New Logics of Progress

Extract

A primary image suggests itself to anyone who wishes to assert that every society exfoliates in several ways, such as in technics, organization, the sacred, the recreational, the beautiful, etc. all in one movement which is simultaneously both differentiated and integral. This image is of a fan, whose stems diverge from a center and are linked in the one unfolding; but another assertion immediately intervenes, claiming that this picture is over-optimistic: it is the assertion of the disparities between these ways, or domains, which disrupt the pattern of the whole by modifying its aspect and which can alter its meaning. If one wishes, one may call these the contradictions.