“Who” is a “Topical Measuring” Postphenomenologist and How Does One Get That Way?

Gert Goeminne’s paper is primarily concerned with “the politics of sustainable technology,” but for good reasons he does not start with this topic. He knows that technology studies as he conceives it must clear a space for itself in a philosophical atmosphere that discourages its pursuit. He therefore begins with a critique of this objectivistic and technocratically defined atmosphere, before moving on to embrace a postphenomenology of technological multistabilities, and then further to introduce what he calls (in an adaptation of Rudolf Boehm) the “topical measure” of technoscientific life. The problem I raise is not about Goeminne’s aims, with which I mostly agree, but with his presentation of how to achieve them. I argue that if one were actually to follow his advice—that is, start with critique, move on to postphenomenology, and end with “political” evaluation of technoscientific life, the project would be doomed to failure. For in our world, no one Understands this pluralizing vision. According to the understanding we actually live through and speak from, some of postphenomenology’s multiple disclosures already arrive in our experience with significantly greater ontological power than others, and sincerity about topical measure notwithstanding, the very identification of something as an interest or “value,” especially if it allegedly comes from a “layperson,” already condemns it to secondary status.     

Postphenomenology and the Politics of Sustainable Technology

In this paper I argue that Don Ihde??s ??postphenomenology?? may constitute a proper access to the question concerning sustainable technology and I do so in three steps. First, I lay bare how a modern framework that systematically separates facts and instruments from values, choices and responsibilities yields no space for engaged decisions and responsible action towards more sustainable societies. In a second step, I elaborate how postphenomenology??s ??in-between?? perspective opens up the possibility of questioning science and technology as an inherent part of our human existence. Building on this, I argue how a ??normativity of the in-between?? may be developed around the concept of ??topical measure?? and which is grounded in the foundationless foundation of postphenomenology??s relational ontology. In a last step, I show how such a ??topical measure?? opens up two fields of normative action vis-à-vis the question concerning sustainable technology: one critical, the other empowering. Whereas ??topical criticism?? focuses on bringing into the open the powerful subpolitics of science and technology, the field of ??topical responsibility?? rather aims at actively assuming responsibility in these political circles. Besides its main interest, which lies in forging a genuine and adequate way into the issue of sustainability, this paper also constitutes an entry into Ihde??s philosophical oeuvre. The question concerning sustainable technology does not only touch upon Ihde??s relational trinity human-technology-world, it also deals with the degree of normative inquiry present in Ihde??s philosophy, an issue he has been repeatedly questioned about by his interlocutors.     

Scientific Objectivity and Postphenomenological Perception

Don Ihde’s paper “Stretching the in-between: Embodiment and beyond” appears to me as a stimulating, topical text with a number of important arguments about human embodiment as a dynamic and epistemically relevant dimension to scientific knowledge production. But, indirectly, the text also raises some basic questions about how to describe the (current) scope of technoscientific knowledge, and the potentials of postphenomenology to deal with this complicated, multi-stable issue.     

From Doing to Performing Phenomenology: Implications and Possibilities

This commentary on Kurt Vanhoutte and Nele Wynants’s of ‘Performing phenomenology: negotiating presence in intermedial theatre’ focuses on the implications of staging phenomenological research. In my opinion the authors missed an opportunity to stress more what W (Double U), a performance of CREW has to offer postphenomenology and what it actually means to ‘perform’ phenomenology. I will not only argue that W (Double U) because of its performative nature offers a reflection on postphenomenology, but also that the performance must be understood as a specific kind of research, conducted simultaneously from a theoretical and aesthetic orientation, leading to a complex interaction between perception and reflection, and offering a valuable, different perspective on postphenomenological research issues. W (Double U) in this respect functions as a ‘theoretical object’, producing a specific kind of embodied knowledge. Finally I will emphasize the possible radical potential in W (Double U), because I do believe that the performance, although it might not lead explicitly to social change, does have an important social and political relevance that the authors do not really delve into.     

