Replying to LO25767 --
Dear Organlearners,
Artur Silva <artsilva@mail.eunet.pt> writes:
>I want to thank you for your reply on this subject. We both
>know that each of us has different positions on this. But,
>apart from that, or because of that, this can be a great dialog.
Greetings Artur,
Thank you very much for also your superb reply.
>For me it's not easy to write this reply, but I think it will
>even more difficult for you to read it; I suppose that you
>will have to mobilise all your capacities of "emergent learning"
>(the one that implies a "profound shift of mind"), only to try to
>understand my point of view (Polanyi's point of view, indeed)
>before you can decide if you shall maintain your previous position,
>or not. As I will have to do when I shall received your next reply...
It is also never easy for me to create a reply reflecting as closely as
possible what I know. The difference between "knowledge in the mind" and
"information outside the mind" is just too great to simply equate the two.
Thus I deeply appreciate your response.
>It is very interesting, At, that you made a lot of assumptions
>about Polanyi possible "reasons", all of them based on YOUR
>conception of the question. At any moment have you tried to put
>yourself in Polanyi's shoes (or thoughts)?
Yes, I studied three of his books available in our own university library.
It was sometime during the late eighties or early nineties. I liked the
"realism" with which Polanyi wrote. First of all, his original thinking on
his "tacit dimension of knowledge" put me at immense ease. Up to then I
felt very lonely in my own efforts to articulate what I perceived self as
my "meta epistemological base". Secondly, of all the disciplines which I
have mastered, the one most dearly to me is physical chemistry. Many
physical chemists have a peculiar way of communicating. It is because they
have to deal with vast and varied amounts of empirical data, many
conditional (restricted) "laws" and the relatively few universal laws of
nature. It is like dealing with a rich picture in black, all the shades of
grey and white, trying not to make it a black text on a white background.
Polanyi was also a physical chemist.
When early this year Fred Nichols insisted that Polanyi wrote that tacit
knowledge CANNOT be told, I realised with a shock that I might have taken
Polanyi too familiar. He wrote on a certain understanding and I may have
read from it quite a different understanding. So I rushed to the library
to study him again. His three books were removed last December when the
library computerised their catalogue completely. They had too many books
to enter in the computer catalogue in the time available and they also
lacked space in a over stored library. Some "subject referees" were called
in to scrap books of "little value for modern academy". Polanyi's books
were among them. I came close to behaving uncivilised.
>>How is it possible that Polanyi can define "tacit knowledge"
>>as knowledge which CANNOT be made explicity, yet write
>>a book on his idea of "tacit knowledge"?
>
>Yes, how can it be? Is Polanyi stupid or very limited, as all
>your hypothesis imply?
Dear Artur, this is not a hypothesis, but a question for which I seek the
best possible answer. I believe the answer is crucial to teaching and
hence crucial to authentic learning.
>Or is it that you, At, have not been able to detach
>yourself from a position where tacit (implicit) knowledge
>must always become to explicate level, because this
>one is (in your opinion) superior. You have not been
>able to accept, what Polanyi defends (and I have summarised):
>for him "tacit knowing" (not knowledge) is the SUPERIOR form
>of knowing: some knowing can be learnt directly in tacit way
>(to play basketball, to ride a bicycle) but others are learnt in
>explicate form - but when someone is a "master" all that
>explicate knowledge has already emerged (more high level
> - not imerged) to tacit level.
Perhaps it is the case that I cannot detach myself from a "certain
position". My understanding evolved through many decades along various
positions to this "certain position". I cannot go back in this evolution,
but I certainly do not intend to stay at this "certain position", although
I might not be aware of having got stranded at it. But what is this
"certain position"?
Almost like Polanyi I also know that there are many things which I know,
but cannot tell. However, I cannot tell it because the human languages
which I know do not allow me to tell it. In such a language I have to
follow certain conventions of that language for others to follow up to
some extend what I want to tell. These conventions constrain what I know
but cannot tell. Therefor I also make use of mathematics as an artifical
language which does not have these constraints. But it does have
constaints of its own which again prevents some knowledge not to be
expressed mathematically.
Yes, trying to tell someone else how to ride a bicycle is an excercise in
futility. But is it different from trying to tell someone else how to care
for a plant so that it will outlive that person? Is it different from
trying to tell someone else how to bake bread with a unique taste and
texture? Is it different from trying to tell someone else how to make
music which reflect what comes from the soul?
