This is a culmination of a lot of ideas I’ve had over the years that constitute
my world view and understanding of our reality. Some key realizations I’ve had
are that there are many parallels between concepts of energy gradients driving
evolution of dynamic systems, emergence, and self-organization with the core
concepts of Dialectical Materialism rooted in contradictions, transformation of
quantity into quality, and the negation of the negation. Dialectical Materialism
describes the cyclical process of development where an initial thesis is
countered by an antithesis, leading to a synthesis that retains aspects of both
but transcends them to a new level. This directly mirrors the idea of energy
gradients driving systems towards higher levels of complexity and organization.
In both cases, emergent properties arise from the interactions within the system
driven by the selection pressures. I see nature as having a fractal quality to
it where environmental pressures to optimize space and energy use drive the
emergence of similar patterns at different scales. I argue that our social
structures are a direct extension of the physical reality and simply constitute
a higher level of abstraction and organization that directly builds on the
layers beneath. If you’re simply interested in a standalone introduction to
dialectics can skip to chapter 8, which is largely self-contained. The preceding
chapters build a foundation by illustrating how self-organization leads to the
emergence of minds and social structures. One of the goals I have here is to
provide an introduction to diamat for people in STEM who may be coming from the
liberal mainstream by demonstrating a clear connection between materialist
understanding of physical reality and human societies. Feedback and critique are
both very welcome. an audiobook here (it’s LLM narrated so not perfect)
https://theunconductedchorus.com/audio.html
[https://theunconductedchorus.com/audio.html]
I recently participated in a discussion with another user of this instance and even though itself didn’t lead anywhere, I personally think that I put enough effort in the comments trying to illustrate the differences between philosophies that it validates it’s own post about it.
Not trying to harass anyone or anything of the kind, just hope that those comments can help someone willing to engage with them to have a better understanding of Dialectical Materialism.