Reframing Architecture

I would like to thank Prof. Stephen Read (2011) and Prof. Andrew Benjamin (2011) for both giving inspiring and elaborate comments on my article “Dwelling in-between walls: the architectural surround”. As I will try to demonstrate below, their two different responses not only supplement my article very nicely, but also augment each other’s. In the beginning of Read’s comment, as he sets the stage for his observations, he unknowingly also points in the direction of Benjamin’s remarks: “I propose not to de-construct therefore, or add a point of view from an orthogonal position, but to try in the spirit of multidisciplinarity to talk in languages not well practiced—to begin to build what Bowker and Star call ‘boundary objects’ between different starting positions; points we can gather around to think further together” (Read 2011). Whereas Read facilitates a multidisciplinary dialogue, Benjamin focuses on how the absence of an initial distinction might threaten the endeavour of my paper. In my reply to Read and Benjamin, I will discuss their suggestions and arguments, while at the same time hopefully clarifying the postphenomenological approach to architecture.     

The Care of Our Hybrid Selves: Ethics in Times of Technical Mediation

What can the art of living after Foucault contribute to ethics in relation to the mediation of human existence by technology? To develop the relation between technical mediation and ethics, firstly the theme of technical mediation is elaborated in line with Foucault’s notion of ethical problematization. Every view of what technology does to us at the same time expresses an ethical concern about technology. The contemporary conception of technical mediation tends towards the acknowledgement of ongoing hybridization, not ultimately good or bad but ambivalent, which means for us the challenge of taking care of ourselves as hybrid beings. Secondly, the work of Foucault provides elements for imagining this care for our hybrid selves, notably his notions of freedom as a practice and of the care of the self. A conclusions about technical mediation and ethics is that whereas the approaches of the delegation of morality to technology by Latour and mediated morality by Verbeek see technical mediation of behavior and moral outlook as an answer in ethics, this should rather be considered the problem that ethics is about.     

海德格尔的建筑哲学及其启示

海德格尔关于建筑的哲学思考，有如他对技术的追问，其运思的方式同样源于其追问“是”的意义的方式。他把建造的本质理解为定居，把定居理解为人在大地上“是”的方式，归属于定居的建造以建筑物的方式聚集天、地、神、人四重整体，由此展开地点与空间、人与空间的关系。空间是建筑的主角，这是当代建筑理论界的共识。要开展建筑哲学的研究，把握建筑的本质，必须深入理解人与空间的关系。海德格尔的建筑哲学将给予我们深刻的启示。     

Releasement and Nihilism in the Art of Living with Technology

In this contribution the author tries to formulate an approach to the art of living with technology based on Heidegger’s The Principle of Reason, a work often overlooked by contemporary commentators in the philosophy of technology. This approach couples the concept of releasement to insights hailing from Wolfgang Schirmacher concerning Heidegger’s nihilism.     

The Uses of Reason in Times of Technical Mediation

The art of living idiom suits well a practice-oriented approach in ethics of technology. But what remains or becomes of the functioning and use of reason in ethics? In reaction to the comments by Huijer this reply elaborates in more detail how Foucault’s art of living can be adapted for a critical contemporary ethics of technology. And the aesthetic-political rationality in Foucault’s ethics is compared with Wellner’s suggestions of holding on to the notion of code but with a new meaning. Foucault’s fourfold scheme of subjectivation and a distinction of “below and above reason” structure the argument.     

Heidegger on <Emphasis Type="Italic">Verfallenheit</Emphasis>

The question of Heidegger’s reflections on technology is explored in terms of ‘living with’ technology and including the socio-theoretical (Edinburgh) notion of ‘entanglement’ towards a review of Heidegger’s understanding of technology and media, including the entertainment industry and modern digital life. I explore Heidegger’s reflections on Gelassenheit by way of the Japanese aesthetic conception of life and of art as wabi-sabi understood with respect to Heidegger’s Gelassenheit as the art of Verfallenheit.     

罗存德词典科技术语收录研究

在我国英汉词典编纂史上,罗存德的《英华字典》起到了举足轻重的作用。它在继承马礼逊开创的双语词典编纂传统的同时,又引领了晚清后期英汉词典的编纂,对商务印书馆最早出版的英汉词典产生的影响尤为深远。这部词典收词广泛,例证丰富,译名更趋完善。罗存德在科技术语的收录和翻译方面的努力则更是令人称道。文章以词典中科技术语的收录为出发点,从术语的学科分布和翻译两个方面展开详细的分析。     

物化关系遮蔽下的军事实验——作战模拟技术的合理性基础

人-军事技术之间除对象化的物化关系外也存在着异化向度,即军事技术对人主体功能的僭越,这一异化关系构成了"人"在作战模拟技术中可以被量化的前提条件.研究者们在模型中用对技术效能的精确测量遮蔽了人在军事实践中的主体地位.当我们接受作为"存在"的作战模拟技术时可以发现,这一异化向度的物化在揭示作战模拟技术先天局限的同时,也为...     

