http://www.smokewriting.co.uk/2007/03/13/channel-4-teaches-the-controversy/ Another Fine Edition of Me Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:30:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://www.smokewriting.co.uk/2007/03/13/channel-4-teaches-the-controversy/comment-page-1/#comment-4310 Smokewriting: Another Fine Edition of Me Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:52:35 +0000 http://www.smokewriting.co.uk/2007/03/13/channel-4-teaches-the-controversy/#comment-4310 [...] The ‘Logic of Essence’ in the Science of Logic attempts to carry this forward by mounting a full-on critique of the separation between essence and ‘mere’ reflection, essence and appearance, ground and grounded, and substance and accidents. Through this movement, the concept of relation - Kant’s third causal category of reciprocity - receives a full articulation as the primary means of thinking identity dynamically. As Sinthome writes, there is no inner core to things that provides their effectivity, their capacity to produce an effect autonomously. There are only the relationships between things that govern the ongoing expression of their potential: Hegel writes (I don’t have the exact reference to hand) of the idea of existence, not as the achievement of a finished, settled accretion of individual being, but as a process of coming-to-be through which the interrelated conditions of a thing’s existence complete or augment [ergänzt] themselves in another thing. This is to foreshadow the conceptual universe of complexity theory, in which co-constitutive, dynamic, non-linear relations are shown to subvert putatively unidirectional causal series. Sinthome notes that the predilection for a fixed relationship between a veiled to-be-known and a pure knower are reflected, in slightly differing configurations, across a ‘wide variety of skepticisms common to thought today’. The habit of mind that refers causality and determination to the equivalent of the efficient cause - just one out of Aristotle’s four modes of aition - is one to which we return just as often. For example, I noted recently how trying to force empirical evidence into this mode of explanation was at the heart of Martin Durkin’s recent ‘documentary’ on climate change. [...] [...] The ‘Logic of Essence’ in the Science of Logic attempts to carry this forward by mounting a full-on critique of the separation between essence and ‘mere’ reflection, essence and appearance, ground and grounded, and substance and accidents. Through this movement, the concept of relation – Kant’s third causal category of reciprocity – receives a full articulation as the primary means of thinking identity dynamically. As Sinthome writes, there is no inner core to things that provides their effectivity, their capacity to produce an effect autonomously. There are only the relationships between things that govern the ongoing expression of their potential: Hegel writes (I don’t have the exact reference to hand) of the idea of existence, not as the achievement of a finished, settled accretion of individual being, but as a process of coming-to-be through which the interrelated conditions of a thing’s existence complete or augment [ergänzt] themselves in another thing. This is to foreshadow the conceptual universe of complexity theory, in which co-constitutive, dynamic, non-linear relations are shown to subvert putatively unidirectional causal series. Sinthome notes that the predilection for a fixed relationship between a veiled to-be-known and a pure knower are reflected, in slightly differing configurations, across a ‘wide variety of skepticisms common to thought today’. The habit of mind that refers causality and determination to the equivalent of the efficient cause – just one out of Aristotle’s four modes of aition – is one to which we return just as often. For example, I noted recently how trying to force empirical evidence into this mode of explanation was at the heart of Martin Durkin’s recent ‘documentary’ on climate change. [...]

]]>