文物保护术语setting析理及中文名探讨

setting是西方文物保护界使用较频繁的专业术语,但由于东西方文化以及语言文字之间的差异,其中文名一直以来难以准确认定。因此,有必要从英文语境以及概念凝练过程研究setting,析理其内在底蕴和含义,以探讨中文语境下的贴切译词。setting通常多与人类的主观活动相关,不仅限于表达“环境”之义,以复合名词“背景环境”作为术语setting的中文译词,可以较大程度地还原setting的多层次含义。     

“民粹”概念解读

“民粹”(或“民粹主义”)是与“精英主义”相对的概念。诸多领域都已出现了民粹思维和实践,但其概念较为模糊。美国的人民党运动和俄国民粹派实践是民粹话语的经典形象。评价视角上,民粹是以草根或平民价值为导向、是富含情绪化和批判性的思维和实践。思想内核上,民粹一是主张以“大众”为中心、奉行“人民至上”,二是以“精英”的视角构建的思想体系,三是一个矛盾体。     

Who is Afraid of the Political? A Response to Robert Scharff and Michel Puech

In their respective commentaries to my article “Postphenomenology and the Politics of Sustainable Technology” both Robert Scharff and Michel Puech take issue with my postphenomenological inroad into the politics of technology. In a first step I try to accommodate the suggestions and objections raised by Scharff by making my account of the political more explicit. Consequently, I argue how an antagonistic relational conceptualisation of the political allows me to address head on Puech’s plea to leave politics behind and move towards an ethically informed, post-political approach to sustainability. “But perhaps the question philosophy is confronted with—through the question of the political—might be whether not all reasoning, including a purely theoretical reasoning, can truly only be a political reasoning, resulting in an inevitable, indeed necessary circular structure” (Boehm 2002; author’s translation). In a footnote to my original article ‘Postphenomenology and the Politics of Sustainable Technology’, I wrote that “for the purpose of this paper, it suffices to say that I use the adjective ‘political’ to indicate all aspects of human and non-human agency that are related to ‘shaping the good life’ (Goeminne 2011a).” With hindsight, brought about by the commentaries of Scharff (2011) and Puech (2011), I now see that I could not have been more optimistic. Or should I say naïve? Indeed, although coming from different angles and resulting in very different suggestions, both commentaries precisely target my postphenomenological inroad into the ‘politics’ of technology. In challenging my grounding of the politics of technology in a postphenomenological perspective, Scharff in particular invites me to make my notion of the political more explicit. In what follows, I will therefore first elaborate my take on the political dimension of technology in dialogue with Scharff’s comments and suggestions. Armed with this deepened concept of the political, I will then address Puech’s plea to leave politics behind and move towards an ethically informed, post-political approach to sustainability. Evidently, within the limits of this piece, I can only indicate the broader direction my conceptualisation of the political takes. It suffices perhaps to say that, partly induced by the commentaries of Scharff and Puech, the question of the political has meanwhile taken a much more prominent place in my research as can be seen from a few recent publications [e.g. Goeminne (2012) and Goeminne (forthcoming)]. In saying this, I am also expressing my indebtedness to the commentators for nudging me in this political direction.     

哲学已死?——霍金的哲学思想

霍金在《大设计》中声称"哲学已死"。他的"哲学已死"究竟是指什么?本文考察霍金的哲学思想,指出霍金以自然定律统治自然的"科学决定论"为基本原则,试图在科学的框架内对本体论、因果律以及宇宙本质等问题做出"科学"的解答。霍金的"解题"并不成功,哲学当然也没死亡。霍金结合最新的物理科学进展为哲学的基础性问题提供一种可能的答案,却是有意义富有启发性的尝试。     

Minimal memetics and the Evolution of Patented Technology

The nature and status of cultural evolution and its connection with biological evolution are controversial in part because of Richard Dawkin’s suggestion that the scientific study of culture should include “memetics,” an analog of genetics in which genes are replaced by “memes”—the hypothetical units of cultural evolution. Memetics takes different forms; I focus on its minimal form, which claims merely that natural selection shapes to some extent the evolution of some aspects of culture. Advocates and critics of memetics disagree about the scientific status of memetics, but they agree that memetics must face the following fundamental problems. Problem 1: Cultural evolution differs too much from biological evolution. Problem 2: Culture is too complex. Problem 3: Memes are too difficult to identify and track. Problem 4: Memetics produces only trivial results. This paper examines these problems in the context of a minimal memetic analysis in one specific context: patented inventions. Technology is a special subset of culture, and patented inventions are a special subset of technology—not least because there is a detailed written record of every patent. I describe four recent empirical results on technological innovation derived from memetic analysis of the patent record. Result 1: Inkjet printing, PCR, and stents are key drivers of technological innovation. Result 2: Patent genealogies are tangled and incestuous. Result 3: Door-opening innovations drive the evolution of technology. Result 4: The evolving content of the drivers of innovation confirms the importance of inkjet printing, PCR, and stents, among other inventions. These results show that minimal memetics can provide a novel and illuminating analysis the evolution of patented technology. Furthermore, this memetic analysis can answer all of the main problems with memetics. Problem 1 can be dismissed because culture and biology can be quite disanalogous, provided that natural selection still operates in both. Problem 2 is a mirage, because memetic analysis of the patented inventions is consistent with the full richness and complexity of the evolution of technology. Problem 3 is easy to solve, because the patent record makes it trivial to identify and track patents and their key traits through lineages. Problem 4 can be fully answered only after memetic analysis becomes widespread, but the results reviewed here shows that minimal memetics does yield scientific results that are nontrivial and interesting.     

