What makes an excellent University department? LO23051

AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Thu, 28 Oct 1999 12:24:05 +0200

Replying to LO22997 --

Dear Organlearners.

Steve Eskow <dreskow@corp.webb.net> writes:

>It occurs to me that in order to diagnose and fix a troubled
>automobile or a troubled university department one needs to
>know in general how automobiles and universities operate,
>but understanding a particular auto .or department can't be
>managed in advance, can't be accomplished without an
>encounter with a particular car or a particular department.

Greetings Steve,

It occurs to me that what you are saying here, is in form exactly how all
those laws of phsyics work which can be represented by "differential
equations".

Solving a "differential equation" leads to a "family of possible
solutions". In other words, every member of the family satisfy the
"differential equation". To pick out the appropiate member from this
family, one needs the so-called "boundary values".

It occurs to me that what you are saying here, is in form exactly how
"logical argumentation" works. Logical argumentation is the extention of
logical deduction. In logical deduction the deductive system produces self
all its assumptions needed for true deductions. In logical argumentation
the system takes assumptions form the surroundings and work with them as
if they were self-produced.

>What the troubleshooter needs in both cases is a willingness
>to get into the innards of the apparatus and keep checking on
>possibilities until one is reasonably certain that the source(s)
>of the difficulties have been found.

Yes.

I will reformulate it -- it is CONTENT which makes FORM actual.

Now think of humankind. From its dawn up to the end of this millenium it
based its form on the internal content. I claim that humankind is in the
midst of a pradigm shift so deep and wide that few humans today are aware
of its very nature, even though many humans are tacitly aware of this
shift. Here is its very nature in terms of the "form-content" and
"inside-outside" categorisations. In the new paradigm humankind will base
its form on internal and external contents. In other words, humans will
now begin to seek form among all content.

Universities which fail to become objectively aware of this paradigm shift
will become history.

Many a student working on his/her PhD is caught up in this very paradigm
shift. The fact that the university department and especially his/her
promoter are ignorant of this shift causes immense conflicts in the
student. But here and there a PhD student is beginning to catch up and
understand what is going on.

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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