At de Lange wrote in 'Logic and Learning LO25307':
>So just what are all these "mental elementals" and how much of each is
>needed daily? I do not want to go into all of them. However, I think a
>LO-dialogue on the topic "mental elementals" in full will be delightful.
>I would rather propose that "logic" (hard core) and "science" (hard core)
>are two of these "mental elementals" so as to illustrate how they function
>in the mind.
Dear At and all,
I very much appreciate the notion of 'mental elementals'.
May I add the following - inspired by Andrew Campbell red/blue Monet: What
ever we do to know about a color... or a sound... or perhaps any
quality... is a mental elemental.
Take an orange. An orange is mainly orange. Assume that we already know
what 'color' is, but that it is the first time that we have noticed
'orange'.
Somehow it seems stupid for me to say that this orange defines the color
'orange' scientifically by means of its spectrum and apply logic such that
any other color is not orange.
There is something else to it and we all know about it. I can take a
pencil and recognise it as orange. We have a game we play with little
children: "I see something that you cannot see and it is orange." The
child will name everything around which is orange until it hits what I
have seen. Then it's the turn of the child and so on.
Then I sit near a camp fire and it may take a while - because it is so
vastly different from my fruit - but somewhen I will recognize that indeed
it is orange too. And the new experience of the color orange will deepen
and widen the meaning of orange. The same happens later in the night when
looking at the glowing coal, the dark black turning orange so that
'looking at' is becoming a 'looking into'. The amazement turns into
laughter when suddenly with a little noise many sparks burst out. It is
becoming late and colder and we sleep a little bit. When waking up it is
pitch black night. I still cannot forget this experience of orange. I know
it is not perfect, it is only partial, it still will grow, yet it is
experiencing orange itself, the territory not the map, isn't it? But what
is this? First in the dark it just feels like emerging pure orange, but
soon I can see it. It is at the horizon. The first hint of the coming
morning. The next hour finds me in unbelievable amazement! ! ! as the
cloudy sky turns more and more orange until the whole sky is burning,
glowing and then majestetically the sun slowly rises: the most intense
orange whatsoever, turning everything, the soil, the trees and bushes and
ourselves into a celebration of orange.
Later I pick my orange to finally eat it and look at its skin. For a
moment I feel disappointed. The devil of comparison lifts its head - this
little orange and that grandious orange. I reject the devils appearance:
No, it is not your time now. Instantanously the experience is there again:
orange itself.
What would happen it I would have rejected all those experiences of orange
around me which finally lead to something that may be called 'orange
itself', if I had insisted on clinging at the definition of orange, the
orange. With each looking at the orange my notion of orange would become
shallower, a serious deficiency of the mental elemental I am talking
about. This deficiency is unbelievable common.
I am wondering whether a question like:
"Are we talking about an orange or about orange itself?"
make sense to you?
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried Dressler
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@Voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.