Nescience, Nichtwissen and Open Space

Harrison Owen hhowen at comcast.net
Sun Jan 16 04:22:23 PST 2005


Thanks Artur! As far as the 4 Principles go I failed to mention them for
several reasons. First the editor of this particular adventure had specified
20 pages, and I was already well over that - So why leave out the Fabulous
Four? Basically because in my experience they are self-evident to anybody
who cares to look. When we created the Principles (the words) it wasn't
about telling people what they should do - rather - to remind them (and make
public) what they were already doing, what was already true. Blinding
flashes of the obvious, as it were. Although it seems that for many (most
people) an occasional blinding flash of the obvious can be useful. The Law
of two feet on the other hand is a different critter. It too is a simple
acknowledgement of a pre-existing condition, but if people are not
consciously aware of it and fail to let it happen, things really get stuck -
and self-organization goes nowhere. Or in the case of this particular
interpretation of Open Space, the search for fitness just doesn't happen.
You can have a great question with all the possibility space in the world -
but if nobody uses their two feet to explore the unknown, not much will
happen.

 

Harrison

 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Drive

Potomac, Maryland   20845

Phone 301-365-2093

Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/>


Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org

Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Artur
Silva
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 12:35 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Nescience, Nichtwissen and Open Space

 

Harrison:

 

Thanks for sharing your new paper and for asking for comments. I will make
one general (and maybe provocative?) comment, and some more specific
observations that you may want to use to make complements or if later you
decide to enlarge this paper to make a full book... 

 

I will quote the text when needed, but I recall that the full paper is at
the URL you provided:


http://www.openspaceworld.com/Opening%20Space%20for%20The%20Question.htm 

 

General Comment

-------------------------

 

1. If we skip the Introduction, the rest of the paper is a new explanation
of OST, how it works and why it facilitates learning. There are many other
such explanations, from HO and from others, but I like this one very much
and the paper and link will, from now on, be part of my courses'
bibliography and this will be the first paper I will give to people (and
customers) that I want to introduce to OST.

 

The reason for this being mostly the following: you have been able to create
a very comprehensive explanation of OST, mentioning all the important
procedures and fundamentals and you were able to do that WITHOUT mentioning
the "principles" at all. As you know, I now think that the "principles" are
not needed to explain OST - so this is the best paper for my personnel use
;-) 

 

Other small observations 

-----------------------------------

 

1. The importance of the unknowing and the Question

 

I agree with almost everything, but it seems that you assume that all
knowledge comes from a previous unknowing phase. If this is so, there is
IMHO a limitation, as the main problem in what concerns learning is not what
(we know that) we ignore, but what we think that we know, indeed what we
knew for sure in the past, but is no longer right - or never was. I would
like to see some clear reference to the importance of unlearning as an
important component of almost every learning process.

 

I know nothing about Nichtwissen or Nescience, but it seems to me that it
could mean not only ignorance but also "wrong knowledge". By "wrong
knowledge" I am referring to something that was (and/or was generally
accepted) as Knowledge - until one day... The point is that humans don't
like to change from their previous assumptions (knowledge) to contradictory
"new knowledge" - they have difficulties with unlearning. 

 

2. High Learning and Genuine Community

 

The previous point can be related with two different points in your text:

 

- you refer to Khun on "High Learning" (High Science), loosing a good
opportunity to also mention that  "High Learning" always imply some
"paradigm shift" and to "learn" a new paradigm one has to unlearn a previous
one - if one is able to do that;

 

- when you refer to "Genuine Community" as a characteristic of OS and one
that mostly facilitates high learning  you could elaborate a little more,
explaining how "genuine community" helps one to "really listen" and "accept
diversity", hence enhancing learnig/unlearning. A reference to Alberoni's
metanoia could be interesting in this point as well as to Argyris' Model
1/2. 

 

- but, on the other hand, "genuine community" can also mean a community that
is "closed" around some rules and principles, making difficult some kinds of
changes that challenges the accepted culture of the community

 

Appropriate Control and Structure.

 

It is important to remember as you did that OST is self-organizing but is
not necessarily anarchy, because a structure emerges. But I would like two
things to be added. One, that without letting go from hierarchic control the
new control structure does not emerges (or emerges with much more
difficultty); and that in OST, some rules (OST rules) are defined from the
outset and guide that emergence of order.

 

Communication

 

Your references to communication (in pages 8 and 11) relates more to
transmission of information that to the "human communication" and its
difficulties and how OST (through genuine community") helps to bypass those
difficulties. It is true that the reference to "collective consciousness"
(or is it "collective unconsciousness"?) refers to the human aspects of
communication but could be more clearly related to the topic of community
(that was mentioned 7 pages before). And a reference to Watzlavicw would be
interesting. 

 

This are some humble comments that you can agree or not, use or not - the
paper is great either way. I have decided to make the comments public,
allowing for others to discuss them if they so wish.

 

Regards

 

Artur 

 

 

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