The next assumption, arising directly from the above, is a tri-partite picture of reality.
Polarities and tri-partite analysis as a logical deduced first pass at classification and analysis.
In special relativity theory’s law of conservation of matter and energy, E=mc2, physical reality consists of matter (m), energy (E) and information in the form of (c), the speed of light, one of the fundamental parameters in the physical universe, which relates and integrates matter and energy, intermediating between them. The three aspects are at once a unified system and a triad of distinguishable dimensions or qualities. Information, being static but insubstantial, is commensurate with both static materiality and insubstantial energy, and thereby stands between and connects them.
At the societal level, we find that human activities, arrangements and interests divide naturally into those oriented to the material world, centered in the economic realm, sometimes also referred to herein as the economic sphere or domain, those involving how people relate to and oriented toward each other, thereby forming a structure of social connections and comprising government, politics, law, rights and human connections more generally, hereinafter referred to variously as the legal/rights, legal/political or governance sphere, realm or domain, and finally, those activities, arrangements and interests essentially involving the spiritual world of culture, arts, science, religion and education, hereinafter referred to as the cultural sphere, realm or domain.
These domains comprise at once a triad of distinguishable types of activity, institutions and concerns, and a unified totality, and as with any holism, each part contains a microcosm of the entirety. And so, creative cultural activity permeates all the domains, as does governance and economics, and there are material, regulatory and creative aspects in all institutions and fields of activity. Each domain itself might be divided further into three subsystems, most obviously in government, where the executive branch materially administers and performs the work of governance, the legislative branch structures and controls it (in theory if not practice), and the judiciary branch intellectually guides and orients it by underlying principles. The economy divides into production which creates goods and services from raw material and labor inputs, distribution which transports and thereby structurally rearranges products to make them available for consumers, and consumption which uses them up and thus dematerializes them. In business organization, line, management and executive functions concern, respectively, the physical actuality of production, its bureaucratic control and its creative leadership, in simplified terms. The cultural domain may be more difficult to partition.[1] Despite the ambiguity in categorizing activities into one of these domains, it is no accident that newspapers usually have separate primary sections for political affairs, business, and culture or the arts. These are natural categorizations that prove useful in looking at human society.
This three-part holism of material, relational and spiritual aspects, or physical, structural and dynamic sub-systems can be widely observed. In mammalian physiology, the abdomen contains the organs primarily concerned with chemical functions and processes (liver, stomach, spleen, etc.), the chest contains the rhythmic organs (lungs and heart), and the head contains the electrically fired mind and most sense organs — a triad of body cavities as the loci of primarily material, rhythmic and electrical processes. Because mammals are holistic systems, digestion and chemical metabolism begins in the mouth and head, the sense of touch spans the entire body in the skin and blood circulates rhythmically to most every part. Each individual organ operates by rhythmic, chemical and electrical processes, and each cell contains rhythmic, electrical and metabolic activity, but at a general level the entire organism also allocates control of these functions into specialized organs separated into the three body cavities. The head, thorax and abdomen of many insects are similarly structured. This tri-partite analysis is not intended to be applied rigidly, and individual parts simultaneously overlap and are comprised of analogous triadic sub-categories themselves, but there is an obvious intuitive tripartite specialization in evidence here.
[Similar triadic classifications of society can be found in Aristotle and elsewhere in Ancient philosophy, and in speculative philosophy through the ages.]
[1] In the arts, education and science, the imaginative conception, performance or execution, and audience consumption of the activity follow this pattern. Hegel arrayed the arts along a hierarchy of those most tethered to materialism, architecture, up to those least tethered, music.