What Second Order Science Reveals About Scientific Claims: Incommensurability,Doubt, and a Lack of Explication

The traditional sciences often bracket away ambiguity through the imposition of “enabling constraints”—making a set of assumptions and then declaring ceteris paribus. These enabling constraints take the form of uncritically examined presuppositions or “uceps.” Second order science reveals hidden issues, problems and assumptions which all too often escape the attention of the practicing scientist. These hidden values—precisely because they are hidden and not made explicit—can get in the way of the public’s acceptance of a scientific claim. A conflict in understood meaning—between the scientist’s restricted claims and the public’s broader understanding of those same claims can result in cognitive dissonance or the equivalent of the Mori Uncanny Valley. Scientists often react to these differences by claiming “incommensurability” between their restricted claim and the public’s understanding. Second order science, by explicating the effects of variations in values assumed for these uceps and associated impacts on related scientific claims, can often moot these assertions of incommensurability and thereby promote greater scientific understanding. This article explores how second order science can address issues of public doubt regarding the scientific enterprise using examples from medicine, diet and climate science.     

Technology as In-Between

This commentary on Søren Riis’s paper “Dwelling in-between walls” starts from a position of solidarity with its attempt to build a postphenomenological perspective on architecture and the built environment. It proposes however that a clearer view of a technological structure of experience may be obtained by finding technological-perceptual wholes that incorporate perceiver and perceived as well as the mediating apparatus. Parts and wholes may be formed as nested human-technological interiorities that have structured relations with what is outside—so that the outside constitutes an interiority in its turn which contextualises and situates the first. This nested structure raises questions about the way architects and urbanists see the built environment and understand inhabitation. It is hoped that this effort continues with conceptual and empirical work to research ways to make the human places of our built environment.     

How Future Depends on Past and Rare Events in Systems of Life

The dependence on history of both present and future dynamics of life is a common intuition in biology and in humanities. Historicity will be understood in terms of changes of the space of possibilities (or of “phase space”) as well as by the role of diversity in life’s structural stability and of rare events in history formation. We hint to a rigorous analysis of “path dependence” in terms of invariants and invariance preserving transformations, as it may be found also in physics, while departing from the physico-mathematical analyses. The idea is that the (relative or historicized) invariant traces of the past under organismal or ecosystemic transformations contribute to the understanding (or the “theoretical determination”) of present and future states of affairs. This yields a peculiar form of unpredictability (or randomness) in biology, at the core of novelty formation: the changes of observables and pertinent parameters may depend also on past events. In particular, in relation to the properties of synchronic measurement in physics, the relevance of diachronic measurement in biology is highlighted. This analysis may a fortiori apply to cognitive and historical human dynamics, while allowing to investigate some general properties of historicity in biology.     

基于语义分析的铁路科技词组型术语翻译

近年来,以高铁技术为代表的铁路科技有了突飞猛进的发展,铁路产业正式迈入“高铁时代”。因此,铁路科技术语及其翻译也相应得以发展。文章试从语义分析角度对铁路科技词组型术语的结构特点、语义关系及其翻译进行归纳总结。     

Newtonian Emanation, Spinozism, Measurement and the Baconian Origins of the Laws of Nature

The first two sections of this paper investigate what Newton could have meant in a now famous passage from “De Graviatione” (hereafter “DeGrav”) that “space is as it were an emanative effect of God.” First it offers a careful examination of the four key passages within DeGrav that bear on this. The paper shows that the internal logic of Newton’s argument permits several interpretations. In doing so, the paper calls attention to a Spinozistic strain in Newton’s thought. Second it sketches four interpretive options: (i) one approach is generic neo-Platonic; (ii) another approach is associated with the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More; a variant on this (ii*) emphasizes that Newton mixes Platonist and Epicurean themes; (iii) a necessitarian approach; (iv) an approach connected with Bacon’s efforts to reformulate a useful notion of form and laws of nature. Hitherto only the second and third options have received scholarly attention in scholarship on DeGrav. The paper offers new arguments to treat Newtonian emanation as a species of Baconian formal causation as articulated, especially, in the first few aphorisms of part two of Bacon’s New Organon. If we treat Newtonian emanation as a species of formal causation then the necessitarian reading can be combined with most of the Platonist elements that others have discerned in DeGrav, especially Newton’s commitment to doctrines of different degrees of reality as well as the manner in which the first existing being ‘transfers’ its qualities to space (as a kind of causa-sui). This can clarify the conceptual relationship between space and its formal cause in Newton as well as Newton’s commitment to the spatial extended-ness of all existing beings. While the first two sections of this paper engage with existing scholarly controversies, in the final section the paper argues that the recent focus on emanation has obscured the importance of Newton’s very interesting claims about existence and measurement in “DeGrav”. The paper argues that according to Newton God and other entities have the same kind of quantities of existence; Newton is concerned with how measurement clarifies the way of being of entities. Newton is not claiming that measurement reveals all aspects of an entity. But if we measure something then it exists as a magnitude in space and as a magnitude in time. This is why in DeGrav Newton’s conception of existence really helps to “lay truer foundations of the mechanical sciences.”     

