The Cynefin Centre

The Cynefin Centre – Also via Ton, who reports on the KM Europe Conference where Dave Snowden of IBM’s Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity spoke – creating a new, emergent simplicity for the on-demand-era, working in un-ordered systems known as contextual complexity provides both pragmatic and conceptual capability for the people aspects of the on-demand age, in which we no longer need to sacrifice effectiveness on the altar of efficiency. All a bit IBM consultant speak, but actually touching on a key issue.

Good phrase – no longer need to sacrifice effectiveness on the altar of efficiency.
It’s not all a numbers and scientific logic game. Efficiency may appear objective and easy to measure, but effectiveness is about real quality in its widest sense.

Now where did I read that quote about putting arty types in charge of science ?

Seem’s Ton is onto a rich seam here – he also blogged about Dave Weinberger’s Small Pieces, Loosley Joined, from which I also picked up the marvellous expression … Undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings in a world of pure connection. World of pure connection = On-demand era perhaps ?

Ton quotes Rorty on Catch-22

Ton quotes Rorty on Catch-22Ton Zijlstra‘s post “Wrong Vocabulary” includes a quote from Rorty, which is another good statement of my Catch-22 [Quote] It reminds me of American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty who stated that it is not possible to argue the pragmatist case with the vocabulary of Platonian dichotomies, the very thing it aims to replace. The Platonian vocabulary simply is not fitted out for this. [Unquote]

Paraphrase
Rational logic is not (entirely) useful when dealing with humans,
and is particularly useless when trying to explain or justify why.

In fact Ton’s post precedes the Rorty quote with a conversation prompted by Verna Allee about social change [Quote] … change is not something you can plan, or can set goals in and then work towards them …. being able to gain understanding of social issues and conventions in an organisation may well be the first step in working towards (evolutionary) change …. the combination of design and social change implicitly contains the wish to make social change a controlleable process …. there is no such control, nor is it needed …. we can work towards change, but we’ll never be sure of the outcome. [Unquote] reminds me not only of my MBA thesis on the subject of organisational cultural change, but also that quote from Northrop [Quote] the basic paradox of our time [is that] “sound” theory tends to destroy the state of affairs it aims to achieve [Unquote] (His scare quotes, not mine). As good a statement of the Catch-22 as any I’ve heard.

Verna Allee takes much the same line as myself about not wasting time with traditional logical arguments [Quote] Winning the uphill battle [against command and control management mentality] would merely amount to showing how the ‘new’ fits in with the ‘old’. The thing is: it doesn’t, and it doesn’t have to either. [Unquote] This is very Tom Peters too, as in Ready, Fire, Aim.

Owen Barfield’s Poetic Diction

Just read Barfield’s Poetic Diction, originally published in 1928, when he was 30. This Weslyan University Press edition has a 1973 Foreword by Howard Nemerov, as well as an original 1928 Preface, and 1952 Preface and a 1972 Afterword all by Barfield.

I can see why people recommended I look at Barfield after Pirsig, Northrop and Lakoff. One particular angle of my own thesis is strongly re-inforced. Knowledge is about evolutionary psychology (spooky to pick up the Pinker link below at this precise moment). This is evident in etymology and in figures of speech of all kinds. Metaphor one way or another is the main component of this development of knowledge and meaning. Some extracts that resonated …

Evoking Maitland, he says [Quote p29] If law is the point where life and logic meet, perception is the point where life and imagination meet. [Uquote]

Paralleling the Maslow / Pirsig ideas of layers of value, he refers to the idea that vestigial layers have “hygiene” value in supporting higher layers once their own function is fulfilled. [Quote p30] … the historical function of logical method has not been to add to the sum of knowledge. It has been to engender subjectivity – self-consciousness. Once this has been achieved …. there is no more that logic can do …. its surviving function is to prevent relapse. [Unquote]

Evoking Pirsig and Northrop, [Quote p61] The cause of [the disproportionately small historical interest in the connection between language and thought] is to be found in the fact that western philosophy from Aristotle onwards is itself a kind of offspring of logic.[Uquote]

Accepting for a moment that the subject is poetry (or poesis), where good = “pleasing” = aesthetic quality, it is interesting to note the recurring references to dynamism being the key. He uses the electrical dynamo analogy from the outset – no motion no potential output – to back-up the idea that poesis relies on novelty, juxtaposition, creativity, synthesis of new meaning, often by metaphorical means. Interesting to note that even “archaism” – going backwards etymologically, invoking lost words or lost meanings of current words, is equally creative. Right in the final concluding paragraphs, Movement. is the single word sentence that jumps off the page. Poetry, said Coleridge, is the best words in the best order, in other words, best language – ie Highest Quality.

