138. Cycles of change: Yin/Yang and discovery

The economist Schumpeter proposed that innovation arises out of ‘novel combinations’, in surprising connections between elements from previously unconnected areas of thought or practice. Here I raise the question whether perhaps there are fruitful connections between the dynamic of Yin and Yang, indicated in the preceding item of this blog, and the ‘cycle of discovery’, developed in my earlier work, which I summarized in items 31 and 35 of this blog.

In Taoism, the interaction between Yin and Yang, between integration and disintegration, is taken to produce and change the universe, to create being and non-being.

In the cycle of discovery also, novelty arises from a succession of integration and disintegration, which results from an opening and closing of context and content, of practices or theories.

I start with a summary of my cycle.

In generalization an existing mental scheme or practice is applied to novel contexts. It is an opening up to new contexts. Generalization is needed for four reasons. First, to escape from the existing order in the present area of practice. Second, to obtain fresh insights into the limitations of existing practice. Third, to create pressure for change fr the sake of survival, in the novel context. Fourth, to obtain insight into alternatives. Generalization can be real, as in a new market for an existing product, or a new field of application of a technology, or it can be virtual, as in a computer simulation, laboratory experiment, or a thought experiment.

To survive in the new conditions the scheme is differentiated in an attempt to deal with them. For this one taps from existing repertoires of possibilities and capabilities learned from previous experience. It is still integrative in that sense, though it begins to open up to variety. If that does not yield survival, one tries to adopt elements of local practices that appear to be successful where one’s own practice fails, in reciprocation. Here the basis is laid for an opening up of content. This yields hybrids that allow experimentation with novel elements to explore their potential, while maintaining the basic logic or design principles of the old practice. One next obtains insight into the obstacles from the old architecture that prevent the full utilization of the potential that novel elements have now shown. This yields indications for more fundamental opening up of content, in changes in the architecture, in accommodation. That is disintegrative.  

Next, the new architecture, with old and new elements, is still tentative, requiring much experimentation and subsidiary changes, and elimination of redundancies and inappropriate leftovers from old practice, in a process of consolidation. Here there is re-integration into a unified whole. There is often competition between alternative designs, which mostly results in a dominant design. In this process there a renewed focus, in a tailoring to a specific context, a closing down of context. And next, to get away from that one again needs the opening up of generalization, and the circle is closed.

The logic is captured succinctly as a succession of closure of content (in a dominant design), opening of context (in generalization), opening of content (reciprocation, accommodation), closure of context, and again closure of content (in a dominant design), with integration in consolidation and disintegration in accommodation.

Does this parallel between Yin/Yang and the cycle of discovery make sense? Does it help to elucidate the former? If it makes sense, then in the stage of reciprocation Yin and Yang are most difficult to separate. It is Yin in the attempt at ongoing integration into basic logic or architecture, but Yang in bringing in the variety that leads up to disintegration.

Can I learn from Yin/Yang to improve the cycle of discovery?  In Taoist thought ultimately the integrativeness of Yin is mostly seen to be the most fundamental force, while I have tended to focus on the Yang of creative destruction, in accommodation. Perhaps I have not fully appreciated consolidation.

My predelection towards Yang is reflected also in a pro-innovation bias in present, at

least Western, society. Stability is associated with conservatism, which is seen to be
antithetical to progress. But without the stability of Yin, Yang becomes neurotic and
erratic.

 

137. Yin and Yang: contrasts and complements

Western philosophy is full of opposites, in dichotomies, such as: dark and light, night and day, construction and destruction, high and low, in and out, spirit and matter, good and evil, being and non-being, …. Ideally, analytically, it is one or the other; there is no third possibility.

In fact, often the opposites shade into each other or come together. At daybreak, dark shades into light, and vice versa at dusk. The porch of a house lies between inside and outside. In creative destruction, construction arises from destruction. Between being and non-being there are emergence and decay. Sometimes bad actions are needed to do good, and good actions misfire. Spirit (mind) is embodied in matter (brain).

