The Nature and Application of the Daodejing | Ames and Hall (2003)

While most might read the Daodejing from beginning to end, perhaps focusing on interests might reduce cognitive load.

… there is a greater degree of coherence to the Daodejing than a first reading might suggest. Chapters are sometimes grouped around specific themes and subjects. For example,

* chapters 1 and 2 are centered on the theme of correlativity,
* chapters 18 and 19 contrast natural and conventional morality,
* 57 through 61 all begin with recommendations on proper governing of the state,
* 67 through 69 are about prosecuting war,
* chapters 74 and 75 deal with political oppression and the common people,

and so on. We have appended a thematic index that reveals at least some of such editorial organization.

Ames and Hall (2003), p. 8, editorial paragraphin added

Those looking to the Daodejing for answers may be disappointed, because it only presents more questions to be considered, perhaps like listening to a song.

… when we turn to reflect on how the selected wisdom sayings of the Daodejing function, we can assume that they, like the repertoire of songs, have a kind of unquestioned veracity that comes from belonging to the people and their tradition. We can further observe that this veracity is made corporate by a reading strategy that co-opts the reader.

Two often remarked characteristics of the Daodejing are palpable absences:
* it contains no historical detail of any kind, and
* it offers its readers no doctrines in the sense of general precepts or universalistic laws.

The required “framing” of the aphorism by the reader is itself an exercise in nondogmatic philosophizing where the relationship between the text and its student is one of noncoercive collaboration. That is, instead of “the text” providing the reader with a specific historical context or philosophical system, its listeners are required to supply always unique, concrete, and often dramatic scenarios drawn from their own experience to generate the meaning for themselves.

This inescapable process in which students through many readings of the text acquire their own unique understanding of its insights informed by their own life experiences is one important element in a kind of constantly evolving coherence. The changing coherence of the text is brought into a sharpening focus as its readers in different times and places continue to make it their own.

Ames and Hall (2003), p. 8, editorial paragraphin added

There are a variety of translations and commentaries on the Daodejing. Ames and Hall rely on the 1982 version by D.C. Lau, that is based on the Wang Bi text.

The Daodejing comes down to us today in several different versions. How do we decide which text to take as a master for our translation? [1]

[1] In this discussion of the text, we have relied heavily upon the research and sometimes speculative insights and conclusions of D. C. Lau (1982) and Robert Henricks (1989, 2000), and would refer the reader to their fuller accounts.

• Lau, D. C. (1982). Chinese Classics: Tao Te Ching. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press.
• Henricks, Robert (2000). Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Henricks, Robert (1989)). Lao-tzu Te-Tao Ching. New York: Ballantine.

Ames and Hall (2003), p. 73

In the Glossary of Key Terms, there is a major insight that the Daodejing should be read a processual, i.e. think verbs, not nouns!

There is one general point that we would make in our interpretation of this classical Chinese language. Above we have argued for a processual understanding of classical Daoist cosmology. If this account is persuasive, it means that the vocabulary that expresses the worldview and the common sense in which the Daodejing is to be located is first and foremost gerundive. Because “things” in the Daodejing are in fact active “processes” and ongoing “events,” nouns that would “objectify” this world are derived from and revert to a verbal sensibility. The ontological language of substance and essence that is sedimented into the English language tends to defy this linguistic priority, insisting upon the primacy of “the world” rather than the process of the world “worlding” and the myriad things “happening.” It is a fair observation that a careful reading of the introduction and this glossary are made necessary by the fact that our European languages can only most imperfectly “speak” the world being referenced in the Daodejing.

Ames and Hall (2003), p. 57

Reference

Ames, Roger T., and David L. Hall. 2003. Dao de Jing: A Philosophical Translation. Ballantine Books. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/3170/dao-de-jing-by-roger-t-ames-and-david-l-hall/.

#change, #chinese-philoosphy, #dao, #daodejing, #laozi, #nature

Diachronic, diachrony

Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method)

diachronic ADJECTIVE

1. Lasting through time, or during the existing period. 1857–

• 1857 The two creations—the extinct and the extant—or rather the prochronic and the diachronic—here unite.
• P. H. Gosse, Creation 87

Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233.

