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Prometheus & Atlas SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Prometheus & Atlas: An Inquiry into the Spectral Essence of Technoscience A Dissertation Presented by Jason Reza Jorjani to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University September 2013 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Jason Reza Jorjani We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Edward S. Casey Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Don Ihde Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Megan Craig Associate Professor of Philosophy, Masters Program Director Jeffrey J. Kripal J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, Rice University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Interim Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Prometheus & Atlas by Jason Reza Jorjani Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University 2013 Technological science has shattered the worldviews of all traditional cultures subjected to it, at times provoking reactionary religious responses that only underscore the traumatic force of this worldwide development. Yet, as I argue, this world-colonizing force is not neutral. The anticipatory projection and world-building characteristic of scientific theorization are grounded in a practical comportment, so that the essence of technology or Craft is ontologically prior to theoretical science. In other words, science is always already Technoscience. Moreover the theoretical concepts and methodologies involved in predictive calculation and in crafting frameworks that model and mold the world are derived from pre-conceptual ideas of an aesthetic character, namely Prometheus and Atlas – titanic gods with a Greek genealogy and a cosmopolitan promise. Diabolically, this reveals itself through attention to what it is about Nature that eludes the grasp of theorization. The ideas or idealities foundational to Technoscience are not abstract, as the concepts derived from them are. Rather, they are spectral personae. The mathematical and geometric structure of scientific projections cannot model those phenomena that most strikingly manifest the spectrality of Nature. These so-called “paranormal” phenomena are perfectly normal in animals and even simpler organisms still guided by instinct. It is our hypertrophied technical intellect that has atrophied them, but they can be regained through a cultivation of intuition. Indeed, only aesthetic intuition can consciously recognize the specters of Technoscience and transform our hitherto unconscious relationship with them to one wherein we are superhumanly empowered by embodying them rather than experiencing them as alienating instrumental forces. iii “I’m playing into your hand, and with your own cards… I’m exploiting the impossible. Or, more accurately, it’s a question of making the impossible possible… something that would bring about the one real revolution in this world of ours, if people would only take it in.” – Albert Camus, Caligula iv Table of Contents Introduction vii Chapter 1. The Next Scientific Revolution 1 1.1 Provoking Permanent Revolution, Not Just an Epistemic Paradigm Shift 5 1.2 Revolutionary Research at the Margins of ‘Reality’ 14 1.3 Unconscious Terror Over Opening the Floodgates 24 Chapter 2. Reason and Terror 29 2.1 Materialistic Rationalism and Cartesian Solipsism 35 2.2 Mind and Matter in the Mirror of Being and Nothingness 41 2.3 Cartesius, the Inquisitor 48 2.4 Kant’s Cartesian Rejection of the Paranormal 53 Chapter 3. Artistic Genius and the Titanic 65 3.1 Otherworldly Aesthetic Ideas 68 3.2 The Occult Art of Unifying Unconscious and Conscious Activity 74 3.3 Storming Heaven: A Renaissance of the Titanic Craft 77 Chapter 4. Life Worlds At War Over Earth 91 4.1 Dasein as Homo Faber 99 4.2 Technoscientific Projection vs. Primordial Perception of the Life World 106 4.3 Poetic Folklore as the Life World Horizon of Historical Peoples 123 Chapter 5. The Specters of Technoscience 138 5.1 The Superhuman Essence of Technology 140 5.2 Our Superhuman Potential 146 5.3 The Spectral Revolution 149 v Chapter 6. Prometheus, the Rebel Artisan of Life 157 6.1 The Aesthetic Idea of Prometheus 159 6.2 An Archaic Existential Archetype of the Human Potential 161 6.3 Prometheus or Christ: Who is the Savior of Mankind? 