However, in Western thought opposition prevails, and change is seen as antagonistic, as Coutinho (2014) proposes, arising from the conflict of opposites. This goes back to Heraclitus and we find it in Nietzsche. In the Western notion of dialectics, out of opposition between thesis and antithesis a synthesis may arise. Yet it remains a battle between opposites, not a blending in complementarity.

In Chinese philosophy, by contrast, complementarity prevails, where apparent opposites are contrasts, as parts of a unified process, coming together, typically in an organic, circular movement where they emerge from each other and yield to each other, as in winter and summer. Here, change is not imposed from outside but arises from within.

This applies, in particular, to the pair of Yin and Yang.[1] The root meanings of the two are the dark slope (Yin) and the light slope (Yang) of a mountain (In the northern hemisphere: the north and the 
south side). Going from there, the following distinctive features arise.

Yin                                                                 Yang
dark                                                               light
moisture (mist and rain on the north slope)   dryness
downward movement, descent                     upward movement, ascent
soft soil                                                          hard
nurturing                                                        challenging
receptiveness, fertility                                    filling, impregnation
integration                                                     disintegration
yielding                                                          conquering, leading
harmony, rest                                                 conflict, tension, energetic
closing down                                                 opening up
female                                                            male

The concepts are relative. The moon is yin with respect to the yang of the sun but it is yang to the yin of the dark sky. The male can be more or less female, and vice versa.

They are counterparts, complementary, succeeding and transforming into each other, building on each other, in an ongoing cycle of change, as in the succession of seasons. They are mutually yielding, blending into each other, ‘across a penumbra of vagueness’ (Coutinho 2014, p. 42).

Most importantly, from my interest in processes of change, the pair of yin and yang promises a view of change as internally generated, immanent, within nature, not as engineered from outside by some transcendent, outside power.

In particular, in the next item in this blog I will consider whether there are similarities, points of contact, or opportunities for cross-fertilization, between yin/yang and the cycle of change by 
assimilation and accommodation that I proposed, in items 31 and 35 of this blog. That also is a circle 
of succession of opening up and closing down, of disintegration and integration.

---

[1] Here again, I use: Steve Coutinho, An introduction to Daoist philosophies, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.

136. Productive ambiguity

In this blog I have identified three issues concerning ideas and their meaning.

First, while we need universals, they should not be seen as absolutes, applying everywhere and always. I discussed that also in the preceding item in this blog. Meanings change according to contexts of application. Sentence meaning depends on word meaning but also, vice versa, word meaning depends on sentence meaning. What a word means depends on other words in the sentence, and the practical context in which it is uttered. This notion that ideas and meanings change in their application, depending on how they work in living one’s life, is part of the pragmatist view.

Second, understanding and interpretation are formed by mental categories that are formed along life paths, and hence vary between people. That is the constructivist view. This variety of cognition is a source of both misunderstanding and learning. It leads to a plea for recognition of the importance of the other for oneself, and of dialogue, in knowledge and ethics.

Third, but related to the above, there is no uniquely identifiable ‘truth’ in knowledge, in the sense of correspondence with some external, objective, substantial  reality. Instead, I advocated a view of truth as warranted assertability. Also, there is no unique, identifiable meaning to what an author wrote, and authors say more than they mean: new meanings and interpretations may be added to what they wrote. That is the hermeneutic view.

As a result, there are several forms of ambiguity, all around us, in the context dependence, shift and multiplicity of meanings. To deal with this, with reference to Pascal I proposed to consider the spirit of finesse next to the spirit of geometry. And I proposed to see all this as instances of imperfection on the move.

