The following is the Foreword for a new book on understanding human intelligence. The book will be released in a special Preview Edition for peer review and early adopters soon. The general release is scheduled for early 2007.
Timothy Wilken
The search to understand and accurately model human intelligence may represent the critical knowing for our species. With this knowing, every human has the potential to elevate their thinking to the level of genius. With this knowing, the majority of mental illnesses can be better understood and controlled. With this knowing, we can create thinking machines in short order, and set them to helping us solve our most pressing problems. And, with this knowing, we can put away anger, fear and conflict, and begin building a world filled with love, trust and co-Operation.
This book presents a new model of human intelligence that is a step towards that critical knowing. It explains that every human brain has two distinct and powerful minds. It further demonstrates how human intelligence results from the complex relationship of those two minds.
And while all humans have two minds, each of our dual minds are developed and educated to different degrees. Further, the relationship between our two minds can vary. Their relationship can be neutral. Sometimes our two minds function separately as seemingly independent units. Their relationship can be adversary. Sometimes our two minds function antagonistically at cross purposes to each other producing conflict, mental anguish and attenuated intelligence. And, finally their relationship can be synergic. Sometimes our two minds work together in perfect harmony and co-Operation producing brilliance and genius. These differences in development, education and relationship produce the wide variation in observable intelligence seen within the human population.
For reasons that will be well explained in this book, I call these two minds the space-mind and the time-mind. As Albert Einstein explained, “Space and time are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.”
The space-mind originated in the animal world. It is responsible for survival in space. I am not talking about outer space. This the local three dimensional space in which we all live. The space-mind moves and controls our bodies. It can move your body left or right—forward or backward—up or down. The space-mind crawls. The space-mind walks. The space-mind jumps. The space-mind dances, and, if you are a monkey, the space-mind leaps through the trees. If you are a fish, the space-mind swims, and if you are a bird, the space-mind flies. The space-mind controls motion and behavior in three dimensional space.
Knowing requires thinking and memory. The space-mind thinks in images. It stores those images in memory and codes them with the specific emotional feelings that were experienced when the events generating those images occurred. Knowing begins in the animal world with KnowWhere—knowing where to go in space to survive. If I am hungry, where do I go to get food? If I am thirsty, where do I go to get water? If I am cold, where do I go to get warm? The answers to these questions are found every day in the animal world. We humans share the animal body, and so must answer these questions for ourselves.
KnowWhere is knowing based on imagic memory—stored images coded with emotional feelings. KnowWhere includes the ability to recognize wholes by their sameness. My space-mind sees Mom as a whole—Dad as a whole—a snake as a whole. Space-mind knows where to find the whole known as “mom” or avoid the whole known as “snake.” But remember, the space-mind does not think in words, words are tools of the time-mind.
Space where I survive is good space. Space where I die is bad space. The secret of survival is securing good space and avoiding bad space. For us humans, KnowWhere is used to solve many problems. The term I use for this first level of knowing is INFORMATION spelled in all upper case.
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Space Mind
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KnowWhere
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INFORMATION
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The time-mind is found in limited form in the more advanced mammals, but develops completely only in humans. Time-mind raises knowing to a new level.
Time-mind can understand much more because it is aware of time. It is aware of changes that occur over time. This generates the next level of knowing called KnowWhen. KnowWhen is knowing when to act in time to control the events in my local reality.
Time-mind analyzes and distinguishes the various aspects of wholes by their differences. It considers these different aspects of the whole to be parts. It has broken the whole process of life into different moments. The past is different than the present, which is different than the future. The moments of our lives are a one way street. By noticing the changes that occur over time, time-mind has the ability to figure things out. It can notice what comes after what, and soon learns to understand and thus anticipate what comes before what. It can notice what events precede other events and in what sequences. With this temporal understanding comes the ability to predict and control sequential process. Understanding temporal difference is the same as understanding temporal sequence.
