Dark Matter

January 10, 2007

I don’t know about you, but I still get excited when I see things like this. My physics is way in the past now, but this level of almost primal discovery and understanding fascinates me. The BBC whose news item brought this to me have a wonderful phrase For astronomers, the challenge of mapping the Universe has been described as similar to mapping a city from night-time aerial snapshots showing only street light. That phrase would also apply to a lot of narrative work in organizations, and as I said yesterday, when you can start to visualize complex environments you get the equivalent (to use another BBC phrase in respect of this Hubble image) the equivalent to seeing a city, its suburbs and country roads in daylight for the first time. Of course, for many years we have known that Dark Matter exists, even thought we could not see it, we also have known that only about a sixth of the mass in the Universe is represented by ordinary matter. It’s the same in organisations. The visible stuff that gets management attention is a sixth at most. The underlying narrative structures and unarticulated culture is hidden. we are starting to discover ways to represent it, and gain perspective but its all about discovery and essential ambiguity. If we limit our vision to the conventional and the acceptable aspects of process and formal structures then we are incomplete, and our actions inadequate.

One response to “Dark Matter”

  1. […] science, our understanding of the human brain and genetics, not to mention the fundamental aspects of the Universe represents as great a paradigm shift as did the enlightenment. As a result we see […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

About the Cynefin Company

The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. We are the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
ABOUT USSUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER

Cognitive Edge Ltd. & Cognitive Edge Pte. trading as The Cynefin Company and The Cynefin Centre.

© COPYRIGHT 2024

< Prev

If the world is flat, seek out the bumpy bits

Cory Banks on the actKM forum brought my attention to this interview. In it, Tom ...

More posts

Next >

Ridicule and the Strawman

Continuing the science theme of my last post, I am grateful to P Z Myers ...

More posts

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram