THE MYSTERY OF WONDER, CRISIS OR CONFLICT AND ITS DEMYSTIFICATION IN THE SCIENCE OF DEVELOPMENT. Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI

KEMKA S. IBEJI 

Please I don't want to get confused. Please don't introduce crisis here. Please endeavor to avoid conflict in your engagement. I am wondering what will happen next. These and many more are commonplace statements we hear whenever someone is either in crisis or wants to avoid such. Many pray that you never encounter crisis in whatever you are doing.

The way it has always been presented portrays crisis and wonder as something to avoid. In fact, in some fora it is treated as a plague. It indeed has caused some stir of reflection if this is a worthy belief or not. Few thinkers may have not bothered themselves about this but I think it is an important issue to be concerned about.

Is wonder, crisis or conflict a curse? The concord implies that I conceive of the three words - wonder, crisis and conflict - as one and the same. It therefore means that within this frame they are interchangeable salva veritate (in the parlance of the WVO Quine). The view here is that in the place of 'wonder', you can use 'crisis' or 'conflict' and it will not alter the meaning and so for any of the words for each other.

So can one therefore validly see or conceive of wonder, crisis or conflict as a curse?

By definition of the concept of wonder, crisis and conflict here, I may rather than denotative definition, adopt a contextual definition whereby the discussion will effortlessly deliver the meaning in the process. In other words, in the course of the discussion, the meaning of the concept will render itself to consciousness and cognition in so clear a way that it will be appropriately incontrovertible.

My years of study in philosophy granted me an opportunity into the experiences of great western thinkers as the milesian triad (Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes), the sophists, the Golden era thinkers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. I also got through medievalism, the church men, the modernity with its scientificity and postmodernism. However, certain philosophical motif crisscross the horizons of human knowledge and understanding. It is the idea of wonder, crisis or conflict.

Considering the conspicuous dualism in daily human experiential encounter where we constantly are greeted with the ubiquity of good and evil, the interplay of the day and night, hotness and coldness, rise and fall, beginning and ending, light and darkness, life and death, etc. The wonder became the poise to depict and denote what exactly is the universal stuff of existence. What is the common underlying potent with which all things are made? What particularly can explain reality in its entirety such that it is found both in hotness and coldness, day and night and the rest of opposing constants of life?

Many western Philosophers in the history of western philosophy came up with their positions to solve the problem of wonder, crisis and conflict.

While Thales saw it as water, Anaximander said it was indeterminate boundless, Anaximenes posited that it is air, Heraclitus stated that it is s fire and Xenophanes of Elea submitted that it was air. The first synthesizer Empedocles of Akragas aggregated the four and submitted that the primary stuff is water, air, fire and earth. Of course, Pythagoras of Samos said it was numbers while Anaxagoras of Clazomenia affirmed that there is everything in everything. One will be misled to think that these were mere gesticulations and guesswork. These were indeed the foundation of philosophy hence science.

Many scientific explanations were marshaled to give grounds to the positions. For Thales, everything is water. He was convinced as such by many states that water assumes at different times - from liquid to solid when in ice form, and to gaseous state through evaporation. But how can water be the source of fire? Is it possible that fire could have been made by the use of water as an element? Do not answer this question in a hurry anyway!

Anaximenes adduced the scientific concepts of condensation (congealing of air) and rarefaction (expansion of air) to drive home his point that air is the ultimate stuff of existence. This position of Anaximenes can even be expanded to take cognizance of the importance of oxygen to human existence and more. This can persuade thinking into accepting air as the primary stuff even as air works between fire ignition, sustenance and extinguishing.

The several declarations of the several thinkers were deployed to explain the wonder, crisis and conflict and to draw out meaning from it. It for this reason that it traditional to assert that philosophy, and by extension all intellectual pursuits, are a child of wonder. It is for wonder, crisis and conflict that human inquisitiveness was conceived and innovation birthed. No wonder it was a cliché to say that necessity is mother of invention. Of course, necessity will only be referring to wonder, crisis and/or conflict.

Therefore, philosophy started out of wonder, crisis and conflict which gave grounds to the quest for solution(s) to both the existential and transcendental uncertainties. When we say philosophy here, it connotes the sciences. This is so as the sciences of today were studied under philosophy as natural philosophy. It is also very important to sustain the fact of knowledge that philosophy is the mother of all disciplines as taxonomized today. And having given birth to all academic disciplines as seen and studied today has also risen in function and assumed the status as the gadfly of all intellectual compartments. It amounts to the fact that wonder, crisis or conflict is the necessity for knowledge, solutions, growth, developments  improvements and the likes.

It will therefore be significant to ask once again ask if wonder, crisis or conflict is a curse to and in human existence?

Another practical instance will assist us drive down a little more. Let us via a bit into the labyrinthine of literature. We usually have read the three genres of literature as prose, poetry and drama. But here we will be more concerned with drama though the concept to be attended permeates the gamut of literature. In drama, we find the synchronic work between setting, theme, plot and conflict. Here also we will narrow our consideration to plot and conflict.

Plot in drama simply means the sequence of events in the process of the entire artwork. It has to do with progression of the drama from one happening to the next and till the drawing of the curtains. The plot is composed of the events that make up the entire story. These events are organized in a sequential manner

or a specific narrative pattern that links them together. The structure of a story or drama depends on the organization of events in the plot. The plot centers the reader’s attention on the characters and their roles in the story. Elements of the plot motivate or impel characters to behave in a specific way, which can either create a positive or negative results for the character. Events in the plot contribute to the story’s rising action, the climax and the falling action, resulting in the story’s end. In short, a plot is what occurs in a story or novel.

For sure, here in drama conflict depicts wonder, crisis or confusion. When we mentioned that events in the plot determine the progression of the story, we are simply pointing at the nature and performance or duty of conflict in literary work. It is axiomatic to assert that it is conflict - and in our considered concept, wonder, crisis or confusion - that necessitates the progression from one plot to another. It is no gainsaying the fact that movement from one plot to another which invariably is development is engendered by conflict. This is to state that without conflict, there will not be development within the sequence of a story; no progress from one plot to the other.

To this end, it is superintendent and indispensable being the significance of wonder, crisis or conflict in the entire corpus of development - existential or transcendental, terrestrial or extraterrestrial.

Wonder, crisis or conflict is found in all processes, procedures, patterns and manifestations of development. It is in all organized knowledge (science), in human associations or relationships such as marriage, friendship, business, in human activities as learning, understanding, pursuits, promotion, and even growth of all kinds. We are used to seeing little children fall sick at different stages of their growth or development. We see workers struggling to pass their promotion examinations, husband and wife shaping up their union and the marking boundaries in relationships through conflicts.

In business and wealth education, it is believed that when you are settled and relaxed for too long without challenges, crisis or conflict you are stagnant. This is same in education. The processes of knowing introduces you headlong to crisis/conflict that sees you to the other side once surmounted.

Though a mystery fraught with paradoxes wonder, crisis or conflict is the ingredient without which the birth of development will be impossible or impracticable.

KEMKA S. IBEJI