Dear Organlearners,
Winfried Dressler <winfried.dressler@voith.de> writes:
>>Who are the most meaningfull authors at the moment?
>AM de Lange. You are lucky! He is a contributor here on this
>list. But take care of yourself - from corresponding with At,
>you will get much more questions than answers. But any
>question is worth to work on. There are wonderfull new
>questions behind each of them.
Greetings Winfried,
Thak you for this wonderful bouquet of flowers. Not for me being the most
meaningful author, but that I have played a role in getting you to
question reality.
This is what the true teacher does -- not to answer the questions of the
learners because they are capable of answering them themselves, but to lit
the fire of inquisitiveness in the learners. Once they ask the questions
themselves, they go further than their capability to answer them by
actually aswering them. For example, Socrates knew this deep truth -- and
it led to the golden age of ancient Greece.
Einstein also had admirable insight in this deep truth -- to ask those
questions which will open a flood of related questions.
A question is the oldest (4000 years at least) and still the best "tool"
by which a person's tacit knowledge pushes towards his formal knowledge.
The reason is very simple. To be able to ask a question, the person needs
to know part of the answer. A part of this part of the answer has already
succeeded in emerging to the formal level knowledge by the very
articulating of the question. What the person now has to do, is to
articulate the rest of the part of the answer in his/her tacit knowledge.
This is where the other questions comes from.
What the person then has to do, is to increase his/her tacit knowledge
until it covers the full answer. Therefor the person needs to grow in
experential knowledge which feeds the tacit knowledge. The back action of
all these questions on the experential knowledge is to guide/focus the
person's creativity to acquire the necessary experiences. It need not be
original experiences. It can be "data mining" in the original experiences
of others. Again Einstein excelled in data mining. Eventually, when the
person has grown sufficiently in experential and tacit knowledge, the
penultimate part is to articulate it into the formal answer to the
original question. And this is not an easy task. Again we can take
Einstein as witness, he often struggled desparately, but never got into
dispair.
I say penultinate phase because the last phase must also happen, namely
the emergence of the third level (formal knolwedge) into the fourth level
(sapient level). No question is ever foolish. I seldom get mad, but when
somebody judge a question to be foolish ot wrong, I see red. All questions
are wise. But some questions are definitely wiser than others. Again I can
refer you to Einstein. He knew it and he occasionaly commented on it. He
lived by this wisdom and that is why he has become one of the greatest
scientists ever.
What makes a question wiser?
Some day I may write on it. But mean while you may consider another
question related to it.
What will increase a person's power of perception?
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.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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