The Becoming of Change in 3D: Dialectics, Darwin, and Dewey

Abstract

Dialectical development through a conflict process of affirmation, negation, and synthesis, provides a template, both for modelling organizational change, and for constructing new, synthetic conceptual models of change. This chapter highlights two other important means by which dialectics can stimulate new change models: as a relational process philosophy, and as an evolutionary theory. A selective review of the history of ideas about change, from Greek philosophy to Hegelian and Marxian dialectics, to Darwin, to pragmatism, underscores how relational process principles link several, not commonly connected, “becoming” literatures, and how these principles can stimulate key conceptual innovations. The contrast of dialectics with Darwin’s evolutionary theory uncovers several, non-obvious affinities: in underlying principles, change patterns, and mechanisms. The capacity of dialectics—as a philosophy and as an evolutionary theory—to inspire new ideas, is illustrated by a reading of Dewey’s work anew, and through other examples pertinent to contemporary phenomena.