Talk:Fourth Way enneagram

message: OK, the split was reasonable; although few people, I'm sure, know of any enneagram other than the fourth way enneagram, I really wonder if the geometric enneagram needs a separate article. It is not reasonable to merge the present article with "enneagram of personality" as has apparently been suggested. The enneagram is an important symbol and tool of a school of thought which has been an important intellectual influence in the 20th century. The "personality enneagram" is one fashionable and disputed application of it. Some readers regard the whole subject as "occult nonsense" of course, that is a POV among others.
I'm not sure what the tags about citations are on about. There is a large part of the article explicating the enneagram without detailed citation, it is all drawn from Ouspensky"s In Search of the Miraculous  referred to in text. Of course page numbers should be supplied; the parts I wrote are deficient in that too. I will remove the uncited reference to Mouravieff, Mouravieff does refer to the enneagram but is of very doubtful relevance. The uncited refrence has been sitting there for months. And what is wrong with the tone? Is the problem that the article doesn't call the subject of the article "occult nonsense"? What "tone" is expected for articles on the Christian superstition? Jeremy (talk) 10:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, we're not supposed to call anything occult nonsense. In its current version, however, this article seems to assume that the enneagram hypotheses are true, which is also "a POV among others." - ∅ (∅), 12:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Kewl. I've read the application section through and can't find what the tone problem is. I've added an intext source note but even as the matter stood the section began "according to Gurdjieff" and so far as I can see doesn't deviate from that attitude or tone. Where does it? Can you quote something objectionable? The section simply explicates the concept. If every sentence is meant to begin "none of this is scientifically proven but the idea is" then we can apply the same principle to other sites. I understand the concern about promotion, and have seen plenty of articles on wikipedia which justify it, but I can't see that this is one of them. Also the referencing tag is mispalced. The tag the article needs is the one calling for page numbers, that would be a fair cop. 
This is not to say that the article as it stands has no problems apart from page numbers. The subject of the enneagram is a huge one, the difficulty from the wikipedia point of view may be that a satisfactory article would be too long. The problem will probably have to be covered by more complete references....the "enneagram of essence types" as developed by Collins-lineage Fourth way should be mentioned for example; and the work done on the enneagram by Bennet-lineage people. Jeremy (talk) 08:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've replaced the tone tag with  and  with . - ∅ (∅), 16:22, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I think a primary source would be something by Gurdjieff on this topic. Perhaps something like the lecture from Ouspensky's book, it is purportedly the text of Gurdjieff's lecture, so could serve as primary materials for the article. The citation would then be something like: The Enneagram, A Lecture by G.I. Gurdjieff, from Chapter 14 of In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky. There is a version of the text of this lecture here: http://www.endlesssearch.co.uk/philo_enneagramtalk.htm, which could be added to external links.Sreed888 (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Here we are

