segunda-feira, 19 de março de 2012

The main scientific tool of after-postmodern: computation, cybernetics, the digital world...

Probably the most important scientific product of the Postmodern Period was computation and its derivatives. 
Nonetheless, although computation was the climax of Postmodern, it was also one of the main tools of its end.
We can take any exemple of hard sciences, biological sciences or human sciences and we will see the deep influence of computation. We can even think of a library or any archive, and that influence is very important to find a new level of technic, scientific method and understanding of the world and the human being.
Paradoxically, when we get to such a level it becomes to be more dangerous to the limits of mankind and to ethics.
In the 20th century, maybe the nineties would be completely different if there was not something like computation...and the postmodern era would not go down...
The digital world provided the conditions to the traps of the free market and at same time the conditions to surveillance over it.
George Orwell wrote in the modern times a prophetic book about the postmodern era: “1984”.
But now “The Big Brother” is more than ever over everyone...
And that is a paradox of After-postmodern: the digital world can free  - as the universality of the cell phone, or other comunications and information - and can be a new kind of jail...
Well, anyway, computation was one of the main propellers of the After-postmodern world.
  

quinta-feira, 15 de março de 2012

complexity, the third included and after-postmodern

The "third included" is another pillar of the Transdisciplinarity.
The complexity can open the door to the third included.
In the Aristotelian Logic we know the "third excluded". It is a logic conclusion about something that doesn't fit to an afirmation like "This man is John or is not John". There is not any other possibility. There is not a "third possibility". He is John, or he is not John.
But, with the third "included" it is possible to go beyond this paradox.
Basarab Nicolaescu use to explain it with the concept of Quantum in Physics, that is something that goes beyond the paradox that some elementary particles that seem to be matter and energy at the same time.
In the Postmodern Era the thinkers of Transdisciplinarity seemed to be just "dreamers" to many people.
In the After-Postmodern we can bring the idea of "third included" to the day by day...
There is a paradox that we live with every moment and we don't give attention.
We use to say that everybody is equal.
We also use to say that each person is unique and that there is not a person completely equal to another, even in the case of twins...
In the Postmodern Era of bipolarity and reductionism it was not accepted a "third way" in a deep sense.
But now bipolarity and reductionism doesn't bring solutions or answers. Maybe it is possible to embrace some paradoxes understanding a multilevel of Reality where de apparent impossible conciliation of a paradox can reach a solution.
Maybe this is a way to world peace in the after-postmodern.
Maybe this is a way to understand that even very important Science is not the only way to find answers to the deep questions of life...

terça-feira, 13 de março de 2012

Back to the Pendulum of History

 The Postmodern years can be divided in decades of the 20th century, from fiftys to ninetys.
At the same time that the “main postmodern program” was walking looking for efficiency and results, parallel movements, opposed or not to that program, capted different feelings about what was happening to the society.
From fiftys to sixtys, at the same time that the Counterculture Movement was growing, in the Arts it was a kind of “romantic feeling” in the 19th century style.
It was a kind of “counterbalance” to the “main postmodern program”.
So, at the same time that people were dreaming with peace and liberty, they had a nostalgic feeling about life walking together with existentialist crisis of that days.
Then, in the sixties The Beatles sang that “yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away”, and that they “long for yesterday”.
The decade of seventys was a transitory decade toward the next apparent “victory” of the “main postmodern program”.
The decade of eightys was called “the lost decade” because of economic problems, but (and maybe because of it) it was also a time to the stablishment of a very pragmatic economic way that would be stronger in ninetys.
Well, in the eightys Duran Duran did not sing anymore like Beatles. The nostalgic feeling was replaced by a more realistic and conformist way of life and they sung a song named “Ordinary World” and talked that “I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world, somehow I have to find, and as i try to make my way, to the ordinary world, I will learn to survive”.
The nostalgic world of Beatles was a dreaming world and the ordinary world of Duran Duran was a “post-dreaming world” in front of a new reality, but it were two poetic ways to feel the current moment in that days.
The pendulum of history swang from a “romantic para-postmodern” to a “realistic para-postmodern” between fiftys-syxtys to eightys-ninetys.
The seventys was something different, a forgotten decade, a kind of “middle ages” in the Postmodern Era.     

domingo, 4 de março de 2012

complexity, transdisciplinarity and after-postmodern - part 2

Complexity is different of Holism.
Complexity can embrace Holism but it is not restricted to Holism.
Holism is interesting as a theory against the Reductionism, but sometimes Holism has its "traps".
Holism can be a kind of Reductionism if it only accept the "vision of the whole" has the unique approach to Reality... So it can become another "reductionist tendency", if it reduces everything to "the whole".
Holism appeared in Modern times but it became a strong and maybe "fashioned" way of thinking in Postmodern Era, because it was a strong way to oppose to Reductionism. 
The Postmodern Era was a time of "strong polarity" with Reductionism at one side and Holism at the other.
In the After-Postmodern times, Complexity can embrace traces of reductionistic and holistic tendencies but going beyond polarities.   
Systems Theory is also interesting and can also be embraced by Complexity. But, as Edgar Morin wrote in his great work "La Méthode", Systems Theory can have also a kind of "trap" that we could say can be similar to Holism.
So, Holism and Systems Theory are good tools to better understand Reality, but Complexity can help us to do not reduce Reality to any of both ways of thought.
The third pillar of Transdisciplinarity, "the third included" can harmonize paradoxes. It can help to harmonize reductionistic and holistic tendencies.