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perceivable as speech and movement (Maturana, 1970, 1971; Von Foerster,
1969, 1971).
Neither of these processes can be “passed on” as we are told in phrases
like “. . . Universities are depositories of Knowledge which is passed on
from generation to generation...,”etc.,for
your
nervous activity is just
your
nervous activity and, alas, not
mine
.
No wonder that an educational system that confuses the process of cre-
ating new processes with the dispensing of goods called “knowledge” may
cause some disappointment in the hypothetical receivers, for the goods are
just not coming: there are no goods.
Historically, I believe, the confusion by which knowledge is taken as
substance comes from a witty broadsheet printed in Nuremberg in the
Sixteenth Century. It shows a seated student with a hole on top of his head
into which a funnel is inserted. Next to him stands the teacher who pours
into this funnel a bucket full of “knowledge,” that is, letters of the alpha-
bet, numbers and simple equations. It seems to me that what the wheel did
for mankind, the Nuremberg Funnel did for education: we can now roll
faster down the hill.
Is there a remedy? Of course, there is one! We only have to perceive lec-
tures, books, slides and films, etc., not as
information
but as
vehicles
for
potential information. Then we shall see that in giving lectures, writing
topics, showing slides and films, etc., we have not solved a problem, we just
created one, namely, to find out in which context can these things be seen
so that they create in their perceivers new insights, thoughts, and actions.
Relation/Predicate
Confusing relations with predicates has become a political pastime. In the
proposition “spinach is green,” “green” is a predicate; in “spinach is good,”
“good” is a relation between the chemistry of spinach and the observer who
tastes it. He may refer to his relation with spinach as “good.” Our mothers,
who are the first politicians we encounter, make use of the semantic ambi-
guity of the syntactic operator “is” by telling us “spinach
is
good” as if they
were to say “spinach is
green
.”
When we grow older we are flooded with this kind of semantic distortion
that could be hilarious if it were not so far reaching. Aristophanes could
have written a comedy in which the wisest men of a land set out to accom-
plish a job that, in principle, cannot be done. They wish to establish, once
and for all, all the properties that define an obscene object or act. Of course,
“obscenity” is not a property residing within things, but a subject-object
relationship, for if we show Mr. X a painting and he calls it obscene, we
know a lot about Mr. X but very little about the painting. Thus, when our
lawmakers will finally come up with their imaginary list, we shall know a
lot about them, but their laws will be dangerous nonsense.
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