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The Dynamics of Transformation: Tracing an Emerging World View
"Remarkable and nearly unique in its mastery and scope. There is a poetic sense behind the text that draws the reader along with pleasure."Allan Combs, Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina"An inspiring vision."Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind"By the time one reaches the end of the argument, one has the sense of having undergone a kind of initiation into an ever-widening community of seekers for whom value and meaning, pattern and purpose are the real stuff of which worlds are made."Sean Kelly, Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies "Nietzsche's Zarathustra said 'I would only believe in a god who knows how to dance'; Maxwell traces out those dance steps, which he calls the dynamics of transformation."Timothy Desmond, author of Psyche and Singularity"An important and insightful contribution to understanding the creative transition into a new paradigm of intellectual thought."Keiron Le Grice, Professor at Pacifica Graduate InstituteIn the tradition of books like William James' Pragmatism, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, The Dynamics of Transformation is a concise and clear presentation of a radically novel theory with the potential to transform the reader's view of the world. The book offers twelve concepts that trace the contours of an emerging world view after the postmodern. Drawing on the work of a wide range of theorists, from Hegel, Carl Jung, Henri Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead to Jean Gebser, Richard Tarnas, Ray Kurzweil, and Terence McKenna, it provides a framework for understanding how processes change over time. Synthesizing ideas ranging from quantum discontinuity, fractals, and archetypes to qualitative time, teleology, and exponential acceleration, Maxwell shows how these concepts relate to one another in a complexly intertwined network. He suggests that these theoretical approaches are all confluent streams that have gradually been converging over the last few centuries, and that this increasingly potent conceptual flood appears primed for a dramatic entrance into the preeminent currents of academic and intellectual culture.
- GenresPhilosophy
215 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 12, 2016
34 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
About the author
Grant Maxwell
32 books6 followersGrant Maxwell is the author of "How Does It Feel?: Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Philosophy of Rock and Roll" and "The Walk", a children's book illustrated by his mother-in-law, Susan Edwards. Maxwell has served as a professor of English at Baruch College in New York, he holds a PhD from the City University of New York's Graduate Center, and he's an editor at Archai: the Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. He's also a musician, and he lives in East Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and son.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 4, 2017
Excellent! This book is refreshing. Maxwell's presence and grasp of the evolution of the collective consciousness is comforting and validating. His writing style is fresh and inspiring. His integration of the transcendent function in almost every chapter is incredible. This is full of transformative meaning across all spaces.
August 16, 2017
The Dynamics of Transformation by Grant Maxwell
The ingression or invasion of consciousness and novelty into our time and space is big medicine and may even be cause for a little math-based hopefulness. Evolving or changing has four causes according to Aristotle - material, efficient, formal and final. What a thing’s made of, its precedent, the nature of change (eg. octave is 2:1) and the ultimate purpose respectively.
This is just the beginning of what I learned from Grant Maxwell’s The Dynamics of Transformation. Clearly smarter now, and with a totally expanded perspective on my life and my own desperate philosophical exercises, I’m glad I barreled through the intellectual obstacle course that composed the introduction.
Abstract concept after abstract concept, vividly elucidated by a world-class wordsmith though it is, the feeling is of a precarious acid trip with Lord Alfred North Whitehead. However, once the intro’s behind you (escape velocity) and when more time is taken, though time itself takes a beating in this thing as well, the author is able to bring the intellectual level down to a comfortable sprint and it becomes a lot more fun. Whereas Rick Tarnas illustrates the ingression of archetype into our world through countless cultural and historical examples, Maxwell has a far more ambitious philosophical agenda.
Whitehead, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger and the late teleoligist Terrence McKenna, heavyweights all, forge the bedrock of Dr. Maxwell’s explorations and intimations for a new mode. A shift is suggested, like the big bang perhaps, or life on earth, or smart monkeys or whatever it is we have become since, perhaps with a formal cause of reverse bifurcation and unification between subject and object – the fundamental goal of yoga. Something new, moving at last through the archaic, magic, mythological and mental mode of scientific rationalism into an ontology, an epistemology that integrates and expands on its precedents.
If post-modernism can be summed up as the collapsing of the meta-narrative of scientific rationalism evolving into utopia into a fragmented mosaic where people are simply the product of social and economic forces, and, like me, you find this depressing – here’s a way forward, plausible and elegantly reasoned.
English professor Harold Bloom defines sublime as “sacrificing easy pleasures for more difficult ones.” The Dynamics of Transformation is no easy pleasure, but once your brain bootstraps itself into the necessary frequency it is a unique and groundbreaking philosophical roller coaster.
The ingression or invasion of consciousness and novelty into our time and space is big medicine and may even be cause for a little math-based hopefulness. Evolving or changing has four causes according to Aristotle - material, efficient, formal and final. What a thing’s made of, its precedent, the nature of change (eg. octave is 2:1) and the ultimate purpose respectively.
This is just the beginning of what I learned from Grant Maxwell’s The Dynamics of Transformation. Clearly smarter now, and with a totally expanded perspective on my life and my own desperate philosophical exercises, I’m glad I barreled through the intellectual obstacle course that composed the introduction.