“政治等效”视野下“依法治国”的英译嬗变探析——以五次党代会报告英译为例

“依法治国”是中国政治话语中的一个重要术语,其英译应从建构中国国际话语权的高度来认识。文章梳理了从十五大到十九大五次党代会报告中对“依法治国”这一术语的英译,发现了“依法治国”英译在这20年间的嬗变途径和趋势,在“政治等效”视野下,从“政治性”“动态性”和“平衡性”三个标准对“依法治国”的英译嬗变进行探讨,辨其途径,析其原因,并得出结论,以期对中国特色政治术语的翻译有所启示。     

About the Confusion Between the Course of Time and the Arrow of Time

A conclusion drawn after a conference devoted (in 1995) to the “arrow of time” was the following: “Indeed, it seems not a very great exaggeration to say that the main problem with “the problem of the direction of time” is to figure out exactly what the problem is supposed to be !” What does that mean? That more than 130 years after the work of Ludwig Boltzmann on the interpretation of irreversibility of physical phenomena, and that one century after Einstein’s formulation of Special Relativity, we are still not sure what we mean when we talk of “time” or “arrow of time”. We shall try to show that one source of this difficulty is our tendency to confuse, at least verbally, time and becoming, i.e. the course of time and the arrow of time, two concepts that the formalisms of modern physics are careful to distinguish.     

技术民主化设计何以可能?--基于芬伯格“自我赋权”的思路

设计是当前技术哲学和技术伦理关注的核心话题,其关键问题之一是如何实现技术设计的民主化。芬伯格认为,技术设计是权力斗争的舞台,通过民主干预,人们可以在技术设计中改变现有的"技术代码",从而实现"技术民主化"的转变。以福柯的"自我技术"为参照,技术民主化设计可以被看作是一种"自我赋权"的方式,它不仅指明了一条将技术进行内在转化的研究进路,而且为社会个体提供了在技术领域中表达自我主张的机会,同时也有助于作为行动者的公众对技术设计的积极参与。     

The God Concept: Aristotle and the Philosophical Tradition

Before beginning a paper on metaphysics, it is wise to acknowledge the paper’s own “metaphysical” assumptions. In what follows, we must bear in mind that the history of philosophy is as interpretively diverse as it is long. We will begin with the premise that Metaphysics is indeed a foundational science. We will posit that Aristotle’s corpus is unified; that is, that Aristotle can be read as a “systematic” philosopher. Moreover, we will assume that the history of philosophy is itself a unity. If we posit such, “philosophy” can be read as a comprehensible continuity: a certainly contestable position. We must bear in mind that similitude is decidedly not identity; however, similitude does imply a certain conceptual correlation, one which, when pressed, may yield interesting, if not unexpected, results. Thus, we will travel at lightning speed through what took a snail’s pace to develop, “mapping,” so to speak, the structure of the unmoved mover of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (1941) onto the traditional historical divisions of the history of philosophy. We will begin with Aristotle himself in the Ancient period, move to Averroes (the Ibn-Rushd of this paper) in the Medieval period, focus on Descartes and Spinoza as Modern thinkers and, finally, end in Heidegger and Sartre in Contemporary philosophy. This is philosophy with a capital “P,” which may or may not be the reader’s preferred position, let alone the writer’s. But, for our purposes here, it is, nonetheless, inevitable.     

“母亲”术语用错了吗?——也析《宪法》中一款条文

《语文建设》曾刊登一文,对于《中华人民共和国宪法》第四十九条第一款“婚姻、家庭、母亲和儿童受国家的保护”中“母亲”一词的使用提出了疑问——认为“母亲”一词使用不当,当修改为“妇女”。文章从语言学、术语学和法学视角,论证了该法条的确当性,并认为:《宪法》语言有其自身的法理精神。