Replying to LO29576 --
Dear Organlearners,
Leo Minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl> writes:
>I like this dialogue; very interesting.
Greetings dear Leo,
This dialogue is not only interesting to me, but i also need it very much.
For example, i began an essay on the "Wholeness of Knowledge" several
weeks ago which is still not completed. The reason is that this "blind to
wholeness" had been troubling my mind.
I can claim with certainty that information has little wholeness. Even
when lumping the "parcels" of information in a depositary like a library
and providing a catalogue for them, the wholeness is not improved. But the
relationship between knowledge and wholeness is becoming perplexing to me.
For example, how much wholeness must knowledge have to qualify as
knowledge?
A person having memorised specialised information and trained in its
application will act like a robot when confronted with anything else
distantly related to such information -- "I cannot respond because it is
not my speciality". When urging a response, that person may say "My
responsibility go as far as my speciality". I wait for the day when
someone will tell: "My responsibility is to wholeness so let us see how we
can resolve the issue".
>Since the 'heelmeesters' (litt. 'wholemasters'; old fashioned
>word for docter/physician) became specialists we lost our
>perceptions to wholeness.
Your remark hit me like a hammer between the eyes. When I was a kid, many
of the elderly people talked of a doctor as a "heelmeester". As I grew up,
I did not notice that fewer people talked of a "whole-master". I cannot
remember of anyone using "whole-master" since I have begun working at the
university two dozen years ago. The usage of the word became extinct and I
did not even notice when.
Why did people stop using "whole-master"? Perhaps the following will shed
some light. I taught chemistry to medical students. The far majority
passed the subject well, but few considered it as relevant to their future
profession. They wanted to become doctors rather than "whole-masters".
As a result of following a strict protein diet (diabetes and allergy to
insulin), I developed some curious symptoms (cramps and comas). Physicians
could not find the cause. Only when Alfred Rheeder refered me to an
physician (dr Will Davies) in his seventies, I met a "whole-master" once
again. Together we established the cause of these symptoms -- a serious
deficiency of calcium (=> cramps) and magnesium (=> comas) in the body.
Perhaps he is the last of the "whole-masters" in South Africa leftover.
>I think that 'blindness' or 'eye less' is too limited. In my
>mind the expression 'blind to wholeness' is a self referential
>paradox. Because blindness refers only to vision. I think
>that ex-ception or non-ception for wholeness is more
>complete, because it refers to all senses.
You are right. When i selected "blind", i was thinking of seeing with
physical eyes and seeing with mental eyes, i.e. insight. We need a word
which will hint to both the physcial and spiritual, but which will not
suggest only one sense organ like the eye. What about "senseless to
wholeness"? If any fellow learner can suggest a better word, I would
appreciate it very much.
>However, even for people who are open to the concept of
>wholeness, their perceptions might not be complete enough.
>Possibly this is due to specialisations and the curiosity for
>details. I mean that curiosity could pull you into a focus,
>opening a new (undiscovered) world with a whole range of
>aspects of wholeness, although ínside. This attraction or pull
>could be so strong that it is hard to retreat oneself out of this
>inside world and take distance for perceiving the minor wholes
>from in relation to its environments. In other words - who
>claims to perceive the wholeness?
I think you have a point here. When i think of specialists with strong
analytical thinking (who abound at universities), i can think of many who
are markedly senseless ("blind") to wholeness. Yet we have to avoid being
judgemental about it because they were trained like that, belong to
specialist societies favouring such thinking and have to build up a CV
among peers who think the same. They become experts on a tiny whole,
giving up working with any larger whole which contains such a tiny whole.
It takes much effort, tenacity and self-denial to free oneself from such
specialised and analytical thinking.
>Is there THE wholeness? One and only wholeness. Perhaps
>this is a too philosophical question. But the existance of many
>wholes is worth to think about.
Leo, as i understand it, "whole" and "wholeness" are two related, but
different concepts. For example, when we go to a supermarket to buy food,
almost every item is pre-packed and sold as a "whole". In many items the
content consists of parts so that the container keeps these parts
together.
Can we say that the container brings wholeness to these parts so that they
can be sold as a unit (one item)? I do not think so. Wholeness do not
force smaller wholes together, but rather keeps smaller wholes
spontaneously together. This can be observed in the associative pattern
for wholeness:- X*Y*Z. Here the "umlomo" Y keeps itself with the parts X
and Z together as the larger whole X*Y*Z. Perhaps this "blind (senseless)
to wholeness" is caused by the lack of understanding what spontaneous
involves.
>One element that plays an important role in this question
>is scale. Are you focussed to a part of the complete map,
>or do you see the whole map. And then .... on what scale
>is this map?
(snip)
>This change of dimensions seems strange. What dimension
>has wholeness?? Or, how looks wholeness in 0D, 1D, 2D,
>3D, 4D, etc? Are there countless wholenesses?
Now you have got me thinking! Consider a needle as a 1D object, a coin as
a 2D object and a ball as a 3D object. Each is a whole with wholeness.
Thus wholeness is not restricted to any particular dimension. This reminds
me of Einstein's relativity theory. He extended a whole in 3D space to a
whole with 4 dimensions by including time. What is even more remarkable is
that he used light as the "umlomo" so that his 4D whole (technically
called a space-time event) obtained wholeness!
>In the subject header of this thread wholeness is written
>with a capital: Wholeness. Did I refer in the former
>paragraphs to lower case wholenesses? And is there
>indeed one Wholeness?
This is a question which i often struggled with. But it is for me like
swimming in a rough sea. Sometimes i have just enough time to take a gulp
of air, but most of the time my head is submerged. By this i mean that
occasionaly i get a fleeting glimpse of the answer, but usually a possible
answer generates too quickly unanswerable questions.
I think that all three the systemic concepts "whole", "wholeness" and
"increasing wholeness"=holism have to be taken into account. The
"increasing wholeness" seems to entail that a system's wholeness is
not the unique Wholeness. Wait! I suddenly got another idea why a
person may be "blind to wholeness". It might happen when that
person does not increase in wholeness. But i am not so sure.
Thank you Leo for prodding my mind with your creativity.
Your initial remark about "leermeester"="whole-master" is haunting
my mind since i first have read about it. Do we need "whole-masters"
in the post-modern world? I think they are very much needed, but
they will have to be "whole-masters" in both body and mind. One
question which they must be able to answer is:-
Why are some people "senseless (blind) to wholeness"?
Can they help those people to sense wholeness when they do not
know the answer self?
To keep this topic on course, we have to consider the Learning
Organisation (LO) once again. Peter Senge wrote that wholeness is an
essence (one of eleven) of a LO. Can an organisation become a LO when many
of its members are senseless (blind) to wholeness? I do not think so. It
is like expecting a blind person to paint what another person can see.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.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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