1. Take an event or series of This model proposes that, inst Transfer can be thought of as Transform can be thought of as Transit can be thought of meta

Contents

Change in content, attention, mode, quantity

Change in state, overall direction or quality

Crisis-Concern-Issue

Exercises

 1. Take an event or series of events in your life which spans a period of time and which eventually ended in a crisis. Identify Transit, Transfer and Transform. Note if there are more than one Transfer. Can you detect Hows in the total series of events? Any Whys? At which points(s) are Hows (and Whys) clarified?
2. Take the same sequence in the first exercise, but now move backwards from the Transform, through Transfer, to Transit, and see if additional detail becomes evident.

One thing stops and next thing starts

One thing stops, an entirely different thing starts

Ongoing movement

Related Models

SetUp-Upset-SetDown

Spatial Maping of Transitions

 This model proposes that, instead of talking about cause and effect, we talk about transitions. The model is useful in talking about both transitions in matter (causation) and transitions in mind (causal thinking).
Cause and effect descriptions cover content only, describe disjunctive Whats, and are not accurate in describing a process wholistically.
This model depicts How things change
using a map in space. It is a flow model involving three different kinds of flow, which attempts to clarify what happens inbetween what we call cause and effect.

Cause -------> Effect
^
The space between cause
and effect is ill-defined in
philosophy and in our every-
day language and thinking.
This model attempts to show How transitions occur and things change.
SetUp-UpSet-SetDown can be
overlayed on this model to some degree as follows: SetUp is at some point before Transit and spans Transit and all or part of Transfer. UpSet occurs in Tranform; it may also occur at the Transfer point, but get SetDown there in a manner similar to the original SetUp. SetDown after Transform is likely to be something quite different from the original SetUp (but the SetDown process is not explicitly part of this model).
Crisis-Concern-Issue (another spatial
model of transition) corresponds to some degree to this model as follows: The conceptual Issue may continue in Transit, may Transfer and become a Concern, and then be Transformed into a Crisis, during which coping is still attempted. After Crisis is disaster or catastrophy.
What-How-Why is commented upon in
the notes attached to the individual elements of this model. Note that Why is largely left out.

Transfer

 Transfer can be thought of as moving from one room to another in a building.
Still in transit, but a transfer of content, attention, mode, or quantity occurs.
Description of Transfer helps to clarify How the transition works.

Transform

 Transform can be thought of as moving from one building to another.
Change in state, quality or in overall direction; change in the process of the movement or how the movement occurs, or the kind of movement.
There is no simple "cause" for the Transform; it is [emergent] from the flow of the whole process that leads to the Transform (or the whole process of which the Transform is one part). So there is no single "cause".

Transit

 Transit can be thought of metaphorically as moving from one side of a partition to another within a room within a building.
Ongoing movement; process proceeds normally.

Transit - Transfer - Transform

What-How-Why
Axon File: c:\axon2002\cogmaps\tttrans.xon
Last modified: 2001-07-21 15:52:07