Dear At and Organlearners,
Distortion of Ideas, i like that, a pleonasm: all ideas are distorted,
have to be distorted and will be distorted. We are all distorted ideas,
the ideas has become flesh. Here are some of mine, for what's it worth:
> Fred Nickols <nickols@worldnet.att.net> write:
> >But, Taylor is old hat to some, so let's take a more recent
> >instance: Michael Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge. Polanyi
> >used the term to refer to the things we know that we can't articulate
> >(e.g., how we recognize a particular person's face). By definition,
> >then, tacit knowledge is knowledge that can't be articulated. Yet,
> >I regularly see tacit knowledge defined simply as "knowledge that
> >is in people's heads." That is dead wrong. There is a vast
> >difference
> >between knowledge that HASN'T been articulated and knowledge
> >that CAN'T be articulated.
> When I read your contribution, I asked myself -- how could I have read
> Polyani's works and failed to notice what you are stressing.
I was not aware of Mr Polyani's works. I have my own distorted ideas. I
always understood tacit knowledge as "implicit" knowledge, the knowledge
i'm unaware of. I supposed there are two kinds of tacit knowledge: the
kind i already had and the kind i had learned so well, that i was no
longer aware of. In interaction with the environment, tacit knowledge
becomes explicit: for yourself and for others. As is: "Aha, this is what i
know" or, "do you see what i mean". I assume that we have tacit knowledge
about the world, because we exist in this world, are made of the same
material, obey the same laws. This knowledge we have to discover, unravel,
develop. We seem like messages that have to decode themselves: the
implicit meaning wants to be explicit in the only way it can: by being
implicit.
We've also learned things. To begin we, we've to control our thoughts, our
ideas, our actions. We've learned to behave, we've learned we belong to a
group and we've adapted. This, to me, is also tacit knowledge. We're not
aware of the controls that guide our acts, the ideas behind the reasoning.
Sometimes i'm able to support a group or team to look at their implicit
ideas and reasoning. Most of the time, at first they seem to be shocked,
blocked and it takes time to ackowledge what they already knew.
Furthermore, we all learned a trade, studied, gained an ability in
something. Learning by doing. After a while, we're able to perform these
tasks without being aware that we know.
> So I decided, coming Monday morning, to go to our University Library and
> read his book "The tacit dimension of knowledge" once again. It was then
> when I experienced a terrible nightmare. ...snip...
> This irreversible loss of books important
> to me, but not to subject specialists, is my nightmare.
I agree, this is terrible.
...snip...
> Even after I have made sure what he meant, it is still my interpretation.
> If I reach the same conclusion as you, then we still have to find out why
> so many other people came to a different interpretation. But let us rather
> assume I still find as earlier that he meant "has not" and not "can not",
> then why did you and I arrived at different interpretations?
The different interpretations are the manifestations of distortions of
ideas. First of all, ideas need a background of other ideas. We constantly
rephrase, reinterpretate, reinvent recreate ideas, notions, principles and
concepts. We're mental cows, chewing ideas again and again. This process
reinforces learning, repetition is key to learning, in schools in Holland
a small examination is called "repetitie".
As the dynamices of replication also generates small errors -or- sometimes
ideas have to be redefined to fit in -or- combining two previously
unrelated ideas distorts them both and: aha, insight (note the tension of
this word: on the one hand it is internally focessed (in) on the other
hand, it refers to seeing (sight) seeing an outside world). Some of these
"errors" turn out to be new interpretations, new ideas and trigger an
avalance of new ideas. A famous new interpretation is Newton's apple. It
was not the first apple to fall, nor the last, i happended to notice. But
making the connection between apples and planetary movement was. This is
also called learning. So also the idea of learning has distorted meanings.
> Let me state emphatically that any emergence is not an easy, faultless
> event which happens automatically. As I see it, it happens after much and
> fast entropy production at the edge of chaos. It is one of the two
> possible outcomes at that very edge.
...snip...
Emergent changing, my distortion based on the distorted ideas of Will
McWinney, has to do with intervening from the social reality to the
mythical and vice versa. You pendle between vision, ideas, symbols and
inventions and values, feelings, motivation and ethics. The game, if it is
a game or whether you are game, is creating new cultures (with their
plays, values, ethics, rules, policies and actions) with the "goal" of
enhancing spirit, meaning and opportunities. It means evoking values from
new images and facilitating others in accepting new ideas. To me it spells
l.i.f.e.: life itself facilitates emergences %-D.
> It is like giving birth to a baby. Whatever the outcome, it is a traumatic
> experience at best for both mother and baby. Both may be alive and well
> after birth, but one of them or even both can die at birth.
As a man and father i have some ideas what this means. My mother in law
always says that if a man would give birth to a child, every family would
have only one child. I then respond, that if a man would give birth to a
child he would be a woman.
> Entropy production happens when free energy drives the conversion of
> several forms of energy into other forms of energy. This conversion of
> forms of energy to other forms of energy is a very complex process.
No it is not, it happens all the time, we do it all the time. It is the
same with using prose, we use it both, tacitly. The way you state your
idea is to me a self-fulfilling prophecy, blocking further inquiry. It is
perhaps not simple to get an accurate and general description, but then,
what isn't?
Conversion is just repeating the same processes over and over agaiwith
some feedback loops.
> This
> entropy production is necessary to reach the edge of chaos where ordinate
> bifurcations happen. But it is not sufficient to ensure constructive
> emergences rather than destructive immergences. This makes the emergence
> deeply complex. The sufficiency requirements are what I call the seven
> essentialities of creativity: liveness, sureness, wholeness, fruitfulness,
> spareness, otherness and openness. If only one are impaired to a dgree
> less than that which the emergence require, the bifurcation will result
> into an immergence. Ususually, more than one are impaired when a
> bifurcation result in an immergence.