As for me, it is now very clear that using only one particular medium
(like a natural language such as English) I can inform other persons only
little of what I know. It is also clear to me -- and this is not a
judgement, but a conclusion which saddens me deeply -- that that far to
many humans do no care to learn from others what they do know. Should they
have cared, together they would have searched and tried every possible
medium to connect mind to mind effectively.
When I discovered the seven essentialities of creativity, I did it outside
the domain of natural langauges. In my mind I searched for corresponding
patterns between mathematical formulations and chemical animations.
Finding them had its own difficulties. But telling about them in a natural
langauge became a nightmare. It was then when I realised how foolish it
was take pictures in the desert to show to my family and friends and tell
what each was about. I stopped doing it and my family soon wanted to boil
me. I just kept on saying: "Come with me to experience what a thousand
pictures and a million words cannot tell." I will come back to this
experience.
>The tacit DIMENSION is a book that articulates and
>makes explicit Polanyi's conviction that the tacit
>knowing and dimension is the superior part of the
>emergence of knowing. And normal science and
>Academia are wrong because they think the contrary.
>And this dominant view has very bad effects in what
>concerns individual and organisational learning.
As for myself, I am convinced that my experiences are essential to my
knowledge. I have to experience so that I can know. For me there is a vast
difference between "experience is essential to knowledge" and "experience
is superior to knowledge". Furthermore, I can now discern sufficiently
clear four levels in my own knowledge so as to talk about it. I will use
several words to describe each level rather trying to define each with one
word.
(1) experential, sensual, boundary, bodiliy level
(2) intuitive, implicit, mute, feeling, individual level
(3) dictive, explicit, formal, artistic, collective level
(4) wise, sensible, common, humane level.
Within myself (2) emerges from (1), (3) from (2) and (4) from (3).
Although I distinguish between these four levels by manner of emergence,
they form one whole which is my knowledge. It reminds me much of a soil
which also has upon the geological stratum D three levels -- C (lowest), B
(middle) and A (top). Perhaps I had too much experiences with soil so that
this "four level understanding" of my own knowledge is far different from
that of other people. Whatever the case, I try to inform others learners
how it is with me so that they can use this information to help them to
think about their own knowledge. I do not claim that it has to be the same
for them. I do not claim that it is superior for whatever reason.
In the sense of pushing, (1) is requisite to (2), (2) to (3) and (3) to
(4). In the sense of pulling (4) is requisite to (3), (3) to (2) and (2)
to (1). In the sense of complexity, (2) is more complex than (1), (3) than
(2) and (4) than (3). But in the sense of superiority I cannot fix with
even the best intent a definitve order.
OK. I will accept that it is for Polanyi different. But then I do not know
where at all his "tacit dimension" corresponds with the "four level
profile" which I have described above. I also suspect that trying to find
a correspondence will be futile.
As for normal science and academia being wrong, I do have strong opinions
which caused me hurt and grief. For example, there is far too little
awareness to wholeness and even less propensity towards wholeness in
normal science and academia. This lack of wholeness cause a whole army of
learning problems among students. I care deeply for them and thus have to
struggle with them how to solve these learning problems. Helping them to
evolve in an essentiality like wholeness is a task which I do not even
"wish for the enemy".
>The main point is that what you call "emergence" of
>new knowledge - going from tacit to explicit - Polanyi
>would call "imergence"; for him knowing emerges when
>it goes from explicit to the level that one doesn't have
>to think about it any more, then, to tacit level.
Let me try to explain once again how I understand it self. For me "new
knowledge" and " present learning" is one and the same thing, namely an
increment in past knowledge. This increment is not a loose adding to a
loose aggregate of previous increments, but a firm or tight binding into
one whole. The emergent phase of the learning entails a succession of
emergences from (1) to (2) to (3) to (4). Simultaneously, when the
learning, for example, reaches (3) from (2), there is an enriching back
action from (3)-formal to (2)-mute. This "enriching back action" from (3)
to (2) may perhaps be called a "back emergence", but I cannot infer from
this that I now have to think of the shift from (2) to (3) as an
immergence rather than emergence.
>At, please follow me in a game: please for a moment,
>assume that Polanyi may be right; during that small
>moment, can you understand his coherence? and the
>way your above repeated sentence proves that you have
>not understood Polanyis idea? I am not claiming that he
>is right and you are wrong; I am claming that before one
>decides on that, and in order to decide, one must be able
>to understand both points of view.
Dear Artur, I am way beyond any hope to participate in the game of
deciding who is right or who is wrong. So even with you asking me "please"
and even with my willingness trying to understand his coherence, I cannot
decide against what I know of myself.