A borrowing from Greek, combined with an English element.

• Etymons: Greek διά, χρόνος, ‑ic suffix.
• < Greek διά throughout, during + χρόνος time + ‑ic suffix

For completeness, prochronic relates “to a period before time began:”

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If we prefer an American definition over the British, Merriam-Webster emphases “change”, citing French rather than Greek origins.

diachronic adjective

: of, relating to, or dealing with phenomena (as of language or culture) as they occur or change over a period of time

Etymology
borrowed from French diachronique, from diachronie DIACHRONY + –ique

Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic,” accessed April 10, 2024, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diachronic.

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From research into situated learning, a figure illustates the distinction between synchronic and diachonic .

A 1998 manuscript would seem to be related to a 1996 dissertation by Lynda D. Stone, that would be published as a book chapter in 2000 book Vygotskian Perspectives on Literacy Research: Constructing Meaning Through Collaborative Inquiry.

… methodologically we attempt to look at both the social practice of literacy learning and the moment-to-moment construction of that practice. As a consequence, we also use theoretical perspectives of such scholars as Bakhtin (1981), Bourdieu (1977; 1991), Foucault (1977), and Goffman (1959; 1961; 1974; 1981) to more richly understand social phenomena such as social identities, hybridity, and hierachies and power relations. in learning contexts. Thus, by integrating micro and macro analyses of learning environments, we are able to investigate the social, spatial, and temporal organizational dimensions of literacy learning practices, that is, diachronic and synchronic dimensions of activity (Gutierrez, 1993,1995; Stone,1996b). [p. 4, emphasis added]

[….]

… to understand better the relationship between literacy learning and its contexts, we examine the gestalt, or the whole practice and the history of those practices in situ. Practices are socially and culturally organized and, thus, encode a social and cultural history. Practice becomes a rich unit of analysis because practices are constituted over time by multiple activities that stretch and change. Accordingly, a focus on practice makes visible the social and cultural history of the practice, an understanding of what is being accomplished in the moment, as well as an understanding of the future goal or object of activity. In Figure 1 below, we illustrate the relationship between the history of actions and the face-to-face interactional sequences that constitute the historical nature of those actions:

Figure 1 portrays the interrelationship between the “regularized acts” of situated practices occurring in the moment and the history of actions that constitutes background meaning or source of mutual knowledge used for the social production of knowledge (Giddens, 1979).

Reference

Gutiérrez, Kris D., and Lynda D. Stone. 1998. “An Emerging Methodology for Cultural-Historical Perspectives on Literacy Learning: Synchronic and Diachronic Dimensions of Social Practice.” UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Synchronic-and-Diachronic-Dimensions-of-Social-Guti%C3%A9rrez-Stone/e43897e97ac7e064a9d92d0103bf8dec84301c86.

#change, #philosophy, #time

Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management | Cummings, Bridgman, Brown (2016)

Many who cite #KurtLewin haven’t read the original 1947/1951 writings, say @strategybuild @ToddBridgman @kgbphd with the “refreezing” part of “unfreezing → changing → refreezing” emerging in a subsequent career of an idea that can be traced genealogically and archaeologically.

Kurt Lewin is widely considered the founding father of change management, with his unfreeze–change–refreeze or ‘changing as three steps’ (CATS) (see Figure 1 …) regarded as the ‘fundamental’ or ‘classic’ approach to, or classic ‘paradigm’ for, managing change ….

Cummings, Bridgman, Brown (2016), p. 34

Figure 1. Change as three steps.

CATS has come to be regarded both as an objective self-evident truth and an idea with a noble provenance.

Cummings, Bridgman, Brown (2016), p. 34

The authors suggest going back to reread the original Lewin 1947 paper, to remove some of the distortions introduced with multiple reinterpretations.

