︎ Open Seminars August-September 2023
You can register for all of the Open Seminars for
August-September 2023
free on this link
August 16-September 13
Erik Zepka
August 16 and 17, 2023| 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here: for the Aug 16 Seminar |
for the Aug 17 Seminar
)
Title:
Rationalism's Role in Scientific Method
(I) and (II)
Short description: Early modern formalizations of what is retrospectively called scientific practice (then a natural philosophical one) centre around geometrical methods and their experimental power. From Galileo to Descartes, Pascal, Newton and Leibniz, commitment to visual mathematical techniques are paramount in bringing to bear an effective accumulation of knowledge. It is a literate rationalism, bodies in space that offer a protocol for mechanical reproduction. Galileo's language of the universe becomes a necessary part of knowledge gathering, of the experimental trials that he put its formal predictions to. Fast-forwarding from the anticipations of Leibniz to the work of Peirce, Carroll and Wittgenstein, geometric diagrams are infused with symbolic and algebraic universality that progresses with time. The visual proof and model takes a formal role in the development of mathematical foundations; and reasoning, now in a more pragmatic vein, comprises what we ascribe to the new social role of scientist. It is a kinematic rationalism filled with dynamic symbols that allow a bottom-up reconceptualizing of instrumental thought. The fallible process of experimentation is coupled with a career-oriented laboratory logical processing. Forward again another 100 years to the present, via the anticipations of Pascal, geometrical and graphical categories are fuzzy, probabilistic and evolving. Through the work of Strogatz, Barabasi, Brodie and others, calls for new scientific methodology are coupled with the changing and statistical nature of visual formal categorization. AI predictions, data estimations, this computational rationalism is a mutation of clouds and pictures responsively altered. The laboratory is expanded into an IOT device space, the predictive apparatus a handheld multi-use computer. We can here question how much current institutions operate in past paradigms and the use-value of increasing access and democratizing knowledge.
These developments will be seen with the backdrop of cultural paradigms and open science in mind. Against the religious assumption of exceptionalism, we can here see an evolving role for reason that in turn has much to learn from other paradigmatic forms of invention and understanding. An updated methodological model can arguably provide a more apt response to current technologies and problems, and resist the build-up of bureaucratic ritual and stagnation.
Samantha Bankston and Tarvo Varres
August 24, 2023 | 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here)
Title: Fragile Metaphysics
Short description: In this seminar Tarvo and Samantha develop their forged concept of fragile metaphysics, an intervention into the logic of the everyday by way of post-conceptual art and post-structural metaphysics. The boundary between what is and is not, what could be and will have been, is drawn by fragile temporal lines, vanishing arrangements susceptible to instantaneous collapse and creation. Samantha will situate the notion of fragile metaphysics within contemporary aesthetic ontology, as seen in the works of Deleuze, Nietzsche, and Bergson, focusing on the recent publications of Deleuze’s audio-recorded lectures from the University of Paris-VIII. Delineating the immanent temporal processes in Deleuzian metaphysics, we will explore the extra-logical by drawing from connected concepts in Agamben, Deleuze, Blanchot, Tiqqun, and Žižek. Unbound by propositional thinking, fragile time destabilizes pre-existing forms without resorting to opposition through identity. In this sense, the fragile is non-productive strength that operates in the silent alleyways between individuated forms, states, and institutions. The positivistic, instrumental rationality critically theorized by Marcuse continues to hollow out Being via the technocratic deification of data, outcomes, and algorithms, while the abandonment of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good in postmodernity has lapsed into relativistic recursions—another reality is possible! Our response is not a return to the dogmas of the past, but the construction of an extra-logical, fragile aesthetics that metaphysically destitutes everyday time, beyond good and evil. Tarvo will discuss samples of his works in post-conceptual art, touching upon notions of non-self, non-linear time, the limit experience among others; bringing up temporal and aesthetic features found in thinkers such as Bachelard, Weil and Lispector as they reenforce the concept of the fragile. The unfolding of fragile metaphysics at the intersection of art and philosophy generates new modes of thought and sensation in everyday life.
