Duality and Opponency

Consider the apparent dualities of many aspects of reality.

Let's start with a first group of examples: positive and negative electrical charge, north and south magnetic poles, left and right particle spins, positive and negative cartesian coordinates, endothermal and exothermal processes, nuclear fusion and fission ... these we could call dualities from physical science.

We could think of a second group of dualities like: black and white colors, high and low pitch sounds, sour and bitter flavors, hot and cold environments, slow and fast motion, past and future events ... these we could call dualities from human sensory perception.

And another group of dualities could include: good and bad experiences, peaceful and violent behavior, philantropic and selfish acts, happy and sad moods, introvert and extrovert personalities, exciting and depressing scenes, love and hate feelings ... these we could call dualities from human social experience.

What are other groups we should consider to think about dualities?

Now let's consider opponency. Some of the duality examples above involve opponent properties within some kind of continnum. For example, the net electrical charge of a system can be defined as the algebraic sum of all positive and negative charges because they have opponent electrical nature. If either one total charge is larger than the other, then only part of the larger one is cancelled out by the other and the resulting difference determines the electric charge of the system. If they are equal, then the system has zero net charge; in this case, electrical opponency yields an electrically neutral system.

The same can be said about positive and negative cartesian coordinates and endothermal and exothermal thermodinamical processes. Let us refer to these as dual and opponent processes of the graded type, to indicate that the opponency occurs allong some continnum (or quasi-continnum). But there are other pairs where it is difficult to consider gradual opponency; for example elementary particle spins, where is not straightforward to consider the "total spin" of a system as something that is more or less (graded) dextrogyrous or levogyrous depending on the algebraic sum of the spin types of their comoponents.

I'll leave it here for the moment ...

Note: Those who may know me probably realize my intent to put together some bits and pieces of my intellectual history, and in doing so, I thought it would be interesting to open the discussion to share thoughts and ideas.

So, if you have something to say, feel free to pitch in.