Dear Organlearners,
Chuck Wallace < CHUKAMYJAS@aol.com > writes:
>I am still perplexed by the notion of accumulated knowledge.
>Our last discussion centered on language as structural limits
>to our thinking. But I would like to ask something deeper. I
>have been studying Deming's system of Profound Knowledge
>and one of the components is the "Theory of knowledge" ....
>or basically Without a theory or model to compare reality
>to, there is no learning. However, with this notion, are not we
>tied to our own base of the pyramid? That is .... as we
>accumulate knowledge and build our theories, how do we rewrite
>them when our ego is so invested in proving them right?
Greetings Chuck,
I am not using irrelevant or intricate concepts so as hide my ignorance
and inability to aswer the questions which you put to me. I have no time
for such deplorable tactics.
But I cannot answer you unless I bring "entropy production" and the whole
web of emergences which it sustains into the picture.
First of all, just as the "entropy production" as BECOMING leads to
"entropy" as its corresponding BEING, learning as BECOMING leads to
knowledge as its corresponding BEING. Every BECOMING-BEING pair plays an
incredible important role -- one which we can call (using the name
suggested in toposlogic of mathematical category theory) as a
"classifier". We can also call it a "diversifier". I once wrote to the LO
list on such "classifiers" , but I forgot the name of the topic under
which I have done it.
To think of only the becoming or only the being is fatal. PERHAPS this is
what Deming had in mind when he said that learning without knowledge is
impossible. Why the PERHAPS? Deming knew nothing about "entropy
production", although he might have learned a few thing about entropy. So
when we try to understand Deming from the viewpoint of "entropy production
+ entropy", we do it form a viewpoint unknown to him. (Prigogine would
have changed my of "entropy production & entropy" into "dissipation &
entropy").
But PERHAPS Deming had another thing in mind. Learning is a kind of
change. No change, whatever its kind, is possible without "entropy
production". Furthermore, entropy can be produced only by means of
"force-flux" pairs. Learning involves (but is not) a flux of information
on all kinds of things. This flux of all kinds of information has to have
a corresponding force. This force has to be a difference. The difference
between reality and "theory of knowledge" sets up the required entropic
force. Cut the "theory of knowledge" away like so many people want to do
so as to end up with reality alone, using Occam's razor to justify
themselves, there cannot be a difference any more. Thus, without the
entropic force, there cannot be DIRECTLY an entropic flux, hence there
cannot be "entropy production" and consequently not that change which we
call learning.
I say DIRECTLY because we should never forget the role of the Onsager
matrix of reciprocal (cross-inductive) relationships. Many people use
Occam's razor exactly to cut this matrix away, i.e to cut complexity away.
Through this matrix other entropic forces can and will induce a flow of
all kind of information. But we have to bear in in mind that it happens
without the principal entropic force resulting from the difference between
"theory of knowledge" and reality. In Senge's work the "systems thinking"
is isomorphic to "theory of knowledge" in Deming's work.
>As T.S. Kuhn elaborated in his "The Structure of Scientific
>Revolutions", we must have a revolution, a Quantum leap, a break
>with the past... not just adding on to it. How many of us can
>actually go back and totally rewrite our personal scripts? We
>all take in reality through our accumulated filters which screen
>input to match our paradigms. Must we be "Born Again"?
Again you ask a very, very important question.
Yes.
Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again to enter the kingdom of
God. Jesus was a woodworker. Nicodemus was the foremost theologian of the
Jews. Strange, is it not, that such a revered person should come seek
learning from a man with such a humble occupation. It took much from
Nicodemus to do so. It gave him an experience and tacit knowledge which
Jesus immediately connected fruitfully to. Did Nicodemus learn anything?
Well, he and Joseph of Arimathea were the only two persons who had the
guts (free energy) to claim Jesus' body after the crucifiction.
I call this action in which something (even humans) has to give up
anything of the past so as to emerge into something different in the
future a "creative collapse". Paradigm shifts are an example of "creative
collapses". Giving up bad habits are also an example. Giving your life to
save the life of somebody else is another example. Perhaps the most
instructive example is in the world of insects. When a worm becomes a
butterfly during the pupa stage, all the organs of the worm dissolve, i.e,
become plasmodial, before the organs of the butterfly emerge.
