Category Archives: Pre-specificity

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Pre-specificity / The Alphabetic Absolute / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Equation

Posted on by • 1 Comment

by Vera Bühlmann author’s manuscript. The mathematical notion of the equation is first documented in the 16th century, when it seems to have been introduced as what we would today call a terminus technicus for organizing the practice of equalizing mathematical expressions. It seems to have been introduced to European Renaissance science and philosophy together with algebra: … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Architectonic Articulations / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist / Uncategorized

Invariance

Posted on by • Leave a comment

by Vera Bühlmann author’s manuscript. The main inclination this article will try to develop concerns a danger that Michel Serres has stated as follows: not to confuse invariance and identity.[1] Jacques Monod, to whom Serres refers with this statement, has pointed out the source of this likely confusion with regard to what he calls the … Continue reading →

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

Maxwell’s Demon (Non-Anthropocentric Cognition)

Posted on by • Leave a comment

  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 →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Architectonic Articulations / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Pre-specificity / The Alphabetic Absolute

Negentropy

Posted on by • Leave a comment

author’s manuscript, work in progress (Vera Bühlmann). “Thought interfers with the probability of events, and, in the long run, therefore, with entropy”.[1] The term “negentropy” is born from this very situation. It was introduced by Schrödinger to distinguish biological systems from physical systems, and then generalized by Léon Brillouin into the domain of information theory. … 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

Posted on by • Leave a comment

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 →

Seminar | Within the Domain of the Sun’s Inverse. Or: Where are we when thinking computationally? Speculative Reasoning and the Nature of the Cosmos
Open Seminars / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Seminar | Within the Domain of the Sun’s Inverse. Or: Where are we when thinking computationally? Speculative Reasoning and the Nature of the Cosmos

Posted on by • 1 Comment

The open seminar is co-curated by Vera Bühlmann (ETH Zurich) and Erin K Stapleton (Kingston University, London). It is a laboratory for applied virtuality event, organized by the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, ETH. The event will take place at Wirtschaft Neumarkt and Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, on November 26th – 27th 2014. … Continue reading →

Book Reviews / Lectures / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

On Michel Serres’ book The Natural Contract (1990): “Cosmoliteracy – the Alphabetization of the Nature of Thought”

Posted on by • Leave a comment

This is the manuscript of my talk at the joint annual conference of the Society for European Philosophy and the Forum for European Philosophy, September 3-5 2014 at Utrecht University, with the annual theme: Philosophy after Nature. Cosmoliteracy – the Alphabetization of the Nature of Thought by Vera Bühlmann A-cosmic philosophies have only language or politics, writing … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Gilles Deleuze / Lectures / Metalithikum / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

The reciprocal double-articulation of »sustainability« and »environmentality« or The mode of »insisting existence« proper to the circular.

Posted on by • 1 Comment

abstract This text inquires how Louis Hjelmslev’s idea of »an algebra immanent to language« can help us to characterize discretized probability densities as a kind of »symbolic alphabeticity«. It is the manuscript for my talk at the 5th metalithikum colloquy in may 2014.   CONTENTS (1)    Introduction: The Materiality of sense, or: “capable of being … Continue reading →

Zugabe. Die Geburt des Komischen – Oder: Wie das Nichts seine Authentizität durch Einkleidung erlangt
Little Dramas Staged / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Zugabe. Die Geburt des Komischen – Oder: Wie das Nichts seine Authentizität durch Einkleidung erlangt

Posted on by • Leave a comment

»[…] so frage dich, ob unsere Sprache vollständig ist; – ob sie es war, ehe ihr der chemische Symbolismus und die Infintesimalnotation einverleibt wurden; denn dies sind, sozusagen, Vorstädte unserer Sprache. […] Unsere Sprache kann man ansehen als eine alte Stadt: Ein Gewinkel von Gässchen und Plätzen, alten und neuen Häusern, und Häusern mit Zubauten … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Lectures / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

The Soul of the Universe, Fabulous Discretion, and Dis-cyphering the Being of Chance

Posted on by • Leave a comment

* this is the manuscript to the paper “Serious stories around the fantastic dream of a mathesis universalis and the inception of Universal Algebra in the late 19th century” delivered at the The Common Denominator Conference, Universität Leipzig, March 21st 2014. ******************************************************************* The title of my paper announces “serious stories” around the inception of universal algebra, so let … Continue reading →

Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Metalithikum / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Arché, Arcanum, and Articulation. What is at stake with the notion of the universal ?

