Babu Thaliath
I studied Civil Engineering at the College of Engineering Trivandrum, University of Kerala and graduated in 1988. Subsequently, I worked as a consulting engineer and designer. I completed my postgraduate studies (M.A.) in German Studies and Philosophy at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, between 1992 and 1994, followed by a "Grundständige Promotion" in Philosophy, German Studies and Art History at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg and the University of Basel (1997 - 1999). I then began doctoral studies in philosophy and art history in 1999 under the supervision of Prof Klaus Jacobi (Freiburg) and Prof Gottfried Boehm (Basel). I completed my doctorate in 2003. Since then, I have carried out several postdoctoral research projects in the history and philosophy of early modern science at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Cambridge. My mentors are Prof Dominik Perler (Berlin), Prof Hasok Chang (Cambridge) and Prof Martin Kemp (Oxford). In 2013, I was appointed Professor at the Centre for German Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. I have been a visiting scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and at St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, fellow at the International Kolleg Morphomata of the University of Cologne (2016) and senior fellow at the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz (2021–2022). My postdoctoral publications include the monographs 'Wissenschaft und Kontext in der frühen Neuzeit' (2016), 'Die Verkörperung der Sinnlichkeit' (2017), and 'Vom Aufspüren der Axiome. Die Epistemisch-Strukturelle Intuition und das moderne Wissenssystem' (2021). My forthcoming publication (monograph): 'Die hinterlassenen Objekte. Das Bildmotiv in den Filmen Andrej Tarkowskis' (2024).
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Hasok Chang, Prof. Dr. Martin Kemp, and Prof. Dr. Dominik Perler
Phone: 0091-9910657026
Address: Centre of German Studies
SLL & CS
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
New Delhi 110067, India
Zukunftskolleg
University of Konstanz
Box 216
78457 Konstanz - Germany
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Hasok Chang, Prof. Dr. Martin Kemp, and Prof. Dr. Dominik Perler
Phone: 0091-9910657026
Address: Centre of German Studies
SLL & CS
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
New Delhi 110067, India
Zukunftskolleg
University of Konstanz
Box 216
78457 Konstanz - Germany
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In my paper I try to show how these different image motifs of Tarkovsky are based on a general and omnipotent natural phenomenon, namely gravity, and how it functions as a tacit principle in all transformations or metamorphoses of a technologically modernised world and the humans, who create and inhabit it. Some of the narrative leitmotifs can be derived from these pictorial motifs, which mostly depict and build on the ruination of a machined modernity. While the film Solaris – as a celestial science fiction – displays striking anti-gravitational image motifs and thus suggests narrative leitmotifs of redemption and resurrection, the film Stalker is rich in earthly image motifs such as the pro-gravitational fall-motif, as represented by the gravitational fall, dispersion, disintegration or ruination of machines and buildings, and also by the fall of humans striving for redemption to death and the subsequent decomposition of bodies in a mysterious part of the world, the Zone. In these films, which are based on celestial and terrestrial science fictions, Tarkovsky seems to juxtapose pro- and anti-gravitational image motifs that relate closely to nature and technology as well as to the human self – to its exteriority and interiority. These image motifs are tacitly accompanied by the equally juxtaposed narrative leitmotifs of redemption and immortality – or repeated resurrection in space (Solaris) – as against the earthly fall into death and ruination in the 'Zone' of destiny (Stalker). This explicates a central motif of Tarkovsky’s film aesthetics, namely, the exploration of a transitory nexus between the human self and the world, which includes both the primordial nature and the technologically developed culture or civilisation.
My paper is premised on the fundamental assumption that the mathematical-formal axiomatics of the early modernity was necessarily based on axiomatic-structural intuitions. The epistemological non-finality of medieval-scholastic aporetics necessitated the emergence of axiomatics of the mathematical and material sciences in the early modern period, in which the historically incessant or persistent phenomenal aporias were transformed into causally irreducible and, as such, epistemically final axioms. This has led to the problem of sufficient, final and definitive epistemic access in axiomatics which can be described as the problem of epistemological referentiality, in which the epistemic reference suggests the cognitive access directed and aimed at an object of knowledge. While axiomatics presupposes the consummation of the epistemic-referential access, aporetics shows its incompleteness, or even infinity. The axiomatic-structural intuition, from which alone the mathematical-formal finality of the axioms can arise, also has the potential to get access to the axiomatically hidden or buried phenomenal aporias and to revive them historically. The paper will focus on the systematic development of the idea of structural intuition, that Martin Kemp had introduced into the scientific discourse in late 90s and has been developing since then, into an epistemological principle of axiomatic-structural intuition as evidenced in the advent of early modern sciences.