Paul Cockshott and Katerina Kolozova
September 13, 2023 | 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here)
Title: Materialism, Ancient and Modern: In Sciences, Philosophy and Computing
Short description:
The
course is based on the l monograph co-written by the instructors and Greg
Michaelson: Materialism Ancient to Modern. We will discuss the fundamental
differences between the notion of dialectic/dialektikein antiquity and that characteristic of modernity beginning with Hegel. Also we
will examine the status of "space" in the beginnings of European
and/or Greek philosophy and its intertwining with the ontology (of the
impossibility of) nothingness, discussing Parmenides, Aristotle, Epicurus,
Lucrecius and Marx's Doctoral dissertation. Interaction between classical
materialism and practice: Lucretius’ observations of processes going on
in the real world, from the dripping of water, and wearing away of gold rings
-> atoms, so small as to be invisible. Archimedes: 'mechanical method’,
anticipated the calculus of Newton, first formal treatment of mechanical
materialism with its underlying theme of conservation laws. In Galen an
alternative, materialist view , the 'pneumatic' theory of nervous system distorted
by Xtians to idealist notion of the spirit. Materialism in time: the
determinism of Hamilton; the replacement of teleology by Darwinian notions of
selection; the notion of successive modes of material production in Smith and
Engels. Time's arrow fundamental challenge to mechanical materialists like
Maxwell and Boltzmann. The revival of atomism by the latter theorist
encountered robust opposition in the late 19th century from Mach and Poincare.
Einstein and Lenin demolish Machist objections. This then opens quantum
mechanics. In what sense is this Mehanical materialism? Reconciling EPR paradox
with Bell and Hamiltonian determinism? Hegelian influence on Marxism has been
overstated, Marx's early atomism underestimated. 1930s Soviet debate between
the Deborinists and the Mechanists, Mao and Stalin on Dialectical
materialism, in the context of this controversy, Mao's restates the principles
of the Newtonian materialist method. Althusserian school for retained relict
idealist themes despite critique of Hegel should have relied on Soviet writers
like Markov.
︎ Open Seminars August-September 2023
You can register for all of the Open Seminars for August-September 2023 free on this link
August 16-September 13
Erik Zepka
August 16 and 17, 2023| 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here: for the Aug 16 Seminar | for the Aug 17 Seminar )
Title: Rationalism's Role in Scientific Method (I) and (II)
Short description: Early modern formalizations of what is retrospectively called scientific practice (then a natural philosophical one) centre around geometrical methods and their experimental power. From Galileo to Descartes, Pascal, Newton and Leibniz, commitment to visual mathematical techniques are paramount in bringing to bear an effective accumulation of knowledge. It is a literate rationalism, bodies in space that offer a protocol for mechanical reproduction. Galileo's language of the universe becomes a necessary part of knowledge gathering, of the experimental trials that he put its formal predictions to. Fast-forwarding from the anticipations of Leibniz to the work of Peirce, Carroll and Wittgenstein, geometric diagrams are infused with symbolic and algebraic universality that progresses with time. The visual proof and model takes a formal role in the development of mathematical foundations; and reasoning, now in a more pragmatic vein, comprises what we ascribe to the new social role of scientist. It is a kinematic rationalism filled with dynamic symbols that allow a bottom-up reconceptualizing of instrumental thought. The fallible process of experimentation is coupled with a career-oriented laboratory logical processing. Forward again another 100 years to the present, via the anticipations of Pascal, geometrical and graphical categories are fuzzy, probabilistic and evolving. Through the work of Strogatz, Barabasi, Brodie and others, calls for new scientific methodology are coupled with the changing and statistical nature of visual formal categorization. AI predictions, data estimations, this computational rationalism is a mutation of clouds and pictures responsively altered. The laboratory is expanded into an IOT device space, the predictive apparatus a handheld multi-use computer. We can here question how much current institutions operate in past paradigms and the use-value of increasing access and democratizing knowledge.
These developments will be seen with the backdrop of cultural paradigms and open science in mind. Against the religious assumption of exceptionalism, we can here see an evolving role for reason that in turn has much to learn from other paradigmatic forms of invention and understanding. An updated methodological model can arguably provide a more apt response to current technologies and problems, and resist the build-up of bureaucratic ritual and stagnation.
