Dialogue and debate

Just a brief reflection about teaching after which has been a mixed day: a great discussion with a colleague, framed by an extravagant lunch at Savoy, elation at being able to start work with some old friends on a new paper I feel strongly about, the feeling of chaos finally subsiding at work, yet saddened by the hardships encountered by two very dear friends in their careers.

But, my point was about teaching (my 2-year old daughter commented, when I came back from work today: "daddy has been working again. Daddy teaches people on how to do things"). Yesterday I had a lecture which I still feel unsure about. I have been trying to make sense of why this is.

In a nutshell, the problem seems to be that I had the feeling that I was not able to communicate with the students. I have little idea of whether what I was talking about made sense to them. The lecture, a guest lecture at HUT, was about critical viewpoints on organizational strategy. As the topic is often quite counterintuitive to many students unexposed to such ideas ("what do you mean? of course you need to have strategy!") , I found myself really pushing the topic through.

In the process, I may have forgotten that the point is not to push a topic through but to engage in a dialogue with the audience and have them engage the topic themselves. With more familiar and easily marketable topics such as strategy implementation, or whatever problem with practical or managerial relevance, it is much easier to try to locate the starting point the present students have on the topic. In situations where you have to validate the topic itself, dialogue easily becomes a debate.

Winter wonderland

Winter has finally made its presence known in the last few days. This weekend, we have been engaged in a variety of winter activities for the kids, involving sleighs being dragged around and friendly quarrels with Outi about whether it really builds character to be frozen stiff, standing in the snow.

I do prefer the snow to the dark, wet alternative when winter keeps at bay, however. Last Tuesday was a particularly memorable evening, when we were celebrating the end of an era at STRADA research program, my previous employer at a restaurant at the heart of Helsinki, overlooking the Esplanadi park. It had started to snow and the gentle evening created the perfect atmosphere for celebrating a cherished time, which had inevitably passed all of us by.

Then Yoda spoke: "Difficult to keep the horizon level, it is".

Heaven. We spent two weeks on holiday at Lanzarote. The sun. The sea. Pepper steak. Sangre de Toro. Inflatable castles for kids to jump in.

The comedy in natural phenomena

While was jogging at the beach, I suddedly became aware of waves crashing to the beach. For some reason, I felt like laughing. The sea, minding its own business, just crashing away.

Later, I realized that there was an explanation offered by two classic thinkers, Aristotle and Henri Bergson. Aristotle has famously made a classification between four kinds of causes. The two causes relevant here are the efficient cause, which accounts for why some event took place by a chain of previous events; and final (teleological) cause, which accounts for why some event took place by giving it a meaning with reference to a purpose, or a goal.


On holiday, looking at natural phenomena at length, I realized that when one accounts nature with a teleological explanation, there is a potential comical element to nature. Henri Bergson, in his analysis of laughter, noted that common to comedies is the idea of there being "something mechanical in something living". That is, human beings, whose actions are explained by final causes - intentions, beliefs, purpose - are comical if they act as if being moved by an efficient cause.

If we look at natural phenomena as if they were beings capable of final causes, they may look funny. The sea looked like a small child, fascinated with a toy, mechanically repeating a set of moves. Another funny thing was the constellation of Orion, who lay on his side.

Orion, standing erect...

The mythical figure, Orion, was a hunter, or some other powerful, male character. The stars in the night sky on the equator made it look as if orion had lain on his side. I got the distinct impression that he was drunk.

Tekla has an encounter with an inflatable castle...

Holiday paradise at dusk