Re: [microsound] crit->alternative

[David Powers <dpowers3@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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

David Powers
Faculty Assistant
DePaul University, School of Education
Department of Leadership in Education, Language, and Human Services
773-325-4806

>>> kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 04/15/05 01:21PM >>>
> Buckminster Fuller would say that critique pales next to creating 
> superior
> alternatives.

this might be true if there is no flow from one state (crit) to the 
other (alternatives)...but in a dialectical process the antithesis can

serve as a critique and from this comes a synthesis which can represent

an alternative to the thesis...no?


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