Digital Endosymbiosis
Mark Johnson,
Improvisation Blog,
Sept 26, 2021
You my recall the discussion last week of Boethius the concept of Porphyry's tree as the structure and categorization of things in the world. This is the idea that the world is made up of substance, which consists of an unchanging essence (aka, 'universals') and changing accident (aka 'particulars'). Knowing this helps us understand statements like the one that opens this article: "Digital Endosymbiosis is a realignment of universals and particulars between the activities that take place in an institution and those which take place outside it." And "disciplinary discourse is confused about what is particular and what is universal." The concept of universality has been carried down to this day. When people propose hypotheses, when people talk about sameness or essence, when people talk about shared meaning or common understanding, they are appealing to it. But what if this 2400-year old idea is wrong, and the search for underlying essence is misguided?
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