In my paper I try to show how these different image motifs of Tarkovsky are based on a general and omnipotent natural phenomenon, namely gravity, and how it functions as a tacit principle in all transformations or metamorphoses of a technologically modernised world and the humans, who create and inhabit it. Some of the narrative leitmotifs can be derived from these pictorial motifs, which mostly depict and build on the ruination of a machined modernity. While the film Solaris – as a celestial science fiction – displays striking anti-gravitational image motifs and thus suggests narrative leitmotifs of redemption and resurrection, the film Stalker is rich in earthly image motifs such as the pro-gravitational fall-motif, as represented by the gravitational fall, dispersion, disintegration or ruination of machines and buildings, and also by the fall of humans striving for redemption to death and the subsequent decomposition of bodies in a mysterious part of the world, the Zone. In these films, which are based on celestial and terrestrial science fictions, Tarkovsky seems to juxtapose pro- and anti-gravitational image motifs that relate closely to nature and technology as well as to the human self – to its exteriority and interiority. These image motifs are tacitly accompanied by the equally juxtaposed narrative leitmotifs of redemption and immortality – or repeated resurrection in space (Solaris) – as against the earthly fall into death and ruination in the 'Zone' of destiny (Stalker). This explicates a central motif of Tarkovsky’s film aesthetics, namely, the exploration of a transitory nexus between the human self and the world, which includes both the primordial nature and the technologically developed culture or civilisation.
My paper is premised on the fundamental assumption that the mathematical-formal axiomatics of the early modernity was necessarily based on axiomatic-structural intuitions. The epistemological non-finality of medieval-scholastic aporetics necessitated the emergence of axiomatics of the mathematical and material sciences in the early modern period, in which the historically incessant or persistent phenomenal aporias were transformed into causally irreducible and, as such, epistemically final axioms. This has led to the problem of sufficient, final and definitive epistemic access in axiomatics which can be described as the problem of epistemological referentiality, in which the epistemic reference suggests the cognitive access directed and aimed at an object of knowledge. While axiomatics presupposes the consummation of the epistemic-referential access, aporetics shows its incompleteness, or even infinity. The axiomatic-structural intuition, from which alone the mathematical-formal finality of the axioms can arise, also has the potential to get access to the axiomatically hidden or buried phenomenal aporias and to revive them historically. The paper will focus on the systematic development of the idea of structural intuition, that Martin Kemp had introduced into the scientific discourse in late 90s and has been developing since then, into an epistemological principle of axiomatic-structural intuition as evidenced in the advent of early modern sciences.
''സ്വാധീനങ്ങളുടെയും അനുരണനങ്ങളുടെയും കാലമെങ്കിലും ഭ്രമാത്മകബിംബങ്ങളും അമൂർത്തചിത്രങ്ങളും യഥേഷ്ടമായിരുന്നെങ്കിലും വീട് ഓർമ്മയായിപ്പോയ ഒരനാഥയൗവനത്തിന്റെ ആന്തരികമായ അലച്ചിൽ ബാബുവിന്റെ വരികൾ അന്നേ അനുഭവിപ്പിച്ചിരുന്നു. അത് പുറംലോകത്തെ പാർപ്പുവീടല്ല, മറിച്ച് സ്മരണയ്ക്കും ഏകാന്തതയ്ക്കും ദുഃസ്വപ്നത്തിനുമെല്ലാം കടവാതിൽ പോലെ തൂങ്ങിക്കിടക്കാവുന്ന അകവീട്.'' അവതാരിക: അൻവർ അലി
It was originally written as a long essay for the Malayalam monthly 'Pachakuthira'.
