Notes to the Fourth Gallery of Images

Steps
Steps
Slopes
Slopes
In and Roun
In and Roun
Conversations
Conversations
Intervention
Intervention
Patience
Patience

Descriptions of images from left to right, top to bottom:

A. This diagram originated in chapter 4 of Process: Introducing Themselves to Young (Christian) Minders (1990). In Allure (2015), where McShane referred to this diagram as a “Step Diagram,” he wrote: “The main advantage of the Step Diagram is that it helps to shake us out of the simplistic view of this final specialty [Communications]” (190). In The Future: Core Precepts in Supramolecular Method and Nanochemistry (2019), he called this image a “Stair Diagram” (39). In Interpretation from A to Z (2020), he referred to this diagram as “Lonergan’s invention of a cyclic process calculated to raise culture” (20) and likened it to Archimedes’s invention of a screw designed to raise water. He used the same diagram, without the side notes or  footnotes, in Æcornomics 5, “Structuring the Reach Towards the Future.” There are three footnotes in the diagram presented here:

  1. Bernard Lonergan, from unpublished notes of the early sixties available in the Toronto Lonergan center, Batch B, 8, 6, V.
  2. Bernard Lonergan, “Christology Today: Methodological Reflections,” A Third Collection¸ ed. Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. (Mahwah, NJ, Paulist Press, 1985), 82.
  3. Philip McShane, “Systematics, Communications, Actual Contexts,” Lonergan Workshop, vol. 6, ed. Frederick Lawrence (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986), 151.

B. This diagram is the final one in the book Method in Theology: Revisions and Implementations. It also appears in Prehumous 2, “Metagrams and Metaphysics” (6). In Cantower VIII, “Slopes: An Encounter,” McShane wrote that “as the disciplines move up from research through interpretation to history and to dialectic, there is a convergence of data and interest” (13). In that essay he went on to give both a priori and a posteriori reasons for his optimistic perspective on omnidisciplinary foundations.

C. This page was provided at the Lonergan Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, July 2009. The “Childout Principle” at the top of the page appears in the “Note to Teachers and Students,” Introducing Critical Thinking (2005), p. i. The authors add that “the word geometry can be replaced with any topic, and children can be replaced with teenagers, adults, teachers, and so on.”  The table at the bottom of the handout is from chapter 2 “The Human Good” of Method in Theology (CWL 14, 47). The first box, with numbers from 1 to 5, is an image of human capacities and needs. The second “INIGO” box is an image of what happens when humans ask “What?” and reach an understanding. The third “ROUNWIKO” image relates the five capacities and needs to the eight functional specialties, which are specific roles and tasks within a global institution, call it “Cosmopolis,” the “Tower of Able,” or some other fitting name.

D. This matrix of communications symbolizes a myriad of dialogues and gives the full complexity of possible relations among people doing functionally specialized work. McShane described the matrix in these words: “Cij, with i and j running from 1 to 8, represents the possible conversations, face to face or through journals, etc., between the community members. It is not difficult to imagine such conversations: between a textual researcher and a historian, between a phonologist and someone with a foundational perspective on neurophysiological possibilities, between an educator and an interpreter, and so on.” A Brief History of Tongue (1998), pp. 106–107.  See also The Allure of the Compelling Genius of History, (2015), pp. 187–190.

E. McShane created this W3 diagram at a conference on Lonergan’s hermeneutics in November 1986. “It occurred during the Montreal Concordia Conference on interpretation that gave rise to the volume Lonergan’s Hermeneutics: Its Development and Application (edited by Sean E. McEvenue and Ben F. Meyer, The Catholic University of America, 1989). The morning that I was to reply to a paper by Fr. Bob Doran, I had a leap of imagination which gave me what is now a centerpiece of my grip on future effective intervention in human progress.” Interpretation from A to Z (2020), p. iii. See also A Brief History of Tongue (1998), p. 124; Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (2013, second printing), p. 161; The Allure of the Compelling Genius of History, (2015), p. 95; The Future: Core Precepts in Supermolecular Method and Nanochemistry (2019), p. 20; and Interpretation from A to Z (2020), p. iv.

F. This image is on the last page of Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas. McShane presented it in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and again in “Functional Research,” a talk he gave at Loyola Marymount University, April 30, 2011. The four-meter-long spear that the stickman is holding represents the four-thousand-year period from 1000 BCE to 3000 CE. One kilometer is equal to a million years, so the 12,700 kilometers (the Earth’s diameter) plus a thousand more kilometers equals the approximate age of the universe. The 2,000 kilometers under the arrow pointing to the left represent the next 2 billion years. See also “Insight Within a New Global Culture,” pp. 166–167.