Get your own Free Home PageDeric Morris
Human history has been the history of paradigms; the major breakthroughs and upheavals have been the result (or root) of paradigm shifts. Without belaboring the point, Iıd like to note that in cultural and technological developments, it has been shifts such as nomad herders to farmers, bronze to iron, and the like, which illustrate this pattern. Hence we now speak of the Industrial Revolution, Space Age, Information Age, and so on as examples of the stages of our advancement.
The important point here is that such epochal changes as are cr edited to Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Hubble, and Einstein have famously involved changes in consensus reality; that is, the real revolution was the beginning of a whole new worldview. The knowledge base in each case was already in place; bits and pieces of the puzzle had to come together over time, until somebody came along and was able to recognize the image as a whole, as the puzzle not just the pieces, the forest, not just the trees.
When Newton said. ³If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants² it was not only false modesty on his part but also literal truth. As well as an apt metaphor indeed. The behavior of bodies in motion had been understood for centuries; the word ballistics comes from ballista, after all. But it was Newton who quantified not just the mode but the model; a new paradigm based on old data.
Likewise Einstein drew on the work of others going back through time in developing his own groundbreaking ideas. His greatest gift lay in his insight into the nature of phenomenality leaving Newtonıs clockworks behind. He himself said that his most powerful tool was imagination; where rigorous science was concerned, he referred to himself as a "fraud." Yet by the impact of Einsteinıs work we are still engaged in a paradigm which in some ways has taken us farther than any other before it.
Again, Iıve got to emphasize that what weıre dealing with here is not a new world, but a new worldview; reframing of consensus reality from a fresh perspective. Standing on the shoulders of giants indeed. The most remarkable occurrence is that the emergent collective vision results in a profound and robust change in shared reality. To put it another way, precept elicits percept.
Looked at in this context, metaphor is in reality our most effective means of connecting up the dots: sign to symbol to referent to meaning; what we think we see is what we feel we get. Or not.
Change your metaphor and you change your world. Isnıt that what all the shoutingıs always been about?
DWEEDLETUM AND DEEDLETWEE
Iıve long found it useful to conceptualize models for the notions Iım trying to work through. Several models have been proved robust enough to be worth keeping, elaborating, and sharing. The fun partıs when theyıre flexible enough to adapt to a number of applications as the need may arise. At any rate Iıd like to discuss a few of the most useful models here; they are (in order of appearance) - the Dandelion, the Surfer, the Glove, and my latest and favorite, the GUI Model.
[to be continued]
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