[Themaintainers] Process philosophy (and beyond) [was: Maintenance and the Metaphysics of Artifacts]

[David Ing]

On the first Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology online seminar
session yesterday, 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, 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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.stevens.edu/pipermail/themaintainers/attachments/20220513/4fb7a86d/attachment.html>