Dear Organlearners,
John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com> writes:
>When I'm trying to learn something, a very wise colleague and
>mentor of mine once taught me to "play dumb." He did it by
>example.
(snip)
>Yet he never let people know that he knew anything about the
>place! I was astonished by the "simple" questions he asked
>(knowing full well that he could answer them better than his
>"informants") -- and was even more astonished, after a short
>while, at the depth of information he was getting from people.
Greetings John,
I have to ask you to have patience once again. This will be a long
contribution because I will by way of question-answer explain how to get
answers to your questions. I myself get impatient when I have to do
anything which requires more time than the time available or guessed. It
is even the case with getting an answer which fits to a question.
I can usually do little about the time available. In such cases, to speed
up anything happening, I accelerate up the entropy production. It has it
benefits, but also its dangers. When I really get ragingly impatient, is
when not only the time is restricted, but also the entropic forces and
fluxes (which I need for enctropy production) are constrained. In such a
case it becomes impossible to do anything worthwhile.
But I can do much about the time guessed. The more ignorant I am, the less
the time I guessed. In a deeper sense it means that the more ignorant I
am, the less can I make a mental picture of the entropy (the arrow of
time) involved. However, by learning creatively (creativity being the
result of entropy production), I have to spend time to overcome my
ignorance. This learning time allows me to make a much better guess of the
time needed to do something. Consequently I get much less impatient.
One wisdom which I have learnt, is not to get impatient with authentic
learning. One cannot spend little time in learning self some procedure in
order to spend little time in applying that procedure. One cannot butter
the slice of bread on both sides without messing things up. So, if we want
to speed up the process of getting answers to our questions, then we
cannot spend little time in studying it.
Playing the dumb (game playing) is one of five ways to sustain the
creativity of other people. Another way is studying the exemplar such as I
will do in the rest of my contribution. Here in South Africa with its
incredibly rich diversity in peoples, cultures and nature, one has to use
as many ways as possible to get the answer to one's question. By not being
able to switch between the ways, it may take ages to get an answer which,
after all, does not fit to the question.
The part which I have quoted, begins with a phrase of paramount
importance, namely
"When I'm trying to LEARN something..."
In this phrase I have capitalised the fundamental reason why we ask
most, if not all, questions.
WE QUESTION BECAUSE WE WANT TO LEARN
The knowledge of people on this fundamental reason may range from the
primary level of experiential knowledge, the secondary level of tacit
knowledge, the tertiary level of formal knowledge or the quaternary level
of sapient knowledge. Each of us has to self-organise (develop) from the
one to the other level. We also react differently to questions and their
answers depending from what level we operate. As a rule of thumb, our
patience with the question-answer problem increases as we grow digestively
in a level and shift emergently from a lower to a higher level.
However, its but a rule of thumb. I often catch myself that I am very
impatient when I should have been and could have been much more patient.
It is as if a curtain moves in between me and my knowledge, making me
ignorant, asking dumb questions, reacting impatiently to ernest and honest
questioning, etc. My emotions, sensitised by all what has happened in a
day, play an important role in drawing this curtain closed. My desires for
what still has to happen that day also plays an important role in drawing
the curtain closed.
Thinking carefully about this "curtain drawing", I am pretty sure that
when I think only of my own self-organisation (activated by my emotions,
desires, health, etc.), then I am impatient. But as soon as I focus on the
self-organisation (learning) of others, then my impatience switch over to
patience. Working in an organisation which has not yet emerged into a LO
also makes me much easier impatient than in a LO. In other words, an
environment conducive to learning has a positive influence on my patience
with respect to the question-answer problem.
I have used the phrase "question-answer problem". What do I mean by
it? A question and the answer to it do not correspond (match, fit). To
get a satisfactory answer to a question is usually not a case of
"asking
the question, getting the answer", i.e a "complete
one-question-one-answer transaction". Even any "complete
one-question-one-answer transaction" has to be questioned. For
example, how sure (sureness) are we that the person understood the
question and thus gave the right answer?
