Layers of Generativity:
Axial Age, Modernity, Technological Civilization, (Reconstructing Futures II)

Instructor: Davor Löffler Date & Time: Saturdays, July 21, 28, August 4, 11 4:00 - 6:30 PM EST

DESCRIPTION
When, where, and why did the mode of abstraction “philosophy”, esp. “the universal” as a relational point of collective commensurabilization appear? Why are there distinct epochs of mathematical renderings of the world? What causes time regimes such as the cyclical, oscillatory, absolute or linear to emerge and what are the differences between their onto-generative potentials? What time concept will emerge after the linear time of Modernity? How does the cumulative increase of abstraction in the course of history relate to historical types of aesthetics, subjectivity, and cognition? How can the apparent co-evolutionary relation between media, economy, metaphysics, cognition, and world-relations be conceptualized? Which transformations of mind and society caused by the current innovations can we expect in the future? These questions can be answered through the extrapolation of the evolutionary trajectories in the history of culture and mind. The examination of the “Expansion of Cultural Capacities” (Haidle et al.) surfaced a formal pattern of macroevolution which informs about these evolutionary trajectories: each historical stage of reality structure appears as the abstraction and operative recursion of the previous reality structure. The pattern of recursion continues beyond early cultural evolution and unfolds as civilizational history. This course will examine civilizational history under the notion that developmental stages like the Axial Age or Modernity can be conceptualized as matrices of event-realization, wherein each stage forms a layer of generativity which is recursively integrated by the following one, unfolding a new continuum of events and relations. The Greek Axial Age is characterized as the “Zenon-Matrix” of event-realization, which is recursively integrated in Modernity, and which is defined as the “Laplace-Matrix” of event-realization. With the emergence of the Technological Civilization, we are witnessing another recursion in which Modernity’s “Laplace- Matrix” of event-realization is abstracted and recursively integrated, rendering “genetic spaces” (Karl Chu) into objects within the newly emerging “Conway-Wolfram-Matrix” of event-realization. The extrapolation of the onto-generative pattern of recursion not only allows for a “deep futurology” as the macroevolutionary informed deduction of future types of cognition, temporalities, and world-relations, but also for asking the question whether the force that chiseled history through humankind into the world will at some point detach from its medium again, establishing a posthuman reality that marks another major evolutionary transition.

Image: Andrew Dadson, Black Barbed Wire, 2013

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