Some decade ago I was pleasantly surprised to learn from his book that
when I was still a student wet behind the ears, he was already aware of an
coherent dynamics between the tacit and the articulated dimensions of
knowledge. No, I was even more than pleasantly surprised. I was about to
give up on trying to defend that I and apparently many of my students had
a "meta epistemological base" without which no authentic learning could
happen. He served as a rock for me to lean upon and regain my stance.
>Let me give you a friendly suggestion: obtain and
>read Polanyi's book. I am sure you will like it very
>much, even if (or because) it will oblige you to change
>some parts of your mental model, in order to emerge
>to a more deep understanding. Or not: you will decide
>that later.
I feel like being caught up in a nightmare -- dreaming that I had studying
his three books and now waking up to discover that it was but a dream.
But I do promise that I will put more effort in it than earlier this year
to get hold of a copy of his book and study it once again.
>>But should I be prevented to use his understanding
>>to improve on my own understanding because my
>>own understanding happen to differ from his, then
>>it is not fine with me.
>
>If you read and try to understand Polanyi, you can
>THEN "use his understanding to improve on your own",
>of course. But after reading and understanding him;
>not before. To improve FROM someone, implies to
>know what this someone said and why. If not, you are
>not improving - in a bifurcation, you may be choosing
>imergence, instead of emergenge, you may be choosing
>digestive learning (digest some vague concepts with the
>help of a "finished theory").
I wonder why you ever got the impression that I have not studied Polanyi.
Perhaps it is the way in which my mind works. I never tried to remember
the exact wording of any specific articulation in the hundreds of
thousands of pages which I have read. Even worse, I never kept in any
notes (in the older days) or copies (in recent days) to refresh quickly of
what I still can remember. When It do become necessary, I will go to the
libraries to consult these works or ask my friends to borrow this or that
literature once again.
It is the way in which the mind of many a physical chemist works --
knowing from vast experiences where to find what data as well as where to
find the descriptions of interactions to transform these data into
practical information.
For example, yesterday I wrote something on the intensive-extensive
categorisation of physical quantities. I first became aware of it in my
pregraduate years (at another university) when reading a textbook on
physical chemistry by GN Lewis. I had to get up, go to our library, see if
it also had that book and make sure that it was indeed Lewis who made me
aware of it.
Lewis is another most interesting physical chemist, preceding Polanyi a
couple of decades. Thus we cannot claim that he must read Polanyi before
we can learn anything from him on "tacit knowledge". Lewis was intensely
aware of the role of "chemical intuition" in understanding the chemical
system and consequently articulating it as chemistry. Lewis was the
teacher-mentor to three Nobel laureates which is a unique distinction. He
taught them, among other things, the essential role which this "chemical
intuition" plays in creating superior chemistry.
How much is this "chemical intuition" of Lewis related to the "tacit
knowledge" of Polanyi and my own which I call (for purely historical
reasons) by the horrible name "meta epistemological base". I inlude myself
not to impress others, but to establish a pattern here. Persons A, B, C,
D, .... all write about something in the dim region of mind, each in its
own manner, selecting self words and stressing certain characterestics. A
writes about "a", B about "b", C about "c", etc. But they do not live in
the same time span so that it is impossible for them to go in a learning
dialogue and compare "a", "b", ..... But B can compare "b" with "a", C can
compare "c" with "b" and "a", etc. However "can compare" and "actually
compare" are two different things.
As the collective knowledge (a-la Jung) of humankind gradually
complexifies, a point in time will be reached when sufficient people have
evolved to that requisite level of complexity to actually want to compare
"a" of A, "b" of B, etc. It is then when, in my opinion, they have to be
very cautious not to invoke LEM (either "a" or "b", but not both "a" and
"b"). I have worked through so many LEM battles in literature that I
actually become frustrated to work through it again.
Yesterday I stared in amazement at what Lweis had to say on
intensive-extensive. Very little. But in the rest of his book it works
like "mute knowledge".
>No one patents concepts; but even when one
>doesn't intend so, theories (and their underlying
>concepts) are, formally or informally, patented.
>You would never try to prove that relativity or
>wholeness are wrong (or right) without reading
>the authors that first used those concepts; so why
>acting different with "tacit knowing"?