message: What most disturbs me about articles like this is the lack of any note pointing out that it has no validity according to science. A naive reader might easily confuse the terminology and pseudo-scientific discussion with an area of knowledge that is widely held to be true by recognized academics. 
While those given to believing in this kind of thing no doubt regard their own point of view as being as valid as any other position, such belief does not make it so.
It's easy to dress up ANY invented mumbo-jumbo in an impressive jargon and make false claims of validity, but without applying any method of distinguishing the valid from the spurious all opinions stand as equal, which they are not. I think the article really must reflect this.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.4.38.225 (talk) 09:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  untrue. the scientific method is quite well and rigorously defined. Furthermore, you seem to have a complete misunderstanding of how the scientific methods is applied - in most cases it is not used to prove at all, but rather disprove. More accurate would be: if is is disprovable by the scientific method, it is untrue. If it cannot be disproven by scientific method, one must not assume it is false until proven otherwise. If something can be neither proven nor disproven via scientific method, "it" must make no predictions and is therefore scientifically irrelevant. 50.133.160.189 (talk) 10:11, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: What you are describing is Popperian falsificationism, one popular theory of scientific method, not the only one. and you wrongly describe it, getting the direction of inference wwrong. If it makes no testable predictions then it is outside the the scope of falsificationsit method. (A classic example was the heliocentric versus geocentric method, before the introduction of the telescope. There were some scientists who got it right nevertheless) In any case, here we are just describing what was held by Gurdjieff and friends, people will have different attitudes to its truth interest of usefulness, and that's OK ¬¬¬¬
'I think the nature of the dispute here is that, to be blunt, the article is using a lot of terminology that has specific dictionary definitions in a fashion more coherent with the internal jargon of the Fourth Way than the definition with which the remainder of humanity is familiar and in which they operate. The use of 'food', to pick one out at random; it's a remarkably wide word used to refer to a lot of things, but it has a basic technical definition (calories etc) and so does 'air' (a specific mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and trace gases). Combining/mixing/whatever 'food' and 'air' is no more magical than opening up a tin of beans. This is far from the most egregious use of actual scientific terminology and logic to give an air of coherence unwarranted in evidence; it's like deciding that to be a horse something has to spiritually resemble the Horsehead Nebula, and within a paragraph you're discussing whether Barack Obama being a horse is going to hurt him in the polls. My private theory is that you're never going to make hypothesizing on the American people's willingness to elect a nebula particularly sensible, but you can at least make it so that you're not doing that so directly as to make it obvious. 70.173.195.241 (talk) 09:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: A Warning is Needed

message: I believe the earliest published fourth way enneagram is this one reproduced here: ; made by de Salzmann as promotional material for Gurdjieff's Institute in 1923. It probably should be reproduced in this article for its historical importance. Presumably it comes under the fair use provisions. Is it also public domain for wikipedia purposes? DeSalzmann died before 1950, publication was in France. Jeremy (talk) 04:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Earliest pubslished enneagram

message: 7/7 is 1 and certainly not 0.9999..., which is not even a fractional number but a real number. Maths is still maths ain't it, even in this new age context?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.239.133.167 (talk) 16:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The answer to your objection is already linked within the article. Esoteric indeed. Gabriel Kielland (talk) 21:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  7/7 

message: This article, as it is, is really out there, it needs a lot of work. I've decided to take it under my wing, as it were, and try and clean it up. The tags are for my reference as I do this. Other people contributing is certainly welcome! Irbisgreif (talk) 16:10, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wow 

message: Regarding the mass of cleanup tags and proposed rewrite of Enneagram by Irbisgreif:
NB: The Enneagram article started off about Gurdjieff and others' use of what they called the enneagram; then someone added the pseudo-maths; and finally someone decided to move the original material to Fourth Way Enneagram and Enneagram of Personality. Hence, we're left with just the geometry, which is a repeat of the material in Nonagon.
Why not ditch the geometry material at Enneagram (some of which is in nonagon anyhow) and replace it with Fourth Way Enneagram, with a redirect to Enneagram from that article, and a link to Nonagon? May need to add some of the material to Nonagon. Esowteric+Talk 19:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  17 August 2009 

message: Irbisgreif, I notice that you've taken out all the material explaining the application of the enneagram in the Fourth Way (see edit diff). Yes, there were no citations, but I think you are wrong to dismiss beliefs held in a school of mysticism as what you choose to label "pseudoscience". If citations can be found, then this material deserves just as much right to exist here as many other beliefs that others hold, one being the belief that this is pseudoscience. Esowteric+Talk 07:20, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: My main complaint was that it was being presented as some kind of fact. If you can find citations, feel free to work the information back in, as appropriate. But I think it's best to keep it presented as "X thinks Y" or "The X group views Y as Z", rather than the tone it previously had. Irbisgreif (talk) 12:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  18 August 2009 

message: Since the article has been cut back to a stub, I've deleted some of your many cleanup tags, Irbisgreif, so that we can see the wood for the trees. Esowteric+Talk 11:53, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I've got to admit, unlike the personality page, where I'm seeking the aid of a psychologist, I really don't know what to do here to find better secondary resources. Irbisgreif (talk) 12:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I know what you mean and personally I don't at all fancy tackling Gurdjieff's stuff. I first came across it around 30 years ago and didn't really enjoy wading through the material. It really requires someone who's familiar with and into the Fourth Way and in possession of the books. Snippet view in google books is no good for referencing. Maybe Jayen466 (a veteran III editor) might like a look sometime, but he's usually very busy on other articles. Esowteric+Talk 12:38, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup of cleanup tags 

