Replying to LO29689 --
Re-plying At's sheets of wholeness- relations, bonds and links
Dear LO'ers and dear At,
Thank you for your words. I need them as I wrote earlier, because they
enhance my own and deeper thinking.
Let me try to add my thoughts to yours and see what links could be made.
> The question "what makes something a whole?" above is a jewel. My
> own answer to it would be short and sweet:- "wholeness"! But it just
> displaces the question to know what wholeness involves.
Yes, your reply seems so simple but it has some hidden aspects. You refer
to a form element - wholeness as one of the 7E's, one of the 7 form
definers. But a whole has also content, even a hole :-). And a whole is
not complete if not both, form and content are considered.
But your answer was close to what I was thinking - the possible forces
that interact in and around a whole.
> There exists in Symbolic Logic a branch called the logic of relationships.
> In it any transitive relationship is symbolised by xRy while a reflexsive
> relationship is symbolised by xR.
I suspect that symmetry is an important aspect of this branche of logic. I
will try to find some references to do some further studies.
> >However, I hope that you still are able to think independently
> >on this subject. I need your input!
>
> I felt the same with the dialogue on "Blind to Wholeness" in which many
> reasons for it were proposed. But as they came into discussion, i began
> to see a general pattern among them which also a relationship! Its form is
> "world-inside-me"#interaction#"world-outside-me"
> The more this interaction gets disturbed for a person, the less that
> person has sense of wholeness.
It is interesting to see and think of this 'interaction'. It was exactly
the reason why I came up with this subject. Thinking on relationships is
crucial for a deeper understanding (another relationship) of this world.
The word 'interaction' suggests a dynamic relationship. Some action is
involved between two different things. And where action is involved,
entropy is produced. Is it always true that there is action? I think so,
although that is not as obvious as it seems. And where action is, there is
a difference in potentials, and thus forces.
I must think of the recent words of Dan Chay:
"I think you would chuckle at my amateur steigerungs. For me it's been
eons since I wondered to you on this list "How many forms of energy are
there?" <G> I now suspect there are more forms than scientists are
measuring."
Dear Dan, your thoughts touch also mine in *relation* to interactions.
> >I was trying to create a picture which was as complete as
> >possible. That means that my thoughts meandered from
> >mechanical constructions to natural sciences, behavioral
> >sciences, nature and human societies.
>
> Goethe's thoughts did the same. But he resisted all attempts to divide
> his activities into physics, chemistry, geology, botany, ............ He
> said that should he do so, he will have lost the wholeness of it all.
I am convinced that one should do both - looking to details and looking to
the relationships, and thus loosing the sight on details. It is this
meandering aproach of coming close and taking distance in a regular and
repeating rhythm that enhances the comprehension of what wholeness and the
whole might be.
I wrote
> >Possibly, these forces play also a role in human organisations.
> >What is the extra element or force in a LO?? The common
> >goal? The limited space of the office and building (a mechanical
> >element), like the walls of a prison? In a human organisation
> >individuals could leave or come in. A LO could grow or decline
> >or disappear. There is certainly a temporary aspect involved. I
> >am still not sure what character all the possible relationships are
> >that define a LO.
> >
> >I leave it to you, dear reader to think of the binding factors of
> >a human organisation and in particular a LO. I was also thinking
> >of a marriage in this respect.
And At responded
>
> I think its (1) the awareness to, (2) the learning of and (3) taking care
> of relationships within the LO. In my work on the 7Es (seven
> essentialities of creativity) i think of relationships xRy in the most
> general manner as the associativity pattern x#R#y of wholeness. I
> write it usually as X*Y*Z. Just explore such three-membered patterns
> irrespective how simple or complex the three members are. As you
> also have suggested.
I wonder what # might be. I have played with other symbols:
(A<-)R(->B) meaning that A has an internal attracting force; A and B 'clamp'
themselves to a common passive sub- or object R.
