Interesting. That’s pretty much orthogonal to what I heard as what dialectic is about: that when two systems—ideas, political, social, scientific—come into conflict, each expose some weaknesses of the other, and then both end up being replaced with a synthesis.
(Obviously, that’s even more abbreviated than what you wrote)
That isn’t actually orthogonal. Hegel’s whole thesis-antithesis-synthesis thing is his conception of how the analytical method fails. When you analyze a system’s parts without regard for holistic context you often run into apparent contradictions. One piece of sound analysis seems to suggest one thing about the nature of what you’re studying, while another piece of sound analysis suggests the exact opposite.
The problem, acciording to Hegel, is the process of analysis itself—trying to understand the nature of the parts prior to an understanding of how the parts fit together in, and are influenced by, the whole. What seemed to be a contradiction might often be resolved by realizing that the parts you’re studying don’t have fixed independent natures, that their behavior and properties are dependent on external factors. Factors that you are led to ignore by the analytical method, which encourages you to abstract a system away from its context in order to understand it. This process of abstraction is what leads to the appearance of contradiction, and assimilating the varying context into one’s understanding dissolves the contradiction and leads to synthesis.
Interesting. That’s pretty much orthogonal to what I heard as what dialectic is about: that when two systems—ideas, political, social, scientific—come into conflict, each expose some weaknesses of the other, and then both end up being replaced with a synthesis.
(Obviously, that’s even more abbreviated than what you wrote)
That isn’t actually orthogonal. Hegel’s whole thesis-antithesis-synthesis thing is his conception of how the analytical method fails. When you analyze a system’s parts without regard for holistic context you often run into apparent contradictions. One piece of sound analysis seems to suggest one thing about the nature of what you’re studying, while another piece of sound analysis suggests the exact opposite.
The problem, acciording to Hegel, is the process of analysis itself—trying to understand the nature of the parts prior to an understanding of how the parts fit together in, and are influenced by, the whole. What seemed to be a contradiction might often be resolved by realizing that the parts you’re studying don’t have fixed independent natures, that their behavior and properties are dependent on external factors. Factors that you are led to ignore by the analytical method, which encourages you to abstract a system away from its context in order to understand it. This process of abstraction is what leads to the appearance of contradiction, and assimilating the varying context into one’s understanding dissolves the contradiction and leads to synthesis.
Thanks, that clears up the connection!