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Dylan Morgan

Meaning of symbols

This summarises the meaning of certain shorthand symbols used by me, especially in the Principles of Hypnotherapy, where more details can be found in Chapter 3

I introduce the notion of the ACTIVITY of organic systems. I observe that the absolute level of activity is less important than whether it is increasing or decreasing. This direction is usually reasonably clearly observable. If anyone wants a precise definition of activity then I propose in Chapter 22 of the Principles: The activity of an organic process is the rate at which it increases the thermodynamic entropy of the universe.

Given these premises I find that a great deal of insight into the nature of many processes in life can be given by noting the cause and effect connections in which the change of activity in one system leads to changes in the activity of others. Let the letters A and B be shorthand for the names of any two systems. The following phrases can arise frequently and so it pays to have shorthand expressions for them.

"An increase in the activity of system A" is symbolised by " &uarr A".

"A decrease in the activity of system A" is symbolised by " &darr A".

"An increase in the activity of system A leads directly to an increase in the activity of system B" is symbolised by "&uarr A &rarr &uarr B"

Two other symbols arise less frequently:

"An increase or decrease in the activity of system A" is symbolised by " |A".

and

"No change in the activity of system A" is symbolised by " 0A".

There are times where we need to distinguish the activity of a system from some other parameter of the system.
Then for clarity "{S}" will denote the activity of the system S, while "(S)" will denote another parameter of system S.

PS. I am grateful to Matthias Nagel for showing me how to code the HTML for these symbols so that they show in the same way on all browsers.