Hi,
This idea of dialectics has been pretty thoroughly disputed. For
Hegelian and Marxist dialectics, this is true, insofar as dialectical
progress through history is inevitable. For later philosophers,
however, this is not necessarily so.
As I understand it, Horkheimer and Adorno's "Dialectic of
Enlightenment" was precisely the idea that rational progress can
dialectically turn into its opposite, irrationality.
Or, using evolutionary biology as a model, one could argue that there
is no such thing as "progress," within evolutionary changes, since
increasing fitness is only relative to the conditions being adapted to
and does not have any ultimate value; environmental conditions are
subject to change, and environmental shifts can turn positive
evolutionary adaptions into negative ones.
Finally, models from the study of nonlinear and chaotic systems might
look at change in an entirely different way, based on phase diagrams
and
attractors. I would imagine that the memes in circulation, including
both critique and superior alternatives, would structure the
possibilities available to a society at any given time in order to go a
significant mutation in form.
~David