Given the number and complexity of the matrices and the multiple operations of the micro–minds, energy must be kept in reserve to face unpredictable changes in the environment, and so deal with flux that is partly predictable and deal with flux which is internal, and also conflict and charge separation between semi–autonomous centres in the brain, in the gut and in the organs. The assemblage of matrices and the structural assemblage of “minds” mutually hold themselves in place. Life is, of course, a distributed system of reciprocal elements; the notion of central controller is one of the fictions of our consciousness. Randomness in the universe, however, saves us from a life of determinism. We live in the gap between extreme randomness and complete determinism.
The continuity of one domain remains completely unresolved: the microbiomes that inhabit our guts and our skin might appear to be discontinuous with our personal genome. Yet it was initiated from our mother's environment at birth and if removed by violent purgation is replaced within a day or two (Haller 2018). Microbial metabolites influence signalling in the gut lumen (ibid.).
2/5: The interconnected matrices
The Matrices do not form a separate idea from Mindedness: rather they are the assemblages of the assemblage at the heart of life. All the ideas in the list of five given at the head of this section are interlocking. Perhaps first I should explain that I make use of the term Matrix whenever a standard physiology textbook might use the word “system”. This conventional usage separates, for the convenience of study, elements which can have no separate existence. As a device, it helps the student focus on details abstracted from the whole, which is useful but tends to diminish the evolutionary integrity of life, and may even promote a diagnostic tendency that favours one “system” or organ over another. In this way a hierarchy of values (and medical careers) tends to dominate the clinical assessment of the patient's situation. In an emergency, this may be desirable or even necessary but in formulating a course of herbal treatment for a chronic condition, it obscures the interconnectedness and evolutionary integrity of the patient's life.22
Matrix is the only word in current usage that I know which refers both to origin and embeddedness. Originally referring to any generating mammal, it became a synecdoche for the womb. From this root comes mater in Latin and cognate words for mother in other Indo-European languages. It is used in geology to express the seam and its embedded ores. Serving also as an expression of the ground–matter of existence, in mathematics, a Matrix refers to a structured array of values which, once constructed, may generate sub–matrices so that any alteration in one of its cells is reflected everywhere within the common ground that the matrices express. Those who use spreadsheets will recognise at once how embedded operations automatically adjust to changes made elsewhere within the matrices. The understanding that no thing in the universe can truly be independent of the rest (at least in the long run) sits at the basis of both ancient and modern physics. In medical physiology, walling off (e.g., fibrosis) may be a protective resistance of a tissue against invasion or incapacity to preserve life but, of course, that resistance extends itself against therapeutic interventions.
The use of the concept of Matrices rather than the anatomical and physiological systems they produce emphasises the obligatory concurrent existence of both simplicity and complexity as equally self–affirming structures of Life. Negotiating the poise between them ensures that we not be trapped in the one and lost in the other. Herbalists will not need reminding that Matricaria, a remedy they use probably on a daily basis means “beloved mother” from Matrix cara.
If the surface and deep anatomical structures of the body arise from embryonic structures during the course of foetal development and maturation after birth, they can only do so by the gradual extension of the matrices into living tissues. The point that I wish to labour is rather an obvious one: the visible and palpable structures like skin, muscle and bone as well as the hidden viscera that make themselves known to us are co–extensive with other “skeletons” which though invisible—because in solution or enmeshed in colloids—they are quite as material as our skin and bone. It is these matrices that underlie the abstractions studied in physiology and upon these that medicinal plants have their greatest effect.
The deepest matrix is the interpenetrative Catalytic Matrix which pervades and permeates all the others. Without this presiding Matrix of Catalytic Enzymes and their cofactors, little if any biological chemistry could ever take place. Thus enzyme matrices operate both constructively and destructively: both are needed for the organism to continue.
The other interpenetrative Matrix in the human body is the haemopoetic system, including the lymphoid immune system: so important in separating out Self (and yet clinically linked to Separation as I hope to show later). Along with these are the Reciprocal Service Matrices, notably those of the cardiovascular system. It is perhaps the kidney and blood that constrain and restrain the internal environment within normal limits lest energetic ambitions from within threaten to exceed themselves. I list the most salient of these elements in the Table below:
| Visible or visible in outline or capable of inspection or palpation | |
| Integument with surface glands | Evidence of the underlying Circulation: from character of pulse & feel and look of blood vessels |
| Eyes, Tongue & buccal cavity | External Ear & other orifices |
| Musculature & skeleton a secretory osteo–myotome | The cavities of the Axial Skeleton the principle sites for congestion by way of the operation of Para–Sympathetic nerves; the limbs of the Appendicular Skeleton the principle sites for the operation of the Ortho–Sympathetic Nervous System |
| Potentially visible on dissection or under high power microscopy | |
| Digestive tube & Adnexial organs | |
| The Splanchnic organs (traditional terminology) | a major part of the homeostatic system esp buffering of pH |
| Nerves | and supporting tissues |
| Circulatory and haemopoetic | Blood & lymphatic vessels |
| Cellular & intercellular | Tissular |
| Invisible Matrices, some virtual & some developmental Matrices | |
| Pheromonal and other communicative circuits | extra–corporeal via olfactory bulb and limbic system |
| Inter–cellular colloids & epithelial connections | |
| Intra–cellular (between organelles) | The Families of Cytosolic receptors |
| Cellular | especially the Ribosomal matrix involving transcription and replication |
| Limbic & Memorious structures | |
| Neuroendocrine systems | |
| The Proprioceptive or Thalamic “Mind” | All animals know where they are in space |
| Morphic plates and other zones of differentiation | Germ layers |
| The Families of Cell–membrane receptors | in spite of appearances, the phospholipid membrane itself represents more of a continuity than a barrier (discussed in Section 4) |
| Catalytic Enzyme & cofactors | enables and presides over all matrices |
| The rate limiters of all other matrices | |
| Genetic limitors and expanders of capacitance | Should perhaps include the genome of our microbiota |
The sense of mindedness is that all cells and all tissue is connected not only by the so–named connective tissue but is also permeated and penetrated by the enzymatic matrix and underpinned by the informational matrix encoded in the chromosomes which resonate to the pulsatility of the physical world. Mindedness provides a narrow escape from determinism. It might seem to imply that the enzymatic and other matrices have a purpose. While a sense of purpose contributes to health, as I wish to assert at the level of the psychosocial individual, there is no purpose to mindedness beyond the structural bias at the heart of life. The enzymes do not have “minds of their own” but respond to the demands of the inner and outer