Self-organizing system
De Bono models memory as a surface changed by incoming information, with earlier changes shaping later patterns. Rain carving channels and hot water sculpting jelly illustrate this self-organization; they are analogies for how the order of experience can matter.
THE IDEA
Self-organizing system
One can think of a secretary actively operating a filing system, of a librarian actively cataloguing books, of a computer actively sorting out information. In de Bono’s model, the mind does not actively sort out information. The information sorts itself out and organizes itself into patterns. The mind is passive. The mind only provides an opportunity for the information to behave in this way. The mind provides a special environment in which information can become self-organizing. This special environment is a memory surface with special characteristics.
A memory is anything that happens and does not completely unhappen. The result is some trace which is left. The trace may last for a long time or it may only last for a short time. Information that comes into the brain leaves a trace in the altered behaviour of the nerve cells that form the memory surface.
A landscape is a memory surface. The contours of the surface offer an accumulated memory trace of the water that has fallen upon it. The rainfall forms little rivulets which combine into streams and then into rivers. Once the pattern of drainage has been formed then it tends to become ever more permanent since the rain is collected into the drainage channels and tends to make them deeper. It is the rainfall that is doing the sculpting and yet it is the response of the surface to the rainfall that is organizing how the rainfall will do its sculpting.
With a landscape the physical properties of the surface will have a strong effect on the way the rainfall affects the surface. The nature of the surface will determine what sort of river is formed. Outcrops of rock will determine which way the river goes.
Instead of a landscape consider a homogeneous surface onto which the rain falls. A shallow dish of table jelly would provide such a surface. If hot water falls on this jelly surface it dissolves a little bit of the jelly and when the water is poured off a shallow depression is left in the surface. If another spoonful of water is poured onto the surface near the first spoonful it will run into the first depression tending to make this deeper but also leaving some impression of its own. If successive spoonfuls of hot water are poured onto the surface (pouring each one off again as soon as it has cooled) the surface will become sculpted into a jelly landscape of hollows and ridges. The homogeneous jelly has simply provided a memory surface for the spoonfuls of hot water to organize themselves into a pattern. The contours of the surface are formed by the water but once formed the contours direct where the water will flow. The eventual pattern depends on where the spoonfuls of water were placed and in what sequence they were placed. This is equivalent to the nature of the incoming information and the sequence of arrival. The jelly provides an environment for the self-organization of information into patterns.
When to use it
In education, creating opportunities for repeated exposure to material in different contexts to allow neural pathways to self-organize.
In problem-solving, allowing ideas to incubate and connect subconsciously, trusting the self-organizing nature of the mind.
In habit formation, using the memory-surface analogy to consider how repeating an action can make it easier to repeat again.
In understanding memory and learning, using the jelly or landscape analogy to explain why sequence and context matter for pattern formation.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Landscape drainage pattern
In a landscape, rainfall forms rivulets that combine into streams and rivers. The contours of the surface, once formed, direct subsequent water flow, creating a self-organizing drainage pattern that becomes more permanent over time.
Jelly dish sculpting
When hot water is poured onto a homogeneous jelly surface, it dissolves depressions. Later spoonfuls flow into existing depressions, deepening them, sculpting a pattern determined by the sequence and location of pours, illustrating self-organization of information in a memory surface.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Think of a skill you have learned. Using the landscape analogy, how did earlier practice make some responses easier to repeat?
In what ways can you design your learning environment to facilitate the self-organization of information, such as through spaced repetition or varied contexts?
Can you recall a moment when a solution or insight emerged without conscious effort, seemingly from the organization of prior knowledge? How does this concept explain that experience?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Lateral Thinking A Textbook of Creativity (Edward de Bono)