There’s something intriguing about a word you almost (but not quite) understand but that which, if you did fully understand it, you suspect would do more than simply add to one’s vocabulary. Without a vocabulary we are figuratively, and literally, dumb. It is through our use of a varied language, as the case of Christopher Hitchens shows, that we win arguments, make points and, in fact, elaborate the world around us.
Right now, I’m contemplating the word “isomorphic”. It’s quite an elegant concept, used to describe a mapping of similar forms or relations.
The world is not wholly made of parts, but of systems of relations – and to understand how the world is ‘put together’ is to study the formal relations between parts, not the parts themselves. The study of parts cannot explain anything of the whole. To talk of “possession” therefore becomes a meaningless way of looking at the world.
Management must always involve the matter of relations between two people. More than involving, management must actually be defined as the relations between two or more people, or between people and things. The idea of someone being a manager in isolation from other people or from any other context is, more or less, absurd.
So what is management isomorphic to? Well, this is what I’m contemplating.
Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog 
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