On Thu, 22 Aug 1996, Bill Hendry wrote:
> Replying to LO9323 --
>
> The question that is running through my mind is can dogma and learning
> co-exist? Is this going to turn into a creationism vs. evolution type of
> debate?
These discussions are in a way timeless: here I am replying only four days
later, and it seems as though several geological ages have passed.
Doesn't look as though we've fallen to mere debate yet; maybe it won't
happen.
Here's a story: the day before I left my Michigan hometown to do graduate
work in Philosophy at Yale, I paid a farewell visit to my grandfather. We
made familial smalltalk, and then, as I stood up to leave, he embraced me
and said "Boy, don't listen to them evolutionists. You watch out for
them." Embarrassed, I nodded, and silently cursed myself days afterwards
for my spineless lack of integrity... .
He was right about something, but it wasn't the science. He couldn't
have been referring to their science; he knew nothing of the science, and
he knew that he knew nothing of the science. He'd been a simple (and
stubborn) Dutch farmer all his life, and knew his boundaries. He was
warning me against a worldview; and that he was well qualified to do
because
a) none of us can escape having one, and
b) some worldviews are better than others.
I can't help reflecting too that, although he warned me against the
evolutionists, he never actually urged me to consort with creationists.
And I never did.
As for "dogma" and "learning" -- in most religions or even simple
mythologies there's a core or kernel set of concepts and some stories or
utterances in which those concepts are embedded or given their primitive
usages. In this role, these things can't be "questioned". There's
nothing magical or incantatory or superstitious or -- heaven preserve us
-- "dogmatic" about that -- it's just a direct consequence of the role
they're playing -- it's analogous to axioms in a geometry or formal logic
system. (I said "analogous", not "identical".)
Now one of the really interesting things about these kernel concepts is
that <<because their expression doesn't change, their meaning does>>. I
recite the same Nicene creed in church today that I did forty years ago.
Almost every word and statement in it has a different meaning for me now
than it did when I was a child. I can even remember some of the insights
and other events in my life that became or engendered these changes. If
the Nicene Creed were a scientific theory, I would have had to change my
language. But it isn't, and I haven't.
Now of course LO and Systems Thinking are not religions. We don't have
congregations or priests and we don't worship anything distinctly LO-like.
But there are unquestionably some core concepts -- and even stories or
utterances, if you will -- that can profitably be construed as a central
teaching or set of insights for LO. These can grow and evolve, just
like this list. But they can't be doubted or questioned within the list;
in doing so, the list would destroy itself.
Finally -- did I promise this would be a short note? -- these core
concepts and stories *generate* the learning that's going on. It's these
basic ideas, infinitely refracted and refocussed in the experience of the
list's contributors, that inform and underlie every new posting and
thread.
Of course, it follows from such a view that none of us individually could
give perfect utterance to any of those kernel concepts. But that is a
limitation we can all live with, right?
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen jamzen@world.std.com
web residence at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
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