Dialectics
*Dialectics was taken as the opposite of this, the comprehension of things in their connections, motions, histories and trajectories
In fact, there was always, bubbling away as an undercurrent, a yearning to transcend the limitations of mechanistic thought. Dialectics is a term which I find really useful to encapsulate this, because it somehow brings together three important currents: (1) systems theory, (2) traditional knowledge/belief, and (3) a non-mechanistic science premised on complexity
– When nature and society are seen through the lens of dialectics and systems thinking
the notion of contradiction, or the unity of opposites, defines both the essence of something, and its intrinsic propensity to change.
– When nature and society are seen through the lens of dialectics and systems thinking
In a sense, dialectics is about training the mind to operate like the natural system it in fact is: neurons form self-organising networks, the brain has no command centre, its structures are emergent from its own fabric; according to some arguments, the brain maintains itself at a point of ‘criticality’, namely the creative zone where phase transition is very close. Thus, by embracing the concept of phase transition, dialectics is tapping-into the way mind itself physically works.
– When nature and society are seen through the lens of dialectics and systems thinking
“Dialectics is the self-consciousness of the objective context of delusion; it does not mean to have escaped from that context,” writes Adorno in Negative Dialectics. “Its objective goal is to break out of the context from within.”
1. Resources
2. Elsewhere
2.1. In my garden
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