To be able to proceed with the solution to the "question-answer problem",
we need the basis ("seed crystal") on which all our solution will grow.
What is this basis? There must be a correspondence (symbolised by ==)
between the question (symbolised by Q) and the answer (symbolised by A).
Hence we can fomulate the basis of the solution for the "question-answer
problem" symbolically as Q == A
Let us question this formula to learn form it.
(1) Why did we not use the sign "="?
The sign "=" is used for an equality. The question Q and the answer A
cannot be equal to each other, i.e a copy of each other, letter for letter
and word for word. An equality would mean that we answer the question Q
with the question Q. This is foolish. We rather need a "deep equality",
something which refer to an equality despite the obvious differences. We
will call this "deep equality" a "correspondence" and symbolise it by ==.
(2) Can the answer A be a rephrasing of the question Q?
Rephrasing means to use the same information, but arrange it differently.
The answer is NO to the "complete one-question-one-answer transaction".
But otherwise for partial question-answer transactions it is YES. For
example, the questioner can rephrase the question. But so can also the
answerer when that person wants to make sure what the questioner has
meant.
(3) Does the rephrasing as the answer to a question complete
question-answer transaction?
NO. It merely rearrange the question Q into two forms, the orginal
form Q(1) and the second form Q(2). Thus we complexify the original
formula into
Q(1) == A and Q(2) == A
In other words, what we do, is to create a little bit of diversity
into
Q == A
by bringing the essentiality otherness ("quality-variety") into play
on the question (left) side Q.
(4) Can the other six essentialities also be used to complexify the
question (left) side Q?
YES, certainly. The questioner or the answerer or both, depending on their
knowledge (experential, tacit, formal or sapient) can do it. Consider,
for example, sureness. What we have to do is to reformulate the question,
bringing an extra qualifier in to focus on a particular word. Consider
liveness as another example. We reformulate the question so as to make a
verb from a certain noun or vice versa. Whatever we do, it is important
to bear in mind that we first complexify the question Q before attending
to the answer A.
(5) Is there a limit to this complexification process on the question
(left) side Q?
YES. The question may become too complex to handle for the developmental
level of the essentialities of the questioner or the answerer. In such a
case we have to move from the question (left) side Q to the answer
(right) side A.
(6) Are we perhaps not comparing Quinces (the Q left side ) with Appels
(the A right side)?
YES. Questions and answers can never be the same thing. It is clear from
all natural languages that we can classify sentences into either questions
(interrogatives), statements (declaratives) or commands (imperatives).
Questions, statements and commands do not follow the same logic. For
questions we use interrogative logic, for statements we use declarative
logic and for commands we use imperative logic.
Logicians are now pretty sure that these three kinds of logic are not the
same, although 99% of their knowledge is concerned with declarative logic.
In other words, we have very little formal studies in interrogative logic
and imperative logic to make use of. Yet we all have experienced and know
intuitively when a question Q matches with an answer A. That is why we
were so bold to express this experential and tacit knowledge as the
correspondence Q == A
What we have done, is to let this tacit knowledge emerge into
formal knowledge. The symbolical formula
Q == A
is then the sign for this emergence. It is of paramount importance to
bear in mind that the formula, when encountered in the beginning,
has only meaning in terms of our experential and tacit knowledge
and not in terms of our formal knowledge. To give it further formal
meaning, we will have to create it in terms of our experential and
tacit knowledge. And to do that, we will have to QUESTION these
underlying levels of knowledge.
(7) What must we do when we ask the question Q but do not get any answer
A?
It means that on the left side of the correspondence == there is a
Q, namely
Q ==
but on the right side there is nothing! Well, we may think of
"nothing" in either a destructive (negative) or a constructive
(positive) sense. In a positive sense we will think scientifically
(and sometimes even artistically). Observation has been the first
step. Speculation is the second step. Why is there no answer?
