Crisis of Perception LO10469

Manuel Manga (0007015296@mcimail.com)
Sun, 13 Oct 96 20:02 EST

REPLY TO LO10404. Rick Karash's response to the question "Do individuals
and groups have a cognitive limitation to grasping complex systems ?"

This conversation reminded me of Peter Senge's key note presentation at
the 1992 Systems Thinking conference, which Peter called a Crisis of
Perception. In that Talk, He introduced Maturana's and Varela's work and
theory of cognition. Part of the crisis of perception is due to our
Cartesian/Newtonian world view, another is due to our lack of
understanding of our cognitive system of perception. When Rick says that
when he teaches systems thinking is like the participants are developing a
new organ of perception he is partly right. Senge in his talk used
Maturana's theory of cognition to educate us that we do not see just with
our eyes/visual organ but we also see the world through our
"distinctions". This is not commonly understood. Peter used an example of
listening to music to illustrate this point. So, when Rick is teaching
systems thinking he is introducing new distinctions through which to
observe the world and the complexity of systems. Wheatley in her keynote
talk at the SF systems conference based her talk as the shift from the
Cartesian/Mechanistic worldview to the Living systems worldview, to see
organizations as living systems not just systems. Again Wheatley borrowed
from Maturana's and Varela's work to make her point.

Manuel Manga
Organization Design Consultant
< 0007015296@mcimail.com>

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Manuel Manga <0007015296@mcimail.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>