“Is a sense of the complementary nature, a sense of the inextricable, complementary dance of contraries.”

The squiggle sense exposes a basic truth that both complementary aspects and their dynamics are required for understanding.

If you see things like yin and yang, organism and environment, nature and nurture, mind and body, friend and enemy, living and dying, creation and annihilation as mutually related and inextricably connected,  as being complementary, you are using your squiggle sense.

If you see them as mutually exclusive contraries, us versus them, nature versus nurture, mind versus body, or if you overemphasize one extreme over the other, you are not using your squiggle sense.

Integration~segregation, local~global, individual~collective, part~whole, competition~cooperation, creation~annihilation, convergence~divergence, dwell~escape, states~tendencies, symmetry~dynamics, form~function, etc. are some of the complementary pairs (that we also refer to as squiggles) that constitute the base set of complementary pairs of coordination dynamics, or in other words, ‘the squiggles of coordination dynamics.’

It is important to note here that the squiggle is not a bridge: it doesn’t stand for glue holding complementary aspects together or mediating between them.

While the squiggle symbol (~) is a way to write and think about complementary aspects in a way that emphasizes their relational and dynamic character, the meaning of squiggle includes and transcends what is meant by complementary pair.

While the squiggle symbol symbolizes and communicates the basic truth for any complementary pair, both complementary aspects and their dynamics are required for an exhaustive account of phenomena. The squiggle, then, stands for the phenomena itself, which manifests and is entailed a pair of complementary aspects and all

TSS stands for The Squiggle Sense, a sixth sense of the complementary nature.

We think of the squiggle sense as a ‘gateway to enlightenment.’

We think this because at the end of the day, all searches for knowledge and understanding about the universe and our nature, eventually arrive at the issue of bistability, of the contraries, contraries of perception, contraries of action, contraries of thoughts, contraries of ideas and ideologies.

Even a cursory study of the history of ideas, of science and philosophy, religion and metaphysics, teaches that there doesn’t appear to be any way around this issue. Actually it would be more surprising if it were otherwise, since it now appears likely that bistability plays a key role in how the human brain and nervous system are put together, and have much to do with how they work.

All discoveries that point to a profound role of dynamic bistability in nature are also heralds of the profound role dynamic bistability plays in ourselves… One thing the squiggle sense senses is bistability, a dynamic cooperation~competition between contraries.