message: With I hope Objectionable POV removed, (page numbers still needed but material accurately sourced)Jeremy (talk) 05:23, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shortened Restoration of Explanation

message: The mention of the Overstone cycle seems irrelevant. -  Metalello talk 06:17, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: If relevant ti needs more detail! 110.143.186.35 (talk) 03:22, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: ""Another completely unrelated system, known as the "Overstone Cycle", was devised by a nineteenth century banker, Lord Overstone, to describe events on the financial market: starting with "quiescence" it then moves on to "improvement", then through "confidence", "prosperity", "excitement", "over-trading", "convulsion", "pressure" and "stagnation"  until it ends again in "quiescence".J. Johnstone's Illustration of Lord Overstone's description of the business cycle"....I've put this in talk as as it stands I don't think it it is relevant to article and if it was made relevant probably OR Jeremy (talk) 20:57, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overstone cycle 

message: I'm beginning to add a new section to the page but can't finish it now. So far I've got:
"The enneagram according to Gurdjieff shows the "Law of Seven" and the "Law of Three" united and so some explanation of these laws is necessary here.
The Law of Seven or law of octaves, according to which phenomena evolves in seven steps; and the Law of Three, according to which phenomena are produced by three forces, are presented by Gurdjieff as global laws appearing on all scales and essential to his cosmology. This cosmology offers an alternative view of how the world operates, said to derive from alchemy and more ancient sources, and to complement or complete modern experimental science rather than to contradict it. According to this cosmology everything is material, including consciousness and spirit, and all matter can be assigned a "density", consciousness and spirit for example having lower "densities" than flesh."(end so far)
I'll go on to explain how the octave works and how it is applied to the enneagram with the "shock in the wrong place" etc. Also I'll note that the musical scale Gurdjieff is quoted as using in the so-called Ptolemy's intense diatonic scale associated with Zarlino rather than the usual modern scale. And also a brief exposition of the law of three. Jeremy (talk) 05:19, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Background in Gurdjieff's Cosmology 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: When this article mentions claims that Idries Shah has suggested Sufi antecedents to the Enneagram, it could mention that the theory that the Enneagram has Sufi antecedents has been hotly contested. Vorbee (talk) 17:10, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough if it is thought necessary. Everything about the origins of the enneagram is contested though. It seems to me that that is clear from the articleJeremy (talk) 12:12, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Does the Enneagram really have Sufi antecedents?

message: The article states that "the Fourth Way enneagram is a figure published in 1949 in In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky" which suggests that Ouspensky is the creator of the enneagram at least in the visual form presented in the article. However I think it is clear that Gurdjieff himself used it in his works. This should be reflected in the article's introduction. --Jazzman (talk) 13:12, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah. The earliest publication available seems to be the drawing by de Salzman in I think 1923 which I think was published in the _Herald of the Coming Good_. Ouspensky seems to be describing this drawing when he describes a flyer used for Gurdjieff's Instistitute in from memory 1919 in Tiflis. This should be in the intro sure, Im the editor "JeremY" who appears elsewhere on this page and I haven't been editing for some while. I think the page makes reasonably clear that Ouspensky wasn't the author of the design. 110.143.186.35 (talk) 05:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Authorship 

message: user Pondoriro added a bit in "Applications in Human Typology" from, judging from his account, seems to be a link to his personal promotional materials following the release of his book. I imagine this should be removed… as far as I have seen in the Gurdjieff work it is not like he is a prominent figure or this is an externally sourced as relevant work in the Gurdjieff "canon" such as it is
Rianinspace (talk) 11:56, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing that out; I've removed it. Some1 (talk) 22:37, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  unnoticed promotional insert?