Review Article

Looking at the World: Playing About Paradox’s

Almada F¹*, Fernando C² and Vicente A³

¹Retired University Professor/Independent Researcher, Portugal

²University of Madeira - CITUR, Portugal

³University of Beira Interior - CIDESD, Portugal

Submission: October 21, 2021; Published: December 15, 2021

*Corresponding author: Vicente A, University of Beira Interior - CIDESD, Portugal

How to cite this article: Almada F, Fernando C, Vicente A. Looking at the World: Playing About Paradox’s. J Phy Fit Treatment & Sports. 2021; 9(3): 555764. DOI: 10.19080/JPFMTS.2021.09.555764

Keywords: Knowledge; Kuhnian sense; Pre-endeavored structure; Stability; Paradigms; Frameworks

Introduction

Understanding the world of which we are a component (some will say, “where we integrate”, or, in a more mechanistic view “that we are a part”, as if we, man, in his wholeness and in his individuality, were something outside that world or a piece of it) is fundamental to be able to have an efficient performance. In the study that we have been carrying out, for a long time, on the functionality of man, we felt the need to deepen this theme of how man fits into this whole, as the conclusions we can draw are certainly marked by the way we build the vision we have and from the point of view, the perspective, from which we look at it. This is reflected in the difficulties we feel, even to communicate, when writing these few lines, for example. We hope the reader has noticed this, as these difficulties are directly linked to the topic we are dealing with here.

Mentioned the problem, our problem and the subject of study, in another way we can say that considering the triple relationship for which Einstein alerts us (fundamentally in the field of physics, but extrapolable, we believe, for all other areas of knowledge), phenomenon / sign / observer, in which man is a component to consider in all of them (in the phenomenon, in the sign and also in the observer – we highlight in the, so that it does not confuse with the observer who would question the triple relationship, a dialectic, that we try to highlight). Or, presenting the same content yet another way – how we see the world, with the signals that we can gather and interpret, from the point of view of an observer immersed in the phenomenon. Starting from difficulties felt in the context of sport, we had the need for a rupture, in the Kuhnian sense of the term, to try to solve the crisis (a whole of crises) that we have identified in all areas and fields of knowledge, which, by the need to find answers, we were successively touching. Crises of understanding the situation and the problems experienced and thus extending to individuals and societies and to the contexts in which they all evolve. In order not to narrow the scope of our research, isolating hypotheses and demarcating conjectures, strong temptation to escape the difficulties that, in essence, constitute the foundations and structure of the very problem that we intend to deal with, we decided to move forward and go the, sometimes difficult, way of moving forward, because the path is often made on the way.

As a methodology, to obtain the debate that allows refutation, we chose to try to publish independent articles on the different aspects, the facets of the problem, so that, from the blocks that have the solidity to survive the confrontations (in a logic used in civil construction, with the notion of “pre-endeavored structure”). So that from the foundations (not the roof), a structure can be assemble... restructured. We make here a point of the situation ... “of the state of the art”, in this assembly that aims to elaborate a proposal of rupture in which the conception of man in the framework of a current perspective will be the master stone of a conceptual building that serves as a tool for the preparation of an overview to be published in the form of a book with the entitle “The Next Technological Determinant Jump: Interpretation of Human Functionality with the concepts of ARAT (Transformation) and Mental Schema (Stability)”.

Everything changes, everything changes: how and why?

Having defined guiding lines on the functionality of man, phenomenon, signal, and observer in this dynamic, as we said above, we can return to the sport aspect, our study starting area, to study the functions that this mean of action, a tool, should assume and the contributions it can make in the context of a global strategy, a fundamental condition for us to have an efficient performance.

We intend to escape two frequent errors:

i. Be very efficient putting together strategies tailored to other paradigms and problems.

ii. Be very efficient in trying to achieve the wrong goals.

Pragmatism is imposed as a counterpoint to the ideologies imagined and produced “in other worlds”, so that we can enjoy “this world” and the “worlds that will come”. It’s ridiculous to equate with cutting-edge technologies to perform old functions, and the other way around too. “A horse wagon on the freeway” or “a Formula 1 on a dirt road” can hardly work well. Coherence and the necessary balances are required.

