At the end of the preceding page, we defined contracted and dilated medium. We will show now that they are produced by waves that I call activity waves that will reveal to be also waves of compression/ dilation.
1- The medium.
Let us note seizing contrast between :
 The organization, the high degree of protection of workshops, especially those of high technology, - protections against the external disturbances, dust, electrostatic inductions, variations in temperature, hacking of the techniques, intrusions of all kinds which could disturb the good course of the sequences of manufacture, etc.
And agitation, hubbub, more or less organized disorder of certain places of sale as professional shows, known like places privileged to fill the order books. The disorder is useful in commercial phase to support meetings, fortuitous or not, between the purchaser and the salesman, the need and the product. In such disordered mediums, manufacture would not be possible any more.
In the same way, we can raise this contrast between:
The activity of the cook which prepares a cake for a family meal. Before starting, she puts order in the kitchen, excludes any intruder or issued such. Then she acts according to the precise order of the receipt. She scrupulously regulates her activity on numerical data: precise weighings of the ingredients, flour, butter..., temperature of the furnace, time of cooking.
And the moment of relaxation when the cake arrives on the family table each guest appreciating the good cake, congratulating the cook in a pleasant and disordered way. It is not any more question of quantity, but of qualities, appreciation, savour, perfumes...
These examples show us the two necessary types of environment for human activity :
A contracted environment.
An ordered, numerical, quantitative medium; an environment that I describe as contracted, confined with many restrictions. Space is divided and directed, displacements restricted in certain directions and directed towards others, for people or for products. Time is arranged hierarchically in ordered and controlled sequences. The operations of manufacture are rigorous, precise. It is enough to visit a factory of high technology to note the extent and the rigour of measurements taken to protect manufacture.
A dilated environment.
Beside that, certain activities need a disordered, qualitative, expanded medium in a dilated environment. The movements of individuals must be done freely without restriction of direction, meetings are done fortuitously, hierarchies are erased. Examples: commercial shows, fairs and festivals.
Not to multiply the qualifiers in description, I made this table where I put in opposition the characteristics of each medium:
Compressed mediums |
Dilated mediums |
Order |
Disorder |
Structured |
Destructured |
Constraint |
Freedom |
Néguentropy |
Entropy |
Containment |
Opening |
Rogorous Logic |
Free imagination |
Rejection of the useless |
Call to fancy |
Precision |
Approximation |
1D |
3D |
Quantitative |
Qualitative |
Closed |
Open |
Dilated and contracted states, and time.
It useful to note the different sensibility with time between the two extreme states, dilated state and contracted state.
In a contracted state time is ordered, structured, and we can envisage events precisely but in the short run. When we make a manufacture we know perfectly what we will obtain, but it is necessary to be protected from any disturbances. It is an unstable state.
A dilated state is characterized by disorder and homogenisation. It is a stable state which varies only slowly, it resists the disturbances. It seems out of time.
We will see how nature, with the ontostat, can make use of this difference in temporal horizon. In the economic ontostat, men benefit from the relative stability of markets or the foreseeable returns of tendency, like seasons, to organize manufactures and to prepare sales.
Ordering operations.
The phenomena of dilation and compression bring into play ordering operations. There are four ordering operations which are operations of bringing together or separation :
-Bringing together or separation of similars,
-Bringing together or separation of differents.
We understand well that compression phases support the bringings together and dilation phases, separations.
Going further, we can analyze these phenomena like compressions or dilations in two dimensions out of three, leaving an ordered and deterministic dimension : a three-dimensional space contracted in two dimensions, become one-dimensional. The events, dispersed and independent from each other in a three-dimensional medium, are obliged to line up in only one direction, to follow one another in a causal order. A certain order succeeds after disorder.
2- The waves.
These states appear to us phenomena of alternative and complementary compression/dilation in economic activity. The phase of contraction (manufacture) is followed of a phase of dilation (sale), and the phenomenon is repeated just like it acted as a wave. Here some reasons which tend to prove that they are truly waves oscillating between constraint and freedom, quantitative and qualitative, entropy and neguentropy :
These waves extend laterally: the activity of a company generates around it other activities,
and longitudinally, the products manufactured are used in other companies for new activities : a product is manufactured in phase of contraction, it is sold in phase of dilation, then it is re-used in another activity in phase of contraction, to make another product which will be sold in phase of dilation. This general outline, of course, must be adapted to each case.
These waves are involved and synchronized, partly from themselves - a production involves others of them, and also by their environment: - alternation of the days and nights, seasonal activities, annual returny of holidays, economic conjuncture, tax constraints, etc. They are synchronized with the favour of rhythms which we presented at the preceding page.
The quivering of these waves.
As an example, we can try to show how such an undulatory unity could be constituted in medieval France, primarily rural.
The agricultural development and the slow speed of displacement of goods reveal on the territory a grid of boroughs, seats of markets where peasants go to sell their production and to buy essential items. These zones of activities under development attract craftsmen. In these places, condensed zones of manufacture and dilated zones of sales, the markets, are superimposed and alternate. We can analyze that as the creation of activity waves on the territory whose amplitude corresponds to the generated activity and the wavelength to the distance between these centers. This one thus depends on the speed of communications.
Some of these boroughs, better placed, surrounded by a richer contry, on easier transportation routes or occupying a strategic position, develop more actively and gain ascendancy over their neighbours. They are attractive, one finds there products more refined, rarer, it reigns there a more significant activity. Strengthening themselves and developing they become capital of small geographical units. Coming back to our analysis, a wave of bigger length and greater amplitude adds again itself to the first. According to the distance and communication facilities, certain small boroughs suffer from it and others benefit from it. It results a rehandling of the primary network which we can analyze like an (economic) effort to synchronize all these activities. The waves in phase add again, i.e. the activities are supported and are reinforced mutually.
Then other waves of bigger lengths and amplitudes appear and are added, which correspond to the development of more significant and more remote cities. This network evolves with the reinforcement of activity and the development of communications. It is always moving. It is identified now with the regional planning which can be understood like the instrument of synchronization of these sets of waves. I will present soon an in-depth study on these points.
These waves of activities always settle down and extend. They get settled now in a true phase wave which encloses the Earth and which we currently recognize under the name of globalisation.
In the following page, we will show that such waves, recognizable by rhythms they generate, find themselves at every levels of living and that their origins locate as well in the infinitely small as in the infinitely large.
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