Dear Organlearners,
Patrick Sue <psue@inforamp.net> writes:
> I've been a mostly silent member of LO for several months now and have
> gotten valuable insights from many postings. One of the things I find
> distracting is the redefinition of words that have definitions in the
> dictionary, for example, the lengthy debate about the meaning of the word
> "manipulation", which I will not get into. Therefore I agree with Robert
> Bacal, L016680, who said "if the goal is to discuss learning and to promote
> learning, then it makes sense to use language as it is commonly used,
> rather than inventing new words which may only be meaningful to those
> inventing the terms".
Patrick, our languages are a testimony to our creativity. To create is not
only to consolidate on our creative emergences, but to go for new
emergences whenever they become inevitable. Old English as the common
language served English people well until the Enlightenment. This was an
extraodinary period of emergences - the birth of the modern age.
But who will today, after three centuries, still insist on formulating
modern concepts in that old common language? Many poeple cry out that we
are now living in the post-modern era. Does it not again entail that
languages have to change as much as Old Enlish had changed into modern
English?
The problem is to know when we have to opt for far reaching emergences in
the field of languages. We can solve this problem by assuming that our
creativity is the result of "entropy production". As I have stressed
before, "entropy" is like a snapshot and "entropy production" is like a
movie. Although they are related to each other (just as a movie is a long
sequence of snapshots in a fast sequence), their effect is so different
that one should never try to think of them as the same thing.
When physicists discovered roughly 150 years ago the quantity
(magnitude+unit) entropy and the law which controls it, they were totally
confused. Since then the law has been known as the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. The law is basically very simple - it says that for any
physical change, the (magnitude, a number) of the entropy of the universe
must increase. However, all the other laws of physics pointed to an
enchanting order in the universe with a dazzling diversity. Unfortunately,
as far as they could understand it in those times, this 2nd law seems to
do the opposite! The law seems to force the
dispersion/dissipation/spreading of heat so that temperatures could be
equalised.
They never expected this law to control anything more than the dissipation
of heat. Since this law confused them so much, they decided to give
entropy an interpretion to alleviate some of the confusion. And what did
they interpret it with? Believe it or not: "entropy is a measure of
confusion"! (Actually, they used the word "chaos" rather than
"confusion".) Thus they believed that they got rid of their confusion by
transferring it into the concept entropy. (Let it be a warning for anyone
who uses the concept "transfer" unqualifyingly , for example knowledge
transfer.) Obviously, it is foolish. It is like a child who acts foolishly
in the eyes of his/her parents. The child then try to justify this
foolishness by transferring it to the parents - it is they who are foolish
and not the child.
But late in the previous century, J W Gibbs - the greatest US scientist up
to now - showed that this law concerning entropy did not only control the
flow of heat, but also the flow of matter in a chemical reaction. Thus the
subject "physical chemistry" began to develop on the basis of chemical
thermodynamics. Unfortunately, this subject also became the nemesis of the
great majority of chemistry students - 50 years ago and even today. Why?
Because on the one hand they had to struggle with the intricate numerical
calculations of chemical thermodynamics - and on the other hand they had
to interpret their results as chaos. Can you believe it - adding insult to
injury!
Soon after WWII, a young man with the name Illya Progogine, began to ask
very creative questions, the kind of questions which dull professors try
to avoid. His first question was: how does the entropy of the universe get
created. Few could understand this question and many thought it to be
utterly foolish. Yet his answering of this question earned him the Nobel
Prize (chemistry) in 1977. It led to the subject now known as Irreversible
Thermodynamics. Any student of irreversible thermodynamics soon discovers
that the Second Law does not only govern the flow of heat and chemical
matter, but a bewildering scene of hundreds os seemingly unrelated
phenomena. Unfortunately, students (experts) of irreversible
thermodynamics are as scarce as chicken hair.
Prigogine, creative genius as he is, went even further. He began to
realise that the 2nd law is not only responsible for dissipation (the
outward dispersion of energy into the universe resulting in chaos), but
also for construction (the inward concentration of energy in a local
structure resulting in order). He began to prove his insight, step by step
through empirical and theoretical studies. His work is usually refered to
as Dissipative Self-Organisation Systems (DSOS). Unfortunately, while
serious students of irrversible thermodynamics are as scare a chicken
hair, serious students of DSOS are as acarce as chicken teeth. Why?
Firstly, it is a very complex subject. Secondly, a student cannot afford
to try and understand the subject with a fixed mindset. For example,
entropy does not measure only chaos, but also order. Another example, the
one I refered to the beginning, entropy and entropy production differs
from each other - much more than a snapshot and a movie differs form each
other. A snapshot depicts "being", but a movie depicts the "becoming of
beings". Do you now begin to understand why Prigogine gave his
post-Nobel-prize book the title "From Being to Becoming"?
Now why all this history? To get to the main theme of his book. If the
entropy production in a system is stepped up so that the system is driven
far from equilbrium, a bifurcation will develop from which the emergence
of a new higher ordered structure might happen. Now, the entropy
production in this stepping up phase is manifested as increasing chaos. It
is observable all through the material world, including living systems.
Unfortunately, up to now no one has documented empirical evidence that the
2nd law also applies to the abstract world of mind. (I will do so in my
book and this will be like letting many cats into a pidgeon pen. This one
of the reasons why it is so difficult to find a publisher for it.) But let
us assume that it is the case. Then in the field of languages, this
increasing chaos will be observeable as an increase in the confusing
meanings given to the same word and an increase in the number of such
words!
Is this not what is happening now in many of the subjects of academy? If
it is, and if the rate of such word confusions is increasing, is a
bifurcation not looming somehere in the future? What will emergence? Will
the emergence happen automatically? If not, what contingencies are
required to have a constructive emergence. On the other hand, if some of
these contingencies are impaired, what destructive immergence will result?
Are you becoming prepared for it, or are you going to insist on a fixed
common meaning for every common word. What about a word like "learning"?
Is the term "learning organisation" not a sign that something extraodinary
is happening?
> The degree to which an organization successfully manages its knowledge is
> the degree to which it is able to increase its effective knowledge by both
> logistical learning and creational learning. It needs the former for
> profitability, and the latter to endure over time.
Patrick, to step up the confusion by another degree! Your "creational
learning" I call "emergent learning" and your "logistical learning" I call
"digestive learning". Your "effective knowledge" I call "creative
knowledge". Creative knowledge needs "emergent learning" to open up its
resilience and needs "digestive knowledge" to embody such resilience..
Otherwise we are syaing exactly the same thing. A baby must first be borne
and then have to grow up in order to become a mature person
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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