Some Coincidences

In the balance of the situation that we leave here, we are going to report some coincidences, as an illustration (an image) for the communication of contents that we consider important for the understanding and explanation of human functionality. To structure this work we will start from our interpretation of statements that we read and hear in the context of quantum physics, because it is a context that is strange to us and, “at a distance”, it is easier to have a interpretation “overall view”. In addition to what seem to us coincidences, constitute anomalies that we find interesting to investigate, already in a deeper way, in the context of the study of the functionality of man.

Note: A statement of interests and incompatibilities – we know nothing about quantum physics other than that it seems to exist and that there are debates about it. A functionality and the limits that we have to consider about the understanding that we can have of it, because being the actor, the agent and an essential component (which is part of the essence) of the phenomenon, this functionality more than structuring (at the levels of infrastructure, structure and superstructure) is the underleading of the whole framework of understanding and explanation of knowledge, from praxis where theory and practice merge to make our action and performance, as well as the operational modes that we have managed to develop, from technologies to production policies (material or conceptual), from action tactics to clustering strategies, from the design of “worlds” to the exercise of user performance and target of production performed, ... in short: man in the phenomenon, in the sign and in the observer in the world in which we live.

Coincidences?

Examples to Illustrate the Importance of ‘How We Look’:

Another view of the world?

The structuring framework of reading “of the world”

When: in the debate that takes place today in physics (for example, between classical physics, relativistic physics, quantum physics, or its scopes) the question is raised as to whether we will not have been wrong in our conception of the “world” and the models we have to understand and explain it (the interpretation of perception), or without going so deeply, to interpret it in a way that it is liveable, not only to try to survive, but also to remove the possible pleasure and avoid pain (an indispensable indicator to alert us to risks, or fight them, with fainting, for example) keeping it within the limits of the suffering necessary to fulfill its function, but avoiding going further.

We will not be in a situation similar to the one we face, namely: When dealing with any area of knowledge, strategies or even operational frameworks? Strange! In the discussions of quantum physics, will there still be anyone who can imagine that you are looking for the “truth”? However, in many other areas of knowledge, action strategies or even operative staff, there are still those who seek absolute objectivity (relative objectivity exists, it is the one defined by thousands of years of evolution, adaptations and transformations, that allowed us to survive, and live, until today, but that do not guarantee that in the future, even near, they will still be valid and that they accompany the change that, inexorably, happens). What is at stake (as we try to show with our work of which this article is a tool as we explain in the conclusions below) is the very conception of man and the still dominant conceptual framework, with strong roots in fixism and the perceptions underlying this theoretical framework. A fixism denied globally, but that left remnants that, when least expected, jump our way (such as those mentioned above, the world “where we belong”, or, in a more mechanistic view, “that we are a part”).

In this sense, we propose two types of intervention to be developed simultaneously:

i. Integrate more deeply and effectively the gains allowed by Darwinism and also by Lamarckism (in the dialectics that these fields have established), in a first phase of preparation for the ability to promote a rupture in the understanding of man from a functional perspective;

ii. Integrate, then, conceptual tools such as the notion of Mental Scheme and ARAT as we propose (see: Conceptual Tools to Think Man 1), as well as to show the influences they exert and the effects they impose on the technological and operational levels.

The need for rupture is clear and this work of ours seeks to be a contribution (based on two conceptual tools, the concepts of Mental Scheme and ARAT) for its realization not only theoretically but also operational.

But the answer to the crisis is, as always (see what Kuhn tells us, among many others), a complex picture of uncertainties and ignorance that can discourage and that arouses, always also, oppositions and resistances... and fears.

A conception of a world made of elements or continuous, or discreet?

Of the conceptual structures on which we lay the fundation and fundament the reading of knowledge and, therefore, the strategies of its use in the most diverse fields (education, health, leisure, economy, industry, etc.)

