Lectures, learning, leadership, LOs LO20080

Steve Eskow (seskow@durand.com)
Thu, 3 Dec 1998 10:10:45 -0800

Replying to LO20062 --

At says this:

>I was told quickly and in no uncertain terms that this cannot ever be
>done in any scientific undertaking. Jesus Christ is essential only for
>redemption. It made no impression on them when I replied that just as the
>commentaries of the past even our own commentaries in future ought to
>play no paradigmatic role. They are merely contributions to the ongoing
>dialogue on something far more important.
>
>Dwig, as you can see, even among Christians there are great differences.
>What interested me as a systems thinker, is why commentaries had to play
>such a decisive role in their paradigm. Except for me, the rest believe
>that knowledge is something "outside me" and that a person merely has to
>import that knowledge to become knowledgeable. Thus the role of
>commentaries are essential to obtain knowledge. The other possibility,
>namely that knowledge "inside me" is primarily a result of the emergences
>of self-organisation which then feed on information "outside me" in order
>to grow, is incomprehensible to them.

This is a misunderstanding of the nonChristian, nontheological approach to
the creation and transmission of knowledge.

Nontheological scientists do not believe that knowledge is "out there"
waiting to be "imported": indeed, all of Kuhn's work is an attempt to make
clear that science is the ongoing construction and reconstruction of
"reality". Our linguistic and material tools--telescopes, microscopes, all
of the physical and conceptual tools by which we attempt to grasp the
stuff out there--reshape continually the world they seek to describe.

And there is no evidence that Jesus or Jehovah or Buddha help in this
work, except as they fortify the scientists for the work of grasping and
reshaping the world.

Indeed, there is ample evidence that the reverse is the case: the science
of an era reshapes our picture of God. In an agricultural age God is a
shepherd; in a mechanical age he becomes the Great Watchmaker who starts
the mechanism running and keeps it running; and as each new "paradigm"
emerges God changes. The process is poignant, and at times vulgar: Bruce
Barton and others have written about Jesus as the "world's greatest
salesman," reflecting a capitalist's eye view of divinity.

Einstein, and perhaps Bohr, were Jews, evidently able to reshape the
worldview of science without the help of the Christian god.

[...quote of entire previous msg snipped by your host...]

-- 

"Steve Eskow" <seskow@durand.com>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>