It is funny...whenever I need a new -- and/or additional, complimentary -- theory, the theory suddenly appears.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
I have known for a while that Hegel's Hotel -- its architecture -- is straining at the edge of Chaos Theory.
For one thing, my whole style of writing, and my style of presentation, is somewhat chaotic...
In Hegel's Hotel, there is order within chaos, and chaos within order...
New order and direction arises from the midst of chaos...
No writer, no philosopher, no psychologist, out there, to my knowledge, is trying to integrate as many different and seemingly paradoxical theories as I am.
DGB Philosophy used to be called 'Gap' Philosophy...and then 'Gap-DGB' Philosophy...
Why? Because 'Gap-DGB' Philosophy philosophizes in the 'gaps' between opposing and differentiated theories....
'Gap-DGB' Philosophy is a 'Dialectic Gap-Bridging' Philosophy...
Think about it for a minute...
Freud would love this...
Creating new ideas, new theories, new philosophies...is a very sexual experience...
Freud would call it 'sublimation'.
How are new ideas, new theories, new philosophies born?
Simple.
They are born the same way new children, new offspring, are born.
Through (dialectic) intercourse and cross-fertilization....
Hegel meets Darwin meets Freud meets DGB Philosophy...
Dionysus meets Apollo in Hegel's Hotel...
Hegel's Hotel is The Grand Meeting Hotel where all ideas...
All theorists...all philosophers...all psychologists...all ideologies...all politic factions...all religions...
Can meet....
Integrate...
And consumate human idealism...
Turn human idealism into philosophical realism...
Through the engagement of the dialectic...
Over and over and over again...
Ad infinitum...
This has always been one of the limitations, one of the problems,
In human thinking...
Theories always have boundaries, they always are finite...
Whereas life is boundless, infinite, defying any and all boundaries...
Life is born from the Shadows, the Apeiron...Chaos...
Life is chaotic...random...unpredictable...turbulent...
Born out of chance encounters...chance meetings...seeming 'coincidences'...
'Purposeful coincidences'...
'Strange attractors'...
Attracting each other...
Engaging together for a short while...
Or for a long time....
Depending on the unique 'bio-psycho-chemistry' of the encounter....
Protons meeting electrons...
Testosterone meeting estrogen...
Sperm meeting egg...
Yin meeting yang...
Thesis meeting anti-thesis...
In Ancient Chinese philosophy, 'yin' and 'yang' differentiate from random chaos...
Amazingly, almost exactly what Anaxamander was saying in around the same time in Ancient Greece...
Another 'strange coincidence'?
Both Ancient China and Ancient Greece were developing a theory of 'chaos' differentiating into 'opposites' -- thousands of years before 'Dialectic Theory' would become 'fashionable' (and then hated) in the form of early 19th Century Hegelian Theory; and even almost a couple of hundred years longer before 'Chaos Theory' would start to become 'fashionable' in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s...
In Ancient Pre-Socratic Greece, Anaximander was philosophizing about 'power dialectics' -- the idea of each 'opposite' trying to 'dominate' the other -- a 'dialectic power struggle' -- with one opposite eventually 'winning' the power struggle and taking its 'moment of glory in the sunshine' while the other opposite is 'pushed back into The Shadows', or the 'Apeiron' which is what Professor Anaximander used to call it...to be 'minimalized' and 'marginalized' until the 'wheels of power keep churning and turning' and eventually 'the dominant becomes usurped from power and forced into the Shadows by the marginalized and the forgotten', and 'the marginalized and the forgotten take their respective turn glorifying in the sunshine of power'...
That is a remarkable piece of philosophy right there...a combination of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida...all rolled up into one -- some 2500 to 2650 years before Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida respectively launched their 'post-Anaxamanderian' 'power-dialects' and/or 'will to power' philosophies...
Philosophers throughout the evolution of Western history have been fascinated by the only written passage left behind by Anaximander, the obscure, mystical, and enchanting Anaximanderian Fragment:
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From Wikipedia...
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
As is the order of things;
For they execute the sentence upon one another
- The condemnation for the crime -
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
Martin Heidegger lectured extensively on Anaximander, and delivered a lecture entitled "Anaximander's Saying" which was subsequently included in Off the Beaten Track. The lecture examines the ontological difference and the oblivion of Being or Dasein in the context of the Anaximander fragment.[44] Heidegger's lecture is, in turn, an important influence on the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.[45]
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Now I have no idea what Heidegger was talking about at that 'Anaxamander's Saying' lecture -- it might be worth investigating, interpreting, and/or analyzing in another essay -- but I do most definitely see Derrida's 'Deconstruction' philosophy (which he learned partly from Heidegger's lectures) as a 'modern day clarification and amplification of both Anaxamander's ('power-dialectic' philosophy and Heidegger's philosophy of 'deconstructing' the philosophy of 'Being' as it has evolved in the history of Western philosophy. More on this at a different time.
