Dear organlearners
winfried@universal.nl (W.M. Deijmann) wrote in LO14774:
(in reply to the thread Structure)
> >It took me 250 pages to set out the theory in my forthcoming book. Do do
> >it a paragraph or two is impossible. I will rather use a dynamical icon to
> >refer to the essence of theory. The theory represents reality as a ragged
> >vortex (vortex = lifting spiral).
>
> Hi At, (and other LO-forumdwellers too) Long time no
> hear! It is good to be back and being able to breath in
> some new fresh LO-air!
Dear Winfried,
Yes, the spirit of learning which pervades this forum, is one of its most
valuable assets.
> How are you doing and how is your book progressing?
I am fine, thank you very much.
My book is 99% complete in a photo-copy ready form, except for the name
and subject index. It is now in the care of our good friend Sherri Malouf
who will try to find a publisher for it. Her studying of the book is an
important reason why she is relatively quite nowadays.
Finding a publisher will not be that easy. The book has the potential to
do what happened only twice the past 3000 years: a paradigm shift so
immense that only the Socrates-Plato-Aristoteles shift in Ancient Greece
and the Copernicus-Newton-Leibniz shift almost half a millenium ago can be
compared to it.
This latest paradigm shift was begun by Prigogine about 20 years ago when
he showed that in the material world entropy dissipation (creation of
entropy) is not only the source of chaos, but also of order. My book will
complete this shift by showing that entropy production also accounts for
chaos, order and complexity in the abstract world. In order to terat both
worlds as indisolluable parts of one universe, I had to choos one root
word for both, namely create -> creation -> creativity.
The definition for creativity will be novel:
the creation of entropy results in creativity.
Now, in order to prepare ourselves to be able to handel a
theory and practice for everything, we need a most powerful
tool. This tool is given in a most simple form - only five
words!
TO LEARN IS TO CREATE
What my book will thus do, is to connect Entropy,
Creativity and Learning in such a triad that we will be able
to manage chaos, order and complexity in nature and culture.
Obviously, my book will offer so many breath-taking viewpoints on learning
itself that a completely new philsophy of learning will emerge. I took
great pains to explain the two main modes of learning as clearly as
possible: digestive learning (hmm-learning) and emergent learning
(aha-learning).
> I remember the lively, high level dialogues we had on the LO -list very
> well. As you certainly have noticed I have been a substantial time in the
> lurker's mode. Actually over the last 5 to six months I have been so busy
> that I only read the person-to-person e-mail.
>
> But here is my answer to your question.
>
> >I then asked my
> >question in the sense of this structure-process evolving as an essential
> >pattern of reality. It is in this sense that I refered to the origin of
> >structure-process.
>
> Allow me to jump-a-conclusion and suggest a book I think might interest you:
>
> The "Philosophy of Freedom" by dr. Rudolf Steiner.
It is a wonderful book on freedom - one that I can recommend to all on
this forum. However, the reading of it is not always easy because freedom
is not an easy issue, as history so clearly points out. I feel so sad for
dr Steiner that he did not have also the entropic viewpoint on freedom at
his disposal. This viewpoint is startling in its simplicity: freedom is
necessary to create sufficient entropy to go through all the cycles of
chaos and order, being and becoming, until all of complexity has been
covered.
> Here's one little quote from chapter 9 of this book:
>
> "The highest level of individual life is that of conceptual thinking
> without regard to any definite perceptual content of the concept through
> pure intuition from out of the ideal sphere."
What he describes here, is the immense happiness which follows upon
emergent learning, first in the individual as percept and then in the
community as concept.
> Here's an other quote. it's Rudolf Steiner's description of the activity
> that takes place when we observe our thinking:
Winfried, the quotation is too long to quote here again. Please note the
importance which dr. Steiner gives to intuition. We have to realise that
between our hard core creativity and the many dimensions of humaneness
which eventually emerge in us, lies the basic emergent of our creativity.
Call this basic emergent whatever you like (intuition, tacit knowledge,
experience, heart stuff, gut feeling, subconscious), but never try to deny
it. All the higher dimensions of humaneness such as language, rationality,
artistry and spirituality depends on it. I prefer to call it our tacit
knowledge, following Michael Polyani. The most difficult thing for us to
do, is to proceed from this tacit dimension of knowledge to our
articulated diemsnions of humaneness.
It is exactly in this articulation from the tacit level to the higehr
levels where learners, individually and collectively, get almost no help -
and where they need most help.
> The above has become my philosophical fundament to grasp the essence of
> every learning activity.
I can understand it.
> Back to At's question:
> >I then asked my
> >question in the sense of this structure-process evolving as an essential
> >pattern of reality. It is in this sense that I refered to the origin of
> >structure-process.
>
> 'being-becoming' can be translated in the concepts 'polarity' and 'rythm'.
> being stands for being at one of the two poles. Becoming = moving in the
> direction of the other pole.
I clearly follow your reasoning. Let me try to articulate your two poles
in terms of what I can remember of you. The one pole is the structure at
birth (parents+baby) and the other pole is the baby itself as parent of a
new generation. The one becoming is thus getting born and the other
becoming is getting ready to give birth.
> Moving forward and backwards iterative between the poles causes rythm.
> Distinquish the poles and you'll feel and observe the rythm.
> Feel the rythm and you will discover the poles.
> Just imagine yourself in the MIR and take a look at our precious globe,it's
> all there: North - South, Day-night, summer - winter, breath in-breath out,
> awake- asleep, alive - dead, happy - sad, management - workfloor, activ -
> passiv, chaotic -structured. etc.
> And the whole thing turns and turns and turns!
I conclude chaper 5 (The dynamics of creations) of my book with fig 5.7.
It depicts exactly this cycle which you are speaking of.
It is very important to maintain this cycle in learning itself! Emergent
learning is that becoming associated to "getting born" while digestive
learning is that becoming associated to "becoming ready to give birth".
> >> Is all this to heavy for this list?
> >
> >Not for me. I find it immensely stimulating. But what about the rest of
> >the organlearners? Do their intuition tell them tthat there is a strange
> >connection between structure- process and Learning Organisation?
>
> Edxactly! What about the rest of you?
Yes, please speak up!
> greetings from extremely warm and humid Holland!
I have experienced that sort of climate in Vendaland and Zululand (north
and north-east in South Africa). Its terrible. I love the immense dry heat
of the Kalahari, Bushmanland and the Namib. I had once a young friend with
me (Mikael Nyberg) from Norway who came all the way to learn something
from me about entropy, creativity and learning. And what did I do? I took
him to a small place in Bushmanland called Pella. There he stood, midday,
in the white hot sunshine at a temoerature of 53C, mumbling in Norwegian:
"My God, is this true, it cannot be true". I have to add that the humidity
was less than 1%, otherwise we would never have made it. Invisible sweat
at a rate of 1 liter per hour keep the body cool.
Why am I telling this about Mikael. For the simple reason to stress that
if he (from the icy Norway) would have been there (the white-hell Pella)
all on his own, he would have become insane in less than half an hour,
such is the schock on the unexperienced body. But with me there, he knew
that somehow he would make this becoming. He did make it - and he will
never forget all his life that day as well as the fantastic plants and
insects which I have showed him there.
There is life beyond the edge. Find someone (facilitator, midwife) who had
been there before and thus who can hold your hand. Then take the step to
discover the new life beyond the edge. This is the spirit of emergent
learning.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>