Jack,
Continuing with your analogy... the most desperate must pay to get it and
expose themselves to all sort of dangers, and complications... one better
exists, develop and care for a stable sustainable symbiosis that provides
and satisfies ones needs (while also satisfying other needs)... (the need
go beyond the physical into the psychological, and the spiritual opens a
different topic, lets just say that love can't be bought and sex without
love is just physical contact).
Couldn't agree more to "confuse the 'thing' with the 'label of the thing'
(or the map with the territory)" creates all sort of complications (and
some delusions) just as the presumption that knowledge exists outside a
mind to be grasped instead of within it to be cultivated and developed.
I found 12 terms used for 'snow' in the passage "...while most non-skiing native Southern Californians use only 2
terms--ice and snow. That does not mean that the English language only
has 2 terms. Quite the contrary, there are many more English words that
refer to different states of frozen water, such as blizzard, dusting,
flurry, frost, hail, hardpack, powder, sleet, slush, and snowflake. The
point is that these terms are rarely if ever used by people living in
tropical or subtropical regions because they hardly ever encounter frozen
water in any form other than an ice cube"(from
http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm).
For most knowledge management, the subtle distinctions and theories are
just not that important, unless they happen to have difficulties at
getting it and want to improve the odds of getting it in the future...
I hold the notion that communication (and knowledge):
diverges - when we think we get it right without the need to explore if
we got it right
converges - when we wonder if we got it right and inquire to ensure that
we get it right
Ever wonder why children learn so fast and so much? ? My guess : Children,
unlike most adults who know, keep wondering alive?
Cordially,
Esteban
------
Jack Ring
Sent by: Management Education and Development Discussion
<
MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>
01/15/2003 06:53 AM
Please respond to Management Education and Development Discussion
Knowledge is like air and sex. Not all that important -- unless you are
not
getting any.
Even if Aleuts do have 23 words for different kinds of snow (I have never
found the list), classifying air as in explicit or tacit and presuming air
can be frozen for posterity (as in Popper's Worlds 1, 2, 3) is great
recreation for theorists but doesn't do much for the other 99.99999
percent
of us.
In contrast, "Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge" by Joseph D. Novak,
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998, looks at knowledge from a utilitarian
viewpoint that brought new insights to this reader and enables discerning
those who confuse the 'thing' with the 'label of the thing' (or the map
with
the territory).
ps. I have no business relationship with Dr. Novak.
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