Replying to LO25098 --
Dear At,
you have applied transdisciplinary thinking. What I am going to write
about is more that sort of lateral (associative) thinking, that uses your
benzene-model in order to "explain" two different kinds of relationships
in an organization, which Senge uses within the context of
"Team-Learning".
Let the benzene ring be a potential core of an organization, the potential
for a culture, "smell", "aroma". This core starts to become actualized
when members relate to this core. "ortho", "meta" and "para" are sleeping
in the pure benzene ring, none of them activated or disactivated.
An electron-acceptor like NO2 can relate such as to add to the complexity
and get electron share. This NO2 relation reminds me of the normal
transactional relations of organizations and it's members: I relate to
such an organization, that will bring me the most reward - what can I get
out of it. The immediate benefit for the organization is added complexity.
Such an organization will exhibit normal thinking patterns: "orthonoia"
and paranoia (what about paranormal? Machiavellis fortune comes into my
mind.) In this organization, metanoia is disactivated - the notion that
single loop learning disactivates double loop learning comes into my mind.
An other case occurs when an electron-donator like CH3 relates to the
core. Here the focus lies on contributing - like in community building
rather than business building. In this case, the metaphor tells, the
meta-position becomes activated while the other two are disactivated.
This thinking drives me to many questions
Why do you write that NO2 and CH3 are complementary duals, rather than
dialectical opposites? What does one have to do with the other? Did I get
you right that CH3 or another electron-donator cannot react with benzene
directly but only in a substitution reaction, substituting NO2 or another
electron-acceptor?
In how far is the second case with CH3 more complex than the first case?
For instance in terms of entropy and free energy. Is there a specific
advantage for e.g. building more complex molecules/organizations when the
meta-position is activated compared to ortho- or para-position? I am
thinking of the difference between procaryotic (transactional businesses)
and eucaryotic (caring communities) cells, where the latter can build
complex biological organisms (nations) while the first remain single cells
(thus the immense difficulties for a corporate mother to create rather
than destroy value for the business units).
And talking about aromatic molecules, can one smell the difference?
Finally it seems appropriate if you could expand a little bit on the
relation between lateral, associative, similarities based, metaphoric
thinking with it's strengths and limits and transdisciplinary thinking
with the program to establish isomorphies, i.e. discover identical formal
relations between different topics, like same differential equations which
can apply to very different physical contexts.
Then you may go on a little further, and still a little further and...:
>I wish I could go on with this topic of aromatic resonance because it is
>vital to the functioning of the so called base pairs of the DNA molecule!
>Without it there would not be such a thing as chemical based inheritance.
>Genetics would have been impossible. But somewhere I have to stop going on
>and on and on with this transdiciplinary thinking.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
The part I refer to is the following:
>>> "AM de Lange" <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> 2000-07-24 16:29 >>>
Now let us look at a diagram of the hexagonal structure of benzene.
I suppress the one H atom bonded to each C atom and standing
away from the ring structure. The carbon atoms are numbered in a
manner conventional to chemists.
. (1)
. C
. / \\
. C C (2 - ortho)
. || |
. C C (3 - meta)
. \ //
. C (4 - para)
Electron rich compounds are usualy very reactive (bases or reducers). But
in benzene the extra 6 "pi" electrons (indicated by the 3 pairs of double
strokes, each stroke indicating a pair of electrons) are unusually
unreactive because of internal stabalising through aromatic resonance
(internal homeostatic feedback).
To make an effective collision (see fruitfulness), the benzene ring, rich
in "pi" electrons, must be attacked by a very, very strong electron
seeking species like NO2+ . The position where NO2+ has attacked and
hooked itself onto the ring is called the number (1) carbon atom. In the
case of NO2+ the result will be nitro-benzene with structure
. NO2
. |
. C (1)
. / \\
. C C (2 - ortho) #
. || |
. C C (3 - meta)
. \ //
. C (4 - para) #
Now a most curious thing happens. Positions 2 (ortho) and 4 (para) becomes
activated by the initiating electron seeking group (like NO2) while
position 3 (meta) becomes deactivated even less than in the original pure
benzene structure! This may give an indication how the mind works -- upon
the first reaction the mind is immediately activated for "ortho" (normal)
and "para" (abnormal) thinking. This is indicated by the # sign. To
activate the "meta" (awakening) thinking, the positions (2) and (4) must
be deactivated and the position (3) activated. This is accomplished by
substituting the electron seeking group NO2 with a COMPLEMENTARY DUAL,
namely an electron donating group like CH3. The result is
. CH3
. |
. C (1)
. / \\
. C C (2 - ortho)
. || |
. C C (3 - meta) #
. \ //
. C (4 - para)
In other words, complementary duals (rather than dialectical duals) play
an extremely important role in changing the internal activity of any
system. Few chemists have a deep enough knowledge of physics and
mathematics to go through the quantum mechanical calculations to see that
this very behaviour of the aromatic compounds are already contained at the
quantum mechanical level. They lack this "deep knowledge" because nobody
has told them how important transdiciplinary thinking is. As for me,
transdisciplinary thinking often gives me the "goose flesh", pointing out
what a profoundly consistent coherency there seems to be at the implicit
level of reality.
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
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