The person may not hear so good. I may have spoken not so well. The
person may not realise that you expect an answer. I may have formulated
the question such that it appear as a statement or a command and not a
question. The person may be incapable of answering, being intixicated or
unconscious. I may have used a language not known to the person. The
person may not want to give an answer, protecting or fearing something. I
may have put too little emergency (urgency) in the question. The person
may feel too superior to answer the question. I may gave waited not long
enough for the answer.
The point is, we have to speculate wildly, thinking of hundreds of
possibilities if necessary. We should not act upon one speculation alone.
We must give sufficient richness to the speculation stage. All this
usually happen in our minds. The other person do not know what is
happening, but observe rather some absent mindedness in us. This internal
speculation may cause the person to end all contact if it takes too long.
Thus, as soon as possible after completing stage 2, we have to begin with
stage 3, namely falsification.
Additional questions play an important role in the falsification
stage. Let us denote the original question Q by Q(1) since it was the
first question asked. Begin with the most likeable speculation and try
to eliminate it by asking question Q(2). Depending on the answer to
Q(2), we will have to eliminate all the other speculations one for
one.
Once we come to a plausable speculation which seems impossible
to eliminate, we may have a try at the artistic method. We then
dream (stage 2) what such a possibility may amount to. Afterwards
we seek confirmations (stage 3) for our dreams.
This artistic followup have its merits. I have often observed how it opens
up a flood of answers from the person who originally gave no answer to
Q(1).
The final point here is that unless the answer A to Q has been given,
how minute and immature that A may be, we have to focus the
complexification on the Q and not the A. (By focussing on Q we
increase the entropic force leading to the answer as its corresponding
flux.) In other words, we must ramify Q into Q(1), Q(2), Q(3), ......
If we are impatient and move from Q to A prematurely, we may abort
the whole process (reaction). This immergence is caused by the
collective action of all the questions Q(1), Q(2), Q(3), ......
Together,
although forming the entropic force needed, they may function like an
interrogation or inquisition intended to justify a damnation.
(8) How will we know when the answer A corresponds with the question Q?
I wanted to write "trust your gut feeling (tacit knowledge)", but I have
to caution you not to trust your "inexperienced" tacit knowledge. What I
mean is that if there is little experential knowledge which underlies our
tacit knowledge, then we cannot expect our tacit knowledge to function as
it should.
For example, how will we know that quinces Q corresponds with appels A?
When we have eaten many different kinds of fruit, each prepared in many
ways. Pears, quinces and appels belong to the same plant family so that we
can expect them to have many things in common. But we must also be aware
that experiences may mislead us when they concern the essentialities
themselves. For example, a mulberry and a fig belong to the same family,
according to flowers, pollen, seed and fruit structure, leave patterns,
sap and many other things. A mulberry is just another fig with its inside
turned outside and vice versa, We require the essentiality openness to
undertsand it.
(9) How do we gain the experential knowledge needed to evaluate the
correspondence between the question Q and the answer A?
When we have to gain in experential knowledge, quantity will be of little
use. Some people have 50, 60 or 70 years of experience, yet their
experential knowledge is restricted. Others may have 20, 30 or 40 years of
experential knowledge in an advanced state. It is the quality and not the
quantity of such experential knowledge which is important. Our experiences
much be as rich as possible in form (patterns), using only so much content
as is needed to manifest (carry) this richness in forms.
An excellent way to form an idea of the richness and complexity of the
form (patterns), is to use the seven essentialities of creativity since
they concern the form of all (deep) creativity. Each essentiality
generates a new dimension in the form of the content. If you do not have
a good teacher to organise the richness of your experiences, then you will
have to do it yourself. Authentic (self) learners learn, among other
things, to become their own teachers. It is also known as double loop
learning.
By using any formalised procedure (the seven essentialities is but one of
many possible procedures) we may use the formal knowledge of somebody else
(rather than our own) to guide the development of our own experential
knowledge. Since we each may not have sufficient knowledge and even less
formal knowledge on any such a procedure, how will we know that the
procedure has been effective? Well, as we gain in the quaility of our
experential knowledge, our tacit knowledge (gut feeling, intuition) will
appear (emerge) and grow (digest) correspondingly. In other words, our
gut feeling will tell us that the formal procedure is effective.
