This post ist stimulated by a recent lecture given by Gilles Retsin at the CAAD Chair at ETH in Zurich entitled “Object Oriented Design”. It raised an interesting thought regarding this new and highly popular theory wave called Object Oriented Philosophy or Object Oriented Ontology (associated with Graham Harman, Levi Byrant, Timothy Morton a.o.), which is emphatically welcomed by … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: November 2012
Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Little Dramas Staged / Plotting from History / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist
Within the Republic of Things – what architectonic form would the Roman Capitol have if it were transformable today into a philosophical school?
“All algebraic inquiries, sooner or later, end at the Capitol of modern algebra over whose shining portal is inscribed the Theory of Invariants.” This writes Arthur Cayley in a letter, around 1850, to his friend James Joseph Sylvester [1]. It strangely resonates, as a statement, with another very famous saying, namely every road leads to Rome. … Continue reading
A “Lobachevsky-like” revolution in arithmetics
“I have not yet any clear view as to the extent to which we are at liberty arbitrarily to create imaginaries, and to endow them with supernatural properties” declared John Graves in reaction to his mathematician friend’s invention of the quaternions (Hamilton 1843). Henri Poincaré held it as: “a revolution in arithmetic which is entirely … Continue reading
Wilfrid Sellar’s essays Within the Space of Reasons (2007) – a puzzled question
How can it be, that a Wittgenstein scholar like Wilfrid Sellars, in his recent book Within the Space of Reasons (Harvard UP 2007),when he discusses Wittgenstein’s view in the Tractatus on predication, doesn’t hesitate to leave the entire debate in the philosophy of mathematics which was culminating in Wittgenstein’s time, completely without mention. Undoubtedly, the problem of predication in philosophical … Continue reading
Not the depth of metaphysics, metaphysical surface
The following text is an excerpt from my book Inhabiting Media, Annäherungen an Herkünfte und Topoi medialer Architektonik (PHD Thesis, University Basel 2009/11) Das »Informelle«. Oder: Zum Konzept der Ähnlichkeit als Medium. »Logic of Sense is therefore an answer to the question: How are series determined with no external reference point?« – James Williams [61] In Logik des Sinns beschreibt … Continue reading
The idea as a differential of thought
The following text is an excerpt from my book Inhabiting Media, Annäherungen an Herkünfte und Topoi medialer Architektonik (PHD Thesis, University Basel 2009/11) Die Idee als »Differential« des Denkens. Oder: Zum Verhältnis von Struktur und Genese im Sprachspiel des Virtuellen »Jede Umgestaltung eines im echten und fruchtbaren Sinne »formalen« Begriffs zieht hier zugleich eine neue Auffassung … Continue reading
Not categories, fantastical notions !
The following text is an excerpt from my book Inhabiting Media, Annäherungen an Herkünfte und Topoi medialer Architektonik (PHD Thesis, University Basel 2009/11) Die Frage nach dem Sinn. Oder: Das Problem des Anfangs. »Zwischen den Problemen und den Sätzen besteht stets eine Wesensdifferenz.« – Gilles Deleuze[1] Das Denken unterhält die Beziehung zu einem Aussen. Gleichzeitig ist … Continue reading
Deleuze’s notion of the Differential
“Just as we oppose difference in itself to negativity, so we oppose dx to not-A, the symbol of difference [Differenzphilosophie] to that of contradiction. It is true that contradiction seeks its Idea on the side of the greatest difference, whereas the differential risks falling into the abyss of the infinitely small. This, however, is not … Continue reading
Gilles Deleuzes’ Key Passage on Quantitability
“However, while it is true that continuousness must be related to Ideas and to their problematic use, this is on condition that it be no longer defined by characteristics borrowed from sensible or even geometric intuition, as it still is when one speaks of the interpolation of intermediaries, of infinite intercalary series or parts which … Continue reading
Polynomials and Series
How can the differences between the following notions be distinguished, how are the involved levels of abstraction to be properly organized? function – operation – procedure series – polynomial Differential – Integral A polynomial is responsive (literally) to many “sets of rules” (many (Gk. poly) precepts (Gk. nomos, in German “Satzung” oder “Gesetz”, also name or … Continue reading
Projective theory on technology: an emphatic plan
something like an inverted manifesto (evocatio). A projective theory on technology is interested in equipping and furnishing a realm for considering technology as intellectual, not as rational or materialist. Our interest is to enrich the operational and generic understanding of technical principles with world. This perspective allows us to engage in a kind of inverse … Continue reading
Michel Serres: Revolution Cognitive et Culturelle (engl. translation)
(translated by Aoife Rosenmeyer) In prep school classes there always came a day which we called ‘the day of inversion’. On that day….the elders [the teachers] had to kowtow to the wind of retribution. But this only lasted for a day. And whatever happened in this reversal, it was never the case that the weakest in … Continue reading
How to theorize technology today?
