Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Plotting from History / Pre-specificity

Maxwell’s Demon (Non-Anthropocentric Cognition)

  by Vera Bühlmann author’s manuscript. In this article, I would like to discuss one of the key moments of reference in 20th century information science, which arose from thermodynamics and which in fact links the latter to the former in many important aspects. Maxwell’s famous thought experiment explores how to think of heat, if … Continue reading

A Quantum City // Book Launch
Architectonic Articulations / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Plotting from History / Pre-specificity / The Alphabetic Absolute / Uncategorized

A Quantum City // Book Launch

Can we find the City in today’s urban landscapes? Can we accommodate the urban in the City? How can we come to terms with the theorem central to information science, that information cannot be acquired without paying a price, that the nature of information is negentropic (Leon Brillouin, Michel Serres) ? What does that imply … Continue reading

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Experiments / Plotting from History

Capital Bodies: Secrets of the Universe

An experiment in accelerating my own thinking about how Capital and Ciphers relate to one another. Deleuze and Guattari suggest (in “Apparatus of Capture” in Mille Plateau) to assume an axiomatics of capital. This here is an exploration towards what it might mean to pursue a taxonomy, or rather a taxonometrics of capital. * thanks to … Continue reading

Lectures / Plotting from History / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

MANUSCRIPT // The creative conservativeness of computation

(Alternative title: The Secretive Conservativeness of Computing) *this is the manuscript (in draft character) of my paper delivered at the “Within the Domain of the Sun’s Inverse, or: Where are we when we are thinking computationally?” Seminar (cf the documentation of the event). »The philosophical role of the sun has transformed many times, but it … Continue reading

Lectures / Little Dramas Staged / Plotting from History / Projective Theory of Technology

Atomism, Alphabet, and Idiosyncrasy (the amorous nature of intellectual conception)

The manuscript for my lecture at the QUANTITY AND QUALITY, THE PROBLEM OF MEASUREMENT IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY conference at UC Davis, CA, April 5/6 2014, organized by Prof. Nathan Brown. ************************************************************** CONTENTS The first cycle: Homothesis as the Locus in Quo of the Universal’s Presence 1st Iteration (acquiring a space of possibility) 2nd Iteration … Continue reading

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Little Dramas Staged / Plotting from History / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Continuing the Dedekind Legacy – Computing within the open totality of what can be the object of thought

abstract The paper presents an architectonic notion of computation in the philosophical sense, which depart from the genuinely algebraic ideas in number theory that have been articulated a.o. by Richard Dedekind. Such a perspective interprets the idea of singularity (Ray Kurzweil) as a hubris in the Fregean positivist tradition relying on some „third empire of … Continue reading

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Gilles Deleuze / Little Dramas Staged / Plotting from History / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

The idea of a Characteristica Universalis between Leibniz and Russell, and its relevancy today

Abstract In this post I will investigate the Leibnizian idea of a Characteristica Universalis from a comparative point of view on two diverging paradigms on computation that can be distinguished, as I will argue, to have emerged since the end of the 19th century. While algebraists like Augustus de Morgan, George Boole, Charles Sanders Peirce … Continue reading

Little Dramas Staged / Plotting from History / Projective Theory of Technology

Object Oriented Philosophy (OOP) – or turning the Style of Neue Sachlichkeit into a philosophical Doctrine ?

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

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

Book Reviews / Little Dramas Staged / Plotting from History

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

Plotting from History

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

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Gilles Deleuze / Plotting from History

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