Like Whit, I’m sorry we didn’t properly connect at St. Giles. I think we’d have had a rich exchange.
You’re right: simplification often seems like the starting point, but I wonder whether the deeper issue isn’t just epistemological, but ontological. What if both dominant approaches begin—not merely in over-simplified knowledge—but in a misunderstanding of being itself?
That’s the question I’ve been circling in a recent reflection:
Terry, I'm very sorry we didn't get to chat! You're pushing me from epistemology into ontology, which feels both important and treacherous territory.
I'll confess I initially balked at the mention of "being" — I'm currently wading through Heidegger's Being and Time, and I can't shake Wittgenstein's worry that the Indo-European verb "to be" creates philosophical confusion by appearing to operate like other verbs when it really doesn't. (Bryan Van Norden has argued that Classical Chinese has no equivalent to Indo-European "to be," which makes me wonder if some of our philosophical problems aren't linguistic artifacts.)
But reading your piece, I think you're actually defending something more Heraclitean — a nature (physis) of "becoming" where humans (nomos) impose static "being" through conceptual reification. If I understand correctly, then yes, the panic I'm describing might stem from this impulse to freeze dynamic processes into fixed categories. That can provide much-needed safety in a sea of flux, but it can also be dangerous if taken too far.
This connects closely with Neither/Nor — learning to work with concepts and observations without mistaking them for reality itself. The historical pattern I'm tracing might be showing how crisis makes us especially prone to this ontological error.
Would love to explore this further, as I suspect our approaches are complementary. I also loved your description of humans as "gardeners of temporary stability within a cosmos that is fundamentally indeterminate."
Bryan, thank you for such a thoughtful and generous response. Your concern about “being” and its linguistic traps really resonated, as did your pointer toward Heraclitus and the risk of freezing what is inherently becoming. That distinction—between reality as flow and our impulse to impose static categories—feels vital, especially in times of crisis when the temptation to freeze intensifies.
Your note helped me see something I hadn’t fully articulated: that humans don’t just reify concepts cognitively—we materialise them as machines, infrastructures, and systems. These temporarily impose determinism on an indeterminate cosmos, offering stability but always subject to entropy’s quiet reclamation. In crisis, the impulse to double down on these constructs becomes strong, and yet it’s precisely at those moments that an ethos of “Neither/Nor,” as you describe, feels most necessary.
I’ve even folded your insight back into my ontology draft, where it now explicitly holds both the conceptual and the material “freezings” as part of our condition. I’d love to continue this exchange—it feels like our approaches are deeply complementary.
May I ask: how do you see this “freezing” impulse shifting in times of collective upheaval? And what practices (personal or cultural) have you seen that keep people connected to becoming rather than being trapped by static categories?
With appreciation, Terry
By the way, sorry for the delay in replying, but I have become rather embroiled in seeking (with only partial success) to articulate both my positive experiences of using AI trained in GTDF's ethic of relationality and my deep reservations about the way AI is being used in the service of humanity's more harmful impulses.
Eh, should have spoken with you at St. Giles. This is a plausible story you're telling. Perhaps over-simplified, but then your case would seem to be that both approaches you critique begin in over-simplification, too.
Great point, Whit! I absolutely agree that any critique of over-simplification risks falling into the same trap. That's exactly why I'm arguing for "Neither rationalism nor empiricism," which acknowledges the strengths of both simplification and complication without regarding either as the only method. My goal is to develop what I call 'oscillation' — the ability to move fluidly between two opposite skills without getting trapped in either. The historical pattern I'm tracing is meant to show why we keep getting stuck, not to provide another position to get stuck in :) I'll try to nuance my views a bit in the coming weeks.
Shaftesbury of course does that in The Moralist, writing as two voices, the enthusiast and the skeptic, in conversation (plus occasional other voices), intending neither to have the last word yet the fuller picture to emerge between them. Amusingly, some recent scholars argue about which of the voices expresses his "real" view.
Like Whit, I’m sorry we didn’t properly connect at St. Giles. I think we’d have had a rich exchange.
You’re right: simplification often seems like the starting point, but I wonder whether the deeper issue isn’t just epistemological, but ontological. What if both dominant approaches begin—not merely in over-simplified knowledge—but in a misunderstanding of being itself?
That’s the question I’ve been circling in a recent reflection:
🌱 https://open.substack.com/pub/terrycookedavies/p/gardens-in-the-sea-of-becoming-an?r=2ho4b2&utm_medium=ios
Would be curious to know how it lands with you.
Warmest wishes,
Terry
Terry, I'm very sorry we didn't get to chat! You're pushing me from epistemology into ontology, which feels both important and treacherous territory.
I'll confess I initially balked at the mention of "being" — I'm currently wading through Heidegger's Being and Time, and I can't shake Wittgenstein's worry that the Indo-European verb "to be" creates philosophical confusion by appearing to operate like other verbs when it really doesn't. (Bryan Van Norden has argued that Classical Chinese has no equivalent to Indo-European "to be," which makes me wonder if some of our philosophical problems aren't linguistic artifacts.)
But reading your piece, I think you're actually defending something more Heraclitean — a nature (physis) of "becoming" where humans (nomos) impose static "being" through conceptual reification. If I understand correctly, then yes, the panic I'm describing might stem from this impulse to freeze dynamic processes into fixed categories. That can provide much-needed safety in a sea of flux, but it can also be dangerous if taken too far.
This connects closely with Neither/Nor — learning to work with concepts and observations without mistaking them for reality itself. The historical pattern I'm tracing might be showing how crisis makes us especially prone to this ontological error.
Would love to explore this further, as I suspect our approaches are complementary. I also loved your description of humans as "gardeners of temporary stability within a cosmos that is fundamentally indeterminate."
Bryan, thank you for such a thoughtful and generous response. Your concern about “being” and its linguistic traps really resonated, as did your pointer toward Heraclitus and the risk of freezing what is inherently becoming. That distinction—between reality as flow and our impulse to impose static categories—feels vital, especially in times of crisis when the temptation to freeze intensifies.
Your note helped me see something I hadn’t fully articulated: that humans don’t just reify concepts cognitively—we materialise them as machines, infrastructures, and systems. These temporarily impose determinism on an indeterminate cosmos, offering stability but always subject to entropy’s quiet reclamation. In crisis, the impulse to double down on these constructs becomes strong, and yet it’s precisely at those moments that an ethos of “Neither/Nor,” as you describe, feels most necessary.
I’ve even folded your insight back into my ontology draft, where it now explicitly holds both the conceptual and the material “freezings” as part of our condition. I’d love to continue this exchange—it feels like our approaches are deeply complementary.
May I ask: how do you see this “freezing” impulse shifting in times of collective upheaval? And what practices (personal or cultural) have you seen that keep people connected to becoming rather than being trapped by static categories?
With appreciation, Terry
By the way, sorry for the delay in replying, but I have become rather embroiled in seeking (with only partial success) to articulate both my positive experiences of using AI trained in GTDF's ethic of relationality and my deep reservations about the way AI is being used in the service of humanity's more harmful impulses.
Eh, should have spoken with you at St. Giles. This is a plausible story you're telling. Perhaps over-simplified, but then your case would seem to be that both approaches you critique begin in over-simplification, too.
Best,
Whit
Great point, Whit! I absolutely agree that any critique of over-simplification risks falling into the same trap. That's exactly why I'm arguing for "Neither rationalism nor empiricism," which acknowledges the strengths of both simplification and complication without regarding either as the only method. My goal is to develop what I call 'oscillation' — the ability to move fluidly between two opposite skills without getting trapped in either. The historical pattern I'm tracing is meant to show why we keep getting stuck, not to provide another position to get stuck in :) I'll try to nuance my views a bit in the coming weeks.
Shaftesbury of course does that in The Moralist, writing as two voices, the enthusiast and the skeptic, in conversation (plus occasional other voices), intending neither to have the last word yet the fuller picture to emerge between them. Amusingly, some recent scholars argue about which of the voices expresses his "real" view.