Episteme vs Paradigm

Episteme vs Paradigm or Michel Foucault vs Thomas Kuhn this is a short comparison between two terms that have marked epistemological studies. 
The idiosyncratic use of the term paradigm by Kuhn meant to be used  as a collector of all the assumptions and beliefs that in their turn organise scientific theories and practices of a certain epoch. Kuhn was determined to uncover that one set of beliefs and assumptions that encompass scientific research. He was convinced that a series of conscious decisions by scientists were responsible for the scientific theories and practices to change their directions. It is obvious from that that Kuhn's paradigm shift was a part of an "epistemological Conscious". For Foucault things were a bit different. He was more keen to understand the "Epistemological Unconscious" of an era and for that matter he makes use of the episteme in his own idiosyncratic way. For Foucault the access to a set of fundamental assumptions and beliefs was impossible due to the fact that those assumptions were so basic that were almost invisible to the scientists that were operating within it. Based on the "unconscious" character of episteme, Foucault opens his analysis to a broader discourse and does not merely confined it to science. Foucault therefore, is more interested to search for the constitutive limits of a discourse, and more importantly the rules responsible for their emergence and productivity.  


Reading:: 
The Order of Things by Michel Foucault 
The Archaeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault 
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

Alice in the Events-land

"Lewis Carroll caries out this operation, inaugurated by the Stoics, or rather, he takes it up again. In all his works, Carroll examines the difference between events, things, and states of affairs. But the entire first half of Alice still seeks the secret of events and of the becoming unlimited which they imply, in the depths of the earth, in dug out shafts and holes which plunge beneath, and in the mixture of bodies which interpenetrates and coexist."

Deleuze, G(2004) The Logic of Sense. Continuum, p.11 
image is linked here: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/07/first-look-new-alice-in-wonderland-trailer/

It is in this passage where Deleuze introduces that peculiar approach of causality that has started by the Stoics and have been elaborated more by Lewis Carroll. On the notions of event, things and states of affairs Deleuze will build his ontological scheme of virtual, actual and intensive processes.

Gattaca

"Most recently, a minor furor erupted over a patent awarded to the personal genomics company 23andMe. The patent in question, issued on September 24th, describes a method of “gamete donor selection based on genetic calculations.” 23andMe would first sequence the DNA of a man or woman who wants a baby as well as the DNA of several potential sperm or egg donors. Then, the company would calculate which pairing of hopeful parent and donor would most likely result in a child with various traits." from scientificamerican.com

other links

http://www.decode.com/

https://www.23andme.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dov-fox/23andmes-designer-baby-pa_b_4042165.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8543339.pdf

The Spiritual Automaton in Computation: Spiritualising Architecture

From Naturalising Architecture to Spiritualising Computation takes few turns that is worth to consider. From Carpo's critique of architects as "midwives of emerging natural powers" to the full embrace of that naturalising tendency most direct expressed in Naturalising Architecture exhibition in FRAC we have no other choice but to position ourselves to that debate by recalling Spinoza's spiritual-automaton as Deleuze has developed in his Cinema books. At the same time though we should push the reading of spiritual-automaton in a post-human/non-human domain to find spiritual automaton supervening every possible state of affair.


Link01: Spiritual Automaton in Deleuze's lecture On Spinoza
Link02: Spiritual Automaton through Terence Blake's account on Deleuze's Cinema Book

The Stack by Benjamin Bratton

"The Stack is a megastructure built out of far-flung data centers, embedded urban applications, universal addressing schemes, weird quasi-sovereign geographies, and maniacal self-quantification." 

"Designing for the post-Anthropocene requires working across multiple scales at once, working backwards from catastrophic virtualities, and testing the breaking points of provisional totalities."

above texts has been extracted from Bratton's abstract to the presentation entitled "2 or 3 Things I Know About The Stack: Projects and Projections Toward the Acceleration of Integral Accidents" that he gave at the begining of 2013 in UCL 

more on Bratton here 

Appolon and Dionysus

"The state of this world is well expressed in the image of the murmur, of the ocean, of the water mill, of the swoon or even of drunkenness, which bears witness to a Dionysian ground rumbling beneath this apparently Apollonian philosophy."

From Deleuze's Method of Dramatization


notes:
Appolon = α(not) - πολλά(many)

Pythagoreians link the Monad with Appolon

and Dionysous = a transformative force

Felix Guattari: Post-Media Era

"The growing power of software engineering does not necessarily lead to the power of Big Brother. In fact it is way more cracked than it seems. It can blow up like a windshield under the impact of molecular alternative practices."
Felix Guattari