The 7 Realms in Endeavour

The primary hierarchy of action is still tentative. Provisional formulations are used in investigations within the Architecture Room.

However, the decision methods (Principal Typology) have had decades of development, testing and application. Hence there is a high degree of confidence in the formulations and the various derived Frameworks.

The Spiral deals with the management culture.The Spiral-Tree and derived Structural Hierarchy deal with achievement and employment from both a personal and a management/organizational perspective.

Posting took place during 2011.

The basic formulations were developed decades ago and parts of them published. Not much has been done since then, although not from a lack of interest on my part. Inquiry shows up in two parts of THEE:

• as part of obtaining useful knowledge about reality i.e. PH2.
• as part of knowledge produced by academic work i.e. PH'5-QH3.

The academic work aspect uses, indeed takes for granted, phenomena that come into existence within the pure inquiry arena. As «New Economy Businesses» are doing work that is mentally similar to academic inquiry, frameworks for such work and its organization are a priority for posting.

Pure inquiry has emerged as a priority for posting. Provisional formulations have been used in investigations within the Architecture Room. Initial systematic posting commenced in the Framework Room in Q2-2015.

Inquiry was an early topic of interest as I was in the midst of academia and it was my job to inquire. Churchman and Mitroff’s work on inquiring systems interested me as they showed a parallel to the decision systems [PH'1].

I tackled the Primary Hierarchy initially, identifying Levels 1-5 and writing it up for publication.  Churchman was the referee for Systems Research who approved the paper: Measurement and the Structure of Scientific Analysis.
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I subsequently concluded that Churchman’s 5 «Inquiring Systems» were correct, being both beautifully described and placed in a THEE-style order [PH'2:L1-L5]. I was then able to add two additional systems [PH’2-L6 & L7]—which were required following the discovery of two more Levels in the Primary Hierarchy. This study was also published by Systems Research.
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TOP Note: A taxonomic ordering error in the two published papers, as explained briefly here, was identified in 2012. 

Naming Issue

Churchman had used philosophers' names: Lockean (L'1), Leibnizian (L'2), Kantian (L'3), Hegelian (L'4), Singerian (L'5). I felt forced, sadly, to re-name them to be more descriptive and understandable by less erudite readers.

There is a lot of material and some provisional Frameworks, much of it illuminating and some of it probably valid. However, there are no current plans to post.

Despite this, progress has occurred, and current understanding has been sufficient to support most of the investigations within the Architecture Room.

See Personal Historical Note for further explanation.

Change has proved the most difficult and intractable of the Root Levels to appreciate properly. I have picked it up and put it down many times over more than 30 years. Often there has been what seems like great progress, but then something looks wrong and I am right at least about one thing. It is wrong! However, something definite and seemingly on the right track is now in use within the Architecture Room.

My initiation into change came from an appreciation of political ideologies: these, at their hidden centre, seemed to be about change or not changing, as well as other social fundamentals. I still hold to that view.

Based on that I determined that the Principal Typology dealt with representing the world and contained «approaches to modelling-PH'3»—otherwise how would anyone know any change had occurred? But I recently had to re-order the approaches in the light of the Primary Hierarchy, whose ordering has now had some validation in the TOP Studio.

Hierarchic patterns here have been gratifyingly enlightening on many matters (e.g. leadership), while being rather frustrating in terms of formal analysis. Nothing at all is known about the Q-hierarchies.

The Primary Hierarchy is known, but only the Principal Typology has been developed in detail. This Framework of approaches to developing an identity (PH'4) was worked out and presented in numerous settings in the early 1990s. It was finally published in Ch.7 of Working with Values (1995), which is available for free download here.

There are many frameworks here that would surely be relevant to understanding personal growth, and perhaps other matters. I use a vague term like "other matters" because: a regular feature of THEE Frameworks is that is quite difficult to know what is going to be discovered, until you actually start exploring in depth and discovering things.

More recently, the Typology was placed in the taxonomic context and renamed. As a result, details of this domain are being posted in 2015.

I started my medical career in psychiatry and immediately gravitated to its psychotherapeutic aspects. This led to a great deal of reading in the area.

Training to be a psychoanalyst exposed me to the intense conflicts between different theoretical schools. I finally worked out that this must be a version of the hostility that characterizes adherents of different identity-defining THEE-Types.

I made my own psychoanalytic contributions blithely ignorant of THEE factors and my inner biases. However, when I came to look at PH’4 in the late 1980s, it was rather easy to see that it dealt with different ways of being a person i.e. developing one’s own identity based on experiences and identifications.

Psychoanalytic schools were aligned in the PH'4 Typology with L'3, L'4, or L'5. The fraternity did not welcome and validate the existence of L'1, L'2 and L'7. There was also L'6 that Jonathan Cohen and I had developed in detail. We thought our paradigm was strongly aligned with Freud. The papers are available for download.

Until 2015, only limited inquiry has been possible. The current plans are to develop knowledge in regard to the controls within the Experience Domain, by drawing on taxonomic principles and new conceptualizations.

Communication-PH5 is amazing and extraordinary. For starters, it creates psychosocial reality. I am keen to pursue inquiries now because the THEE Online Project is an exercise in communication.

Communication-PH5 is therefore a major THEE-Topic currently being posted. Rather than take the safe option and attempt to work it all out before posting. I am doing it in steps. So far I have posted an orientation and the Primary Hierarchy. You can read about the Principal Typology in the Frameworks Room. It is not possible to predict how speedy or orderly the investigative process will be.

Other provisional formulations are used in investigations within the Architecture Room.

The main frameworks have been developed and published in Working with Values (1995).  They will be posted in due course. Until that time, the principal Chapters and Tables can be downloaded free from this website.

Two Satellites are part of the Purpose Realm: Politics and Interacting-for-Benefit both derive from this fundamental discovery.

When I was surrounded in the mid-80s with my notes and pictures, I realized that no-one was going to believe any of it unless it was worked out carefully and in detail with citations to key authors. I therefore picked one area that I intuitively felt was important, «purpose», and spent the next 10 years discovering what it was about and writing it up in detail.

The result was in Working with Values: Software of the Mind. I learned a lot including a realization that, despite striking into an area that was new to me, I had accidentally hit the jackpot in terms of social significance and practical relevance.

The initial two Satellites are both derivatives of PH6. Politics emerges from Making Ethical Choices [PH’6] by way of a Spiral transformation; and Interacting-for-Benefit is the 4th hierarchy from the Q-expansion of the Principal Typology. It combines both individualist and communalist ethical choice.

Several components have had some preliminary development : the Primary Hierarchy, the Structural Primary Hierarchy, and the Principal Typology. There are no plans to post either of these, as per the Personal Historical Note.

However, as with Change, provisional understanding has been sufficient to support several investigations within the Architecture Room.

I came to Willingness very late. It was only identified following the realization that there was a Root Hierarchy. At some point it became evident that something was needed above the 6th Level (Purpose) to complete the necessary transitions and to protect endeavours.

Some work has been done on the frameworks, but not intensively enough. I have tentatively proposed that the Principal Typology deals with approaches to enhancing ability.

The widespread neglect of the importance of willingness is being impressed on me daily. As of 2014, I intend to give its investigation a higher priority.