Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Critical Thinking and Structured Thinking

This blog is the expression of things I think about.  Some things more than others.  A variety of things that have a common thread in that they involve some degree of objective looking at conceptual social structures, and subjective observation as to how they either fail to adequately accomplish their purpose or could accomplish it with a better structure (restructuring) and how that restructuring might be done.  Generally, the natural structure of things (the hard science ordering of the world in order to manage the things in it as we have applied the Language of science to the Logic of nature to create our Structure of conceptual systems and their application to design then build material objects and systems to serve us.

The basic model is old and simple:  Science discovers the rules of order, cause and effect in  the natural world and expresses it in a language of science.  Math for example.  Engineers apply what science discovers and defines with its language to design man made object things, real and conceptual and plan for their construction.  The language of Engineering is that of Science with an added application layer of engineering architecture to create a plan schema for Builders to implement into some real physical/conceptual thing or combination of the two.  In the information age is trending more toward creating conceptual structures that result in physical structure things and therefore shifting the the relationship that has been historically to create things first and then develop the conceptual structure around it.  For example:  Planes, trains, automobiles and telephones were created and social conceptual systems were built around them.

So, what am I saying:  Conceptual social system design increasing drives physical system development to serve it to the extent that a tipping point has been passed where physical system development is not the dominating driver of social conceptual systems built around the physical things created by scientists, engineers and builders. 

I like structured novels.  "Pillars of the Earth" was about structural building.  The main character is Tom Builder.  A builder of cathedrals.  In accordance with the naming tradition he took on the last name "Builder" because that is what he did to distinguish himself from all the others named Tom.

Tom Builder built better cathedrals because the existing ones were neither structurally sound nor artistic enough (spiritually sound) to fill the user with awe through their representation of a spiritual aspect nature concept.

In order to build a better cathedral, Tom (by virtue of his intuitive nature to comprehend the science of structures as observed in the natural world) became a scientist, learned the language of science.  He also became an engineer, learning the language of engineering.  He also learned (or maybe intrinsically had) the nature of an artist.  That human nature of conceptual logic beyond physical world logic that has its own language to express itself in the creation of an artistic structure that lives in both the natural world and the conceptual creative artistic world. 

What is art?  Hey, the answer to that is beyond me (don't have much of it or talent)  but the nature of it founded is founded on the same structure of everything.  The fundamental triad:  Logic, Language, Structure.  (Subject noun word  thing,  Verb action word to implement the nature of the subject noun.  Object noun thing to receive the action of the verb).

Tom Builder was a one man band like Leonardo Da Vinci.  A Darwin of his times.

Maybe that is why I enjoyed the book so much.

Ken Follet wrote the book.  As the author he was also a one man band creating a work of art as Scientist, Engineer and Builder.

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