identified, then synthesize the accumulated data to
arrive at a picture of the total person. Instead,
Rogers maintained that each field, human and en-
vironmental, is identified by pattern, defined as
“the distinguishing characteristic of an energy field
perceived as a single wave” (Rogers, 1990a, p. 7).
Pattern manifestations and characteristics are
specific to the whole.
Because human and environmental fields are in-
tegral with each other, they cannot be separated.
They are always in mutual process. A concept like
adaptation, a change in one preceding a change in
another, loses meaning in this nursing science.
Change occurs simultaneously for human and
environment.
The fields are pandimensional, defined as “a
non-linear domain without spatial or temporal at-
tributes” (Rogers, 1992, p. 28). Pandimensional re-
ality transcends traditional notions of space and
time, which can be understood as perceived bound-
aries only. Examples of pandimensionality include
phenomena commonly labeled “paranormal” that
are, in Rogerian nursing science, manifestations of
the changing diversity of field patterning and ex-
amples of pandimensional awareness.
The postulate of openness resonates throughout
the previous discussion. In an open universe, there
are no boundaries other than perceptual ones.
Therefore, human and environment are not sepa-
rated by boundaries. The energy of each flows con-
tinuously through the other in an unbroken wave.
Rogers repeatedly emphasized that person and en-
vironment are energy fields—but they do not have
energy fields, such as auras, surrounding them. In
an open universe, there are multiple potentials and
possibilities. Nothing is predetermined or foreor-
dained. Causality breaks down, paving the way for
a creative, unpredictable future. People experience
their world in multiple ways, evidenced by the di-
verse manifestations of field patterning that contin-
uously emerge.
Rogers (1992, 1994a) described pattern as
changing continuously while giving identity to
each unique human-environmental field process.
Although pattern is an abstraction, not some-
thing that can be observed directly, “it reveals itself
through its manifestations” (Rogers, 1992, p. 29).
Individual characteristics of a particular person are
not characteristics of field patterning. Pattern man-
ifestations reflect the human-environmental field
mutual process as a unitary, irreducible whole.
Person and environment cannot be examined or
understood as separate entities. Pattern manifesta-
tions reveal the relative diversity, lower frequency,
and higher frequency patterning of this human-
environmental mutual field process. Rogers iden-
tified some of these manifestations as lesser and
greater diversity; longer, shorter, and seemingly
continuous rhythms; slower, faster, and seemingly
continuous motion; time experienced as slower,
faster, and timeless; pragmatic, imaginative, and vi-
sionary; and longer sleeping, longer waking, and
beyond waking. She explained “seems continuous”
as “a wave frequency so rapid that the observer per-
ceives it as a single, unbroken event” (Rogers, 1990a,
p. 10). This view of the ongoing process of change is
captured in Rogers’ principles of homeodynamics.PRINCIPLES OF HOMEODYNAMICS
Like adaptation, homeostasis—maintaining bal-
ance or equilibrium—is an outdated concept in the
worldview represented in Rogerian nursing science.
Rogers chose “homeodynamics” to convey the dy-
namic, ever-changing nature of life and the world.
Her three principles of homeodynamics—reso-
nancy, helicy, and integrality—describe the nature
of change in the human-environmental field
process. Resonancy specifies the “continuous
change from lower to higher frequency wave pat-
terns in human and environmental fields” (Rogers,
1990a, p. 9). Resonancy presents the way change
occurs. Although Rogers stated that this process is
nonlinear, she was unable to move away from the
language of “from lower to higher” in the principle
itself, which seems to indicate a linear progression.
Rogers (1990b) elaborated: “[I]ndividuals experi-
ence lesser diversity and greater diversity...time as
slower, faster, or unmoving. Individuals are some-
times pragmatic, sometimes imaginative, and
sometimes visionary. Individuals experience peri-
ods of longer sleeping, longer waking, and periods
of beyond waking” (p. 10).
Resonancy, then, specifies change flowing in
lower and higher frequencies that continually fluc-
tuate, rather than flow from lower to higher fre-
quencies. Both lower and higher frequency
awareness and experiencing are essential to the
wholeness of rhythmical patterning. As Phillips
(1994, p. 15) described it, “[W]e may find that
growing diversity of pattern is related to a dialectic
of low frequency–high frequency, similar to that ofCHAPTER 13 Martha E. Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human Beings 163