Requirements Modelling and Specification for Service Oriented Architecture

Appendix B. The Fundamental Concepts of Service Oriented Architecture

The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

K. Marx, Afterword to Volume I of Das Kapital (1873)

This appendix is a philosophical digression which the uninterested reader may wish to skip completely. Doing so will not affect your ability to understand the rest of the book but may help you organize your understanding better.

To analyse the fundamental concepts of SOA the method we bring to bear is a particular kind of dialectics developed in the 19th century by idealist phiosophers such as Georg Frederich Hegel and the materialist Karl Marx. The Wikipaedia gives the following definition:

Dialectics (διαλɛκτικη) is an exchange of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue.

As is often the case, Wikipaedia repeats the conventional wisdom about the Hegelian dialectic. I am not aware that Hegel ever presented it as Thesis - Antithesis - Synthesis in this way. This was a crude misconception that arose in the early to mid-20th Century and was much touted by Stanlinist 'theoreticians' and various ...