To order: https://dcbookstore.com/books/ammaveetu
Intuition lässt sich als ein primordiales und vorsprachliches Ver- mögen betrachten, anhand dessen der Geist einen unmittelbaren epistemischen Zugang zu den Phänomenen erhält. Die strukturelle Intuition baut auf dem Grundprinzip auf, dass zwischen innerlich intuitiven und äußerlich phänomenalen Strukturen eine unfehlbare Resonanz besteht; sie erweist sich gemeinhin als kompositorisch, in- dem sie die mathematische Formhaftigkeit mit der mechanischen und materiellen Phänomenalität vereinheitlicht. Die vorliegende Abhand- lung ist ein Versuch, die Lehre der strukturellen Intuition hinsichtlich ihres erkenntnistheoretischen Potenzials auf eine epistemisch-struk- turelle Intuition zu erweitern und sie demnach als den Grundzug axiomatischer Intuitionen in den frühneuzeitlichen mathematischen und materiellen Wissenschaften zu begründen.
(Original text in German) Der Mensch erlebt den eigenen Leib und die Umwelt allein durch die Sinnlichkeit; seine Erfahrungswelt baut ursprünglich auf den Sinneswahrnehmungen auf. Der Zugang des menschlichen Subjekts zum Gegenstand, der sinnlich wahrgenommen und durch den Verstand erkannt wird, vollzieht sich zuerst in dieser verbindenden Funktion, die notwendigerweise die leibliche und außerleibliche Ausdehnung der Sinnlichkeit voraussetzt. Die vorliegende Abhandlung ist ein Versuch, die primären räumlich-zeitlichen Strukturen, die jeder Form der Sinneswahrnehmung innewohnen und folglich deren Ausdehnung gewährleisten, erneut zu untersuchen und dabei eine grundlegende Analogizität zwischen den Sinnesstrukturen aufzuweisen. Seitdem Descartes die Sinnlichkeit ausschließlich unter einer unausgedehnten Seele, der res cogitans, subsumierte, und Kant sich – daran anschließend und erweiternd – die primären Sinnesqualia Raum und Zeit rein apriorisch vorstellte, bleibt die wirkliche Ausdehnung der Sinnlichkeit ein ungelöstes Problem. Die Aporie der Sinnlichkeit scheint eine Wiederherstellung des objektiven Status der primären Sinnesqualia zu bedingen. Die räumlich-zeitlichen Sinnesstrukturen bilden dabei das unreduzierbare Skelett der Wirklichkeit, auf dem sich die sekundären Sinnesqualia ausdehnen.
Die Untersuchung geht von Fallstudien aus, wie sie in mechanischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften von Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Hooke und Boyle zu finden sind.
In my paper I try to show how these different image motifs of Tarkovsky are based on a general and omnipotent natural phenomenon, namely gravity, and how it functions as a tacit principle in all transformations or metamorphoses of a technologically modernised world and the humans, who create and inhabit it. Some of the narrative leitmotifs can be derived from these pictorial motifs, which mostly depict and build on the ruination of a machined modernity. While the film Solaris – as a celestial science fiction – displays striking anti-gravitational image motifs and thus suggests narrative leitmotifs of redemption and resurrection, the film Stalker is rich in earthly image motifs such as the pro-gravitational fall-motif, as represented by the gravitational fall, dispersion, disintegration or ruination of machines and buildings, and also by the fall of humans striving for redemption to death and the subsequent decomposition of bodies in a mysterious part of the world, the Zone. In these films, which are based on celestial and terrestrial science fictions, Tarkovsky seems to juxtapose pro- and anti-gravitational image motifs that relate closely to nature and technology as well as to the human self – to its exteriority and interiority. These image motifs are tacitly accompanied by the equally juxtaposed narrative leitmotifs of redemption and immortality – or repeated resurrection in space (Solaris) – as against the earthly fall into death and ruination in the 'Zone' of destiny (Stalker). This explicates a central motif of Tarkovsky’s film aesthetics, namely, the exploration of a transitory nexus between the human self and the world, which includes both the primordial nature and the technologically developed culture or civilisation.
