Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
The thinking between simplism and simplicity
30
Sep
Naive thinking ignores the complexity, relief and depth of things
see them in the superficiality of their appearance, while simplicity initiates a phenomenological process that begins with the appearance of the beholder and then develops a greater perception, in the words of philosophy, the noema, that complements the initial phase of the ability to feel, the noesis.
By defining complex thinking as having three principles: recursive, dialogic and hologrammatical, Edgar Morin thus explains this third that is inseparable from the other two:
“The hologram is a physical image, conceived by Gabor which, unlike ordinary photographic and filmic images, is projected into space in three dimensions, producing an astonishing sensation of relief and color. The holographed object is restored, in its image, with remarkable fidelity. This hologram is made up of coherent light (laser) and a device that makes each point that constitutes this image contain a sample of the system of interference lines emitted by the points of the holographed object” (MORIN, 2003, p. 34).
To explain and clarify certain phenomena it is necessary to use didactic resources that simplify them, however, this pedagogical task cannot mutilate the explanation nor make it absolutist.
There is nothing more complex than reducing it to the simple, as stated by Bachelard, there is no such thing as simple, there is only the simplified, which in most cases mutilates and deforms the phenomenon, inducing thought to an obscure liquidity.
Phenomena of nature are not easily simplified, often the pretension of mastering it even in scientific cases has revealed a perverse face, this has happened from atomic physics to modern communication technologies, it is necessary to predict and investigate adverse effects.
However, the simplicity of seeing the phenomena does not only depend on the culture, which is always diverse, but on the ability to reduce the idea (the eidetic reduction proposed by Husserl), where we go from simple appearance to the experience of consciousness about what it is informed by the senses and how the mind receives them, interpreting what is informed.
Simplifying always requires an analogy or a metaphor, we’ve already discussed it here, and that yes, it is necessary to be simple to receive “new” information with the disposition of a child, with an epoché, say philosophy, with a suspension of judgment, I would say, Cartesian thought .
MORIN, Edgar et al. (2003> Educar para a era planetaria: o pensamento complex como método parra aprendizagem. (Educating for the planetary era: complex thinking as a method of learning in human error and uncertainty). São Paulo: Editora Cortez.
Order, disorder and dialogue
17
Sep
Understanding the process of complexification of nature also
means understanding that it is man and that it actually means humanism forgotten in traditional idealist and positivist schemes.
Thus for Edgar Morin (2001), the paradigmatic issue goes beyond the simple understanding of the theory of science (epistemology or methodology), as it involves the questioning of the frameworks of knowledge we have (gnoseology and what we think is reality) and more Deep ontology (what is the nature of reality), these principles govern the phenomenon of what we know and cannot be separated from physical, biological and anthropo-sociological systems.
It is an open reason, not irrationalism or relativism, but based on the idea that an evolutionary, complex and dialogical knowledge can be built, in which disorder is a part.
Systems develop in a process of entropy, but it is negentropy (the denial of entropy at each stage of evolution) that makes self-organization a living and evolving system.
It defines it as a body that develops and expands, entropy, dispersion and crisis appear in the original organization, but negentropy means new self-organization and if we look at man within it, within nature and in its evolutionary aspect, it returns question of a supernatural order, because it was precisely the opposite path that denied this transcendence.
When the repudiation of naturalism won and took hold, the humanist myth of the supernatural man became the very center of anthropology (and of all other sciences) and the oppositions nature-culture, man-animal, culture-nature took shape. of paradigm.
Of course, the role of man in nature depends on the worldview, animists for example, all non-human realities also have supernatural power, others stand out a God also human as in Christianity (created in the image and likeness of God) and others an ascesis that we are at one end of the scale of evolution (complexity), the Hindu and Eastern religions.
In Christianity, last week we reflected Jesus’ question to the disciples, “Who do they say I am?” and he prepared them for death, for the “disorder” of his death, even though the disciples still understood they wanted to dispute the power, position and positions they would occupy in the ascesis, and Jesus, seeing what they said, will give them a harsh sentence (Mk 9,35): “If anyone wants to be the first, let him be the last of all and the one who serves all!”, do you understand today?.
What is natural and the possibility of knowing
15
Sep
The problem of knowing the world (natural and not cultural,
this is what we have) must start from a premise of clearing our minds of cultural convictions, most of them idealistic, that blind us to the possibility of understanding that we do not dominate nature as proposed the Enlightenment, and worse, we run the risk of destroying it and putting civilization in check.
Quoting Edgar Morin in the epigraph of his general introduction of the book “The Nature of NATURE”, he write the second in capital letters even to deify it in the sense that it is still unknown to us, and contains mystery that affects us, as proved by the current Pandemic that still challenges us.
Edgar Morin, opening the first chapter: “The Spirit of the Valley”, quotes Karl Popper: “Personally I think there is at least one problem… that interests all thinking men: the problem of understanding the world, ourselves and our knowledge as part of the world”, so this knowledge is neither definitive nor eternal, as everything evolves and is perishable.
To introduce these convictions, he makes a second quote by Jacob Bronowski: “The concept of science is neither absolute nor eternal”, and he will make a third, which is for the next post.
He begins with 5 convictions that made him start this book and where is his “cogito” his suspension of judgment of everything he thought before, his first conviction of these problems states that he: “holds us to the present, they demand that we let go of it to consider them in depth” (Morin, 1977, pg. 13), and professes his second conviction: “the principles of knowledge hide what, henceforth, it is vital to know” (idem) thus detaches himself from his previous ideas.
His third conviction is the strongest, increasingly convinced that the relationship science Ʌ politics Ʌ ideology [Ʌ in text it´s triangle] when it is not invisible, continues to be treated in an indigent way, through the reabsorption of two of its terms in one of them that has become dominant” (idem) , gives you food for thought.
His fourth conviction is that “that the concepts we use to conceive our society — the whole society — are mutilated and lead to inevitably mutilating actions” (idem).
Finally, his fifth conviction is: “that anthroposocial science must be articulated in the science of nature, and that this articulation requires a reorganization of the structure of knowledge itself” (Idem), so the knowledge we have needs to be modified to from its bases.
He knew that his task was really encyclopedic and vast, that’s why he even isolated himself in a castle (I don’t have the precise data) because his task: “I myself needed exceptional circumstances and conditions’ to move from conviction to action, that is, to work” (idem).
And it is from there that he wrote his complex method with three initial questions: “What does the radical self of self-organization mean? • What is the organization? • What is the complexity?” (page 14).
MORIN, E. The nature of NATURE. Lisbon PUBLICATIONS EUROPA-AMERICA, LDA., 1977.
Between the natural and the Supernatural
10
Sep
The soul (anima in its original Greco-Latin version) was studied by 
almost all ancient philosophers, it can be summarized from the Latin “anima mundi” (soul of the world) as a cosmological concept of a ruling force of the universe by which the divine becomes manifested in laws that affect matter, or in the hypothesis of an immaterial force, as something inseparable from matter, is in Plato in the books The Republic and Timaeus.
Marsilio Vicino, Renaissance humanist, who wrote a Platonic Theology, defined it as “The soul can be called the center of nature, the intermediary of all things, the current of the world, the essence of everything, the knot and union of the world” , whatever the concept, it is a part of the natural that may have manifestations unknown to current science, and that is why it is supernatural.
But the natural that man seemed to dominate from the Enlightenment, revealed to the few more mysterious than imagined, at the beginning of the century the uncertainty principle gave rise to quantum physics and a tiny virus challenges us, and we have not overcome it, the relaxation can provoke a new crisis, like a poorly cured patient who wants to do activities that the disease does not allow.
In his book The Nature of Nature, not by chance his first book on his method of complexity, Edgar Morin will describe the Dasein of nature (from physis) as: “All systems, even those we abstractly and arbitrarily isolate from sets of which they are part (like the atom, which is moreover a partially ideal object, or like the molecule), they are necessarily rooted in the physis” (Morin, 1977, p. 133), and quoting Lupasco (creator of the idea of the included third party, state between being and non-being of matter): “A system can only be energetic” (idem).
Energy, complexity and mystery is therefore a characteristic of nature, and we have discovered over the last century that uncertainty must not only be part of a truly scientific method, its absence can lead to dogma and obscurantism.
How the supernatural manifests itself then depends on the cosmovision of each culture, without being confused with it, as it has a unique meaning within the eschatology that sees it, the beginning and end of everything, of the universe and its enigmas.
In Christian culture, the supernatural is present in the human revelation of a God who makes himself small, and the human condition is reduced to take him to the coming of eternity. Jesus forbade the apostles to speak openly about his divinity, but he questioned them (Mk 8.27-29):
“Who do men say that I am?”. They replied, “some say you are John the Baptist, some say you are Elijah, some say you are one of the prophets.” Then he asked: “And you, who do you say that I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.”
He talked separately with the disciples and was going to explain the kind of death he was going to die.
MORIN, E. THE METHOD 1. A natureza da NATUREZA (The nature of NATURE). Portugal: Europe-America Editions, 1977.
Listening and the crisis of thought
03
Sep
When only fundamentalist and ideological discourse has space, it is
because listening to the other side has become difficult, understanding that reality is multiple and complex, that there will not be a monochromatic future that is sustainable, is essential for a new world that is sustainable.
The understanding of reality, in addition to the facts and worldview of each social and cultural group, can only be expanded in a context of conviviality and respectful listening.
The demand for isolation due to the pandemic could have helped greater cohesion and social solidarity, it even existed in some groups and individuals, but the radical isolation of many groups around self-reference and the reinforcement of group positions has increased.
They perceive reality only through an angle of vision, closed worlds, more isolation and consequently more injustice, in addition to social injustice, that existential one that isolates groups and people, who repeat discourses and narratives only to justify subtle forms of power, is the so-called psychopolitical ( name given by Byung Chul Han), unable to open the vision.
It takes almost a miracle, perhaps the easing of the pandemic will help, but for now what we see are groups that are estranged in search of consolidating power, or taking it over.
The biblical passage that impressed even the Pharisees was the one that Jesus healed the blind and deaf, a clear metaphor so that groups clinging to his vision (political and religious) could understand through the metaphor the need to open their ears.
The passage in Mark says (Mark 7: 31-34): “Then they brought in a deaf man, who was speaking with difficulty, and they asked Jesus to lay his hand on him. Jesus walked away with the man, out of the crowd; then she placed her fingers in his ears, spat and with saliva touched his tongue. Looking up at the sky, he sighed and said: “Ephphatha!” which means: “Open up!”.
More than listening, it is necessary to listen, but to see it is necessary to widen the field of vision.
Complex thinking and humanism
02
Sep
Edgar Morin, Heidegger, Sloterdijk, and more prematurely 
Nietszche and Schopenhauer realized the crisis of what we call humanism and which distanced itself from man.
Some approached more from an ontological perspective such as Heidegger and Sloterdijk as a critic of Heidegger’s humanism, others as an approach and critique of Nihilism such as Nietszche, and Schopenhauer in a more human purpose, his phrases are famous: solitude is the luck of all exceptional spirits and the higher the spirit, the more it suffers.
All these thoughts deserve to be analyzed in the crisis of civilization that we have already entered, it is no longer lurking, it has already penetrated, in our view, it is in the thought of Edgar Morin that it is possible to find a more solid solution to this crisis, although we are moving in the opposite direction.
According to Morin, the core of humanism that we need to revitalize is the one described in Method II: “It is not a question of refusing humanism. It is necessary, as we shall see, to hominize humanism, and therefore to enrich it, basing it on the reality of the Homo complex” (Met. ll, p, 398).
Complex, because the human cannot be described in a linear logic, and cannot be isolated in areas delimited by knowledge (complexus: weaving together), the whole is man, and this is his complexity.
This arises from antiquity with the emergence of the problematic that will be called subjectivity, Karl Popper draws attention to the pre-Socratic Enlightenment, the naturalistic view of philosophy of this time would have submerged man in the web of laws of the material world, not precisely configuring the notion of Being, placed in subjectivist (of the subject) or objectivist (of the physis) aspects.
Morin promotes a review of concepts and methods, both in The Lost Paradigm, and especially in The Method, the recent evolutions of biological sciences, cybernetics and the so-called cultures of man, undergo revisions, highlighting the concepts of “autonomy” , of “love”, of “individual” and consequently of subjective, and of “uberty”.
Woven in the Jewish-Greek-Christian matrix of our culture, traversing the history of Western thought and daily life, humanism assumes orientations that do not exactly coincide with man, and which, in our view, gave an idealist vision to more universal human principles.
For Morin, two revisions are needed in humanism that intertwine and complete:
— The sketch of the homo complex;
—-The hominization of humanism.
To a phrase by an anonymous author (not Einstein’s) that circulates on the internet: “you cannot reach different results from the same thoughts”.
Listen, epoché and meet
01
Sep
In a world that is increasingly closed, polarized and with little
exercise in thinking, listening is increasingly a great effort and to know and broaden horizons it is necessary to listen.
Rubem Alves said in his famous text on listening: “I always see public speaking courses advertised. I have never seen a listening course advertised. Everyone wants to learn to speak. Nobody wants to learn to listen. I thought about offering a listening course. But I don’t think anyone will enroll. Listening is complicated and subtle…” and the beautiful text continues.
The poet Alberto Caeiro (pseudonym of Fernando Pessoa) also said something similar: “It is not enough to have ears to hear what is said; there must also be silence within the soul”, hence the difficulty: we can’t stand to hear what the other says without saying something better, without mixing what he says with what we have to say…
Our inability to listen is the most present manifestation due to our little reading and a subtle dose of arrogance and vanity: deep down, we are the wiser, more beautiful and more convinced than others, it is also a denial of otherness, of the relationship with the other.
But wisdom, thought and especially the development of solutions to complex problems and situations of humanity, and we are in one of these moments, demanded of thinkers, statesmen and social activists make a great void to be able to elaborate new thoughts, the Greeks called it “epoché”, suspension of judgment.
For the rationalists, Descartes also elaborated the “cogito”, and for the phenomenologists, the epoché is putting our preconceptions in parentheses in order to hear other perspectives of new horizons and enter a hermeneutic circle that makes up what Hans Georg Gadamer called fusion of horizons.
Those who manage to do these exercises are able to contemplate beauty so much because it needs silence to be “captured”, and knowing how to listen to others means a great capacity for communion, therefore also means an ability to find the deepest part of the Other, and live with greater harmony and joy.
The intermittents of death
31
Aug
José Saramago (1922-2010), in addition to his famous book
Essay on Blindness, written in 1995 and which later became a film directed by Brazilian Fernando Meirelles and scripted by Don McKellar, wrote many other novels: O memorial do convento (adapted from an opera), The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Essay on lucidity, and many others, I highlight here As Intermitências da Morte (2005).
In 1998, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, but two works seem prophetic for today: The essay on blindness, which we have already posted, and the Intermitências da Morte.
Skeptical and ironic, Saramago did not fail to notice the dramas of our time, but the unexpected way it ends. Lucidity, I would say using the Heideggerian metaphor that clearing is possible if we penetrate the existential drama of life.
In The Intermittencies of Death, he penetrates into the existential dramas of life, as a religious skeptic, he will also mock the outputs with an answer “from above”, that is, transfer to “another world” our permanently mundane dramas, among them, what it’s life itself.
He says in a passage on page 123: “It is possible that only a painstaking education, one of those that is already becoming rare, along, perhaps, with the more or less superstitious respect that in timid souls the written word usually instills, has led readers, although they were not lacking in reasons to manifest explicit signs of ill contained impatience, not to interrupt what we have been reporting so profusely and to want to be told what it is that, in the meantime, death has been doing since the fatal night when it announced the your return.” (in the photo a picture of Gustav Klimt’s painting).
After inquiring in every book about life, something unusual these days, because all you want is a return to frivolity, the normality of emptiness, the absence of life, consumption and false joys, the author will say in end of the book that death is normality, said like this:
“He stayed in his room all day, had lunch and dinner at the hotel. Watched television until late. Then he got into bed and turned off the light. Didn’t sleep. Death never sleeps.” (Saramago, 2005, p. 189).
And he concludes that his common irony in times when the pandemic was not even dreamed of (his pandemic was The Essay on Blindness), he says about death: “(…) I don’t understand anything, talking to you is the same as having fallen into a labyrinth without doors, Now that’s an excellent definition of life, You’re not life, I’m much less complicated than it, (…)” (Saramago, 2005, p. 198). Oh what a pity, a pity even that Saramago had never believed in a true life, this disbelief is also in all his work, especially “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” (1991), but at least he was not indifferent to the theme, something “bothered him”.
SARAMAGO, José. (2005) The intermittence of death. Brazil, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
Modern sophistry and the crisis of democracy
19
Aug
Through the posts we develop the crisis of thought and modern
sophisms, no longer based on justifications of power, but to promote new neo-authoritarian models of power, it is psychopolitics as developed by Byung Chul Han, which is beyond Foucault’s biopolitics.
On the reform of thought Edgar Morin developed an extensive work that is summarized in his book “The well-made head: rethinking the reform, reforming thought”, with two important aspects, in addition to the reformed thought itself: ecological thinking and overcoming of the mechanistic model.
A century after the triumph of quantum physics, the model of our thinking is still Newtonian, mechanistic and dualistic, the quantum model admits a third excluded, in which matter pulsates and there is a third state between one point of matter and another, called na In tunneling effect physics, he enshrines Werner Heisenberg’s initial view of the uncertainty principle and rediscovers the wave nature of matter and not just light, which is also massless matter.
Edgar Morin uses this concept of uncertainty to reform reform, that change we all want but which is still focused on two poles, and induces much of modern thought towards fundamentalisms that admit reforms neither an excluded third nor a third way.
These strands make the planet move towards an unprecedented political crisis of democracy, neo-authoritarian governments, such as Myanmar and now in Afghanistan, and planet dictatorships already almost consolidated throughout the West, threatening the emergence of new and even more radical ones.
Edgar Morin says in his book: “An intelligence incapable of perceiving the context and the planetary complex becomes blind, unconscious and irresponsible” (Morin, 2014) and will later say: ““[…] a way of thinking, capable of uniting and solidarize separate knowledge, it is capable of unfolding in an ethics of union and solidarity among humans. A thought capable of not being confined to the place and the particular, but of conceiving the sets … would be able to favor a sense of responsibility and citizenship” (Morin, 2014).
See “would be able to” in Morin´s phrase, possible but difficult in the current stage.
MORIN, Edgar (2014) A cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
