innovations in strategy crafting: An Orbital Model of Thinking and Learning

Buckminster Fuller once described something he called “precessional learning” as learning that occurs slowly over time as our accumulated insights interact with one another (typically well beneath the level of our awareness) and find their right relationships, adjusting their orbits, as it were, around our central focus. Celebrated scholar, Mary Catherine Bateson (1995) has written wonderfully about what she calls “peripheral learning”, the sort of learning that happens when you think you’re learning something else or not even learning at all. In both cases, the learner is moving through the broad idea space surrounding the focus of his or her attentions. In both cases too, the learning surfaces unpredictably from unconscious rather than conscious process.

John’s (Cimino) version of this non-linear, indirect approach to learning is called “orbital learning” and is illustrated in the figure below. It is purposefully indirect, preferring to explore the surrounding neighborhood of ideas in order to get a feel for what might lie at the center. It seeks context, field forces, the topography of the terrain, the perspectives of other disciplines, the culture of local highways and byways – all the time cultivating a measure of intuition for that special focal point, not unlike the meanderings of a shy boy in orbit around his ‘Juliet’. Here, however, although there is plenty happening beneath the level of one’s awareness, there is a conscious strategy of enrichment of the learning field. The orbiting is deliberate and research oriented, mindfully seeking a multiplicity of perspectives on the subject of one’s fascinations.

As you will see, this orbital model of our learning process happens to be compatible with an arts-based approach to thinking and imaginative development. To better understand this, however, let’s position the arts themselves as the focal point of our orbital investigations and see what we can learn about their inner workings via this model.

In Orbit around the Arts

To begin, we need a set of enticing satellite concepts to launch into orbit around our arts focal point and serve as our catalysts. Their job will be to tease out insights and clues as they circulate through the idea space surrounding “the arts”. Here we present four concept words for this, each representing a dimension or direction of growth in our human conscious development. Their interplay will hopefully spark a few insights.

Fantasia, the Italian word for imagination (pronounced, in the Italian, fan-ta-SEE-a) borrowed famously by animator Walt Disney. Arguably, fantasia – and not formal logic – may be our most direct and potent way of knowing. Fantasia: an authentic species of knowing equivalent to the uniquely intimate knowing of an inventor or creator – personally experienced, personally grasped, personally felt. Fantasia = imaginative insight.

Coeur, the French for “heart”, from which we also derive our word for “courage”. So many noble and endearing qualities attach to this blood pumping organ: compassion, wisdom, fortitude, gentleness, intuition, the ineffable, love, passion, hope. Pascal’s classic, “The heart has reasons, which reason does not comprehend.” The heart is our portal to another species of knowing, to mystery, imagination, and yes, courage.

Apericolia, a Greek word referring to “a lack of experience of things beautiful”. The scholar Joseph Campbell once said, “Far too many of our youth, our leaders and our communities suffer from apericolia. Beauty isn’t cool, commercial or controversial anymore, or so some would have us believe.” But the arts favor beauty! Whether captured in an equation, the sweep of a symphony or the leaping of a gazelle, the arts favor what happens in the presence of beauty: joy, rapture, hope, a deeper and different knowing of ourselves and our connection with the world.

Consilience, a rare word until recently, recovered for us by biologist Edward O. Wilson in his book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Consilience – literally, a “jumping together” of knowledge across disciplines – is all about “connectivity” and the weaving together of ideas from different domains of knowledge to reveal deeper, common groundworks of explanation. Our minds delight in consilience. Our “atoms of consilience” are our metaphors. “My love is a red, red rose.” Writ large, consilience is knowledge fit together in a broad connected landscape.

Gleanings and Insights from our Orbital Journey

Hitching a ride on these satellite ideas as they encircle our focal point of the arts has yielded for many of us curious travellers gleanings and insights which include the following:

The arts bring us into direct contact with imagination, our own as well as others.

The arts jump-start a process of reflection through which we begin to ‘see’ what lies beneath the surface of things.

The arts open us to alternative perceptions both of ourselves and the world around us.

The arts challenge us to see more, to envision the “not yet” and then to work to bring it into being.

The arts connect us deeply and meaningfully to our senses as channels of perception to the outer world and as modalities of expression for our inner world.

The arts help us to feel deeply, to feel differently and to connect with one another empathically.

The arts tap the wisdom of the ages across cultures, centuries and codes of conscience.

The arts bring us face to face, eye to eye with beauty and the silent experience of awe. (The aesthetic encounter becomes one of self-recognition, an aspect and a glimmer of ourselves recognized in the beauty which has overwhelmed us. This may bring us to tears, but this is not sadness, rather joy and a more compassionate knowing of ourselves and all we love.)

The arts are imagination (fantasia), connection (consilience), beauty (apericolea), wholeheartedness (coeur).