Eyes to see (3)

[David Kerridge <dfk@rsc.co.uk>]

Some time back I started a thread called "Overcoming
Resistance". I tried to hold back my own thoughts, because
I wanted to collect as many ideas and insights as possible.
So I described only the theories I had rejected.

I am grateful for the messages which followed. Now I want
to take the theme up again, but under this new title, which (possibly)
conveys the idea better. This is where I have go to at the moment.

1 There is resistance, but it is just as much in ourselves as
   in others. We must start with ourselves if we are to help
   anyone else.

2 Frustrating though it is, it is not due to stupidity or stubbornness,
   but to real problems in grasping new concepts.

3 The Deming Philosophy is not at all unique in raising
   this kind of difficulty: it has been studied in relation to
   the basic concepts of physics, for example, which cause
   very great difficulty.

But:....

Although the Deming Philosophy raises the same problems
as other subjects that depend on unfamiliar concepts, it
raises them in a much more extreme form, for many reasons:

1  There are so many more new concepts involved

2  The new concepts are closely interwoven. You can't
    understand them one by one, as each is necessary for
    the full understanding of the others.

3 The concepts relate to much more familiar things,
   which we feel we understand already.

   For example, it does not worry us to hear that we do
   not understand atoms: we don't expect to understand
   things like that. We are worried if we are told we don't
   understand how to manages. The new ideas contradict
   what we take to be the evidence of our own eyes.

4  As with any new concept, we must experience it to
    understand it properly. But the opportunities for
    experiencing the new ideas in their proper setting are
    very limited.

The theories described in these three posts are not new:
so far as I know, they are not even controversial. But
complete agreement is rare in psychology, not because
psychologists are inept, but because of the difficulty of
the subject.

Still, I believe there is enough here to help us take action.
That is what theory is for. Even if some of this theory is
wrong, remember that "We can learn even with a wrong
theory." What matters is that we try things, study the
results, and then try again.

Dan Schwart has written on the problems of "meaningful
discourse". But if what I have tried to describe in these
three posts so far is anything like accurate, it is inevitable
that ordinary methods of discourse, or reasoning should
fail. To have successful discourse, we must have a common
language of concepts, and an agreed standard of rigour and
of evidence.

Galileo had similar problems. It is so *obvious* that the
Earth is standing still. We could feel it moving if it were
not standing still. What is more, the laws of nature,
as known at the time (due to Aristotle), conflicted with
his theory.

But many arguments, in politics or economics, suffer from
the same problems.

So now we must try to find ways to make progress in spite
of these difficulties. Thinking about them has made me
appreciate many of WED's ways of presenting ideas, which
seemed odd to me at the time.

Best wishes
David
dfk@rsc.co.uk
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