Milan Jaros, born and educated in Prague, Czechoslovakia. In 1968 took up a research post in Britain. Worked also in the USA and Germany. Founder and Director of the Centre for Research in Knowledge Science and Society, and BA and MPhil in Philosophical Studies of Knowledge and Human Interests. at Newcastle University, UK, where he part retired in 2008 as Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics. Until 2016 served also as Professor in Philosophical Studies at Newcastle. Authored over 300 papers, several books and patents, on quantum theory and modelling of novel materials and structures for application in optoelectronics, and on onto-epistemic and educational methods grounding the Self in the post-mechanical age. Supervisors: Professor G.S.Rushbrooke FRS
The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention, 2019
Fuelled by the neo-liberal division of labour, complexification acquired a life of its own. This ... more Fuelled by the neo-liberal division of labour, complexification acquired a life of its own. This gave a novel dimension to the growing gap between emergent knowledge and human systems, knowing and being, between the human content of work and its outcomes, value and citizenship. It is argued that here is one of the key reasons why most decisions are made in the chaotic space of ephemeral price relations manufactured by the data-rich, runaway ‘surveillance commoditism’. However, advances in quantitative, empirical methodologies also open an action space for a fresh research agenda. It is to recast our past and present into transparent, directional genealogical accounts of order generation and actualisation recording the ascent and limits of development as well as its pathways between the ‘lab & cloister’ and the social systems. It grounds a new, ‘meta-modern’ Foucauldian episteme in which the notion of order freed of power-hungry impositions assumes the role of an onto-epistemic varia...
The realm of mystery of matter that has long inspired creative minds has been broken by runaway c... more The realm of mystery of matter that has long inspired creative minds has been broken by runaway complexification of life into fragments tossed around in voids of ‘total presence’. Apart from notable exceptions, the origin and actuality of the material condition of humans remain hidden from view by layers of ‘neo-baroque’ allegories framing narratives of the post-mechanical age. It is argued that resurrection of the ontic role of encounters with material reality may restore what has always served as an indispensable source of personal identity and life-sustaining narratives. It is also a means to fostering narrative novelty in the process of instilling timely attitudes and competences, with a view to ensuring that every individual can effectively engage with materiality of their presence and build upon its appreciation and on any inspiration it can offer, at the pace and level of accomplishment matching their personal ability and circumstances. It is this grounding of knowing and bei...
Advancing modernity fatally weakened direct ways of intervening in the social, whether by the Div... more Advancing modernity fatally weakened direct ways of intervening in the social, whether by the Divine Will or barricades. Nietzsche’s technique of inscription has been gradually adapted to reach the present as hazardous sub-brands of “digitally enhanced” inscriptive connectivity born out of an unlikely alliance of emergent tools of networked communication and technophobia of much of the humanities. Even some specialist topics enter the public space as “narratives”, no longer grounded in open allegiances to a system of thought or worldview. Instead authors prefer a travelogue format which hides intended connections. What then is the genealogy of this way of structuring narratives? In particular, what might serve as a tutorial door opening not only to the hidden content of such narratives but also to turning them into useful tools of learning and competence building free of top-down impositions and rota learning familiar from the curriculum delivery demanded by much of the educational ...
It has been shown that semiconductor superlattices can be engineered to achieve a significant enh... more It has been shown that semiconductor superlattices can be engineered to achieve a significant enhancement of the higher order virtual susceptibilities. These studies also reveal that the strength of the optical transitions between minibands originating from different regions of the wave vector space reflect the microscopic character of the superlattice wave function. However, this relationship has not been systematically studied and neither its precise origin nor its impact upon the spectral shapes can be understood in terms of the standard language of band theory. Accordingly, in the present study, we show that the spectral shape of the frequency-dependent third order susceptibility of such a system (e.g. AlSb-InGaSbAs) in a sensitive function of novel cancellation processes that reflect not only the position in energy but also the widths and the shape throughout the momentum space of the superlattice minibands spanning the energy range of the order of the fundamental gap away from the band edges.
