Dear Organlearners,
John Gunkler <jgunkler@sprintmail.com> writes:
>At, I'm accusing you of being a closet pragmatist! And now
>you're out of the closet! I welcome you to the club. Though I,
>too, don't like to label myself any kind of ###-ist, I am honest
>enough to admit that I use pragmatic principles very often in
>my thinking.
Greetings John,
As I wrote before, I am not and do not want to be a ###-ist enbracing
the philosophy of ###-ism. (For fellow learners who have not followed
the dialogue, substitute the ### by the root word for any philosophy
like "pragma", "commun", "existential" and "ideal".)
If you want to identify me as a (closet) pargmatist, so let it be. I
cannot and do not want to change your identifications. I can only
change my own and tell others about it. I would also like to show how
I do it, but we are not yet at that "Big Brother" stage of TV
technology where we can zoom in on the life of ANY other person.
Let us think about any particular ###-ism.
(1) Let us assume that someone has been able to identify all the
principles of that ###-ism.
(2) Let us assume that the ###-ism does not change revolutionary in
its principles any more.
(3) Let us assume that every body understand these principles, say 11
in number.
>From the viewpoint of creativity, these assumptions are important
because none of them actually holds. In other words, by making these
assumption, we are, as someone recently has written, dancing on the
tip of a needle.
If I now were to upheld 8 of these 11 priciples while rejecting the
other 3, does it make me a ###-ist? My own answer is no.
If I were to upheld 8 of these 11 principles as well as X of the Y
principles of another philosophy, does it make me a ###-ist? No.
Neither does it mean that I embrace the other philosophy.
And if I were to upheld all 11 of these 11 principles? My own answer
is yes, provided I do not upheld any other principles.
In other words, if I were to upheld all the principles of the
philosophy ###-ism as well as one or more principle of one or more
other philosophies, I am still not a ###-ist.
But once we drop the three assumptions above, things get much more
complex. Furthermore, there is one activity which compels us to drop
the assumptions above: LEARNING. In other words, once we begin to
learn, it might be a fine excercise to dance on the tip of a needle,
but we alo need to perfom other excercises aay form needles. Which
brings me to one of may basic tenets: to learn is to create. There is
nothing creative (1) to claim that all the principles of an ###-ism
has been indentified, (2) to give them an eternal character and (3) to
insist that they are comprehensible to all people.
However, this does not mean that someone should try to document (1)
the already articulated principles of a ###-ism (2) at a particular
point of time as (3) clearly as possible. If we don't do it, we will
not be able to think correctly about the ###-ism. In other words, we
should observe the ###-ism as careful as possible since observation is
the beginning and end of the scientific method. The scientific method
is one of the powerful methods which have been developed during the
creative course of time.
One of the things which I do when making time to read philosophy, is
to work on a "paleology" (Gr: "palaios"=old, ancient) of philosophy,
almost like the paleontology of biology -- the study of fossils of
prehistoric life forms. Its part of my general theme of study, namely
tracing the creative course of time. Obviously, the "paleology of
philosophy" cannot go so far back as fossil records of life forms. The
furthest we can bo back in the "paleology of philosophy", is
approximately 5 000 years.
What I do in this "paleology of philosophy" among other things, is to
trace the "philogeny" of modern philosophies (Gr: "philos"=loving,
fond; "genea"=race, "genesis"=beginning). In other words, what I try
to create is a developmental tree of relationships (lineage). The idea
is not to look back into the past because the creative course of time
is irreversible. The idea is to make a time shift into the past and
look from there to the future=history up to the present. This time
shift into the past is an important way to get a futuristic vision
from the present onwards. This futuristic vision is essential to
Learning Organisations.
Humans are physically mammals. It is interesting to know that the
oldest records of mammilian like creatures are from the Triassic
Period (TP). The TP refers to a GEOLOGICAL time scale, meaning a time
scale during which things CHANGE VERY SLOWLY. The TP refers to the
Mesozoic era which contains also two other periods, the Permian and
the Jurassic. I hope you have all seen the movie Jurassic Park. Now,
for the pleasant surprise, the TP followed the Permian Period (PP),
but preseded the Jurassic Period (JP)!
Although humans did not exist a couple of million years ago, their
lineage (philogeny) point back to those times. It is interesting that
the mammalia developed from the Therapsia (mammal like reptiles). The
Therapsia appeared in the middle of the PP, but became extinct at the
end of the TP. In other words, when the great dinosaurs began to roam
the earth (big crystals with bigger m), the little mammalia (small
crystals with bigger M) already began to scud between their feet. So
what did the mammals had in M which neither the therapids nor the
dinosaurs had and which caused their demise?
(The m and M refer to the Digestor model.)
Let us now think of pragmatism in the sense of the "philogeny" of
philosophies and their "paleology" (history). Pragmatism is
essentially a 20th century philosophy. By this I mean that it was
delineated only in the 20th century. Before we go any further, let us
establish a definition for pragmatism (Gr: "pragma"=practice,
"pragmatikos"=practical). Pragmatism is the doctrine that thoughts in
general and ideas in particular have value only in terms of action and
that results are the sole test for the truth of a person's beliefs.