How much effective? By following at least two procedures, first the one
and then the other. We cannot make an evaluation without a comparison. We
will have to use the better of the two as the standard. By using third,
fourth and other procedures, each time comparing the one present with all
others in the past, selecting the best among them, each of us will
gradually develop our own "bench mark". It is very important to develop
SELF your bench mark and not trust any "bench mark" sold as such. Why?
Because authentic (self) learners also learn how to develop their own
standards for whatever evaluation.
This is the reason why authentic (self) learners easily become annoyed
when somebody forces an inferior evaluation upon them. It suggest that
their own self-learning has little value. Yes, their own evaluation may be
immature, but that does not make it inferior. An immature internal
standard has much more self-organisation power than a superior, but
external standard. Even worse, whereas an immature internal standard is
used in future emergences, the superior external standard may easily cause
immergences. (See the Digestor).
(10) What must I do when my tacit knowledge tells me that Q and A do not
correspond or that I cannot trust the apparent correspondence between Q
and A?
This awareness signals the time when we have to change our focus in the
complexification of Q to the complexification of A. It means that we have
done enough in formulating the question so that we we now have to
concentrate on the answer. In other words, we have to focus our creativity
on A and not any more on Q. We will still be asking additional questions,
thereby ramify the Q(n) into even greater numbers n. However, it is all
now done to ramify the original answer A [now denoted as A(1)] into A(2),
A(3), ...... It means that that we will have to generate many pieces of
the answer by using many questions. All these parts of the answer should
serve one and only one purpose, namely to get the full answer A which will
correspond with the question Q.
Should we symbolise the whole process, it will look as follows:
Q(1) + Q(2) + Q(3) + Q(4) + ..... == A(1) + A(2) + A(3) + A(4) + .....
This is the FORM of the whole process of CREATING the correspondence
Q == A
It looks exactly like a chemical reaction. The various Q(..)'s are
the reactants and the various A(..)'s are the products.
Now, should there be no correspondence between the physical world (to
which the material brain belongs) and the spiritual world (to which the
abstract mind belongs), then it is insignificant that the process of
creating a correspondence between Q and A appears to be like a chemical
reaction. However, if there is a correspondence (adjunction) between the
physical and the material world, then we are ready to shift our paradigm
once we know the barest information of such a correspondence. This
paradigm shift will fire our creativty to levels which we have not even
dreamed of. We will experience flashes of creative emergences which will
take books to document. We will experience stretches of creative
digestions which will surprise us with the duration of the concentration
we are capable of.
I have given you all more than enough hints to such a correspondence with
the theory of "deep creativity". The rest is up to you as learning
individuals in learning organisations.
(10) Given that learning individuals have to create the correspondence Q
== A, does it mean that the learning organisation has no role to play?
NO. The questioner and the answerer must know what they know
about each other as well as what they do not and will never know
about each other. For example, the mind of each learner is unique.
Not even in identical twins is the mind of the one and exact copy
of the other. In other words, even twins have to work with the
correspondence
Q == A
rather than the equivalence
Q = A.
But it seems as if identical twins (clones) question and answer each other
with much harmony. Why? Because they succeed much better in setting up a
LO among themselves than between two siblings. Has it something to do with
genes? Yes, a little bit because the identical twins will respond
physically much the same to external influences, provided they have the
same environment. Thus their experential knowledge (and hence the higher
levels of knowledge) will correspond largely.
However, should they have been separated from birth into different
communities or treated by the same community in much different
ways for some reason (injury, disabledness), their respective
knowledges will diverge with the creative course of time. Eventually,
when they have to set up the correspondence
Q == A
their problem will be very much the same than ours, we who are
genetically not so closely related to each other.
(11) What role does the Learning Organisation play in the
correspondence Q == A?
