I had a very enlightening conversation with scientist Dr. S. Naranan who works in the area of cosmic energy and particle physics, but also bends his considerable intellect towards linguistics. He is part of a duo – Balasubramanian and Naranan, highly respected researchers who have published several papers on linguistics. The two papers in the journal Quantitative Linguistics discuss complexities of language and entropy.

I was intrigued by the discussions and wondered if we could map Spiral Dynamics (SD) on to the basic principles enunciated by them. This discussion helped me get a greater insight into the systems equivalents of the V-memes. The Gell-Mann formulations on the idea of effective complexity are compelling since he discusses “complex adaptive systems” at great length in his papers and presentations.

It was very tempting to speculate on the usefulness of trying to map SD on to the Gell-Mann curve. Sharing my understanding, that is as yet very tentative and formative, may be helpful to readers of Integral Leadership Review and the SD community.