Tuesday, January 3, 2012

The differance between meta- and ideological theories

Ongoing IPS discussion in the OOO thread has a Bohr(ing) quantum convert decrying OOO's pluralist or democratic ontology for a more ideological and totalizing theory of everything, what I lovingly refer to as The Bohrg. In response I posted this from Mark Edwards on meta-theories (from the religious difference thread):

“Integration in the metatheory building context does not mean to create one super-theory but rather to bring many different viewpoints together so that their strengths and weaknesses can be recognized....Rather that simply reproducing dominant theoretical ideologies, metatheory undermines them through this reflexive raising of consciousness about the relationships between theories. And this is, in fact, why several metatheorists have argued that postmodernism is itself a metatheoretical enterprise” (13-15).


Related to this Balder then posted a long section from Harman's The Quadruple Object. See the referenced IPS page, posted partly in response to how it relates to Edwards metatheoretical ideas in the religious pluralism thread. My comment:

Actually Harman above relates to both threads, in that it offers a meta-theory of various theories, not reducing any one into the other, or subsuming any into one "super theoretical ideology." Yet nonetheless he finds this type of integration (that Edwards mentions) a "universal" of sorts, but not an ontheological One or totalizing Whole. I also appreciate his polarities, reminiscent of "complimentarity," at least the kind envisioned by the likes of Barad or Desilet, "split by fission and united by fusion."

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