Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development, No. 1-4 (2006-2008)
Filed under journal | Tags: · aesthetics, horror, mathematics, philosophy, politics, science, speculative realism, theology
Collapse Vol. IV: Concept Horror
May 2008
Collapse IV features a series of investigations by philosophers, writers and artists into Concept Horror. Contributors address the existential, aesthetic, theological and political dimensions of horror, interrogate its peculiar affinity with philosophical thought, and uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable. This unique volume continues Collapse’s pursuit of indisciplinary miscegenation, the wide-ranging contributions interacting to produce common themes and suggestive connections. In the process a rich and compelling case emerges for the intimate bond between horror and philosophical thought.
Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Damian Veal
ISBN 978-0-9553087-3-4
403 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)
Collapse Vol. III: Unknown Deleuze [+ Speculative Realism]
November 2007
Collapse III contains explorations of the work of Gilles Deleuze by pioneering thinkers in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, music and architecture. In addition, we publish in this volume two previously untranslated texts by Deleuze himself, along with a fascinating piece of vintage science fiction from one of his more obscure influences. Finally, as an annex to Collapse Volume II, we also include a full transcription of the conference on ‘Speculative Realism’ held in London in 2007.
The contributors to this volume aim to clarify, from a variety of perspectives, Deleuze’s contribution to philosophy: in what does his philosophical originality lie; what does he appropriate from other philosophers and how does he transform it? And how can the apparently disparate threads of his work to be ‘integrated’ – what is the precise nature of the constellation of the aesthetic, the conceptual and the political proposed by Gilles Deleuze, and what are the overarching problems in which the numerous philosophical concepts ‘signed Deleuze’ converge?
Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Dustin McWherter
ISBN 978-0-9553087-2-7
458 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)
Collapse Vol. II: Speculative Realism
March 2007
Comprising subjects from probability theory to theology, from quantum theory to neuroscience, from astrophysics to necrology, and involving them in unforeseen and productive syntheses, Collapse II features a selection of speculative essays by some of the foremost young philosophers at work today, together with new work from artists and cinéastes, and searching interviews with leading scientists.
Against the tide of institutional balkanisation and specialisation, this volume testifies to a defiant reanimation of the most radical philosophical problematics – the status of the scientific object, metaphysics and its “end”, the prospects for a revival of speculative realism, the possibility of phenomenology, transcendence and the divine, the nature of causation, the necessity of contingency – both through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and through an openness to its outside. The breadth of philosophical thought in this volume is matched by the surprising and revealing thematic connections that emerge between the philosophers and scientists who have contributed.
Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Damian Veal
ISBN 978-0-9553087-1-2
330 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)
Collapse Vol. I: Numerical Materialism
September 2006
Collapse I is an unprecedented collection of work by leading practitioners in diverse fields of enquiry. Conceived as a meticulously compiled and compendious miscellany, a grimoire or instruction manual without referent, as a delirious carnival of sobriety, Collapse operates its war against good sense not through romantic flight but through the formal insanity secreted in the depths of the rational (“the rational is not reasonable”).
Collapse aims to force unforeseen conjunctions, singular correspondences, and unnatural cross-fertilisations; to diagram abstract regions as yet unnamed.
The first volume of Collapse investigates the nature and philosophical uses of number through interviews with philosophers scientists and mathematicians, essays on the mathematics of intensity, terrorism, the occult and information theory, and graphical works of multiplicity.
Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editors: Ray Brassier, Michael Carr
ISBN 978-0-9553087-0-4
288 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)
Comment (0)Charles Howard Hinton: The Fourth Dimension (1904/1912); A New Era of Thought (1888)
Filed under book | Tags: · geometry, history of science, mathematics, science fiction, theosophy, time
In an 1884 article entitled “What is the Fourth Dimension?”, Hinton suggested that points moving around in three dimensions might be imagined as successive cross-sections of a static four-dimensional arrangement of lines passing through a three-dimensional plane, an idea that anticipated the notion of world lines, and of time as a fourth dimension (although Hinton did not propose this explicitly, and the article was mainly concerned with the possibility of a fourth spatial dimension), in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Hinton later introduced a system of coloured cubes by the study of which, he claimed, it was possible to learn to visualise four-dimensional space (Casting out the Self, 1904). Rumours subsequently arose that these cubes had driven more than one hopeful person insane.
Hinton created several new words to describe elements in the fourth dimension. According to OED, he first used the word tesseract in 1888 in his book “A New Era of Thought”. He also invented the words “kata” (from the Greek “down from”) and “ana” (from the Greek “up toward”) to describe the two opposing fourth-dimensional directions—the 4-D equivalents of left and right, forwards and backwards, and up and down.
Hinton’s Scientific romances, including “What is the Fourth Dimension?” and “A Plane World” were published as a series of nine pamphlets by Swan Sonnenschein & Co. during 1884–1886. In the introduction to “A Plane World”, Hinton referred to Abbott’s recent Flatland as having similar design but different intent. Abbott used the stories as “a setting wherein to place his satire and his lessons. But we wish in the first place to know the physical facts.” Hinton’s world existed on the surface of a sphere rather than a flat plane. He extended the connection to Abbott’s work with “An Episode on Flatland: Or How a Plain Folk Discovered the Third Dimension” (1907).
The Fourth Dimension
Third Edition
Published by London: George Allen & Co, 1912
PDF
Read online (1884 article) (HTML)
A New Era of Thought
Publisher London: Swan Sonneschen & Co, 1888
PDF
Read online (HTML)
Sluneční hodiny na pevných stanovištích (2005) [Czech]
Filed under book | Tags: · astronomy, ecology, geometry, mathematics, time
Sluneční hodiny jsou pozoruhodné kulturní památky. Snoubí se v nich matematika, geometrie, astronomie s uměním, architekturou či řemeslem. Bývají krásnou ozdobou budov a veřejných prostranství, připomínkou spojení našeho života se Sluncem, jsou i vynikající učební pomůckou.
V knize najdete katalog 2339 slunečních hodin na pevných stanovištích v Čechách, na Moravě, ve Slezsku a na Slovensku. Jedná se o první soupis svého druhu a rozsahu. Dozvíte se o principech fungování slunečních hodin, jejich stavbě a obnově, gnómonických zajímavostech a nejhezčích (ne nutně nejznámějších) slunečních hodinách na celém zpracovaném území.Pro návštěvníky Prahy, domácí i zahraniční, je připojen námět na vycházku za pražskými slunečními hodinami.
Sluneční hodiny na pevných stanovištích. Čechy, Morava, Slezsko a Slovensko
Edited by Miroslav Brož, Miloš Nosek, Jan Trebichavský, Drahomíra Pecinová
Publisher: Academia, Prague, 2005
ISBN 80-200-1204-4
EAN 9788020012043
404 pages