. . . scribbled on a restaurant napkin:
1. Things are always already in process.
2. More complex things are more in process, or in more (and different) processes, than simpler things.
3. Growing/developing/evolving things tend to become more complex. Other things tend to become less so.
4. Being in process, things elude capture. Those that don’t become other things, and generally simpler things, than they were.
5. You can never do only one thing.
6. You can never isolate one thing from the rest. When you try, that thing ceases to be what it is, or it drags other things with it.
7. Knowing is doing; doing is knowing. But neither of them is only and fully the other.
8. Every moment presents options. Its passing alters the options presented to future moments.
9. Every action feeds a relation, tweaks a process, builds a network.
10. A world full of things made by the human Thing makes it seem that things are merely things, simple things, dead things. Even those things aren’t that, but other things certainly aren’t that.
Notes:
(1) “Things” is a generic term for bits and pieces of world/universe. Things do; things are done.
(2) Complexity and simplicity are relative; entropy and negentropy are general trends. In reality, most things don’t just move all in one direction.
(4) Everything becomes different from itself anyway. The question is always what to become.
(5) But you can try.
(7) Form is substance; substance is form. But… same story.
(9) Or many at once.
(10) The “human Thing” includes humans, ruminants and cereal grasses, fossil fuels, cities, techno-economic networks, and an ever diversifying range of things made for the Thing and things made to make other things for the Thing. Things made by the human Thing even seem to be getting livelier and more complex (e.g., digital life, nanotechnology, online worlds). We are building a complex (mega)network atop a complex (mega)network, but with relations between the two (Terra 1.0 and Terra 2.0, if you will) growing more tenuous and fragile.
Check out Justus Buchler’s ‘Metaphysics of Natural Complexes.’ I think the SR/OOO crowd would benefit from Buchler’s notion of ordinality (equals SR/OOO “scalability”) but also the strong and weak relationalism that you mention in your post (Buchler calls it “prevalence” and “alescence.”) Interesting stuff. Nice post on process-relational philosophy, from the other day, too. Keep up the good work.
Great, Adrian! I’m particularly interested right now in #5, #9 and #10.
#5 – Interests me because I’m thinking right now about all of the things that social research does besides collecting/analyzing data (drawing from John Law).
#9 – Because I’m interested in the concept of work and the movement of energy in far-from-equilibrium systems. I see every action contributing to organization in some way (positively, negatively or neutrally). It gives a different understanding of the concept of Practice and it’s relation to Structure…
#10 – I think one of the core problems in human/environment relations might be that we have ceased to recognize the agency, vibrancy, force, etc. of the world around us. The world has become nothing but a substrate for us to mold in whatever image we wish. But it’s not that, of course, it’s alive and always affecting/altering us. I think that’s something we need to incorporate more and more into our daily lives and cultures.
after nature: Thanks for the Buchler recommendation. I’ve been meaning to read more of him, intrigued by the Peirce connection (and because a friend is writing about him), but haven’t done that yet.
Jeremy: Re social research and J. Law, I was actually thinking of Law’s After Method (among other things) when I came up with #7 about knowing requiring doing. Glad you’re finding the list useful, and thanks for adding to its annotations 🙂