Subjectivity and language LO10710

jack hirschfeld (jack@his.com)
Sat, 26 Oct 1996 12:28:33 -0400

Replying to LO10622 --

Thanks, Mike for your thorough and, as usual, challenging response to my
posting. Indeed, we are very close in our thinking, as I have discovered
every time I asked for help in understanding your point of view - and I
might add that my thinking has changed somewhat in the course of the
ongoing dialogue [and of course you're right, I could never say WHEN "I
changed my mind" :-)]. So when you conclude:

>I agree completely on everything that Jack adds to the conversation from
>this point on.
>
>> But I must ask: If the bones need to be
>> manipulated, or if a surgical procedure is required, will the physician do
>> this, or will his hands?
>
>This question reveals the agreement and, I think, the point of departure
>in the specifics. I approach the question from the point of view that it
>is and/both and that I'll say (use the construct) what appears most
>useful. In some instance it will be "the hands" and in some instances it
>will be "the physician" and in both of these instances I will be aware
>that I've chosen a construct that will not hold up as a complete
>separation even then.
>
>For example. If I'm instructing student surgeons to observe a master
>surgeon on bone setting, I might instruct them to observe the hands "as
>hands". While at one moment this might be the most instructive focus for
>most, I will be aware that they are missing other factors that can be
>observed only at the level of "physician" and that all will need to be
>observed and integrated for a physician to appear where there was only a
>student.
>
>I will probably judge that the student is a physician when they can
>observe the whole "in one sitting".

Of course, this completely and accurately reflects my own view, and I am
also "with you" in the evaluation piece (how to gauge when the student
transits to physician) which captures the concept of personal mastery in
an unfamiliar and extremely useful way.

It remains for me to say that if the master surgeon himself were the
instructor, his purpose in asking the students to watch his hands would be
to point out how a *surgeon* successfully intervenes to improve or restore
the patient's health, and not how his *hands* do it.

>There Jack - are we still friends?

More so than ever, I dare say. ...and, I must add, in ways that language
cannot capture! :-)

--

Jack Hirschfeld All the lonely people, where do they come from? jack@his.com All the lonely people, where do they belong?

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