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        “Pleneurethics” is a term invented and developed by Richard Bangs Collier. The term is the blending of three root words: (1) plenary, (2) neural, and (3) ethos or ethics. “Plenary” means complete competence with total authority. “Neural” relates to the brain—the central organic structure of the human being—and to the nervous system. “Ethos” or “ethics” relates to responsible behavior and constructive conduct. Collier, from the beginning, related Pleneurethics to the individual rather than to the species. He also related Pleneurethics to health, especially to the curative aspects of chronic illness. This relationship is evident in his first volume, which he titled, A New Concept of Healing. The term “Pleneurethics” first appeared in his second volume.
        Collier is not an academician. He has never been affiliated with any institute of higher education in a professional capacity. This fact has been a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that Collier was absolved from teaching and from the bureaucratic academic network. He was a solitary figure who had a career with the Federal Aviation Authority from which he took early retirement so that he could devote full-time to the development of Pleneurethics.
        The curse of Collier’s solitary effort is that he never benefited from the scholarly network of research journals. Journals provide helpful and rigorous testing of ideas by fellow scholars. Published research in learned journals is so persuasive that ideas, e.g., Pleneurethics, suffer from neglect and/or arrogance. In a powerful sense, the journals are closed shops in the world of ideas. Collier reminds one of Baruch Spinoza who was also a solitary figure who stood between Descartes and Leibnitz. Spinoza once refused an appointment to a university faculty position for fear it would detract him from his search for truth.
     Between the curse and the blessing is the fact that the search for truth in an academic setting is usually guided by the academic discipline to which the researcher belongs. A strong generality is that the disciplines
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tend to narrow the search. One of the great needs in the world of ideas is the need for greater unity in knowledge. The massive complex of academic life, especially the proliferation of departments, is not conducive to fostering unity of knowledge.
        Collier, absent alliance to any one academic discipline, sought unity in knowledge without acknowledging the divisive approaches to knowledge. For example, Collier is critical of chemistry because, in his opinion, it does not offer a cure for chronic illness; it only makes the illness tolerable. He places his hope with physics, which is structure. Structure, when corrected, cures chronic illness.
        In addition to its applied importance, Pleneurethics is also a structured entity—a philosophy. Few contemporary philosophers have shaped a philosophy de nova because they are residents of an academic climate. Some, like William James (pragmatism) and Wittgenstein (ordinary language philosophy), departed from the orthodoxy of their times. Collier, absent the academic setting and the research libraries, looked at things as they were and wondered why, how. For him the answers he discovered were original. He is empirical in his approach. With his newly acquired knowledge, he shaped it as a structure to provide a unity. Collier concludes that his work would not have been possible had he worked within a specific discipline within an academic setting.
        With the singular exception of Will Durant who wrote his huge history of civilization outside the academic confines, almost every significant philosopher is a citizen of academia, including the other great historian of philosophy—Bertrand Russell. John Searle and Richard Rorty, two of the foremost contemporary philosophers, are residents of academia—the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Virginia, respectively. Searle in recent years has focused on the brain/mind. The Churchlands—Patricia and Paul—both work on the mind separately in an academic setting. In short, the academy in a real sense serves a credentialing function for the contemporary scholar. This “fact” has represented a huge obstacle for Collier. Anyone shaping a philosophy today beyond the pale of the academic campus is usually dismissed as a quack. This, unfortunately, is what has happened frequently to Collier’s original work.
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        As theory is translated into practice, as in the implementation of public policy, the process requires more than one academic discipline. Knowledge in practice almost always requires unity—a process known as “consilience.” Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard University professor of Biology has recently published a book titled, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998). The giants of the Enlightenment believed in the unity of all knowledge—individual human rights, natural law, and indefinite human progress. Wilson acknowledges that he owes a debt to the Enlightenment, which he logically contends is the source in modern thought of the dream for intellectual unity. He states: “The greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and the humanities” (p.8). Consilience is the key to unification. “When we have unified enough certain knowledge, we will understand who we are and why we are here” (pp. 6-7). Pleneurethics is a forward step in the unity of knowledge.
