Insecurity => Creativity?? LO10813

Julian Macnamara (100317.2417@CompuServe.COM)
01 Nov 96 04:28:11 EST

Replying to LO10797.

Mike McMaster comments (abridged):

> One feature of Julian's summary of SFI's complexity work
> missed an important feature for the topic of creativity.
> From the depth of Julian's cover, I suspect it was missed
> due to length rather than anything else.

'Fraid not Mike, it was due to ignorance.

> That is the feature of the "genes" or "bits" or "threads" to remain
> in existence in some largely unused form and to resurface as part of
> new threads which are created. This is one of the features of
> Holland's work on recombination.

Interesting, I should be most grateful if you could give me a reference.

> Ideas (or threads) which appear to be part of an earlier chain lurk
> in the background and resurface when new threads provide new
> opportunities. The "old" ideas often occur as new when recombined
> with the new thread.

This seems to have parallels with Hagel's thinking on dialectics. Also,
with a passage by Blaise Pascal in Pensees.

"Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the
material is new. In playing tennis both players use the same ball, but one
plays it better.

I would just as soon be told that I have used old words. As if the same
thoughts did not form a different argument by being differently arranged,
just as the same words make different thoughts when arranged differently!"

It also underpins the comments you made in an earlier post on the use of
language and practices as the key to structural couplings in human
organisations.

<snip>

> This implies that ideas do not die out even though, the pathways of the ones
> which are effective deepen or strengthen with use. But, then they too lose
> strength or "die out" and still remain in the background to resurface.

In my seminars, I always advise people to look for ideas / knowledge which
could be new, old - but whose time has now come, "crystalizers",
"triggers", or those that can be used to reject or modify existing ideas.

Thanks, as ever, for your insights.

Best wishes.

Julian

Julian Macnamara
Glandore Associates
100317,2417@compuserve.com
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/glandore>

-- 

Julian Macnamara <100317.2417@CompuServe.COM>

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