Do you see DIM in the theory underlying your work?

[wishbone]

Dr. Peikoff has spoken about the "DIM Hypothesis" and has illustrated it in a few fields, e.g. Physics & Education.

I see signs of "DIM" in the theories of software development. I think the "old school methodologists" represent the "M", the "modernist extreme programmers" represent the "D". I do not think a theoretical "I" has been expounded. However, some implicit "I" is what is practiced from day to day.

I will post more on Software-development DIM as I develop my ideas further and will also try to make it so that people other than software developers can understand what I am saying.

For now, I have a different purpose. I am interested in aspects of "DIM" in fields that I have not considered and that Dr. Peikoff has not mentioned.

Do you see DIM in the theory surrounding your area of work?

[AMERICONORMAN]

Of course.

Such novelists as Schiller, Hugo, Dostoevsky, and even Rostand, are misintegrators.

Such novelists as Joyce, G. Stein, and others, are disintegrated.

And Rand and some lesser novelists are integrated.

However, one has to divide romanticists from naturalists. I think that someone like Tolstoy or Sinclair Lewis are misintegrated.

So that among romanticists the theory applies but they are better because of plot and the principle or romanticism than lesser misintegrated authors. And the naturalists, in some context, fall under disintegrated.

It is very complex to name it all. But it is a very helpful theory. However, I have not bought the lectures yet. But it is on my purchase list.

But the idea itself is guiding me, to some extent, in my research into world literature.

Americo.

[RichardParker]

For now, I have a different purpose. I am interested in aspects of "DIM" in fields that I have not considered and that Dr. Peikoff has not mentioned.

Do you see DIM in the theory surrounding your area of work?

Dr. Peikoff (from memory) began his lectures discussing trichotomies.

My interest presently are three major philosophers (John Locke, Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant) and their influences (positive and negative) on the development of modern medicine.

I presently think that the I (the Fountainhead) of modern medicine was Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738) at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. His conceptualization of medicine at that time was something called The Mechanistic Theory of Man. Boerhaave seems to have attempted to integrate a type of Cartesian Rationalism (his major philosophical influence was Spinoza who was a Cartesian) with Bacon's Empiricism. Boerhaave was also fluent in reading Latin and Greek and was very well versed in studying the Ancient as well as Renaissance philosopher-physicians.

I don't presently know if Boerhaave was in any way influenced by John Locke as well.

For my purposes of study at present, Locke was the I in philosophy, Descartes the M and Kant was the D.

Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not purposefuly contradicting what Dr. Peikoff has said in his lectures on these three philosophers, only that for the purposes of my present study, I'm only suggesting that this conceptualization is more helpful in my understanding what Boerhaave's Mechanistic Thoery of Man really was.

[BurgessLau]

Such novelists as Schiller, Hugo, Dostoevsky, and even Rostand, are misintegrators.

Such novelists as Joyce, G. Stein, and others, are disintegrated.

And Rand and some lesser novelists are integrated.

However, one has to divide romanticists from naturalists.  I think that someone like Tolstoy or Sinclair Lewis are misintegrated.

I have a question for Wishbone, Americo, and Richard, but I have picked Americo's examples as being easier to understand, given my background.

What is it that is being disintegrated, integrated, or misintegrated in your example field? In novel writing, would the subject matter of integration be fact and value, plot and theme, emotion and reason, a combination of these, or something else?

[AMERICONORMAN]

I have a question for Wishbone, Americo, and Richard, but I have picked Americo's examples as being easier to understand, given my background.

What is it that is being disintegrated, integrated, or misintegrated in your example field? In novel writing, would the subject matter of integration be fact and value, plot and theme, emotion and reason, a combination of these, or something else?

Assuming that Objectivism is the correct philosophy, the subject matter of fiction writing is human action (plot) and human purpose (theme). In the art of fiction writing, it is at least a great aid to know of one's theme consciously, and having a plot that concretizes that theme in a drawn out action.

If you are to study novel writing as such, by investigating the available works of master novelists, comparing and contrasting them, classifying them, evaluating them, you will be able to apply the DIM Hypothesis. If Objectivism is the standard of Integration, then those novels that best integrate plot and theme are most integrated. (The other attributes of a novel follow from these). On this level, the Integrated novelist would be Ayn Rand because she integrates a suspenseful plot with the correct philosophy. All the rest of the writers, despite them having master plots integrated to a moral theme well done, they are executing the incorrect philosophy, and thus can't reach the stature of Ayn Rand. But then you have novelists who disregard plot, or are almost indifferent to a deep theme.

If you want to include the integrated standard along with the misintegrated class, then the subject matter of integration will necessarily change. Context.

Americo.