Opus 2012-48, Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

What does it mean to have your thinking grow, to mature in your understanding.  We learn new things and come to a deeper and better understanding as we get older.  We have a wider foundation.  At least that is the way it is supposed to progress.

If you stayed awake in the philosophy class you took years ago, you remember that a guy named Hegel had the idea of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.  Someone has a proposal.  That is the thesis.  It runs into real life, the antithesis, and is modified by experience.  This leads to a new, modified idea, the synthesis.  It makes sense.  Most of us can relate to the concept.

This mantra has become the god of modern science.  All he did was take what is obvious to any farmer, carpenter or thinking person, put some fancy words on it and elevate it to a universal principle that is going to change our lives.  He had a good ad agency and publisher.

The place we err is in paying too much attention to his ideas, pro and con and then elevating his proposal as if it is a universal principle of the universe.  We need to learn to use good ideas.  We need to learn to not throw them out just because they were made famous by a pagan or heathen philosopher.  We also need to see that they are not universal truths worthy of our reverence. 

One weakness of this formula is that it can lead to rejecting eternal truth and insisting that all things are relative.  Just because some things do change doesn’t mean that everything can be improved.  The problem is not the idea itself but in the application.

Happy thinking, growing and clinging to the eternal.

homo unius libri