Dear Organlearners,
Gavin Ritz <garritz@xtra.co.nz> writes:
>Language itself is an obfuscation because it belongs to the
>auditory Representational system of the mind. It has upper
>limits due to the language itself plus the syntax of language
>is so structured that it limits our ability to see complex things.
Greetings Gavin,
Thank you for your delightful "logue" to the dialogue.
One of the most powerful thinkers I have met through my browsings in the
books, is Roger Bacon. He was an English scientist who lived in the
THIRTEENTH century. This makes him a contemporary of the English
philosopher William of Ockham (Occam). Bacon worked at the newly found
Oxford university -- when he was not in jail for his strong viewpoints on
science. (Read Bacon also on leadership between the lines -- his insights
bridge seven centuries up to today.)
One of Bacon's most remarkable insights was that physics (of those times
-- today it would be all the natural sciences) will not advance until it
has made sufficiently use of mathematics as a descriptive tool to break
through the boundaries of languages. FOUR centuries later the great Isaac
Newton actualised this very insight as the first human to formulate any
law of the material world. It was the law of gravitation and he used
mathematics to formulate it. To understand exacly how remarkable Bacon's
insight was, we should study the history of mathemtics also. Simple things
like even fractions (2/3; 7/8; ...) did not exist.
Some say that Newton even had to invent his own mathematics (fluxion
calculus) to formulate his second law of mechanics. Others say that this
honour goes to Gottfried Leibniz (infinitesimal calculus). (The "English
versus the German" people ;-) Great was my surpise a few months ago when I
stumbled on some information in an old book that the French mathematician
Fermat did most of the ground work roughly a century earlier, except for
giving it a name (fluxion or infinitesimal calculus).
I do believe that languages play a great role in obfuscation, so much so
that we can say like "language is AN obfuscation". But I do not believe
the converse, in other words, that "obfuscation is A language". The key
here to understand what I mean is the indefinite preposition "a, an". In
logics it is called a "class qualifier", in mathematical category theory
we may call it the "inclusion arrow" and in set theory we may call it the
membership relation. In ordinary words it means that obfuscation involves
much more than merely languages. How?
One of my dictionaries says that obfuscation is an obscuring, perplexing
or confusing of the mind. (I think that by now some of you know me well
enough to see in what direction I am heading.) In other words, obfuscation
is the "chaosing" of the mind. (English has only the noun "chaos" and not
yet a verb for it.) Let us assume for a while that obfuscation is involved
with only the mind. Afterwards we may think of "deep obfuscation" which
involves chaos in all systems (material and abstract) and not merely
minds.
How much has obfuscation has to do with hearing? Let us ask the deaf
people. I have had several discussions with deaf people in and around
Pretoria with the help of an able hand-sign interpreter on the topic
"entropy production in the mind". The frustrating thing was that as soon
as I went beyond commonly used words and especially into technical
terminology, the interpreter had to spell out these words letter by
letter, even a word like "energy". Any way, deaf people experience even
worse obfuscation than hearning people. Thus obfuscation seems to happen
when two of the five sense are used, hearing and seeing. Since hearing and
seeing are involved, we may easily be misled to think that only languages
(speaking/hearing and seeing/writing) are involved.
So, let us ask the blind people. Even though they can hear what other
people speak, they have to rely more on touch than other people. When they
want to follow a language other than hearing it, they have to feel it
through braille printing. Like the deaf people, they also experience
intense obfusction, having one sense organ less (the eyes) to feed them
with information. But from them I have learned something much more
important. Their obfuscation goes beyond languages. For example, they have
extreme difficulties in identifying any object which do not supply
SUFFICIENT information to the other three senses -- smelling, tasting and
hearing. Typical examples are powdered substances or objects with perfect
symmetrical forms.
To prevent this contribution from becoming too long, we may conclude that
obfuscation involves information received by all five sense. Thus we may
delete the "auditory" in the phrase "auditory Representational system of
the mind" so that only the "representational system of the mind" remains.
Hence we have to investigate how the remaining two things contribute to
obfuscation. They are "representational system" and "mind". This
contribution will become very long should we first explore how the "mind"
contributes to obfuscation . Before the end almost everybody would have
jumped off the bus. So let us explore the "representational system". Later
on we can explore "mind", thinking about "mind" and "brain"among other
things.
I think the problem of obfuscation in the "representational system"
goes much deeper than we care to think. The way in which I see it, it
has to do with the following pattern of relationship:
[being] --(becoming)--> [being]
To be more specific, I will write it as:
[word] --(semiologor)--> [meaning]
In other words, the pattern is the "semiological relationship". The
"word" in [word] is any word from a language. The "meaning" in
[meaning] is the meaning of that word. The "semiologor" is a word
which I have just created. It is that becoming which gives meaning to
a word. I derive it from "semiology" by changing the "gy" of "-logy"
to "or" of "-logor" to indicate the "actor of an action".
Now what is the problem of obfuscation, using the pattern
[word] --(semiologor)--> [meaning]
as our model?
>From a mathematical viewpoint, we have two possibilities
or --(semiologor)--> . It can be a "function" or a "relation". When
it is a function, it means the following. We take any "particular"
word, say "digestion", as the input [word] of the pattern above. Its
output (image) is then a "unique" meaning. In other words, that
"particular" word cannot have two different meanings
hen --(semiologor)--> is a function. But when the --(semiologor)-->
is a relation, any "particular" word can have one, two or even many
different meanings. The problem with obfuscation is that some people
want the --(semiologor)--> to be a "function" while other people
think that it can also be a "relation".
