[Lonergan_l] power, metaphysics and serendipity

[Jaray...@aol.com]

Doug, Catherine, Phil, Bob and all

 

   I'm not sure what role serendipity might play in GEM studies. Still, I see serendipity in the ongoing discussion between the role of power as summed up by Catherine and Doug in the message below and the somewhat "recondite" hope that Phil and Bob Henman would call us to in SGEME.

 

   SGEME, focused on implementing GEM metaphysics, would make the message below part of its strategy as I see it. Is a military metaphor adviseable here? BL uses one in his Insight (encirclement etc). Phil uses his own. I think what Phil, who was asked by BL to be present at BC as he reworked his economics, is on to the long term implications of what the social and physical sciences have in common, eg advert to our data of sense and consciousness, the general categories and what follows from that--eg, in "power relations". Also part of what follows from that is BL's "uncompromising" drive to help us develop the basic nest of terms and relations and the differentiations of consciousness and an "account of the human good, values, beliefs... the carriers, elements, functions, realms, and stages of meaning..." (MiT, 287).

 

   This serendipity, if it be one, challenges us (the "GEM team") to do the FS 1-8 well--or am I just dreaming again? If the latter, then I'll keep quiet for a while,

 

John