Fundamental Surprises Zvi Lanir Decision Research 1201 Oak ...
Fundamental Surprises Zvi Lanir Decision Research 1201 Oak ...
Fundamental Surprises Zvi Lanir Decision Research 1201 Oak ...
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“One of the things a scientific community acquires with a paradigm is a criterion<br />
for choosing problems that can be assumed to have solutions, while the paradigm is taken<br />
for granted. To a great extent, these are the only problems that this community will admit<br />
as scientific or encourage its members to undertake …”16 “A paradigm is an efficient<br />
instrument for solving the problems or puzzles that its paradigms defone.” 17 Leaders do<br />
not have the luxury of choosing problems that they think they know how to solve.<br />
In the nonscientific reality, fundamental and situational relearning does not<br />
overlap in their time dimensions. The development of fundamental understanding is an<br />
extended process, whereas the need to derive functional political and military lessons<br />
after a surprise is immediate. In such cases, situational thinking and incremental<br />
situational decisions may accumulate, substituting for fundamental thinking.<br />
All these factors cause the process of fundamental learning in the social domain to<br />
be longer, less direct, more vague, and more frustrating than fundamental learning in the<br />
scientific realm.<br />
E. The Process of fundamental surprise<br />
To sum up this theoretical chapter, I propose conceiving the phenomenon of<br />
fundamental surprise as a social-cognitive process. This is only one phase within this<br />
process. In this phase, outside intervention plays a major role. In all other phases, it is<br />
the “self” that is the cause and subject of the process.<br />
In the second phase, the fundamental surprise spills over the boundaries of the<br />
specific surprise event that triggered the process, to include issues that have little to do<br />
directly with that event. Rather, social and epistemological crises evolve. These crises<br />
can lead into the third phase—the fundamental learning phase.<br />
In the fourth phase, the process of morphogenesis occurs. The new perspective of<br />
self-understanding is translated into practical political-social terms. Social goals are<br />
redefined, the structure of organization is changed, and the system’s sensitivity toward its<br />
environment is recalibrated. A new requisite variety system evolves.<br />
In the fifth phase, the system seeks greater efficiency and a holistic concept of the self<br />
and the environment shifts into the requisite variety mode of dealing with the<br />
environment. The system’s thinking shifts to a problem-solving logic, and the search for<br />
self-awareness is extinguished.