Steve,
as a physicist I often encounter situations when strangers approach me
with those New-Age-Not-From-This-World-Dreaming eyes and want to know from
me the importance of quantum physics for their spiritual development. I
COULD feel proud about so much attention given to me and start to play the
guru. I would use some in-jargon, combining mysterious words to long
sentences, leaving them with the (good?) feeling, that they didn't
understand, but that I did and that there must be something to it. They
would adopt my language and create a ranking among themselves based on the
fluency they reached in talking about - fluff.
I suspect that you view At de Lange as such a guru and me as one of those
strangers who approached him and now trying to become fluent on fluff,
right? I check this point whenever I see your or for example John Zavakis
questioning of At de Lange on the list. I do this checking by wondering
whether I clearly can follow your reasoning and whether it hits what I
could grasp so far as At's message or not.
Reading Ken Wilbers final article in The Holographic Worldview (my
translation of the german title) was a real pleasure for me. But Ken did
not apply Occam's Razor. He just stated that applying quantum physics to
human spirit is a categorical error. The holonic structure and processes
ARE the same.
The point as I understand it is, that Ken fights the thinking in the big
web, everything connected to everything making everything equally
important und thus nothing important. He calls this attitude "flatland
holism". On the contrary a basic feature of holons is their hierarchic
structure: Human spirit is a completely different order of holons than
quantum particles - thus categorical error, the spirit is another category
than particles.
At de Lange reflects this categoricity of wholeness to which Ken Wilber is
so sensitive. With similar reasoning I have not fond a concept so far,
that is not included in the complex theory of deep creativity by At de
Lange. This is methodically close to the notion that Newtonian mechanics
is included (as the limit h -> 0) in quantum mechanics. And without
question, for the broad mass of professions, Newtons mechanics is just
fine, nothing become better by considering quantum mechanics, except that
thinking about quantum mechanics may distract someone from doing his job.
But I haven't answered your questions yet. I personally enjoy the thinking
process, the sequence of confusion and ahas. My company has noticed that I
started to approach strategical issues differently. I get the chance to
structure my work around entropy production. Although I won't take that
word in my mouth, the concepts help me to design interventions and ways to
communicate - having a look at the rate of entropy production (confusion
and ordering, bifurcations and digestion) and the essentialities and their
interconnectedness (Onsager relations). May be I am going to distort the
idea, may be I fail, may be I turn back to back up solutions (compare Fred
Nickols thoughts on Distortion of Ideas) - the complexity of the solution
should be adequate to the complexity of the problem and one should not
make an elephant of a mouse.
So you may be right to say: "When I look at this discussion, or what goes
on in any of the organizations I belong to through the lens of "entropy" I
get no new insights, no help in forwarding our work."
At least At de Lange GOT new insights - in LO22996 (response to Fred
Nickols Distortion of Ideas) At gave a good summary on how it helped him
to overcome learning disabilities. Some lenses are difficult to look
through. Some lenses are inadequate to see what one wants to see. And, I
agree completely, one should be suspicious to believe that there is a
lense just because someone claimed so. Yet, you will agree that difficulty
alone cannot be a reason to apply Occam's razor.
>What would happen if we merely used Occam's razor to get rid of
>"entropy" in our discussions of human creativity and
>organizational life together?
What would happen? May be just a waste of time and effort. Let me explain:
I never understood the use of Occam's razor. I have to concentrate on what
seems to be important to me and try to make a living out of it. For me to
try to apply Occam's razor is like concentrating on what has no value for
me in order to get rid of it. Isn't this a waste of time and effort? It
never worked throughout history of mankind. Whenever people tried to weed
out misconception they find others claiming that that weeding out is the
misconception. Seems to me quite fruitless. Reminds me of trying to shovel
entropy out of a system faster than it is produced. Instead, let's use it
to create higher order - getting another step further from the physical
ground (to get back to Wilber).
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>