Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Post 109. August 23, 2020
Theory of Enformed Systems
Enformy, Enformation, Pre-
In my own 2008 thesis of Enformationism, I coined the term “Enformy” from scratch, as a reference to the creative power of generative Information. Then, I recently found this paper on Hilgartner's Enformy webpage, after I came across that novel word in a Google search. I was not completely surprised though, to find that someone else had independently coined the same neologism, to describe “the capacity to organize”1, as a counter to the disorganizing power of Entropy in Physics. But that 1993 essay by Kapnick & Kelly didn't seem to have much impact on Science or Philosophy, beyond the International Society For Philosophical Enquiry (SPE). I had even posted an abstract from their paper on my website, noting that I agreed with the general concept, but was skeptical of some of its proposed implications in the realm of Para-
I was intrigued by this 1997 article, which gave a detailed summary of Watson's proposed new theory (TES) for both Physics & Psychology. Just as I did in my website, it defined “Enformy” as the “organizing principle” of our universe. Like my own hypothesis, it also based its conclusion on evidence from Systems Theory (Systematics – the science of holistic systems), and from Quantum Theory (entanglement). However, it doesn't seem to include an expanded Theory of Information3, as my thesis did. Its primary application seems to be in the study of Consciousness and its correlates, including the fringe theories of Parapsychology. Both of these papers apply their Enformy theory to support such non-
The TES article focuses on a wide range of phenomena that are generally related to Cognition, and that its claims are “invisible to prevailing paradigms, e.g. memory, self-
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Don Watson
THEORY OF ENFORMED SYSTEMS
Don Watson & Andy Hilgartner
http://www.hilgart.org/enformy/$wsr02.html
Don Watson, MD, Psychiatry and Neurology
• Member, American Mensa, Ltd.
• Senior Research Fellow, International Society for Philosophical Enquiry
• Member of Board, International Academy of Philosophy
ENFORMY :
The Capacity to Organize
Chapter 19 in Thinking on the Edge,
R. A. Kapnick and A. A. Kelly, eds.
Burbank, CA: Agamemnon Press 1993.
ENFORMATIONISM
Personal Website
http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/
1. Enformy : A hypo-
3. Information is :
See glossary sidebar note
http://blog-
4. Pseudoscience : Literally – bogus science; a derogatory label for hetero-
5. Magical : supernatural, mystical, occult, paranormal, uncanny, otherworldly, miraculous
6. Mundane : I make one exception to that rule against super-
Theory of Enformed Systems
Comprehensive theory of Consciousness
Don Watson
Psychiatrist, Neurologist
“A hypothetico-