Established paradigms of thought are linear and look at minutiae, parts of things, removed from the context of the network of relationships in which they exist. IBI believes that critical thinking must be context-dependent, and through research projects, lectures, seminars, and various culture initiatives, they seek to bring a whole-of-system perspective to human thinking.
While the ability to study and understand things in isolation is an important component of scientific inquiry, just as important is the study of the way these things, especially livings things and groups/systems of livings things (such as a human being), interact with their environment and with other systems. While linear thinking tends to see only the fragments, systems thinking sees the whole in terms of its parts. The mission of IBI is therefore to describe things as they are, free from the limitations of the purely linear mind and with the fullest respect for the subjectivity which underlies the nature of living systems.
Particularly germane are questions such as how should one describe a living system – i.e. a human being? How can we incorporate the difficuties, the poetry, the complexity into our perception and understanding of such a vast, complex, and multidimensional living thing?
A large part of IBI’s research involves recognizing how patterns repeat and reflect each other across multiple contexts and systems. To avoid disrupting the circuitry of the interdependencies that give it its integrity, IBI looks at the spread of relationships that make the system robust. This requires reconceptualizing data and information to account for the complexity of inter-relationality.
“Warm Data” refers to information about the interrelationships that integrate elements of a complex system. It includes qualitative dynamics and offers another dimension of understanding to what is learned through purely quantitative, linear, or “cold” data.
IBI is one among many groups constructing a framework for a new Aquarian Age epistemology and ontology—the foundations upon which to build a clearer vision and knowledge of the nature of life and the world around us—one which is interconnected, motivated by love, and actuated by purpose.
