Dear organlearners,
Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com> concludes his
contribution (LO16557) with:
> Still I am glad there is much agreement between our perspectives- if a
> gulf in terminology which I apologize to the list for.
Simon, in what now follows, I merely use your conclusion as something to
refer to. My comments are not directed to you personally.
One essentiality is "quality-variety" (rangeness). This essentiality is
evident when using different terminologies because of working from
different viewpoints. We should never apologise for one or more of the
seven essentialities of creativity. When we apologise for an essentiality
because it is essential we pull the mind's free energy for creativity into
a negative state. In other words, we reduce our potential to think
creatively. This reduced potential owing to thinking essentials to be
inferior, is a very serious learning dissability, whether it concerns
individuals or organisations. (It is not in Senge's list of seven learning
dissabilities of organisations.) It makes us weak leaders and weak
followers because our creativity becomes inferior.
Simon seems to have apologised for the essentiality "quality-variety"
(rangeness). I think that he rather may have apologised for the length of
our dialogue - something which I would do. One of the fruits of a dialogue
is cognitive emergences - to understand reality in terms of the notions,
terminology or metaphors of others. The effect of any impaired
essentiality is to dilate (increase) the creation time of an emergence
finitely or even to prevent it happening at all (infinite dilation). The
extra time is needed to make up for the deficiencies - to "explain
connectively" things which we think ought to be explained - to fill up the
missing links.
The advantage of a common terminology is that it avoids these "connective
explanations". But this advantage is coupled with a disadvantage, namely,
that those who have not mastered the terminology, are left out in the
cold. Thus - as Erwin Schroedinger (the father of quantum mechanics) once
noted - if those who profess a certain terminology are not willing and
able to connect that termiminology with the concepts of others outside the
profession (the general public), then the professionals have become a sick
society themselves. What they do not realise is that their terminology is
outside their profession not a terminology any more, but merely another
class of metaphors.
Does this means that we should have no respect for terminology? No. Let
us think of natural languages (dialects, standardised languages and lingua
francas) as a metaphor. There is an advantage when we are willing and able
to use a lingua franca (English, Spanish, Mandarin). The disadvantage
begins when the lingua franca and our mother tongue is the same language
and we cannot speak any other language. (See the dialgoue between Ray
Harrel, me an others on this issue - I forgot the wording of the thread.)
When I am using a terminology which includes terms like entropy,
dissipation, chaos, order, bifurcation, immergence, emergence, complexity,
I merely point to an emerging language which can be used as a lingua
franca. I will never advocate that this language should become a lingua
franca by displacing other languages - that would be very sick.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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