[] Re: Pragmata = Objects?

JA = Jon Awbrey
JS = John Sowa

JA: But there seems to be, more lately, or perhaps recurringly,
     a regression from the hey-days of process, relational, and
     systems thinking into ontological particularism, a curious
     compromise formation between essentialism and nominalism.

JS: All those 'isms are trying to impose somebody's ideology on life.
     What I liked about R-W Mann's analysis of the Aristotelian and
     pre-Aristotelian terminology is his focus on how people actually
     use language.  He suggests that the sharp distinction between
     processes and things was invented by Aristotle, and it's
     a mistake to talk about it as an inevitable "common sense"
     view.

JS: Whitehead noted that modern physics is more compatible with the views
     of Heraclitus, who emphasized the flux:  "panta rhei" -- all flow.
     I translated 'panta' as 'all' rather than 'all things' to avoid
     forcing a thing-centered view on Heraclitus.

Again, all these points used to be rather widely understood,
even in semi-popular culture.  The attitude that I took away,
that several generations of geek/hippy subcultures took away
from their indelible/transient fluxion through physics was to
treat all imputed dichotomies like noun/verb, subject/predicate,
content/process, static/dynamic, res/rhei, ... as complementary
aspects of being on analogy with particle/wave, erg/sec, q/p.

Jon

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