Volume 72, 2018
Social Philosophy
Dmitri Mikhalevski
Pages 99-104
The Development of Social Space and its Structures
A New Spatial Paradigm Approach (on the Material of Ancient Greek History)
The paradigm of spatial paradigm is a derivative of the developing mentality structures and universal description of epistemological and ontological aspects of human existence, social space and its structures. It provides internalization of external conditions, of forms of social and cultural life, and externalization of schemes of perception and action, as a series of simple shapes of increasing dimensions: a point, a line, a square, a pyramid. The development of social space and its structures is associated with the emergence of carries of a new spatial paradigm within the society. In the initial state, society is not structured and occupies minimal social space. Each subsequent level increases both size of social space and its dimension by one. The carriers of the highest spatial paradigm determine size of social space and act as representatives of the society as a whole. Social structures of different levels form a nested construction, which is isomorphic to the structure of their mentality. Historical periodization of the development of society and its culture follows changes of the spatial paradigm. For Ancient Greece it includes zero-dimensional period (dark ages), one-dimensional (archaic), two-dimensional (classical), three-dimensional (Hellenism) and finally decay and collapse of all social structures.