ANNOUNCEMENT:
On June 7th and 8th, at the JVE in Maastricht, the Netherlands, the third Form & Formalism conference will be taking place, under the title Formalisation & Dialectics. Pasted below are the manifesto, schedule and poster for the conference (designed by Mary Ikoniadou).
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It has been two hundred years since the glacial drift of syllogistics gave way to the unsteady movements of science, a double revolution that would both revive and divided the discipline of logic. Two texts served to mark the irreversible thresholds that logic had crossed: Hegel’s Science of Logic in 1812, and Boole’s Mathematical Analysis of Logic in 1847.
Were it not for Hegel’s own excessive resistance to the idea of mathematising logic – an idea not yet realised before his death – the most doctrinaire dialectician would no doubt expect the eventual synthesis of these anti- thetical trajectories in a ‘higher unity’. On this score, however, history has been meek. The two traditions issuing from the logical revolts of the nineteenth century – the tradition of mathematical logic, on the one hand, and dialectical logic on the other. By the twentieth century, the gulf between The Algebra Of Revolution announced by Herzen and Lenin, and The Revolution In Algebra begun by Grassmann and Boole had become almost entirely void of communication. Dialectical philosophers, with a handful of brilliant exceptions, would become increasingly oblivious to the events unfolding in the mathematical science of logic, while mathematical logicians, again with rare and ingenious exceptions, would become increasingly unconcerned with the demands of dialectical philosophy.
It is this situation that we wish to interrupt.
If dialectics is to be reanimated, today, we must cross it at is point of greatest resistance, a blind spot formed by a resistance to mathematics: the idea, which Hegel resisted furiously despite the embryonic status in which his time retained it, of logical calculation.
It was through this idea that history would give birth to another that is ultimately more profound: the idea of logico-mathematical formalisation, an idea that would liberate mathematical thought from the contingency of its objects, through an act of reflection that would make it itself a mathematical object. This would, moreover, be a reflection subject to an essentially dialectical drama, slipping away from its own grasp, a refractory reflection that would generate antinomies, incompletions and subversions of meaning. Through this struggle to apprehend itself as such, mathematical logic would, quietly, and without attracting the attention of either of the two traditions that the nineteenth century began, rebuild the dialectic from the calculi Hegel rejected.
On June 7th and 8th, at the JVE in Maastricht, the Netherlands, the third Form & Formalism conference will be taking place, under the title Formalisation & Dialectics. Pasted below are the manifesto, schedule and poster for the conference (designed by Mary Ikoniadou).
==========================================
It has been two hundred years since the glacial drift of syllogistics gave way to the unsteady movements of science, a double revolution that would both revive and divided the discipline of logic. Two texts served to mark the irreversible thresholds that logic had crossed: Hegel’s Science of Logic in 1812, and Boole’s Mathematical Analysis of Logic in 1847.
Were it not for Hegel’s own excessive resistance to the idea of mathematising logic – an idea not yet realised before his death – the most doctrinaire dialectician would no doubt expect the eventual synthesis of these anti- thetical trajectories in a ‘higher unity’. On this score, however, history has been meek. The two traditions issuing from the logical revolts of the nineteenth century – the tradition of mathematical logic, on the one hand, and dialectical logic on the other. By the twentieth century, the gulf between The Algebra Of Revolution announced by Herzen and Lenin, and The Revolution In Algebra begun by Grassmann and Boole had become almost entirely void of communication. Dialectical philosophers, with a handful of brilliant exceptions, would become increasingly oblivious to the events unfolding in the mathematical science of logic, while mathematical logicians, again with rare and ingenious exceptions, would become increasingly unconcerned with the demands of dialectical philosophy.
It is this situation that we wish to interrupt.
If dialectics is to be reanimated, today, we must cross it at is point of greatest resistance, a blind spot formed by a resistance to mathematics: the idea, which Hegel resisted furiously despite the embryonic status in which his time retained it, of logical calculation.