I give this summary because it may help to understand and utilize ancient Chinese philosophy, which incorporates ideas similar to those of pragmatism and hermeneutics. I am thinking here, in particular, of Taoist texts (the texts named after Lao, Zhuang and Lie)[1]. To a Western mind, they are noriously difficult to understand. I have had a hard time trying. But I see the attempt as an exercise in practising what I have preached. I find that what I have been saying is congenial to old Chinese thought. Hence, I may learn more by immersing myself in it, in trying to see how in those old texts meanings hang together and depend on context, how they shift according to shifts of context. Perhaps the endeavour to understand the texts is not entirely hopeless.

As a Westerner, educated and trained in rational, analytical, empirical thought and practice, I am used to rigorous, clear, unambiguous and logical argument. But I am aware that if indeed universals are problematic and context matters, and shifts of meaning occur in the use of ideas across contexts, then ambiguity can be productive.

And perhaps the most adequate form of reasoning and presentation is narrative, where ideas are exemplified in stories, and understanding progresses by exploring analagous cases (as Coutinho put it). If dialogue is key to understanding, then that is what one may expect in philosophical writing. Narrative philosophizing is not, I admit, where my strength lies. And I keep on striving for clarity, coherence, consistency and rigour of argument whenever possible. But I try to be open to requisite and productive ambiguity.

---

[1] Here I am making use of Steve Coutinho, An introduction to Daoist philosophies, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Coutinho cautions that while there a commonalities there is also diversity within Taoist thought. But I think that applies to all streams of philosophy: pragmatism, enlightenmen thought, analytic philosophy, etc. It applies, more widely, to the meanings of words. It is the rule rather than an exception. It is an exception only to those who expect essences everywhere.

135. Universals and individuals

Previously in this blog, in items 16 and 17, I criticized universals that are taken as immutable absolutes, applying everywhere and always, and I pleaded for more modest, temporary, mutable universals, with room for deviance of particulars, individuals, in a variety of contexts, which causes universals to shift. 

We do need universals. Without them we could not make inferences, in science, in generalizations, in laws or regularities that apply across contexts. It is not clear to me how Eastern philosophies deal with this. How does science fit in Eastern philosophy? There is a strong tendency there to shun ‘conceptual thought’ in favour of intuition or ‘direct perception of reality’. For me, that is not good enough.

To resolve the problem of individuals and mutable universals, we need a theory of how the dialectic between them works, and I don’t see that Eastern philosophy, with its view of ongoing change, with a variety of particulars, provides it, except for the Taoist notion of Yin and Yang, in cyclical processes of production, reproduction and transformation, in opening and closing. I will expand on that in the following item of this blog.

Here, I want to recall my earlier proposal (items 36 and 37) of change according to the hermeneutic circle. From specific events in specific contexts, we abstract notions for generalization, shedding context-specific detail. We need this to transfer experience from one context to another. The generalization, when applied in a new context, needs to be enriched with context-specific details. It may fail in the novel context, and then is falsified, and needs to be revised or replaced, tapping from the new context. That is the process of pragmatist experimentation.

Here, use is made of the notions of the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic. Paradigms are the universals, expressed in words, which have a repertoire of possible meanings. In a syntagm paradigms are configured into sentences, where meanings of words are picked out from repertoires of meaning, triggered by the context at hand. Syntagms are modified, in reconfigurations of familiar entities, until sense is seen to be made in the context. When this fails, novel meanings of existing paradigms or tentative novel paradigms may arise. This can be seen as a process of first closing, eliminating detail in the construction of a universal, to step away from context, and then opening up a universal for new content from a new context. A question is whether this may have some relation to the cycle of Yin and Yang, which I will consider in the next item.

Another challenge, related to the above, is to resolve the old issue in sociology of conceptualizing the reciprocal relationship between structure and agency. The structure of institutions (macro) that enable and constrain actions is somehow reproduced or transformed by those actions (micro). For example, markets enable agents to engage in supply and demand, but the institutions that enable or constitute markets are modified or broken down by entrepreneurial or political action. Here one can think of laws of property or liability, regulations concerning safety, health and the environment, technical standards, advertising, distribution channels, and deeply seated sentiments, meanings, habits and intuitions). I will return to markets later on in this blog.