User: Holons are agentic autonomous sovereign individuals in a shared arena. Holons interact with the shared environment and this takes the form of a feedback loop process where the holon commits change upon the external environment, and the informative conditions of the environment return.
In our 4QX model active change goes from left to right (form to flux) in a movement we call instantiation (or concretisation), and informative passive feedback returns from right to left in a movement called classification (or abstraction).
A holon is p2p in nature because it is self-organising and self-sovereign, from the maths perspective this means the collective (network and external world state) is a local and idempotent process unconditionally running in all peers.
But the collective aspect is not just passive, it acts upon the individual in a definite way. This means that the unconditional idempotent collective process must also take the form of an interactive feedback loop like the individual loop, but this loop acts from outer to inner and its informing feedback return from inner to outer.
In the 4QX model we have outer above and inner below, and so this is how we arrive at the two general behaviours of the holon being in the form of orthogonal diagonal feedback loops, and why BL-TR is the individual instance loop and TL-BR is the collective class loop.
1. Start with the square nobody can avoid
The moment an observer can tell inside from outside and state from change, reality splits along two axes—Perspective (outer / inner) and Modality (form / flux). Their crossing yields a four-corner stage that re-appears in every culture and discipline, but in 4QX it is derived, not assumed: any agent that notices must grow this square or perish.
Outer-form (top-left) becomes the shared pattern shelf; outer-flux (top-right) the live marketplace; inner-form (bottom-left) the private toolkit; inner-flux (bottom-right) the stream of raw results . These four vistas are the most general facts we can state about a holon and they hold at every depth of the holarchy.
2. Each diagonal tightens into a feedback breath
Opposite corners notice they are natural partners:
- Pattern ⇄ Result ties outer-form to inner-flux. A blueprint is published, burned, then measured and refined .
- Capacity ⇄ Commitment ties inner-form to outer-flux. A private offer surfaces, the market locks it, then returns a concrete job card .
Both breaths share a single rhythm: active change always runs left → right (form to flux); informing feedback always flows right → left (flux to form). That left-right pulse is the holon’s metabolism.
3. Why peer-to-peer is the default
Because every holon carries the whole square, no privileged hub is needed. Updates are broadcast idempotently—replaying them does nothing—so the collective state is rebuilt locally at every peer . Autonomy and coordination are thus two sides of the same shape.
4. The collective acts back: introducing the two triangles
A single diagonal can feel its mismatch but cannot correct it. The 4QX proof shows that the only minimal way to close both diagonals is to hook a mediator to each, creating two oriented triangles that share the edge between outer-form and outer-flux .
- Instance triangle (bottom-left → top-left → top-right → bottom-left) lets the individual push outward.
Active stroke: inner-form out to outer-flux — the holon pledges capacity to the arena.
Feedback: outer-flux back to inner-form — the arena returns a signed commitment. - Class triangle (top-left → top-right → bottom-right → top-left) lets the collective push inward.
Active stroke: outer-form down to inner-flux — the shared recipe shapes the agent’s concrete behaviour.
Feedback: inner-flux up to outer-form — the agent’s metrics rewrite the recipe.
Thus both triangles still breathe left-to-right and right-to-left, yet their vertical direction is opposite: the personal loop rises, the collective loop descends. This mirror-image ensures that every thrust from a part toward the whole meets an equal thrust from the whole toward the part, while sharing the exact same temporal beat .
5. Orthogonal loops, one coherent dance
Because the triangles interlock at their shared edge, commitments produced by the instance loop are immediately the evidence consumed by the class loop, and vice-versa . The system therefore cannot tune the individual without simultaneously tuning the collective pattern, and cannot update the pattern without simultaneously grounding it in real capacity. In engineering terms, the two diagonal controllers close each other’s control error; in lived terms, the holon experiences an unbroken dialogue of “I act on the world, the world acts on me.”
6. From shape to everyday meaning
Seen from the rooftop: a 4QX holon is the smallest possible territory where agency, learning and coordination can coexist without external scaffolding. Zooming in: its life is the oscillation between two diagonal loops—one lifting personal intent into public action, the other pouring public know-how into personal skill. Zoom deeper still and you meet familiar artefacts: Kanban boards, compiler tool-chains, immune responses, sensorimotor cycles. All of them are just this geometry wearing local clothes.
7. Why we always describe from the whole down
If we begin with tools, tickets or metrics, we treat symptoms. Begin with the square, then the diagonals, then the dual triangles, and every lower-level detail—API call, neural weight, warehouse pallet—slots naturally into its quadrant, edge or vertex. The geometry already made the room; our job is only to name what is found there.
Closing reflection
A 4QX holon is not a metaphor but a minimal physical grammar. Its two orthogonal feedback loops ride the same left-right breath yet pull in opposite vertical directions, fusing individual autonomy with collective guidance in a single, self-correcting dance. Describe that shape first; the specifics will then reveal themselves as the inevitable vocabulary of its motion.