What is an Operational Definition? LO27009

From: demingtw (demingtw@ms17.hinet.net)
Date: 07/16/01


Replying to LO27002 --

Dear Andrew and other friends,

Your mail is inspiring but very difficult for me to write to the 'point'.
But I think I cannot afford writing this mail three times. Otherwise I may
like the 'writer' in Camus's The Plague, he never completed his second
sentence for his life long aspiring novel.. Since you mentioned about our
common 'friend' E. Gombrich, perhaps we can do some chats using his works
and your insights as the starting point.

You know that the first paintings in his masterpiece Art and Illusion, he
uses Canstable's Wivenhoe Park, Essex, 1816. It is a very friendly one,
since I studied over there in 1977-78. But one thing you might not know,
Gombrich and late K. Popper have a Chinese 'communities of practitioners',
so most of their representative works are available in Chinese with
quality translation..

I like their 'style' of writing and thinking, including the Logic of
Vanity, they make their thinking in very concise and clear statements.
Perhaps this is the power of British 'weather' or 'teas', it makes many
profound continental thinkers 'free' of certain ambiguities ( dear Andrew,
you might not know that I admire the study of 'Decision-Making under
Ambiguity' by James G. March, see his Decisions and Organizations, and not
to mention our Chinese friend, Bill Empon's Seven Types of Ambiguity. )

You might know that the first quotation in Art and Illusion is " Painting
is the most astounding sorceress. She can persuade us through the most
evident falsehoods that she is pure Truth."

Now a little bit subject of 'color' and related subjects. I learned the
importance of operational definitions and operational meaning in the
production of 'color' CRT back 1979 in Philips Taiwan. I don't have time
to explain here how true I found the statements Dr. Deming made in my last
posts in this thread.

I think through all this kind of efforts, I can enjoy your 'colorful'
masterpieces weekly at least and don't need to worry too much about your
process of 'From Light to Paint'. This is not a joke.

And thank you for your mail. Perhaps it broadened my scope of thinking.

Best wishes,

Hanching Chung
http://www.deming.com.tw
Join our annual conference on October 13 in Taipei, Taiwan.

ACampnona@aol.com wroteˇG

> This is my third attempt to write this text. I
> At, Hanching...everyone, do you think jokes are asymmetrical? Mmmmmmm.

-- 

demingtw <demingtw@ms17.hinet.net>

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