On the active / passive, transitive / intransitive theme. [Quote p55/57] This ability to recognise significant resemblances and analogies, considered as in action, I shall call knowledge; considered as a state … I shall call it wisdom. …. With this expansion (knowledge) may remain something of a peramanent possession (wisdom), my aesthetic pleasure will still …. only accompany the actual moment of expansion [of consciousness] [Unquote]

[Quote p63] One of the first things even an amateur student discovers is that every modern language is apparently nothing but a tissue of petrified metaphors. [Unquote]

[Quote p132] Process is the making of meaning …. There is really no end to the secrets hidden behind single words …. Meaning itself can never be conveyed from one person to another – words are not bottles [See Lakoff’s rant on the conduit metaphor] [A book on the subject of meaning which discounts metaphor as non-scientific] is somehow horribly tragic … indeed the book is a ghastly tissue of empty abstractions. [Unquote]

Other reading matter.

Fritjof Capra – Tao of Physics (1975)
Fritjof Capra – Turning Point (1982)
Malcolm Gladwell – Tipping Point (2000 / 2002)
Michael Talbot – Holographic Universe (1990 / 1992)
Michael Talbot – Mysticism and the New Physics (Written 1975 / 1981 / 1993 Read already)
Fritjof Capra – Web of Life (1996)
Fritjof Capra – Hidden Connections (2002)
(Plus systems theory stuff – Lazlo, von Bertalanffy, etc.)

Pirsig and Barfield at the RMMLA

Pirsig presented to the Rocky Mountain Modern Languages Association on 13th October 1961 [see Timeline]. It seems Owen Barfield is a regular item on the RMMLA agenda.

And this is a much better Barfield link that the one I blogged earlier which is a nasty frames-base site.

Barfield – C.S.Lewis – Oxford and Cambridge

Another little synchronicity the other day. When I mentioned to someone in the Pickerell (by Magdelene in Cambridge) that Barfield was on the reading list after Northrop, they knew of the C.S.Lewis / Inklings connection I blogged earlier. I knew of the Oxford 1917 to 1924 connection when Lewis (at University College Oxford) met Barfield (Wadham College Oxford), and C.S.Lewis was subsequently Fellow of Magdelen College Oxford and English Tutor there from 1925 to 1954, following which he took up the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdelene College Cambridge and regularly occupied the sofa in the corner of the Pickerell in, until his death in 1963. Anyway, back to Barfield, before I digress too far- C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien and G.K.Chesterton lead off into strongly theistic directions very quickly.

Rough Barfield timeline.
Born 1898 and raised Muswell Hill, 6 Grosvenor Gardens.
Attended Highgate School.
At 20 (1918) joined The Royal Engineers during WW1
At 21 (1919) went (back) to Oxford, Wadham College (Met C.S.Lewis, joins the Inklings)
At 22 workig as Assistant Editor on London Weekly Newspaper
Starts to get works published / interested in Anthroposophy.
At 36 achieves B.Litt Oxon, and becomes partner in his fathers law firm.
Practising lawyer 1931 to 1959
Baptized 1948.
1964/5 Drew University. Madison, New Jersey.
Visiting professorships at various US Universities.
Moves to live in Orchard View, Kent during 1986
From 1986 until his death aged 99 on December 14th 1997, lived ay The Wallhatch, Forest Row, East Sussex.

Northrop, Barfield and Rorty

I’m that close to finishing Northrop – 20 pages maybe (Post note – Completed Northrop BTW) – so I’ve got some more reading material lined-up, already despatched from Amazon.

Richard Rorty – Philosophy and Social Hope
Richard Rorty – Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
Owen Barfield – Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning
Owen Barfield – History in English Words

Interestingly it’s taken me since late July to complete Northrop – though I did fit in George Lakoff’s Metaphors We Live By and most of Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, and a re-read of Michael Talbot’s Mysticism and the New Physics along the way. Can’t think what to say about Northrop yet, except it was worth the difficult read. Pretty much a complete history of politics, law, religion, empire, invasion and philosophy of the whole world ever in one long book, with some very tricky whole-paragraph-long sentences. Bad news is that because it was an old fragile copy of thebook, I didn’t dare annotate it like I do with all my modern paperback editions – so I’, going to have to read it again to dig out the key references. Well worth it though – what was I saying “Nothing New Under the Sun”……..