Course Syllabus will be adjusted according to participants
Over the past decade conversations across humanities and sciences are emerging around provocative re-thinking of change, process, evolution, the ceaseless dynamic of complex bio-socio-cultural-geophysical systems. Acknowledging that wet, unruly, feeling stuff exceeds the scope of any finite a priori schema, and Turing-equivalent algorithms, beyond affirming Galileo’s Eppur si muove! we ask, Come si muove? How?
There are no pre-requisites, but it can serve as a supplement to studies of Deleuze and Guattari, Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, William James, or Isabelle Stengers, new materialism, complex systems and process theories.
There are no pre-requisites, but it can serve as a supplement to studies of Deleuze and Guattari, Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, William James, or Isabelle Stengers, new materialism, complex systems and process theories.
Day 1 Morning: Process
Heraclitus, General Introduction (9-12, 16-23), §38 - §42, §49, §50, §52, and Commentaries on those fragments.
In ZhuangZi (Chuan Tsu) chapter six, a dying Daoist master addresses his friends:
"As something other than me approaches, I am dying; if I were to refuse to listen it would be defiance on my part so how can I blame it? That Vast Clod of Soil (the Way) loaded me with a body, had me toiling through a life, eased me with old age, rests me with death. Therefore that I found it good to live is the very reason that I find it good to die. If today a master sword smith were smelting metal and the metal should jump up and say "I insist on being made into an [Excalibur]," the sword smith would surely think it metal with a curse on it. If now having once happened on the shape of a human being I were to say, "I'll be a human, nothing but a human," that which fashions and transforms us would surely think me a baleful sort of person. Now if once and for all I think of heaven and earth as a vast foundry and the fashioner and transformer as a master smith, wherever I am going why should I object? ..." (Graham 88-9 mod.)
• Simondon, Gilbert. "The Position of the Problem of Ontogenesis," tr. Gregory Flanders, Parrhesia 7 (2007): 4-16. (introduction to L’individuation psychique et collective, 1989.)
• Simondon, Gilbert. "The Physico-Biological Genesis of the Individual" (part of L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (l'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information, 1964.)
Supplementary Readings:
Gilbert Simondon. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, tr. C. Malaspina, J Rogove. Univocal, 2017.
Day 1
Afternoon: Individuation, Process
• Combes, Muriel. Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual, tr. T. Lamarre (2012 (1999)), pp. 1-56.
• Elizabeth Grosz. The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics, and the Limits of Materialism. Introduction, Chapter 5, "Simondon and The Preindividual." Columbia, 2017.
Supplementary Readings:
• Gilbert Simondon. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, tr. C. Malaspina, J Rogove. Univocal, 2017.
Day 2
Morning: Enaction, Sense-making
• Brender, Noah Moss. Sense-Making and Symmetry-Breaking: Merleau-Ponty, Cognitive Science, and Dynamic Systems Theory, 2016.
Criticality, symmetry-breaking
Supplementary Readings:
Evan Thompson, Sensorimotor subjectivity and the enactive approach to experience
Afternoon: Topological Approach to Process and Sociocultural Dynamics
Sha, "Topology and Morphogenesis," in Theory, Culture and Society special issue: A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics, vol. 29, 4-5: pp. 220-246.
Day 3
Morning: Topological Approach to Process and Sociocultural Dynamics
Sha, "Topology and Morphogenesis," in Theory, Culture and Society special issue: A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics, vol. 29, 4-5: pp. 220-246.
Supplementary Readings:
Klaus Janich: Topology, chaps 1-2.
Meiss, Differential Dynamical Systems, chapter 3, topology & function spaces, chapter 4, dynamical systems, chapter 5, invariant manifolds
Afternoon: Applications: Poiesis, Performativity, Organism, Architecture
Choice of:
Sha Xin Wei, Poiesis, Enchantment and Topological Matter., Ch. 0-1 Opening and Why…, Epilogue, Ch 8 Refrain, Epilogue.
Longo, Giuseppe, and Maël Montévil. Perspectives on Organisms. Biological time, Symmetries and Singularities. Springer, 2014. Opening.
