Philosophy of the system

Author: Jin Guantao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Starting from Heraclitus, dialectical masters viewed nature as an ever-flowing flame. To grasp the internal development and self-negation of this flame, philosophers introduced self-negation of prescribed concepts within rigid and static conceptual definitions—this is contradiction. However, contradiction leads to the destruction of logic, hence it is met with cold reception from science. How can this philosophical paradox be resolved? Do science and philosophy share an intrinsic common foundation? How can contemporary philosophers reformulate philosophy based on scientific demands and advancements? While the application of philosophy to social and historical studies has fallen out of fashion, two new developments have surprised me. It is the application of certain perspectives to new areas of art research. The Philosophy of Man once proposed that truth could be divided into subjective truth and objective truth. Subjective truth is merely a logically possible inference derived from the cognitive application of systems theory. Whether it truly exists in reality was unknown at the time. In the 1990s, concrete expressionist painting based on the creative experience of French painter Jean Arpéguy demonstrated that subjective truth was proven in the realm of painting. In this new century where art has become dispensable, when the discovery of subjective truth emerges as a new mission for painters, the study of philosophy naturally becomes an indispensable tool for further exploration. Second, certain methods from The Philosophy of the Whole are beginning to be applied to medicine. The new development of structural stability in relation to homeostasis has finally caught the attention of doctors, and a medical theory known as holistic coherence is on the rise.