I use the word doctrine of a special reason. I see a doctrine as a
collection of tenets which is offered for acceptance as a system of
truth and which is taught as a belief. If you carefully work through
all my contributions on the list, you will find that up to now I have
offered only two tenets. They are:
(1) Creativity is the result of entropy production.
(2) To learn is to create.
I am very hesitant to offer any further tenets simply because I have
not yet uncovered any more, although I am continually on the lookout
for a third. Furthermore, I offer them only in the sense that I have
benefitted much from them. Lastly, my learning about them is more
important than my teaching of them.
Should we compare these two tenets above with the definition of
pragmatism, we see that they both are about (1) activities and (2)
results. Thus it is reasonable to conclude that I am a pragmatist even
though I deny being one. In other words, to use your words, I am a
"closet pragmatist". But is it really the case?
The oldest book (about 4000 years old) in the Bible is Job. If we use
the definition of pragmatism and look at Job, we can easily conclude
that Job was a pragmatist. Yet he was not one because of two important
reasons. (1) Pragmatism was not known at Job's time. (2) The book Job
teaches something different than pragmatism. Another very problematic
book in the Bible is the epistle of James. Martin Luther called it the
"book of straw" (today we will say strawman) up to a few months before
his death. Why? Because even though Luther did not know pragmatism (he
lived four centuries before pragmatism), he thought that James taught
something (it was 19 centuries before pragmatism) like it. Did Martin
Luther suddenly became a pragmatist a few months before his death? Did
James really taught pragmatism? My answer is no. Should we study James
or Luther, it is clear that both of them taught somethings else of
which some of it coincided with pragmatism.
The picture which I had been trying to draw, is that the lineage of
pragmatism in human thinking can be traced back many millenia. Just
like the mammals (including humans) of today is not the rat like
creature of the Triassic Period, 20th century pragmatism was not the
philosphy of people like, for example, Job, James and Luther.
Furthermore, we as humankind is right in the middle of a spiritual
revolution very much like the one which happened approximately 2500
+/- 200 years ago in the Middle East, America and the Far East. That
revolution happened with remarkable synchronicity, even without the
aid of communication. It is happening again, but now aided by
communication so that it happens much faster and deeper. We can also
call it a "grand paradigm shift". One hundred years or two from now,
after the "grand paradigm shift", people will smile when reading about
our present demarcations, including the box "pragmatism", to sunk
people into.
So what new species is in the making of which present pragmatism will
be one of its parents? I do not know. If I knew, I would have told you
so.
But I do belief that the two tenets which I am offering, will be part
of its genetical make up. Not only is the evidence growing by the day,
but not a single piece of evidence point to the contrary. I am fully
aware that these two tenets are like aliens in a world where fashion
words like technology, change, information, performance, competance,
markets, networks, organisations, leadership, management,
collaboration, empowerment, measurement, research, artificial
intelligence, knowledge management, chaos, order, complexity and even
learning organisations abound. As I see it, all these words flying
around indicates the temperature (intensity of chaos) as we approach
the edge of chaos. They do not indicate the seed crystal of the new
epoch in human development.
The word "tenet" comes from a Latin word which means "to stretch out".
It is related to an axiom. The difference is that whereas an axiom can
be included or excluded in a system of reasoning, a tenet is essential
to all reasoning. A tenet goes one step further than the fashion
words which are now flying around. It pinpoints to a relationship, a
sort of primordial pattern or arrangement. It is this arrangement
which cause the emission of the self-organising forces. In other
words, using the crystal digestor as metaphor, a tenet is the
arrangement of the building blocks into a crystal seed so that the
Madelung forces can "stretch out" from the crystal seed. Two building
blocks are not enough -- three or more are needed so that at least one
can act as mouthpiece or "umlomo" (see wholeness).
[The seven essentialities (liveness, sureness, wholeness,
fruitfulness, spareness, otherness and openness) can be thought of as
the tenets of the syntaxis (form) of creativity. But then they have to
be formulated nominally and seminally, for example
liveness="beoming-being". When they are formulated only nominally,
they are not tenets any more.]
Now let us go back to pragmatism as a twentieth century philosophy.
Why did its delineation emerged in the twentieth century and not the
previous centuries? For example, why did it not emerge in the 17th
century when the first laws about nature were being delineated? I
think that it has to do with logical positivism (making an -ism of
sureness). Scientific discoveries in physics during the late 19th and
early 20th century had to be made with an associated paradigm shift to
understand that sureness is more than merely a logical enterprise. It
also has an empirical/experential dimension to it. As soon as this was
realised, the demise of positivism led to the upcome of pragmatism.
John Dewey, for example, emphasised the role of experience and
empirical results in education.
For me personally, the greatest contribution of pragmatism was to make
people sensitive of what I may call the "functional" pattern or
diagram. This pattern can be decribed as
input => function => output
where the inputs and output are "beings" (structure, object, operand)
and the function is a "becoming" (process, method, operator).
