First Principles of LO LO12111

Mnr AM de Lange (AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za)
Tue, 21 Jan 1997 12:49:53 GMT+2

Rol Fessenden wrote in LO12069
> ... there must be something that holds that organization
> together.
and
> I suggest to anyone who wnats to add anything, that these
> two principles -- shared self-evident truths and
> individual Personal Mastery -- are _necessary_ preconditions
> for a learning org as I defined it above....
>
> Any thoughts?

Dear organlearners,

Rol, thank you for a very thoughtful contribution. It warrants many
responses because it goes right to the things that matters.

By saying 'any thoughts', you have given me a blank cheque. I will use it
as follows. I will argue that what you say fits in perfectly with the
fundamental "thread" Entropy -> Creativity -> Learning. I introduced this
"thread" a few days ago with two very long responses, one to Rick and one
to Winfired. Do not worry, this response will not be as long thos two
responses.

Your term 'shared self-evident truths' is encompassed by the term
'wisdom'. Wisdom is not only about truths, but also about rights,
endeavours, etc. Wisdom have three very important properties.

1 All the 'elements' of wisdom belong to a very high order.
2 Wisdom is easily recognised by people having had much creative
experiences.
3 Wisdom is the power house to generate creative experiences.

Deep creativity (which includes human creativity) exhibits two phases, a
revolutionary (bifurcative) phase and an evolutionary (digestive) phase.
In the bifurcative phase a bare new order may become established by an
emergence, or an old order become destroyed by an immergence. This phase
happens when sufficient entropy is produced fast enough. The entropy is
produced while energy forms changes into other forms. Some of these
initial forms of energy are able to drive the changes and hence gets the
collective name 'free energy'. The free energy is derived from the mature
structures in the highest previous order. Another way to say it, is
'wisdom is the power house to generate creative experiences', specifically
new experiences. It happens in chemistry, in plants and animals and also
in the realm of human affairs.

In the digestive phase the bare new order is embodied, i.e it grows to
maturity. This means that although the free energy of the new order has a
high quality, it is still low in quantity. (To use a battery as an
example, it is high in volts, but low in amperes - the number of parallel
cells have to increase.) It is the very quality of the high order which
allows for digestive organising by feeding on what the environment has to
offer. Obviously, similar digestive systems in the enviroment which feed
in terms of a higher quality (i.e. having higher volts), do not become
prey, but predators! Only after a sufficient digestive period can the next
bifurcative period commence. Thus again, 'wisdom is the power house to
generate creative experiences', but now specifically re-experiences.

It is not only the dynamics of creativity (entropy production, chaos,
order, revolutionary and evolutionary phases) which are important to all
creativity, but also the mechanics of creativity. The mecahnics of
creativity entails the seven essentialities. If we accept that learning is
particular subset of 'creating' in which the brain, especially that of
humans, play a mojor role, then these seven essentialities is also
applicable to learning.

It is important to distinguish between the dynamics (content) of
creativity and its mechanics (form). Holism is a fine example of not
making such a distinction. Holism = wholeness + emergence. The wholeness
is an essentiality and thus a matter of mechanics while emergence is a
matter of dynamics. For this reason I use the word 'monadicity' rather
than 'wholeness' when referring to this particular essentiality in order
to maintain the distinction.

Your insistence that personal mastery is a necessary precondition to
learning point to the fact that personal mastery, i.e. creative learning,
is not possible when one or more of the essentialities are impaired. Now,
when they are impaired among some memebers of the organisation, then they
are impaired for the organisation as such. In other words, if they are
impaired for indivudual learning, then they are also impaired for
organisational (collective) learning.

In conclusion, Rol, you stress the importance of 'shared self- evident
truths' because they are the power house for organisational learning. It
is these truths which makes organisational learning spontaneous. You also
stress the importance of Personal Mastery because it checks if all the
essentialities of creativity are fully operative in a person. It is any
deficiency in these essentialities which prevents creative learning. I
have merely echoed your stress in terms of the thread "Entropy ->
Creativity -> Learning".

Best wishes
- --

At de Lange
Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za

-- 

"Mnr AM de Lange" <AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za>

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