Back in the Ancient East, a more 'democratically friendly' dialectic philosophy was being developed even in the context of great Chinese Civil War (similar to the civil wars between the Spartans and the Athenians in Ancient Greece).
Ancient pre-Socratic Greek philosophy had no equivalents for the Chinese dialectic concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' -- even though Heraclitus, an indirect student of Anaximander, was also developing a more 'democratic friendly' dialectic philosophy. Not only do opposing and dueling dialectic philosophies continually try to 'outmuscle each other for power dominance' but also, and/or in a more 'healthy vein', opposing dialectic polarities are 'attracted to each other' and 'need each other to 'co-exist' at a 'higher plateau of existence' in a state of being and becoming that might be called 'dialectic unity and harmony and wholism'. This was the message that Heraclitus developed in Ancient Greece that Anaximander didn't, and it was also the type of message that was coming out of the Chinese East in the form of 'yin' and 'yang' philosophy...
Returning once again to the mutual development of 'Dialectic Theory' and 'Chaos Theory' in Ancient Chinese Philosophy,
Even once 'yin' and 'yang' -- feminine and masculine 'energies' -- have differentiated themselves from each other, bringing more order into a 'chaotic world'...
Still, too much 'yin'...or too much 'yang'...can lead us back to chaos again...
'Dialectic harmony', 'dialectic unity', 'dialectic wholism'...
Is the type of harmony, unity, and wholism...
That arises from 'strange attractors'...'dialectic attractors'...
Harmonizing their respective, opposing, energies...
With each other...
Without each of them trying to respectively 'dominate' the other into 'submission' in an Anaximanderian or Marxian or Foucaultian or Derridian way...
Lao Tse meets Anaxamander meets Heraclitus meets Hegel meets Darwin meets Nietzsche (Birth of Tragedy) meets Freud meets Jung meets Cannon meets Derrida meets Perls meets DGB Philosophy...
They have all come togetheer to integrate their respectiv ideas...
In Hegel's Hotel...
Dialectic Theory meets Chaos Theory...
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According to Ziauddin Sardar...
Author of 'Introducing Chaos'...(1998, 1999, 2000)...
'Mathematical physicist David Ruelle gave chaos theory a kick start with his work on turbulence. For decades, turbulence had been a major problem for physicists. Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), who contributed the "Uncertainty Principle" to quantum physics, probably still worried about it even on his deathbed.
God! Why relativity? And why turbulence?
Even I do not have an answer for turbulence.
So turbulence is a graveyard of theories.' (Sardar, Introducing Chaos, 2000, p. 56)...
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Yes, turbulence is a graveyard of all theories.
Theories are finite -- with boundaries, and classification systems...
Whereas life is infinite -- with no boundaries, and/or boundaries with always stretching...always breaking always evolving and changing boundaries...
Theories -- regardless of how good they are, regardless of how sophisticated they are -- cannot keep up with life...always mutating, always evolving, always compensating...life...
The best we can do is try as best as possible to 'keep up with life'...to evolve and mutate and modify and compensate and dialectically integrate our theories in accordance with what we see around us...in life...
Don't hang onto your 'model' or your 'map' or your 'theory' too tightly...
Because life will always allude -- and break the boundaries -- of your 'cherished conception'...
The human mind and personality is full of 'yin' and 'yang' and 'order' and 'regularity' and 'habits' and 'custom' and 'Apollo'....and 'disorder' and 'irregularity' and 'turbulence' and 'chaos' and 'Dionysus'...
Perfect predictability will always be defeated by 'turbulence'...the influence of 'chaos'...
We may be able to some extent to 'predict chaos'....
But we will never be able to perfectly predict...
Where chaos is going to take us...
This spawns the infinite diversity of life...
And DGB Philosophy...
As best as possible...
Needs to account for...
'Dialectical turbulence'....
'Strange attractors'...
And strange encounters...
Between strange attractors...
This is the most recent -- and evolving -- influence...
Of Chaos Theory...
On DGB Multi-Dialectic Theory...
And Hegel's Hotel...
-- dgb, April 13th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
