The Taijitu, Western Dialectics and Brain Hemisphere Function: A Dialogue Facilitated by the Scholarship of Complex Integration

Abstract

Using as central reference point a complex evolutionary interpretation of the East Asian Taijitu (associated with yin-yang theory), this chapter leans toward a kaleidoscopic dialogue involving: Western dialectics (as exemplified through Bhaskar’s dialectical critical realism and philosophy of meta-Reality); brain hemisphere function (via McGilchrist’s work critically exploring the globally significant under-regard of the right hemisphere and its relationship to dominant culture); the philosophy of quantum physics; Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Winton’s pattern dynamics; critical social theory; and an ecosystem of postformal developmental psychological modalities. Enhancements are effected both toward Boyer’s scholarship of integration—by the utilisation of postformal reasoning to propose a scholarship of complex integration—and toward such notions as dialogue and pertinence. With radical implications for global academia and formal Western contexts of thought regarding the critical underuse of such semiotic patterns as the Taijitu, this chapter aspires to the betterment of humanity and the world.