A term (Begriff) within a language marks in its primordial genesis the finality or terminus of an epistemic process that is necessarily directed towards an object. The epistemic finality of a linguistic term therefore presupposes a uniform referentiality of cognition. However, the term refers to both universals as well as particulars - two references that should, in principle, prove to be complementary, but which, in their modes of existence, stand in a contradictory relationship to each other. This ambiguity of epistemic reference arises from the subject's ambivalent access to the object, namely the direct sensory access to the particular and the indirect (abstract) access of understanding to universals, and denotes as such a certain aporia of language.
In the history of modern philosophy there have been several - implicit and explicit - attempts to solve this problem. The most important of them would be Kant's transcendental hierarchisation of epistemology, in which aesthetics as the doctrine of sensory perceptions (Sinnlichkeit) is subordinated to logic. Baumgarten's notion of parallelism between cognitio sensitiva and cognitio abstractiva and the ensuing epistemological analogousness between aesthetics and logic was a significant philosophical undertaking in the early modernity. However, it is well known that in Baumgarten's philosophy the aesthetics prevails over the logic, which Kant clearly seeks to reverse in his transcendental epistemology. Nietzsche in his early work Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne (“On truth and falsity in an extra moral sense”) polemicises against the prevailing primacy of universals over particulars, as represented in the hierarchical order of logic and aesthetics in the context of modern epistemology. In doing so, Nietzsche observes terms (Begriffe) as linguistic individuations on which sciences build their secure “columbaria”. Nietzsche's idea of the metaphoricity of language eventually suggests the aporia of language itself, for which the philosopher offers no solution. Language or its epistemic-referential access to objects remains, as before, an aporia.
Offensichtlich basiert die ästhetische Erkenntnislehre Baumgartens auf dieser Verbindung von Ästhetik und Logik im Rahmen einer cognitio sensitiva, die hier – wie nie zuvor in der Philosophiegeschichte – hervorgehoben wird. Allerdings erweist sich eine derartige Gleichstellung und Synthese zwischen Sinnlichkeit und Verstand kaum als problemlos. Denn zugunsten seiner Lehre der sinnlichen Erkenntnis stellt sich Baumgarten den epistemischen Zugang (zu Erfahrungsobjekten) als ein Zusammenspiel von attentio (Aufmerksamkeit) und abstractio, also der logisch-begrifflichen Abstraktion, vor.
In meinem Vortrag versuche ich aufzuzeigen, wie in dieser Vorstellung Baumgartens, die die konträren Vorgänge des subjektiv-epistemischen Zugangs zum Objekt miteinander gleichstellt und in sich einschließt, unvermeidlich eine Zweideutigkeit der epistemischen Referenz zutage tritt. Da das Apodiktische an Erkenntnissen notwendig einen hinreichenden epistemischen Zugang (zu den erkannten Objekten) bedingt, sollte im Prinzip jede Zweideutigkeit der epistemischen Referenz die Gewissheit der Erkenntnisse gefährden. In Wahrheit jedoch bereichert diese Zweideutigkeit das Erkenntnisvermögen, indem die sinnliche Erkenntnis tendenziell die Finalität begrifflich-abstrakter Erkenntnisse durchbricht und dabei deren Unendlichkeit erfahrbar macht.