Let us study the issue of genetical relationships further. Despite all the
differences (theological, political, economical, educational, cultural,
ethnical, national) between us, we differ genetically less than 0.01%.
(Even the great apes differ genetically less than 2% from us.) In other
words, relatively to all the kinds of living creatures (from mono cellular
organisms to complex plants and animals) on this planet, we are so much
the same that we are actually multiplets (the limit of duplets, triplets,
quatroplets, ...) of each other. Like twins (duplets) growing up in the
same community which treat them the same, we ought to behave in the same
manner, but we do not.
Is it not that we share the same earth and all on, above and underneath
it. Does this "deep community" (mother earth and all its creatures, i.e
self-organsing systems) not treat each of us the same? Should you and I
go to any place on earth where we will not be inluenced by many people
(like a rainforest such as the Amazon or a dessert like the Namib) we will
have to live with exactly the same complex environment, free of extra
complications caused by humans. Is it not there that we will discover
that we are actually twins? Yes, provided we do not complicate each others
lives in such desolated places.
One of the greatest, is not the greatest, complicating factors among
humans is that they do not know what the other know, but assume that they
know something. Let me state it emphatically, as LEARNING INDIVIDUALS no
one of us did ever know and will ever know anything of the other. For
example, as learning individuals none of you know anything about me. Even
if you were my shadow and observed me second for second all my life, you
will not know anything about me. All your sense organs, how amplified
they may function, will only inform you something about me physically.
They cannot tell you anything about me spiritually, my emotions, my pains,
my pleasures, my needs, my desires, my fears, my faith and thousands of
other things. Likewise, as am individual learner, I do not know anything
about you.
So how will learn anything of each other? Only by forming (emerging into)
learning organisations. As LEARNING ORGANISATIONS we are POTENTIALLY
capable of knowing something about each other. As learning individuals we
will never be able to know anything about each other. Perhaps we question
and answer each other because we have learnt by inner self-reflection the
way of questioning. But is it not the other way around, namely that we
learn through Learning Organisations the way of questioning and then apply
it to inner self-relection? If it is the case, and I steadily grow in
conviction that it is, then it means that the Learning Organisation is
essential to the Q ==A correspondence.
The word "potentially" has been emphasised above as some of
you may have observed. Now, whenever POTENTIAL comes into
the picture, we must be willing and be prepared to let FREE
ENERGY come into the picture. Why? Free energy is the
universal (general) way in which we think of any collection of
different forms of potential energies. Free energy is also the key
to combining the Law of Energy Conservation and the Law of
Entropy Production in one sweep with a very simple formulation
by Gibbs, namely
/_\F < W
It is this change /_\ in free energy F which we need to establish the Q ==
A correspondence because we will have to work for it. However, just like
in a chemical reaction, we have to overcome a wall of free energy between
the Q and the A. (Chemists call it the energy of activation.) This wall is
too high for individual learners to overcome. What we as individual
learners need, is a catalyst to lower the wall of free energy. This
catalyst is leadership as I have explained some time ago. Leadership
without an organisation in which to function is not actual, but virtual
leadership.
It is because of our PAST experiences participating in Learning
Organisations (LOs) that we now make two assumptions lethal
to setting the PRESENT LO needed to create the correspondence
Q == A at hand. These two assumptions are:
* the questioner knows something about the answer A which
the answerer will give.
* the answerer has to take the lead in creating the correspondence
The first assumption is wrong because as learning individuals we know
nothing about each other, not even what each other knows. Thus we know
nothing in advance about the answer to be given. The correct assumption
is that when the questioner and answerer forms a temporary LO, the
potential emerges by which an answer may be created. The correct
assumption is thus a kind of null hypothesis.
John, perhaps the above explains your important observation "Playing the
dumb ...".
