Summary

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CONCENTRIC MAN; learning to communicate P.H.Damsté M.D Ph D, Utrecht Netherlands

Summary

This is about resilience, an essential quality of health and well-being. It is the result of successful adaptation and defence in communicating with the environment. The dialogues between species and their environments have resulted in evolution toward fitness. Individual resilience, physical as well as mental and emotional, is achieved by a pertinent course of learning during one's lifetime. All processes leading to resilience can be described under the common denominator that evolution and learning take place in four systems:

    • [1] a genetic adaptation and defence system (GAD) protecting the identity of the species

    • [2] an immune system or lymphoid adaptation and defence system (LAD) protecting the individual's health and well-being

    • [3] a nervous or neuronal adaptation and defence system (NAD) which accommodates drives, emotions and skills, as well as attitudes and value-judgments

    • [4] an intraspecific signalling system, which in humans has developed into a linguistic or verbal adaptation and defence system (VAD).

The four systems (SADS) have in common that they evolve, that is they learn. They do this in different time-scales: a stimulus - response transaction requires centuries for GAD, minutes to weeks for LAD, seconds to hours for NAD and VAD. The general Darwinian principle of variation followed by selection applies to all four systems. All systems acquire cognition which in the long term is expressed as form, in the short term as function and behaviour.

An appropriate model for complex living systems is a concentrically layered sphere. The layers that result from interaction with the environment are, according to J.C.Pringle, connected by a network consisting of non-linearly oscillating systems. B.Goodwin has demonstrated that chemical oscillations drive embryogenesis. He suggests that equivalent temporal dynamics can be applied to other modes of learning and development e.g. of neural cognition. A time-oriented concept of Concentrical Man, apart from disclosing a great structural beauty, has been found to be a useful tool. It has helped us to understand that crucial events during development of the child may result in functional pathologies. These evolve when inappropriate demands are made on the LAD, the NAD or the VAD. For the LAD (allergy) and the NAD (neurosis) this relationship has been established, which means that preventive measures now can be taken.

TREFWOORDEN

allergy, cluttering, cognition, communication, concentric, consilience, evolution, form versus function, immunity, language, oscillation, prevention, somatotyping, stuttering