Uploaded November 2017 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
http://www.egs.edu One-day colloquium held in Saas-Fee, Switzerland on June 18th, 2017 with the participation of Professors Alisa Andrašek, Philip Beesley, Benjamin H. Bratton, Gabriel Catren, Sha Xin Wei, and Elie During and Dr. Andreas Salzburger from CERN.
Thinking in Emergent Horizons: The Challenges Presented by New Scientific Paradigms and Computation
What thinking is called for--and what is called “thinking”--in a time when the established philosophical connotations of the term are confronted by new forms of intelligence in computational processing, machine learning, and large data? How are existing theoretical paradigms challenged by an emergent (“quantum”) reality?
To put this more broadly: what transformations in practicing thought might be required to engage the new technologies and sciences of our moment? How might art and craft respond?
Finally: What are the conditions (temporal, communicational) and the implications of thinking together in this scarcely definable present? What horizons are shared now between the forms of thought that have been practiced at the EGS over the past twenty years and emerging practices defined by computation. What horizons must be breached?
For two decades, the European Graduate School has hosted some of the most sophisticated philosophers and theorists in the continental tradition. Bringing them together with artists and practitioners in fields such as architecture or film, it has sought to force the limits of contemporary thinking in relation to the questions of our time. It has instituted a curriculum that promotes radically cross-disciplinary passages (involving philosophy, social theory, literature, and the arts) that cannot be contained by any established school of thinking. At the same time, it has sought to preserve an intellectual cohesion that allows its community to work in common, even in the face of discontinuities raised by its multifold engagement with social reality. With the introduction of new forms of thinking (in philosophy of science and design) that embrace the realities opened by computational processing, it brings a new and necessary challenge to the established horizons of inquiry.
We recognize that this challenge must be faced if we are to live up to our ambition to remain at what is often casually referred to as the “cutting edge” of contemporary thought. If, with Paul Celan, we seek reality in a time when the traditional tent of the sky is torn open, then we must join with our fellow researchers in contemporary science.
We are inviting to this colloquium several professors who have taught with us in the past, so our step on this occasion does not represent a dramatic departure, even as we add new guests from scientific institutes. But we have yet to reflect as a group on the meaning of their work with us or confront it in a sustained way outside the classroom, and it remains for us to explore the new directions we need to take. We hope that our colloquium can proceed at the highest levels of contemporary debate in the relevant fields, as is our custom, and that we can bring to the fore the question of undertaking such a conversation in the context of contemporary philosophy and philosophically informed theory from the continental tradition.
http://www.egs.edu One-day colloquium held in Saas-Fee, Switzerland on June 18th, 2017 with the participation of Professors Alisa Andrašek, Philip Beesley, Benjamin H. Bratton, Gabriel Catren, Sha Xin Wei, and Elie During and Dr. Andreas Salzburger from CERN.
Thinking in Emergent Horizons: The Challenges Presented by New Scientific Paradigms and Computation
What thinking is called for--and what is called “thinking”--in a time when the established philosophical connotations of the term are confronted by new forms of intelligence in computational processing, machine learning, and large data? How are existing theoretical paradigms challenged by an emergent (“quantum”) reality?
To put this more broadly: what transformations in practicing thought might be required to engage the new technologies and sciences of our moment? How might art and craft respond?
Finally: What are the conditions (temporal, communicational) and the implications of thinking together in this scarcely definable present? What horizons are shared now between the forms of thought that have been practiced at the EGS over the past twenty years and emerging practices defined by computation. What horizons must be breached?
For two decades, the European Graduate School has hosted some of the most sophisticated philosophers and theorists in the continental tradition. Bringing them together with artists and practitioners in fields such as architecture or film, it has sought to force the limits of contemporary thinking in relation to the questions of our time. It has instituted a curriculum that promotes radically cross-disciplinary passages (involving philosophy, social theory, literature, and the arts) that cannot be contained by any established school of thinking. At the same time, it has sought to preserve an intellectual cohesion that allows its community to work in common, even in the face of discontinuities raised by its multifold engagement with social reality. With the introduction of new forms of thinking (in philosophy of science and design) that embrace the realities opened by computational processing, it brings a new and necessary challenge to the established horizons of inquiry.
We recognize that this challenge must be faced if we are to live up to our ambition to remain at what is often casually referred to as the “cutting edge” of contemporary thought. If, with Paul Celan, we seek reality in a time when the traditional tent of the sky is torn open, then we must join with our fellow researchers in contemporary science.
We are inviting to this colloquium several professors who have taught with us in the past, so our step on this occasion does not represent a dramatic departure, even as we add new guests from scientific institutes. But we have yet to reflect as a group on the meaning of their work with us or confront it in a sustained way outside the classroom, and it remains for us to explore the new directions we need to take. We hope that our colloquium can proceed at the highest levels of contemporary debate in the relevant fields, as is our custom, and that we can bring to the fore the question of undertaking such a conversation in the context of contemporary philosophy and philosophically informed theory from the continental tradition.