By going back and looking at what Lewin wrote (particularly the most commonly cited reference for CATS, ‘Lewin, 1947’: the first article ever published in Human Relations published just weeks after Lewin’s death), we see that what we know of CATS today is largely a post hoc reconstruction. Our forensic examination of the past is not, however, an end in itself. Rather, it encourages us to think differently about the future of change management that we can collectively create. In that spirit, we conclude by offering two alternative future directions for teaching and researching change in organization inspired by returning to ‘Lewin, 1947’ and reading it anew.

Cummings, Bridgman, Brown (2016), p. 35

Lewin (1947) does have a subheading as “Changing as Three Steps: Unfreezing, Moving, and Freezing of Group Standards”, but doesn’t use the term “refreezing”.

Lewin never wrote ‘refreezing’ anywhere. As far as we can ascertain, the re-phrasing of Lewin’s freezing to ‘refreezing’ happened first in a 1950 conference paper by Lewin’s former student Leon Festinger (Festinger and Coyle, 1950; reprinted in Festinger, 1980: 14). Festinger said that: ‘To Lewin, life was not static; it was changing, dynamic, fluid. Lewin’s unfreezing-stabilizing-refreezing concept of change continues to be highly relevant today’. It is worth noting that Festinger’s first sentence seems to contradict the second, or at least to contradict later interpretations of Lewin as the developer of a model that deals in static, or at least clearly delineated, steps. Furthermore, Festinger misrepresents other elements; Lewin’s ‘moving’ is transposed into ‘stabilizing’, which shows how open to interpretation Lewin’s nascent thinking was in this ‘preparadigmatic’ period (Becher and Trowler, 2001: 33).

Cummings, Bridgman, Brown (2016), p. 37

The “Change as Three Steps” idea can be traced backwards (genealogically) before 1980, and then moving forward (archaeologically) after 1980.

Prior to the early 1980s, Lewin’s CATS was largely unseen; by the end of the 1980s, despite the fact that its form was anomalous to what Lewin actually wrote or likely intended for the idea, it was the basis of our understanding of a fast growing field: change management.

Cummings, Bridgman, Brown (2016), p. 41

Figure 2. CATS as a grand foundation

Kurt Lewin passed away at age 56 in 1947, with a heart attack. The 1947 paper is titled “Frontiers in Group Dynamics”. Where might he have continued research, if the untimely interruption had not occurred?

Lewin outlines many frontiers in the 1947 paper from which CATS is developed, but the two to which he devotes the most space, and which interconnect to most of the other frontiers he wrote about, are the first and the last in the article. The first is that when studying change the unit of analysis must be the group, not the individual (as psychology might direct us), the organization (as modern management studies is want to think) or wider society (as may be the want of the sociologist). The last is a call for advances in mathematics and statistics, advances that would enable multiple variables relating to individuals and groups to be analysed as a system, so as to enable the other frontiers he has outlined to be reached. Seeing these two aims as foundations for the future could, we believe, have profound effects on research and teaching now.

Cummings, Bridgman, Brown (2016), p. 51

References

Cummings, Stephen, Todd Bridgman, and Kenneth G Brown. 2016. “Unfreezing Change as Three Steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s Legacy for Change Management.” Human Relations 69 (1): 33–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726715577707. Alternate search at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=9697411470697319629

Lewin, Kurt. 1947. “Frontiers in Group Dynamics: Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science; Social Equilibria and Social Change.” Human Relations 1 (1): 5–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872674700100103. Alternate search at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=5294512717494967898.

“Unfreezing change as three steps” | Sage | March 10, 2016 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJfdmT1UtBY

#change, #change-management, #kurt-lewin, #organizational-change

Designing Cities for Change | Robert Ouellette | March 7, 2013 | meshcities.com

Information-driven change in cities, says @MESHCities, needs new skills, institutions and companies to empower people to design smart, responsive cities.  Designing for change is different challenge from designing for a static environment.

Most designers, unfortunately as yet, do not have the breadth of experience not to mention the inclination to deal with the new complexity the densely populated, information-driven city creates.

