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A dynamic critical and philosophical study of modern North American and Latin American cultures via art, architecture, philosophy and mathematics. With an unprecedented ease of movement between literature, music, art, architecture, mathematics, and philosophy, this richly illustrated study enters into the "electromagnetic field" between Latin America and North America with two complementary essays examining some of the principal features of their intellectual and creative landscapes throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. "Under the Sign of Jonah" explores how nineteenth-century North American culture adopted and transformed the legacy of romanticism, with sensitive readings of th...
Peirce's logic of continuity is explored from a double perspective: (i) Peirce's original understanding of the continuum, alternative to Cantor's analytical Real line, (ii) Peirce's original construction of a topological logic -- the existential graphs -- alternative to the algebraic presentation of propositional and first-order calculi. Peirce's general architectonics, oriented to back-and-forth hierarchical crossings between the global and the local, is reflected with great care both in the continuum and the existential graphs.
Albert Lautman (1908-1944) was a French philosopher of mathematics whose work played a crucial role in the history of contemporary French philosophy. His ideas have had an enormous influence on key contemporary thinkers including Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou, for whom he is a major touchstone in the development of their own engagements with mathematics. Mathematics, Ideas and the Physical Real presents the first English translation of Lautman's published works between 1933 and his death in 1944. Rather than being preoccupied with the relation of mathematics to logic or with the problems of foundation, which have dominated philosophical reflection on mathematics, Lautman undertakes to develop an understanding of the broader structure of mathematics and its evolution. The two powerful ideas that are constants throughout his work, and which have dominated subsequent developments in mathematics, are the concept of mathematical structure and the idea of the essential unity underlying the apparent multiplicity of mathematical disciplines. This collection of his major writings offers readers a much-needed insight into his influence on the development of mathematics and philosophy.
An approachable introduction to elementary sheaf theory and its applications beyond pure math. Sheaves are mathematical constructions concerned with passages from local properties to global ones. They have played a fundamental role in the development of many areas of modern mathematics, yet the broad conceptual power of sheaf theory and its wide applicability to areas beyond pure math have only recently begun to be appreciated. Taking an applied category theory perspective, Sheaf Theory through Examples provides an approachable introduction to elementary sheaf theory and examines applications including n-colorings of graphs, satellite data, chess problems, Bayesian networks, self-similar gro...
An investigation of the nature and philosophical uses of number. The first volume of Collapse investigates the nature and philosophical uses of number. The volume includes an interview with Alain Badiou on the relation between philosophy, mathematics, and science, an in-depth interview with mathematician Matthew Watkins on the strange connections between physics and the distribution of prime numbers, and contributions that demonstrate the many ways in which number intersects with philosophical thought—from the mathematics of intensity to terrorism, from occultism to information theory, and graphical works of multiplicity.
In everyday reasoning - just as in science and art - knowledge is acquired more by "doing" than with long analyses. What do we "do" when we discover something new? How can we define and explore the pattern of this reasoning, traditionally called "synthetic"? Following in the steps of classic pragmatists, especially C.S. Pierce, Giovanni Maddalena's Philosophy of Gesture revolutionizes the pattern of synthesis through the ideas of change and continuity and proposes "gesture" as a new tool for synthesis. Defining gesture as an action with a beginning and an end that carries on a meaning, Maddalena explains that it is a dense blending of all kinds of phenomena - feelings and vague ideas, actual...
The book investigates the topic of creativity by focusing on C.S. Peirce's and A.N. Whitehead's accounts of novelty. It is divided into three parts. The first part considers the problem of novelty from a philosophical point of view and examines the historical and theoretical connections between the two authors. The second and third parts explore, respectively, Peirce's and Whitehead's thoughts on novelty, analyzing their views from three different perspectives - phenomenological, gnoseological, and cosmological. Finally, their thoughts are compared in order to show their contributions to the issue of novelty.
As Hölderlin was to Martin Heidegger and Mallarmé to Jacques Derrida, so is H.P. Lovecraft to the Speculative Realist philosophers. Lovecraft was one of the brightest stars of the horror and science fiction magazines, but died in poverty and relative obscurity in the 1930s. In 2005 he was finally elevated from pulp status to the classical literary canon with the release of a Library of America volume dedicated to his work. The impact of Lovecraft on philosophy has been building for more than a decade. Initially championed by shadowy guru Nick Land at Warwick during the 1990s, he was later discovered to be an object of private fascination for all four original members of the twenty-first ce...
This book gathers 14 architects, designers, performing artists, film makers, media theorists, philosophers, mathematicians and programmers. They all argue that matter in contemporary posthuman times has to be rethought in its rich internal dynamism and its multifaceted context.
Bach's cantatas are among the highest achievements of Western musical art, yet studies of the individual cantatas that are both illuminating and detailed are few. In this book, noted Bach expert Eric Chafe combines theological, historical, analytical, and interpretive approaches to the cantatas to offer readers and listeners alike the richest possible experience of these works. A respected theorist of seventeenth-century music, Chafe is sensitive to the composer's intentions and to the enduring and universal qualities of the music itself. Concentrating on a small number of representative cantatas, mostly from the Leipzig cycles of 1723-24 and 1724-25, and in particular on Cantata 77, Chafe s...