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Recursivity and Contingency Yuk Hui

Recursivity and Contingency By Yuk Hui

Recursivity and Contingency by Yuk Hui


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Summary

This book is an investigation of algorithmic contingency and an elucidation of the contemporary situation that we are living in: the regular arrival of algorithmic catastrophes on a global scale. Through a historical analysis of philosophy, computation and media, this book proposes a renewed relation between nature and technics.

Recursivity and Contingency Summary

Recursivity and Contingency by Yuk Hui

This book employs recursivity and contingency as two principle concepts to investigate into the relation between nature and technology, machine and organism, system and freedom. It reconstructs a trajectory of thought from an Organic condition of thinking elaborated by Kant, passing by the philosophy of nature (Schelling and Hegel), to the 20th century Organicism (Bertalanffy, Needham, Whitehead, Wiener among others) and Organology (Bergson, Canguilhem, Simodnon, Stiegler), and questions the new condition of philosophizing in the time of algorithmic contingency, ecological and algorithmic catastrophes, which Heidegger calls the end of philosophy. The book centres on the following speculative question: if in the philosophical tradition, the concept of contingency is always related to the laws of nature, then in what way can we understand contingency in related to technical systems? The book situates the concept of recursivity as a break from the Cartesian mechanism and the drive of system construction; it elaborates on the necessity of contingency in such epistemological rupture where nature ends and system emerges. In this development, we see how German idealism is precursor to cybernetics, and the Anthropocene and Noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin) point toward the realization of a gigantic cybernetic system, which lead us back to the question of freedom. It questions the concept of absolute contingency (Meillassoux) and proposes a cosmotechnical pluralism. Engaging with modern and contemporary European philosophy as well as Chinese thought through the mediation of Needham, this book refers to cybernetics, mathematics, artificial intelligence and inhumanism.

Recursivity and Contingency Reviews

Recursivity and Contingency is simply an outstanding philosophical treatise on cybernetics that re-opens the all-too human image of technology today. Alongside a zealous re-situating of system theory within philosophies of nature, Hui boldly defies current technocratic aspirations towards totalizing and deterministic systems with a metaphysical commitment to re-envision the relation with the inhuman. Cosmotechnical perspectives, alter-cosmologies, and techno-diversity are here part of human-machine genesis that promises to finally re-situate technology in various cosmic realities. -- Luciana Parisi, Reader in Cultural Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London
I hardly know how best to recommend this third major achievement in as many years by one of the most insightful younger philosophers. It reanimates an abandoned arc of reflection that includes cybernetics, organicism, and organology from both European and Chinese traditions to address aspirations for a pluralism of homes within the becoming of an artificial Earth. -- Carl Mitcham, Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines
Yuk Hui's rich, new writing shows that in order to understand our modern technological world, we need to understand modern thinking about organisms and organology - and not only to understand but, recursively, to think differently. Hui's cosmotechnical approach - from cybernetics to history of philosophy - is complex, and exactly because of that, deeply rewarding. -- Jussi Parikka, Professor in Technological Culture and Aesthetics, University of Southampton
Yuk Hui's Recursivity and Contingency is not simply a major contribution to the Philosophy of Technology - it is an immense resource in that respect - but it is also a lively work of pluralistic experiment in thought. Here Hui's invitation to think in terms of cosmotechnics comes into its full bloom, engineering an unsurpassably agile guide to questions of technology and culture, nature and mechanism, logic and existence as they have arisen before and as they manifest with full force in the present. -- Matthew Fuller, Professor of Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London

About Yuk Hui

Yuk Hui is the author of On the Existence of Digital Objects (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) and The Question Concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics (Urbanomic, 2017).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements / Introduction. A Psychedelic Becoming / Chapter 1. Nature and Recursivity / Chapter 2. Logic and Contingency / Chapter 3. Organized Inorganic / Chapter 4. Organizing Inorganic / Chapter 5. The Inhuman that Remains / Bibliography / Index

Additional information

GOR012992518
9781786600530
1786600536
Recursivity and Contingency by Yuk Hui
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Rowman & Littlefield
20190128
336
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Recursivity and Contingency