HONEST TO BLOG

The Blogging Dooyeweerdians
or "blogosphere sovereignty"?

My friend, Scott Kennedy, is utilizing Dooyeweerdian modal aspects to tag his blog posts. I think this is totally fantastic. I don't use tags myself, and such an application would probably never have occurred to me. But I hope his endeavor is a success and that others try it out.

Modalities (or aspects) are highly abstract "categories." They are fundamentally hows or ways (not whats or things). They are the "hows" of meaning. Created reality, all existence, is meaning. Things don't have meaning, they are meaning. That sounds strange, but it means that, as created, the being of this universe is utterly dependent on its Creator. Being is meaning because it both refers to God and expresses His power. The modalities are theoretically irreducible "modes" of temporal being and experience, that is to say "of the way reality means."

Now, as the highly abstract categories that they are, modalities may not seem to be the best "taxonomy" for blog post tagging. Most topics discussed in any given blog entry cover a wide range of interconnections, or what might be called "modal analogies." But even these sorts of analogical concepts are still quite abstract. Many things one would talk about in a blog are the concrete things of "every day" experience. One might talk about a vacation trip, and the paintings viewed in a museum, and the friends who came with, and the foods tasted, and so on. One might even talk about the paper one's writing. But these are all concrete things, not abstractions.

However, each of these concrete things may be associated with some "primary characteristic" or other. And such primary characteristics, however discerned, can be associated with some particular related modality. Blog topics classification is not a theoretically precise science, and there's no reason it should be. But the possibility of relating such topics to Dooyeweerd's profound theoretical matrix seems to hold promise of providing a diverse-enough-to-be-flexible, yet concise-enough-to-be-systematic solution for blog metadata. Who woulda thunk it?

Anyway, let me take this opportunity to list the several Reformational (aka Dooyeweerdian) and/or Neocalvinist (aka Kuyperian) active bloggers from my sidebar. In part, I mention these blogs to find out who else I can include. So, if I've left you out, let me know!
Macht Beheersing
Mark Bertrand
Nathan Bierma
Steve Bishop
Byron Borger
Joe Carter
Jeff Cavanaugh
Sander Chan
Nevada Epiginoskein
Cal Fox
Bill Gram-Reefer
Rudi Hayward (new blogger!)
Dave Hegeman
Andrea Hensen
Kenn Hermann
Ben House
Brian Janaszek
David Koyzis
Keith Martel
Cynthia Nielsen
Paul Otto
Nancy Pearcey
The Philologous
Theo Plantinga
Russ Reeves
Owl Refwrite
Paul Robinson
Jamie Smith
Gideon Strauss
Steve Veldkamp
Greg Veltman
Graham Weeks

Again, if I mistakenly left you out (and you've posted in the past month or so), or if you're only a neocalvinist in my dreams (I mistakenly included you), be sure to leave me a comment and I'll correct the list.