unresolved tensions

From: Bill Barowy (wbarowy@attbi.com)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 19:33:54 PDT


It's rather quiet online lately. Here's a quick note with a dreamy thought
about the latest reading. I'm struck with the problem of emergence vs.
inseparability, as if one must preclude the other, as if the world must be
either black or white. Keith (it was good to meet you in Nor) paints the
picture of the bitter schism with ism's on either side: i.e. " a rejection of
the individual subject", "process ontologies reject the terms of this
debate", etc. and "denying the existence of emergent properties" , "many
socioculturalists deny inseparability". This is not a critic-ism, but an
observation/interpretation. Sometimes it seems as if the brouhaha is more
about the egos of the theorists than the theories and the human condition
that the theories re-present to us.

So as i sit here typing on my linux machine, its software made with the
effort of many programmers i'll never know, but that i have come to rely
upon, I wonder what it would take to accomplish the equivalent feat with
theory. As software can be open source, it is possible to work on (and with)
"open theory"? Yeah, i did mention the email would be kind of dreamy. As
geeks dream, anyway.

So it seems the bottom line is i do understand and find value in Keith's
conclusions -- being rather practically minded (a reality forced on me by the
current state of education, no matter how much i try to leverage escape with
the tertiary artifact of theory) I'm interested in the answers to the final
questions he asks, and I'm interested in how the human sciences can provide.

What does Eugene think?

bb

-- 
...this was not just a matter of chance.  These strange things happen all the 
time...
[from the film "Magnolia"]



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