Replying to LO29554 --
Dear Organlearners,
Chris Klopper <syntagm@icon.co.za> writes:
>> [Host's Note: I tried to find the article that Hanching
>> suggests... Here's one
>> http://www.alfred.north.whitehead.com/ANW/WitWisdom/witwis9.htm
>
>WOW...what a find!
Greetings dear Chris,
I have great respect for Alfred North Whitehead and his insights. He was a
man for all seasons. For mathematicians he was one of the greatest among
them. For philosophers he was one of the greatest among them. For
educators he was one of the greatest among them. He was as at home in
theology as in science.
Many of Whitehead's thoughts involved the 7Es (seven essentialities of
creativity), eventhough i discovered them some forty years after he
stopped writing. For example, he criticised the European idea of ontology
(study of "being") and tried to augment it with process thinking, thus
showing his sensitivity to liveness ("becoming-being"). He insisted that
the identity of an object remains inexact/vague until its entire context
has been taken into account, thus showing his sensitivity to sureness
("identity-context"). He was one of the few philsophers speaking of
otherness rather than diversity. He tried to articulate this otherness
("quality-variety") in terms of three things: causes, influences and
values.
Perhaps the most dearest to me is that he emphatically denied the
Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, a dualism already in germ in the
thinking of Plato. For example, he insisted that ideas are the outcome of
sensory experiences of the physical world and not fruits of pure abstract
thinking. As i now self understand it self, the physical and spiritual
worlds are not disjunct, but overlap to a large extent. One of the things
in this overlapping region is our creativity.
His insights on what universities ought to do, are marvelous. Two of
them which i shall never forget are:
"The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have
but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble
imaginations. Fools act on imagination without knowledge; pedants
act on knowledge without imagination. The task of a university is
to weld together imagination and experience. "
"The task of a University is the creation of the future, so far as
rational thought, and civilized modes of appreciation, can affect the
issue. The future is big with every possibility of achievement and
of tragedy."
His book "The Aims of Education" (1929) is one which everyone involved
with learning should read. There is profound wisdom to be found in it.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.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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