A closed system becomes plastic when it converts contingent accidents into own essential elements.
Evidence
Thus, the possibility of a closed system to welcome new phenomena, all the while transforming itself, is what appears as plasticity. Here again we find the process by which a contingent event, or accident, touches at the heart of the system, and, in the same breath, changes itself into one of the system’s essential elements. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1283
Categorization
- XREF: Directly grounds the reader’s brain-plasticity work: the immune/nervous-system tolerance-to-modification framing is exactly how neuroscience conceives synaptic plasticity and immune memory. — connects to: Plasticity’s mechanism is the substance-subject seesaw between essence and accident — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1256; Philosophy reveals how accidents become essential and essence becomes accidental; Plastic development requires substance to contain its future actualizations virtually — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 477 (+1 more)
- DEFINE: Gives the core definition of plasticity in cybernetic/systems terms — closed-but-perturbable.
Broader Connections
- Plasticity’s mechanism is the substance-subject seesaw between essence and accident
#expands(0.92) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1256 - Philosophy reveals how accidents become essential and essence becomes accidental
#expands(0.90) - Plasticity also means the ability to change one’s own determination
#expands(0.85) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 64 - Plastic development requires substance to contain its future actualizations virtually
#expands(0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 477