p.30 [Fritjof Capra quoted] Modern science has come to realise that all theories are approximations to the
true nature of Reality; and that each theory is valid for a certain range of phenomena... Thus scientists construct
a sequence of limited and "approximate" theories or "models", each more accurate [than] the previous one, but none of them
representing a complete and final account of natural phenomena.
p.41-42 Underlying what Argyris is saying, is that knowledge and effective action are co-extensive
in the sense of jointly re-enforcing each other. This is the case if the perspective that leads to that knowledge
is also the perspective that underlies the action that flows from that knowledge.
p.42 Mechanistic thinking without the perspective of holistic thinking is
like action set free from its alignment or moorings in knowledge - potentially very counter-productive.
p.42 [Kaufmann 1975 quoted] All calculation makes the calculable "come out" in the sum so as to
use the sum for the next count. Nothing counts for calculation save for what can be calculated. Any particular thing
is only what it "adds up to", and any count ensures the further progress of counting. This process is continually using up
numbers and is itself a continual self-consumption. The "coming out" of the calculation with the help of what-is counts as
the explanation of the latter's Being.
p.58 [Flemons quoted in Completing Distinctions, who in turn is quoting Wendell Berry in Home
Economics] If we are up against a mystery, then we dare act only on the most modest assumptions. The
modern scientific program has held that we must act on the basis of knowledge... but if we are up against a mystery, then
knowledge is relatively small, and the ancient program is the right one: act on the basis of ignorance. [W. Berry continues:
Acting on the basis of ignorance, paradoxically, requires one to know things, remember things - for instance, that failure
is possible, that error is possible, that second chances are desirable (so don't risk everything on the first chance), and
so on.]
[Haynes continues] In other words, in acting from ignorance we are not contaminating our
intuition (inner teaching) with our rational knowledge (outer teaching). In this strict sense, ignorance
can ultimately know more than knowledge.
p.59 For Polanyi, originality then, inter alia, comes from an ability to be able to discriminate "within"
information. I suggest that such discrimination is evidence of selecting only that which is appropriate to the theme
of the inquiry.
p.60 [Bortoft quoted] Discovery in Science is always a perception of meaning, and it could
not be otherwise. The essence of a discovery is therefore in the nonempirical factor in cognition.
p.60 [Steiner quoted] To be able to transform a specific perceptual object or group of objects in accordance
with a moral mental picture, one must have understood the laws of the perceptual picture to which one wants to give new form
or new direction.
p.61 a percept is the mental result or product of the act of perception... human action... recasts...
what is hidden as existing percepts and gives those percepts a new form.
p.65 [Bortoft quoted] When consciousness is thus restructured into an organ of holistic perception, the
mind functions intuitively instead of intellectually... [intuition] is a very clear and precise notion. Ornstein...
links it with a simultaneous perception of the whole.
p.153-154 in philosophy, the words, which capture a certain point of view, are initially merely perceived.
The initial perception then gives way to, or changes into, a state of conception as the reader comes to a comprehension
of the meaning (or at the very least validity) of what is being presented or read.