KnowWhen is based on an awareness and understanding of cause and effect—the understanding of sequence. If I know what causes an effect, I can predict and control my future. If I understand the sequence for making a fire, I can stay warm and cook my food.
As a modern human, to start my breakfast I first need to get a skillet from the cabinet, and bacon from the refrigerator. Then I place my skillet on the stove. Then I turn on the burner. Then I add my bacon before the skillet gets too hot. I need to adjust the heat so it’s not too hot and not too cold. Because I know the con-sequence of under cooked pork, and the con-sequence of burnt food, I control my cooking event by knowing when to turn the heat up and when to turn it down. To successfully cook my breakfast, I am using KnowWhen. The term I use for this second level of Knowing is KNOWLEDGE spelled in all upper case.
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Time Mind
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KnowWhen
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KNOWLEDGE
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There are two higher levels of knowing that are only reliably available to those special humans that we call genius. I say reliably because almost all humans have occasional sparks of genius. This is more common in children than adults. Unfortunately, most of us were/are “educated” to limit our thinking to conform to the rules, and reflect the “teachers” expectations, and so most of us lose contact with our ability for genius. In today’s world, only a few manage to maintain contact with their genius, and consistently function at the higher levels of knowing
The third level of knowing is KnowHow. KnowHow is knowing how KNOWLEDGE and INFORMATION fit together. KnowHow is created when the space-mind turns its attention away from the outside sense data and looks at the patterns of sequential KNOWLEDGE created by the time-mind and recognizes new patterns of wholeness. It can see how some of these supposedly different KNOWLEDGE concepts—sequence chains are really the same.
Individuals achieving the third level of knowing recognize how things work together. They may discover laws of nature, and advance human understanding. Albert Einstein saw that E=mc2. In other words, that the KNOWLEDGE concept known as energy was the same as the KNOWLEDGE concept known as matter multiplied by the speed of light squared.
Those special individuals, like Einstein, who think at the third level can thus create, invent, and innovate new wholes that have never existed before. They may create new knowing or synthesize new music, art, or inventions. This third level KnowHow is a very powerful form of knowing which I designate as WISDOM spelled in all upper case.
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Space-Time Mind
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Know How
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WISDOM
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Those humans who master KnowHow and consistently think at the WISDOM level are commonly called geniuses and include: Leonardo, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Hippocrates, Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, Nicomachus, Epictetus, Tactitus, Ptolemy, Michelangelo, Copernicus, Kepler, Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Milton, Pascal, Hooke, Leibnitz, Newton, Huygens, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Smith, Kant, Paine, Lavoisier, Fourier, Faraday, Henry, Gauss, Edison, Tesla, Darwin, James, Freud, Jung, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Maxwell, Pavlov, Poincare, Planck, Lorentz, Einstein, Minkowski, Born, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Eddington, Oppenheimer, Bell, Herrick, Child, Meyer, Korzybski, Selye, Young, Haskell, Fuller, Etc., Etc., Etc..
In synergic science, this level of thinking is called multiordinal genius. Those stabilizing as multiordinal geniuses have reliable access to WISDOM. They know how things work.
Unfortunately, some of those achieving multiordinal genius may still behave adversarily. They are not compelled by their KnowHow to act in good ways. They can be evil geniuses. Thus they include some of the most notorious of villains that have ever lived: Tomas de Torquemada, Vlad Tepes, Ivan the Terrible, Adolph Eichmann, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Adolph Hitler, Etc, Etc..
Often the evil of these individuals was so profound that their genius was overlooked. Unfortunately, they were both bad and intelligent. This sometimes resulted in their victims numbering in millions.
Fortunately, there is a level of knowing above WISDOM which does compel good.