It has recently been emphasised that the outstanding educational challenge of the digital age is ... more It has recently been emphasised that the outstanding educational challenge of the digital age is to develop-and integrate with the established practices-effective forms of 'competence' enabling graduates to engage with disparate knowledge systems and networks. It is argued here that a generic shift in leadership strategy may be productively assisted by a bottom-up, iterative method engendering gradual integration of personal tutoring with the intellectual capital offered by a mix of traditional and networked facilities. Empirical results show that this approach is particularly relevant in conditions created by novel divisions of labour which drive the move towards development and assessment of 'competence'. Keywords: educational leadership and methodology, student-centred engagement and curriculum delivery, interdisciplinary learning and competences
Human have acquired the ability to make heterogenous bodies and networks. This renders obsolete m... more Human have acquired the ability to make heterogenous bodies and networks. This renders obsolete much of the conceptual ammunition legitimating Galilean modernity and the meta-narratives of Progress. In particular, in the course of the last decades of the 20th century the link between material reality and representations (artistic, literary, mathematical) of reality grounded in Kant’s Critiques has been fatally weakened. The crisis of representation became the crisis of the critical function of representation, Those attempting to retain the critical function at any cost have turned their barbs against the very assumptions that gave rise to this function. Whether as a result of Greenbergian modernism or Derridean textual postmodernism, the real has disappeared.
The purpose of this paper is to describe - and offer for discussion - the results of research and... more The purpose of this paper is to describe - and offer for discussion - the results of research and implementation of a novel educational methodology in which competences are the outcomes supported rather than led by 'subject knowledge'. In this approach the curriculum is ...
We have performed second harmonic generation (SHG) measurements in the 3 - 5 micrometers region o... more We have performed second harmonic generation (SHG) measurements in the 3 - 5 micrometers region on p-type stepped quantum wells (QWs) using the tunable, high peak power pulses generated by a free electron laser. The samples were grown by MBE on (100) GaAs wafers. The ...
Advancing modernity fatally weakened direct ways of intervening in the social, whether by the Div... more Advancing modernity fatally weakened direct ways of intervening in the social, whether by the Divine Will or barricades. Nietzsche's technique of inscription has been gradually adapted to reach the present as hazardous sub-brands of "digitally enhanced" inscriptive connectivity born out of an unlikely alliance of emergent tools of networked communication and technophobia of much of the humanities. Even some specialist topics enter the public space as "narratives", no longer grounded in open allegiances to a system of thought or worldview. Instead authors prefer a travelogue format which hides intended connections. What then is the genealogy of this way of structuring narratives? In particular, what might serve as a tutorial door opening not only to the hidden content of such narratives but also to turning them into useful tools of learning and competence building free of top-down impositions and rota learning familiar from the curriculum delivery demanded by much of the educational Establishment? It will be shown how to guide the reader in an interactive, bottom up manner so that he or she can, gradually, and at the level of ability and resources peculiar to the case in hand, proceed through ascending stages of reading and engaging with the text, and systematically dispel the baggage of layers of loss and uncertainty preventing confident, critical approaches to communication, work, and citizenship.
Journal of Education and Development 4(2), 68-79, 2020
The realm of mystery of matter that has long inspired creative minds has been broken by runaway c... more The realm of mystery of matter that has long inspired creative minds has been broken by runaway complexification of life into fragments tossed around in voids of 'total presence'. Apart from notable exceptions, the origin and actuality of the material condition of humans remain hidden from view by layers of 'neo-baroque' allegories framing narratives of the post-mechanical age. It is argued that resurrection of the ontic role of encounters with material reality may restore what has always served as an indispensable source of personal identity and life-sustaining narratives. It is also a means to fostering narrative novelty in the process of instilling timely attitudes and competences, with a view to ensuring that every individual can effectively engage with materiality of their presence and build upon its appreciation and on any inspiration it can offer, at the pace and level of accomplishment matching their personal ability and circumstances. It is this grounding of knowing and being that offers the promise of a bottom up transition to citizenship in a shared Common in which the key measure of value rests with promoting personal independence and social emancipation! What are the key stages of 'allegorisation' of narrativity and literary narratives in particular leading to the meta-modern present? What is the fate of materia poetica? The model of curriculum and competence development-grounded in object based, project driven, personal ownership of knowing, and amplifying the tutor-learner component at the expense of top down 'talk and chalk'-recently developed to take higher education into the digital age may be instrumental in delivering such objectives, and prove to be particularly relevant post-Covid 19.
Journal of Advances in Social Science and Humanities 6(7), 1225-1238, 2020
Competence in knowing and being is about making sense of change, of novelty's place in the social... more Competence in knowing and being is about making sense of change, of novelty's place in the social, its functionality as well as one's relation to it. The challenge is in acquiring, implementing, and resourcing methods of selecting and connecting things fit for the human condition of today. The main source of development has always been the urge to seek new forms of natural and spiritual order, and creative recasting of the inherited order into a new one. Until recently, such deeds were believed to be acts of Divine revelation. Advances of modernity turned the human action space into contingent networks of man-made quasi-objects grounded in disparate systems of thought and measurement that pattern the social. What will legitimate capacity for recognition and directional taxonomy of innovations? How will the resulting norms affect narratability of life? It is an outstanding intellectual and leadership challenge to develop practices leading to directional thought and fostering an elbow room for playful initiatives. Recent initiatives designed to bring knowing and being up to the demands of the digital age show that no amount of top down instruction, good will or revolutionary fervour, are a substitute for bottom up acquisition and ownership of knowledge and work in which the ultimate measure of value is the degree of personal independence and social emancipation. With it comes competent citizenship and social responsibility any socioeconomic system with democratic ambitions cannot do without.
Journal of Advances in Social Science and Humanities 5(8), 939-948, 2019
Key Words: Human Systems and Emergent Knowledge, Competence Development, Digital Humanities, Soci... more Key Words: Human Systems and Emergent Knowledge, Competence Development, Digital Humanities, Social Ontology, Systems of Thought
The The International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Inventions, 2019
Full title is "The Episteme of Meta-Modernity: Order, Value, and Citizenship in the Space of 'Dig... more Full title is "The Episteme of Meta-Modernity: Order, Value, and Citizenship in the Space of 'Digital Finitudes'"
Journal of Advances in Advances in Social Science and Humanities, 2018
The aim is to draw on creating an operational space for emergent knowledge to bear on the functio... more The aim is to draw on creating an operational space for emergent knowledge to bear on the functioning of human systems in the digital age.
The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention, 2019
Fuelled by the neo-liberal division of labour, complexification acquired a life of its own. This ... more Fuelled by the neo-liberal division of labour, complexification acquired a life of its own. This gave a novel dimension to the growing gap between emergent knowledge and human systems, knowing and being, between the human content of work and its outcomes, value and citizenship. It is argued that here is one of the key reasons why most decisions are made in the chaotic space of ephemeral price relations manufactured by the data-rich, runaway ‘surveillance commoditism’. However, advances in quantitative, empirical methodologies also open an action space for a fresh research agenda. It is to recast our past and present into transparent, directional genealogical accounts of order generation and actualisation recording the ascent and limits of development as well as its pathways between the ‘lab & cloister’ and the social systems. It grounds a new, ‘meta-modern’ Foucauldian episteme in which the notion of order freed of power-hungry impositions assumes the role of an onto-epistemic varia...
The realm of mystery of matter that has long inspired creative minds has been broken by runaway c... more The realm of mystery of matter that has long inspired creative minds has been broken by runaway complexification of life into fragments tossed around in voids of ‘total presence’. Apart from notable exceptions, the origin and actuality of the material condition of humans remain hidden from view by layers of ‘neo-baroque’ allegories framing narratives of the post-mechanical age. It is argued that resurrection of the ontic role of encounters with material reality may restore what has always served as an indispensable source of personal identity and life-sustaining narratives. It is also a means to fostering narrative novelty in the process of instilling timely attitudes and competences, with a view to ensuring that every individual can effectively engage with materiality of their presence and build upon its appreciation and on any inspiration it can offer, at the pace and level of accomplishment matching their personal ability and circumstances. It is this grounding of knowing and bei...
Advancing modernity fatally weakened direct ways of intervening in the social, whether by the Div... more Advancing modernity fatally weakened direct ways of intervening in the social, whether by the Divine Will or barricades. Nietzsche’s technique of inscription has been gradually adapted to reach the present as hazardous sub-brands of “digitally enhanced” inscriptive connectivity born out of an unlikely alliance of emergent tools of networked communication and technophobia of much of the humanities. Even some specialist topics enter the public space as “narratives”, no longer grounded in open allegiances to a system of thought or worldview. Instead authors prefer a travelogue format which hides intended connections. What then is the genealogy of this way of structuring narratives? In particular, what might serve as a tutorial door opening not only to the hidden content of such narratives but also to turning them into useful tools of learning and competence building free of top-down impositions and rota learning familiar from the curriculum delivery demanded by much of the educational ...
It has been shown that semiconductor superlattices can be engineered to achieve a significant enh... more It has been shown that semiconductor superlattices can be engineered to achieve a significant enhancement of the higher order virtual susceptibilities. These studies also reveal that the strength of the optical transitions between minibands originating from different regions of the wave vector space reflect the microscopic character of the superlattice wave function. However, this relationship has not been systematically studied and neither its precise origin nor its impact upon the spectral shapes can be understood in terms of the standard language of band theory. Accordingly, in the present study, we show that the spectral shape of the frequency-dependent third order susceptibility of such a system (e.g. AlSb-InGaSbAs) in a sensitive function of novel cancellation processes that reflect not only the position in energy but also the widths and the shape throughout the momentum space of the superlattice minibands spanning the energy range of the order of the fundamental gap away from the band edges.
It has recently been emphasised that the outstanding educational challenge of the digital age is ... more It has recently been emphasised that the outstanding educational challenge of the digital age is to develop-and integrate with the established practices-effective forms of 'competence' enabling graduates to engage with disparate knowledge systems and networks. It is argued here that a generic shift in leadership strategy may be productively assisted by a bottom-up, iterative method engendering gradual integration of personal tutoring with the intellectual capital offered by a mix of traditional and networked facilities. Empirical results show that this approach is particularly relevant in conditions created by novel divisions of labour which drive the move towards development and assessment of 'competence'. Keywords: educational leadership and methodology, student-centred engagement and curriculum delivery, interdisciplinary learning and competences
Human have acquired the ability to make heterogenous bodies and networks. This renders obsolete m... more Human have acquired the ability to make heterogenous bodies and networks. This renders obsolete much of the conceptual ammunition legitimating Galilean modernity and the meta-narratives of Progress. In particular, in the course of the last decades of the 20th century the link between material reality and representations (artistic, literary, mathematical) of reality grounded in Kant’s Critiques has been fatally weakened. The crisis of representation became the crisis of the critical function of representation, Those attempting to retain the critical function at any cost have turned their barbs against the very assumptions that gave rise to this function. Whether as a result of Greenbergian modernism or Derridean textual postmodernism, the real has disappeared.
The purpose of this paper is to describe - and offer for discussion - the results of research and... more The purpose of this paper is to describe - and offer for discussion - the results of research and implementation of a novel educational methodology in which competences are the outcomes supported rather than led by 'subject knowledge'. In this approach the curriculum is ...
We have performed second harmonic generation (SHG) measurements in the 3 - 5 micrometers region o... more We have performed second harmonic generation (SHG) measurements in the 3 - 5 micrometers region on p-type stepped quantum wells (QWs) using the tunable, high peak power pulses generated by a free electron laser. The samples were grown by MBE on (100) GaAs wafers. The ...
Advancing modernity fatally weakened direct ways of intervening in the social, whether by the Div... more Advancing modernity fatally weakened direct ways of intervening in the social, whether by the Divine Will or barricades. Nietzsche's technique of inscription has been gradually adapted to reach the present as hazardous sub-brands of "digitally enhanced" inscriptive connectivity born out of an unlikely alliance of emergent tools of networked communication and technophobia of much of the humanities. Even some specialist topics enter the public space as "narratives", no longer grounded in open allegiances to a system of thought or worldview. Instead authors prefer a travelogue format which hides intended connections. What then is the genealogy of this way of structuring narratives? In particular, what might serve as a tutorial door opening not only to the hidden content of such narratives but also to turning them into useful tools of learning and competence building free of top-down impositions and rota learning familiar from the curriculum delivery demanded by much of the educational Establishment? It will be shown how to guide the reader in an interactive, bottom up manner so that he or she can, gradually, and at the level of ability and resources peculiar to the case in hand, proceed through ascending stages of reading and engaging with the text, and systematically dispel the baggage of layers of loss and uncertainty preventing confident, critical approaches to communication, work, and citizenship.
Journal of Education and Development 4(2), 68-79, 2020
The realm of mystery of matter that has long inspired creative minds has been broken by runaway c... more The realm of mystery of matter that has long inspired creative minds has been broken by runaway complexification of life into fragments tossed around in voids of 'total presence'. Apart from notable exceptions, the origin and actuality of the material condition of humans remain hidden from view by layers of 'neo-baroque' allegories framing narratives of the post-mechanical age. It is argued that resurrection of the ontic role of encounters with material reality may restore what has always served as an indispensable source of personal identity and life-sustaining narratives. It is also a means to fostering narrative novelty in the process of instilling timely attitudes and competences, with a view to ensuring that every individual can effectively engage with materiality of their presence and build upon its appreciation and on any inspiration it can offer, at the pace and level of accomplishment matching their personal ability and circumstances. It is this grounding of knowing and being that offers the promise of a bottom up transition to citizenship in a shared Common in which the key measure of value rests with promoting personal independence and social emancipation! What are the key stages of 'allegorisation' of narrativity and literary narratives in particular leading to the meta-modern present? What is the fate of materia poetica? The model of curriculum and competence development-grounded in object based, project driven, personal ownership of knowing, and amplifying the tutor-learner component at the expense of top down 'talk and chalk'-recently developed to take higher education into the digital age may be instrumental in delivering such objectives, and prove to be particularly relevant post-Covid 19.
Journal of Advances in Social Science and Humanities 6(7), 1225-1238, 2020
Competence in knowing and being is about making sense of change, of novelty's place in the social... more Competence in knowing and being is about making sense of change, of novelty's place in the social, its functionality as well as one's relation to it. The challenge is in acquiring, implementing, and resourcing methods of selecting and connecting things fit for the human condition of today. The main source of development has always been the urge to seek new forms of natural and spiritual order, and creative recasting of the inherited order into a new one. Until recently, such deeds were believed to be acts of Divine revelation. Advances of modernity turned the human action space into contingent networks of man-made quasi-objects grounded in disparate systems of thought and measurement that pattern the social. What will legitimate capacity for recognition and directional taxonomy of innovations? How will the resulting norms affect narratability of life? It is an outstanding intellectual and leadership challenge to develop practices leading to directional thought and fostering an elbow room for playful initiatives. Recent initiatives designed to bring knowing and being up to the demands of the digital age show that no amount of top down instruction, good will or revolutionary fervour, are a substitute for bottom up acquisition and ownership of knowledge and work in which the ultimate measure of value is the degree of personal independence and social emancipation. With it comes competent citizenship and social responsibility any socioeconomic system with democratic ambitions cannot do without.
Journal of Advances in Social Science and Humanities 5(8), 939-948, 2019
Key Words: Human Systems and Emergent Knowledge, Competence Development, Digital Humanities, Soci... more Key Words: Human Systems and Emergent Knowledge, Competence Development, Digital Humanities, Social Ontology, Systems of Thought
The The International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Inventions, 2019
Full title is "The Episteme of Meta-Modernity: Order, Value, and Citizenship in the Space of 'Dig... more Full title is "The Episteme of Meta-Modernity: Order, Value, and Citizenship in the Space of 'Digital Finitudes'"
Journal of Advances in Advances in Social Science and Humanities, 2018
The aim is to draw on creating an operational space for emergent knowledge to bear on the functio... more The aim is to draw on creating an operational space for emergent knowledge to bear on the functioning of human systems in the digital age.
The aim of this study is to describe a model of the dynamics of constituting a living place that ... more The aim of this study is to describe a model of the dynamics of constituting a living place that is peculiar to the material condition of humanity today and that lends itself to empirical studies of meta-development and sustainability of the human-made environment. The empirical point of departure is the novel character of contemporary knowledge and knowing and the shift it leads to from the transparent, perspectival space to networked quasi-objects, from design to meta-design. It is argued that the self depends for its ability to recognise itself primarily on collisions that suspend the flow of spatialised complexity. The sites of such collisions are superpositions of virtual and material interactions – spatio-temporal instabilities or warps. The structure of such collisions mirrors the mechanisms characteristic of the functioning of our techno-scientific civilisation and associated with different levels of measurement, embodiment, and organisation that pattern the human unconscious, the material and knowledge systems, the 'lifeworlds'. This proposition expands the notion of the Schmarsow-Benjamin 'elbow room' (Spielraum) and gives a perceptual-empirical meaning to the self's ontology, to the 'living place' and its 'sustain-ability'. The 'elbow room' may be viewed as a dynamic impact parameter – an effective existence radius of the self – as an assemblage of the self, place and interactive narratives binding them dynamically together.
The contemporary self is caught in spatial systems beyond its control. Yet it has to interrogate ... more The contemporary self is caught in spatial systems beyond its control. Yet it has to interrogate these systems in order to make existential as well as architectural – designer sense of its predicament. This interrogation is acted out in the language of anxiety, hybridity and fragmentation that reflects the material condition of humanity of today; it appears inseparable from techno-scientific practices. The result is a weakening of the Cartesian notion of 'extension' (ontology, objectness) and 'self' (subject, narratability) as a measure of the bodily existence and identity. Instead, it is argued here, the self depends for its ability to recognise itself primarily on collisions that suspend the flow of spatialised complexity. The sites of such collisions are folds of networks of virtual and material interactions – spatio-temporal instabilities or warps. They expand the Schmarsow-Benjamin 'elbow room' (Spielraum) that gives a perceptual-empirical meaning to the self's ontology. The 'elbow room' may be viewed as a dynamic impact parameter – an effective existence radius of the self – as an assemblage of the self, place and interactions (narratives) binding them dynamically together. It constitutes an object-event, with its 'extension' and a 'lifestory'. This dynamic model of the wayfaring self seeking self-recognition and creative fulfilment is analogous to the field theoretical treatment of collisions. It offers an opportunity to develop models that may be instrumental in unfolding the origin of space warps, in finding their link to specific techno-scientific models of the world and dynamic ontology, and in pointing to their usefulness in identifying strategies and novel technical features in meta-design.
Phenomenological critique of Galilean modernity The pre-modern age was the age of narratives. The... more Phenomenological critique of Galilean modernity The pre-modern age was the age of narratives. The status of nature, "things" and human activity, were given by powers external to humans. Such norms can only be accessed via recollection or revelation. With the advent of the Galilean "measure and quantify" the normative power of traditional narratives was fatally weakened. For Kant space and time are "forms of perception". The human activity then takes place in an abstract container overseen by a clock. The practices of e.g. perspective drawing transplanted this notion of an abstract observer into the domain of daily routines. The individual's claim to immortality as a creator can only be legitimised through disinterested inquiry resulting in a "proof"; the problem is identified and explained away. It is then deposited for eternity-with a suitable label-in one of the cemeteries of human achievement (museum, archive, library, databank). Only that part of the material condition of humanity that is amenable to measurement and codification in terms of universal variables has existence and meaning. The neutrality (universality, autonomy) of space, time, object and subject created operational space for an unprecedented growth in mathematisation and mastery of nature. As for authentic experiences of bodily life (now, here, I) these seemed destined to be sacrificed on the altar of complexity for the sake of complexity. The phenomenological turn in philosophy is often viewed as an attempt to redeem the primacy of bodily life and creativity. Space and time are a medium rather then a container for human activity, for events. In the phenomenological perspective of Heidegger "spaces receive their essential being from locations" (Heidegger, 1972, p.332). Humans' "dwelling" and staying with things cannot be separated from "space" and "time". "Dwelling is accomplished in the nearing of things" (Casey, 1998, p.274). Indeed, for Heidegger this dwelling is a key concept connecting humans to a primordial form of Being, to the full richness of existence. Since space and time are now "existential", our being and consciousness are necessarily "local". Merleau-Ponty argues that the human body is a junction where thought and world meet and interact. "…my experience breaks forth into things…it always comes into being …within a certain setting in relation to the world which is the definition of my body" (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p.303). Perceptual consciousness is not merely a thought about the world out there but a product of bodily orientation and motion in the world, a part of the ontological process that constitutes place-ness. The phenomenology of the social Being-in-the-World is not to be understood in terms of "universal" variables such as, for example, Marx's class, surplus value and means of production but in a move from "space" to "place", from subject and object to "things". "Meaning" of "place" is then grounded in the consciousness of it. It "is" (" meaningful") to the extent to which it is a "living place", reaching perhaps as far as the folds of "the coupling of the virtual-actual" (Deleuze, 1993,
The Challenge… The rise of the digital age brought about novel 'competing levels of being in the ... more The Challenge… The rise of the digital age brought about novel 'competing levels of being in the world', e.g. genomic, net-bound…, with their characteristic scales and units, instruments of performance and knowledge acquisition… Gains (power…) are maximised by ceaseless subdivisions and re-couplings of material production and human organisations quite outside the 'central system' ('linear', predictable, 'capital enforced'…) structures. It is argued that the outstanding educational challenge of today is to develop new forms of 'competence' enabling people to harness the runaway generation of knowledge and complexifications on which we depend but do not fully control (e.g. Blömeke, S., Zlatkin-Troitchanskaia, O., & Fege, J., Eds. (2013). Modeling and Measuring Competences in Higher Education, Wilson, A. (2010), Knowledge Power: Interdisciplinary Education for a Complex World, Jaros, M. , Leadership and Competence Development in Higher Education, Lambert Academic Publishing, Saarbrücken 2015, and a list of sources below.) What is to be done? The research model for pedagogy advocated here is inspired by the bottom up, 'archaeological-genealogical' approach informing particularly the Arcades Project.
The onto-epistemic, methodological problems arising from fragmentation and medicalization of huma... more The onto-epistemic, methodological problems arising from fragmentation and medicalization of human experience, and their consequences for the possibility of coherent social practices, remain an outstanding intellectual challenge of our age. In particular, advances in materials sciences, communication and biotechnologies brought about 'competing levels of being in the world', e.g. molecular, genomic, net-bound, with their characteristic scales and units, and with instruments of performance and knowledge acquisition; it has become a daily necessity for the Self 'register' with them. This calls for a generic shift in practices of inquiry and action; they must be sensitised to the specificity of material exchanges characteristic of such different 'levels of being'. The purpose of this paper is to report and offer for discussion a fresh methodological project, implemented at various levels of learning and knowing, that is instrumental in recognising and cutting across the enslaving capital-enforced divisions of human experience of time and space so acutely felt today. It is the fetishist status of such divisions, and the seeming autonomy of 'layers of existence' they create and sustain, that separate us from access to and memory of direct experience of material exchanges (life), and bar critical, coherent communication and action. It is argued that the research model well positioned to address this challenge is the conceptualisation grounded in the object-driven, bottom up (archaeological-genealogical) approach pioneered by Walter Benjamin in his Arcades Project. An Overview Marx was probably first to measure progress of science in terms of technically exploitable knowledge. Since for him labour constitutes the world on the model of physics, it bridges the gap between the finitude of the individual material act-event and the natural world. It is one of the key tenets of historical materialism that commodification of the experiential world is transcended in the process of objectification of social labour. However, in the course of the last decades of the 20th century, techno-science greatly accelerated the process of weakening the Cartesian notion of 'extension' and its power to ground the ontology on which stood the great systems of Western thought from Descartes to Habermas. Advances in the 20 th century sciences split human existence into
The modernist notion of thingness is grounded in the Galilean separation between humans and natur... more The modernist notion of thingness is grounded in the Galilean separation between humans and nature. The crisis of modernity, of the dividing line between image and reality, noumenal and phenomenal, and of the positivist notion of consciousness is the crisis of this separation whose legitimacy has been undermined not so much by culture wars but by the power of post-Galilean technoscience to create heterogenous bodies. The purpose of this study is to recast this paradigmatic shift into a pragmatic research programme. It is inspired by the dynamic, rhizomatic geo-philosophy to re-establish the primary creative role of the body and experimentation (art, technology), to restore directionality to the sites of making and connecting, and to facilitate a systematic study of act-objects. FROM COSMOS TO NATURE For Aristotle the Cosmos was a purposeful unity of things, gods and humans, a grand organism at equilibrium. However, after centuries of scholastic speculations the credibility of the claim that there is an omniscient external law became seriously undermined. Since this law is God's law, man can free himself only if he takes His place. Galileo separated humans from things, from nature. The intellectual intuition of the Greeks was replaced by sensory perception. In order to reconcile philosophy and Galilean science Kant divided the world into two realms, phenomenal and noumenal. Knowledge is the knowledge of phenomena, the domain of Pure Reason. It requires a priori forms of perception of time and space. What cannot be present in time and space, the beginning of time, god, freedom, belongs to the realm of Ideas. These are thoughts that do not have presentations. They are thinkable but unknowable. In Critique of Practical Reason the Ideas acquire a positive content via the moral law. For any actualization of the theoretical necessity of individual freedom to take place there must be a connection between them. This connection is developed in the Critique of Judgement. In it Kant considers reflective judgements (aesthetics), i.e. when the particular is given and the aim is to find the universal. However, Kant's morality and beauty remain only a potentiality. For if
The Kantian modernity was grounded in a static universal ontology based on the Galilean separatio... more The Kantian modernity was grounded in a static universal ontology based on the Galilean separation of humans and "things". Today's machinic processes have fatally weakened the normative power of any meta-narrative and rendered unhelpful the Kantian autonomy of subject and object, of the natural and artificial. Hence "thingness" is better thought of as a "dynamic capacity to be affected and affecting", to behave or act or be treated as an object. New knowledge transfer agencies have been created skilled in manipulating the onto-epistemic status of products of human labour by animating and codifying heterogenous assemblages (of "humans", "things", "networks"). The bringing to life of quasi-object assemblages depends on animations via networks of knowbots and playbots which contain the consumer as one of the principal actors. This creates a new knowledge market and research agendas. The shift is particularly apparent in education (e.g. universities) and leisure supermarkets (e.g. theme parks, intelligent playthings). It is of particular research interest here, firstly, to identify and examine some key "real" and "virtual" mechanisms that, in the absence of powerful traditions or ideologies of progress, drive the rising and decaying of quasi-object assemblages today. Secondly, it is argued that such mechanisms carry the signature of the inscriptions deposited in (e.g. local, "national") knowledge territories by the application of technoscience peculiar to them [1].
The rapid acceleration and the change of character of globalising tendencies after cca 1990 coinc... more The rapid acceleration and the change of character of globalising tendencies after cca 1990 coincided with a dramatic shift in investment and organisational structures supporting R&D. This process was led by major US and West-European institutions (e.g. IBM, Daimler-Benz). Its far reaching social consequences are being recognised. However, it is not so well appreciated that parallel to e.g. the internet, virtual reality industries, etc.-and to large extent in response to them-there have occurred deep changes in scientific practices of knowledge generation and manipulation themselves. The purpose of this paper is to identify and place into broader conceptual context (sociological, scientific, and philosophical) the specificity of these changes. It will invoke a concrete Integrated Optoelectronics Project spanning the years of 1987-1998. The project was funded by major sponsors (e.g. EU Esprit/Framework programmes), involved key companies (e.g. Daimler-Benz/Chrysler), and brought together contributions of researchers from many European and non – European countries. The study shows that the R&D practices strongly respond to communicational, institutional and trans-national social changes that have accelerated in the last decade. In particular, both the scientific research agenda and its execution and management have become increasingly fragmented. The result is re-territorialization and re-coding of knowledge that is open to a surprising degree to driving forces and algorithms imported from outside of the standard agenda of science and scientific method. 1. INTRODUCTION: WHAT GLOBALISATION? For the ancients change was governed by what was Given, by narratives of revelations and traditions that appeared external to humans. The Enlightenment undermined the status of traditional narratives. For Kant knowledge is the product of disinterested and universal science. Technology is actualisation of this knowledge. Karl Marx was probably first to measure progress of science in terms of technically exploitable knowledge. Once scientific knowledge leaves the laboratory it assumes a life of its own and acquires a monetary value like any other commodity. The process which takes place between humans and nature and in which humans through their action mediate, control, and consume material exchanges is social labour. Since for Marx labour "constitutes" the world on the model of "objective" physics commodification is transcended in the process of objectification of social labour. The capitalist progress of the Communist Manifesto is then universal and necessary, without political, cultural, geographical or any other boundaries. This picture of globalising tendencies of capital accumulation implies that the relevant account of advanced capitalism is to be found in macrosociology of
It is an outstanding challenge to take on board - particularly in education and management - the ... more It is an outstanding challenge to take on board - particularly in education and management - the normativity of novel forms of order generation and consumption brought about by quantitative, empirically based methods peculiar to the digital age. It is argued that this offers a fresh research agenda for re-claiming our cultural heritage, with the benefit of a legitimate predictive aspect compatible with the level of complexity framing current thought and production practices.
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Papers by Milan Jaros