That which opposes produces a benefit. --Heraclitus
The argument in the “social constructivist" view is that “constructs" exist because they are re-created through the process of “negotiating the social order.”(135) This suggests that the social world is constantly changing according to the variable re-creation of “social constructs.” Clearly many existential experiences indicate that the social world is never free to be formed anew at each social interaction. Substantiating our earlier claim, that action is always action in a preexisting context,(136) let us note that there are rules and structures that both enable and constrain the communicative process of negotiating a social order. This is not to say that rules are themselves more “real" than the communicative process of negotiation, but rather to say that the rules are less transient and more permeable in their intervention into discourse. The rules and structures themselves are formed through the negotiation of social order, but they are formed through communicative action embracing symbolic transactions and particularly linguistic transaction, which are structured in their formation. It is not possible to take part in communicative action without engaging these structures. However, because the structures are themselves negotiated, this makes them transcendental rather than merely objective. They have to be interpreted to be activated. They have no existence apart from their interpretation, but when interpreted, that process is then called into transcendental existence.
For Bhaskar, transcendental reality is assumed to encompass structures and causal powers in addition to observable events and phenomena. A structure may be defined as a set of objects or practices that are internally related and not a mere aggregation of independent, externally related objects. In social science, the main examples of this are the internal relationships of individuals through the roles and positions they hold within organizations and society more generally. If structures can give rise to causal powers, which in turn give rise to events, explanation ought to consist in identifying the structures and causal powers underlying events. In other words, this implies that transcendental/critical realism contemplates a reality in which causal powers are “emergent" from the structural relationships among objects. The concept of emergence rules out static reductionistic explanations appealing to a one-dimensional reality. This appreciation returns us to a distinction already apparent in ancient Greek thought.
Some 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus emphasized change and becoming, and noted that “you cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.” Heraclitus opposed Parmenides who, as we have seen, stressed the pure presence of Being and considered reality to be static, claiming it is only on the surface that we see change. Heraclitus was one of the first philosophers of the Cultural West to address the idea that the reality is in a constant state of flux embodying characteristics of both permanence and change. As he noted, “Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. ... Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool; the moist dries, the parched becomes moist. ... It is in changing that things find repose.” For Heraclitus, the secrets of the universe were to be found in hidden tensions and a nexus that simultaneously creates patterns of unity and change.
The debate between Heraclitus and Parmenides continues to this day. It invests Western thought. Herein the problem of time, one of the recurrent themes of twentieth-century philosophy, forms a dividing line between the two conceptualizations of reality. The divide may be said to be one between two cultures. We find it in Henri Bergson, Karl Popper, Alfred Whitehead, Martin Heidegger and more recently David Bohm and Roy Bhaskar...(137)