Victor,
I also found the url's you provided to be very useful, thank you for
them. I am intrigued by the connection you make between aspects of
Salthe's thinking and Hegelian dialectics. I sense potential for combining
aspects of complexity theory with dialectical materialism. I am interested
in your insights on how Salthe's hierarchy theory could be related to
cultural historical activity theory, as well as to dialectical
materialism. A paper I found by Wolfgang Hofkirchner on the
internet Emergence and the Logic of Explanation: An Argument for the Unity
of Science at
http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/igw/menschen/hofkirchner/papers/InfoScience/Emergence_Logic_Expl/echo.html
seems to have much to offer in regards to emergence theory and dialectical
materialism. Another line of inquiry that has similarities with hierarchy
theory that I would like to understand better, Ethel Tobach's integrative
levels (from Needham, about 1937), strikes me as also relevant. Back to
George Novack, I also see parallels in these theories with his work on the
sociological or historical materialist theory Novack refers to as the law
of uneven and combined development (the original formulation is Trotsky's),
and Novack's way of describing historical processes in terms of
qualitatively higher and complex levels, a way of thinking he attributes to
Marx and Engels. I sense potential connections among all of these theories
and approaches.
Thoughts?
- Steve
At 10:33 AM 10/17/03 +0200, you wrote:
>Ben,
>You might check out Stan Salthe's hierarchy theory: intentional and
>extensional hierarchies. He's designed it for analysis of bioecological
>issues, but it can with some imagination be used to analyse political
>economic and social issues.
>http://www.nbi.dk/~natphil/salthe/natphilecol.2001.html
>http://www.nbi.dk/~natphil/salthe/hierarchy_th.html Also
>http://www.isss.org/hierarchy.htm
>www.library.utoronto.ca/see/pages/hierarchydef.html If you find those
>interesting you can search through the google files on hierarchy theory:
>some 1,460,000 entries. The most interesting and relevant of these concern
>biosemiology. (Note. Amost interesting feature of Salthe's hierarchy theory
>is that his concept of the "intentional hierarchy" is virtually the same as
>the Hegelean dialectical method).
>Victor
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