Structural and Interpersonal Stability and Instability
While the Triad, as noted in the conversion experienced of St. Paul and Brugh Joy, is directed toward progress, it is also founded on stability. Three-sided structures (such as trusses) are very stable, as are three-fold principles for governing a society. We triangulate the sources of information and methods of obtaining this information so that we might be confident of the conclusions we reach when conducting a study of human systems (Bergquist and Mura, 2014). We also triangulate support systems when faced with major challenges. This triangulation consists of expertise-based support, friendship/colleagueship-based support, and friendly-critique-based support (Bergquist and Mura, 2013). It is in the three-part perspective and three-part assistance we receive that we can best navigate a rugged and dancing terrain (Miller and Page, 2007).
However, progress only takes place between three-fold structures can also be a bit wobbly if one of the three entities feels left out or if this this entity represents the future and not the present. It becomes aligned with whatever progress requires.
Three-fold interpersonal relationships, in particular, tend not to be stable. One of the three members is usually set aside, isolated or “ganged up against. A field of study called collation formation focuses on this instability. One of my students many years ago applied coalition for formation theory to a study of the relationship between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin nearing the end of World War II. My students noted the ways in which Roosevelt and Churchill met together, without Stalin, and shared secrets (e.g. the successful testing of the atomic bomb) while leaving Stalin “outside the loop.” More generally, the instability of triads is featured in the Hegelian theory regarding the human enterprise.
Hegel and Big History
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel spoke of the tension between two poles (thesis and anti-thesis) that is resolved with synthesis. Apparently, all of human history can be distilled into this Hegelian tension and resolution. Even more generally, we find the tension and resolution of triads in a process called Emergence. This phenomenon occurs when a complex entity emerges from the joining of two or more less complex entities. The new entity displays properties or behaviors that its components do not have on their own. This new entity emerges only when these other entities interact. For instance, we can bring together two basic gaseous elements, hydrogen and oxygen. Together, they form an element that is not a gas, this element being water. The chemical “tension” between hydrogen and oxygen is resolved with the emergent creation of water.
The proponents of Big History suggest that a similar progression is to be found in all of history (not just human history as the Hegelians suggest) (Christian, 2019). It is noteworthy that the emergent perspective is itself based on the interplay between several different disciplines, including British emergence theory (John Stuart Mills), process philosophy (Alfred North Whitehead), continental philosophy (Heidegger), general systems theory (von Bertalanffy), and the concept of emergent learning that was offered by Michael Polanyi. In each of these fields, something new and unexpected (like water) comes out of an emergent process (interdisciplinary integration) related to two or more entities that are old and well-known (like oxygen and hydrogen).
