Bruno:
THANK YOU for the statement:
"I would say that the Church has nothing to do with religion, science,
ethics, or even politics (in the good reading of the term), etc.
it is just manipulation by fear. Political power by authoritative argument,
when not terror." (see at the conclusion again).
I worked in my early years for the Hungarian Patent Office (in line with the
international P-law) as an infringement-researcher. The old-fox boss said:
...and you be careful to check every angle, for NOBODY invents anything new,
just reads the literature superficially....
(Not quite true).
Later I wondered in realizing the gradual epistemic enrichment of the human
mindset over the millennia, "how" do we absorb something NEW?
Is there an undetailed (raw) totality in our 'mind' and development just
dresses up certain details with relations we already interpreted? Or is
there a capability of hooking up 'novelties' and it is up to the individual
to put it into relations of fitting background-knowledge, - vs. just
missing it altogether? (which would make the difference between creative and
not).
I found 2 different types of 'creative': the "inventor" of a (?) perpetuum
mobile (joking example), and the perfecting mind to solve problems in new
ways. Patent Offices have trouble with the 2nd type, how NEW is an improved
solution? However, if it solves a problem so far unsolved, it is creative.
When Papin realized that the lid of his boiler-pot lifts to puff out steam
and returns to position for the next puff and THIS repetition of "up and
down" can be used to generate movement - that was creative. To get from
there to the rotating motion of Steveson's locomotive: it was also creative.
But how creative was Otto's combustion engine to apply a similar effect by
different conditions? I think it was also highly creative.
I could make my 38 patents because I was not learning 'deeply' enough my
math and physics and could free-up my mind from the sci. 'rules' that
explained thoroughly all the circumstances causing the problems. Most of my
ideas were results in free thinking about unusual possibilities. And some
guts to try it out - similarly in unusual ways. And: understanding outcome
in nonconventional connotations, how to apply them to a quite different
case.
Bruno, you are right: it is not 'teachable'. Example: I worked on a glue for
plywood and just heard about the fast demise of bus-tires. Knowing that my
stuff is 'wetting' aged rubber, prompted an experiment to wet the tires
with my (diluted) glue-stuff and the communal bus-company got a 30% increase
in tire-durability. How would you teach THAT?
DuPont had a researcher (Carothers) who had a crazy idea of a "stuff" and
the company let him work on it for 17 years without intermittent practical
results. The result was the invention of nylon (66 that is).
I enjoyed your treatise on medieval suppression of ideas by the Church. Just
don't you think it was all over by the advent of Reanissance: today
different ways for different aims work similarly: One of the Pittsburgh
giants bought an ingenious sand-filter patent from Hungary (I had a
tiny part in the patent) and burried it in their archives because it would
have been a competition to their widely marketed product. Free market, huh?
Have a good day
John
On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Kim Jones <kimjones.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
> On 20/03/2009, at 6:37 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> >>
> >> Creativity has been the victim of repression in western thinking
> >> since
> >> Socrates, who, along with Plato and Aristotle are the sods
> >> responsible
> >> for giving us the our critical-thinking-dominated and design-energy-
> >> deficient thinking system.
> >
> > ?
> >
>
> Perhaps I should do better. The last Renaissance revived and polished
> the methods of Socrates and the other thinkers of the pre-Roman
> universe. The way the knowledge was re-assimilated was with a heavy
> flavouring of Roman fascism. The mathematical universe of Islam and
> the pre-Islamic thinkers had to be accommodated as well. The argument
> method (not the only method of exploring a terrain of ideas) was
> perhaps in use before, but Socrates had developed it into a formidable
> procedure.
>
> I am mainly concerned with the effect of Socrates. Pythagoras and
> Plotinus and all the other guys you love are in the pantheon of
> mathematicians - they are the "Good Greeks". These guys knew how to
> ask the right questions. Socrates knew less about asking questions but
> he knew a hell of a lot about giving answers. Socrates never asked
> fishing questions. ("Fishing question": a real and honest demand for
> information; you don't know if the fish will bite, where, when etc.)
> Socrates only asked "Hunting questions". ("Hunting question": when you
> have the animal - the target - in your sights.) Socrates wanted people
> to confirm his opinions which he would hoodwink everybody into
> imagining were the morally responsible ones to hold.
>
> "You wouldn't elect your best athletes by lot now would you?"
>
> "No we wouldn't"
>
> "So why would you elect your politicians by lot?"
>
> The required response is embedded in the comparison; a fake
> comparison. The technique involves taking two really quite different
> things and making them appear the same. Its a kind of a magic trick.
> Works every time. However, there may well be excellent reasons for
> electing politicians anonymously (risk of bribery, corruption etc.)
> Pure sophistry. I love it. Aristotle was simply wrong so no need to
> bother with him anymore.
>
> But then, Socrates never set out to be a constructive thinker. He is
> nowhere as imaginative as Plotinus and Pythagoras. Socrates' purpose
> was to attack and remove 'rubbish'. Socrates will show brilliantly
> that all suggestions offered are wrong or faulty in some way. Not ONCE
> does Socrates offer a better idea. "Not My Job" rules with him. "I am
> not here to help you forge ideas I am here to help you find the true
> ideas, the ones you can trust. Its just that you have to come with the
> ideas I criticise." He seemed to believe that if you simply attack
> what is wrong, or in error, then what you are left with will be true
> and trustworthy. This has left us with our obsession with criticism.
