George Bartow wrote:
> I get the idea that we really cannot speak about what is so and that we
> can only speak in metaphor - or, if you will, mental models. Maybe it
> doesn't make any difference.
A friend of mine has an expression: "we're all just making it up as we go
along, anyway." In our many conversations where this little saying comes
up, we invariably discover ourselves exploring the ways in which we
understand our experinece of the world and then communicate and share that
understanding with others. What he and I have settled on for our purposes
is (more or less) this: mental models are the internal constructions of
our mind that place our experience of the world within the context of our
own personal identity, and metaphors are the tools which we devise and use
to facilitate the outward expression of that experience in order to
communicate it to others. Which, of course becomes part of the 'others'
experience of the world and hence shapes their mental models. And so on,
and so on, infinitely and eternally.
> A description of a phenomenon does not reveal what is so. Merely being
> aware that descriptions of phenomena is not true or not real does little
> for us when we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory. Our dance is all
> important. Does any of this make sense . . . on any level?
It makes sense to me (if sense is the right word here). If indeed the
universe is nothing more than one continuously infinite and eternal
unfolding, then all that exists for us is our experience of that
unfolding--nothing can be truly absolute. All that exists are the
memories of our experiences (reflected as our mental models), enfolded
within our own experience of ourselves (our identity). Trapped in that
place between emergence and immergence where nothing that exists now can
be what it was before or what it will become, what else can we do but move
out onto the floor and dance the dance of life.
> Ok, then. Why don't we just use the term metaphor? Or is it that mental
> model means something more? For me, mental model conjures up a picture of
> an airplane, a model airplane. I don't know why. I have yet to get
> excited whe we talk about model airplanes. ;-/
Several weeks ago, a speaker (Cliff Hamilton) at a conference in which I
participated stated that he flew "remote control airplanes" as a hobby.
He specifically drew attention to the fact that, although these planes
were quite small (in relative terms), they were indeed not models--there
were the genuine article, constrained by the same laws of physics and
aerodynamics as a Boeing 747. His comment was very poignant, given that
many other speakers and participants were exploring new way of 'modeling'
organizational dynamics. Cliff's point (to me, anyway) seemed to be that
it makes little sense to spend so much of our time focusing on
models--rather, let them live in our heads while we focus our energies on
their tangible expression. It is here that I find metaphors useful.
metphors can be useed as a means of making a model sufficiently tangible
that it can be communicated, shared, even universally accessed.
--Arnold Wytenburg <arnold@originalthinking.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>