Dwelling In-Between Walls: The Architectural Surround

The title of this paper might evoke claustrophobic associations. In other words, architecture in a very immediate sense can affect our behavior and feelings. In more mediated ways, architecture is also capable of influencing humans and putting their environment into perspective. Consider, for example, how a penthouse apartment can literally elevate people??s emotions and unfold a new perspective on city life, which some people are willing to pay millions of dollars to attain. In this paper I will explore how architecture frames human experience from a philosophical point of view. My aim is to offer key elements of a new typology of architecture. For that purpose I am going to reflect and expand on key insights into technology of one of the funding fathers of contemporary philosophy of technology, Don Ihde. Through a life time, Ihde has been probing and investigating the relation between humans and their world as it is mediated through technology. In doing so he has concentrated on examining and understanding the role of scientific instruments. This paper is dedicated to showing how Ihde??s significant postphenomenological concepts not only can be translated to another domain and serve a better understanding of architecture, but also how his work can help us to relate to architecture in multiple constructive ways. The succeeding experimental translations of Ihde??s understanding of technology to architecture are also meant as a guide to design more adequate and fascinating built environments. I will begin with a broad overview of Ihde??s postphenomenological project; subsequently I shall endeavor to translate this work onto architecture through a number of case-studies, some of which are detailed and others less so.     

A Critical Use of Foucault’s Art of Living

Foucault’s vocabulary of arts of existence might be helpful to problematize the entwinement of humans and technology and to search for new types of hybrid selves. However, to be a serious new ethical vocabulary for technology, this art of existence should be supplemented with an ongoing critical discourse of technologies, including a critical analysis of the subjectivities imposed by technologies, and should be supplemented with new medical and philosophical regimens for an appropriate use of technologies.     

“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.     

技术、解放与讨论--对哈贝马斯为何重视"讨论"概念的一种考察

作为日常生活惯用语的“讨论”这一词组，在哈贝马斯的著作中，是反复出现的重要概念，特别是论及到技术进步与人的解放关系问题时，更见他对“讨论’’的重视。这一现象值得探究。哈贝马斯之所以重视“讨论”，在于他通过语言研究，从意识哲学转向了交往哲学，从双重理性化的视野考察技术进步与人的解放关系，把“讨论”看作加强交往合理化的途径。     

The Art of Living with Technology: Turning Over Philosophy of Technology’s Empirical Turn

In this article we seek to lay bare a couple of potential conceptual and methodological issues that, we believe, are implicitly present in contemporary philosophy of technology (PhilTech). At stake are (1) the sustained pertinence of and need for coping strategies as to ‘how to live with technology (in everyday life)’ notwithstanding PhilTech’s advancement in its non-essentialist analysis of ‘technology’ as such; (2) the issue of whether ‘living with technology’ is a technological affair or not (or both); and (3) the tightly related question concerning the status of the methodological bedrock of contemporary PhilTech, the ‘empirical turn.’ These matters are approached from the perspective of the philosophical notion of the ‘art of living,’ and our argumentation is developed both as a context for and on the basis of the contributions to the special issue ‘The Art of Living with Technology.’     

天坛皇穹宇声学现象的新发现

天坛是我国珍贵的文化遗产，也是世界上最大的祭天建筑群，其设计之精、建筑之巧、风格之奇、回音之妙，在世界古我上亦属罕见，成为人类建筑艺术的瑰宝，被列为我国四大回音古建筑之首。１９９４年３月２６日，作者在天坛皇穹宇内发现了一个回音壁和东、西配殿相关的奇妙声学现象－天坛”对话石“声学现象。     

The Documentary Real: Thinking Documentary Aesthetics

In this article we consider the growing interest in recent years in the use of documentary strategies in the wold of contemporary art, film and performing arts and explore some of the central epistemological assumptions underpinning the persistent idea that the documentary should be equated with ‘non-fiction’. Following Stella Bruzzi we argue that if documentary theory maintains objectivity as the primary measure of value, it will inevitably and continuously arrive at the conclusion that the documentary genre is fundamentally flawed. Instead, we propose to move beyond the ‘realist epistemology’ of documentary theory and focus on the ‘documentary real’, i.e. the specific performativity of the reality constructed in and by the documentary genre. In the last paragraphs, we introduce the various articles that address the “documentary real” in this special issue.     

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.     

术语管理实践的行业模式探索——《术语管理指南》述评

术语管理是现代译者能力体系的重要组成部分。《术语管理指南》立足语言服务业术语管理实践的行业模式,剖析术语管理的概念、团队、流程与技术,致力于传播术语管理知识,提升术语管理能力。文章概述该书的内容结构,归纳其编写特色,并结合国内术语管理研究与教学现状,探讨该书的学术意义与实践价值。     

从视觉文化论太空美术与科学传播

太空美术是建立在太空科学与宇航学发展基础上的美术形式,同时具有科学与艺术的特质。它把科学知识融入了图像世界,成为我们了解太空世界的重要方式之一,太空美术和太空摄影相近,但又是不可代替的两种视觉语言形式,太空美术在传播科学知识、科学思想和科学文化中发挥着不可替代的作用,并且给现时期的科学传播提供了一种新的路径模式和启示。     

科学和艺术之关系简评

本文讨论了科学与艺术的关系争论的焦点问题，并就科学与艺术的关系进行了阶段性的历史考察，指出了在远古时代、近代和当代科学与艺术相互联系的不同特征。文章还对分析科学与艺术的关系时应该注意的一些问题提出了看法。     

试论框锯的发明与建筑木作制材

刀锯是我国（建筑）木工使用的工具之一，一直长期使用，但它不能用来解木。约在南北朝后期，我国有了框锯的使用。它是由刀锯演化为弓形锯，再由弓形锯逐渐发展而来的。框锯的发明，直接影响到木作的制材技术，为古建筑材分制的形成准备了技术前提，并影响到建筑技术乃至建筑工艺的方方面面。