DevelopmentThinking1 - Friday January 8th Development as a term has won out over its competitors civilization westernization modernization even

Friday, January 8 th Development as a term has won out over its competitors: • “civilization”, “westernization”, “modernization” even “liberation”. Principles of Biological Development: - Directionality : you know where a seed and seedling are headed. - Cumulative: Each stage of growth is necessary for the organism to be able to pass on to the next, “higher” stage. - Continuity: A seedling is the same organism as a tree, a caterpillar is the same organism as a moth - Irreversibility: It is impossible to go back. • Problems with applying this metaphor to human society: - Who says that villages are destined to become cities? - Civilizations collapse. - For some groups of people, things used to be better. Aristotle (382-322), an early expositor of the natural metaphor: - The Greek word physis can be translated as both ‘nature’ and ‘development’ - Every being has a physis: its own principle of development - “The nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse or a family.” (Politica 1253) - An individual cannot exist without the state, the state must have existed before the individual. • Science is the examination of things according to their nature (development) . The nature of humans is to be found in the state.