[Themaintainers] Process philosophy (and beyond) [was: Maintenance and the Metaphysics of Artifacts]
David Ing isss@daviding.com
isss at daviding.com
Thu May 12 16:22:46 EDT 2022
On the first Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology online seminar
session today, Mark Young raised the question of a substance ontology
(associated with Aristotle) and how a process philosophy (oriented first
around time) might give a different perspective.
Process philosophy (e.g. Alfred North Whitehead) is tough to read. Someone
also if there was a normative application of the philosophy.
Around Toronto, I've been working with the Systems Changes Learning Circle
<http://systemschanges.com/online/>. We've made the shift from systems
thinking (in the 20th century sense) towards a new interest in "systems
change". This has led us into appreciating living systems, that many would
view from a process philosophy.
To make the ideas more understandable to the layman, we talk about
"rhythmic shifts", that might be differentiated from normal rhythms in a
living system. We also make the distinction between kairos (felt time) as
opposed to chronos (clock time).
I've just finished a revision of a paper for publication yesterday, if
anyone wants to take a peek. It's downloadable from
http://coevolving.com/pubs/2022_SSB_Ing_SystemsChangesLearning_v0511a.pdf .
Returning to Mark's example of maintaining the Golden Gate Bridge in San
Francisco, we might take a different approach. Instead of starting from
maintaining non-living systems and trying to add features of living, it may
be easier to start from maintaining with living systems, and remove the
features to become non-living. This would be the way that mathematical
biologist Robert Rosen
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rosen_(biologist)> would approach the
categories.
David Ing
Systems Changes Learning Circle, Toronto
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