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Ralph Windle’s Blog on Science & The Arts

is about some big, interconnected issues:-

The long-running Arts / Science / Two cultures Debate. Why the old clichés have to STOP...

How Creative Synthesis - the bringing together of separated (Arts/Science?) modes of thought is now top-priority for Innovation...

About Ralph Windle

Bridging the Shared Learning Gap

Each of the two cultures seems locked into its own disciplines and methods. What steps could be taken to break down this ‘lock-in’?

Lock-in is a longstanding phenomenon. When Marco Polo returned from China and told of the use of paper money, that paradigm or mental concept was simply too foreign for his own people: only metal money could be real and have value. A mindset that endured well into the next century. Consider your PC keyboard. Its layout was designed in 1873 to slow typing down, because early mechanisms jammed easily. More than 100 years later we use the same keyboard layout.

Perhaps these lock-ins have in part come about as a result of a common learning tradition, based largely on expert teacher-tell? . Thus a move to learner-directed, experiential learning (in both cultures) could be beneficial.

Surely such learner-based efforts will help to cut through typical blockages, fears, limiting beliefs and inhibitions - and more readily achieve engagement, confidence, discovery, insight and greater possibility? Surely, enlightened educators can guide learners to a curiosity about other disciplines, so that ‘or’ becomes ‘and’, ‘we and they’ becomes ‘us’? Because the starting point is often awareness. As Osho says: “I am saying that there is a simple key: awareness. You cannot believe it? How can awareness, just awareness, help when nothing else has been of help? Keys are always very small; keys are not big things. A small key can open a big lock”.

The radically changing world needs leaders in all fields who are adept at connecting ideas to opportunities, and comfortable “wandering around in unknown territory, a search for connections where there seem to be none”. (Theodore Zeldin. An Intimate History of Humanity. Vintage. London. 1998). Zeldin reports that “the most important discovery of science about fear…is that it’s physical symptoms, in terms of the chemicals produced to defend the body, differ only in degree from those of curiosity”. All sorts of fears (for example fear of failure, of lost security, of the unknown – including unfamiliar other disciplines) can be driven out by the stronger drives of curiosity, inquisitiveness. Curiosity is a key to the discovery of freedom, growth and development.

And with regard to the guiding and exploring role of the enlightened educator, the telling of stories can play an important role. Stories shared within and across disciplines. As philosopher A. C. Grayling has said, “throughout human history story-telling has been a central means of informing people about possibilities beyond their personal sphere, and inviting them to understand those possibilities better”. Story has been a part of the fabric of community since time immemorial. Stories are rooted in mythology, archetypes, experiences, confrontations and surmounting of obstacles and differences. Stories contain moods and feelings and so can capture and engage, allow mind connections and associations (the very basis of our neurology). Thus story has the power to motivate, to move, to change or reframe belief systems (negative to positive, defeat to new beginning, hurting to healing, problem to challenge) and induce states (well-being, relaxation, curiosity, contentment, determination). Indeed, the Arts and Science ‘debate’ is more about story sharing than debate.

So we say, beget co-habitation by guiding, creating awareness, exploring, expanding belief bubbles, stimulating curiosity, embracing diversity, and reverting to story.

A couple approach a therapist for marriage counseling. First the husband shares his version. The therapist nods, “You’re right.” Then the therapist listens to the wife’s version and comments. “You’re right.” There is a trainee student with the therapist, who asks, “How can you say to both the husband and to the wife, “You are right?” The therapist turns to the student and says, “You know, you too are right.”

Graham Williams.

Graham Williams is a South African based international management consultant and writer. He has just co-authored (with Dorian Haarhoff, a poet,writer and educator) an unusual book on the power of story-telling and listening -’The Halo and the Noose’. We’ll revert to that when the book is published ( by South African publisher, Graysonian Press) in December.

It has great relevance to the cross-disciplinary theme.

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