Obviously, the mouthpiece ("umlomo") of this "functional" pattern is
nothing else than the "action" which gives value to pragmatism.
However, I will not go so far as to say that "functional" pattern is
one of the tenets of pragmatism.
If we look at all the developments in Operational Research, Managerial
Science and System Dynamics (Thinking) since WWII, all of them has
this "functional" pattern implicitly. But it does not mean that after
the "grand paradigm shift" this "functional pattern will still be
there. I personally have a hunch that the pattern is too
"being"-like -- too little harmony between "becoming-being". What I
mean by this harmony is that the pattern
input-function => object => output-function
is too "becoming" like. In fact, many people are beginning to think in
terms of this pattern, hence giving rise to a philosophy which one day
might be called "neo-pragmatism".
The role of the mouthpiece ("umlomo") in understanding cannot be
stressed enough. There is not such a thing as direct understanding.
Even our external experiences (which we consider to be directly
between us and our environment) depends on "umlomos", namely our sense
organs. Thus we have to learn, speak and think in terms of metaphors
or "umlomos".
One of the ways in which we look at organisations today, is to make
use of "successful metaphors". The "machine" was highly successful (up
to now) in the world of business. But the scientific discoveries in
physics and chemistry before WWII, led to a wave crest of scientific
discoveries in biology after WWII. This discoveries are now beginning
to find application, i.e produce results. Thus the "organism" is
beginning to replace the "machine" as the predominant metaphor in
organisations.
However, "successful metaphors" is just another way in which
pragmatism is changing the world we live in. A pragmatist might say:
"Use as the truthful metaphor that one which produce the best
results." This stress on successful results is one of the negative
outcomes of pragmatism. It is one of the greatest destroyers of
people's creativity in modern time. The more stress is put on
successful results, the less the innovative (emergent) aspect of human
creativity. Its effect in the world of learning is devastating. (Why?
We cannot eat our cake and sell it. We cannot force both ordinate
bifucartions and digestors to do one and the same thing.) I have to
help more students and pupils who fail emergent learning because of
overstressing successful results than all other things together which
jeopeardise emergent learning.
The lesson which we can learn from this is the following. Should we
model our organisations on the "organism" rather than the "machine"
because it has become the "successful metaphor", we will not get far
with our organisational learning. In fact, we will do better with the
"machine" as metaphor because it is far less complex to understand.
(See how the pragmatism filters through ;-) We rather have to try an
understand why the metaphor of the "organism" is closer to our
organisational needs than the metaphor of the "machine". To say that
it is because we ourselves are not machines, but organisms, is by far
not enough. We have to know what things make all organisms unique, i.e
different from all machines. Only then will our creativity bloom when
we use all the "creative metaphors" to us.
I can think of a number of such things. But to me the most basic
things are (1) dissipation, (2) spontaneous (3) addaptive (4)
self-organistion. But these things are not peculiar to living
organisms. They also happen in the inanimate world. (For example, the
priciple of Le Chatelier-Braun highlights the addaptiveness of the
inanimate world.) The important difference is that they are of a
higher degree in the living world. Furthermore, the diversity (range
of degrees) in them is much more in the living world than in the
inanimate world. (To use the metaphor of the crystal digestor, it is
not only the m which counts, but especially the M)
John, you write:
>Once again I submit, At, that this is essentially a pragmatic kind
>of reasoning. Don't be confused, as many are, by the use of the
>word "work." William James created confusion forevermore by
>using it. [I refer you to my extended message: Pragmatism:
LO21430.]
I used the concept "work" to bring in the order relationship
/_\F < W
of Gibbs so as to show once again that the law of entropy prodution
has much to say on pragmatism.
John, you will notice that I seldom refered in my contributions to
particular philosophies. It is to avoid creating additional confusion
(making vehicle tracks in the dessert) as you have warned above. In
trying to understand reality and the creative course of time through
it, I take notice of what the pragmatists have to say as is the case
with other kinds of philosophers. But being a "closet pragmatist" is
not my making or choice.
>I am honest enough to admit that I use pragmatic principles
>very often in my thinking.
I do not think that it is a case of dishonesty by not labeling most of
my priciples in terms of particular philosphies. In the Old South
Africa it was a favourite past-time to call people fence-sitters
("draadsitters") when they were not willing to fall into the box of a
particular philosophy, political party, church, etc. But as I have
tried to explain in the contribution on "Transdisciplinary Thinking",
this kind of thinking is necessary to see the gaps in all our
thinking. If philosophy would have been the actual foundation of our
thinking, I would rather have encouraged "transphilosophical
thinking".
In fact, my contribution above can easily be called "transphilosophy"
by those for whom philosophy is everything. But once again I have to
stress that we have to deal in our learning as individuals and
organisations with many more disciplines than only philosophy. Peter
Senge has identified five for Learning Organisations. I will go
further and say that we have to look at all the hundreds of
disciplines of Academy if we "want to have worthwhile results in our
learning" (see the pragmatism ;-). We have to meet complexity on its
own grounds, namely by becoming complex ourselves.
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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