The second assumption is also wrong. The questioner has to function as
leader in creating the correspondence Q == A. This leadership is signalled
in the first place by the questioner asking the question and not the
answerer. This leadership is maintained in the ramification of Q into Q(1)
+ Q(2) + Q(3) + .... This leadership has to be continued in the
ramification of the answer into A(1) + A(2) + A(3) + ... so that the whole
answer A can emerge.
John , perhaps the above explains your second important
observation:
".. (I) was even more astonished, after a short while, at the
depth of information he was getting from people."
Authoring (designing and programming) CAE (Computer Assisted Education)
lessons depends critically on these two assumptions. Should the two wrong
assumptions be made, the lesson cannot guide the learner in self-learning
("stand-alone" lessons in CAE jargon.) Even when the two correct
assumptions have been made many a "stand alone" lesson fails because the
lesson author had not been able to create a temporary LO between him and
the would be learner. This failure becomes a hurting embarresment exactly
when the lesson program asks questions which the learner then has to
create and submit for evaluation.
(12) Given that the question Q is well formed or its ramification has
progressed far enough, how do we create the answer A, usually in terms of
a ramification which has to emerge into the whole answer?
The answer in plain language is short and sweet:
As questioner you will have to lead in creating the answer by
all available means in a harmonious manner, focussing on
constructive creativity.
When you again have the opportunity, observe how young kids learn to do
it. Maybe you assumed they were only interested in getting an answer to
their question. I also thought like this, but not any more. They are
often more interested in learning tacitly how to create the correspondence
Q == A than in actually learning from the answers themselves. In other
words, they are often more interested in the FORM of the correspondence
than its CONTENT. Unfortunately, when they get to school, they are forced
to learn about the CONTENT of Q == A, forsaking further learning about its
FORM. By the time when some of them do manage to enter university, almost
all the creativity of most of them have been destroyed. All content, no
form -- all quantity, no quality.
Thus, creating the correspondence Q == A is major excercise in healing our
creativity which has been destroyed so much in schools trying to function
as factories producing robotic workers. One of the ailments which we have
to heal, is to cultivate a burning curiosity in the form of any content.
Let us use the short and sweet answer in plain language above as example.
What is the form of this sentence? Closely observe your reactions to it
when I express it as follows:
Given
Q <> A
create
Q == A
as the complex
Q(1) + Q(2) + Q(3) + Q(4) + ..... == A(1) + A(2) + A(3) + A(4) + .....
by using entropy production.
What was your reaction to it? Arrgh, another monstrous expression in some
kind of technical langauge? Hideous mathematics?
But should you carefully study this whole contribution up to this point,
you will find that it indeed has proceeded along this form almost to
completion. However, what was your reaction to the contribution itself?
Arrgh, another philosophical broth by which the sorcerer want to transform
us into monsters. Hideous complexity?
The point is, should we allow the form to intimidate us, it will much
stronger than the content intimidate us into such a low state of free
energy that we will never be able to create the whole answer. Our free
energy will have to increase during the creation of the answer. In other
words, we have lost our potential to create the answer. We then cannot
ever self create the answer, except when we are forced by some external
agency working on us. But this is what the formal schooling system has
been doing by acting as a factory, forcing us to create answers which we
could not do self.
Entropy production? Yes, we have to open ourselves and observe what the
present system of formal education is doing to a large extent. It destroys
much of the creativity of learners. To rectify its failures, it forces
learners by external work to behave what learners cannot do themselves
because of the damage to their potential. This work costs the tax payer a
fortune. The creatively disabled worker costs the business a fortune. We
are all paying through our neck because we do not wisen up. When are we
going to challenge the system?
(13) Since the description of the answer to question (12) was too general,
how do we specifically ramify the initial answer A to the whole answer
A(1) + A(2) + A(3) + ...?
Although I have stressed that the questioner and not the answerer has to
take the lead, I now have to stress that creativity is even more important
than leadership. Leaders (even the questioner) without creativity and
followers (even the answerer) without creativity are but hollow vessels.
To use a metaphor of Tom, they are like organisms (insects, crabs, etc)
with an exoscelet. They are low down on the ladder of evolution, although
they might occupy important positions in multinational corporations.