In meinem Vortrag versuche ich das filmische Bildmotiv Tarkowskijs sowie seine Polemik gegen das Montagekino Eisensteins anhand einer vorwiegend deutschen Philosophietradition zu untersuchen. Die Zeitvorstellung im Montagekino schien zu dem Rahmen eines sich historisch-paradigmatisch entwickelten und etablierten Transzendentalismus zu passen. Anstatt der tradierten, rein subjektiv- transzendentalen Zeitvorstellung Kants sieht Edmund Husserl in der subjektiven Zeitempfindung eine Retention des Zeitphänomens im Bewusstsein, indem im subjektiven Zeitbewusstsein das empfundene Phänomen (z. B. eine Melodie) momentan und stets gegenwärtig verweilt. Hier argumentiere ich wie folgt: Zwischen der rein apriorischen Zeitvorstellung Kants und der existentiellen Zeitvorstellung Heideggers plädiert Husserl in seiner Phänomenologie des subjektiven Zeitbewusstseins für eine epistemologisch und ontologisch ausgeglichene Wahrnehmung des Zeitphänomens, in deren Rahmen sich das Bildmotiv Tarkowskijs am ehesten untersuchen lässt. Demnach könnte Tarkowskijs Grundvorstellung vom Filmbild als Bildhauerei aus Zeit erneut im Rahmen der Phänomenologie des subjektiven Zeitbewusstseins von Husserl umgedeutet werden, nämlich als eine ikonische Retention der Zeit bzw. des Zeitphänomens in der Beobachtung, insbesondere dargestellt in seinen Bildmotiven wie dem filmischen Stillleben und der Zeitlupe in den Filmen Andrej Rubljow, Solaris, Spiegel, Stalker, Nostalghia und Opfer. Die Retention der phänomenalen Zeitlichkeit im Bewusstsein bewältigt die kantsche Vorstellung (innerhalb einer transzendentalen Ästhetik) von der epistemologischen Anwendung der Zeit als rein apriorische Form auf die Phänomena, die das Montagekino filmästhetisch zu realisieren scheint; sie bedingt des Weiteren – gegenüber dem geläufigen, transzendentalphilosophisch vorgestellten epistemologischen Vorgang vom Gegenstand zur begrifflichen Erkenntnis – einen wahrnehmungstheoretischen Rückgang zum Bildphänomen.
The main object of investigation is the method of Newton in his Principia, namely the mathematization or mathematical demonstration of the laws of celestial mechanics (principle of inertia, law of elliptical orbits, area law and the law of gravitation) that were originally proposed by Descartes, Kepler and Hooke. Newton, however, observed with disapproval the original propositions of Kepler and Hooke as mere guesses, and considered the mathematical reasoning and demonstration to be the true method in mechanics that alone can axiomatize its laws imparting them universality and apodicticity. Newton’s claim on the primacy of his mathematical methods has been subject to discussion in several important treatises by leading historians of science in the 20th century, like I. Bernard Cohen, Richard S. Westfall, and François De Gandt.
But how could mere guesses lead directly, i.e. without mathematical reasoning, to axiomatic knowledge in the above-mentioned fields of early modern science? Can there be mere guesses in the science of mechanics that appear immediately to be true and apodictic? I would argue that these guesses (of Kepler and Hooke), that Newton observed in dispraise and, consequently, disclosed from his mathematical methodology, should have originally been free-spatial-structural intuitions that alone can attain an adequate epistemological finality and scientific-axiomatic legitimacy. This would necessitate a reexamination of the mathematical methods of Newton in order to find out whether purely mathematical premises and methods can bestow an axiomatic status on the original mechanical and optical structural intuitions, as represented in their apodicticity and universality. In short, I want to examine whether in the context of early modern mechanics and optics the immediate free-spatial-structural intuitions reach a deeper foundation ― thus gain a deeper axiomatic finality ― as compared to their mathematical and deductive reasoning.
The primacy of free-spatial-structural intuitions over geometrical deductions in the early modern science of mechanics and optics seems to lie in the fact that geometry is essentially a spatial science like mechanics and optics and as such, presupposes the free-spatial-structural intuitions which originally brought about its axioms. The most fundamental epistemological finality of free-spatial-structural intuitions can be demonstrated through a few examples from the early modern mechanics and optics. Furthermore, the epistemological finality of free-spatial- structural intuitions can be observed in the historical context of these classical sciences. The trajectory from intuitive-epistemological process to axiomatic finalities in the early modern spatial sciences (geometry, mechanics and optics) proves ultimately to be historical; i.e. it forms a historic-epistemological process to finalities, from which the axiomatic foundations of these sciences constantly evolve, deepen and thus develop further. Such an epistemological processuality seems to underlie the contextualization of sciences that defines their bounds and, at the same time, expands them historically.
