Not replying, but my thesis on this issue:
Belief is prior to any thinking. But thinking challenges belief in order
to find foundation on more fundamental belief if necessary.
Proof by example (find one example of a belief, that is prior to
thinking): The foundation of logic (law of identity, law of
contradiction, law of excluded third for example) are beliefs, on which a
special type of thinking - called logical thinking - is based.
Usually such beliefs are called "evidence". But one should be cautious.
There may be situations where "evidence" is challenged, for example in
physics beginning this century. One might say, that classical physics has
been challenged by refined measurement possiblities, checking predictions
based on classical physics, that turned out to be unholdable. But also in
such progress, there are beliefs working. In case of physics, such a
belief may be formulated as
" Conflicts (contradiction between two necessary conditions for observed
effects) do not exist in nature."
Obvious? Trivial? Just evident? Note that in the sense of my thesis, a
belief is always reasonable. An unreasonable belief, or a belief that has
not yet been tested for reasonability is a mere guess.
I think that belief is the better word than evidence, and I prefer not to
distinguish between evidence and belief. Only in communication, I should
remember that what appears to me as a false belief of my counterpart, may
have status of evidence for him and that my conclusion "false" is also
based on beliefs of mine with status evidence.
So you need to agree on the more fundamental belief, that "conflict do not
exist" in order to question the underlying assumptions of the two
contradictory beliefs in order to solve the conflict, which stops to exist
as soon as you found the non-valid assumption. This is the way of
dialogue.
Such a dialogue on underlying assumptions may look like a debate or
discussion and can be very emotional. But as long as both parties agree on
"Conflict do not exist, so lets resolve it", they are engaged in a
dialogue. It becomes a judging, hurting... debate only when either party
accepts the conflict as real. Which is also just a belief. But isn't it
more challenging to test the belief "Conflict do not exist" than not to
test it?
By the way, physics has made tremendous improvements, which cannot be
stated for the humane sciences. May be, the difference, that makes the
difference is whether conflicts are accepted as real or not.
In this sense I wish to pose two questions:
1.) What are the fundamental beliefs to Systems Thinking?
2.) What kind of challenging older beliefs (wich ones?) led to those
fundamental beliefs of question 1.)?
Liebe Gruesse
Winfried Dressler
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>