Eva, thanks for your question, and Jay for the response. Eva discerned what
had been muddled in my response to Bill -- I'd been thinking of dialectics
as characteristic of thought, whether thought about material reality or
about us-in-material/social-reality. In fact, despite Jay's persuasive case
for conflictual relations among elements in any system, I'm inclined to
assert unknowability about systems we're not part of and the principles of
'life' -- a bit of mysticism? or is it humility (Hah!)
a wishful thinker is never a humble thinker
jay wrote:
>My deepest understanding of dialectics is that it embodies the insight that
>heterogeneity combined with interaction leads to change. In dynamic system
>terms, rather than as a purely philosophical argument, the issue here is
>about what happens when differences collide -- not trivial differences of
>variation on a theme, but profound differences of a kind we have never
>really been able to characterize (contradiction is certainly not the right
>condition, incommensurability may be too strong a condition). How does a
>whole hold together when it contains incompatible or antagonistic elements,
>and especially when those elements need each other, or imply each other?
>when the whole cannot resolve the conflict, but in fact arises itself out
>of this conflict? theories of emergence of higher levels of organization,
>now a cornerstone of ecological models, are direct descendants of
>philosophical dialectics (albeit by a different path than, say, historical
>materialism's).
Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183
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