Kepler's redefinition of the traditional celestial mechanics in terms of a celestial physics was based on the recognition of nature and structure of forces and planetary movements as premise for a purely physical explanation of celestial phenomena, which was largely opposed to the Copernican geometric-mathematical pre-formation of the cosmos - with perfect circular orbits and uniform circular movements of planets. The dynamics of celestial phenomena, namely the structures of forces and planetary movements, can only inadequately be represented through static geometric forms; they are apparently premised on the primacy of an epistemological intuition or intuitive visualization. In a similar way, Robert Hooke seemed to follow in his cosmological discoveries, namely the principle of gravity, the ellipticity of planetary orbits etc., an analogous methodological intuition (prior to mathematical demonstrations). Newton, however, observed with disapproval the original propositions of Kepler and Hooke as mere guesses, and considered the mathematical reasoning and demonstration to be the true method in mechanics that alone can axiomatize its laws imparting them universality and apodicticity.
In this paper I attempt to identify these and similar axiomatic notions in early modern physics essentially as structural intuitions and substantiate their epistemological precedence over mathematical deduction. The investigation starts from the basic notion of structural intuition that Martin Kemp introduced in his lecture on “Structural Intuitions in Art and Science” (held on 16th December, 2002, in Munich). Kemp conceives the notion of structural intuition as a significant mode of aesthetic perception or rather of visualization in art and science, relating it principally to the static structures in nature, in architecture as well as in sculpture. The notion of structural intuition can be extended to a priori dynamic structures that the philosophers and scientists of early modern mechanics and optics discovered through spatial geometrical intuitions. While the geometric-mathematical deduction – especially in Newtonian physics – presupposes the primacy of a priori axiomatic knowledge over its a posteriori manifestation, the structural intuition seems to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between apriority and aposteriority of axioms in the knowledge system of early modern physics. For the apodicticity of structural intuition is based on an original epistemological process, in which the subject thinks i. e. cognizes with or rather within the visible and invisible structures of physical phenomena. In other words: here it is, as a matter of fact, not about a traditional notion of the primacy of an a priori mathematics over a posteriori physical nature, but rather about a fundamental correlation between mathematics and physics (as the science of physical phenomena) which is verifiable in its objective manifestations. It is to be closely examined how the structural intuition embodies such a fundamental epistemological correlation which alone can directly result in axiomatic knowledge in the science of physics. Furthermore, the ontological foundations of structural intuition – in the context of the epistemology of early modern physics – are examined, in order to determine how they or their finality eventually safeguard the apriority and apodicticity of axiomatic knowledge.
The narrative continuity of a past life manifests itself in different historiographical reconstructions of memory, as represented chiefly in biographies but also in other forms of narrative such as literary fictions and films. A primordial time-structure seems to persist in the form of an inevitable residual entity in both the perceptual continuity of experience as well as in the narrative continuity of memories and reflections. I would argue here that the hyletic data (hyletisches Datum), which, according to Husserl, survives all the phenomenological reductions in consciousness and thereby bridges the divide between consciousness and reality, eventually refers to the residual persistence of a time-structure inherent in both the immediate experience and in the narrative reconstruction of memory. Precisely this persisting and indelible remnant of a time-structure in consciousness seems to autonomise the mental inexistence of the objects of perception and memory against all noetic processes and their historical morphoses. The primacy of noesis over noema, as tacitly presupposed in phenomenology, seems to be refuted here or rather reversed. I will try to demonstrate how certain filmic image motifs of Andrey Tarkovsky that depict the biographical reconstruction of past memories are aesthetically premised on such a necessary reversal in the framework of phenomenology.
