My own
definition of creativity (1996), "Creativity is self-organizational
bifurcation to novel attractors of being", by context, emphasizes chaos
also, which brings it close to the intention of the Gardnerian-Csikzentmihalyan-Gruberian-Feldmanian
systems approach to creativity, a requirement for which is what Gardner (1993)
calls "fruitful asynchrony", a condition often quashed by the
academic conditions indicted by Berezin (see Abraham,
1995; Zausner, 1996). A chaotic mixing of existential
angst (convergent forces) and joy (divergent forces), so requisite to
creativity, might appreciate some of the hardships of the academic marketplace,
but who could deny that the excesses Berezin
highlights exceed and negate those useful to creativity. When Nachmanovich (1990) talks of "unblocking the obstacles
to its [creativity's] natural flow", he is talking about the inner
landscape, but this inner landscape is inextricably interactive with the
external landscape.
I
consider hermeneutics and post-modernism a sort of yin-yang dual-perspective
dyad. Hermeneutics seeks the creation of truth through interpretation and
understanding, emphasized in the famous hermeneutic circle. The hermeneutic
circle of understanding the relationships between whole and parts rests on Humboldt's
"vorgängige Grundlage
des Begreifens" a "prexisting
basis of understanding", a rapport or wholeness between the interpreter
and subject of investigation. Humboldt thus anticipated Droysen,
Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer
(Mueller-Vollmer, 1992, p. 15).
Post-modernism
has often been criticized as nihilistic, on the dark side, especially in the
French deconstructionism of the post-structuralists such as Derrida (1967), and
the reductio's of the Frankfurt school, such as in
Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of the Enlightenment (1947/1973). But I
interpret nihilistic extremes by Nietzsche's observation (1883), "I love
those that that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the
over-goers. I love the despisers, because they are the great adorers, and
arrows of longing for the other shore." I see the Judaic "peeling of
the onion" as a deconstruction aimed at unpeeling and hermeneutically
reconstructing and creating the truth. Greeley (1995) has found this also in
her search for meaning in the pauses and silent moments in dialogue. Greeley is
similar to Zausner in seeing the dynamics of
creativity in the "void" of the "bifurcation
transformation" (also emphasized by Abraham, 1996, and Paar,
1992).
The
struggle between enlightment and social forces of
repression are far from new. As an example of an early stuggle
of this nature, I recently received a letter from Protagoras, in response to my
inquiry concerning his difficulties. It was delivered to me during an address
at the recent Conference of our Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life
Sciences, and read to those assembled for Robertson's address on the struggles
for meaning within our society.
Athens, June CDXV, BCE
You ask
for advice about the search for wisdom. I am not sure that I am the best person
to answer that. We certainly tried out best to pursue sophia,
which means wisdom and skill, to learn and understand. But there are those who
have taken advantage of some ambiguity there, and have given our efforts a
pejorative connotation of deception by skillful false reasoning. So our efforts
to provide a path to the pursuit of truth may not have been entirely
successful. We applied reasoning and humanitarian concerns as an alternative
path to enlightenment to that offered by the mythic-poetic-theistic traditions
which were beginning to give way in our culture. Our efforts were honorably
received in our day, but have been tainted in time, largely due to the efforts
of that rascal, Plato, who felt that our professionalization of these skills in
the pursuit of truth in everyday social life emphasized the skill as a path to
success over the search for truth. In teaching rhetoric and law using the
adversarial technique of having students argue both sides of an issue, we
sought to place the search for truth above all else, not the pretense to truth
by a better argument at the expense of truth.
It is a
pity that only fragments of my writing remain. When Diogenes Laertes (9.51)
quoted me fairly accurately in the two-logoi
fragment as saying:
kai prwtos efh duo logouz einai peri pantos pragmatos antikeimenouz allhloiz
I was
following the lead of Heraclitus who made much of oppositions as you well know.
And in fact, the interpretations of this fragment have been either Heraclitan
or subjective. Subjective ones consider this fragment to mean such things as
"On every issue there are two arguments opposed to each other"
(O'Brien, 1969) or reduce my statement to the absurd 'proposition that a debate
is possible on any topic' (paraphrase of Schiappa,
1991). This subjective interpretation is founded on a misunderstanding to the
term logoi as an artifice created by the
adversarial agents, as only rhetoric (Plato's term, not mine), not by the
aspects of truth inherent in the phenomena being debated.
Heraclitean interpretations are
more like Untersteiner's (1949/1954) "In every
experience there are two logoi in opposition
to each other" or Kerford's (1981) "There
are two logoi concerning everything, these
being opposed to each other". Both, in leaving logoi
untranslated, emphasized the closeness of my logos to the realities
sought by Heraclitus, and to a true understanding of the term pragmata, things, the real nature of things and
experience. I was concerned with all things, from `reality and divinity, to
political, social, and ethical life and their theoretical and practical'
aspects (paraphrase Schiappa, 1991, as is most of my
letter, for I speak not your language).
As
Robinson (1979) notes, I considered pragma to mean `reality' in a
general sense. That would include what you would now recognize as subjectively
or Hermeneutically created (as Greeley, 1991, points out in her chaoanalysis of the early Socratic Dialogs after my time)
as well as the objectively created. Thus you can see that `pragma, reality, is
such that there are two opposing ways, logoi,
to describe, account for, or explain any given experience.
Thus my
two-logoi fragment was meant be an extension
of Heraclitus' theory of flux and Unity-of-Opposites doctrines.
Many of you have taken these theories to heart, literally in the case of Sabelli who has written a book on the Union of Opposites,
and has applied it to study of the heart and psychology (Sabelli,
1989, 1995). It could also be observed from the time of the early preSocratics like Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus,
Parmenides, Anaxagoras (a favorite of Rössler's),
Empedocles, Alcmaeon, and Melissus,
all of whom used concepts of opposition and all of whom were rationalizing
mythic and theistic interpretations, that the history of the development of
these ideas followed bifurcation sequences into greater and more explicit
theorizing that you modern chaoticians would find fascinating.
So were
sophists pursuing the truth. One can say the same of the chaostitians.
And, as you can see, Chaos Theory is not the first arena of discourse to
have difficulty in finding its philosophical foundations, or to suffer
discredit for attempts to promote and professionalize its program. We sophists
who built on the foundations established by the earlier Presocratics
and who revolutionized the teaching and practice of reasoning and understanding
had similar difficulties. I particularly was motivated by a preference for a
humanistic logos over traditional mythoi, or mytho-poetic
traditions, in trying to understand logos. My teaching was transitional
between written prose and oratorical aphorism, and the fragments left in your
day need careful study to know our way, and to use it in your work. It may be
that the attempt to institutionalize any house of wonder and awe will suffer
the same self-organized demise without vigorous attempts to keep it vital. You
should thank Robin, Michael, Bill, Hector, Sally, Allan, Rick, Tobi, Lillian,
the late Tom Gentry, Marianne, Louise, and the rest of the Society for keeping
it so. And thanks to Alexander for pointing to the dangers in academia. Thank
you all for keeping our traditions alive.
Your
sophistic instructor,
Protagoras
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