Re our finite realities

["Jean-Marie Gogue" <jmegogue@wanadoo.fr>]

On July 5th, Jim Clauson wrote :

>There have been numerous discussions about how to "reach" people with
>the Deming Philosophy.  And Deming said something about knowing where
>someone "was" in order to teach them effectively.

The same problem is facing the French speaking community indeed, and I like
your analysis, Jim, because I think that it can be applied on the other side
of the Channel as well. I urge my colleagues to give their opinion about
this post. 

You represented an individual "reality" by the image of a circle (French use
to say a potato) and the encounter of two realities by the juxtaposition of
two circles, secant or not. This makes appear the difficulty of accepting
your concepts if the difference between both gets larger.  

You also suggested a kind of reality's measurement in two dimensions (a
symbolic representation). I follow you. My impression is that, among many
characteristics of reality (the potato is in a N dimension space), an
interesting one is something that we could name "degree of acquaintance with
conceptual ideas". If we plot measurements on an horizontal axis, traders
and businessmen are on the left side (low level), scholars and scientists
are on the right side (high level).  Denizens are on the right side, of
course.

My impression is that Deming, standing at the extreme right of the axis, was
constantly holding his hand to the left side people : a very unusual
behaviour. On the contrary, famous scholars behave as if they wanted to
disgust people for their science. They isolate themselves in a small circle
of initiates. This is especially the case of Philosophy, and the story of
Charles S. Peirce (in my opinion) is the story of a man who struggled
against the arrogant philosophic set.

If we look at the left side, many people shifted to the right, thanks to
Deming and his 4 day seminars. Other people are remaining on the extreme
left, because they live in a pure logic of power. They just believe in
cooking recipes. The trouble is that CEO's of this category tend to keep
their people in the same state of mind. Should we attempt to reach them ?

I do not think so. It would be beyond us. The most efficient approach is to
reach people who are not involved too much in a logic of power.

We feel like orphans. The Deming's loud voice had shaken the citadel of the
win-lose economy, but after his death, it is hard to stand our ground. Some
offensives continue to be successful however, namely in Education.

Well. Let us come back to the issue of communication between two non-secant
realities. I believe that this endeavor can be successful (from the
viewpoint of Knowledge) if and only if both people are on the right side of
my axis. This idea was developped by Karl Popper in a famous paper that he
presented in 1972 in England : "The Framework Myth". I have only a French
translation in hand, but it would be easy to find the original paper. It
explains why the variety of frameworks in a discussion turns out to be an
opportunity for continual learners. Rather than giving you here a summary,
let me urge you to read this pleasant and helpful lecture.

Jean-Marie Gogue
President
The French Deming Association
Versailles France
jmegogue@wanadoo.fr
http://assoc.wanadoo.fr/deming/

[Moderator's Note:  Does anyone have access to this paper?]
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