{Generalisation and Specialisation [continued]}[14th October 1987]

[Redbook4:124-125][19871014:2155c]{Generalisation and Specialisation [continued]}[14th October 1987]

19871014.(2155c)

[continued]

Points which occur to me now* regarding generalisation and specialisation include the following. Generalisation is an undifferentiated approach, a seamless web; specialisation is differentiation between minds.

This distinction of modes of thought has echoes manywhere [sic]: just as the average individual starts off in childhood as a generalist, becomes in education, training and work a specialist of one sort or another, may if he rises to the top in some areas (e.g. business, politics) develop a general approach again, and will in any case become typically a generalist as an old person; so Human civilisation itself started (I presume) as a society of generalist individuals (at least within each tribe) (although the sexes have always specialised, I imagine, and to some extent the ages), and is now passing through a phase of extreme specialisation of Individuals' roles, and may be expected in line with Circle patterns to return to a finer form of generalised Society – which is what we all see when we imagine the Utopia of the future in which nobody actually seems to do any work.** for it is work, production, above all, that is associated with Specialisation: material production, which is the Manufactoral [sic] polarity, [+Mk]A~.

Even the Universe seems to operate on this pattern: starting (we are told) in an undifferentiated (or general) phase, it is proceeding though differentiation, and specialisation of its differentiating parts, to perhaps another, rarer or finer form of generalisation.

*[See last previous entry.]

**Not an impossible future, perhaps, now?

[continues]

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