A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity

Another is behind a paywall.

So the first one was ContraPoints on the West talking about how people want to defend the west or consider the west in decline but there really isn't any such thing as the west because different things have been referred to as the west and the borders of the west have changed and so on um and then there was another one um by historian explaining about how different things are meant by the word capitalism as well and that therefore capitalism is a myth of course And actually, I happen to be in the middle of reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and it occurs to me that that notion may be covered less by one of these fallacies than by something that Wittgenstein talks about in that book, which is that you have something, and his example is games, where there's really no, we have this word game, which applies to a diverse number of activities.

And we all seem to understand what we mean when we say the word game.

But when you try to actually define a game, there's really no one aspect or quality which covers every single instance of what we would call a game you can always come up with examples if you're saying well games are this and you can you know okay games are played with other people okay what about solitaire just for example um well just about every other game is played with multiple people but um so there there's an overlapping um network of connections uh which he calls a family resemblance and this is a way of understanding the concept of a game rather than saying well you can't actually define a game so there's no such thing as a game anyways moving on So I say with equal tendentiousness, everything is a thing.

You can still call this the same body, it's aged 10 years since then, but it's still my body as it was in 2005.

And so there's a sense in which this first table cannot account for the emergence of things over and above their ultimate components.

And as Manuel de Landa has shown in his book, A New Philosophy of Society, a lot of times there are objects that can create their own parts or can replace their own parts.

An example would be the city of Stockholm.

Another is behind a paywall.

So the first one was ContraPoints on the West talking about how People want to defend the West or consider the West in decline but there really isn't any such thing as the West because Different things have been referred to as the West and the borders of the West have changed and so on And then there was another one By historian explaining about how different things are meant by the word capitalism as well and that therefore capitalism is a myth of course And actually, I happen to be in the middle of reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and it occurs to me that that notion may be covered less by one of these fallacies than by something that Wittgenstein talks about in that book, which is that you have something, and his example is games, where there's really no, we have this word game, which applies to a diverse number of activities.

And we all seem to understand what we mean when we say the word game.

But when you try to actually define a game, there's really no one aspect or quality which covers every single instance of what we would call a game you can always come up with examples if you're saying well games are this and you can you know okay games are played with other people okay what about solitaire just for example um well just about every other game is played with multiple people but um So there's an overlapping network of connections, which he calls a family resemblance.

You can still call this the same body, it's aged 10 years since then, but it's still my body as it was in 2005.

And so there's a sense in which this first table cannot account for the emergence of things over and above their ultimate components.

And as Manuel de Landa has shown in his book, A New Philosophy of Society, a lot of times there are objects that can create their own parts or can replace their own parts.

An example would be the city of Stockholm.