Dear Organlearners,
Steve Eskow <dreskow@durand.com> writes:
>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."
Greetings Steve,
Weight is a special case of the gravitational force between two
material bodies when the one body is the earth. The gravitational
force is proportional to the product of the masses of the two bodies.
All matter has the property of mass.
But the material world consists not only of material bodies. Think of
electromagnetic waves of which vissible light is but a tiny section.
Light has no "rest" mass -- it is pure energy. Yet it has "becoming"
mass by virtue of Einstein's famous equation
E = mc^2.
Thus it is attracted by material bodies. If a body has sufficient mass
like a star so that the force between it and light is strong enough,
the bent path of light can even observed. In other words, massive
stars acts as cosmic lenses.
All wave phenomena are characterised by the propagation of energy
through space and time by means of a temporary disturbance. Thus all
wave phenomena , although they do not have "rest" mass, do have
"becoming" mass. All such wave phenomena on earth have weight (are
gravitationally attracted), even though we may not be able to measure
this tiny attraction. It even includes the waves made by any living
brain.
But what about the thoughts in the mind sustained by these wave
activities in the brain? Do they have "weight"?
(1) In the sense of these ABSTRACT thoughts being attracted by the
MATERIAL earth, I do not think so. We have no experience or empirical
evidence pointing to it.
(2) In the sense of ABSTRACT thoughts in one mind being "attracted" by
the ABSTRACT thoughts in another mind and vice versa, we have indeed
something to think about. Exactly how it works, we do not know.
Probably it does not follow the same pattern as the "product of
properties divided by square of distance" laws so prevalent in
physics.
We can even extend this "attraction" to define a special case like for
weight. An example is the attraction between the thoughts of a true
leader and the thoughts of each of all his/her followers. If the same
kind of "attraction" now also exists between each of the followers,
the attraction between each of them and the leader can metaphorically
be thought of as "weight". This condition, namely "the same kind of
attraction between the leader and the followers also exist between
each of the followers", gives us an interesting viewpoint on the
concept of a Learning Organisation.
The defining task of a Learning Organisation is to develop at least
one thinking pattern among all its members such that this thinking
pattern through its attraction keeps the members together.
One example is the thinking in terms of systems, i.e systems thinking.
A very important question is the following: Is the attraction of
systems thinking strong enough to keep the learning organisation
intact in future times? Another question: What kind of system thinking
will you propose to transform your organisation into a LO?
>Thoughts, for example, are not really subject to the "laws" that
>help us make sense of our material surround.
Agreed. It is important not to extend the laws of the material world
to the abstract world unless we have clear empirical evidence to do
so. Furthermore, the days when that may happen, will be far more like
"the cat in the chicken pen" than even in the days of Newton and his
law of gravitation.
But what about the the "laws" of the abstract world?
Do we have such "laws" which apply as consistently and coherently as
their material counterparts? No, not even a single one. Does it mean
that we will never uncover such laws? No. Four hundreds years ago not
even one law for material world was known -- to day we know hundreds
of them.
Do we already have "laws" in the abstract world of mind which are
valid to some extend? Yes. One definition of logic is nothing else
than "the study of the laws of mind with respect to truth". Many
logical "laws" have been uncovered. But not one of them acts in a
universal sense as for example the fundamental laws of physics do.
Some people honour these laws of logic while others care nothing for
them.
Why have universal laws in the abstract not been discovered? I
personally believe that human thinking has not yet developed to the
required level of complexity. Furthermore, there may be people who
have already discovered such laws. In this case, like it was for
Copernicus, it would be difficult to convince other people of it. The
complexer such a law, the more difficult the convincing becomes.
>>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.
I agree.
But to create an abyss between these two worlds in order to prevent
confusion, is much worse.
Intrepid adventures are much more valuable than doing nothing because
of taking a risk.
>>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.
What is physical temperature? The simplest answer is to say that it is
a quantity measured by a thermometer like Robert Boyle did almost 400
years ago. Should we stick to that answer? No, not even Boyle did it.
He wanted to know more about temperature. In post modern words, he
wanted to complexify his thoughts on temperature. So he set up an
activity which was only completed by Maxwell almost three hundred
years later. Maxwell showed convincingly that temperature measures the
average of the diversity (variation) of molecular motion (speed,
vibration). This average is intensive. In other words, he showed that
temperature measures the intensity of chaos among molecular species
Is it really impossible for anyone of us to become aware of the
intensity of chaos among thoughts?
>And there is no real evidence from the history of discourse
>and debate that "thoughts" self-organize or reach "equilibrium."
I described an example to consider, namely the concept of temperature.
I am sure that many people can think of many other examples in the
thousands of concepts which we all work with.
>This is a confusion of realms.
What makes you so sure that self-organisation is not the bridge to
cross the abyss between the material and the abstract worlds?
Is the innovative creativity of humans not a kind of self-organisation
which builds bridges where other less creative people were not able to
build them?
>What history does show us is that as humankind develps
>its technologies the workings of that technology insinuate
>themselves into discourse as metaphor.
(snip)
>This kind of thinking results in well meaning and unintentional
>obfuscation.
Yes. Technology is but one facet of human culture. Humans use of
anything from culture and nature to serve as metaphor for talking
about something in the material or abstract worlds. I cannot see any
reason, other than obfuscation, why material metaphors should be used
only for material objects and abstract metaphors for only abstract
objects.
This crossing of the borders between nature and culture or material
and abstract is nicely illustrated by the word obfuscation itself. The
word now means "making confusion". It is used to refer to mind and
thoughts, i,e chaos in the abstract world. But it is derived from the
Latin word "fuscus" which was used to qualify any DARK colour. Of
course, colour concerns light which is a physical phenomenon. But do
thoughts themselves have any "colour"? I would not be surprised is the
first usage of obfuscation was in the sense of somebody having dark
thoughts.
De Bono made effectively use of various colours in his Six Thinking
Hats to help people distinguish between six main thinking modes. Is
this also a case of obfuscation?
The etymology of obfuscation always remind me of the following. In
South Africa, close to a place called Upington on the border of the
Bushmanland and Kalahari desserts a very interesting succulent plant
can be found. It is round like a basket ball with more than a hundred
"vingers" coming out all over the body in an attractive pattern. It
has a very DARK green-purple colour. Therefor its name "Euphorbia
fusca" (the dark euphorbia) is most descriptive.
All species of the genus Euphorbia contains a milky sap. In some
species this sap can be poisonous and extremely irritating like in
"Euphorbia virosa". The latter species (with the form of organpipes)
grow in the Namib dessert, some in the vincinity of the Burnt
Mountain. The sap of Euphorbia virosa (the name refers to the virulent
character of the sap) protects it from being eaten by animals.
Thank goodness, not all thoughts are like the milky sap of Euphorbia
virosa.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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