows that there must be as many specialized functions as there are sociotypes - sixteen. Specialized functions I will denote with + and - signs as well as make use of operations from propositional logic. In this article when the word "logic" carries the meaning of structural logic rather than business logic.

1. Sign dichotomies

Originally I have assigned the positive and negative signs of communicative functions, including logic, to the dichotomy "left/right" [also known as process/result]. "Right" logic I have denoted with symbol +L and left logic by -L. What is the difference between these two logic types?

Right/Process/Evolutionary logic: straight and absolute, has no reverse feedback. This type of logic as if delineates contours of forms on some background that is then discarded as insignificant. It is characterized by absence of context and is categorical, explicit in judgements.

Left/Result/Involutionary logic: inversive, derived from straight logic using the operation of subtraction. It is reflexive and considers not the upfront side as much as the back side of the coin. It underlines the background, contextual dependencies of judgements.

Right logic (process): ILE, SEI, EIE, LSI, SEE, ILI, LSE, EII
Left logic (result): ESE, LII, SLE, IEI, LIE, ESI, IEE, SLI

However, there is another way of assign + and - signs that is no less substantiated: using the dichotomy of negativism/positivism. Then +L will denote the logic of positivists while -L will denote the logic of negativists.

Positivist logic: unified, accordant in all parts. This kind of logic comes closest to what is known as formal logic. An example of this kind of logic is syllogism - inferential sequence of arguments described by Aristotle in "Organon".

Negativist logic: logic of contradictions. Dialectic, containing in itself oppositions and contradictions. This logical instrument works best when analyzing complicated multilayered systems.

Positivists: ILE, ESE, LSI, ...

Translator's notes: This article is a follow-up of Gulenko's work and most of the text in quotes was taken from his earlier publications. Original article.

"Left/right" dichotomy is also known as Process/Result or Evolution/Involution.

In typing, distinguishing types of same or similar temperament can be challenging. The Right/Left dichotomy can be used to distinguish between Kindred, Bussiness, and Quasi-identical relations. For example, type EII is Process while types similar to EII, its Kindred (ESI), Quasi-identical (IEI), and Business (LII), lie on the Result side of this dichotomy. Whether someone's sociotype is Process or Result can be established by inspecting the flow of information present in this person's writing. Check the comment at the bottom of this article to see examples of its application.

This method does not work for distinguishing types in Benefit relations. In such cases, Static/Dynamic dichotomy can be used (link).


Part One: "Two vectors of social progress"

1. Evolution and involution as two vectors of social progress.

The founder of Socionics, Aushra Augustinavichiute, introduced the concept of social progress as the essence of the functioning of the collective mind of the socion. According to her opinion, "every type carries out its own part of the social request - the social function of its own intellect." The four rings of the benefit are ...

From the standpoint of their structure, cognition in my opinion is most successfully modeled by combinations of these three dichotomies: Static–Dynamic, Positivism–Negativism, and Evolution–Involution. Why these? I came to understand this relationship in two ways. First, I noted that the most rapid and complete exchange of information occurs through Supervision rings, which are formed by these dichotomies. Second, finding Socionics analogies to other models of comprehending reality (worldviews) I found that information exchange in each of the four Supervision rings embodied fundamental forms of intellectual activity found across the history of established thought.

If my conclusions are valid, then the mental activity of Supervision rings constitutes that which cognitive psychology typically refers to as styles (or forms) of cognition. A strict deductive proof of this theory is not my aim. Instead I will simply present the results obtained. Coming from the practice of consultation, teaching, and training work, inductive generalizations have more weight ...

**UPDATE (August 2015): See the attached PDF file for an updated, more thorough explanation of this topic by the author.


Reinin dichotomies were derived using group theory, a field of math I know very little about. This site gives a thorough explanation. Unfortunately it is in Russian, and online translators obviously don't do very well with the mathematical terminology. That said, maybe misutii and any resident mathematicians could help out.

I'll try to explain my current understanding of it as simply as possible. The idea is that the socion, with its dichotomies, is a Klein 4-group. This means, given a few initial dichotomies, you can produce all other possible symmetric dichotomies. (I'm not sure what symmetric means in this context.)

New dichotomies can be formed by combining the original four dichotomies. If I, N, T, and J are represented by 1 (true) and their opposites by 0 (false), comparing them with the boolean operation of equivalence (=) yields new dichotomies. For instance, a type is "static" if I and J are both true or both false. Mathematically, I=J. (The above article uses the clumsy but equivalent notation (I & J) v (~I & ~J) instead.) Any other commutative (i.e. symmetric) operation, such as XOR, could also be used.

4C2 = 6 dichotomies are formed by comparing pairs of the original four dichotomies.
...

MERRY | SERIOUS

Merry/Subjectivists (Alpha, Beta: Ti/Fe):

• Subjectivists are good at noticing the general emotional background that accompanies contact with people (For example: enthusiasm, fun, stress and so on). Fun (as, probably, every other emotional experience) for them is allocated into a separate aspects of

...