One of the most beautiful and mesmerising sights in the world is, I think, flowing water. This photo captures a flow of water around a post at the beginning of a weir. Flow is a very important concept to me.
Giles Deleuze‘s radical philosophy emphasised difference and change to the extent that he called on us to change our priorities from the old Greek ones which still dominate our reductionist science.
He emphasised difference instead of identity. Championing uniqueness, and the special-ness of the present moment, over categorisation, essences and identity. I am a one off, not one of a kind.
He emphasised change over objects. His philosophy is a philosophy of becoming.
As it says, in the byline to this blog……becoming not being.
These ideas have been with us for centuries. In the West, it was Heraclitus who said you can’t step in the same river twice. In the East, Taoism emphasises the Way, and Japanese culture, for example, reveres the transient (as we see magnificently in the annual cherry blossom celebrations)
[…] Transience and flow. These two phenomena are closely connected and lie at the heart of what I see everywhere in life. Life is a dynamic flow of energy, information and materials. In fact, not only “Life”, but Nature. All natural phenomena are dynamic, moving, changing, developing from one form into another. […]