Polyrhythmicity: Foundations of African philosophy

Not too long ago, we profiled two major scientific publications on Nkrumahism by the eminent economist, mathematician, philosopher, historian, logician, management scientist, financial and policy analyst, and statistician Dr. Kofi Kissi Dompere. We gave our readers the following information:

1) “The Theory of Philosophical Consciencism: Practice Foundations of Nkrumaism” (http://adonisandabbey.com/book_detail.php?bookid=231) (ISBN: 978-1-909112-66-7)

2) “The Theory of Categorial Conversion: Rational Foundations of Nkrumaism.” (http://adonisandabbey.com/book_detail.php?bookid=232) (ISBN: 978-1-909112-67-4).

Since then, we have been engaged with Dr. Dompere on how to make the contents of these highly technical scientific/mathematical/philosophical texts more accessible to the average reader.

We have made some progress in this area however, a tentative one of course, and will definitely bring simplified chapter-by-chapter renditions of the texts to the attention of our readers once we formalized everything (Dr. Dompere is working on two books this year on related subject matters).

In the meantime, we shall ask our readers to stay tuned for more information in the future. That said, we will like to bring to your attention two more highly technical texts both of which also deal with aspects of Nkrumahism and [other] related topics.

The first title is “Polyrhythmicity: Foundations of African Philosophy,” published by Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd 2006-03, 2006 (ISBN 10: 1905068182/ISBN 13: 9781905068180).

BLURB FOR POLYRHYTHMICITY: FOUNDATIONS OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

“The modern works on African philosophy have not been integrated and fully connected to Africa's antiquity in order to provide a foundational unity for further intellectual refinement.

“The philosophical dimensions of humanism, Nkrumah's concept of categorial conversion, African concepts of duality, polarity, unity, continual creation and democratic ideals must be shown their African-centered origins.

“In considering African philosophy, there arise conceptual and logical gaps that require the development of fundamental cognitive unity from the available data, with judicious interpretation and restructuring in order to define the parameters of African philosophical unity that will allow these gaps to be closed for intellectual continuity.

“This monograph is devoted to the establishment of the foundations for the development of Africa's intellectual continuity and cognitive unity from antiquity to the present. Its main premise is that there is African philosophy with its own method of reasoning, analysis and synthesis.

“The monograph initiates self-contained philosophical foundations for African intellectual unity that is required to support African cultural unity, African personality, African essence and humanism for the creation of Greater Africa that is implied by African Union.

“These philosophical foundations, it is argued, formed the thinking system for Africa's social construct, law, economics, politics and governance of empires, kingdoms and social units that have come to pass.

“These philosophical foundations constitute the thinking system that must guide current and future of Africa's socioeconomic dynamics. The monograph discusses also Africa's contributions to the global intellectual heritage by showing the relationships among foundations of African philosophical tradition and other philosophical systems that lead to rediviva Africana.

“It presents the principles of cognitive unity and continuity on the held position that without clearly developed Africa's philosophical foundations from its antiquity providing intellectual unity and cognitive continuity, complete emancipation of Africa will be a mere mimicking of intellectual faults of other nations and philosophical systems.

“The research by African scholars and others on specific philosophical thoughts from different areas of Africa are useful materials that must be integrated into cognitive unity by accepting those that fit and rejecting those that do not fit by a defined logical process.

“Mindful of this, a case is thus made in this monograph for African cognitive unity and supporting reasoning methods. The system of ideas and perceptive interpretations of relevant data is, here, referred to as Africentricity, and its philosophical foundations that project thought as polyrhythmicity while the study of logic of reasoning about methodological and epistemic problems of polyrhythmicity and Africentricity is referred to as polyrhythmics.

“On a practical level these philosophical foundations are shown to support the conceptual basis of Nguzo Saba (the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa).

“The monograph would be of interest to philosophers in general, professionals, researchers and students engaged in African philosophy, African studies, Black studies, socio-political philosophy and those interested in knowing the thinking system on the basis of which African essence arises and African social formations were constructed and governed from antiquity.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kofi Kissi Dompere is a professor of economics at Howard University.

He has authored a number of scientific and scholarly works on economics, philosophy, and decision theory and related fields. He has also authored a number of monographs including twelve monographs with Springer Science Publishers, three with Greenwood Publishers, and two with Adonis-Abbey Publishers.

His teaching areas include Economic Theory, Mathematical Economics, International Economics and Cost-Benefit Analysis as decision theory.

His current research foci are on Theory of Development Process, Qualitative mathematics of transformations, epistemics and mathematics of fuzzy phenomena and their application in economic decision, mathematics of transformations and General information theory.

He is the producer and host of a radio program “African Rhythms and Extensions” on WPFW 89.3 FM, in Washington D.C., USA, a member of Pacifica Foundation.