Leaders and followers high in the ladder of evolution needs and
endoskelet. That endoskelet is creativity.
The easy way out, and to end a long contribution timely, is to say that
you should study a number of books on how to improve your creativity.
There are now many such books available, but fifty years ago there were
none. You will definitely benefit much from such books. Unfortunately, I
do not know of any book which gives an account of creativity from the
viewpoint of a Learning Organisation. Yet both "creativity" and "learning
organisation" are essential to create the correspondence Q == A. Since
such a book is not available, you will have to do your own questioning,
trying to get answers from a body of literature (the answerer) which is
not creative. Yes, a book or a paper in a journal cannot ever be creative.
What a task, getting an answer from literature which cannot even hear you,
see you, feel you, ....!
Since having stressed creativity, I can now claim that there is
nothing wrong with repeating the same question Q (n) again as
Q(n+1). Here the n refers to the n-th question. But what is wrong
is to repeat the question without setting it up in a feedback loop!
In other words,
Q(n) = Q(n+1)
is wrong. In other words, symbolically, the correct expression is
Q(n) <> Q(n+1)
Here the sign <> means "not equal to". The <> can be rectified
into a = by making a comment C(n) on the nature of the answer
A(n) to Q(n) when asking Q(n) again as Q(n+1). It is nothing else
than
Q(n) + C(n) = Q(n+1)
In other words, we use Q(n)+C(n) to try and create the
correspondence Q(n+1) == A.
Should the answer A(n+1) be the same as A(n), despite the
comment C(n) given on A(n), it means that the answerer went
into an infinite loop because of a lack of creativity. It does
have merit (scientific method) to give on A(n+1) the comment
C(n+1) the same as C(n) on A(n) to form Q(m+2), namely
Q(n+2) = Q(n) + C(n+1). It is known as double falsification.
However, to let it happen a third time is foolish so that the
answerer may easily be annoyed.
To break out of the infinite loop, a new comment has to be introduced. If
this also fails, producing an infinite loop, then there is something
seriously deficient in the answerer's creativity as with regard to the
answer corresponding to question Q(n). In my own experience, most of these
deficiencies are directly in the mechanics (seven essentialities) and
dynamics (entropy production) of creativity.
To break out of such an infinite loop which occurs for the
second time on a question Q(n), a different question has to be
asked. Say we have to break at question Q(n+m). Then
Q(n) <> Q(n+m)
To formulate Q(n+m), we have to go back to one of the answers
earlier than A(n). Design the question Q(m+n) by scrutinising
a facet different to the one scrutinised by Q(n).
How will we know which new facet to follow? It is here where the seven
essentialities of creativity become immensely valuable. Question Q(n)
focused on one of the seven essentialities, even though it may concern
more than one of them. What we now do, is to formulate a question, using
one of the earlier answers, which focus on a different essentiality. This
question may then be repeated with the necessary different comments until
it gets depleted, i.e. gets into an infinite loop.
There are two very lethal assumptions we can make.
The first assumption is:
* The answerer seems to have given the whole answer A in terms
of A(1) + A(2) + A(3) + ..., although we have not yet employed
all seven essentialities in generating Q(n).
This assumption is wrong since we do not really know all what the answerer
knows. This has been discussed earlier. But it has even a worse
implication -- we do not even know ourselves and whether the model which
we have created of the answer A in terms of A(1) + A(2) + A(3) + ... is
complete. Since we do not know the whole answer, we will not have gained
the adjoints (satisfaction, curiosity, hope, ..) of emergent learning.
Less than all the pieces of answer cannot emerge into the whole answer. A
jig-saw puzzle is not completed until the last piece has been fitted.
The second assumption is:
* To find a new piece A(n) of the whole answer, we have to
focus our analysis of A(n) itself on its simplest parts.
I know how much people stress on simplicity, employing expressions such as
"use Occam's razor". I know that when learning, we have to move from less
detail to more detail. That is why we create the whole answer A in terms
of the PRIMARY ANALYSIS (ramification) A(1) + A(2) + A(3) + ... itself.