Here i read the social implications of your ideas, the meaning of
l.i.f.e.. Emergence and immergence seem to me two different sides of the
same coin, two counterinventions, like every tidal wave having its
opposite in the "unseen" air. A wave braking on the coast will generate a
current back into the sea that will topple the next wave. The sound thus
generated seems to be inbedded deeply into our sub-consiousness, .... line
of reasoning stopped for unknown reason.
I'd call emergence and immergence (they aint nothing until I have called
them) classes of differentiating processes and conventionalising processes
- thus distort them into processes. The one type creates differences from
the samenesses, like you suddenly becoming aware of the beauty of the
autumn leaves (spring flowers down south). It is just the same light, the
same day, the same you and yet, something pops up. The other type creates
sameness out of the chaos of different differences, it takes a photograph,
it sweeps aside the autumn leaves, reminds you of the traffic noise and
supplies a photo, a picture. Same day, same light, same you and
conventionally stored.
These two types of processes counterinvent one another: controlling (a
conventionalising movement) counterinvents delegation (differentiating),
delegating will eventually lead to establishing more control; designing
counterinvents testing, testing leads to new designs; persuading
counterinvents converting and trying to convert people will generate a
need to persuade them. It is the source of backlash, perhaps the source of
a feeling of frustation. It is also the source of dynamic systems, like
the sea, the tides, the weather, the gletschers and rivers. The trick, my
intervention, is to let go, let go, let go and snap! the system into place
at a convenient meta-stable phase, like the blind watchmaker Tempus (or
was it Horus), just before the counterinvention sets in. The blind
watchmaker, off course, the blind watchmaker is the unintentionally
operating lifeguard.
...snip...
> I once again want to urge you fellow learners for what it is worth to
> question my tacit knowledge. I value every question as the sign of
> "knowledge in evolution". I have the greatest respect for it happening in
> any person, young or old, simple or gifted, irrespective of creed, race,
> sex, .... (you know the words.) I do not mind such questioning at all.
> But I know of many others who get the jitters or react violently when I do
> it. That is why I refrain from questioning other fellow learners directly,
> except when they have given me some indication that they do not mind it
> also. They know tacitly who they are without us ever having had to
> articulate it formally.
No problemo, shoot.
...snip...
> Fred, there are two ways how formal knowledge on any topic
> can change
> (1) distortions because of ignorance or superficial studies
> (2) natural evolution of a topic because of the spiritual evolution
> of humankind.
> You have made some very sound comments on (1) which I do
> not want to modify or add to.
>
> But I am very concerned that we are not sufficiently aware of way (2) or
> ready to articualte formally what we already know tacitly about the
> "evolution of knowledge".
Dear At, I praise you for your concern. Don't be concerned for others,
whether we're aware or not has nothing to do with the development of
humankind. Let it be. Concern sometimes inhibits spiritual development, it
can generate a conventionalising movement, away from the differentiating
processes. You probably, my guess, mean to say that you have compassion,
are compassionate. I sense compassion as being more neutral to
differentiating or conventionalising.
...snip...
> Thus we arrive at Demings remarkable insight -- 85% of production problems
> (and now I include even the emergence of tacit to formal knowledge as a
> production process) is the fault of the system and its managers, not the
> workers (and in this case the learners.)
85% of te problems is the fault of fear for problems. Fear is a bad
advisor.
> Fred, thank you again for articulating so beautifully what we tacitly
> know, namely that ideas ideas can be distorted. It took me many screens to
> show something else, namely that we can take ideas as young plants and
> carefully cultivate them so as to come into full flower. It takes
> patience, care and love. The flowers are not the original juvenile plant.
> But they are the actualisation of the potential for that juvenile plant to
> flower some day.
>
> This flowering of an idea is a change of the original idea,
> but not a distortion of it
> UNLESS WE FORCE THE GROWING SO GROTESQUELY
> UNDER ARTIFICAIL CONDITIONS THAT THE IDEA WILL
> NEVER BE ABLE TO FLOWER ON ITS OWN WITHOUT
> SUCH CONDITIONS.
I tend to disagree. Whether a changed idea is a distortion or not can only
be evaluated after the results of the ideas have been evaluated. And even
then, the evaluation may be on a road to nowhere (know ware?). At the
same time, i think that when we're open to our own being, our own essence
or existence, our tacit knowledge will guide us in weeding out the best
ideas, seeing the most beautiful flowers.
Use of physical force is usually used to conventionalise within a zero-sum
game but a revolution, like one in South Africa, the American, the
Russian, the French and the Dutch, may also be a differentiating movement,
creating win-win games. Sometimes we have to taken the weapons and oppose
conventionalized, oppressive systems. However, when force is used, the
backlash will be more powerful, the reconventionalising stronger - a
revolution eats its own children. Forcing to use force again. Gradually
we're learning to transform the tables by using forces that do not kill.
>Do people persist with their learning after leaving the last
>educational institution which they have attended?
I do, this person does. Have to bake cake.
Rate cake,
Jan Lelie
-- With kind regards - met vriendelijke groeten,Jan Lelie
Drs J.C. Lelie CPIM (Jan) LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development Mind@Work est. 1998 - Group Resolution Process Support Tel.: (+ 31) (0)70 3243475 or car: (+ 31)(0)65 4685114 http://www.mindatwork.nl and/or taoSystems: + 31 (0)30 6377973 - Mindatwork@taoNet.nl
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