The Renaissance Mob

Kodaly's circle games

To write a folksong is as much beyond the bounds of possibility as to write a proverb. Just as proverbs condense centuries of popular wisdom and observation, so, in traditional songs, the emotions of centuries are immortalized in a form polished to perfection.
~Zoltan Kodaly

Today the Hungarian town of Kecskemét is decorated with signs that read “Welcome to Kodály Town!” It was in this town, 128 years ago today, that Hungarian ethnomusicologist Zoltán Kodály was born. Kodály is special to the people of Hungary not only for being one of their most famous composers, but also for his work as champion of their heritage. Along with his friend and colleague Béla Bartók, he recorded and studied numerous Hungarian folk songs and stories to preserve them for future generations.

But Kodály was more than a musician. With a PhD in philosophy and linguistics, he was a strong believer in music as a language – a concept shared by many other musical pedagogues including Suzuki and Orff. But to Kodály music as linguistics was not just a metaphorical cliché. He saw music as a literal language, claiming “we should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound.”

Today, we’d like to make the case that Zoltán Kodály, a Renaissance Man in his own right, was also complexity scientist. Any music educators reading this post will at least be aware of “The Kodály Method,” which was actually developed after Kodály’s death by his students. Kodály himself was opposed to labeling his way of teaching music as a method, preferring the word concept. He felt it would be no less presumptuous for an individual to say they had written a folk song than a proverb. As a pioneer in the study of folk tales and song, Kodály believed great ideas – and great art – come about gradually through a process of emergence.

Another connection to complexity science is Kodály’s belief concerning the way we learn:

Singing connected with movements and action is a much more ancient, and, at the same time, more complex phenomenon than is a simple song.
~Zoltán Kodály

This idea that learning should be a whole body activity is only just beginning to get traction in the education community thanks to people like Sir Ken Robinson (see his TED talks – 2006 & 2010).

So happy birthday Kodály! And thank you for the gift – not just of music, but of the linguistics of complexity.

The following interview is in Hungarian, but if you go to YouTube, some translations are given in the comments section.

Those who follow @renaissancemob on Twitter have seen a series of tweets today with the hashtag “#dhfwrong“. You are invited to join in the discussion of David H. Freedman’s Wrong: Why experts keep failing us–and how to know when not to trust them

. We are tweeting:

quotes from the book

links related to the book

insights related to the book’s topic.

Even if you are not reading the book, you are invited to share your thoughts on the book’s main topic: Why experts keep failing us – and how to know when not to trust them.

…Just remember to use “#dhfwrong” so we can find your tweets!

Also, you may notice in our blog side-bar (to the right of this post) we’ve added “Our Favorite Blogs.” These are blogs on RM-related topics (complexity, social entrepreneurship, ect.) which are particularly interesting. To highlight just a few:

Steven Berlin Johnson – Innovation and emergence.

Onionesque Reality – Deep Learning Methods and Complex Networks.

Intuinovare – Design and Innovation.

Evasantisteban – Management and Communication

Gonna Grow Wings – Natural Emergence and Dialogue

…and more to come. Our favorite posts will be featured in the “Our Favorite Blogs” block (right). Let us know if you have a RM-related so we can subscribe!

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
~Abraham Maslow

At the 2006 TED Conference, Sir Ken Robinson shared his observation that “every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects…. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts – everywhere on earth.” He then went on to point out how today’s educational system was originally designed to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. Today, however that old hierarchy no longer works. Due to both global interconnectedness and a resulting demand for creativity, the arts (in the broadest sense) are of utmost importance. The hierarchy has been turned on its head, and the world’s education systems must to adapt to this perspective shift.

In 1992, the USDA adopted the Improved American Food Guide Pyramid (shown right) as a way for the public to better understand how to eat healthy. It showed breads and cereals as the foundation of the pyramid, with fewer fruits and vegetables, then meats and dairy and finally fats, oils and sweets – which we should eat the least of. As a result, fat-free products and synthesized sweeteners began showing up everywhere, with damaging effects to our health we are only just beginning to see. Then in 2005, the USDA decided this “one size fits all” model just wouldn’t work. So they came up with a new pyramid (shown below).

As you can see, the food groups are shown vertically. The people at the USDA felt this would better portray people’s food needs based level of physical activity. The old pyramid, while well-intentioned, was over-simplistic and may have done more harm than good.

In 1943, psychology professor Abraham Maslow proposed a “hierarchy of needs” in his paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Based on a study of the most emotionally healthy people he could find, Maslow concluded that there are five levels of needs which motivate humans to behave the way they do: Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem, Self-Actualization. Maslow believed “that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual will strongly desire (or focus motivation upon) the secondary or higher level needs.” However, like so many other hierarchies, Maslow’s might be in need of an update.

Categories and hierarchies help us in learning and understanding, but they have limits. We may like to keep the peas from touching the gravy on our plate, but it’s just not that simple. The human being is a complex system. Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef says that human needs are ontological, not hierarchical (as Maslow described). In other words, instead of clear-cut categories, human needs exist simultaneously. For instance, rather than requiring Safety as a prerequisite for Love, the two might co-exist as a combined need.

As we continue our pursuit of community renewal at the edge of chaos, we must be cautious about over-simplifying ourselves. We are complex beings: intellectually, physically and emotionally.