There are, however, firms who understand that they are designing for complex change they can’t fully predict but they can try to reasonably accommodate.

Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is one firm that consistently deals with the issues of massively changing cities. One of their projects is Beijing’s China Central Television headquarters. [….]

Beijing’s CCTV building is to 21st C. Beijing what the Rockefeller was to 20th C. New York: A symbol of a dynamic, upstart society intent on defining the future of civilization. Needless to say, Koolhaas’s post skyscraper un-tower was designed around the latest intelligent building systems. If this building is an example, the cities of tomorrow will be smarter, more sustainable, and different looking than the legacy cities we are leaving behind.

While Beijing’s blinding growth spurt is dazzling the international stage, what Canadian design firms take on the challenge of redesigning North America’s aging cities?

One firm is Toronto’s Brown and Storey Architects.

Like Koolhaas, Brown and Storey look beyond obvious stylistic interpretations of design. To them design as a process is not, metaphorically speaking, about making a static photograph it is about editing an interactive movie—an approach well suited to designing for change.

Take as an example the Garrison Creek project. 19th century civil engineering practices buried most of the ravines and creeks that give Toronto is unique character. Brown and Storey revived the covered Garrison Creek by making its figural presence once again part of the city experience. Hydrologic systems that shaped the city’s landscape are made visible.

It is this “embracing of systems” approach to design that gives Brown and Storey’s work its relevance in the smart, process city.  [….]

Designing for information-driven change is a demanding art and science still in its infancy. In fact, one of the challenges of creating the smart, responsive cities of the future is empowering the people who will design them. What skills will they need? What social institutions will be there to support them? What companies will help them benefit from the opportunities change creates?

From Designing Cities for Change | Robert Ouellette | March 7, 2013 | meshcities.com at http://meshcities.com/index.php/meshcities/comments/designing_cities_for_change.

#change, #cities, #design

In Studio: Recipes for Systemic Change | Brian Boyer, Justin W. Cook, Marco Steinberg | 2011 | Helsinki Design Lab, powered by Sitra

“In Studio: Recipes for Systemic Change” by @hdl2010 for @SitraFund reflects Finnish style of practical collaborative research.  Downloadable 2011 book describes findings from three Studio Challenges, and how they were conducted by the Helsinki Design Lab.

This book explores the HDL Studio Model, a unique way of bringing together the right people, a carefully framed problem, a supportive place, and an open-ended process to craft an integrated vision and sketch the pathway towards strategic improvement. It’s particularly geared towards problems that have no single owner.

It includes an introduction to Strategic Design, a “how-to” manual for organizing Studios, and three practical examples of what an HDL Studio looks like in action. Geoff Mulgan, CEO of NESTA, has written the foreword and Mikko Kosonen, President of Sitra, contributed the afterword.

The book comes in three parts:

• 1. Strategic Design
  • Includes Strategic Design as Beyond Vision, the Pursuit of Synthesis, and “Applied Optimism”
• 2. HDL 2010 studios of (i) Education Studio, (ii) Sustainability Studio, and (ii) Ageing Studio
  • Each with (a) Challenge excerpt, (b) Team, (c) Week Schedule and (d) Outcomes
• 3. HDL Studio Model How-tos
  • Includes (i) building a team, (ii) organizing a week, (iii) expected outcomes
  • Includes detailed  (i) Education Studio Challenge Brief, (ii) Sustainability Studio Challenge Brief, and (iii) Ageing Studio Challenge Brief

Full book downloadable from “In Studio: Recipes for Systemic Change” | Brian Boyer, Justin W. Cook, Marco Steinberg | 2011 | Helsinki Design Lab, powered by Sitra at http://helsinkidesignlab.org/instudio/.

Via “Architecture of Change” | Satsuko VanAntwerp | Dec. 14, 2012 | thinkthrice.ca at http://thinkthrice.ca/blog/13605618/architecture-of-change

#change, #helsinki-design-lab, #social-innovation, #strategic-design, #systemic