About Marika
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Summary
Dr Marika Bouchon is a researcher in Topologic Ecology (Ph.D. 2008), with expertise in health ecology and cognitive anthropology (the representation used to frame explanation, experience, object recognition, perception, sensations, are ruled by parameters and geometric projections). Underlying ancient cultural frameworks and symbols, she uncovered a dimensional-geometric ‘thinking in imaging’ that pictures, in topologic style animation, the shaping of a situation, from its arising to boundary behaviour. From it, she developed a method with a dimensional logic that can model generic states without fragmenting them, or stages of topologic deployment and other properties. She applies this in her experiments and field observations on distortions in Homo sapiens primate health, behaviour, creations and falls, and of nature’s biological co-regulation, away from breaching limits.
Dr Marika Bouchon is a researcher in Topologic Ecology. This discipline introduces a new approach to age-old problems linked to certain generic aspects of human behaviour, biases, and knowledge fragmentation.
Her initial training in mathematics and physics (Orsay, France, 1978) enabled her much later to detect the topologic nature of her theoretical findings, and to develop four new methods [1]. Her interest in geometry and use of words as a technical tool allowed her to extract parameters of representation, which are general to all cultural landscapes.
A year working in Canada developed her multi-cultural awareness, broad interests and keen questions, and reinforced her attraction to exploration and pioneer countries. The best way to compare the continental Europe world of linear logical thought to the Anglo-Saxon social ways and modalities, and to investigate their roots in languages, was to manipulate both languages daily and live that way.
She emigrated from Paris to Sydney in 1989, and so her research is formulated in English.
Animated Geometric Modelling
This ‘Animated Geometry’ imaging models generically, small progressive deformation, without numbering elements of fixed shapes, without equations, just as an embryo develops four limbs without pre-determining measured lengths or regimenting details. This video shows the distortion of a flat sheet into a cone and back to a flat sheet, with geometric projection in between.
Dr Bouchon embarked onto a multi-domain investigation path:
- retracing the same cultural origins and fundamental philosophical questions as mathematical physicists such as Isaac Newton, Henri Poincaré, Steven Hawking and Roger Penrose;
- reflecting the physical enquiries of several free-thinking female patient–physicians [2, 3, 4];
- questioning anomalies and logical inconsistencies in representations, investigating the distortion of biological signals that alter body care behaviours, and studying the generic property of ‘swelling’, a word used in many contexts but which expresses a geometric notion of increase or extension.
Her master’s thesis on models of the mind (uws, 1998) identified in the literature two overarching frameworks that are the basis of culture-bound representations of «life»: the philosophy of human advancement (progress/expansion) and the philosophy of nature, both claiming to describe «natural» laws of human behaviour. Two intellectual tendencies can be distinguished. On one hand, a tendency to oppose them irremediably through the notion of ‘return’ to nature, without seeing their underlying common operational ground. On the other hand, the two may also be assimilated, reducing biology to growth, and over-generalising to only see what grows, increases, or rises up and describe it as inevitable or a necessity. Words became for her a technical tool to discern logical inconsistencies. The impact of words through AI, teaching and mindset, and the conflicts of the tendencies have now become evident on a global scale, on collective human behaviour towards nature and bodily health (think of cancer ‘spreading’), as well as on economy and planet.
In her doctorate (uws, 2008), Bouchon focused on theory concerning the physical realm and an experimental study of flaring sub-clinical syndromes with chronic, diffuse or ‘vague’ symptoms (think of the vagus nerve). The latter revealed a common thread: overal deregulation, critical instability states, and a general activation inducing physiological suppression (a vertical symmetry).
Simultaneously, the study of cultural representations of health, body, and life, led her to ancient frameworks and timeless symbols (iconic images such as the tree), which are independent of specific cultures and describe effects in essence.
General Perspectives and Frameworks of Explanation & Experience description
Investigating the most generalised frameworks of explanation and perspectives on the societal world of humans revealed that the symbols are derived from fundamental parameters of representation at the foundation of human culture (known in deep philosophy) and at the root of perception (which was known in social psychology). The combinations of the geometric parameters give rise to geometric symbols, such as the vertical axis «up» related to bipedal posture, the spiral, the abstract circle that represents an integrated whole, and ultimately the medical caduceus.
Multi-language comparisons and Indo-European etymology revealed that their essential meaning is generic; it is the same in all cultures, applicable in many fields, in times ancient or modern. A geometric mapping of the shapes of symbols, modern abstract models, and concrete cartographies of behaviour, showed that these involve a process of geometric projection. This also accounts for «frames» of thought, framing explanations and experience with a reference, as well as the many developments found in models of life, body and health.
All of this ultimately brought to light an underlying «thinking in imaging», which is different from imagination and other culture-bound re-presentations. A simple form of non-algorithmic topology proved relevant to model the dimensional animated geometry of this «Geometry of Mind» sought by a few philosophers, and to develop the Topologic Situation Modelling© method from it to describe deployment in any context.
Without access to computer animation or video at the time, the topologic nature of this imaging could not be rendered in a written thesis. To describe this generic imaging in cultural forms, a multi-media thesis was therefore necessary: ancient phrases or questions and theoretical imaged-models (slides) collected from the literature, as well as some simple animations of geometry, and screenshot summaries, supplemented the words of linear, unavoidably very abstract explanations.
An operational imaging useful for health ecologies and any general perspective
This type of thinking in imaging conceptualises in animation a situation being modelled, with unmeasured geometric figures which distort to match the presenting situation as it changes. It thus produces a generic ‘likeness’ of the situation in shaping (not analogy or metaphor), simple enough that it can be expressed through gesture.