The medieval-scholastic discourse on the problem of individuation was apparently premised on a thinking-in-particular. The characteristics of individuation, namely the singularity, identity, individuality, indivisibility, differentiability, etc. referred more or less to the particular in the object of knowledge and in cognition itself. And the principle of individuation referred chiefly to the individuation of the particular. The discourse on the principium individuationis, however, appears to have developed in its historical transition from the late medieval scholasticism to the early modernity an ambivalent relation to the prevailing ontological and to the emerging epistemological contexts. In modern systems of epistemology, the particular aspect of phenomenal individuation seems to be inadequately taken into account in favour of a generalized notion of objective actuality, and subordinated to every form of subjective apriorism. The method of epistemological negation, introduced by Descartes and applied by many post-Cartesian philosophers, was strategically based on the appropriation of objective attributes and sensory qualia by the subject, and therefore aimed at marginalization of the actual object of cognition in the process of perception and knowledge. Consequently, Descartes reduced the variety of phenomenal individuation and mental cognition into a general framework of res extensa and res cogitans. The Cartesian rationalism manifestly presupposed a form of thinking-in-general or in general categories. However, in many modern epistemologies the factum of object necessarily constitutes an irreducible and irreplaceable remnant. The unity of the method of epistemological negation points to a historically progressive transcendentalism in the modern era, in the course of which the residual factum of object surfaced in different traits, as represented in Descartes´ res extensa, Locke´s primary qualia, and Kant´s thing in itself (Ding an sich). The residual factum of object is presented in these modern philosophical systems as an irreducible final entity. I would, however, argue that the inevitable persistence of the object as a residual factum, which seems to be displaced again and again in favour of a modern philosophical system and its actuality, can have unforeseeable consequences. This persistence could have a regressive effect; it could initiate a radical reversal within a philosophical system. In my lecture, I try to show how, in the case of such a reversal, the philosophically and historically repressed individuation of the particular resurfaces as a problem, as demonstrated by some concrete examples from the history of Early Modern philosophy.
Abstract:
My lecture is an attempt to introduce the idea of a synthetic philosophy. In all its origins or cultural sources, philosophy proves itself more or less consistently as a fundamental science that searches for the possibility of binding knowledge, i.e. the synthetic-cognitive nexus between the subject and the object, whereby the object to be known clearly indicates the world or our environment. In concrete terms, philosophy is characterised from the outset by the human mind’s quest to find adequate cognitive access to objective reality, which manifests itself in man’s incessant cognitive struggle with worldly reality. This binding function of knowledge argues for a fundamental synthesis in knowledge between the human mind and the given world, and thus for a synthetic philosophy. In my lecture, I try to show how the original synthetic nature of philosophy is subject to a historicity, i.e., to certain historical transitions, as best exemplified in the transition from the medieval to the early modern period, and thereby exhibits a tendency towards the analytical. Cartesian modernity famously prompted the advent of the philosophy of mind and, in contrast, the equally historic advent of the axiomatic sciences. Both were originally conceived within the framework of a unified mechanical philosophy, although a clear divergence between the philosophy of mind and that of the body cannot be overlooked. These binary currents were based on a unifying strategy of modernity, namely, the final resolution of the mental and phenomenal aporias, inherited from the scholastic philosophy, through a philosophical and scientific axiomatics. This strategic axiomatics of modernity, however, ultimately proves to be an axiomatic masking or concealment of ‘living’ aporias, which are therefore historically destined to resurface or resurrect. The idea of a synthetic philosophy should resume or take into account the incessant aporias, so that the factum of the object – the world in general – can participate directly in a referential way in the processes of philosophical and scientific cognition and, when necessary, dictate to the knowing subject the missing, even historically and paradigmatically suppressed, knowledge or possibilities of knowing.
Historically, early modern axiomatics was preceded by medieval aporetics. The scientific discourses in the Middle Ages on the phenomenal foundations of the philosophia naturalis, such as space, time, void, place, movement, impetus, gravitation, infinitesimal, etc. proved to be incessant, as the seminal works of Pierre Duhem and Anneliese Maier suggest. This seems to indicate that the mediaeval-scholastic discourses focused on phenomenal aporias, to which the permanence and incessancy of these aporetics can ultimately be attributed. Aporetics hardly achieved an epistemological finality within the framework of scholastic natural philosophy, whereas the early modern axiomatics, in the character trait of final justifications within the paradigmatic context of mechanical philosophy, produced the primary principles of the sciences as axioms and thereby historically established the individual scientific disciplines.
