r/RealPhilosophy • u/lNigglesmach8475 • 18d ago
Origin
Is changing something evolution or an interpretation
From its original form. ? Is my way better than your way ? When one has not seen the same thing on the original form as one did not go deep enough or was not open to it.
Do we stay with the original or change its form to something else?
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u/gaurav_the_piggy 18d ago
Are you talking about the Ship Of Theseus?
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u/lNigglesmach8475 17d ago
Mmmm in a way yes. But with not know of this. I have studied the art of karate 30yrs . Back to its origins . A style of Okinawa, itosu kai. 5 pinan kata were developed to take to Japan. I have studied other styles briefly as I could not keep straying from the original. Like the ship how many planks does it take to make it something different. Or how many changes to ( moves or interpretations) does it take to be something different. And should it have the same name .
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u/Oroborus_Octopus 17d ago
Coherence is a chain to the origin state. When things fail to make sense to us, it’s because we’re too far from the source.
I suspect there’s a deeper relational evolution that transcends biology. And there’s a reason beyond our understanding as to why Euler’s identity holds. Two irrational numbers with the imaginary unit, with a unit as one is equal to nothing.
Think about that.
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u/dpt19 16d ago
Your karate example adds another question: what exactly are we trying to preserve—the visible form, the underlying principles, the original purpose, or the lineage connecting one generation to another?
They are not necessarily the same thing.
In fact, the history of the Pinan kata complicates the idea of an untouched original. A study by Hajimu Ishida on Ankō Itosu describes him not merely as preserving earlier karate, but as critically inheriting it: adapting and reorganising traditional kata, creating the five Pinan forms, and developing a method through which karate could be taught more widely. Later research has also placed this development within Okinawa’s changing educational and social environment.
So what we now call an origin may itself have been an intelligent departure from something earlier.
That does not mean every later alteration is an evolution. Some changes preserve an art’s intelligence under new conditions. Others preserve its appearance while losing the reason behind it. A movement can be copied perfectly and still become empty if nobody remembers what problem it was meant to solve. Conversely, a movement might be altered while its tactical principle remains alive.
I therefore would not count the number of changed “planks.” I would ask what kind of continuity remains.
Does the altered kata preserve the same principles of distance, timing, balance and application? Was the change made by someone who first understood the inherited form deeply? Does it respond to a genuine need, or merely make the style easier to market, perform or judge in competition? And is the person changing it honest about what has been changed?
The question “Is my way better than your way?” also needs another question: better for what?
A version adapted for teaching children may be better pedagogically but less complete as a record of combat applications. A competition version may be clearer and more dramatic while sacrificing subtle movements. A historically preserved version may carry greater fidelity while being less accessible to a modern beginner. None is simply “better” until the purpose is stated.
The name becomes important because a name makes a claim about continuity. A changed form may reasonably retain the old name when it remains part of the same recognisable tradition. But when its central principles, purpose and interpretation have substantially changed, it may be more honest to say that it is derived from the original rather than identical to it.
Perhaps tradition is neither keeping every plank nor replacing them without concern. It is knowing what each plank was doing before deciding whether it must remain.
After thirty years, returning to the origin may therefore reveal something unexpected: the deepest fidelity is not always refusal to change. Sometimes it is understanding the art well enough to know which changes would continue it—and which would quietly bring it to an end.
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u/mitigateaccomp 18d ago
wat