The fourth level of knowing is KnowWhy. KnowWhy is knowing the con-sequence of applying and/or misapplying WISDOM, KNOWLEDGE and INFORMATION. KnowWhy is created when the time-mind turns its attention away from analyzing INFORMATION to examine the patterns of WISDOM created by the space-mind. The time-mind’s ability to analyze WISDOM allows it to understand and predict the effects that will result from the use or misuse of WISDOM, KNOWLEDGE, and INFORMATION. Therefore, KnowWhy results in the complete understanding of Space and Time, and the most powerful form of knowing possible, and the level which I designate as ONENESS spelled in all upper case.
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Time-Space Mind
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KnowWhy
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ONENESS
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Individuals reliably achieving the level of ONENESS are rare. While these individuals are enormously intelligent and clearly geniuses, they are most remarkable for their goodness. They are sometimes called spiritual geniuses. Synergic science designates those stabilizing at the fourth level of understanding as synergic geniuses.
When they have appeared throughout history, they have been called by many names including: Enlightened One = Ascended Master = Avatar = Divine Mother = Guru = Sage = Living Saint = Messiah = Savior.
They include: Jesus of Nazareth, Siddhartha Gautama, Muhammad, Rama, Krishna, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Urukagina, Moses, Leo Tolstoy, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, Florence Nightingale, Bah·’u’ll·h, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama, Etc., Etc..
The goodness of these individuals is often so profound that their genius may be overlooked. But these rare souls were/are both good and intelligent.
All historical geniuses have activated their genius potential intuitively by discovering how it feels to think and understand at the higher levels of knowing. They have all mastered KnowHow, and a few have mastered both KnowHow and KnowWhy.
Intuitive Geniuses
Humans who have developed the ability to activate their genius potential by sense or feel are called intuitive geniuses.
The intuitive geniuses of history did not know they were activating a higher level of knowing. They did not know that they had a Dual-Mind. They believed, as did those without genius, that genius was inborn and in no sense controllable by them. They just knew if they felt a certain way their thinking was much more brilliant. “I will create when the muse moves me.” or “I will understand more deeply when God reveals his truth to me.”
When such intuitive geniuses create works important to the civilization they become known as historical geniuses. The term applied in this way is a judgment of history.
However it is important to realize that geniuses are above all else human. While they may have learned to activate their genius potential more readily then the average human, they don’t always think like a genius. The human brain has seven modes of thinking and only two of these modes are at genius level. As we humans live our lives, we move through the various modes of thinking throughout the day. It doesn’t take a genius to brush his teeth or carry out the trash.
Every individual’s intelligence will vary as the different modes of thinking are engaged. Even Einstein was sometimes less than brilliant, and Mother Teresa was sometimes less than good. We are talking about real humans here. Those called genius do manage to spend more of their thinking time at the higher levels of knowing. Some may even stabilize at the genius levels, but this stabilization does not prevent the occasional lapse of brilliance or goodness.
Then of course, there is the factor of learning which comes from our education and life experiences. Modes of thinking and levels of knowing result from the hardware—the structure of the human brain. But our actual knowing—INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM and ONENESS—is software. It accumulates during a lifetime of learning and understanding as we use the various modes of thinking, and store our experiences and learning in memory. Furthermore, our experiences and education are often compartmentalized thus resulting in compartmentalized knowing. I might be a musical genius, but completely naive when comes to fixing my car, or having a loving relationship with my children.
Unrealized Potential
However for the vast majority of humans, the potential for genius is not ever known, let alone experienced or realized. They don’t stabilize at the higher levels of knowing, and aren’t proclaimed by history to be geniuses.
Most of us never experience the thrill of discovery, the ecstasy of knowing: “I was the first person to think of this idea. I was the first to solve this problem. I was the first to understand—the first to learn one of Nature’s secrets.” In fact our lot is just the opposite. Most of us find our intelligence attenuated, our potential ignored, our goals unaccomplished, our desires unachieved, our hopes unrealized, our expectations disappointed, and our destinies unfulfilled.
