08_Learning+for+work,+learning+for+life

=The mis-understood bow=




 * The challenge, starting point**...
 * Our own boundary encounters as a small group as a physicist, chemist and visual artist.
 * Of work and jobs and professions and how they are inter-related – how they are interpreted in different way. For some a job is a means to an end – whereas for other it is their life/their identity. I work therefore I am.

• Actually the essence of what we were talking about is the fundamental nature of knowledge, understanding of the world around us, and more importantly how this is linked to our professional identity.
 * Learning for life, learning for work?**

• Is there that much different between Science and Art? Are the differences superficial? • What is creativity – doesn’t just belong to the Arts? Similarly logic doesn’t just belong to Science • You can reach an understanding of deep meaning about the world from considering different perspectives
 * Commonalities and differences between different subject domains**

 • Through our work/our art we leave a stamp on the world • Much of what we do is narcissistic, even when we think we are doing something altruistic - we want to leave our trace on the world • How does our identity change over time, how do we reinterpret early work we have done in the light of new personal experiences
 * Personal voice**

• Flatland – we are 2-D objects in a 3-D world – a sphere, see for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWyTxCsIXE4 Dewdney http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse What you see is not what reality is – everything is through a lens and is interpreted and is limited by our physiology, our view of the world and our understanding and by the mediating artefacts we use to understand things like languages. Eskimos have lots of words for snow, Africans for sand • “The world is all that is the case”– Wittgenstein : The early Wittgenstein is epitomized in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, he provided new insights into the relations between world, thought and language and thereby into the nature of philosophy. It is the later Wittgenstein, mostly recognized in the Philosophical Investigations, who took the more revolutionary step in critiquing all of traditional philosophy including its climax in his own early work. The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems. Even if a lion could speak to us we wouldn’t understand – boundary encounter • The little prince: "On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." ("It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.") Other key thematic messages are articulated by the fox, such as: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" and "It is the time you have spent with your rose that makes your rose so important." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince • Ie adopted a post-modernistic perspective • “Making order and sense of the world and from different perspectives” – whether its art, religion or science doesn’t matter but just helps us understand the world around us and it is tied to our identity – (both now and past) • The Iris Murdoch connection!
 * Our interpretation of the world**

• Something in its original form, its prototypical version and purest form – and for us we started to think about an ‘ur identity’ of ourselves and its relationship to our practice. We are a work in progress. The ur moment – can you have an ur moment?
 * UR** **identity**

//From: On bullfighting – AL Kennedy//
 * Duende**

• Duende – meaning “goblin, imp” but also means contact with earth spirit or higher spirit also any piece of art with darkness associated with it, painfulness, sadness, catholic guilt. Private suffering a voice… Very Spanish, links with flamenco and also bullfighting – depth of soul. Knew it was something I wanted - under covered moments of beauty i.e. some understanding,  depth of beauty only comes out of suffering… the artist as a tortured soul… destruction does have an intimate relationship with creativity (and science) even if it is the destruction of the empty space that preceeds or the necessary removal of the poor forms that lead to a finished work. It can act as a description of the soul, which offers itself beautifully and cruelly to specific human beings at specific moments, but try to trap it, guarantee it take it for granted and it melts away.

• Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Oppenheimer – atomic bomb ‘I have become death. The destroyer of worlds.’ i.e. you have to suffer to take you understanding forward – the grief cycle – 7 stages and can spend more time in some phases than others • Serendipity – spooky how our collective thinking is merging • Berger – social-construction of meaning, ways of seeing http://machines.pomona.edu/marxwiki/index.php/Ways_of_Seeing • Postmodern generator link http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
 * Other references points**

• Cognition, defined concisely by psychologist Ulric Neisser, is “the activity of knowing: the acquisition, organization, and use of knowledge” (1976: 1). Casting a wide net, D'Andrade portrays the study of cognition within anthropology as concerned with “the relation between human society and human thought” (1995: 1). The implications of “the need and ability to live in the human medium of culture” (Cole 1996: 1) for an understanding of cognition is a historically enduring topic http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631225973_chunk_g97806312259737
 * Effort after meaning**

• Occam's razor, also Ockham's razor,[1] is the principle that "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." It is apocryphally attributed to 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony", "law of economy", or "law of succinctness"): entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." An alternative version Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate translates "plurality should not be posited without necessity."[2] Occam's razor, also Ockham's razor,[1] is the principle that "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." It is apocryphally attributed to 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony", "law of economy", or "law of succinctness"): entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." An alternative version Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate translates "plurality should not be posited without necessity."[2] Relates to Orwellian view of the simplicity of language
 * Occam’s razor**

• Wittgenstein - If a sign is useless it is meaningless. Language is not sophisticated enough to explain meaning and the world. Language is unsatistfactory

• Traditional work trajectory doesn’t match with those where their work is their life!! Is notion of retirement appropriate? An artist is an artist for life • Constraints of mediating artefacts we use to explain things – such as language • Currency and relevance of your identity and how that can change – lose of status within a community
 * Constraints of work contexts**

• Is life who you are? Tension - for some it is and some it isn’t • Is the question who am I and/or what do I do? • Is a life/work balance an oxymoron?
 * Life /work balance**