Sometimes one can pinpoint a person who created a particular name to name
his/her concept. Relativity theory is such a case and Einstein is the
person. Yet, when I studied Einstein self, I became aware how much he was
indebted to thinkers before him who had some knowledge on relativity
theory, but could manage to articulate only a minor facet of it. I think
here of Lorentz (who derived before Einstein some of the equations) and
Mach (who stressed that the whole universe influence a local outcome in
the universe). But they did not use the word "relativity" so that were it
not for Einstein making a casual comment here or there, I would not knew
for sure that what they articulated and what he articulated, were so
closely related to each other. Physics textbooks, when dishing out
relativity theory, are notoriously tacit on Einstein's "connective
comments" made in "private correspondence".
Perhaps one of my most enjoyable exlorations through the writings of
humankind, is when I traced the conceptual evolution of the seven
essentialities, wholeness being one of them. What I found most
extraodinary, is how much each person who wrote on wholeness, struggled to
say in words what that person knew on wholeness. Perhaps I should stop
writing ever again on wholeness, claiming that it is "tacit knowledge"
sensu Polanyi.
Will it help if I make a counter claim that I am not acting differently on
"tacit knowledge"? I do not think so because it will then be within the
dialectics of LEM.
Even before studying Michael Polanyi, I studied, for example David Boehm
on creativity and the implicit order and Lutzen Brouwer on "mathematical
intuition". I still remember how much Polanyi reminded me of Boehm and
Brouwer.
Such studies made me aware of the following. I will use the concept which
person A manages to articulate as "a", B as "b", C as "c", etc.
Now think metaphorically of those botanists who actually go out in nature
and collect living specimen after living specimen, making preserved
herbarium specimens of them. In order to deposit the specimen at a
herbarium, it has to be given a provisional name. Usually it is easy to
give it an already existing name of a species because through time became
that species in all its varaiation has been deleniated by many herbarium
specimens. The newly gathered species will look very much like a few of
the very many already collected. This happens when a species is very
common and botanists can easily explore the places where they occur.
But sometimes a specimen is found of which it is extremely difficult to
give an already existing name. All specimens of that species may grow at a
location which is very difficult for botanists to visit. The species may
be very rare itself. The species may not be rare, but specimens are thinly
distributed over a vast region with significant local differences. Now
think of herbarium specimens which originally have been given different
names "a", "b", "c", .... , but which all eventually appears to belong to
one species of which a name has to be established. How will they make sure
that this bewildering collection is indeed specimens of one species How
will they establish in peace and understanding a name which will satisfy
most botanists?
Well, they have a remarkable way of doing it and perhaps one day, when the
desire is strong enough, we may learn it too. We may also learn how often
someone among them, for opportunistic reasons, insist on exclusitivity so
as to get his/her name attached to the very species name which he/she have
created self. The latter is not said to get at you. It is a serious
malpractice which makes taxonomy hell.
Now let us jump back from this metaphor to knowledge. Here are some
adjectives which had been used to refer to one (or perhaps even more)
facets-kinds-species-dimensions of knowledge:
. apprehensive, basic, blind, constructive, elemental, fundamental,
. immanent, immediate, implicit, internal, intuitive, mute, perceptive,
. tacit, unshaken, unreserved.
Do we have one complex species here, or do we have many definite
varieties which we want to upgrade into one complex spcies, or do
we have many species which form a well defined genus?
I had may own fair share of reading on knowledge. In the beginning I was
also inclind to seek of hidden reasons why people differ. Sometimes I felt
that A should have acknowledged B, that C should have studied D, that E
picked a clandestine fight with F, that G differs form H merely for the
sake of differing, that J actually copied K, that L wanted to be smarter
than M, etc. But gradually, as I explored more and more, I became deeply
under the impression that for me they were all busy with one extremely
complex thing, a certain level of knowledge which they began to write
about. What each had to say, was a specimen of a species which no specimen
can fully represent.
In fact, because of that very awareness, I developed a different for
complexity which often puzzles others. Complexity is all the perceptions
of all humans from all eras. Or to use Polanyi's concept of "tacit
knowledge" -- Complexity is the whole which emerges form the sum of all
tacit knowledges of humankind.
>>For example, every non-spontaneous act it is impossible
>>for a system which has to perform that act "self". (snip)
>
>Impossible, in this context, means "something that can't
>be done by any human being, as the real emergence
>occurs the other way around - from explicit to tacit".
Here I have to differ. For me one of the profound characterestics which
distinguish humankind from the rest of all creation, is the capacity to
make the impossible possible. I have already written extensively on it so
I will not do it here. And I am more than willing to explain it again and
again to whoever wants it.