the excerpts below are work in progress of how to communicate our interest, at the laboratory for applied virtuality, in how to theorize technology. We are searching for a way to overcome the dis-proportionality we perceive today between the actual power and level of abstraction of the technology with which we plan, build, decide and live … Continue reading
Towards an algebraic understanding of architectonic interpretation (according to J. Vuillemin)
In his Philosophie de l’algèbre (readable at amazon preview), Jules Vuillemin distinguishes 6 dimensions of interpretation in the Cartesian Architectonics, which depend upon a strict distinction between the synthetical and the analytical. Descartes was of the clear opinion that analysis can only treat particular problems, while synthesis can only proceed within the general. In the view … Continue reading
Scopes of analysis and synthesis enabled in different ways by different “number spaces”
The assumption I am trying to organize and structure in this post is thought-in-action (careful! no uncritical taking for facts): 1 “analogy” and “proportionality” the identity of a term expressing a “quantity” is comprehended as determinable only within a relational order. The problems are formulated in words, not yet in (algebraic) symbolic notation. We … Continue reading
The Integrity of Objects: Design, Information, and the Form of Actuality
[to appear in ADD METAPHYSICS, ed. by Jenna Sutela et.al. Aalto University Digital Design Laboratory, ADDLAB (forthcoming)] We are so accustomed to information that it feels strange to claim that information is not. Yet information has no weight, no extension, no body; it is reducible neither to physical matter nor energy. Nevertheless, it has impacts. We experience … Continue reading
From the Cosmic City to the Articulated City I – A Psycho-Political Essay
In the Quantum City, it is mainly existentialists who gather. Existentialists of the symbolic. People who know they could do virtually anything, if they wanted to, and if they got organized properly. Yet they feel largely undecided. There is a sense of brute potency all around them, which at one and the same time attracts … Continue reading
PHD Kolloquium Winter 2012: Computability in the light of the Master Argument
download flyer PhD Kolloquium in Projective Theory on Technology, Wintersemester 2012, LAV CAAD Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich, Switzerland Computability – considered in the light of the Master Argument Computation is largely treated today as the procedure to »mechanize« »logics«. Our interest with a projective theory on technology is not to reject (negate) or … Continue reading
Articulating quantities – when things depend on whatever can be the case
Paper delivered at the ART OF CONCEPT conference, MaMa in Zagreb (June 2012) It is a first attempt to speak about what I call the Dedekindian, Boolean, and Deleuzean notion of reasoning as concerning not the totality of what there is, but as the totality of what can be thought rigorously. download manuscript Bühlmann_ArticulatingQuantities „Man can think … Continue reading
PHD Kolloquium Summer 2012: Computation, and the question of the applicability of arithmetics
PhD Kolloquium in Projective Theory on Technology, Summer semester 2012, LAV CAAD Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich, Switzerland download flyer Computation is treated today as an art, just as Mechanics had been in the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. This basically means that its actual performance is widely recognized and welcome, striking in effect, … Continue reading
abstraction as a method: affirm, negate, multiply, popularize, infinitize, invert
»Oh Newton, if you have managed, with the light and the sublimity of your genius, to determine the figure of the earth, so it is my own project to envelop you with your own discovery. This is, in a certain manner, to have you being enveloped with yourself […].« (Etienne Louis Boullée (1728-1799) Originally in French: … Continue reading
monas oikos nomos 