Posted on by • 1 Comment

CONTENTS 0 précis I Genericness as the symbolical body of reciprocity Enunciating the universal Universal text, generic code, pre-specific data Ada Lovelace, the Enchantress of Numbers Algebraic Paradigms II Lemmata in how to theorise the universal while remaining neutral on matters of believe Lemma 1: Universality in terms of objectivity Lemma 2: Universality in terms … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Lectures / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

“Die Empörung des Modells // models, outraged“ – abstract and slides of my talk at the Zhdk conference “David and Goliath – Models between art and architecture”

Posted on by • Leave a comment

my talk will attempt to pick up the beautiful mentioning in the conference flyer of “models as mighty miniatures“, under the tentative title of: “Die Empörung des Modells // models, outraged“. The conference is organised by the Forschungsschwerpunkt Transdisciplinarity and the MAS Spatial Design: Florian Dombois, Stephan Trüby, Reinhard Wendler. website, flyer of the conference, another flyer … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Lectures / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

manuscript for the gta ETH conference “universal – specific”: The question of ‘signature’ and the computational notion of ‘genericness’

Posted on by • 1 Comment

“…linguistics has just provided the death of the author with a precious analytical tool, by showing that the complete utterance is an empty process that functions perfectly without the need for filling it with its individual interlocutors: linguistically speaking, the author is never anything more than he or she who writes, in the same way … Continue reading →

New book out! Sheaves – when things are whatever can be the case
Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

New book out! Sheaves – when things are whatever can be the case

Posted on by • Leave a comment

by Ludger Hovestadt, Vera Bühlmann, published as Vol. II in our Applied Virtuality Book Series (ambra, Vienna/Austria) This is a book that holds the intellectual wealth of our world to be elemental. Today, the classical architectonic elements of form, quantity, units, numbers, principles, foundations are all constituted by information, and by literacy. Artefacts are things … Continue reading →

Printing Architecture: Michael Hansmeyer’s and Benjamin Dillenburger’s Digital Grotesque
Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Printing Architecture: Michael Hansmeyer’s and Benjamin Dillenburger’s Digital Grotesque

Posted on by • Leave a comment

My colleagues have realised the first large scale instance of printed architecture, and they call it the Digital Grotesque. A disturbingly beautiful piece about which they say: We aim to create an architecture that defies classification and reductionism. We explore unseen levels of resolution and topological complexity in architecture by developing compositional strategies based on … Continue reading →

Signification | Communication: theory and applications of glossematic coding as method for pre-specific modeling
Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Open PhD Kolloquium at the Laboratory for Applied Virtuality CAAD ETH Zürich / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Signification | Communication: theory and applications of glossematic coding as method for pre-specific modeling

Posted on by • Leave a comment

The next PhD Kolloquium (Winter 2013/14) Computing symbols as literacy and ability starts next Tuesday September 24th. download the flyer here: PHD_KolloquiumWS13_flyer «The entities of linguistic form are of “algebraic” nature and have no natural designation; they can therefore be designated arbitrarily in many different ways.» (Louis Hjelmslev) Since Claude Shannon‘s Mathematical Theory of Communication (1936), the notion … Continue reading →

Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Lectures / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

The question of ‘signature’ and the computational notion of ‘genericness’

Posted on by • 1 Comment

Abstract for the Universal – specific. From analysis to intervention? conference organized by ETH Zürich, D-ARCH Department of Architecture, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), Prodoc Art and Science Keywords: Michel Serres; the algebraic quantity notion; computability; literacy ********************************** “By world-objects I mean tools with a dimension that is commensurable with one of … Continue reading →

Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Articulating a thing entirely in its own terms Or: what can we understand by the notion of «engendering» ?

Posted on by • 4 Comments

CONTENT What is the subject of the generic? Grammatizing symbolical domains An abstract object’s integrity: political subjectivization Beyond urban comfort, in a state of expulsion Generic as an adverb, universality as an ouevre Bodies of thinking live in algebraic universality Characterizations of the subject of the generic Characterization on a grammatical level The man without … Continue reading →

Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Lectures / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Abstract: Serious stories around the fantastic dream of a mathesis universalis and the inception of Universal Algebra in the late 19th century

Posted on by • 1 Comment

Proposal for The Common Denominator Conference, Universität Leipzig, March 2014. Keywords: Critical Reasoning; Symbolic Reasoning; Amphiboly, Reflection and Projection; Computability In 1898 Alfred North Whitehead published A Treatise on Universal Algebra in order to present “a comparative study of the various Systems of Symbolic Reasoning“ that had been allied to ordinary Algebra since mid 19th … Continue reading →

Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Gilles Deleuze / Lectures / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

How to substantiate liminitudinality or: Gilles Deleuze and the formula of capitalism – towards an entropic economy

Posted on by • 2 Comments

* manuscript of my paper at the Deleuze Conference 2013 in Lisabon, July 13th. With a few additional annotions.  During this conference, we have heard many accounts and twists on a disturbing relation which Deleuze’s philosophy of capture, through the terms of what he calls the method of transcendental empiricism [1], appears to maintain with … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Gilles Deleuze / Lectures / Pre-specificity