>From a physical viewpoint, we also have two possibilities
or --(semiologor)--> . Let us think in terms of optics. The one
possibility is the converging of light rays through a convex (bulging)
lens to focus on a "real" image. This optical case "convergence"
corresponds to the mathematical case "function" where the "real" of
the optical image corresponds to the "unique" of the mathematical
image. The other possibility is the diverging of light rays through a
concave (hollow) lens to produce an "virtual" image. The problem of
obfuscation is that some people want the --(semiologor)--> to
produce a "real" image while other people think that it can also
produce a "virtual" image.
The physical viewpoint gives an interesting insight to the problem.
Concave (hollow) mirrors produce "real" images like convex (bulging)
lenses while convex mirrors produce "virtual" images like concave lenses.
In other words, it is not the kind of optical object which plays the role,
but the action of the light rays themselves. In the case of convergence
the image is always real and in divergence the image is always virtual.
Another viewpoint can be from logic. To insist on "real function"
semiology is to employ exclusive thinking. To allow also "virtual
realtion" semiology is to is to employ inclusive thinking.
In creativity studies people also speak of converging or diverging
thoughts as their metaphor. They say that a creative (innovative) thinker
has divergent thoughts.
I have often stressed in my theory of "deep creativity" that innovation is
but one of the two asymptotes of creative thinking, namely revolutionary
self-organisation at the edge of chaos. The other asymptote is
evolutionary thinking close to equilibrium -- the digestion of thoughts.
In other words, when some people want the --(semiologor)--> to perform as
a "virtual relation" (many meanings of which some have not yet
actualised), it has to perform at the edge of chaos where ordinate
bifurcations happen. But when other people want the the --(semiologor)-->
to perform as a "real function" (one actual meaning), it has to perform
close to equilbrium where digestions happen.
The previous paragraph shows that the problem of obfuscation is one of the
many offspring of the problem of chaos-order. Some people think
exclusively that chaos and order have to be kept as far from each other as
the east of the west. Other people think inclusively that chaos and order
work as a push-pull pair -- the sun which goes down in the west later on
rises in the east.
Which case should we choose, a word with "one real unique" meaning or a
word with "many virtual meanings"? I do not want to make a choice for any
of you fellow learners. As for myself, I choose BOTH TO BE USED IN
HARMONY. This is the kind of harmony which I find in natural languages.
Some words have only one meaning while others have many meanings. Those
with only one meaning often had many meanings in the past while those with
many meanings often had only one meaning in the past.
>It has upper limits due to the language itself plus the syntax
>of language is so structured that it limits our ability to see
>complex things. Because English has the subject verb object
>structure which is in itself a cause effect type relationship.
>We all live in what professor Wendall Johnson calls
>"verbal cocoons".
Gavin, I wish I knew more about all natural languages. In English we have
the "subject verb object" structure by using SEPARATE words for each of
the "subject", "verb" and "object". In many languages of Africa and the
East two or even all three of them are constructed into one COMPOUND word.
But even for that compound word, they can still be identified. Do the
separation of the three induce a hyper sensitivity to the "cause effect
type relationship" (principle of causality)?
>Further the comment we can only create with the present is a
>very interesting one. Is not entirely correct although there could
>be many heated discussions around this.
I think your are correct with the "heated discussions".
>Time plays an incredibly important role here. As we are stuck
>in some of our fears from the past. each person suck at
>different mental times. So actually when we communicate we
>all are at different mental times making communication very
>difficult. Called Kairos from the Greek intention Time or
>goals-coined from Professor Kermode. Hence defensive or
>aggressive behaviour. Too much to discuss here. So it could
>mean that the fear of our past dictates our future-you might
>remember from South African history "Die Swart gevaar".
Yes, I agree. People who did not live in South Africa, often wonder why it
was possible for the majority of the white people (electorate) to vote
for a policy based on the ideology of apartheid.
The first thing which people abroad -- and even most brown and black
people today on South Africa -- do not realise, is that the "race of the
electorate" were pricipally imposed by the colonial rulers abroad, first
the Dutch and then the English. Obviously, this suited the white colonists
even with the LITTLE electoral rights they had. One of the main reasons
why they (white clolonists) moved further north into Southern Africa from
the Cape Colony, was to gain more electoral rights for themselves.
Unfortunately, they took along with them the seed of apartheid which they
got from their colonial masters. To do so gave them, as I now see it, a
"temporary digestive advantage". (An increment in the Msy of the Digestor
which they thought would be very big, but which is actually
insignificantly small.)
The second thing which they have to understand, is the element of fear as
you have rightfully pointed out. I wish you and other South Africans on
this list would sit down one day and draw up a description for the benefit
of fellow learners exactly how wide and deep this fear went. Learning
Organisations have to learn how to deal with fear. To put it in a
nutshell, using Digestor terminology, the Msy of the white people (SY)
were placed into competition with the mSU of the non-white people (SU).
As you have written:
>This is a classical fear that is is mentally imprinted and on the
>other hand a utopian Future is offered. The Apartheid State. You
>might relate to this as you and I were there.
I relate fully to it.
The third thing which they have to understand, is the role of "backroom
operations" conducted by secret organisations. Secret organisations
flourished probably more in South Africa than any where else in the world
during the apartheid era. A most interesting topic which we can have a
dialoque on somewhere in future, is "Secrecy and LOs".
>I am aware that this might be a little off track but actually we
>are all saying similar things in slightly different contexts.
No, you are not off track. You are meandering in the context of reality. I
love it. Thank you very much. Please meander again.
--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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