Sometimes it’s hard to find quality people in the mob of Twitter users. Each month we’ll suggest a user of particular interest/relevance to Renaissance Mob topics.

The “Featured Tweeter” for October 2010 is Dave Snowden (@snowded on Twitter). He is the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge, which assists companies in management practices in complex situations. As a pioneer in the field of Complex Adaptive Systems, he developed the Cynefin Framework, which applies complexity theory to management science (see embedded video below).

It is also interesting to note that Snowden, a Shakespeare enthusiast as well as a scientist, is an advocate for interdisciplinary learning. In a Q&A session at a lecture, Snowden commented,

A collection of specialists is not the same thing as a trained generalist. Now, it’s interesting – my generation in British schools was trained as generalists. So I did… all sciences at “A” level. But if we hadn’t read Shakespeare by the time we were fifteen… we were considered inadequate human beings. My children aren’t going through that. They’ve got modular education. They deal with something, they pass an exam and they forget it.

These thoughts compliment one of the main points of The Renaissance Mob: interdisciplinary learning. Snowden goes on to say how he is actively encouraging schools with MBA programs to engage in a more eclectic approach to education.

Another point of interest Snowden makes has to do with innovation. In the following video clip, he uses the Apollo 13 crisis as a case study for innovation. He makes the point that for innovation to happen, three conditions must be met:

Starvation (of Resources)

Pressure

Perspective Shift

 

Here are just a few links about Dave Snowden:

Cognitive Edge: http://www.cognitive-edge.com/

Biography: http://www.cognitive-edge.com/files/Dave-Snowden.pdf

Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Snowden

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I find it amusing that people think I’m together… because I’m the most untogether person I know. In the band, they just say, ‘Here comes chaos.’
~Bono, U2

In the past few decades, Chaos Theory, along with his “backup singers” The Fractals, has become a huge rock star. He’s created cool art, starred in movies and even dabbled in the music industry (with Brian Eno, for instance). Beyond pop culture, he has applied himself in just about every area of science there is: from medical research (studies in lung disease) to computer science (the study of complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute). In fact, the only area of study scientists have had trouble applying the Chaos Theory to is… anthropology, the study of humans. Why? The short answer might be stated simply: we’re just too darn chaotic.

You see, the name “Chaos Theory” is somewhat of a misnomer. Like all good talent agents, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot humbly admits that he did not create Chaos & The Fractals, he simply discovered them. What he was studying at the time were cotton prices in the stock market. What he found in that chaotic data were recurring patterns. In every study Mandelbrot has done since, he has begun with chaos and ended with order. But… “The Order Theory” just wouldn’t do for a rock star. It needed a stage name: “Chaos” has appeal to a …wider demographic.

So why doesn’t Chaos like to play with humans? To understand, we must go backstage and visit the Chaos “changing room.” It’s there we find that Chaos is actually a pretty neat fellow. In fact, we learn, the wild-and-crazy-guy bit is all an act (another misunderstood artists). Here are some of the consistent principles he abides by:

Highly Sensitive to Initial Conditions- Does Chaos get “butterflies” in his stomach before performing? Darn right he does! If he gets a lukewarm reception on the red carpet before the show, it will affect his performance on stage. Like most primadonnas, Chaos is temperamental. He goes by first impressions, just like the old saying, “The way it begins is the way it goes.”
Deterministic- From the very start, Chaos was destined to be a star. It was his destiny. With Chaos, those “inital conditions” we just spoke about determined everything that was to happen in Chaos’s entire life. He didn’t have a choice in the matter; his life was determined from the outset.
Recursion- Chaos likes to say “practice like you perform.” In fact, he practices constantly. His whole life is a model of each period of his life, which is a model of each set of performances, which is a model of each gig, which is a model of each song, which is a model of each “lick” he plays, which is a model of each note within the lick, which is a model of the overtone series, which is a model of… well, you get the idea.
Self-organizing/Emergent- It may seem contradictory, given what we just said about recursion, but Chaos is the king of improv. He may be recursive, but he doesn’t do much planning. He likes to say, “Things just work themselves out,” and he’s right! From chaotic beginnings his life has become organized and structured.
Intractable- If you’ve seen the mockumentary “This is Spinal Tap” you know that rock stars are difficult to manage. In fact, Chaos has burned through every manager he’s ever had. This is because he’s virtually (although not entirely) unpredictable. But that’s also why he’s a great artist. So… it’s complicated, or better yet… “complex.”

It’s a little ironic to be anthropomorphizing The Chaos Theory when it has this problem with humans we keep ignoring. Well, no more! Enter randomness, Chaos’s archrival. All the beautiful designs Mendelbrot and others have made with Chaos & The Fractals assumes the absence of random elements. Something is “random” when it has no aim or purpose. The “Mandelbrot Set” (pictured left) is computer generated with no Randomness.

Within the human life all elements of chaos are present: it’s influenced by its beginnings, it is deterministic, and it’s intractable. Into our perfectly planned lives comes Randomness. You thought Chaos was corrupting your children? Wrong! Randomness crashes “after-show” party and sends the perfectly designed Fractals in a completely different direction.

In the next few months I will be keeping a “Chaos Journal” here on the blog which will chart Chaos and Randomness in my life. (Not that my life is of any particular interest – other than being a little more chaotic that most.) This is a first step to a larger project involving more people. In fact, you’re invited to join me and make your own Chaos Journal and post your comments.

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