Note that these parts are already LESS COMPLEX than A itself. There is
nothing wrong to analyse A(n) into A(n,1) + A(n,2) + A(n,3) + ... where
each of these are minor parts of A(n). But what is definitely wrong, is to
search in this SECONDARY ANALYSIS for the simplest parts rather than the
MOST COMPLEX parts.
I cannot stress the lethalness of this assumption to our creativity
enough. To try and harmonise simplicity with simplicity is a
deadly cacaphony. To get a hamonious symphony, we have to
complement simplicity with complexity and vice versa. In other
words, the secon assumption should be
* To find a new piece A(n) of the whole answer, we have to
focus our analysis of A(n) itself on its complexest parts.
I have discovered this fundamental truth empirically in CAE (Computer
Assisted Education) lessons. The lesson author can make use of two kinds
of questions, namely questions with formatted answers (such as yes/no,
fill in, multiple choice, pairing lists) and questions with free answers.
In a formatted answer the lesson author claims the sole right to
creativity. But in a free answer, the lesson author acknowledges the
potential creativity of the learner. To be able to guide the creative
learner, the lesson author self must have a superior creativity. This
where "deep creativity" comes into the picture.
Many authoring systems can now be bought to create lessons with questions
using formatted answers. However, only a few Rolls Royces are available
which can also offer questions with free answers. But whenever a lesson
author uses such free answer capabilities of a Rolls Royce authoring
system, the result becomes a nightmare. Thus the authors fall back in
using these expensive Rolls Royces to generate cheap questions with
formatted answers.
Why do they not put these Rolls Royces to effective use? Because none of
them realised that they make lethal assumption number 2! And none of the
manuals of these Rolls Royes warns them not to make this lethal
assumption. And should the manufacturers of these Rolls Royces knew about
this assumption, they would have put a much better product on the market.
After having discovered this truth, namely to complement simple parts of
an answer with complex parts of the parts, in CAE lessons and having
created an authoring system myself which operates in terms of this truth,
I began to test it outside the world of computer programming. Up to now it
has worked without exception. Furthermore, I have even tested on many
occasions the converse by swithing from the correct form of the assumption
to its lethal form. The result -- without exception a decrease in the
creativity of the answerer.
SOME AFTER THOUGHTS.
OK, the contribution was again very long, using much technical language.
So what about saying it in ordinary language?
You (all fellow learners) want to know (learn) how to get an answer to a
question. My answer is that you will have to create the answer to your
question by all means in a harmonious manner, focussing on constructive
creativity.
So let me question you. What is creativity to you? How do you distinguish
between constructive and destructive creativity? Can anybody create
constructively all the way as an individual, but not as a member of an
organisation? What has creativity to do with organisations? Is a Creating
Individual a prerequisite (discipline) for a Creating Organisation, or is
it not perhaps the other way around? How will you measure the potential of
any Creating Organisation, what to speak of any Learning Organisation?
What will be your behaviour when you discover that your Creating
Organisation has not only emerged into a Learning Organisation, but that
the Learning Organisation has itself emerged into a Believing
Organisation? Will you submerge your mind in sand like an ostrich because
you do not want to recognise what you are observing?
John, you wrote:
>This is a kind of patience that is very difficult to cultivate -- but
>very worthwhile. If people believe you "know everything" then
>they don't tell you the important things that you don't know.
As I have wrote about myself, patience comes with authetic learning.
Authentic learning is extremely difficult should we make the wrong
assumptions. However, authentic learning becomes much easier if we follow
the truths concerning entropy production and creativity. Furthermore, this
authentic learning takes time because of the entropy production involved.
It is most important that we should have patience with the time involved
in authentic learning. Unless we have the knowledge why authetic learning
is so time consuming, we will keep on destroying authentic learning
(irreversible self-organisation) with our impatience. The choice is ours:
life or death.
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
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>