Samantha Bankston and Tarvo Varres
August 24, 2023 | 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here)
Title: Fragile Metaphysics
Short description: In this seminar Tarvo and Samantha develop their forged concept of fragile metaphysics, an intervention into the logic of the everyday by way of post-conceptual art and post-structural metaphysics. The boundary between what is and is not, what could be and will have been, is drawn by fragile temporal lines, vanishing arrangements susceptible to instantaneous collapse and creation. Samantha will situate the notion of fragile metaphysics within contemporary aesthetic ontology, as seen in the works of Deleuze, Nietzsche, and Bergson, focusing on the recent publications of Deleuze’s audio-recorded lectures from the University of Paris-VIII. Delineating the immanent temporal processes in Deleuzian metaphysics, we will explore the extra-logical by drawing from connected concepts in Agamben, Deleuze, Blanchot, Tiqqun, and Žižek. Unbound by propositional thinking, fragile time destabilizes pre-existing forms without resorting to opposition through identity. In this sense, the fragile is non-productive strength that operates in the silent alleyways between individuated forms, states, and institutions. The positivistic, instrumental rationality critically theorized by Marcuse continues to hollow out Being via the technocratic deification of data, outcomes, and algorithms, while the abandonment of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good in postmodernity has lapsed into relativistic recursions—another reality is possible! Our response is not a return to the dogmas of the past, but the construction of an extra-logical, fragile aesthetics that metaphysically destitutes everyday time, beyond good and evil. Tarvo will discuss samples of his works in post-conceptual art, touching upon notions of non-self, non-linear time, the limit experience among others; bringing up temporal and aesthetic features found in thinkers such as Bachelard, Weil and Lispector as they reenforce the concept of the fragile. The unfolding of fragile metaphysics at the intersection of art and philosophy generates new modes of thought and sensation in everyday life.
Paul Cockshott and Katerina Kolozova
September 13, 2023 | 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here)
Title: Materialism, Ancient and Modern: In Sciences, Philosophy and Computing
Short description: The course is based on the l monograph co-written by the instructors and Greg Michaelson: Materialism Ancient to Modern. We will discuss the fundamental differences between the notion of dialectic/dialektikein antiquity and that characteristic of modernity beginning with Hegel. Also we will examine the status of "space" in the beginnings of European and/or Greek philosophy and its intertwining with the ontology (of the impossibility of) nothingness, discussing Parmenides, Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucrecius and Marx's Doctoral dissertation. Interaction between classical materialism and practice: Lucretius’ observations of processes going on in the real world, from the dripping of water, and wearing away of gold rings -> atoms, so small as to be invisible. Archimedes: 'mechanical method’, anticipated the calculus of Newton, first formal treatment of mechanical materialism with its underlying theme of conservation laws. In Galen an alternative, materialist view , the 'pneumatic' theory of nervous system distorted by Xtians to idealist notion of the spirit. Materialism in time: the determinism of Hamilton; the replacement of teleology by Darwinian notions of selection; the notion of successive modes of material production in Smith and Engels. Time's arrow fundamental challenge to mechanical materialists like Maxwell and Boltzmann. The revival of atomism by the latter theorist encountered robust opposition in the late 19th century from Mach and Poincare. Einstein and Lenin demolish Machist objections. This then opens quantum mechanics. In what sense is this Mehanical materialism? Reconciling EPR paradox with Bell and Hamiltonian determinism? Hegelian influence on Marxism has been overstated, Marx's early atomism underestimated. 1930s Soviet debate between the Deborinists and the Mechanists, Mao and Stalin on Dialectical materialism, in the context of this controversy, Mao's restates the principles of the Newtonian materialist method. Althusserian school for retained relict idealist themes despite critique of Hegel should have relied on Soviet writers like Markov.
You can register for all of the Open Seminars for August-September 2023 free on this link
August 16-September 13
Erik Zepka
August 16 and 17, 2023| 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here: for the Aug 16 Seminar | for the Aug 17 Seminar )
Title: Rationalism's Role in Scientific Method (I) and (II)
Short description: Early modern formalizations of what is retrospectively called scientific practice (then a natural philosophical one) centre around geometrical methods and their experimental power. From Galileo to Descartes, Pascal, Newton and Leibniz, commitment to visual mathematical techniques are paramount in bringing to bear an effective accumulation of knowledge. It is a literate rationalism, bodies in space that offer a protocol for mechanical reproduction. Galileo's language of the universe becomes a necessary part of knowledge gathering, of the experimental trials that he put its formal predictions to. Fast-forwarding from the anticipations of Leibniz to the work of Peirce, Carroll and Wittgenstein, geometric diagrams are infused with symbolic and algebraic universality that progresses with time. The visual proof and model takes a formal role in the development of mathematical foundations; and reasoning, now in a more pragmatic vein, comprises what we ascribe to the new social role of scientist. It is a kinematic rationalism filled with dynamic symbols that allow a bottom-up reconceptualizing of instrumental thought. The fallible process of experimentation is coupled with a career-oriented laboratory logical processing. Forward again another 100 years to the present, via the anticipations of Pascal, geometrical and graphical categories are fuzzy, probabilistic and evolving. Through the work of Strogatz, Barabasi, Brodie and others, calls for new scientific methodology are coupled with the changing and statistical nature of visual formal categorization. AI predictions, data estimations, this computational rationalism is a mutation of clouds and pictures responsively altered. The laboratory is expanded into an IOT device space, the predictive apparatus a handheld multi-use computer. We can here question how much current institutions operate in past paradigms and the use-value of increasing access and democratizing knowledge.