My paper is premised on the fundamental assumption that the mathematical-formal axiomatics of the early modernity was necessarily based on axiomatic-structural intuitions. The epistemological non-finality of medieval-scholastic aporetics necessitated the emergence of axiomatics of the mathematical and material sciences in the early modern period, in which the historically incessant or persistent phenomenal aporias were transformed into causally irreducible and, as such, epistemically final axioms. Axioms as first principles became the cornerstones of sciences; the long aspired epistemological finality of the foundational knowledge led to an axiomatic finality. The paper discusses in general the historical and philosophical transition from medieval-scholastic aporetics to the early modern axiomatics of mathematical and material sciences. It will focus on the systematic development of the idea of structural intuitionism as an epistemological principle of axiomatics from the basic notion of structural intuition, that Martin Kemp had introduced into the scientific discourse in late 90s and has been developing since then. The theory of structural intuitions draws upon the primal resonance between the inner-intuitive and external-phenomenal structures, as represented in both art and science. Such a resonance serves as basis for the aesthetic and the epistemic access to the phenomena, more precisely, to the visible and invisible structures that form plastic arts and the axiomatic-intuitive and the theoretical-deductive methods and procedures inherent in models, analogies and applied operations in mathematical and physical sciences.
Fig.: 'Mysterium Cosmographicum' by Johannes Kepler (Tübingen, 1596).
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The admittance of objects – especially the time-objects – in consciousness, that Brentano and Husserl could accomplish in their systems of philosophy, marked a philosophical as well as a historical rejection of the prevailing transcendentalism – clearly in favour of the autonomization of object in an ontological framework, which had been a major feature of the past Scholastic philosophy. I would argue that the notion of the intentional in-existence of an object, especially of a temporal object such as a melody, can philosophically lead to a reversal of the referentiality of all noetic acts, whereby this referentiality of the acts of consciousness is preconditioned by the intentionality of consciousness itself. The hyletic data that survives all phenomenological reductions and thus remains in consciousness apparently constitutes a link between consciousness and the consciousness-independent reality, which is merely excluded in the ordinary phenomenological practice. Such a conjunction seems to enable consciousness to extend beyond itself into the real. In this referential transition from consciousness to reality, the residual hyletic data functions as an interface (between consciousness and reality), as Jaakko Hintikka observes and emphatically emphasizes. In my lecture, I try to extend this basic idea – namely the residual persistence of hyletic data as an interface or bridge between consciousness and reality – by means of the above-mentioned methodological analogy between epistemological systems. The residual persistence of hyletic data could be rendered more precisely, if from this data the secondary sensory qualia, which belong solely to the sensory perceptions of a transcendental subject, continue to be phenomenologically reduced and segregated. The spatio-temporal structures of sensations, which alone remain from this final reduction in consciousness, form the irreducible and, as such, indestructible skeleton of reality that consequently passes unchanged into an immanence of consciousness.
Disciplines and Movements: Conversations between India and the German-speaking World edited by Hans Harder and Dhruv Raina, is a recent publication in the field of transnational studies between India and German-speaking countries in scientific–historical contexts. This is a unique undertaking to overcome the almost paradigmatically established notions of cultural influences and exchanges, of scientific cooperation and direct and indirect participation in the genesis of scientific disciplines, especially at the beginning of the 20th century. Both commentators, Anil Bhatti and Jürgen Renn, agree that the anthology brings about a paradigm shift in the well-established comparative and trans- national studies between India and German-speaking countries, and indeed within the framework of the disciplinary unfolding of the sciences and their participation in the globalisation of science and the production of knowledge. The overarching context of this project, in which authors from different scientific disciplines are involved, is undoubtedly the “globalization of knowledge in the age of disciplinary sciences,” as framed by Renn, which prompts the development of scientific disciplines in a transnational context.
Jagadeesh; it is also the title of one of the poems. As this title
indicates, poems in this anthology smacks of primordiality of
man and his civilization, of nature and its metamorphoses,
which the human – the alienated other – reincorporates. Her
poems rain down over dense forests, lonely mountains, valleys
and rivers of desire, ruins left in oblivion, landscapes of history,
graveyards, emptied cities... What most closely characterizes her
poetry is the transitional nexus between man and nature,
between the present and the past, whereby every facet of the
harmoniously appearing civilization holds the potential for a
transformation into primordiality – into ruin and being left
behind. These transformations or metamorphoses are temporal
phenomena; they show the astounding persistence of time, its
siege over spaces – over nature and culture that house the traces
of the past and preserve them from the transience of time.