Dialogue on Leadership
Investigating the Space of the Invisible
Conversation with Professor Arthur Zajonc - Amherst, MA - October 15th, 2003 - Interview by Otto Scharmer
I. Childhood: Living in Two Worlds
I've been grateful for both of those worlds. They've given a lot to me and my family. My father was a practical person who really wanted me to be in some kind of a practical field - engineering, business, something like that.
II. Entering University in 1967
Yes, there was the Vietnam War era and the Civil Rights Movement. The University of Michigan was an active campus where a lot took place. SDS was born there.
But it just didn't seem to offer what I was looking for-a longing not just of the intellect, but also of the heart. I felt like I was going nowhere. Science was somehow an empty vessel.
IV. Journey of Discovery: "A Whole Universe Opened Up"
Then, between my sophomore and junior years, I went to Europe for the first time. It is saturated with history and culture, which the suburban Midwest lacks. We didn't even have a downtown in the town where I lived. There was no center of town, just sprawl.
So my trip was exhilarating in a way that's hard to exaggerate. A whole universe opened up.
V. What Am I Here For? Which Way Do I Go?
So I came close to dropping out. I actually got a D in a physics course. When I went to talk to that professor, he saw it as a larger, more existential question. I was able to handle the material; when I took the course again, I got an A. But it was really the question of why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life? Which way do I go? How do I organize my inner and outer activities and worlds?
VI. The Eye of the Needle and Goethean Science
I still think is that Goethe was first a very thoughtful critic of the unconscious reification of hypotheses and models.
VII. Three Stages of Goethean Science
what he called the first stage of empirical phenomena, the second stage of scientific phenomena and the third stage of pure, archetypal phenomena.
VIII. Real Knowledge is Seeing
Real knowledge is, for Goethe, a kind of seeing. It's not just opening your eyes and seeing what's around you in the naïve sense. But it's basically moving oneself inwardly to the point where one can stand before the blue of the sky, seeing it not only as simple blue but also as the co-presence or instantiation of these three factors.
IX. Two Types of Science: Distancing from or Participating in the Phenomenon
Conventional science objectifies by taking an experience and replacing it by a set of more "fundamental" objects such as atoms, molecules, interactions, and so forth. So, as opposed to the blue of the sky, physics says it's Mie scattering and the blue results from small, polarizable molecules interacting with electromagnetic fields, setting up secondary waves. This leads to a differential scattering cross-section with a dependence on the fourth power of the frequency. In this way you have an objectified account.
X. I'm Not Interested in Causality
Another important thing for Goethe is that he said, "I'm not interested in causality." We normally explain things through causal networks. The reason such-and-such takes place is because . . . So the reason for the blue sky is an electromagnetic wave that strikes the polarizable small particle. That particle oscillates and has its own accelerated charges. Those accelerated charges produce secondary waves and so on. So you give a causal account.
Observer is key, that's true. In fact, he started his color theory with the observer. In many instances, we may quibble with him concerning his notions on color, this triad. But he did study vision and color illusions, what he called physiological and psychological colors. And he was the first one to do so, in part because he valued the observer far more than did the conventional science of his day.
Goethe was pretty faithful to his own phenomenological orientation. So when he studied plants, about which I know less, or animals and physiology, he did so with the same kind of extraordinary attention to the details that he did in color. There are hundreds and hundreds of examples and sketches and all manner of careful observations Goethe made in the life sciences.
XIII. Goethe and the Third Base for Valid Cognition in Buddhism
The third form of valid cognition is direct perception, which doesn't mean just opening your eyes and seeing something. Direct perception is, in its own way, a very rigorous form of cognition. You have to be able to distinguish between illusions and the genuine artifact. But in Buddhism, the highest form of knowing occurs through a direct perceptual engagement.
XIV. Goethe, Steiner, and Contemplative Sciences
because if the morphogenetic field of Rupert Sheldrake is anything like what I think it is, it's connected to the life forces that Steiner speaks about-whose forms are constantly transforming, dynamic, and supersensible, that is not connected to the physical senses, but to the mind senses.
XV. The Epistemological Reversal
In the philosophy of science one speaks of the hypothetico-deductive method. In it one frames a hypothesis. From that hypothesis, you can make a deduction or prediction, and then you either confirm or disconfirm that deduction. That's one understanding of the way science proceeds.
In quantum physics you don't end with archetypal phenomena, because the phenomena of quantum mechanics are often imperceptible to the senses. They occur in a way and at a level that's inaccessible to sight and hearing. But one can work on the basis of valid inference beginning with electronic outputs that in turn go back to detectors of various types that are sensitive to quantum events.
XVII. The Capacity for Collective Presencing
That is the kind of thinking that must be brought into the domain of pure experience associated with imagination if one is to attain knowledge. The first level has no knowledge. The second level together with the first gives knowledge, you could say, adds knowledge to pure experience. And then that third level sets representation aside entirely; meaning arises through the co-presencing of myself and the Other. This means finding a way of being a self and, at the same time, being completely selfless.
XVIII. Varela Meets Goethe and Steiner
But then you could fall in love with this experience. And in order to make it to the next step, the next threshold, you have to let the imaginations go. Then what shows up is the activity that's behind everything you have been experiencing. But living inside that activity, then, can become a problem, can become too single-minded and a kind of preoccupation. One can be captured by this realm of experience like any other.
XIX. Most Men Are Not Good at Social Groups
At the Collective Wisdom Initiative of Fetzer, there are groups that don't have any purpose outside themselves. They are just personal inquiry groups that come together for the personal benefit of the people who show up. There's no agenda. There's no project that you accomplish. There's no study that you're doing. You bring who you are and enter into a joint exploration.
XX. The New Group Is a Group of Co-perception of the Other
I do think there's a lot to be learned and discovered from groups. It's an evolving form. Steiner talks about the royal art of the ancient, the old Masonic art of building cathedrals. He says that the new royal art will no longer be to build in materials, but rather it will be social architecture. That will be the mystery art.
XXI. A Scientist - Dalai Lama Dialogue at MIT
I've worked now with the Dalai Lama on several occasions and moderated or led conversations at four of them, if you count the MIT event. My general experience has been that in working with him, with the Buddhist scholars, and a good group of scientists, something of this nature happens to some degree.
XXII. Other Centered Leadership
They say, "You should have something you want to make happen in the world." For a long time, I was very embarrassed, because I felt I should have something, you know? Then at a certain point, I said, "Listen, I don't have anything. There's nothing I want to make happen."
Knowledge and love aren't supposed to go together in a conventional world. They're supposed to be two parts of the world that are kept separate. The geometry of our gatherings belies this view and confounds it. It says, "No, we're going to do both of these right here on this stage. And you're going to be invited in, and we're all going to experience it together."
XXIV. Developing the Selfless Self
The people were bright and fast thinkers. It was very much a kind of popcorn meeting. You know, pop, this idea! Pop, that idea! We could do this! We could do that! Boom, boom, boom. And there was no presence. In fact there was a negative presence.
Project & original website sponsored by McKinsey & Company and The Society for Organizational Learning