When: we observe the interpretative structure of knowledge that we call science, we see that at the level of its most basic structure that (today) we can achieve, we can define a taxonomy that distinguishes, the conceptions that they use in their structuring:

1. Sets of discrete variables.

2. Sets of continuous variables.

We’re talking about the interpretation we do. The tool used conditions the work performed with it.

We will not be in a situation similar to the one we face, namely:

In a basic situation:

In Sport:

i. Different sports use, for example, in their scoring, discrete variables (as in football – the score goes from 1 goal to 2 goals, there are no 1,xxx goals – however, as a reaction (?), it insists on stating that a team dominates by having “more possession”, “more shots”, “....”. Because they can’t accept a “discreet frame”?;

ii. Different sports use, for example, in their scores, continuous variables (such as a race in athletics – the score passes through a number of squares to the right of the comma according to the measuring abilities and the need to discriminate from the activity (tenth, hundredth, thousandth...);

iii. Different sports use, for example, in their score, sometimes discrete variables and sometimes continuous, as changes are introduced in the rules, as in judo:

a) in the tradition of combat sports, the goal was the “symbolic death” of the opponent - ippon - discrete variable, or exists or not (mere comment: unless, in a quantum superposition, it is Schrodinger’s cat);

b) but in “adaptations to a Western context”, or to “promote the spectacle” (perhaps both), there has been a demand for arrangements (e.g. markings of yuko, shido, keikoku, ..., punishments for lack of attacks, etc.), in the search for a continuum that have not satisfied - demand is an indicator of this – In that sense continued conventional variables were created, which, even feeling and without a deeper study, do not correspond to the desired dynamics.

Note: Sport has been managed predominantly on an empirical basis, under circumstances that we are not responsible for debating here. However, the use of models, the definition of variables and indicators in the interpretation of the phenomenon, is an enriching strategy (because it allows efficiency, increases the benefit / cost ratio and also because it reduces risks) in the short term will not fail to impose itself.

This example illustrates and justifies being considered the type of variables (discrete or continuous - with a structuring character at the cultural level???) that are used in the scoring of sports activities and the character that this change confers on each of the sport activities.

In education, health, economics, research, ..., in everything, thinking about a world made of discrete elements or continuous elements, we are seeing and imagining different things. In a synthetic and succinct way, we consider:

In Education:

i. In education, let’s think about the confrontation between two positions:

a) Thinking about a world made of discrete elements - we will tend to see knowledge as a “full set” in which what is needed is to, successively, extend its borders in a continuous way (therefore discreet and not continuous, the trap of words), in a cumulative process in which it is possible to define a program that can evolve by adding levels that overlap with the previous ones;

b) Thinking about a world made of continuous elements – if, alternatively, we think, for example, of a structuralist conception, in which the unknown is “speckled” by conceptions of knowledge (modules, almost many, therefore not discreetly), we not only have structures with different forms but also have different dynamics resulting from them;

An example - if we observe a meteorite, in the confines of space, that does not comply with “established laws”, an anomaly, or a singularity (which are different things, but which are often considered synonymous in science), in a structuralist conception it is easy to accept that it is the conception (the formulation) of the structure that fails (which will have to be corrected). In a “discreet” perspective, until we arrived “to the ends of space”, we were accepting everything “what we were encountering along the way” …and, certainly, we had gotten lost and wouldn’t get there….

Another example - In a “paradoxical perspective” - an example identical in the dynamics to the one we give above: “Earthlike planets (telluric) are sought to discover life”, (note- nonlife identical to that which exists on Earth, which changed the formulation). And yet, there are ‘lives’ on Earth in conditions quite different from those targeted in these searches, (in the atmosphere, in the fumaroles, in acidic environments, …) as is well known.

ii. In health, economics, research, etc., we can build conceptual frameworks of references in a process similar to what we have used above for education.

The choices made for the construction of the design of the “world” that we made are not innocuous. Moving from one design to another has costs which means that, for ease, the propensity will be to always keep ourselves in the same option. The possibilities of building “conceptions of worlds” are practically infinite, even using the knowledge available today, without having to resort to fantasies that, normally, little diverge from what we find in the “realities” that we permanently deal with.