Longo, Giuseppe, and Maël Montévil, "The Inert Vs. The Living State of Matter: Extended Criticality, Time Geometry, Anti-Entropy – an Overview." Frontiers in Physiology 3 (2012): 1-8.
Christopher Alexander, Nature of Order: The Process of Creating Life, opening pages; Appendix: "A small example of a living process."
(
Supplement:
Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life.
)
Day 1 Morning: Process
Heraclitus, General Introduction (9-12, 16-23), §38 - §42, §49, §50, §52, and Commentaries on those fragments.
In ZhuangZi (Chuan Tsu) chapter six, a dying Daoist master addresses his friends:
"As something other than me approaches, I am dying; if I were to refuse to listen it would be defiance on my part so how can I blame it? That Vast Clod of Soil (the Way) loaded me with a body, had me toiling through a life, eased me with old age, rests me with death. Therefore that I found it good to live is the very reason that I find it good to die. If today a master sword smith were smelting metal and the metal should jump up and say "I insist on being made into an [Excalibur]," the sword smith would surely think it metal with a curse on it. If now having once happened on the shape of a human being I were to say, "I'll be a human, nothing but a human," that which fashions and transforms us would surely think me a baleful sort of person. Now if once and for all I think of heaven and earth as a vast foundry and the fashioner and transformer as a master smith, wherever I am going why should I object? ..." (Graham 88-9 mod.)
• Simondon, Gilbert. "The Position of the Problem of Ontogenesis," tr. Gregory Flanders, Parrhesia 7 (2007): 4-16. (introduction to L’individuation psychique et collective, 1989.)
• Simondon, Gilbert. "The Physico-Biological Genesis of the Individual" (part of L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (l'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information, 1964.)
Supplementary Readings:
Gilbert Simondon. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, tr. C. Malaspina, J Rogove. Univocal, 2017.
Day 1
Afternoon: Individuation, Process
• Combes, Muriel. Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual, tr. T. Lamarre (2012 (1999)), pp. 1-56.
• Elizabeth Grosz. The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics, and the Limits of Materialism. Introduction, Chapter 5, "Simondon and The Preindividual." Columbia, 2017.
Supplementary Readings:
• Gilbert Simondon. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, tr. C. Malaspina, J Rogove. Univocal, 2017.
Day 2
Morning: Enaction, Sense-making
• Brender, Noah Moss. Sense-Making and Symmetry-Breaking: Merleau-Ponty, Cognitive Science, and Dynamic Systems Theory, 2016.
Criticality, symmetry-breaking
Supplementary Readings:
Evan Thompson, Sensorimotor subjectivity and the enactive approach to experience
Afternoon: Topological Approach to Process and Sociocultural Dynamics
Sha, "Topology and Morphogenesis," in Theory, Culture and Society special issue: A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics, vol. 29, 4-5: pp. 220-246.
Day 3
Morning: Topological Approach to Process and Sociocultural Dynamics
Sha, "Topology and Morphogenesis," in Theory, Culture and Society special issue: A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics, vol. 29, 4-5: pp. 220-246.
Supplementary Readings:
Klaus Janich: Topology, chaps 1-2.
Meiss, Differential Dynamical Systems, chapter 3, topology & function spaces, chapter 4, dynamical systems, chapter 5, invariant manifolds
Afternoon: Applications: Poiesis, Performativity, Organism, Architecture
Choice of:
Sha Xin Wei, Poiesis, Enchantment and Topological Matter., Ch. 0-1 Opening and Why…, Epilogue, Ch 8 Refrain, Epilogue.
Longo, Giuseppe, and Maël Montévil. Perspectives on Organisms. Biological time, Symmetries and Singularities. Springer, 2014. Opening.
Longo, Giuseppe, and Maël Montévil, "The Inert Vs. The Living State of Matter: Extended Criticality, Time Geometry, Anti-Entropy – an Overview." Frontiers in Physiology 3 (2012): 1-8.
Christopher Alexander, Nature of Order: The Process of Creating Life, opening pages; Appendix: "A small example of a living process."
(
Supplement:
Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life.
)