How does science represent the world? What do our models teach us about ourselves, and our relationship to the Universe we inhabit? The scientific image – the world picture established by centuries of methodical and formalised discovery – shatters and recomposes the manifest image – how humankind conceives of itself – at rapid pace. With technological capacity reaching a new, vertiginous apex, the complexity of scientific discovery ambiguates our understanding of the environments we observe and inhabit instead of illuminating them. Being able to build a shared idea of ‘reality’ is the single most important task of sapience; one that is only possible through the bringing together of the scientific with the manifest. During a historical moment seemingly unable to find its centre, can (and I’ll add, should?) art and philosophy build the epistemic scaffolds necessary to protocolize sense-making in the sciences?
Reference materials:
Scientific Cosmology and International Orders (excerpt pp. 10-12)
Bentley B. Allan (book)Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know
Peter Galison (documentary)A Vertiginous Enlightenment
Reza Negarestani (article)How Human History Shapes Scientific Inquiry
COMPLEXITY (podcast)The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn (book)