To Conclude

We know that to show erudition (not knowledge, that is, not the understanding and explanation of phenomena, or in another perspective, the coherence of the interpretative models used and the balances that we can obtain with these models, be it the conjecture and its framing – see, for example, - erudition - In Search of Coherences and Anomalies 2 and Science: Scarcity versus Plenty 3, it is common to use quotes from authors, who sometimes do not understand and areas of knowledge that we understand nothing about, in such a way as to close the door to debate and hinder the contradictory. Mystifications, we can call it, which were exposed and denounced, for example, by Alan Sokal (the so-called “Sokal scandal”), but which are part (in their strategies and dynamics) of a context in which not even science has adapted to the excess (in the amount and possibilities of access) of information. [Note: erudition that, as a tool, it had already been used in other frameworks, in other contexts and with other objectives – for example “the mass in the church in Latin”, “the aggressive sale of products”, “the politics”, ...]. Here, as we said above, we use some aspects of “quantum physics”, an area of knowledge that we perceive nothing, as we soon confessed, to draw the reader’s attention to coincidences, which we believe exist between locks lived in different contexts. The aim is to clarify the conjecture we have built in order to facilitate refutation by experts from different areas of knowledge, at the points where we have had to cross borders of the unknown to consolidate our position [see, on frontiers of the unknown, what we have published in: Thinking Science and Education: Implications and Dysfunctions 4; Infimum Times: Dimensions, Scales and Implications 5 or Conceptual Tools to Think Man 1]. We take the risk here that our strategy may be considered in this context, but we leave the verdict to the reader and its interpretation, because we consider that it is fundamental (grounding, literally) to achieve the rupture that we deem necessary to overcome the blockages felt in many areas, as is visible when we reach the crisis (in the Kuhnian sense of the term) in which we live today. We prepare, with these publications and the searches for acceptance or refutation by the debate in the scientific sphere, at the same time, the foundations and safety for the work in which we present in book form with the title “The Next Technological Determinant Jump: Interpretation of Human Functionality with the concepts of ARAT (Transformation) and Mental Schema (Stability)”.

The change, which we all talk about and we all recognize, requires us to challenge certainties that come from the past, from a past that, even recently, was quite different. The search for new solutions, solutions that can make strategies, operations, praxis and even the way we live more efficient, is, we think, natural for those who live sport with a sense of optimization and not just in the role of mere performer. It is for the competition of ideas, of ways of being and acting that we leave a challenge here… and for a proposal for dialogue. A dialogue that comes from far… that Plato, Aristotle, Zeno of Elea… debated. With advantages that we still enjoy nowadays. Even those who don’t even know what they … and many others … said, enjoy.

An Aristotle who more earth to earth (an opinion), marked for centuries, for being more useful to those who wanted to support themselves in the “magíster dixit” who served as help and argument to those who needed it (even if it wasn’t its intention – knowledge becomes autonomous and escapes the domain of those who produce it). Plato, who with his “cave” raised doubts, which bothers many, which reduces the market’s possibilities of implantation, but inherently stirs up waters that would otherwise be still, with the risks (and, of course, advantages also) of being able to stand still. Zeno of Elea, on the other hand, with his paradoxes, not always comfortable, but which today is perhaps the most current, where contradictions and antagonisms are necessary (perhaps even essential) so that we do not get stuck in immobility that balances and coherence cannot support. Worlds that struggle… in a “natural selection” where the pleasure of searching is practicable and the means to find possible (viable, feasible and desirable) solutions.

References

1. Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2021) Conceptual Tools to Think Man. Advances in Orthopedics and Sports Medicine 2021(4).
2. Almada F, Fernando A, Lopes H, Vicente A (2019) Searching for Coherences and Anomalies. CPQ Orthopaedics 3(5): 01-08.
3. Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2021) Science: Scarcity Versus Plenty. Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research 37(3).
4. Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2021) Thinking Science and Education: Implications and Dysfunctions. Journal of Physical Fitness, Medicine & Treatment in Sports 9(2).
5. Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2020) Infimum Times: Dimensions, Scales and Implications. Journal of Physical Fitness, Medicine & Treatment in Sports 8(1).