It was through this idea that history would give birth to another that is ultimately more profound: the idea of logico-mathematical formalisation, an idea that would liberate mathematical thought from the contingency of its objects, through an act of reflection that would make it itself a mathematical object. This would, moreover, be a reflection subject to an essentially dialectical drama, slipping away from its own grasp, a refractory reflection that would generate antinomies, incompletions and subversions of meaning. Through this struggle to apprehend itself as such, mathematical logic would, quietly, and without attracting the attention of either of the two traditions that the nineteenth century began, rebuild the dialectic from the calculi Hegel rejected.
The purpose of this conference is, first and foremost, to draw philosophy’s
attention to this reanimation of the dialectic from the ‘dead bones’ of
calculation, to accelerate this reanimation through careful experiments
in formalisation, and interrupt the servitude to ‘the understanding’ to which philosophers have, for the last century, indentured mathematical logic. If philosophy wishes to find in logic something other than a regimentation of the understanding’s prejudices, then the task of tapping the underground current of the dialectic in mathematical logic the logico-mathematical force latent in dialectical philosophy, is one we can no longer ignore.
in formalisation, and interrupt the servitude to ‘the understanding’ to which philosophers have, for the last century, indentured mathematical logic. If philosophy wishes to find in logic something other than a regimentation of the understanding’s prejudices, then the task of tapping the underground current of the dialectic in mathematical logic the logico-mathematical force latent in dialectical philosophy, is one we can no longer ignore.
JUNE 7th, 2012
11:00 - 13:00 > SESSION 1
Chair + opening remarks: Luke Fraser
John Bova, ‘Diagonalisation and Platonic dialectic’ Luke Fraser, responding
Discussion
13:00 - 14:00 > LUNCH BREAK 14:00 - 17:00 > SESSION 2
Chair: Dhruv Jain
Emmanuel Barot, ‘To formalise the dialectic, to institutionalise freedom – two contradictions or one and the same?’
Alessio Moretti, responding Discussion
Baptiste Mélès, ‘The categorial dialectics of F.W. Lawvere’
Tzuchien Tho, responding Discussion
17:15 - 18:45 > SESSION 3
Chair: Jon Short
Gregor Moder, ‘Logic of emanation’ John van Houdt, responding Discussion
19:00 > DINNER
SUGGESTED READINGS (specimen texts)
Can be downloaded HERE.
11:00 - 13:00 > SESSION 1
Chair + opening remarks: Luke Fraser
John Bova, ‘Diagonalisation and Platonic dialectic’ Luke Fraser, responding
Discussion
13:00 - 14:00 > LUNCH BREAK 14:00 - 17:00 > SESSION 2
Chair: Dhruv Jain
Emmanuel Barot, ‘To formalise the dialectic, to institutionalise freedom – two contradictions or one and the same?’
Alessio Moretti, responding Discussion
Baptiste Mélès, ‘The categorial dialectics of F.W. Lawvere’
Tzuchien Tho, responding Discussion
17:15 - 18:45 > SESSION 3
Chair: Jon Short
Gregor Moder, ‘Logic of emanation’ John van Houdt, responding Discussion
19:00 > DINNER
JUNE 8th, 2012
11:00 - 15:00 > SESSION 4
Chair: Sami Khatib
Jamila Mascat, ‘Hegel in Jena and the critique of abstraction’
Mladen Dolar, responding Discussion
Luke Fraser, ‘Go back to An-Fang’ Julian Rohrhuber, responding Discussion
Round Table Discussion 11:00 - 15:00 > SESSION 4
Chair: Sami Khatib
Jamila Mascat, ‘Hegel in Jena and the critique of abstraction’
Mladen Dolar, responding Discussion
Luke Fraser, ‘Go back to An-Fang’ Julian Rohrhuber, responding Discussion
SUGGESTED READINGS (specimen texts)
Can be downloaded HERE.
