This is a culmination of a lot of ideas I’ve had over the years that constitute my world view and understanding of our reality.

Some key realizations I’ve had are that there are many parallels between concepts of energy gradients driving evolution of dynamic systems, emergence, and self-organization with the core concepts of Dialectical Materialism rooted in contradictions, transformation of quantity into quality, and the negation of the negation.

Dialectical Materialism describes the cyclical process of development where an initial thesis is countered by an antithesis, leading to a synthesis that retains aspects of both but transcends them to a new level. This directly mirrors the idea of energy gradients driving systems towards higher levels of complexity and organization. In both cases, emergent properties arise from the interactions within the system driven by the selection pressures.

I see nature as having a fractal quality to it where environmental pressures to optimize space and energy use drive the emergence of similar patterns at different scales. I argue that our social structures are a direct extension of the physical reality and simply constitute a higher level of abstraction and organization that directly builds on the layers beneath.

If you’re simply interested in a standalone introduction to dialectics can skip to chapter 8, which is largely self-contained. The preceding chapters build a foundation by illustrating how self-organization leads to the emergence of minds and social structures.

One of the goals I have here is to provide an introduction to diamat for people in STEM who may be coming from the liberal mainstream by demonstrating a clear connection between materialist understanding of physical reality and human societies.

Feedback and critique are both very welcome.