This represents not only a profound loss for each of us personally, but also a great loss for all of humanity, the other living systems, and even the Earth itself. In this, the gravest hour of our human crisis, can any of us really hope to survive if the greatest powers and resources of our species remain unknown and undeveloped?
Learning to understand and optimize your own individual human intelligence begins with a small investment of time and some study. Your first task will be to become aware of your thinking, and to develop the habit of watching your two minds as they work—learning to think about thinking. This process will be fun and interesting.
I believe that it is possible for most humans to understand, and then master their intelligence fully. Those who choose to do so, can with practice develop genius level thinking, and mastery of the four levels of knowing.
INFORMATION is understanding local space and knowing where to go to enable or avoid an action.
KNOWLEDGE is understanding time—temporal sequence—local cause and effect, and from that understanding knowing when to act in time to encourage or discourage an action from occurring in that known sequence.
WISDOM is understanding how things work together—what events and actions are necessary to produce a particular result—how INFORMATION and KNOWLEDGE relate to each other.
And finally, ONENESS is understanding the con-sequences of those actions and their resultants, and knowing why they should or should not be allowed to happen.
Let me provide one example of these four levels of knowing, and how they might apply to one of the really big problems currently threatening our civilization. You may recall that one of humanity’s most celebrated geniuses Albert Einstein warned over fifty years ago, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” By this he meant that his discovery of E=mc2, enabled humans to invent and build nuclear weapons. Let us examine the threat of nuclear warfare from the perspective of the our four levels of knowing:
INFORMATION is the level of understanding necessary to know where to go to escape from the blast of a nuclear weapon.
KNOWLEDGE is the level of understanding necessary to know when to act to either detonate, or deactivate a nuclear weapon.
WISDOM is the level of understanding necessary to discover how physical reality allows the forces of nature to interact and result in a nuclear explosion—E=mc2. And, it also is the level of understanding necessary to invent and manufacture a nuclear weapon—The Manhattan Project.
And finally, ONENESS is the level of understanding necessary to know why we should never have created nuclear weapons in the first place.
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Level of Knowing
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Consciousness
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ONENESS
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DIVINE
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WISDOM
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GENIUS
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KNOWLEDGE
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EGO
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INFORMATION
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ID
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I began this foreword with a statement that now bears repeating:
To understand and accurately model human intelligence may represent the critical knowing for our species. That with this knowing, every human has the potential to elevate their thinking to the level of genius. That with this knowing, the majority of mental illnesses can be better understood and controlled. That with this knowing, we can create thinking machines in short order, and set them to helping us solve our most pressing problems. And finally, that with this knowing, we can put away anger, fear and conflict, and begin building a world filled with love, trust and co-Operation.
Understanding Human Intelligence
My journey towards understanding human intelligence began quite by accident. For much of my life, I have practiced medicine. As the Director of an large urban Emergency Department in the early 1970s, I led a team that treated over 236, 000 patients. It was there that I first learned about stress. An Emergency Department is a very stressful place to work, and a very stressful place to visit as a patient. I personally treated and cared for thousands of highly stressed patients and their families.
By the end of 1978, it was clear to me that the number one factor in surviving disease and injury was stress, and that those physicians understanding stress would be the most effective in helping their patients. Knowing the power of the stressor causing the injury or illness, and the effectiveness of the patient’s ability to adapt to their stressors would allow them to predict and augment the course of their patient’s recovery.
I realized that modern medicine was too often treating patients too late in the course of disease. I knew there had to be a better way. We needed to focus on prevention rather than cure.
I began a search to understand stress and its effect on me and on my patients. Over the next eight years, I would read hundreds of books, attend meetings, lectures, and workshops. I apprenticed myself with experts in Psychology, Cognitive Therapy, Hypnosis, Relaxation Training, and Biofeedback. I continued to practice medicine, but now my focus was on Adaptive Medicine (helping patients to successfully adapt to the stressors in their lives).
