Dear Gray: I have 3 degrees, BS. Chemical Engineering, MA. Physics, MA
human resource management.
I have read some re chaos theory, entropy etc. and I was delighted about
your comment, since for many years as a Science of Mind church belonger, I
would at periodic times hear the minister quote some principle of entropy,
or chaos and truly wonder at my own ignorance, "i did not seem to
understand.' I then realized I did not and still do not understand entropy
even after lo many courses and AM Lange's fine explanations, which I have
read, though not studied.
I would like to answer my own dilemma and pehaps offer this comment to you
by way of learning something myself. I appear to be an experiential
learner, things make sense to me after I have experienced them, and had a
chance to digest.
Now to chaos and a sidebar on entropy: Perhaps re chaos, it is enough to
know that a theory exists which predicts unrestrained response from a
minor unrelated input, a non-linear, apparently out of control, response.
Maybe what chaos theory says is, that it really isn't chaos at all, but a
(somewhat) predictable non-linearity.
Might we not analogize this to rumors in a company, or to some discovery
of a new product(like teflon), or even TQM, which appears to go against
entropy by producing order(higher entropy) out of nature's natural desire
to create homo-geneity(lower order entropy) (do I have this correct?) New
product development could fit into this entropy analogy, if I have this
correctly.
With a good explanation, there is a tie to enthics, which is the context
in which a company is viewed by its constituents. An out of control event,
which does happen(chaos) could cause disaster in a company if the proper
ethical context is not in place, or something like that theme.
Back to Chaos: remembering my first reading of the Chaos book, and the
dicovery of the constant 4.82 or something like that, was a marvelous
insight, and I felt the same way when I first saw how Schroedinger's
equations predicted quantum levels, which is way different than continuous
energy levels predicted by then classical theory.
Whether exactly analogous or not, I feel (think, sense), that individuals
in an organization do feel a sense of chaos at times, and to give credence
to that feeling could be a valuable intervention and insight for them: but
this delves directly into what many have alluded in these messages: once
you've done everything you know how to do, orchestrated, organized,
taught, presented, etc, there is still that unnkown part of what people
will do with it all.
The creatives, I think, love the concept of chaos, why I don't know, but
there is a certain freedom in the concept of chaos, and should you/I be
able to tap into this at the right moment, and in the right organizational
setting, perhaps this is where TQM, new product development and process
improvement, (good things in a social and technical sense) can happen.
How to make this into an experiential thing, other than the processes I
mentioned above, I don't know at this time. It might be worth thinking
about.
rex paris
mpicg@inetworld.net
At 05:32 AM 12/28/98 +1100, you wrote:
>Replying to LO20275 --
>
>I must respond to At Lange's reponse to John Gungler.
>
>I feel that I have some competence as a person who has studied physics
>(with a PhD), have studied the emergence of NMR in medical applications
>over the time that it emerged, and am now a student of organisations, the
>way people understand and the emerging field of knowledge management.
>
>In brief, my comment is that I find that At's explanation is obscure, and
>extremely difficult to gain any meaning from.
...big snip by your host...
--rpbrb <mpicg@inetworld.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>