>Strangely, or not, I agree with you, and one of the
>things that is contributing to "mental global warming"
>is that "people are being forced to make IMPOSSIBLE
>MENTAL CHANGES". Between many others, the ones
>to try to make explicit tacit knowing, to try to learn (or do)
>in an explicit way things that can only be understood
>(or done) in a tacit way.
One of the key points in my own teaching is never to force a person to
learn or to make any other mental change. I have explained it extensively
and will explain it again and again.
Another key point is that knowledge never occurs outside any person,
although information (which is of an order lower than knowledge) exists
outside a person. Together with it goes the understanding that formal
knowledge and information should never be confused as one and the same
thing.
The last key point which I have to mention with respect to this dialogue
and which is actually manifested by this very dialogue between you and me,
is that the sharing of differential learning and integral knowledge is
essential for humans to become humane. For me and you to share the
learning and knowledge inside each of us, we have to communicate. This is
done by creating information in some or other medium following certain
patterns friendly to that medium and then commute such information.
Without such sharing I think that we will be the wretched among all
creatures.
This is what every Learning Organisation is for its Learning Individuals.
To share whatever knowledge they want to share, to make the impossible
possible, to become human.
If you do not want to or cannot express your tacit knowledge (a-la
Polanyi) into some minor information, I will be the last to command you to
do so. The spontaneous action of your whole learning and knowledge is too
important to me to dishonour it with a silly command. But should you or
any fellow learner ever want me to help you to make explicit what you want
to make explicit but feel that you have come against a solid wall for not
being able to do so, contact me so that we as a team can try to tunnel
trhough that seemingly impregnable wall. We need not to call it "tacit
knowledge" so as to get into trouble with Polanyi. Let us simply call it
"mute knowledge", the literal English translation for my Afrikaans name
"stomkennis". It is something which I once called by the horrible name
"meta epistemological base".
I cannot promise success because of the complexity involved. But I can
promise that I will try to help you as I have succeeded in helping
hundreds of learners to learn how to express what they actually know. I
have enough "mute knowledge" gained by extensive experience to serve some
of us.
>If bicycling (or sex, by the way) would be thought
>at the Universities, one would have to study a lot
>of theories before one could practice; after studying
>all this "explicit knowledge", I am quite sure one
>would never be able to acquire the tacit knowing
>that is needed...
If you should have told me that I had written this sentence myself, I
would not have been able to differ from you because I completely agree
with it. I used the word "one" self extensively up to the early nineties.
So, if you should claim that I have written it a decade or so I would not
be able to refute your claim. It is only the use of the "one" that would
have helped me to refute a claim that I wrote it recently.
Perhaps you are not aware how many times I have stressed that for me and
for the many learners which I have helped out of their misery, learning
begins with experience. I have a lone struggle here at the university. The
general viewpoint here is that the practical part of a course having it is
an illustration to the theoretical part which has to precede it. I claim
that it is a mere administrative convenience which has now become a
principle of knowledge. I try to precede the exposition of any theory with
pratical encounters as close to it as possible. Eventhough this is an
administrative nightmare, I try to keep up with it.
The really sad thing is that almost all students assume the general
viewpoint to be actually true. So I have to bear their frustrations and
objections also in mind, living a life on a tight rope. But the worst to
bear in mind is that sometime in future they will come to me, asking for
help so as to understand some or other theory. Then I have to take that
individual student and repeat some practice so as to make sure that the
student has gained the experience from which his/her tacit knowledge
(oops, mute knowledge ;) has to emerge.
>Let's try to play a game again: let me change your
>paragraph to try to make it compatible with Polanyi's
>thinking. Please make an effort to try to understand
>the "new version" even if it makes no sense to you. It
>would be something like that:
>
>If it would be possible for "tacit knowledge" to become
>articulated, it wouldn't be "tacit knowledge" any more
>(indeed it wouldn't be knowledge at all). Nothing in the
>universe can change irreversibly and yet remain the
>same. All emergences are irreversible changes. The
>change of any "explicit knowledge" to "tacit knowledge"
>is an emergence so that it cannot also stay "explicit
>knowledge".
I have written many times self on this list that when "tacit knowledge"
(mute knowledge ;-) it cannot be "tacit knowledge" any more. I have
explained in once in terms of the "measurement problem" of quantum
mechanics. Let me offer a much simpler explanation. When two hydrogen
atoms H and one oxygen atom O combine for a water molecule H2O to emerge,
there is not any more two H atoms and one O atom in it. Analysing H2O into
two H atoms and one O atom is not evidnece that they existed as such in
H2O also. In fact, all empirical evidence point to something different.
