Plato, in the Symposium, distinguished three types of love: eros, phelia and agape, concerned with emotions based on physical, heartfelt and and spiritual attractions. In the Republic, he writes of three types of soul: epithymia, thymos and logos, concerned with appetites, spirit and reason, i.e. distinguishing between physical desires (basic needs and pleasures), emotional qualities (courage, ambition, etc.), and mental qualities (intellect, wisdom and reasoning). Aristotle, in De Anima, extends the analysis of soul types, describing the three as the nutritive, the sensitive-locomotive, and the rational. Freud’s id, ego and superego correspond to the Greek triad, and the ego intermediates between the id’s physical urges and the superego’s ideals
Speculative Phenomenological Methodology:
logical extrapolation to the higher complexity level of collective human societal from the lower complexity levels of physical and natural system*/* Boulding “Levels of Complexity”, describes 9 levels of complexity, from the physical to the social, and then includes a 9th symbolic level which would describe the global human society considered here.
The positivist, empirical notion favoring simplicity and economy in thought, evidenced by Occam’s razor, was dismissed by phenomenologists in favor of “a genuine will to know,” which requires a spirit of generosity, reverence for the undertaking, and a lens rather than a hammer. While empirics were restricted to sense data only, phenomenologists questioned what other data could be used, noting that simplification may not hold the best access to a legitimate and full picture of reality (Spiegelberg, 1982).
Economists studying the dismal science in graduate school here the classic joke about the economist looking for his lost car keys under the lamp post. A passerby asks where they lost them. The economist answers “down the road where my car is parked”. Asked why he’s looking under the lamppost the economist responds “because that is where the light is”. Economists analyze the data, and while quantitative analysis may be unable to address the subject metamorphosis hypothesis, it may still be true. The speculation is a stabbing in the dark because that is where the hypothesis lies.
Academic social science abstracts complex reality into patently unrealistical simplified models to focus on a few parameters of interest but applies logically rigorous methodologies to compare and contrast alternative hypotheses in search of the more probablisticly accurate and useful. By contrast, the speculative methodology used here starts from the plausibly realistic assumption of societal metamorphosis, but then applies biased and heuristic anecdote, analogy, narrative and speculation to support its thesis. Like carrot and stick, maybe both approaches can lead us forward in the same direction toward greater knowledge of the unknown.
Instead of asking for a cause and effect explanation of global phenomena we ask what purpose observed phenomena serve.