lovecraken

The fourth theoretical condition of the crisis of the Newtonian
paradigm derives from the advances of knowledge in the fields of
microphysics, chemistry, and biology over the past twenty years. Let me cite,
by way of example, the findings of Ilya Prigogine. His theory of
dissipative structures and his principle of “order through fluctuations”
established that, in open systems, that is, in systems that function far from
equilibrium, evolution is explained by fluctuations of energy which, at
certain not entirely predictable moments spontaneously generate reactions, which in turn, by means of nonlinear mechanisms, pressure the system beyond its utmost limit of disequilibrium.

The situation of bifurcation, that is to say, the critical point at which the
slightest fluctuation may lead to a new state, represents the potentiality of
the system to be attracted to a new state of lesser entropy. Thus the
irreversibility of open systems means that they are the product of their
history (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984; Prigogine, 1980; 1981: 73ff.).
The importance of this theory is that it rests on the new conception of
matter and of nature, which is hard to reconcile with the one we inherited
from classical physics. In place of eternity, we now have history; in place of
determinism, unpredictability; in place of mechanicism, interpenetration,
spontaneity, irreversibility, and evolution; in place of order, disorder; in
place of necessity, creativity and contingency. Prigogine’s theory revives
even such Aristotelian concepts as potentiality and virtuality, which the
sixteenth century scientific revolution appeared to have definitively cast
into the dustbin of history.

https://estudogeral.sib.uc.pt/bitstream/10316/10836/1/A%20discourse%20on%20the%20sciences.pdf

another note for myself

tombomp:

at russell square tube station there’s lifts but there’s also a staircase and when you’re at the bottom it says like “there’s 180 [or so] stairs in this staircase!! don’t use except in an emergency!! no seriously!!” on a couple different signs with a big WARNING! text yet despite that when i was walking down it i came across 3 different groups of people who were all going “UGH WHEN DOES IT END I HATE THIS” and stuff. people are truly incredible

i always want to use it though. the sign just makes me feel i shouldn’t

“The cybernetic alternative envisioned in ecosystem theory for its part is an ultimate ecology fetishism, most appropriate to its own cultural context of industrial and bureaucratic capitalism, whose project likewise consists in reducing both men and things to their functional specifications as elements of a self-determining productive process.
FOOTNOTE: “In fact, in the production process of capital… labour is a totality… whose individual component parts are alien to one another, so that the overall process as a totality is not the work of the individual worker, and is furthermore the work of the different workers together only to the extent that they are [forcibly] combined, and do not [voluntarily] enter into combination with one another. The combination of this labour appears just as subservient to and led by an alien will and an alien intelligence — having its animating unity elsewhere — as its material unity appears subordinate to the objective unity of the machinery, of fixed capital, which, as animated monster, objectifies the scientific idea, and is in fact the coordinator, does not in any way relate to the individual worker as his instrument; but rather he himself exists as an animated individual punctuation mark; as its living isolated accessory.

“The theoretical practice might be called “ecology fetishism.” Nothing cultural is what it seems; everything is mystified as a natural fact which has the ostensible virtue of being basic and exact although it is essentially abstract. Marriage becomes “an interchange of genetic materials,” as hunting is “an interchange of energy with the environment,” corn, beans, and squash are an “unbalanced diet,” society a “population” of human organisms, and cannibalism a “subsistence activity.” …The same way of thinking as applied to the discovery of sanitary values in dietary tabus Douglas (1996) has called “medical materialism.” It is only a particular anthropological or ecological version of the exchange of meaningful content for functional truth that Sartre described as the vulgar Marxism.

FOOTNOTE: As for Marx himself, far from being implicated, it was he who gave such fetishism its most general criticism and explanation: “The apparent stupidity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness, this apparently metaphysical abstraction arises from the fact that, in modern bourgeois society, all relations are subordinated in practice to the one abstract monetary-commercial relation. This theory came to the fore with Hobbes and Locke. … In Holbach, all the activity of individuals in the mutual intercourse, e.g., speech, love, etc., is depicted as a relation of utility and utilisation. Hence the actual relations that are presupposed here are speech, love, the definite manifestations of definite qualities of individuals. Now these relations are supposed not to have the meaning peculiar to them but to be the expression and manifestation of some third relation introduced in their place, the relation of utility or utilisation. … All this is actually the case with the bourgeois. For him only one relation is valid on its own account- the relation of exploitation; all other relations have validity for him only insofar as he can include them under this one relation, and even where he encounters relations which cannot be directly subordinated to the relation of exploitation, he does at least subordinate them to it in imagination. The material expression of this use is money, the representative of the value of all things, people and social relations. Incidentally, one sees at a glance that the category of ‘utilization’ is first of all abstracted from the actual relations of intercourse which I have with other people (but by no means from reflection and mere will) and then these relations are made out to be the reality of the category that has been abstracted from them themselves, a wholly metaphysical method of procedure”

-Sahlins

just want to remember this

immolator:

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