DR. KOFI KISSI DOMPERE PUBLISHES TWO NEW SCIENTIFIC BOOKS ON NKRUMAHISM

1) “The Theory of Philosophical Consciencism: Practice Foundations of Nkrumaism” (http://adonisandabbey.com/book_detail.php?bookid=231) (ISBN: 978-1-909112-66-7)

2) “The Theory of Categorial Conversion: Rational Foundations of Nkrumaism.” (http://adonisandabbey.com/book_detail.php?bookid=232) (ISBN: 978-1-909112-67-4).

Readers may want to revisit Ghanaweb and all the other major web portals for the following articles “Rational Foundations of Nkrumahism” (April 10, 2015) and “Practice Foundations of Nkrumahism” (April 12, 2015), the serial essays “Dr. Kofi Dompere On Nkrumah’s Scientific Thinking,” sixteen in all, for a rough idea as to what Nkrumahism philosophically, mathematically and scientifically means.

Dr. Kofi Kissi Dompere, one of America’s and the world’s most respected economists and academics, a brilliant mathematician and philosopher as well, has finally published two highly scientific, technical and sophisticated volumes on Nkrumah and Nkrumahism.

In other words not only is he a man of theory but that he is also a man of practice. He knows how political economy and comparative advantage truly work, particularly as it should have been in the case of the African world from the standpoint of consciencism, fundamentally Nkrumahism. Categorial conversation is key to these formulations in both theory and practical assertion.

As a matter of fact he wrote his doctoral dissertation on categorial conversion, the focus of Nkrumah’s “Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonization,” and brings his extensive knowledge and expertise from that field to bear on his vigorous philosophical, mathematical and scientific analysis of Nkrumahism. His approach to the scientific method is commendable.

An award-winning author, professor of economics, and academic widely recognized around the world for his highly technical texts and publications and cutting-edge research, as well as one of the distinguished faces in America and the world known for bridging the frontiers of mathematics, science and the humanities/liberal arts through his cutting-edge research, the polymath Dr. Dompere is also the author of several economics-cum-mathematics texts used around the world and American universities/colleges and the following highly recommended texts:

a) “Polyrhythmicity: Foundations of African Philosophy”

b) “African Union: Pan-African Analytical Foundations”

c) “Africentricity and African Nationalism”

In other words, he is widely known for the rigor of his mathematical formulations and modeling of complex qualitative problem. For instance, Prof. Dompere’s contributions to fuzzy logic, fuzzy mathematics, and fuzzy theory as they relate to academic economics and the practice of political economy have widely been acknowledged by academic economists, mathematicians, institutions, and Springer Publishing, one of his major publishers which also happens to be one of the world’s largest carriers of scientific titles and journals; as well as of Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd, and so on.

More than 3500 libraries carry Prof. Dompere’s academic works around the world (see WorldCat for Prof. Dompere’s scholarly works; WorldCat houses tens of thousands of libraries in at 160 countries; it is also “the world largest and most comprehensive catalogue of library resources from around the world.” See OCLC.org for additional information! Amazon.com also has them).

Also, Prof. Dompere’s high-profile academic standing in the American Academy, notwithstanding all the above, is exemplified by his respected membership in a number of prominent institutions: The American Society for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest scientific organization; the New York Academy of Sciences; the Econometric Society, an international society of academic economists; the Golden Key National Honor Society; the American Economic Association (AEA); the Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement (DISA); and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS).

Prof. Dompere is also associated with Scientific American; Fuzzy Sets and Systems; the International Journal of Development Economics; the Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Theory and Decision; and the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems. Further, Prof. Dompere has also served as Chairman of the Appointments, Promotions and Tenure Committee (APT) of Howard University’s Economics Committee, as well as of the Curriculum Committee and the Macroeconomic Examination Committee.

He has also been a member of the Graduate School’s Task Force on Environment Science at Howard University. He has also worked with a number of international organizations (the World Bank, for instance), American institutions, and a number of governments from around the world (for instance, the Organization of American States (OAS)), etc.

To remind our readers once again, he has been ranked among “The World’s 100 Leading Thinkers.”

Last but not least, for those uneducated and skeptical minds that are of the view that there has never been a systematized formal body of knowledge on political economy or a science of political economy called Nkrumahism, this is finally it. These two highly technical texts put those uninformed plaints to eternal rest.

Again, as far as we can tell no scholarship or academic text on the subject matter comes close in terms of the analytic depth and sheer range of mathematical, philosophical and scientific rigor with which Dr. Dompere, a world-class economist, mathematician, philosopher, historian, management scientist, and logician approaches the subject.

In fact, there is nothing like it in the entire field of African political economy and philosophy if we may put it succinctly. The technical sophistication of methodology, the denseness of formal auctorial language, and the multifaceted (or multidisciplinary) approach to this rigorous study of Nkrumahism put the subject matter in a class of its own.

