Today was the type of day that makes the past few years of theory worthwhile.

Before I go any further, a brief digression: I’m not good with philosophy. Not in the “I don’t see the value of it” way. Nah, I’m at the more fundimental “I don’t understand it” way. I wasn’t trained to read it. And stuff like Marx’s “negation of the negation” stuff just causes my eyes to glaze over. It’s not for lack of trying mind you. But its been a stuggle since I dove into the social sciences.

Digression completed, my exciting news is that I think I finally “get” Hagel’s dialectic — the key to unlocking a lot of stuff. After an excellent lecture in my Professional Seminar class, it’s making a lot more sense. My professor, Dominic Boyer, gave an amazing lecture that really connected a number of dots for me (not the least of which was getting me beyond “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” to “becoming, negation, sublimation”).

Have a lot more to write about this, but I need to cut it off here so I can hopefully get in a proposal for Siggraph 2009.