        In 1963 Collier retired from the Federal Aviation Administration and started writing his eight original volumes on Pleneurethics. These eight volumes are referred to as the Hong Kong books because they were published in Hong Kong. His intent at the outset was huge and immodest—to produce a complete and comprehensive evaluation and analysis of the human condition. He concluded, “I must scrutinize the ‘total individual’—the whole person” (I, xiii). Between 1964 and 1972 he wrote the eight volumes. He was a pioneer.
        The first book set the tone. Collier’s approach to the total individual was multi-disciplinary. His thrust was to find a new concept of healing, especially for chronic illness. He found traditional concepts of healing to be inadequate. Immediately he began to develop his own vocabulary. So extensive is the vocabulary of Pleneurethics that a special glossary is necessary. (The second part of this booklet is devoted to a glossary of Pleneurethics). Page 1 of Volume I introduces the specialized vocabulary. Collier uses PNE as shorthand for Pleneurethology. PNE “is a system of restoring health and emotional stability to those who are chronically ill” (I, 1). “The scope of PNE is focused exclusively upon the nervous system (I, 1). Immediately Collier addresses his main concerns: (1) the elimination of chronic illness, (2) the establishment of health, and (3) the importance of the
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nervous system. The term “Pleneurethology” was changed to “Pleneurethics” in subsequent volumes.
        Truth is always a philosophical term. Collier, in his first book, devoted an entire chapter to the subject. In a pragmatic fashion he identified the multitude of definitions relating truth to Pleneurethics. Pure logic is not the answer to truth. In his chapter on “awareness” (Chapter IV), Collier continued to develop the special vocabulary of Pleneurethics. Two significant terms illustrate the special vocabulary. First, “infrallect”: “Associated with that part of the brain of activity which presides over the operation of the visceral and vascular body requests.” “Infrallectosis” is the “malfunction of the infrallect through hypnosis, habitual denial, or discouragement of specific body functions. Second, “ultrallect” which is that portion of the mind above the level of ordinary day-to-day thinking. It is “the immediate inspirational source of our external and moral nature.” “Ultrallectosis” is the distortion of the structure of normal ethical awareness by the coaching of others who are morally unfit or through unethical autosuggestions. Before “holistic” medicine became fashionable, Pleneurethics concluded that healing must recognize the “total individual (whole person)—not merely some segment of the whole, e.g., the chemical person, the mental person, the spiritual person, or the physical person.
        The subtitle of his summation book is A Philosophical System Uniting Body, Brain, Mind. First, the sequence of body, brain, and mind is of critical import. The brain is central to the unification of the body (material) and mind (ideal). Second, Collier determined that the dualism identified by Descartes is, in fact, a monism rather than a dualism—not of material and ideal but of behavior. The structure was critical. For example, a structural impairment in the brain will cause chronic brain overload in virtually every human environment. Structured correction rather than chemical intake is the answer. Again Collier was ahead of the medical professional which utilize chemical prescription rather than structural correction. Pills do not cure; they make tolerable the illness. Collier goes so far as to recommend that the foundation of medical training should be physics rather than chemistry. The leading scholars on the mind in the last 20 years have worked on the structure of the brain. The brain is the central engine to the mind and the body. Collier has developed a system of cerebellar coaxialities. In Pleneurethics the brain is a vital part of the entire
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nervous system. Hence, if the loading of the brain becomes excessive or distorted, the function of the brain is impaired and one’s health becomes diminished. Therefore, with Collier, the reality of chronic illness gave rise to his philosophical precepts.
        Richard Collier said: “The main purpose of the eight Hong Kong volumes was to establish a copyrightable paper trail, in hardbound format, delineating the course of the creation and development of Pleneurethics over the years and decades.” Following the Hong Kong books, Collier wrote and published three more books: (1) Pleneurethic: Way of Life, System of Therapeutics; (2) Pleneurethic: The Evolution and Scientific Basics; and (3) Pleneurethic: A World Class Philosophy. The Exposition Press published these three volumes. (Note: In the titles “Pleneurethic” is without the final “s.” Later the “s” was added.) Edited volumes followed:

1. Essential Pleneurethics edited by Ralph D. Shoub, 1985.

2. Essential Pleneurethics (Second Edition) edited by Donald C. Emmons and Ralph D. Shoub, 1987.

3. Essential Pleneurethics (Third Edition) edited by Donald C. Emmons and John N. Terrey, 1989.

4. Pleneurethics: A Philosophical System Uniting Body, Brain, Mind edited by John N. Terrey, 1990.

5. Pleneurethics: A Philosophical System Uniting Body, Brain, Mind (Second Edition) edited by John N. Terrey, 1991.

     In the 1990s John N. Terrey edited all eight of the original Hong Kong books into second editions.
     Collier, in his “Afterward” to Volume I (Second Edition) listed his twelve postulates of Pleneurethics. They are listed here but developed in subsequent sections of this publication:

1. Structure: All engines and devices of man and nature, including man’s brain and body, are easiest understood if evaluated in terms of their structure.

2. Brain: The brain frames the range of mentality of the mind, and influences somatic systems’ coordination and operation.

3. Disease: Disease and disability are categorized Pleneurethically into three divisions: chronic, acute, and congenital.

4. Chronic Illness: The identification and accurate discrimination of the true nature of the chronic illness (degenerative disease) process
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is of inestimable significance in the proper diagnosis and effective curative therapy.

5. Acute Illness: Acute illnesses, such as smashed or cut fingers, heal uneventfully due to neurological competency, provided such competency remains undiminished.

6. Communicating a Curative Remedy: The cure of an ailment is accomplished by communicating correlatively with the prime cause of the ailment. (The difference between chronic and acute illnesses is basic in Pleneurethics because the remedy for each is fundamentally different.)

7. Stress: Brain stress throws lines or areas of degeneration in facial tissues—temporarily if from acute psychological genesis or permanently if from chronic bioductory defection.

8. Mind and Mentality: Mentality is the part of the mind structured by the interplay between brain activity and mind capability.

9. Ethics: The ethics of Pleneurethics achieves relevance and reality because it is related to a measurable parameter—neurological economy.

10. Absolute: The Pleneurethical god emits a gantry of force known as Absolute Law. Absolute Law is a principle thrown by the Absolute which provides for the manifestation known as the cosmos and all things in it, including man with his ability to detect a small portion of the cosmos.

11. Man: Man’s greatness is solely inherent within himself. Acceptance of ethical responsibility commensurate with his minor authority is all that is required to achieve Pleneurethical stature.

12. Civilization: Structuring institutions in terms of enlightened and creative neurological economy fosters civilization best. Evaluating overall neurological impact of various proposed actions is more relevant to evaluating the common good than assessing good in terms of money, material, metaphysical belief, or form of government. Anything that unnaturally warps brain tissue is potentially dangerous to the vigor and advancement of the civilization that indulges its use.
     These postulates are general, not detailed.
     In an article in the Journal of Pleneurethics, Volume 3, Number 1 (1995) this editor cited seven concepts as examples of Collier’s originality. These are:
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1. The focus he placed on chronic illness as separate from acute illness and which called for a significantly different method of treatment because chronic illness is structural in origin; therefore, it does not yield to the standard treatments utilized by psychotherapy, by spirituality, or by prescriptive medicine.

2. he importance he placed on structure (physics) rather than on chemistry in the treatment of chronic illness.

3. His discovery of the bioductory system, which conducts and protects the brain and the central nervous system, including the spinal cord—a discovery which is largely ignored in the current practice of medicine; however, it is vital to the cure of chronic illness problems.

4. He related the centrality of good ethics to good health and the reverse—poor ethics to poor health.

5. He identified the acceptance by the individual for self-responsibility for one’s health and ethical character.

6. He identified the brain as perceived in Pleneurethics as a living machine functioning as a biological entity and as a vital link between the body and the mind.Finally, he perceived that structural distortion (stress) in any part of the person, which impacts on the brain, results in the impairment of the brain and, consequently, establishes the basics for illness and disease, either acute or chronic. The inability to relax adequately due to persistent stress and tension predisposes the individual to illness and disease.

        James F. Carroll, a faculty member of Tacoma Community College and the Program Coordinator of the college’s Human Services Program recently identified ten principles of Pleneurethics. His article appears as Chapter IV in the volume.