These developments will be seen with the backdrop of cultural paradigms and open science in mind. Against the religious assumption of exceptionalism, we can here see an evolving role for reason that in turn has much to learn from other paradigmatic forms of invention and understanding. An updated methodological model can arguably provide a more apt response to current technologies and problems, and resist the build-up of bureaucratic ritual and stagnation.
Samantha Bankston and Tarvo Varres
August 24, 2023 | 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here)
Title: Fragile Metaphysics
Short description: In this seminar Tarvo and Samantha develop their forged concept of fragile metaphysics, an intervention into the logic of the everyday by way of post-conceptual art and post-structural metaphysics. The boundary between what is and is not, what could be and will have been, is drawn by fragile temporal lines, vanishing arrangements susceptible to instantaneous collapse and creation. Samantha will situate the notion of fragile metaphysics within contemporary aesthetic ontology, as seen in the works of Deleuze, Nietzsche, and Bergson, focusing on the recent publications of Deleuze’s audio-recorded lectures from the University of Paris-VIII. Delineating the immanent temporal processes in Deleuzian metaphysics, we will explore the extra-logical by drawing from connected concepts in Agamben, Deleuze, Blanchot, Tiqqun, and Žižek. Unbound by propositional thinking, fragile time destabilizes pre-existing forms without resorting to opposition through identity. In this sense, the fragile is non-productive strength that operates in the silent alleyways between individuated forms, states, and institutions. The positivistic, instrumental rationality critically theorized by Marcuse continues to hollow out Being via the technocratic deification of data, outcomes, and algorithms, while the abandonment of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good in postmodernity has lapsed into relativistic recursions—another reality is possible! Our response is not a return to the dogmas of the past, but the construction of an extra-logical, fragile aesthetics that metaphysically destitutes everyday time, beyond good and evil. Tarvo will discuss samples of his works in post-conceptual art, touching upon notions of non-self, non-linear time, the limit experience among others; bringing up temporal and aesthetic features found in thinkers such as Bachelard, Weil and Lispector as they reenforce the concept of the fragile. The unfolding of fragile metaphysics at the intersection of art and philosophy generates new modes of thought and sensation in everyday life.
Paul Cockshott and Katerina Kolozova
September 13, 2023 | 18:30 CET/12:30 EST
(Direct link for registration here)
Title: Materialism, Ancient and Modern: In Sciences, Philosophy and Computing
Short description: The course is based on the l monograph co-written by the instructors and Greg Michaelson: Materialism Ancient to Modern. We will discuss the fundamental differences between the notion of dialectic/dialektikein antiquity and that characteristic of modernity beginning with Hegel. Also we will examine the status of "space" in the beginnings of European and/or Greek philosophy and its intertwining with the ontology (of the impossibility of) nothingness, discussing Parmenides, Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucrecius and Marx's Doctoral dissertation. Interaction between classical materialism and practice: Lucretius’ observations of processes going on in the real world, from the dripping of water, and wearing away of gold rings -> atoms, so small as to be invisible. Archimedes: 'mechanical method’, anticipated the calculus of Newton, first formal treatment of mechanical materialism with its underlying theme of conservation laws. In Galen an alternative, materialist view , the 'pneumatic' theory of nervous system distorted by Xtians to idealist notion of the spirit. Materialism in time: the determinism of Hamilton; the replacement of teleology by Darwinian notions of selection; the notion of successive modes of material production in Smith and Engels. Time's arrow fundamental challenge to mechanical materialists like Maxwell and Boltzmann. The revival of atomism by the latter theorist encountered robust opposition in the late 19th century from Mach and Poincare. Einstein and Lenin demolish Machist objections. This then opens quantum mechanics. In what sense is this Mehanical materialism? Reconciling EPR paradox with Bell and Hamiltonian determinism? Hegelian influence on Marxism has been overstated, Marx's early atomism underestimated. 1930s Soviet debate between the Deborinists and the Mechanists, Mao and Stalin on Dialectical materialism, in the context of this controversy, Mao's restates the principles of the Newtonian materialist method. Althusserian school for retained relict idealist themes despite critique of Hegel should have relied on Soviet writers like Markov.