Abstract: How to substantiate liminitudinality – Taking Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism as a philosophical starting point for thinking about territoriality

Posted on by • Leave a comment

***** The abstract to my upcoming lecture at the 6th International Deleuze Studies Conference “The territory in-between” (Lisboa Portugal, July 8-10 2013). Info: http://deleuze2013.fc.ul.pt Keywords: symbolic algebra, time, space, metaphysics, semiotics, articulation, glossematics, diagrammatics “Le fondement c’est donc ce qui nous donnera ou ne nous ne donnera pas le droit.” (Gilles Deleuze, Qu’est-ce que fonder?) Departing … Continue reading →

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

Offen ist abstrakt. Für eine Philosophie der Künstlichkeit, oder: Das Generelle lebt seine eigene Geschlechtlichkeit

Posted on by • Leave a comment

Unter der Bezeichnung Open Design beginnt sich gegenwärtig das Label für eine Aufmerksamkeit herauszubilden, welches eine bestimmte Wiedererkennbarkeit, Einschätzbarkeit und Entwicklungstendenz in den aufkommenden Infrastrukturen zu indexieren sucht, in denen heutige „Produkte“ – so allgemein gesprochen wie es die Anwendbarkeit des Begriffs Design heute eben verlangt – ausgedacht, entwickelt, hergestellt, verteilt und erworben werden. Dabei … Continue reading →

Pre-specificity / Projective Theory of Technology / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Limitudinality. Data space is quantum reality.

Posted on by • Leave a comment

The colonization of categories, or: how can we conceive of that which is being named by polynomials resolved through adjoining complex roots to their coefficients?  “Le fondement c’est donc ce qui nous donnera ou ne nous ne donnera pas le droit.” (Gilles Deleuze, Qu’est-ce que fonder?) “I really do not know that anything has ever been … Continue reading →

Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Metalithikum / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Characteristica Designata VI: emerging fields in the synthesis and analysis of data

Posted on by • 5 Comments

Contemporary technologies operative on the symbols of universal algebra and their code-based characteristics, namely information, have meanwhile spelled out three fields that begin to appear within the emerging logistically based order. I will attempt to characterize these fields (as the beginning of a to-be-continued reformulation and articulation): Quantum Activity as a  kind of actuality that abstracts from … Continue reading →

Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Metalithikum / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Characteristica Designata V: legacies of philosophical realism

Posted on by • 5 Comments

The distinctions I would like to draw involve whether and how learning can be considered a private activity or a personal one, whether and how we can think of it as being achievable by realizing ones potentials or by appropriating and identifying with the role of an intellectual princeps or master, or less Aristotelean and … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Metalithikum / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Characteristica Designata IV: algebra as an undiscovered continent, and attempts to appropriate it as the symbolic positivity of ‘pure instrumentality’

Posted on by • 5 Comments

In his classic textbook The Development of Mathematics (1950), E.T. Bell describes how abstract, symbolical Algebra appeared like an ‘undiscovered continent’ on the horizon.  Those who pushed the application of the symbolic method without dedicated political or economical commitment were ‘adventurers’, whom Bell calls ‘illegitimate Kings’ striving for ‘profit’: masses of young mathematicians were recruited, … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Metalithikum / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Characteristica Designata III: an existential ‘genitality’ proper to symbolic numericalness

Posted on by • 5 Comments

A resurfacing of the debate about amphiboly and concepts, and the relation of this theme to number theory,  took place in the 19th century and can perhaps best be associated with an address by Arthur Cayley, a British algebraist working on variational calculus and invariance-theory, to the the British Academy for the Advancement of Science … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Metalithikum / Pre-specificity

Characteristica Designata II: Polynominality, and the question of structural amphiboly

Posted on by • 6 Comments

“Bombelli [(1526-1572)] had given meaning to the “meaningless” by thinking the “unthinkable,” namely that square roots of negative numbers could be manipulated in a meaningful way to yield significant results. This was a very bold move on his part. As he put it: ‘it was a wild thought in the judgment of many; and I … Continue reading →

Algebraic Concepts Characterized / Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Metalithikum / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

Characteristica Designata I

Posted on by • 5 Comments

This series of posts will focus a an old theme in philosophy, the idea that there can be a characteristics capable of expressing that of which we can say that it is a property of all things. My interest is to consider a shift in how we can relate to such universality which took place … 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

Posted on by • 2 Comments

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 →

Distinguishing the General from the Generic / Pre-specificity / Thinking as an Algebraic Mechanist

The Integrity of Objects: Design, Information, and the Form of Actuality

Posted on by • 2 Comments

[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 →