Download PDF by John Donald: Catataxis: When More of the Same is Different

As issues get greater, it is not simply the size that adjustments. whatever else basic adjustments too. operating for a small corporation isn't the comparable as operating in an important multinational; their complete manner of doing issues is various. Governments make judgements that appear nonsensical to members. The loss of life of 1 individual is a tragedy: the loss of life of one million is a statistic. for those who swap the size of whatever, extra of an identical factor finally ends up being diversified. Paracelsus, the medieval alchemist, placed it like this: 'Substances aren't toxic, dosages are.' Friedrich Engels positioned it extra accurately: 'a quantitative switch, eventually, turns into a qualitative one.' a well-liked bumper sticky label makes the purpose extra succinctly: 'You should not caught in site visitors; you're traffic.' The anomie of the trendy international is as a result of sizeable alterations in scale with no the considered necessary adjustments in attitudes, associations and social mechanisms. there's confusion among hierarchical degrees. conception has develop into truth. there was no effortless approach to show those topics - those issues of value - in one observe. previously, that is... Catataxis, a neologism from the Greek for 'level confusion', explains why a lot of modern-day difficulties are attributable to utilizing yesterday's instruments in an inappropriately scaled glossy context. Disparate matters corresponding to famous person tradition, banking rules, worldwide warming, the struggle on terror, hovering CEO's salaries, web safety, unrepresentative democracy, spin medical professionals and political correctness can all be associated with a unmarried underlying idea: extra of a similar is different.