Autopoesis is both a concept about self-maintaining systems, especially biological ones, and an epistemological theory about cognition and self-reference.
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Kristi Hargrove, Egg Series, 20004
BwO
in theory, embodiment, psyche
The "body without organs" and the "organs-partial objects" are concepts that Deleuze and Guattari mobilize in opposition to the organism and its organization, in opposition to the functional specificity of organs, so as to release the decoded and deterritorialized flows of desire. The BwO is the "anorganism of the body" a bundle of virtual affects in a non-organic and non-organized multiplicity, "molecular" rather than "molar."
Read Moreembodiment
Embodiment is the line between psychology and biology. One important feature of embodiment is that the interaction between the body and cognition is circular. Thus posture, facial expressions, or breathing rhythm are in a feedback loop with motor movement, mood, and cognition. I am bouncing along the street because I am happy but I am also happy because I am walking with a spring in my step.
Read Moreorganism
"Organism" is derived from the same word as organ: in Latin, organum ; in Greek, organon, which means tool, and was the title given to Aristotle's logical writings to emphasize the idea of logic as a tool helping the other sciences. The instrumental view lies to some degree within the word organism itself: a system of organs, a whole composed of parts, where each part is a functional tool related to the other parts and the whole.
Read Morepraxis
The tradition of Platonic and idealistic philosophy separates theory from practice in much the same way as it does mind from body, privileging in both cases the "conceptual" (or moral) over the "material".
Praxis philosophies give primacy to a theory of action. The original expression is Aristotle's and refers to a symbolically meaningful activity, whose very doing, not its result, is the fulfillment of a cultural commitment. It can be defined as meaning rather than function.
For the Frankfurt school in its earlier period, prior to 1937, truth was defined as "a moment of correct praxis." Subsequently, in the face of Fascism and Stalinism, the relation between theoretical truth and the political praxis of specific social groups began to appear increasingly remote.
Read MoreProsthesis
"Prosthetics: The castration complex raised to the level of an art form." J. G Ballard. "Nothing is more disembodied than Cyberspace. It is like having your everything amputated." --John Perry Barlow (former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, "electronic frontier" advocate, and major supporter of the Republican party)
The medical prosthesis was developed to replace amputated limbs (for which war is the great experiment and driving force) As Mark Wigley points out, "Prosthetic technology alternated between producing substitutes for the body parts that military weapons had destroyed and producing these very weapons." (p. 23) see Ambroise Paré , "A Supplement to the Defects in Man's Body" in Collected Works, Paris, 1579.
Read Moresimulation
"Simulation of any system implies a mapping from observable aspects of the system to corresponding symbolic elements of the simulation." (H. H. Pattee, "Simulations, Realizations, and Theories of Life", in Artificial Life) For Pattee, realizations are functional replacements. They are judged primarily by how well they function as implementations of design specifications. (Thus a building would be the implementation of a blueprint)
Read Moretool
Henri Focillon describes the relationship between the hand and the tool as a human familiarity, whose harmony is composed of the subtlest give-and-take, not just a matter of habit. (The Life of Forms in Art, p109.) "Once the hand has need of this self-extension in matter, the tool itself becomes what the hand makes it. The tool is more than a machine. " The "exact meeting place" of form, matter, tool, and hand is the touch.
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