[Subject line shortened by your host..]
At says:
>Before I make the jump from the material to the abstract world
I ask At and all here to consider that the profound "obfuscation" occurs
in this "jump," this leap from the material world to the world of thought.
That "jump" is in itself the source of errors.
That is: physical objects have "weight," but thoughts are not really
"weighty."
Thoughts, for example, are not really subject to the "laws" that help us
make sense of our material surround.
> In that contribution I have given a short history of the concept
>"temperature". I will use it once again, but now for the abstract world.
>O, what terrible obfusction might lie ahead?
One might predit at this point that the writer--in this case, At, is about
to suggest that thoughts, like physical objects, are "hot" and "cold," and
subject to the same characteristics of "temperature" as those objects. If
the writer does, this becomes unintentional obfuscation, since it begins
to cofuse and conflate two realms that ought not be confused.
>The temperature of thoughts rushing around in email communication is much
>higher. That is why we may become aware of the Digestor as model for
>self-organisation close to equilbrium.
There it is: the fundamental error. Thoughts do not really have
"temperature," except metaphorically. And there is no real evidence from
the history of discourse and debate that "thoughts" self-organize or reach
"equilibrium."
This is a confusion of realms.
What history does show us is that as humankind develps its technologies
the workings of that technology insinuate themselves into discourse as
metaphor. In biblical days the Lord was our Shepherd and King. Later,
mechanical metaphors moved into our thinking about how the world of
thought works, and now we want to believe that organizations conform to
system thinking, and "self organize," and reach "equilibrium," and the
rest.
This kind of thinking results in well meaning and unintentional
obfuscation.
Steve Eskow
--Steve Eskow <dreskow@durand.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>