Hegel, Dialectics, and POSIWID

tags : [[Hegel]]

source : Hegel, Dialectics and POSIWID

Notes

• Hegel’s understanding of [[dialectics]] was grounded in an understanding of history, as the movement from one phase to the next

  The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole. — Hegel, as qutoed by the author

• For Hegel only the whole was true

• the Hegelian notion of preserving moments as the process of the dialectic moves along

  • the process of going from nothingness to being is “becoming”, which is the phase of movement between the two

• A dialectical conception of [[beauty]] would be one where what is beautiful is an ongoing process, in dialogue with “not-beauty”

• [[the purpose of a system is what it does]]

  A good observer will impute the purpose of a system from its actions… There is, after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it consistently fails to do. — Stafford Beer, as quoted by the author