The nucleus of each H (in this case a simple proton) and the kernel
(nucleus plus two inner) of oxyden share four electrons between them while
oxygen kernel has to cope on its own with the four remaining electrons.
This change is irreversible.
So if the "tacit knowledge" (mute knowledge ;-) begins to disappear we
will get into a big problem when nothing of it is left over. It indeed
disappears faster that the "formal knowledge" appears. Think of three
atoms (two H and one O) which disappear for one molecule (H2O) to appear.
There are two ways of preventing the disappearing of "tacit knowledge".
The one way is to prevent its emergence into "formal knowledge", for
example, by insisting that it cannot be done. The other way is to promote
its emergence from experiences.
One thing which I have to point out very clearly is when we indeed
succeeded in articulating "mute knowledge" is that we ought to make a
crucial distinction between "formal knowledge" (that which remains inside
the person) and the "information" (which is a byproduct outside the
person). For me "information" cannot ever be equated to "formal
knowledge", just as I cannot equate "formal knowledge" with "mute
knowledge" or even "knowledge as whole with all four its dimensions". So,
when you write "indeed it wouldn't be knowledge at all", I will agree with
you of this indefinite "it" actually refers to the artifact of the
articulated "tacit knowledge" (mute knowledge ?) rather than the "formal
knowledge" (which remains inside the person).
As for "tacit knowledge" emerging from "formal knowledge", I cannot agree
to that. I am very well aware that much of my "tacit knowledge" emerge
while experiencing human created "information" (but not "formal knowledge)
with my eyes, ears, smell, taste and touch in decreasing order of
frequency. Furthermore, I am deeply aware how my "formal knowledge" had an
enriching "back action" on my two lower levels of knowledge. I will even
concede to calling it a "top-down emergence", but not call it an emergence
when having to call the "down-top emergence" an actual "immergence".
>Does this makes any sense for you, At?
>Can you make, even if only for a while, the
>paradigm shift to change from your conception
>to this one? And how do you feel with the new
>one? Prepared to "not see" the point of view
>of some other and going back to your ideas
>and digest it a little further or prepared to try
>to understand it within Polanyi's point of view?
Artur, I have tried to explain as carefully as possible my own
understanding. I think I understand Polanyi's point of view as you have
tried to make it clear. But (and with this little word I have to signify
that) I have to reckon with my own emergences also. I am indeed capable of
getting rid of even them, but this will involve what I call a "creative
collapse" and which I also have explained before and am willing to explain
again and again. That kind of "objectivity" which entails that I have to
keep myself out of the study, I cannot subscribe to any more.
Helping students in total "oorgegewendheid" with their learning miseries
have affordes me the opportunity to look at myself in a way which I now
frimly belive is otherwise impossible. The closest English translation for
this "oorgegewendheid" (three of my dictionaries do not have a translation
for it) is "surrenderhood".
>I believe that you are an honest and intelligent man.
>I believe that you have already understood that from
>Polanyi's perspective, everything is now different.
>Perhaps not better, but different anyhow.
I wish I was as honest and intelligent as you make it out. In fact,
telling me that I am honest and intelligent almost tempt me to be more
honest and intelligent than what I am at present capable of. That would be
dishonest and foolish.
>And I thank you for giving me an opportunity to
>further clarify Polanyi's ideas (or my own?). Please
>believe that I am not trying to "gain a discussion".
>I truly think that if you read the book you will enter
>a new period of "emergent learning". And all of us in
>this list will profit from that.
I have studied his book and it did help me immensely to formalise my own
"mute knowledge" on mental emergences. But I cannot undo this emergent
learning except by a "creative collapse". The outcome of any "creative
collapse" is superior among all emergences should we really we want to
bring in superiority.
I do appreciate your honest contribution very much because it helped me
once again tremendously to go over what I know in total of myself.
I am not so sure that "all of us in this list" will profit from it because
once again it resulted in a very long contribution which frustrates many
as they often have hinted. It also made me break my promise for the second
time that I will take a rest which I do need. Even my dear wife called me
a little while ago and was rather furious with me for breaking my promise.
There are also many private "learning friendships" which I have to respond
to and which I just cannot manage -- please forgive me whoever knows what
I am refering to.
Knowing what to write from what one knows is not as easy as riding a
bicycle. I wish there was not so much obscurity involved.
>Receive my friendly and warmest regards
Thank you, and more of the same to you and all others.
She called again just now and soon I will have to perform a dance ;-)
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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