You have added some important information to this viepwoint by writing:
>The late J. Krishnamurti had advocated the total dropping of
>the ego and the self so reality could be seen fresh and whole
>without the psychological filtering. He had said that we cannot
>really love until we stop striving and realize we have arrived....
>the total being. This would mean that we would need to "die"
>to the self concept... to the notion that we are separate from
>reality.
I can offer my own viewpoint, but I think It will be much nicer to tell
about the viewpoint of Jan Smuts, "father" of holism. He said that reality
consists of a hirarchy of imbeded wholes. Each whole had an inside and an
outside. He called the outside the field of the whole. The whole and its
field are continuously interacting with each other. (Richard Feynmann used
this very idea to make remarkable break throughs in quantum electro
dynamics.) Severe a whole from its field and it dies. Every human is also
a whole. The field of any human is the whole of reality (God Creator and
the rest of Creation). Severe this field and the human dies retograssively
(i.e. first spiritually and then physically.)
>Maybe this notion of "becoming-being" wholes can shed some
>light on this matter also? Maybe the "becoming-being" cycle is
>what Deming was alluding to with his "Theory of Knowledge"?
>As difficult as it seems, maybe we must keep learning and
>being in a "becoming-being" flux like an AC current?
Yes. I like you AC current metaphor. Perhaps someone in the dialogue on
the topic "PDSA.. Do vs. Act?" can use it to paint a richer picture.
Perceiving becoming-beings as nested wholes is a deeply abstract excercise
which the unexcercised mind cannot hope to accomplish. Allow me to
describe a metaphor which may help to give you mind the excercise.
Think of an onion. Think of a razor (not Occam's razor ;-) with which we
are going to dissect the onion. There are three principal ways in which we
can don it.
(1) Cut through only the outer layer covering at least half of its
perimeter, but never the full perimeter. Pull it off without letting it
shear into two pieces. This gives us one whole which acts as the field for
the deeper layers (wholes). Do it for each inner layer. This result tells
us more about wholes than about becomings or beings. Doing this repeatedly
in reality will give us an "holistic" outlook on reality.
(2) Cut the onion in half from pole (top, stem) to pole (bottom, roots).
The result tells us more of the becoming of the onion than its being or
its wholes. This way give faster results than way (1). Doing this
repeatedly in reality will give us an "ontogenical" outlook on reality.
(3) Cut the onion in half through its "equator" perpendicular to its polar
axis. The result (concentric rings) tells us more of the being of the
onion than its becoming or its wholes. This way is as fast as way (2).
Doing this repeatedly in reality will give us an "ontological" outlook on
reality.
I think this metaphor may help you fellow learners to understand Deming
better. He used all three ways to cut his "onions" -- organisations.
As for me, I use many more ways. I even tunnel like a worm in and out of
the onion, let myself produce seed when the onion has become of age, sow
them and become a new onion.
Have you ever noticed how terrible an onion smells when it has turned bad?
Have you ever noticed how quickly one bad onion can infect all the others
in a bag? Have you ever noticed how onions are preserved by pickling them
in salt and vinegar or hanging them in very dry air?
Have you ever tried to grow onions, making them set seed when still as
small as an apricot so as to speed up the generative cycles for selection
purposes? Have you ever tried to prevent an onion from setting seed so as
to let its caudex grow as big as a pumpkin?
Have you ever dug up succulent plants with onion like caudexes. Have you
ever tried to guess their age by counting the dead outer skins by which
they protect their inner live part. In less than 30 kilometers away from
our university I can show you specimens -- very poisonous -- of Boophane
disticha or Ammocharis corannica which were already mature in the days of
George Washington.
Have you ever tasted in the desert an onion baked slowly in a skin of clay
in the mild ambers of a fire made from desert bushes? Have you ever had to
search in the desert for edible wild onions to stay alive?
It is all these kinds of things which you can take do when interacting
with your organisations. When you do all such things and many more, your
organisations may emerge into Learning Organisations. But when you cut
them up in slices of onion rings as in the fast food business, forget of
them ever becoming a LO.
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>