170 6.4 Frankenstein, or Prometheus as the Artisan of Life 177 Chapter 7. Atlas, the World Builder of Atlantis 186 7.1 The Aesthetic Idea of Atlas 188 7.2 Atlantis: The Realm of Atlas in Plato and Bacon 194 7.3 The Cosmopolitan Neo-Colonialism of Atlantic Civilization 202 Chapter 8. The Titanic Religiosity of Radical Empiricism 212 8.1 The Radical Empiricism of Responsible and Self-Reliant Individuals 213 8.2 A More Radically Empirical Reading of Revelation 216 8.3 ‘Religious Experience’ as a Subject Matter of Scientific Research 220 References by Chapter 226 Bibliography 252 vi Introduction There is something curious about the fraternal statues of Prometheus and Atlas at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Instead of simply bearing a celestial globe on his shoulders, Atlas is supporting several interlocking circles that outline the shape of a hollow sphere. These bear astrological markings on them that suggest the precession of the equinoxes through the rise and fall of world ages. The very same zodiacal symbols are also impressed upon a circle through which Prometheus is triumphantly emerging. An inscription from the Greek tragedian Aeschylus reminds us that the torch of craftily stolen fire that he holds stands for techne: “Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved for mortals a means to mighty ends.” We find yet another hint to the meaning of this symbolism in a bolder inscription beneath a depiction of Zeus holding a compass over the central doorway of the main building visible immediately behind Prometheus, which reads: “Wisdom and Knowledge shall be the stability of thy Times.” This is paradoxical. Discoveries fostering the advancement of knowledge would usually be taken to upset tradition and unleash instability, to demand changes that both the masses and established interests fear. What kind of society could have its stability grounded not in tradition, but in the persistence of the quest for Wisdom at all costs? It would have to be a civilization led by those rare individuals who have the titanic psychical constitution to endure uncertainty, and even to thrive in its midst. It is no accident that King Atlas, ruling over the Atlantean world empire through Time, stands opposed to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and that his head is turned aside in such a way that his gaze spurns the Lord’s altar. Taking a position behind Atlas, the significance of this defiant posture should be as clear to any mindful observer as it must have been to the devious planners of this Temple of Man. It is amusingly ironic that every year, Gotham lights up its ‘Christmas’ tree behind Lucifer. Hesiod refers to titans such as Prometheus and Atlas as the most primordial gods. My work takes its departure from Martin Heidegger’s prophecy of a return of the gods as vii the future of a poetic reflection on the sciences from beyond the end of Philosophy. Heidegger’s technological interpretation of Science is rooted in his understanding of human existence. The practice of scientific research is only one of the modalities of our existence and it does not secondarily yield technology but is grounded by tool use and made possible by certain technical developments. Science does not apprehend the elementary constituents or laws of an objective world prior to our existential engagement in technological development and scientific research. Heidegger goes so far as to try to demonstrate the way in which our scientific world-pictures cannot be extricated from political history and the spiritual values of our community – for which the arts as led by dichtung are determinative. This is a bold claim and Heidegger only obliquely, or at best esoterically, addressed that feature of human experience with the most potential to light up the deep structure of scientific practice, to literally comprehend it, from what currently lies at or beyond its margins: the spectral. This work introduces and explores three inextricable ideas. The first new idea set forth in this work is that the basic concepts and methodological constraints employed by the sciences are the expression of personal agencies that are spectral and that act on the world through daemonic possession. We have mistaken the so-called ‘laws’ of Nature and the putatively ‘elementary’ particulars whose dynamical interaction they regulate for actual features of life at large. On this basis, we have classified everything about living processes that cannot be predictively anticipated and encompassed by this mechanical framework as “irrational” delusion or, at best, as “paranormal” phenomena that are usually seen as “supernatural” in the sense that they lie outside or beyond Nature, as if Nature were isomorphic to our scientific models. Rather than presenting us with an objective view of things as they are, the anticipatory projection and world modeling common to all of the sciences is a mode of praxis and an expression of our vital concern to inhabit the earth more effectively. In this sense, technological development is prior to, and determinative of, scientific theorization. Remaining unconscious of the personal motivation and practical function of this way of being in the world, we have allowed the theoretical postulates necessary for technical development to cover over our instinctual or intuitive orientation towards other persons and things in places of significance to ourselves.
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