A(->R<-)B meaning that R attracts both A and B to itselve; A and B are
passive
an ofcourse lots of other combinations are possible: R could be attractive
to either A or B; both R and A and/or B are attractive; forces could also be
rejective; etc. And thus, # or *, or whatever symbol is used, is not as
simple as it seems at first sight. And the complexity of this subject
increases if one realises that something like A*R*B comprises more than one
relationship (at least 3).
At proposed as the binding factors of a LO:
awareness to
learning of relationships
taking care of
At first sight this looks like the dog biting its own tail. Suppose that
At and I form a small LO. What binds us? Is it trhe physical cable which
connects our PC's? Maybe, but more important is that we both have
something to learn. At learns, and I learns. And thus there is something
like: At * learning * Leo. Learning is for me an activity which could
comprise a lot of things. Maybe I should specify the former relationship
somewhat better: At * learning of wholeness * Leo. However, with this
specification I introduced another relationship (learning with a subject).
But At generalised the subject much more. He was thinking of 'learning of
relationships (between us). Dear reader, could you imagine that I become
somewhat dizzy. I have the feeling that I have entered a maze with no
escape route.
I have one question, which touches a matter that At has stressed
hereafter, namely the physical and spiritual world. If I think of
relations which are present and which bind a LO, I think of (mental)
forces. In the physical world the magnitude of a force is usually
dependent on distance. For instance, stretching a rubber string increases
the attraction; with increasing the distance between two bodies the Newton
attractive force decreases. What about the binding forces in a LO? Is
'care' dependent on distance? Is learning dependent on distance? What is
the relation of a LO with distance?? (and here you see that once in this
maze, no escape is possible).
I you don't like to enter the inescapble maze of wholeness, please forget
this whole dialogue.
Finally, At wrote some words on the 'umlomo' questions.
> A frequent mental excerise with me is to take ANY two things A and
> B and see if i cannot find the central member U (for "umlomo", Zulu
> word for mouthpiece) which connects them as A*U*B. This is
> really a powerful excercise.
The rather philosophical question is what this finding of a central member
means. Was this umlomo always present and is it a matter of finding it, or
do we introduce a relationship? In other words, if I am looking for an
umlomo between a pinguin at the South pole and the desert plant Adenia
Spinosa, I have brought these two elements together by just asking this
question. I have the feeling that our mental capacities could be so strong
that we could introduce new umlomo's. But as I said, this question is
possibly too philosophical for this list.
However, looking for commonnesses between two seemingly unrelated sub- or
objects is a mental excercise that enhances the creativity enormously. An
experience that is again and again demonstrated during my workshops. And
thus, I completely underline the following words of At:
> Leo, i know that you have been studying creativity for a long time. I
> myself always thought of it as something abstract. Then after having
> discovered the 7Es, my understanding of creativity changed drastically.
> I now see it as something in the section where the phsyical and
> spiritual dimensions of the universe overlap. In other words, it
> constitutes the relationship (associative pattern)
> physical*creativity*spiritual
> It is creativity which links these two complementary dimensions together!
Dear At, you wrote:
> I do not try force a foreign umlomo U in the relationship between A
> and B. I try to search by observation what is already between them
> affording the A*U*B pattern. Sometimes it is easy, but sometimes
> it takes weeks of searching.
and I said already that I am still not yet sure if it is a matter of finding
a preexisting umlomo, or introducing an umlomo.
In the very beginning of this contribution the word 'interaction' was
mentioned. With interaction also entropy is produced. And this very
entropy production CREATES a force! If entropy production leads to a
constructive emergence, this force is attractive; if the result is a
destructive emergence, the force is rejective. The most obvious examples
in the spiritual world are love and care as constructive and attractive
emergences; hate and punishment as destructuve rejective emergences.
And thus, relationships and interactions play an active role. Possibly
'only' in our minds and as mental constructions, but since the 'world
inside us' is care most, it is worth to think of relationships.
Greetings from a mental maze.
Leo Minnigh
--leo minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl>
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