After successful completion of the course, students are able to have an overview over current state of the art respective to the course's overall theme. Students have learnt to orientate themselves within this field and know how to do harvest it for their own reasearch. Additionally, students will have learnt how to introduce their own questions into discussions and how to craft their interests into arguments.   

PUBLICNESS AS PLACE

Metaphysics and the Void, Architecture of Matter

Aristotle posed a vexed problem in between Dialectic Philosophy and Natural Philosophy: “We see the same heaviness, namely body, being moved faster for two reasons, either (a) because that through which it moves differs, for example through Water or earth, or through water or air, or (b) because …" -  he does not consider this case. Two pages later Aristotle notes: “Some people think that if there is to be change of place, there must be a void, but this is impossible ... examination of the void shows that it is indeed void.” 

This has usually been approached through the lens of Aristotles theory of dynamics, without loosing thereby its vexedness. This is exactly what makes the set-up to interesting to think through our own perplexedness with regard to quantum physics, which is essentially a mechanics that operates upon the substrate of dynamics – both classical dynamics (Newton) as well as thermodynamics.    

By close readings key texts with regard to this "motif", at the core of which we can spot then as today the relation between dialectic philosophy and natural philosophy. For our current dispositif of information technology in its terms of a proper mathematics and physics of information, the considerations are highly relevant. We will inquire into how one could rethink the domain of the public architectonically today, beyond its dominant conception as either space (public space, geographic and territorial approaches) or sphere (as in Habermas, the public sphere though media and communication approaches).

The weekly meetings entail:

• readings of approx. 30 pages

The seminar is conducted as a joint course with PHD candidates from ETH Zurich. It can be joined either actively (with the rewards of 3 ECTS) or passively (as a listener, without credit points). 

Here is our ZOOM Room for the Course – we meet Mondays 4-6:30 pm.

Topic: PHD Course SS 2022

Join Zoom Meeting
https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/97785637637?pwd=VDd0UTVwOFlIOHJ1cmo4Sk9wNzlaQT09

close readings, lectures, argumentation, discussion.

Bisherige Vertiefungsthemen im Dissertantenseminar von Vera Bühlmann:

MEMORY AND THE PRESENT TENSE: POETICS AND ARCHITECTONICS (2020/21)

(Georg Steiner, After Babel:Aspects of Language and Translation; Lars Spuybroek, Grace and Gravity, Architecture of Figuration; Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace; Simone Weil, Illiad Or The Poem of Force; Giordano Bruno, On the Composition of Images, a.o.)
 

DATA AND THE FOLD OF THE GIVEN (2019)

(Michel Serres, The Incandescent (2019) und Vera Bühlmann, Information and Mathematics in the Philosophy of Michel Serres (2020))

BILDVERLUST UND AUTONOMIE DER BILDER (2018)

(Peter Handke, Bildverlust (2002);  Francois Laruelle, The Concept of Non-Photography (2011); Sean Cubitt, Daniel Palmer and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds.), Digital Light (2015); Erasmus von Rotterdam, Copia (1512); B.Rottmann, Signifying Nothing: the Semiotics of Zero (1993)).

CHANCE (2017)

Elie Ayache, The Blank Swan: The End of Probability (2010); Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2010); Jacques Monod, "Of Strange Objects", in Chance and Necessity (1974))

MICHEL SERRES AND GNOMONICS IN THE DIGITAL (2016)

(Michel Serres, Origins of Geometry (1993); Michel Serres, The Parasite (1980))

students are expected to prepare weekly readings of approx 35 pages, and actively participate in the discussion. Presence is mandatory.