Replying to LO27122 --
Dear Organlearners,
D P Dash <D_P_Dash@nts2.ximb.ac.in> writes in the topic
"Communities of Practice LO27122"
>In my last mail, I was making the case that
>organisations might be considered to be people-like
>(anthropomorphisation!) In this mail, I am going to
>suggest that people might be considered to be
>organisation-like (organomorphisation!)
Greetings dear DP,
I thoroughly enjoyed your creative feat. Well done! It will make us
think twice!
There is something deeper going on here which I want to draw your
attention to. This is how to find the correspondences between two
dissimilar things A and B. In your case A=human and B=organisation. That
is why I have changed the name of the topic.
What you did in your first contribution is to find human-like (A) patterns
in organisations (B). Let us represent this symbolically as
. p(A) s====> p(B)
Here the "p" stands for "patterns" while "p(A)" stands for "patterns of
system A". Furthermore, the "s====>" stands for "of which some occur
in" or "of which some map into". In other words, the whole expression
. p(A) s====> p(B)
means
"patterns of system A of which some occur in patterns of system B".
We may also think of "s====>" as an "inclusion becoming".
What you did in your second contribution is to find organisation-like (B)
patterns in humans (A). We can represent this symbolically as
. p(B) s====> p(A)
It means
"patterns of system B of which some occur in patterns of system A".
Should you be willing to read from right to left as you do from left to
right, this symbolic expression can also be written as
. p(A) <====s p(B)
Now, should we have BOTH
. p(A) s====> p(B) AND p(A) <====s p(B)
we will write it symbolically as
. p(A) <==iso==> p(B)
It means "patterns of systems A and B of which some occur in each
other".
This
. p(A) <==iso==> p(B)
is a very powerful concept which we may call an "isomorphism" or
"adjunction". Hence the "iso" which occur in the dual arrow <==iso==>
The "isomorphism" defines "some equivalence between two systems A
and B". Compare it to the classical concept "equality" which we will write
as
. p(A) = p(B)
This "equality" defines a "complete equivalence between two systems
A and B".
The very power of the isomorphism comes to light when we study
complex systems. Complex systems may have many differences
and yet some similarities. These similarities may all be represented
by the "isomorphism"
. p(A) <==iso==> p(B)
Likewise we may distinguish between all the differences or dissimilarities
with the symbolic expression
. p(A) <==apo==> p(B)
We will call it a "apomorphism". The Greek prefix "apo-" means away or
novel while "iso-" means the same or common.
My own tacit cognition to "isomorphisms" and "apomorphisms" comes a long
way. I can still remember how on primary school at form (level) five I got
completely engrossed in the history periods by finding similarities and
differences between two historical events. We had a teacher who loved to
draw up tables of similarities and differences and encouraged us to do the
same. I never before and never again afterwards (not even at university)
had a teacher so sensitive to similarities and differences.
When we compare two complex systems, we ought to take both the
"isomorphism"
. p(A) <==iso==> p(B)
and the "apomorphism"
. p(A) <==apo==> p(B)
Unfortunately, people often go for the one or the other because of LEM
(Law of Excluded Middle). Those who go for the "apomorphism" will deny
with great efforts the existence of any "isomorphism". They will use any
possible difference to undo a similarity. We may think of them as the
"splitters". On the other hand, those who go for the "isomorphism" will
deny with great efforts the existence of any "apomorphism". They will
use any possible similarity to suppress a difference. We may think of
them as the "lumpers".
Managing a complex organisation is for me among other things to steer a
sound, wholesome and harmonius course between the "splitters" going for
"apomorphisms" and the "lumpers" going for "isomophisms" in that
organisation. When the executive manager self is either a "splitter" or a
"lumper", that organisation frequently gets into deep conflicts because
there are usually "splitters" and "lumpers" in most organisations.
The systematics of biology (the study of different biological organisms)
and arranging them into some order is one of its oldest disciplines.
Taxonomists became gradually aware that some changes took place over many
hundreds of generations while others took place within a couple of
generations. Thus they had to distinguish between the long term
phylogenetic relationships and the short term phenetic adaptations when
comparing organisms mophologically. Thus they devised a modern method of
classification called cladistics. Concepts like apomorphous,
synapmorphous, plesiomorphous, homomorphous and isomorphous abound in
cladistics. Particularly characterestic of cladistics is the so-called
cladograms. The similarities between these cladograms of biology and the
managerial organograms of organisations are extraordinary. They point to
an isomorphism between the evolution of organisms and the evolution of
organisations. Add to this the corresponding "object-arrow" diagrams of
mathematica Category Theory which in a sense depicts the evolution of
mathematics. It makes one think, does it not?
Hopefully you will find the follwing interesting as a result of your own
recent experiences in "anthropomorphisation" and "organomorphisation".
I discovered the 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity) by searching
for the "isomorphism"
. p(material system) <==iso==> p(mental system)
I selected the chemical system CHEM as the material system and
the mathematical system MATH as the mental system. In other
words, I focussed my search on the "isomorphism"
. p(CHEM) <==iso==> p(MATH)
The way in which I found these seven patterns is exactly what you
did in your two contributions. I first looked for
. p(CHEM) s====> p(MATH)
and then for
. p(CHEM) <====s p(MATH)
After the first three patterns discovered, it seemed to me that I have
come up against what seem to be a solid wall. I then switched the
order into first
. p(CHEM) <====s p(MATH)
and then
. p(CHEM) s====> p(MATH)
Thus the last four patterns followed.
I then had to establish for myself that these seven patterns also occur in
other domains like biology, geology, history, economics, antropology,
philosophy, etc. It is here where I found the phenomenology of Husserl
most useful. Only afterwards did I dare to call them the seven
essentialities of creativity (7Es).
With care and 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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