Dear Organlearners and especially Winfried,
Winfried Dressler <winfried.dressler@voith.de> writes:
> In your introduction you included two pieces of homework and I wish to
> share my results with you:
Winfried, I am grinning like someone "mit einem Durchfall"! It makes
me very happy that nothing escapes you attention. But it will make
me very sad if you considered my "homework" as obligatory.
> >Here is a fine example coming from your world of experience to test
> >the idea of eidetic reduction. Is a leader essential to any human
> >organisation? (Iwould love to see how you handle this one). And just
> >to give your paradigm a slight bump, here is another example. Is the
> >element carbon essential to any human organisation?
I am going to change the order of your contribution.
> Carbon:
You have done very good on this one. I enjoyed your emergent and
digestive learning on this case. Your sentence
> Eidetic reduction is then the path "down the ladder".
summarises it all. I was especially impressed with
> For completeness you need all seven essentialities - I just
> learnt this lesson while writing here and now!!)
I do hope that you do not contrast completeness with the
seventh essentiality "open-paradigm" (openness).
> Hm. What about the reaction H + H -> H2? No H2-molecules without H-atoms,
> yet H-atoms may exist without H2-molecules, thus this is an emergent
> reaction, but where is "quality-variety"?
It is a very good question. It shows that by thinking in terms of
atoms, we can do our understanding great harm. A H atom already has
"quality-variety" (otherness) in it - it consists of a proton and an
electron. Thus when, the H2 molecule forms, we have two protons
sharing a pair of electrons between them. Diagrammatically
[p] e e [p]
A better example would be any diatomic molecule other than H2, for
example nitrogen N2.
e e
e e [N] e e [N] e e
e e
Three pairs of electrons are shared between two "nitrogen kernels" while
each kernel has an additional lone pair of electrons.
I find the concept of a "kernel" very important to understand what really
goes on in chemistry. This concept was introduced by G N Lewis, but
somehow no modern text book even mentions it. Many people think of atoms
as the "holons" (even Smuts and Koestler) of chemistry. However, once we
realise that the kernels and electrons are the basic holons of chemistry,
chemistry takes a new dynamic meaning.
A kernel of an atom consists of the nucleus of that atom plus all the
electrons in its inner (filled) shells. In other words, an atom is made up
of a kernel plus its outer valency electrons. A kernel is that part of the
atom of which its identity can be changed, but never chemically. Hydrogen
and helium are the only two elements of which the kernels do not contain
inner electrons. They are complementary to each other: hydrogen being
chemically very reactive and helium being chemically inert. You will soon
seen why I digressed somewhat on the concept of a kernel.
> The second homework:
>
> > When you get to the list of essentialities, read this paragraph again and
> > see how many essentialities you can identify in it.
> I cite the mentioned paragraph below and include my guess of where the
> essentialities are by using their nomal names:
You did very good on this one.
Now for the first one.
> Leader:
> No leader without a human organisation to lead, but an organisation
> is at least thinkable without a leader (whether it practically
> occurs or not). Thus my result is, that human organisations are
> essential to leaders, not the other way round.
Winfried, you gave me with the above much to think about the last weekend.
On the one hand I wanted to disagree with you, especially since you also
have written the next paragraph:
> But there is also a chance to become "essential" by definition (not
> by eidetic reduction): For a subset of human organisations, namely
> those lead by a leader, the leader is essential.
Eidetic reduction is to be used on phenomena, not our definitions of
phenomena. In this respect you did a fine job on carbon as an essential of
organisations => organisms => organs .......
Those organisations which you distinguish as "organisations lead by a
leader" are all example of a real phenomenon from which we DERIVE our
definition of leaders. It is by the very fact that leaders are essential
to these living organisations that we derive this definition. Thinking
leaders out of them afford a dying organisation. We certainly have many
examples of this latter phenomenon. That is why it it is so important to
replace a leader who, for some reason, cannot act with leadership any
more. Here is the reason why I expounded above on kernels. The leaders of
an organistion function as the kernels of that organistion!
But it is your first paragraph which kept me thinking. What did Winfried
articulated which I failed to articulate myself, but which my intuition
(tacit knowledge) kept on warning me to articulate? Finally, your "not the
other way round" helped me to have an emergent thought myself. As I have
explained in the previous paragraph, the other way around is indeed the
case. Thus in this respect I disagree with you.
You have made it an exclusive case. I have learnt long ago emergently that
we seldom have exclusive cases - it is usually inclusive cases which we
fail to connect coherently You have given me another example to digest
upon. But let me explain why not only the leader is essential to the
organisation, but the organisation is also essential to the leader!
First, let me give an example. Consider my head (brain) as the leader and
the rest of my body as the organisation. My head is essential to my body.
Should I become brain-dead, my body will soon die, except if kept alive
artificially by other brains and machines. But what you have been arguing,
is not that my body is essential to my brain (minus a limb or two). You
have been arguing that all the organs (in my body) are essential to my
brain. I think of all these organs together as a body. In other words, I
have already assumed wholeness. You have shown me that I have to think of
somthing before wholeness have taken effect. You are correct.
However, in the case of using my brain and body as example, I have made
use of a de facto organism (organisation) which depends on all seven
essentialities, including wholeness. Your argument differs from this
example in this very fact. I think your argument refers to all "plasmodial
(protoplasmic) organisations" which have not yet have emerged into formal
organisations with a leader.
A beautiful example of this plasmodial organisation is the slimy mold
formed by ameboid (one cell) organisms. Sometimes the slimy mold give rise
to exquisite patterns (see Nicolis and prigogine, 1977, "Self-organisation
in non-equilbrium systems" New York: Wiley) without becoming a more
complex organism, but usually the slimy mold remain amorphous, i.e.
without any higher order organisation.
Another example is the fourth state of matter. We usually think of only
three states of matter (gas, liquid, solid), forgetting about the fourth
state. Again the name "plasma" is used for this state. This state, for
example, occurs in an electrical fluorescent tube when giving of light. As
soon as we switch of the electricity, the original neon atoms with which
the tube had been filled, emerge again.
Winfried, to round it up, your articulation caused the concept of a
"plasmodial organisation" to emerge within me. I want to thank you.
This concept help to to further digestions on two important things.
Firstly, a nation is essential to parliament (or congress) and not only
the other way around. A nation without democracy typifies a "plasmodial
organistion".
Secondly, I thought about the extraordinary words of Jesus that he wanted
to gather Jerusalem as a hen gather its chicks, but that they would not
listen. Jerusalem also typifies a "plamodial organisation".
Maybe you were thinking of something else than a "plasmodial
organisation", but then I am in the dark and you will have to explain it
to me.
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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