Involution as Architectonic Activism: Playing in Scales of Positive and Negative Entropy Or Natural Philosophy in a New Key

Abstract

Natural philosophy is not a register highly in fashion today, and neither is "involution" a well established and widely used word. And yet they both bear a promise I want to explore in my talk to the theme of "translating entropy". At stake with my interest in these topics today is the pursuit of grasping through the notion of "involution" a counter concept to that of "learning": If "learning" grasps a process of interiorization in terms of subjective understanding (absorption and digestion of "content" or "information"), the counter concept I am looking for would grasp processes of interiorization in terms of acquired and objective skilfulness (in German: ein Können). My interest thereby also will be how to address the "master" of such skill as the "subject" to such skilfullness and vice-versa, as well as to explore the chiastic self-engendering optics (mirroring game) in the constellations this formulation affords. My talk will attend to Fernando Zalameo’s recent work on Charles Sanders Peirce’s notion of architectonics, Michel Serres' thought on contemporary natural philosophy and the place it keeps for what he calls "incandescence", Elias Zafiris' approach to the mathematics of category theory in terms of natural communication and digital dignity, and Susanne K. Langer’s interest in and work on art theory.