I was now working one on one with a handful of patients each week instead of the hundreds I had cared for in the Emergency Department. My treatments lasted hours instead of minutes. My focus settled on studying human behavior, human relationships, and surprisingly human intelligence.
To most effectively help my patients adapt to the stressors in their lives, I had to understand how they thought. I began reading everything I could find on human thinking seeking models of human intelligence.
I studied the works of the great thinkers, and intelligence scientists—Diocles of Carystus, Arthur Ladbroke Wigan, John Hughlings Jackson, Alfred Korzybski, Buckminster Fuller, N. Edward Haskell, Arthur Young, Arthur Coulter, Roger Sperry, Joseph Bogen, Michael Gazzaniga, Maxie Maultsby, Tony Buzan, Edward DeBono, Robert Orstein, Peter Russell, and Raymond Abrezol.
I began integrating and combining the best of their ideas into a framework to help me better understand my patients as we worked together to neutralize the stressors in their lives. As I did so I began to see a consistent pattern for human thinking in all of them.
As recently as October 2004, a leading intelligence scientist wrote: “Understanding human intelligence is difficult in part because it is so vast in method and scope. Hundreds of cognitive phenomena have precise formal models. However, since most human thinking involves many of these phenomena and since particular models involve inference and knowledge representation methods that are difficult to integrate, human cognition outside of the laboratory remains largely unexplained.”
With the publication of this book, I have finalized my scientific formulations which explain human intelligence. I make this claim with some trepidation, but I make it nevertheless. The truth of my claim is in your hands, or in this modern age on your computer screen. You are an intelligent human, decide for yourself.
My original model was formulated in January of 1983 as the Dual Mind Hypothesis of Human Intelligence. It was based on my one-on-one interactions with hundreds of thinking humans. It explained that human intelligence, behavior, and creativity were the result of the complex relationship of two distinct ‘minds’—the space-mind and the time-mind. In the twenty-three years since then, the model has been tested, refined and extensively modified. Today, my model of human thinking is called the Synergetic Theory of Space-Time Intelligence.
Those choosing to understand and master this model of human intelligence can expect to gain control over their own thinking. Further, those who gain control over their own thinking will discover they have simultaneously gained control over their own emotions and behavior. One immediate advantage will be the ability to greatly increase their effective intelligence and creativity.
Many of the diseases and illnesses that currently plague modern humans appear to result from internal conflict within the dual-mind. Those with a mastery of their dual-mind can develop the ability to cure many of the illnesses that plague them. This includes nearly all of the psychosomatic, psychogenic, and stress diseases. So you can expect not only to think better, but to feel better.
As the understanding of human intelligence becomes more widespread, communities will finally gain the ability to control adversary and criminal behavior within them. Thus the understanding of human intelligence has staggering implications in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, psychology, education, criminology, and sociology.
Those currently working in the field of human intelligence research will discover that the Synergetic Theory of Space-Time Intelligence represents an extraordinary advancement in human knowing. There is extensive correlation and integration of the Dual-Mind Hypotheses, N. Arthur Coulter’s Human Synergetics, as well as Alfred Korzybski’s major discoveries—the Theory of Time-binding and the Theory of Sanity (General Semantics). In addition it integrates important but less well known work including R. Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics, Arthur Young’s Theory of Process, and William J. J. Gordon’s Synectics.
In the years since my first formulation, I have continued studying and thinking about all that I have learned. I have occasionally taught my model to others. As I worked with small groups of individuals, my understanding grew, and became more refined. My goal has been always to make it clearer—easier to understand and easier to use. And while I have often been a teacher, I have always been a student. I have learned from my patients, my students, family and friends. My teachers have been legion. I stand on the shoulders of many giants. This work is therefore a collaboration—an integration of ideas and understandings from a group of humans who lived from the 4th century to the present. Therefore, it is with humility, and gratitude that I present and share all that I have learned about human intelligence.
Much More Very Soon … Stay Tuned for details …