Resources for Knowledge

Chris Argyris

• Action Science, coauthored by Robert Putnam and Diana McLain Smith. Jossey-Bass 1985.
• Knowledge for Action: A Guide to Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Change, Jossey-Bass 1993.

Gregory Bateson

• Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chandler 1972.
• Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Dutton 1979.
• Angels Fear: Toward an Epistemology of the Sacred, coauthored by Mary Catherine Bateson, 1987 Macmillan.
• A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind, HarperCollins 1991, edited by Rodney E. Donaldson.
• A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson, by Peter Harries-Jones, Toronto 1995.

Alan Combs

• Radiance of Being: Complexity, Chaos and the Evolution of Consciousness

Edward de Bono

• I Am Right - You Are Wrong: From Rock Logic to Water Logic (Viking Penguin 1991)
• Parallel Thinking: From Socratic to de Bono Thinking (Viking Penguin 1994)

  from pp. 2-3

  We can take the complacent view that poverty, pollution, local wars and local chaos are the inevitable result of change and of human nature. ... If, however, we were to have doubts about this complacency (doubting complacency is a classic oxymoron) then we might get around to asking ourselves threes possible questions:

  1. Is it possible that some of our troubles are actually caused by inadequate thinking habits?
  2. Is it possible that our difficulty, and sometimes inability, to put things right is due to inadequate thinking methods?
  3. Is it possible that better thinking could make things better?

  ... The standard traditional Western thinking style was set by the famous Greek Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. ... In this book I intend to examine the adequacy of our hallowed thinking habits. The purpose is not merely to criticize, which is an easy exercise of intellect, but to suggest alternatives in those places where the traditional method seems inadequate.

Kenneth J. Gergen

• Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction, 1994 Harvard.

Susantha Goonatilake

• Evolution of Information: Lineages in Gene, Culture and Artefact, (Pinter 1991)

  from p 126:

  The information in a flow line is thus the encoding of past interactions of the flow line directly or indirectly with the environment. This information encodes a memory of past responses to the environment and is thereby a 'congealing of past history'. The information can also be seen as a partial mapping of the environment on to 'the flow lines'. The environment's current responses is always potentially ahead of the already encoded aspects of the environment. The partial coevolution of flow lines and environment is therefore by necessity potentially out of step in time. ... If a sub-culture or group has internalized within its members a wide variety of responses to the environment, this allows, in the event of changes in the environment, a variety of possible responses. The historically derived cultural elements of the flow lines are spread over a wide pool (as the 'common heritage' of the group, as past 'wisdom') and constitute a reservior of possible responses.

• Toward a Global Science: Mining Civizational Knowledge (Indiana 1998)

  from p. 8:

  If it sounds like I am accepting the "totalizing" hegemony of modern science, I am. I want to enlarge it if possible, not destroy it. I want to reach beyond the Enlightenment and the modern projects and some of their Eurocentric limitations. But the modern sciences, when taken individually, are not monolithic, ontologically and epistemologically totalizing projects. There are too many differences and even contradictions in the approaches of the different disciplines as to methodology, epistemology, and at times ontology. So science as a totalizing project is totalizing only to the extent that it is an organized skeptical attempt to gather valid knowledge. With that pursuit I am perfectly comfortable. I want only to increase the skepticism, to make it more valid, and to enlarge the catchment area.

Horst Hendriks-Jansen

• Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought, MIT 1996.

Alicia Juarrero

• Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System, MIT 1999

  from p. 260:

  We are enmeshed in a fabric of time and space, which we unravel at our peril. In part, we are the product of a complex dance between our innate endowments and an already structured physical and social environment. We are never passive in this entire process, however. Even the environment in which we are situated is itself, in part, the downstream consequence of our own upstream doings, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. As such both culturally and individually, we bear a measure of responsibility for that environment. Once we are mature and aware, we can self-consciously select the stimuli to which we will respond and that will affect who we are in the future. At that point we are as responsible for who we will become as is the environment. And once again, this is true for each of us both as members of a community and as individuals.

George Lakoff

• Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, coauthored by Mark Johnson. Basic Books 1999.

Peter M. Senge

• The Fifth Discipline : The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization

Francisco Varela

• Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living
• The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience
• Principles of Biological Autonomy
• Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, (Shambhala 1987), coauthored by Humberto R. Maturana

  from pp. 25-27:

  Therefore, underlying everything we shall say is this constant awareness that the phenomenon of knowing cannot be taken as though there were "facts" or objects out there that we grasp and store in our head. The experience of anything out there is validated in a special way by the human structure, which makes possible "the thing" that arises in the description.

  This circularity, this connection between action and experience, this inseparability between a particular way of being and how the world appears to us, tells us that every act of knowing brings forth a world. ... All doing is knowing, and all knowing is doing.

  ... Every reflection, including one on the foundation of human knowledge, invariably takes place in language, which is our distinctive way of being human and being humanly active. For this reason, language is also our starting point, our cognitive instrument, and our sticking point. ... Everything said is said by someone. Every reflection brings forth a world. As such, it is a human action by someone in particular in a particular place.

  ...

  This bringing forth of knowledge is commonly regarded as a stumbling block, an error or explanatory residue to be eradicated. This is why, for instance, a colored shadow is said to be an "optical illusion" and why "in reality" there s no color. What we are saying is exactly the opposite: this characteristic of knowledge is the master key to understanding it, not an annoying residue or obstacle.

• Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition (Stanford 1999)

Georg von Krogh

• Organizational Epistemology, coauthored by Johan Roos, St. Martins 1995.

Paul Watzlawick

• Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes, coauthored by Janet Beavin Bavelas and Don D. Jackson, 1967 Norton.
• How Real is Real: Confusion, Disinformation, Communication, 1976 Random House.
• The Language of Change: Elements of Therapeutic Communication, 1978 Norton.
• The Situation is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness, 1983 Norton.
• The Invented Reality: How Do We Know What We Believe We Know? (Contributions to Constructivism), 1984 Norton.

  A collection of essays:

  • "An Introduction to Radical Constructivism", Ernst von Glasersfeld.
  • "On Constructing a Reality", Heinz von Foerster.
  • "The Consequences of Causal Thinking", Rupert Riedl.
  • "Self-Fulfilling Prophecies", Paul Watzlawick.
  • "On Being Sane in Insane Places", David L. Rosenhan.
  • "Self-Reflexivity in Literature: The Example of Samuel Beckett's Novel Trilogy", Rolf Breuer.
  • "Active and Passive Negation: An Essay in Ibanskian Sociology", Jon Elster.
  • "Components of Ideological 'Realities'", Paul Watzlawick.
  • "Can an Inquiry into the Foundations of Mathematics Tell Us Anything Interesting about Mind?", Gabriel Stolzenberg.
  • "The Creative Circle: Sketches on the Natural History of Circularity", Francisco J. Varela.

• Münchhausen's Pigtail, or: Psychotherapy and "Reality": Essays and Lectures, 1990 Norton

Etienne Wenger

• Communities of Practise: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge 1998.

Margaret J. Wheatley

• a simpler way, (Berrett-Koehler 1996), coauthored by Myron Kellner-Rogers

  from p. 13:

  It is the ability to keep finding solutions that is important; any one solution is temporary. There are no permanently right answers. The capacity to keep changing, to find what works now, is what keeps any organism alive.

  from p. 14:

  Identity is the filter that every organism or system uses to make sense of the world. New information, new relationships, changing environments - all are interpreted through a sense of self. This tendency toward self-creation is so strong that it creates a seeming paradox. An organism will change to maintain its identity.

Randall Whitaker

• Self-Organization, Autopoesis, and Enterprises

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