Thu
14
Dec
Seminars and Conferences
Technologies of the Self: Rorschach Test, Cybernetic Person-Machines, Nuclear Futures
On Thursday 14 December 2023 the meeting of the "Theseus Colloquia" will be held in Sala Riunioni DIATI (Ingresso 3). Theseus Colloquia are a series of seminars on the topics of technology, its preconditions and its social, economic, political and environmental impact, hosted by the Theseus research centre of the Politecnico. They are given by international experts working on issues fundamental to contemporary societies in an era of technological transformation. The meeting of the cycle is entitled "Technologies of the Self: Rorschach Test, Cybernetic Person-Machines, Nuclear Futures", and will have as guest speaker Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University.
Abstract
How do scientific and technical objects both presuppose and shape the scientific self? We begin with a discussion of what such a historical, transcendental materialism might be in the early 20th century - using the Vienna Circle's philosophical interest in Bauhaus architecture on the one side, and the famous ink blots of Hermann Rorschach on the other. What does each presuppose about the self - how do these technologies, once ubiquitous, become guides to how we understand ourselves? During World War II/the Cold War, another form of technology purported to be such a guide to self: Norbert Wiener's electro-mechanical feedback-designed anti-aircraft gun that folded into cybernetics. What does this mean for intention - the very fabric of the will-based self that for so long dominated "das Ich". Finally, toward the turn of the 20th to 21st centuries, we turn to the materiality of land in an age of intense technical intervention. As they are usually understood, "nuclear wasteland" and "pure wilderness" are opposites; when they converge on the sites of decommissioned nuclear weapons lands, we often describe this circumstance as "paradoxical" or "ironic," but they are not. Removing parts of the earth for 25,000 years - for reasons of sanctification or despoilment - alters a central feature of the human self in relation to the physical world, raising irreducible questions about who we are and will be 400 generations in the future.
Program
Introduction:
Biography
Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. He currently directs the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard, a leading center for interdisciplinary research on black holes. His books include How Experiments End; Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics; Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps; and, with Lorraine Daston, Objectivity. His latest feature film is Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know.
Abstract
How do scientific and technical objects both presuppose and shape the scientific self? We begin with a discussion of what such a historical, transcendental materialism might be in the early 20th century - using the Vienna Circle's philosophical interest in Bauhaus architecture on the one side, and the famous ink blots of Hermann Rorschach on the other. What does each presuppose about the self - how do these technologies, once ubiquitous, become guides to how we understand ourselves? During World War II/the Cold War, another form of technology purported to be such a guide to self: Norbert Wiener's electro-mechanical feedback-designed anti-aircraft gun that folded into cybernetics. What does this mean for intention - the very fabric of the will-based self that for so long dominated "das Ich". Finally, toward the turn of the 20th to 21st centuries, we turn to the materiality of land in an age of intense technical intervention. As they are usually understood, "nuclear wasteland" and "pure wilderness" are opposites; when they converge on the sites of decommissioned nuclear weapons lands, we often describe this circumstance as "paradoxical" or "ironic," but they are not. Removing parts of the earth for 25,000 years - for reasons of sanctification or despoilment - alters a central feature of the human self in relation to the physical world, raising irreducible questions about who we are and will be 400 generations in the future.
Program
Introduction:
- Roberto Lalli, professor of History of science and technology of the Politecnico
- Peter Galison: "Technologies of the Self: Rorschach Test, Cybernetic Person-Machines, Nuclear Futures"
Biography
Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. He currently directs the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard, a leading center for interdisciplinary research on black holes. His books include How Experiments End; Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics; Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps; and, with Lorraine Daston, Objectivity. His latest feature film is Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know.
14 December 2023 at 1,00 pm
Sala Riunioni DIATI (Ingresso 3) - Politecnico di Torino - Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24