Practice in At's Emergent Learning (1) LO17665

Mnr AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Mon, 6 Apr 1998 13:27:06 GMT+2

Replying to LO17633 --

Dear Organlearners,

Ragnar Heil <Ragnar.Heil@urz.uni-heidelberg.de> writes
in reply to my LO17608:

> >Our thinking and thoughts inside us should not be estranged from anything
> >outside us, inluding life. By thinking in such a manner, we will
> >experience a transformation of conciousness. We will, among other things,
> >become conscious of the universe inside us. For example, I now begin
> >understand why God warned Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of
> >Knowledge

> I don`t know which consequences this last sentences has. Does God hate
> everyone who is into the thinking of radical constructivism, Zen or NLP
> ? -bg-

Ragnar, your question, not in its details, but in its general nature,
namely "Does God hate everyone who XYZ?" is very important to shed
additional light on emergent learning.

Self-learning consists of two phases, namely emergent learning and
digesttive learning. In emergent learning a bare concept, new to the
person, arises from within that person self. The concept will not be
new for other persons within whom that concept also has emerged. In
digestive learning that bare concept grows into maturity.
Self-learning is not restricted to only individuals. It can also
happen for an organisation as a whole whereby it becomes a learning
organisation.

There is a vast difference between denying only myself emergent
learning and denying emergent learning also among other people.

If I deny emergent learning among all people, then where do all the
answers to ALL the questions (and not merely the "Does God hate
everyone who XYZ?" type) in the first place come from? Some people
claim that some answers were revealed to them by some omnipotent
source and by no emergence whatsoever. This source has many faces:
God, spirituality, ancestery, literature, experiment, etc. However,
this onipotent source cannot be beneficial to anyone not part of the
source since by denying emergences (including emergent learning)
completely, no means exist to check on these answers.

[I have learnt that the Bible has a very clear answer on this. God
loves all people and wants the best for all of them, eventhough many
people are motivated by self-interest and hate God. Thus God has made
sure that what He has revealed from above do also emerge from below -
the rocks will bear witness to those relevations.]

Thus I have to accept that emergent learning does happen among some
people.

Should I deny only myself emergent learning, then it means that I
would never be able to answer that question myself. This means that I
will have to depend on other people to supply me with an answer. Some
will try genuinely to provide me with an answer which will be
beneficial to my own interests.

But the others will provide me with an answer which will benefit only
their own interests. Since their own interests are their highest
priority, they will even invoke God to further their own interests.
These people use the "Does God hates everyone who XYZ?" type of
question with great efficiency to gain absolutely control over the
lives of others. They will never relinquish their control by a "Since
God loves you, you may ....".

I have to accept that if I my own interests are important to me - if
I love myself - then I can learn emergently. If I love all fellow
humans as I love myself, then emergent learning can also happen among
all fellow humans. It has to happen at least in smaller
organisations, known as learning organisations, before it can happen
for humanity as such.

But why does emergent learning not happen all the time among all
people (including me)? Some of the answer has already emerged within
me. Although I want to tell you about it, I also have to tell you
that you can learn emergently the answer yourself.

I will shoot myself in the foot by this last sentence "I also have to
tell you that you can learn emergently the answer yourself" if you
have not learnt it yourself and merely accepts my answer.

> I have problems to get informations for myself when I ask "what can I
> learn from the story of Adam & Eve". But that's a different topic....

Yes, it is a different topic. I can think of three questions.
* How should I interpret all human creations (including literature)?
* How should I interpret all human creations claiming a divine
relevation?
* How should I interpret the Bible?

With respect to the first question, there is a fundamental belief
that humans are completely free to follow whatever interpretation in
order to find the best interpretation possible. As Gotthard Guenther
in "Dieser Substanzverlust des Menschen." (1950)
<http://www.techno.net/pcl/substanz.htm> has put it:
* Der unloesbare Gegensatz von Freiheit und Praedestination ist
* das metaphysische Grundproblem, das den Menschen der magischen
* Welt bewegt hat, und in ihm erscheint er sich selbst essentiell
* zweideutig als Pneumatiker oder Psychiker. Als Pneumatiker ist er
* frei, als Psychiker hingegen ist er vollkommen determiniert.
(Ragner, many thanks for the pointer to Gotthard Guenther)

However, as soon as we accept that "entropy production" also happens
in the mind and the spiritual world it leads to, then that absolute
freedom becomes relative to what "entropy production" allows.

> >Prigogine thinks in the same direction by showing that all
> >living systems are dissipative self-organising systems. The converse is
> >not true. i.e. there are dissipative self-organising systems which are
> >not living systems. However, those dissipative self-organising systems do
> >not have the ability (autopoiesis) to reproduce themselves by making self
> >a progeny.
>
> Yes, Maturana / Varela say the same. All autopoietic systems have
> dissipative structures but not all dissipative organized systems are
> autopoietic. I will read an introduction of dissip.structures soon. What
> do you recommend more, "order out of chaos", "end of certaitny" or the one
> with Nicholais ?

Ragner, I would recommend "Order out of Chaos" on dissipative
self-organising systems, although it has very little on autopoiesis.
On the other hand, literature on autopietic systems have very
little to say on antropy production and dissipation as its first
manifestation. But I want to recommend especially to you Erich
Jantsch (1980) "The self-organising universe" Oxford: Pergamon Press.
I have an idea that he will speak more directly to your way of
thinking.

> I really like your explanation how you bring passion into student's
> learning-life.
>
> I am practicing it in a close way with a NLP technique. I go into states
> of trances where I dig out a picture where I loved learning. Then I
> describe the pic very exactly with all submodalities (don't know if its a
> common word in ENglish). Then I compare it with the descriptions of my
> learning-picture where I got bored or frustrated and correct the last one.
> I just change important controllers (which have influence on my emotions)
> which make my movie or pic.

Yes, if there is one myth we should get rid of, is that an emergence
will happen on the first try. There is a wonderful German proverb
which says that "trying goes over learning".

Best wishes

-- 

At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za

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