provides methods for integrated clinical care, psychotherapy,
innovation, and progressive social action.
H. Sabelli
Hector_Sabelli@rush.edu
Chicago Center for Creative Development
For many centuries mathematics has been recognized as a possible framework understanding the physical world. The well-accepted Bourbaki school has identified three basic structures of mathematics, lattice (sets organized by asymmetry and transitive relations among members), group (sets in which every member has an opposite), and topology (sets with space-like and plastic structure), which are irreducible to each other. These basic structures of mathematics are empirically found in mental processes that develop during early stages of development in children (Piaget). Asymmetry, symmetry and transformation are demonstrable at all levels, from physics to brain anatomy. Processes are sequences of actions (changes of energy in asymmetric time); the structures are transformed are material. Also the fundamental physical forces embody asymmetry in unipolar gravity, opposition in bipolar electromagnetic processes, and triadicity in the three colors of quarks engaged in the strong and weak nuclear forces. The human central nervous system embodies these three simplest fundamental forms: asymmetry in the dorsal-ventral dimension that corresponds to action, symmetry in the left-right axis, and levels of increasing complexity in the vertical axis, with priority of the simpler spinal cord and supremacy of the newer and complex brain structures. Process theory thus interprets Bourbaki’s mother structures as universal laws of natural and human processes (Sabelli, 1989). Everything that exists is an action, a flow of energy in asymmetric time, is paired with an opposite action, and the interaction of the two transforms simple material structures into complex ones.
After reviewing these principles, we shall explore how they provide guidelines for integrated clinical care (Sabelli and Carlson-Sabelli. Biological Priority and Psychological Supremacy, a New Integrative Paradigm Derived from Process Theory. American Journal of Psychiatry 146 1541-1551, 1989), psychotherapy (Sabelli, 2005), innovation (Sabelli. Bios Theory of Innovation. The Innovation Journal 13, 2008, article 12), and progressive social action (If not us, then who? http://creativebios.com).
