Dear organlearners,
"John H. Dicus" <jdicus@ourfuture.com> wrote in LO14261
> I would appreciate hearing the benefit of the thinking on this list around
> the use of the word structure. Partly to hear your thoughts and partly to
> help in developing different vocabulary (under the assumption that it
> might be helpful).
John, in my forthcoming book I will document one of my discoveries, namely
the seven essentialities of creativity. I will document in one chapter how
I discovered them and in another chapter what each one amounts to and how
they contribute to creativity.
When increasing chaos has to bifurcate into order at the saturation point,
the seven essentialities become extremely important. Only when all seven
of them are sufficiently mature, the bifurcation will result in an
emergence of a higher order. In other words, the emergence is contingent.
Should one or more of the essentialities be deficient or absent, the
bifurcation will become an immergence to a lower order.
One of the essentialities is the antisymmetrical duality
"process-structure". I try to use (in a taxonomic sense) the oldest
authentic names and thus I have called this essentiality "becoming-being"
rather than "process-structure", thereby reaching back into ancient greek
thought. Nevertheless, the reason why you, and probably a lot of others
will be intrigued by the term "structure", is that it refers directly to
an essentiality of creativity, especially in the emergent sense. This is
very clear from your later comment:
<snip>
> Emergent learning environments, I believe, are "differently" structured,
> rather then "unstructured." Many people refer to them as higher forms of
> structure -- or manifestations of higher complexity where complexity would
> mean degree of inter-relatedness and ability to live/adapt/evolve.
>
> What do you think? How can we talk about new and unfamiliar "structures"
> without meaning that they are confining, limiting, and contain fewer
> avenues of choice for individuals?
We can definitely talk about "process-structure" as essential to
creativity. But I must also issue a warning. During the bifucation itself,
we do not think of the structure and process as a antisymmetrical matched
pair, but rather as opposites. Some people tend to favour the structure
part of becoming-being while others favour the process part. However, once
the bare new order has emerged and the evolutionary (disgestive) stage
take over, the matching falls into place.
May I remind you that Ilya Prigogine (from 'Order out of Chaos' fame
together with Isabella Stengers), have written a subsequent book with the
wierd title 'From Being to Becoming', or to "translate" it in your
metaphors, 'From Structure to Process'. Unfortunately, about 80% of this
book is "hard core" physics and chemistry. (Capra made a magnificant job
of translating the contents of this book into a form for the
non-specialist in his book "The web of life".) However, those of you not
afraid to read the lines between mathematical equations, will find the
book by Prigogine (Nobel prise, 1976) itself most interesting.
My own book will take over where this book of Prigogine stopped, leading
you through a paradigm shift which I myself have experienced and can only
describe as mind boggling.
Keep on with this thread Structure and try to uncover as much as possible.
It will certainly be most interesting and worthwhile.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>