Abstract concept after abstract concept, vividly elucidated by a world-class wordsmith though it is, the feeling is of a precarious acid trip with Lord Alfred North Whitehead. However, once the intro’s behind you (escape velocity) and when more time is taken, though time itself takes a beating in this thing as well, the author is able to bring the intellectual level down to a comfortable sprint and it becomes a lot more fun. Whereas Rick Tarnas illustrates the ingression of archetype into our world through countless cultural and historical examples, Maxwell has a far more ambitious philosophical agenda.
Whitehead, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger and the late teleoligist Terrence McKenna, heavyweights all, forge the bedrock of Dr. Maxwell’s explorations and intimations for a new mode. A shift is suggested, like the big bang perhaps, or life on earth, or smart monkeys or whatever it is we have become since, perhaps with a formal cause of reverse bifurcation and unification between subject and object – the fundamental goal of yoga. Something new, moving at last through the archaic, magic, mythological and mental mode of scientific rationalism into an ontology, an epistemology that integrates and expands on its precedents.
If post-modernism can be summed up as the collapsing of the meta-narrative of scientific rationalism evolving into utopia into a fragmented mosaic where people are simply the product of social and economic forces, and, like me, you find this depressing – here’s a way forward, plausible and elegantly reasoned.
English professor Harold Bloom defines sublime as “sacrificing easy pleasures for more difficult ones.” The Dynamics of Transformation is no easy pleasure, but once your brain bootstraps itself into the necessary frequency it is a unique and groundbreaking philosophical roller coaster.
August 4, 2018
This is a book about how a new world view has been emerging over the last few centuries. We participate in the unfolding meaning of the world. Participatory insight is an outcome of an integrative method, which seeks to reconcile opposed assertions. The integrative method recognizes that opposed assertions both contain partial trues within their appropriate contexts, and seeks to synthesize them into a reconciling third perspective. Grant Maxwell reminds us that our relation to experience suddenly and abruptly can change.[1]
Different assumptions lead to different ways of relating to experience.[3] In order to reconcile opposing beliefs, one must move beyond what makes the beliefs seem irreconcilable.[4] Life seems to go through relatively distinct periods. These are expressed in subtle and constantly shifting meanings.[5] Grant Maxwell suggests that entropic disorder perhaps should be complemented with a syntropic teleological impulse toward novelty, consciousness, and order.[6]
Grant Maxwell points out that all that is required to make the transition from one world view to another is a decision. The integrative method is indispensable for this transition.[8] We do not decide to adopt a new world view primarily for rational reasons, but because of changes in our bodily experience.[9] We are not passive observers of the emerging world view, but active and integral participants.[10]
Fundamental transformation can happen suddenly when all factors align.[12] Grant Maxwell describes a world where the activities and interactions of billions of people are set against the background of the multivalent quality of each moment, reflected in a radically new archetypal cosmology.[13] This new cosmology is in itself an outcome of the integrative method.[14] It's a thought-provoking book. I liked it.
Notes:
[1] Grant Maxwell, The Dynamics of Transformation: Tracing an Emerging World View (Persistent Press, 2017), p.30.
[2] Ibid..
[3] Ibid., p.32.
[4] Ibid., p.41.
[5] Ibid., p.45.
[6] Ibid., p.54.
[7] Ibid., p.57.
[8] Ibid., p.78.
[9] Ibid., p.103.
[10] Ibid., p.121.
[11] Ibid., p.136.
[12] Ibid., p.149.
[13] Ibid., p.151.
[14] Ibid., p.142.
"Like water boiling or ice melting, world views are susceptible to comparatively abrupt transformations precisely because they are not given, but are elicited by our participation in the creation of the world’s meaning."[2]
Different assumptions lead to different ways of relating to experience.[3] In order to reconcile opposing beliefs, one must move beyond what makes the beliefs seem irreconcilable.[4] Life seems to go through relatively distinct periods. These are expressed in subtle and constantly shifting meanings.[5] Grant Maxwell suggests that entropic disorder perhaps should be complemented with a syntropic teleological impulse toward novelty, consciousness, and order.[6]
"… if we change our beliefs, whether intentionally or impelled by the witnessing of new evidence, the world can appear suddenly and radically different to us …[7]"
Grant Maxwell points out that all that is required to make the transition from one world view to another is a decision. The integrative method is indispensable for this transition.[8] We do not decide to adopt a new world view primarily for rational reasons, but because of changes in our bodily experience.[9] We are not passive observers of the emerging world view, but active and integral participants.[10]
"[The] … participatory perspective acknowledges that if human consciousness is evolved from and embedded in the world it seeks to know, then the mind can be understood as the world coming to know itself."[11]
Fundamental transformation can happen suddenly when all factors align.[12] Grant Maxwell describes a world where the activities and interactions of billions of people are set against the background of the multivalent quality of each moment, reflected in a radically new archetypal cosmology.[13] This new cosmology is in itself an outcome of the integrative method.[14] It's a thought-provoking book. I liked it.
Notes:
[1] Grant Maxwell, The Dynamics of Transformation: Tracing an Emerging World View (Persistent Press, 2017), p.30.
[2] Ibid..
[3] Ibid., p.32.
[4] Ibid., p.41.
[5] Ibid., p.45.
[6] Ibid., p.54.
[7] Ibid., p.57.
[8] Ibid., p.78.
[9] Ibid., p.103.
[10] Ibid., p.121.
[11] Ibid., p.136.
[12] Ibid., p.149.
[13] Ibid., p.151.
[14] Ibid., p.142.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews