There is Only the Dance (T.S. Eliot)

Mijn inmiddels overleden vriend Will McWhinney formuleerde het zo: “All communications arrive as invitations to dance, whether it is via a tap on the shoulder, a question from a spouse, or a humming bird flitting into our view. And, they are never simple. They come with over-tones and under-tones. So as a massive church bell is struck, the surrounding bells receive the impetus to ring. Every generated sign is accompanied by a spectrum of related signs, some clearly harmonic, others that are so complex that we would hear them as noise. So a fine violin produces sounds unlike the electric keyboard. Whereas the richness of violin entrances, the electric monotone simply informs. It is useful to think of any message as a broadcast with its spectral components being picked up by various members of an organization or sensory receptors of an organism. Systems that are in tune communicate over the range of the spectrum. Those that are harmonically distant may only pick up the dominant tone or a few of the harmonics. The systems are coupled in either case, with many reverberations or with but a linkage or two”.

Het bevreemd me steeds maar weer dat beleidsmakers en bestuurders het fenomeen fase-vergrendeling, entrainment of coupling dat overal letterlijk te horen en te zien is niet aangrijpen om op zoek te gaan naar de redenen waarom de wetenschap een cacofonie van geluiden produceert die weinig meer weg heeft van de “harmonie van de sferen” van Pythagoras. Ik denk dat dat komt omdat iedereen zijn eigen deuntje wil blazen en niet meer kan luisteren naar de ander. Als dat wel gebeurde was er vanzelf fase-vergrendeling opgetreden.