Replying to LO26930 --
Dear Organlearners,
Artur F. Silva <artsilva@mail.eunet.pt> writes:
>When we have problems in understanding ourselves,
>interpersonal relations, organizations, or society at large,
>our normal attitude is to look for professionals and, if that
>doesn't work, to look back to universities and professors
>to obtain help to solve our problems. They then apply even
>more rigorous 'research' based on the same technical
>rationality and give us a 'solution'. We try to apply the
>solution and many of us are burned in the process. After
>some time we then decide that we have a new situation
>with different (sometimes worse) problems and so we call
>again for help from 'researchers'.
Greetings dear Arthur,
I am looking forward to your series because I have enjoyed the first
delivery very much. One of the reasons is, funny enough, that finally
someone else will begin to write longer contributions than me ;-)
It order not to become long winded self, but led you run in front of the
team of donkeys pulling the cart, I will connect only to a few of the
points which you have made.
I have a simple description (hopefully accurate and yet not too cynical)
for "technical rationality" <=> "follow the recipe". It amounts to the
following: Let the world change without any care because humankind will
solve tomorrow's problems with today's answers as the infallible recipe.
Since humans solved problems in the past, there is no reason why they
cannot solve the problems of the future, (unless, Leo, they are the
problems which you now are aware of ;-)
Many people think that the philosophy of Positivism emerged as a result of
the Copernican Revolution and thus the emergence of the physical sciences
beginning with Newton. The first philosopher who articulated Positivism is
A Comte. Positivism, even presently, means that the ONLY sure knowledge is
that gained from empirical data by measuring physical phenomena. The
capitalised ONLY serve to point a one-to-one-mapping by invoking LEM (Law
of the Excluded Middle).
But I think that Positivism began much earlier as your "professionals" and
"professors" indicate. These words are created from the Latin prefix
"pro"=forth and root "fateor"=confess/believe. Its meaning was "from this
person comes forth knowledge (actually information) which can be believed
without questioning." The first professors to be found were in the
medieval universities (beginning with Bologna) and specifically in the
medical profession. The infallible recipe? Give the patient medicine and
health will be regained.
Today's world has many kind of professions and many more disciplines
trying to obstain the status of a profession with all the grandeur (robes,
certficiates and money) going with it. If your deficiency (illness,
problem) has to do with XYZ, go to the professional on XYZ and that person
will sell you the recipe (medicine, solution) so as to make up that
deficiency. What an incredible "tyranny of experts" have humankind not
created the past 800 years!
Arthur, as you have written:
>In all this process there is a 'paradigm' that we
>almost never question: given a problem, university
>research will find a solution; some are good, some
>not so good but they will always improve the
>situation (at least, they will change it :-)
Perhaps it is a "paradigm", but I think more of it as the Mental Model of
"the professional expert has the best recipe."
Dear fellow learners, how can I bring you to the understanding that this
Mental Model is perhaps the greatest fallacy, if not hoax, of our time.
How can you offer the earnings of your creativity to such an expert by
admitting that your creativity is inferior so as to let the creativity of
the "recipe expert" take control of your life? How dare I convince you
that by doing so you destroy your own creativity. I must not convince you
because then I put myself as the "medicine man" in place of the "recipe
expert". I can only beg you "Please question endlessly so as to learn self
and thus improve your own creativity."
Artur, you quote Schon, in his 'The Reflective Practitioner' (RP, 1982),
who wrote:
. I have become convinced that universities
. ARE NOT devoted to the production and
. distribution of fundamental knowledge in general.
I myself work in an university. I agree with this conviction in the sense
of any university AS AN organisation. But I also disagree because in
my university not a day goes by without a post graduate student or
professional visiting me, lamenting this very sad state of affairs and
trying to overcome its lethal consequences with their own creativity.
These people who visit me are devoted beyond measure to care for their
fellow human beings. They know tacitly that creativity and learning are
essential to create a healthy future for our planet, but somehow the
complexity of it all overwhelm the university system and thus render their
care to obscurity.
As for me self, I will question step by step even the most sacred to make
sure that it is not perhaps the most demonic. For example, Schon speaks of
"fundamental knowledge" which has to be produced and distributed. I am
today more sure than ever that knowledge can live only in the mind of a
person. Thus knowledge cannot be translocated from one person to another
like a blood transfusion or like going to a gasoline station and fill the
car's tank. That which comes out of the mind into any creation like
writing, instruments or even art is not knowledge, but information.
Allowing information from one mind to be translocated to the mind of
another person is a most dangerous practice. It can easily destroy the
spiritual health/harmony/ecology of that person's mind. It does to the
mind what "fast foods" and "ready made pills" are increasingly doing to
the body. Only when a person's mind has the necessery tacit "kernels" to
"digest" the information on the outside of the mind in an organised
manner, will that information be beneficial. These tacit "kernels" of
indwelling knowledge have to emerge within the mind of that person through
authentic learning.
(The adjectives "tacit" and "indwelling" which I have used above, has been
done carefully in the sense which Polanyi would have done.)
As for the "fundamental" of "fundamental knowledge", I now consider
"elemental knowledge" as far more superior to "fundamental knowledge".
This "elemental knowledge" becomes "fundamental knowledge" through a
process of reduction/refinery. Whereas the "elemental knowledge" always
has a one-to-many-application, the "fuandamental knowledge" has a
one-to-one-application. The process of reduction/raffination stripped from
a lesser to a greater extend the 7Es ("seven essentialities of
creativity") from the "elemental knowledge" to produce the "fundamental
knowledge". Hence the application of "fundamental knowledge" becomes
highly specific.
This is why you can quote Schon writing:
. "..the professions are in the midst of a crisis
. of confidence and legitimacy... first because
. professionals do not live up the values and
. norms that they espouse, and second because
. they are ineffective"..
The point is that, even with many professionals deperately wanting to, without
the 7Es the professions can neither live up to values and norms they espouse
nor operate effectively.
Allow me to give one example for merely one of the 7Es how this "elemental
knowledge" gets reduced/refined into "fundamental knowledge". I wish I had
the time and you fellow learners the patience and Rick the resources for
me to go extensively through all 7Es. I will use an example pointing to
the essentiality otherness ("quality-variety")
The outcome of a research program gets published in English as the ligua
franca of the professions. The reason for using English are manifold such
as subjecting the information to scientific authority and disseminating it
as widely as possible. Here in our country it is done too. Yet we have 11
major languages (in principle declared as "official") and a dozen other
minor languages. Fifty percent of our population are desperately poor.
Sixty percent of our population do not know English. Another 25% are
functionally illiterate in English. Yet the less than 0.1% researchers
among the remaining 15% have to publish in English or perish. In other
words, refining this information into English makes it inaccessible to at
least 75% of our population of which 50% are in desperate need.
Artur, you write:
>I begin with the assumption that competent
>practitioners usually know more than they can
>say. They exhibit a kind of knowing-in-practice,
>most of which is tacit.
As I understand it myself, beginning with assumptions is part of the
crisis of modern humankind because it is part of the theoretical stance.
To resolve this crisis we will have to reform this theoretical stance, not
by substituing it with the practical stance, but by harmonising both into
the artistical (practice + theory) stance. It is for this very reason that
I had been exploring through many years what seems to be crazy to others.
For example, consider my distinction between "elemental knowledge" and
"fundamental knowledge". How do we acquire "elemental knowledge"? By
making use of what I call "elemental organisers", each consisting of a
"becoming-being" pair. For example, "painting picture", "solving problem"
and "managing system". What is most important to note in an "elemental
organiser" is that becoming is first while the being is last. What does
this mean?
It is through deeds (becomings) that I connect my 5 sense organs to the
"world-outside-me". I is through deeds that I become aware of sensations
so as to gain in experience. It is through deeds that my new experiences
emerge into further tacit knowing. It is through deeds that some of my
tacit knowings emerge into formal knowing by creating once again "form" in
the "world-outside-me". So what is important about this "form"?
Other humans may use it as "information". The rest of living nature have
no use for this "information". Therefore, in the first place it must not
jeopardise the rest of living nature. Secondly, this "information" must
also not jeopardise my fellow humans, but be beneficial to as many of them
as possible. Both my deeds and my words serve as "information". It is
eactly here where I firmly believe that my deeds are far more beneficial
than my words ever can be.
I do not only work on Internet (as it seems ;-), but also elsewhere. My
greatest handicap on Internet is that I have to work with secondary words
to accomplish primary deeds. This frustrates me more than anything else.
For example, I can say "I love you all". They are but words. But say, for
example, that I have cancer such that formulating these words becomes an
ordeal testing my mental focussing to create them rather than giving in to
the destructions of cancer, then I do believe that the words "I love you
all" become a deed.
I believe that by this example I have pointed to the future of our
LO-dialogue. The culmination of contructive creativity is in unconditional
love. Words which we write to each other in unconditional love become
deeds.
Dear Artur, please do not consider my reply as critique. It is but the
outcome of my own questioning and learning. Once again I warn all fellow
learners that it has to be seasoned with a big, big bag of salt. Artur,
also do not feel compelled to reply to my contribution. It is far more
important to complete your grand undertaking for the benefit of us all.
Consider me merely as your shadow following you where ever you are going.
With care and best wishes
--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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