At de Lange asked on 24th of April:
>Is it possible to transfer experience from one person to another
>person?
Let me have a try on this (incorporating ideas of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
Experiences are partly individual and partly collective. They are
individual as phenomenons and collective by means of interpretation
(understanding) and selection (didactics).
Experience takes place in given domains, which are sets of interpreted
phenomenons (like physics, music, art, mathematics, company A, industry B,
school, family...) These domains represent the state of the art sureness -
the established isomorphic relation between phenomenon and its current
symbolic representation (short: interpretation). Due to the complexity of
real phenomenons, the isomorphism will never be complete, thus collective
experience will evolve and domains and culture develop.
Articulated individual interpretation of phenomenon (personal experiences)
are judged by a field of experts, accepting or rejecting the claimed
experience. An important control on a persons experience has the field of
experts this persons believes to be relevant (engineering experts?
financial department? customer? At de Lange?).
With this, I can try to answer your question:
The transfer of experience is a process of sharing domains. The domain and
its field selects a set of typical phenomenon and directs the attention of
the scholar to associated quesitons. In a first step, by repeating the
experiences of the experts, he will become an expert himself (develop
sureness). In a second step, he may contribute to further development of
the domain by complexifying the domain (becoming-being). From physicists I
know how eager they are to repeat breakthrough-experiences and to derive
setups for new breakthrough.
At's question here can serve as an example:
The domain is "learning and creativity" and At is the field of experts.
The difficulties to publish his book proves it: Other experts reject it as
"not my domain, can't see how it contributes to the development of my
domain". I think, At's domain is a metadomain in the sense, that it may be
fruitful for other domains, especially understanding the dynamics and
mechanics of their evolution, otherwise I wouldn't spend time on it.
Asking the question whether transfer of experience is possible, At tells
us, that this question is basic to his domain and the experiences provided
by tackling this question will help mastering the domain. Yet it is still
an open question, how to connect this metadomain fruitfully to other
domains - transfer the experiences of At to another person. For the time
being, At's view is such complex, that it will take long time to develop
up to this complexity.
It is like seeding on a specific soil. And like plants, we may grow or not
and don't know why. Yet I believe that there is more adventure in it that
just letting it happen.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--Winfried Dressler <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>