The Becoming of Change in 3D: Dialectics, Darwin, and Dewey

2021 ◽  
pp. 699-728
Author(s):  
Moshe Farjoun
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Change Models ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Relational Process

Dialectical development through a conflict process of affirmation, negation, and synthesis, provides a template, both for modelling organizational change, and for constructing new, synthetic conceptual models of change. This chapter highlights two other important means by which dialectics can stimulate new change models: as a relational process philosophy, and as an evolutionary theory. A selective review of the history of ideas about change, from Greek philosophy to Hegelian and Marxian dialectics, to Darwin, to pragmatism, underscores how relational process principles link several, not commonly connected, “becoming” literatures, and how these principles can stimulate key conceptual innovations. The contrast of dialectics with Darwin’s evolutionary theory uncovers several, non-obvious affinities: in underlying principles, change patterns, and mechanisms. The capacity of dialectics—as a philosophy and as an evolutionary theory—to inspire new ideas, is illustrated by a reading of Dewey’s work anew, and through other examples pertinent to contemporary phenomena.

scholarly journals “Nous alone enters from outside” - Aristotelian embryology and early Christian philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-138
Author(s):  
Sophia Connell
Keyword(s):  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relevant Context

In a work entitled On the Generation of Animals, Aristotle remarks that “intellect (nous) alone enters from outside (thurathen)”. Interpretations of this passage as dualistic dominate the history of ideas and allow for a joining together of Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine on the soul. This, however, pulls against the well-known Aristotelian position that soul and body are intertwined and interdependent. The most influential interpretations thereby misrepresent Aristotle’s view on soul and lack any real engagement with his embryology. This paper seeks to extract the account of intellect (nous) in Aristotelian embryology from this interpretative background and place it within the context of his mature biological thought. A clear account of the actual import of this statement in its relevant context is given before explaining how it has been misunderstood by various interpretative traditions. The paper finishes by touching on how early commentary by Christian writers, freed as it was from the imperative to synthesise Greek philosophy, differed from those that came after. While realising that Aristotle’s position would not aid them in their explanations of the soul’s survival after death, their engagement with Aristotle’s science allowed for other aspects of theology concerning the fittingness of soul to body.

Optimism and Romanticism

PMLA ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 921-945 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur O. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas

The purpose of this paper is, first, to attempt to correct a still rather widely prevalent error concerning the logical import and the usual emotional temper of eighteenth-century optimism, and, second, to point out that the significance in the history of ideas of the multiplication and the popularity of theodicies in the first half of that century consisted less in the tendency of these arguments to diffuse optimistic views of the nature of reality than in their tendency to procure acceptance for certain new ideas of the nature of the good, which the logical exigencies of the optimistic argument involved—ideas pregnant with important consequences for both ethics and aesthetics, since they were to be among the most distinctive elements in what perhaps best deserves to be named “Romanticism.”

The Material‐Cultural Turn

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Cultural Turn

The terms ‘material culture’ and ‘material culture studies’ emerged, one after another, during the twentieth century in the disciplines of archaeology and socio-cultural anthropology, and especially in the place of intersection between the two: anthropological archaeology. The purpose of this article, however, is to excavate the idea of ‘material culture studies’, rather than to bury it. Excavation examines the remains of the past in the present and for the present. It proceeds down from the surface, but the archaeological convention is to reverse this sequence in writing: from the past to the present. In the discussion of the history of ideas and theories, a major risk of such a chronological framework is that new ideas are narrated progressively, as paradigm shifts. The main argument of the article relates to the distinctive form taken by the ‘cultural turn’ in British archaeology and anthropology during the 1980s and 1990s.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter sets the scene for the case studies that follow in the rest of the book by characterising the ‘age of modernism’ and identifying problems relating to language and meaning that arose in this context. Emphasis is laid on the social and political issues that dominated the era, in particular the rapid developments in technology, which inspired both hope and fear, and the international political tensions that led to the two World Wars. The chapter also sketches the approach to historiography taken in the book, interdisciplinary history of ideas.

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