What, Why & How do we Know ?
I have so many notes, I’m not quite sure how much I’m going to write up Charles Foster ‘s Annual Mike Jackson lecture at Hull University on Tuesday 19th March “What is a Human?”. Suffice to say its scope was unsettlingly beyond expectations for our systems studies context. Excellent none-the-less. So I will, as usual, … Continue reading “A Mouse is Edgier than a Musk Ox”
I mentioned in my first ever paper about my interest in Pirsig in 2005, that I owned the same Honda Superhawk model as Robert Pirsig did on his 1968 “Zen Ride” – mine was the CB72 his was the CB77, but they are mechanically identical in all respects other than the cylinder bore which made … Continue reading “A Badly Maintained Honda CB72/77”
Just a holding post to which I will add a few links. We already know Alan Watts, a Brit, was part of the 1960’s boom in Eastern / Zen interest, Hinduism too, particularly in the US, but I’d never really considered his scholarly value in this space. Having written “The Way of Zen” in 1957, … Continue reading “Alan Watts”
Dave Snowden, of who I’m a big fan as you know, very kindly linked to a post of mine commenting on last year’s Annual Mike Jackson Lecture given by him at Hull University. [This year 2024 Mike Jackson lecture also attended by Dave Snowden] Preamble Turns out some of the things he included in last … Continue reading “The Holistic Mob”
There’s an assumed hypocrisy in saying one thing and doing another, but in reality, in complex situations, there is always some motivation. And as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, after Brunsson, there are good reasons, hypocrisy is an essential life skill anyway. The other way round, “Do as I do, not as I say” there’s an easy … Continue reading “Do as I Say, Not as I Do?”
In my own rules of discourse, I’ve always emphasised creativity & increasing understanding over analytically destructive critique & debate. This is to counterbalance, by dynamic integration, the imbalance promoted by the “critical thinkers” who shout most effectively in the dysmemic sense. In fact, the destructiveness of Aristotle’s analytic knife features in my very first (2001) … Continue reading “Against Criticism?”
24th year of blogging and, I’m repeating myself a lot as I’m marshalling main threads into (hopefully) book and/or thesis chapters. Cycling through the topics I’m finding stuff I said years ago is pretty good to go mostly unchanged. Kind of embarrassing that I didn’t pull it all together sooner. Contexts and content of current … Continue reading “Forgotten More Than I’ve Written?”
The publisher very kindly let me have 3 copies of the 50th anniversary edition of ZMM published Tuesday last week. I can confirm that as well as the new Foreword from Matt Crawford, this edition contains both the Author’s Introduction, the Afterword referring to Chris’s death and the Readers’s Guide, that were added at the … Continue reading “50th Anniversary Edition of ZMM has Arrived”