>
> There is a remarkable paradox in how the revival of Greek argument
> thinking in the last Renaissance served a dual purpose. On the one
> hand, humanistic thinkers used the system of reason and logic to
> attack the dogma that suffocated society. On the other hand, Church
> thinkers led by Thomas Aquinas developed the same argument logic into
> a powerful way of defeating numerous heresies that were forever
> surfacing. This argument/logic type of thinking became standard in
> seminaries, universities and schools. The paradox is that Church
> thinkers and non-Church (humanistic) thinkers found equal value in the
> methods. Perhaps this is not too surprising given that the new methods
> were a clear and obvious advance on the existing ones.
>
>
>
>
> >
> >
> >> OK - so get the bloody Athenian Academy
> >> doors yanked open and let's get this thing sorted out by golly! You
> >> have great reverence for Greek thinking, Bruno - I just want to slap
> >> them all around the gills for their lack of design, their lack of
> >> creative, generative thinking energy.
> >
> >
> > You try to provoke me, I guess. I am not so much reverent with all
> > the Greeks. You know that I believe that Aristotle was wrong on
> > metaphysics, or at least responsible for the beginning of the
> > departure from rational mysticism and Platonism.
> >
> >
>
> Of course - I merely continue the triage of defective ancient Greek
> thinkers by one more Greek. Plato and Pythagoras and Plotinus and
> Euclid are all in the mathematic pantheon and above reproach (I won't
> forgive Plato the slaves or the fascination with Sparta, though). I am
> rather concerned with the legacy of Socrates though. The Greeks
> bequeathed us argument and democracy and we have wanted to keep the
> two together ever since because nobody can conceive of how to operate
> a democracy without argument. Plato gave us "the Truth" which we are
> always said to be after. So our traditional thinking system is like
> that: it is based on the search for "the truth". It was never a case
> of being in search of "the best design". Truth has to be uncovered and
> checked by logic and argument (supplemented by statistics and other
> methods). The result is a strong tendency toward negativity and
> attack; the very nadir of creativity in other words. Negativity and
> fear are seen to be a powerful way of uncovering the truth or,
> securing compliance with somebody's definition of it. Negativity and
> attack can also provide the attacker with a very seductive and
> addictive feeling of satisfaction as well. The Crusades were an
> exercise in taking all of this for a jolly walk.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> >
> >> It's all argument bloody
> >> argument.
> >
> >
> > That is what I like. I appreciate arguments. It is my way.
>
>
> What's wrong with a simple discussion? Why does there always have to
> be a winner and a loser? Why do we have to make like adversaries when
> what we want to do is share perceptions and explore a topic? Why can't
> there be as many theories about something as heads in the room? We all
> lay out our piece of the mosaic and in the end we have the Big
> Picture. I try not to confuse thinking with perception. Argument, as
> the executive function of critical (vertical) thinking lacks design
> energy. Argument makes you right, that's all. Nothing is constructed
> or created by argument. Argument was never for the purpose of
> generating new ideas. Argument was invented to weed out all the
> inferior or incorrect ideas as a way of having some confidence in what
> is probably an arbitrary conclusion locked in by the original choice
> of premises anyway. Remember, after Goedel, any argument is only as
> good as its starting premises which can never be proved from within
> the argument.
> >
> >
> >
> >> I am right sir and you are wrong sir! The truth lies with
> >> me! No sir it is you who are wrong sir!
> >
> >
> > Not at all. Once we argument, we never have to talk on who is right
> > or wrong. We let people figure out by themselves. Science is doubt
> > and doubt and doubt, and always doubt. Certainty and conviction is
> > madness. Plato never pretends to be right. He presents points of
> > view and people discussing and trying to solve problems, like "what
> > is knowledge" in the Theaetetus.
>
>
> OK - you are being very scholarly in your deployment of this word
> "argument". I do feel there is more, much more though, to the
> scientific method than just criticism and attack. A hypothesis arises
> in the first place as an act of imagination.
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> You are without merit! So what
> >> have these two guys created while yelling at each other?
> >
> > The scientific attitude, in all direction, including mystic
> > experiences. It last for 8 century, and stopped when Justinien close
> > the academy of Plato in Athen. It never really came back, although a
> > few bits survive in the middle east and bubbled out in Europa later.
> > Just a little bit. The main fundamental inquiry (theology) did
> > remain in the hand of the "authorities", making both science and
> > religion a sort of religion. We are still, and actually more and
> > more so, victim of that schizophrenia.
>
>
>
> So - there it is. Just as I say - the Church banished creativity and
> the creative interpretation of information. People were forbidden to
> use conceptual imagination in understanding data. Creativity was seen
> as evil and suspect and the work of sorcerers and witches and
> alchemists. Anybody who could "think" in the medieval period better
> have good connections in society. As soon as "thinking" came back into
> fashion at the Renaissance, the Church once again felt threatened by
> rising levels of education in society and in some very direct sense,
> this is WHY the Church invented school. To impart the "right"
> knowledge to those who had the right beliefs. We cannot underestimate
> the extent to which education today is the product of this miserable
> state of affairs.
>
> In Japan, where there was never any exposure to Hellenistic or Arabic
> or Roman influences, it turned out rather differently. The Japanese
> never wasted any time arguing about the rights and the wrongs of
> anything. The Japanese method was to encourage everyone to think how
> everything might be improved and to trial as many ideas as possible. A
> high failure rate of ideas must be envisaged in this style, but the
> result is that innovation and design-thinking is encouraged.
>
>
> K
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >
>
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Received on Fri Mar 20 2009 - 17:37:23 PDT