The prestige of mechanistic physics after Newton led to an extended confrontation between the norms of physics and other areas of science such as biology and psychology. Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophystood as a classical prototype, or canon, by which to judge all subsequent science. Newton's great achievement was to have produced a mathematical theory of nature that provided general solutions based on a rational system of deduction and mathematical inference, coupled with experiment and critical observation. Newtonian mechanics established "universal laws" that explained the movements of the planets, the tides, and whose predictive powers were given an overwhelming demonstration with the appearance of Halley's comet, just as predicted, in 1758, long after both Halley and Newton were dead. Even today, the exploration of space is a straightforward application of classical gravitational mechanics.
Read MoreFor Deleuze and Guattari, molarity is the site of coded wholes. It is a productive process: a making-the-same. Its attractor state is that of stable equilibrium. It is the mode of being, rather than becoming.The principle revolutionary objective of their writing is to break down molar aggregates in favor of molecularity, and the "microphysics of desire." They call for becoming rather than being, for becoming-other rather than being the same. For them, becoming-other is thoroughly political.
Read MoreMorphogenesis is the process by which the phenotype develops in time under the direction of the genotype.
The explanation of morphogenesis requires a theory of the gene as well as theories for those properties of the organism revealed by experimental embryology and experimental morphology.
Read MoreMorphology is an "account of form," an account that allows us a rational grasp of the morphe by making internal and external relations intelligible. It seeks to be a general theory of the formative powers of organic structure. The Pre-Darwinian project of rational morphology was to discover the "laws of form," some inherent necessity in the laws which governed morphological process. It sought to construct what was typical in the varieties of form into a system which should not be merely historically determined, but which should be intelligible from a higher and more rational standpoint. (Hans Driesch, 1914, p. 149)
Read MoreThe theory of what Stephen Jay Gould has called morphospace is that space of possible morphologies for species organized according to certain principles. Proponents of robust morphogentic processes, such as Stuart Kaufman or Richard Goodwin, see these processes as having large basins of attraction in morphospace.
Read More"Organic forms have a general character which distinguishes them from artificial ones.... We come then to conceive of organic form as something which is produced by the interaction of numerous forces which are balanced against one another in a near-equilibrium that has the character not of a precisely definable pattern but rather of a slightly fluid one, a rhythm...There is, in a human work of sculpture, no actual multitude of internal growth-forces which are balanced so as to issue in a near-equilibrium of a rhythmic character. We should therefore not expect that works of art will often arrive at the same type of form as we commonly find in the structures of living matter. Much more can we anticipate an influence of man's intellectualizing, pattern-making habit of simplification, diluted perhaps by an intrusion of unresolved detail." (Waddington (1951) in L.L. Whyte, ed. Aspects of Form)
Read MoreFor Deleuze and Guattari, nomads are characterized above all by the fact that their mode of existence is antithetical to the system of the State, of cultivation, and of striation, which they describe as sedentary. Because the nomads were so decisively defeated, history has always dismissed them, and indeed "history is one with the triumph of States." (p.394) Nomadism becomes, for D+G, a revolutionnary alternative to the State, although they are always careful to distinguish between their "de jure" or conceptual distinctions and all the "de facto" mixes and transitions that actually occur.
Read More"Ornament shapes, straightens and stabilizes the bare arid field on which it is inscribed. Not only does it exist in and of itself, but it also shapes its own environment -- to which it imparts form." (Henri Focillon, The Life of Forms in Art, p. 66) For Heinrich Wölfflin, ornament is an epression of an excessive force of form. It is "the blossoming of a force that has nothing more to achieve." (p.181) Antoine Picon echoes this association of ornament with potency. "like orderand proportion, ornament expressed the fundamental regularity of the universe, and, above all, its fecundity. Ornament, in general, gave evidence to the creativity and the beauty of the cosmic order, just as the fruits and flowers that if often imitated were the products and finery of nature." ("Architecture, Science, Technology and the Virtual Realm" in Architecture and the Sciences, p. 298.)
Read MoreConrad Fiedler's aesthetic of "visibility" is based on Kant's distinctions between two different modes by which we come to terms with reality: perceptual and conceptual cognition. Whereas the former is based mainly on visual experience, (even here the visual is given priority over the sensual -- see optic / haptic ) For Kant, conceptual cognition is arrived at through a process of abstraction, the conceptual ordering of perceptual data. Both are autonomous but at the same time equal processes.
Read More...the qualitative is expressed in our concepts of reality and value. The Aristotelian universe was one in which qualities were primary. They were ontologically primary and indestructible. Qualities constituted an individual material body or substance when imposed on some portion of omnipresent neutral matter. (this is the hylomorphic model -- see form / matter. ) Aristotle sought to describe change-of-quality in general -- including both the fall of a stone and the growth of a child to adulthood.
Read MoreInherent to the concept of style is an idea of historical necessity. A true style, like the Baroque of the seventeenth century, is not copied from a previous epoch, but arises out of some structural necessity, out of the manifest needs of man and society. "Style is, above all, a system of forms with a quality and meaningful expression through which the personnality of the artist and the broad outlook of a group are visible." (Meyer Shapiro, Style, in M. Philipson Ed., Aesthetics Today, p.137) (cf morphology) Style is an essential object of study for the historian of art. For the synthesizing historian of culture or the philosopher of history, style is the manifestation of the culture as a whole, the visible sign of its unity. The style reflects or projects the "inner form" of collective thinking and feeling.
Read MoreIn "The Mass Ornament", Siegfried Kracauer claims that "An analysis of the simple surface manifestations of an epoch can contribute more to determining its place in the historical process than judgements of the epoch about itself," and that "the very unconscious nature of surface manifestations allows for direct access to an understanding of these conditions."
Read MoreAlfred North Whitehead characterizes the scientific mentality as instinctively holding that all things great and small are conceivable as exemplifications of general principles which reign througout the natural order. He sees the alliance of science and technology as keeping learning in contact with irreducible and stubborn facts, and credits the Benedictine monasteries as providing much of this practical bent. (cf clock)
Read MoreThe textual space of the printed page has come to be seen as arbitrary and self-contained. The arbitrariness is a result of the alphabet, referring to sounds in an arbitrary (and contextual) way, to the concept of the linguistic sign, which after Saussure, was described primarily as an arbitrary link between signifier and signified, and to the culture of the printed book, which has striven towards legibility through typographic simplicity and the exlusion of pictorial attributes to the page itself.
But at different moments in the history of writing, the surface has been endowed with pictorial qualities. Picture writing, which is generally thought of as the historical precursor of phonetic writing, refers through stylized images. The bridge from picture writing to phonetic writing was the realization that picture elements could be identified with sounds in language. Through the process of phonetization and abstraction, writing becomes a secondary system depending on spoken language for its meaning. (much of Derrida's work is a criticism of this idea...presumably because the system which is supposed to be secondary has become so important.) see writing.
An example of orchestrated simultaneity on the page is Blaise Cendrars' and Sonia Delaunay’s La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France , which combined poems, maps, and illustrations on a sheet two meters long.
Read MoreHenri Focillon describes the relationship between the hand and the tool as a human familiarity, whose harmony is composed of the subtlest give-and-take, not just a matter of habit. (The Life of Forms in Art, p109.) "Once the hand has need of this self-extension in matter, the tool itself becomes what the hand makes it. The tool is more than a machine. " The "exact meeting place" of form, matter, tool, and hand is the touch.
Read More