The average or casual reader is, therefore, not going to find these remarkable texts friendly at all as he writes mostly for experts. Beyond this, the two books must also be in our parliament, in the Flagstaff House, and in our major libraries and research institutions and think tanks (as well as those of the world beyond the African world).

Then also their contents should be explored and debated and made a dialectic fixture of national political discourse, of policy strategies and tactics. Our students in the fields of engineering, management science and operations research, policy studies, mathematics, political science, logic, economics, political economy, diplomacy and international relations, political sociology, philosophy and history, literature, science and technology, computer science, leadership studies, law, sociology and development sociology, sustainable development and political psychology need to explore the contents of these books.

A SHORT LIST OF PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS DR. KOFI KISSI DOMPERE HAS PUBLISHED HIS PAPERS, SERVED AS A REFEREE, AND/OR HELD/HOLDS OFFICIAL MEMBERSHIP IN:

1) Encyclopedia of Capitalism

2) Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

3) International Journal of Production Economics

4) Theory, Fuzzy Sets and Systems

5) Engineering Costs and Production Economics

6) Cybernetics and Systems Research

7) Fuzzy Sets and Systems

8) Fuzzy Information and Decision Processes

9) Applied Systems and Cybernetics

10) Approximate Reasoning in Decision Analysis

11) INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Science)

12) ORSA/TIMS (INFORMS)

13) Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems

14) Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Theory and Decision

15) The New York Academy of Sciences

16) The American Society for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

17) Econometric Society

18) American Economic Association

19) The Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement

20) Scientific American

21) The International Journal of Development Economics

IN PRAISE OF DR. KOFI KISSI DOMPERE

“The bulk of Professor Dompere’s research and publications lie within the highly technical field of ‘fuzzy system’s research… This degree on specialization is part of a complicated process that hopefully leads to further insights and what we proudly admire as scientific progress when all works well…One must try to assess not only the value of a person’s contribution to work going on in a specialized field, but also the likely value of the specialized area to the profession as a whole…

“The works I have reviewed, as well as the publication and conference participation records, clearly demonstrate that Professor Dompere is a valuable contributor to fuzzy systems theory. His paper, ‘The Theory of Fuzzy Decisions’ published in ‘Approximate Reasoning in Decision Analysis’ (M.M. Gupta and E. Sanchez editors, North-Holland, 1982) is a clearly early valuable contribution written at the highest mathematical level.

“However, this is a field that requires not only high level math skills but also considerable philosophical sophistication…What is more interesting is Professor Dompere’s work applying the theoretical insights he developed early in his career to a number of areas of economic research. He demonstrates how insights from fuzzy systems theory clarify overlooked complexities in capital theory in… However, several new developments indicate that the work of Professor Dompere and others in fuzzy systems theory may be of greater importance than most economists realized only a few years ago.

“In conclusion, Professor Dompere has been a valuable contributor to a highly specialized field of economics that has recently proven to be of far greater interest and value than most economics expected…” (Robin Hahnel, Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, American University/Portland State University)

“Pan-African Analysis: This provocative and idealistic question leads to Prof. Dompere’s two works on African Union and Polyrhythmicity. I studied African politics and literature at Penn and Morgan State, and have a deep admiration for some of the historic figures and ideas that Dompere that celebrates in these two books. I will not comment on them, other than to make two observations. First, what shines through here is the vision of Kwame Nkrumah—and of other legendary figures—that insisted on Pan-Africanism as a crucial element in Africa’s effort to break away from colonialism and neo-colonialism, in its effort to develop and to become prosperous.

“Second: in this respect, the effort at thinking of African development as a whole, as having a collective logic and as demanding from its people that they think collectively of all Africans’ collective well-being, is completely consistent with the national social planning approach that Prof. Dompere has been working out in his formal economic-theory work. In effect, one solution among others is a Pan-African approach; and this will be best for Africa. In these works, of course, this prescription comes fully charged by the author’s love and devotion for the poetry, beauty, literature, and vitality of Africa.

“But then, what do we do if micro-structures don’t work like that-don’t function as component parts of optimizing social matrices? Dompere’s answer, as a man of Africa, is that we must fight for Africa—or if we are not from there, for America…One is the beautiful cloud of the dream of a Pan-African path to development, arrived at as colonial empires crumbled. The other is the n-dimensional cloud of mathematical symmetry and elegant possibility, arrived at through mental exercises in thinking the world of production and consumption. On these clouds, I feel at home and yet above the earth.

“And perhaps that is the role of a theorist and a meta-historian—to remind his readers what is possible, what can be and even what could not be, so they have something to hold onto as they make their way along the alleyways and streets down on the hard, cold ground…” (Gary A. Dymski, Professor of Economics, Executive Director, University of California (Riverside)