It is found in some patients’ descriptions of their symptoms and their health state. For example, it gives a signification to small distortions felt at biological boundary surfaces (e.g. ‘puffy’ swelling), a role of indicator of deregulation predictive of worse, just as a large deformation indicates an injured or sick state. Large and small are important distinctions of mathematical topology in physics.
This animated imaging is therefore also a «Geometry of Sensation» relevant to health in general, at any order of health, be it human or planet – with a caveat: it produces a ‘likeness’ modelling, not a specific or generalisable description, but it is less fragmentary. The gestures can also express an oriented deployment such as feeling pushed too far or headed for a worse health state (see for example [5,6]). For the syndromes (still) considered ‘not well understood’ or controversial in medical theory, this research thesis ‘filled a gap in medical understanding’, stated the thesis examiners.
Finding the applications & testing the modelling method: 8 years of fieldwork
The topologic ecology research program then had to be extended to observe, directly in situ, the reverse process to that of deployment and worsening health. From 2011, taking her field research to the Australian outback, Bouchon studied various elements of the ecology of health, and confirmed the role that nature, water, oxygen and low impact movement play in restoring the diffuse regulation of human biology, beyond simple recovery. The physiological well-functioning effects of this innate phenomenon (rarely recalled nowadays) is different from triggering self-healing or feeling energised in a forest. Because veterinarians care for wildlife in a different way to the medical practice for civilised humans, this phenomenon can be summed up in a way that makes sense to many, by a motto: Wildlife Care 4 Humans.
During the same period, Bouchon found the existence of a population mostly invisible to society, therefore not taken into account in statistics or as research subjects, which avoids the difficulties of physiological regulation under normal living conditions by avoiding sedentarism and urban crowding. These difficulties, if they cannot be corrected mentally or socially, medically or nutritionally, make a person dependent on nature and walking to function properly.
In parallel, Dr Bouchon developed the basis of the Foraging Station Experiment: reducing the impact of the elements of health ecology that increase ecological pressure on a highly reactive neurology and/or sensitive physiology. This exploratory field research connects the individual difficulty of body regulation under normal conditions, to the current problem of regulating, on the global scale, human societal behaviour towards the planet, animals, people, and health. In other words, it connects the local to the global, through the Local Case© experimental method.
In 2021, what was not feasible in 2006 might be. The fragmented knowledge, in the literature, of the parameters of representation and their derivatives could be computerised for automated Perspectival Mapping©. This could help find trans-disciplinary connections, as well as analyse texts for human assumptions, physical presuppositions (particularly about the body) and other biases.
A complementary approach to current strategies
The last 12 years have been devoted to testing the effectiveness of this geometric modelling, and defining its domain of validity. It turned out that:
- it is complementary to other forms of specialised and general knowledge, shares a common domain with them, and can also help connect the existing generalist perspectives; and
- it offers a way to understand how the two philosophies of life are expressions of two instincts generally considered opposite — short-term survival and long-term viability, related to fight-flight and rest-recover. They often work against each other (called ‘balancing’), but can also work together to avoid reaching and breaching limits. The key is in understanding the consequences of and how to gauge boundary behaviour.
Current step of the research program: realising the Foraging Station Experiment
The Foraging Station Experiment constitutes an exploration of these ideas through applying them. It takes advantage of a biological phenomenon that does not demand a ‘return’ to nature exclusive of human presence and advancement, and which can be modelled with the new gauging method. The experiment can contribute to individual health (particularly preventing syndromes with flare-ups), societal inclusion and technology, while also supporting the present effort to resolve global problems before the feared catastrophes.
This animated geometry and the pilot Foraging Station Experiment are the core of Bouchon’s contribution to the hope of simply being Safe & Sound, sans frontières, of time or of space(s) or species.
During all my years of research, when I doubted or felt stressed, I always reminded myself of this sentence by Spinoza:
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule,
not to bewail, not to scorn human actions,
but to understand them.”
Spinoza, On the Improvement of the Understanding, 1901
After so many years of research and with a new method in hand, it now seems crucial and urgent to connect complementary strategies, and that we collaborate in complementary ways, leaving no one out, even those hidden, if we all are to be taken where we want to go.
Because increasing numbers of people feel this way too, I now take to heart to begin sharing my work online and to seek communication and collaborations to quickly initiate the realisation of the exploratory Foraging Station Experiment.
If you wish to help enable it and support this ongoing research, I humbly invite you to share them to your network, and give your expertise or resources for the station.
Kindly support this research and the Foraging Station Experiment
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To know more:
[1] 4 methods©: Perspectival Mapping; Somato-Analysis; Local-Case experimental method; Topologic Situation Modelling. Bouchon, 2008.
[2] Dr Annabelle Baughan, MD, haematologist
https://www.neurologyadvisor.com/neuromuscular-disorders/personal-insight-into-primary-periodic-paralysis/article/755780/
[3] Dr Sharon Meglathery, MD, psychiatrist, internal medicine
https://www.rccxandillness.com/summary-for-scientists.html & https://www.gro-gifted.org/rccx-theory-and-giftedness-a-promising-new-line-of-research/
[4] Dr Terry Wahls, MD, general medicine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIurbDArpEU
[5] Bouchon. 2009. Low-dose oxytocin stops unexplained ‘burning’ pain — a case report + Additional files 1 Hypothalamic ‘first stress system’ & 2 Theoretical questions
Research Gate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marika-Bouchon/research
[6] Bouchon. 2010. Poster ‘Thinking in Imaging, not Imagining things’.