Strong Reactions<>Weak Ties LO30437

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@postino.up.ac.za)
Date: 07/31/03


Replying to LO30414 --

Dear Organlearners,

Andrew Canpbell < ACampnona@aol.com > wrote:

>D'you know how i got here in the first place? What little
>event of a serendipitous co-dependent arising nature?
>Seven years ago --nice number - -- if seven is a 'number'
>or a 'word'...stop!

Greetings dear Andrew,

I forgot how i came to our LO-list! But i am very glad that i did got to
it. There is a profound spirit of learning in it. And our host Rick is
fabulous.

[Host's Note: Thank you... You are very kind. ..Rick]

I find the title of your topic mysterious. Can you explain it to me.
Perhaps it is what i know of chemistry which confuses me. The weaker some
of the bonds in a chemical compound, the stronger it will react with other
compounds -- exactly what the title of your topic tells.

>I have on my desk a pdf from the IBM Institute for
>Knowledge Based Organizations.
(snip)
>One: It seems to completely fuddle up the distinction between
>''information'' and ''knowledge''. my sense is that it does these
>by means of a mechanism implicit to the 'agenda' (money-profit)
>my deeper thought is that there is some disengenuosity in this paper...
(snip)
>I read it and did not bother to differntiate the word information
>for knowledge, and reading the word knowledge as information
>neither added nor subtracted from my knowledge about either.

These KM people assume that, for example, a book has information and
knowledge in it. They say that the knowledge in it is less faulty than the
information in it and thus of a higher level.

There are millions of people thinking like KM people. The KM people have
merely formalised what they think. Most religious people think in this
way. They believe that sacred texts have precious knowledge in it.

In my own parish i created consternation when i said that the Bible is
merely a source of information and that it has no knowledge. Knowledge
lives in the mind, not books. The pastor rebuked me, quoting from dogma,
saying that Christians have two sources of knowledge about God-- nature
and scripture. He said that these sources have knowledge in them. I asked
him how the knowledge of these sources get into a person's mind. He could
not answer me.

Forget a while about scripture and think only of nature. How do we get
knowledge of nature (and not necessarily of God)? The answer is the
history of how science developed. It is not simply a flow of signals from
nature to the mind. Those signals have to be seeked for as well as all the
relationships (patterns) between them. It is a complex job requiring an
inquisitive and discerning mind. It is the same with scripture. We have to
seek the data in its information as well as the relationship in the data.

But what do we use to seek signals/data and the relationships between
them? For myself it is my tacit knowledge which has emerged from my
experiences. These experiences emerged as a result of interactions between
me and the world around me. This tacit knowledge is free from the language
used in discourse, but not free from art. Its art is like poems, music,
painting and sculpturing waiting to emerge. Only when in a desert, free
from other humans and after a few days to get rid of my human baggage, i
become aware of this art in my tacit knoweldge. What i am trying to say is
that there is form in my tacit knowledge and that this form is intuitive
and thus not yet formalised. Does it make sense to you?

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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