Connectivity - Contributions from the Network #5 - Richard Horwood

Thanks to everyone who sent me comments and thoughts on the Connectivity writing project.  Over the next few days I'll post up some of the feedback and thoughts that these pieces.  Remember to send comments on these things too and I'll pull them all together.

This post came from Richard Horwood, Clinical Educator in the Physiotherapy Department at AUT University in Auckland, New Zealand.

Why Critical Physiotherapy Needs Connectivity. Modernism likes to create single forms that can be 'understood', words, labels, models, tags etc. In effect it creates simple forms from complex parts. To create these forms, 'z', it works it's way from 'a' through a series of processes, accepting each transition based on reason, before moving on. However, reason is a construct based on 'past' knowledge, the acceptance of what's gone before as a basis of what is now. Therefore reason itself is a single longitudinal form, it travels in one direction. Connectivity dismisses this construct by allowing risk (lateral form) to penetrate, bend, distort, and affect this line of reason.  To be FUNCTIONAL we require longitudinal and lateral forms, in a myriad of constructs without accepting at face value reason. As an example I'll use Dave's example of assemblage and his decision to sit down on a rock whilst walking on the beach. He has taken reason (being tired) and added another reasoned process (finding a rock to sit on of the right height) to form the construct of his assemblage. Along the way though, from 'a-z' there are a whole host of 'risks' that may well prevent him from reaching his target rock; falling over, becoming distracted, changing his mind, and once he reaches the rock there are yet more reasons why he might decide not to sit there (bird poop, a particularly nasty looking oyster shell, etc).  The longitudinal path of reason - I'm tired and I'm going to sit on that rock- is a decision he's made but it's based on the removal of risk (lateral form). Medical and Social models (forms) remove lateral processes to simplify their constructs. To challenge these we need add back (connect) the lateral forms and in doing so open the space of connectivity into the realm of reason.