The force behind stuff

A kids tale about the history of concepts, humans, nature and technology.

We been at school for 2 months, learning the history of concepts, human, nature, and technology. So far, it has been a fascinating and enriching experience.

As an exercise to internalize the readings we decided to develop an artifact that is accessible by the most: a children book and video.

Each scene represents a conceptual rupture, and they occur when something so new/different happens that it cannot be subsumed under the conceptual presuppositions we live by without breaking them.

What’s a conceptual presupposition? The many implicit conceptual ideas that are logically necessary for our thinking, experiencing and understanding to make sense. The emphasis is on the pre. They come before experience; they structure experience. Conceptual presuppositions are invisible and mostly unrecognized.

Here’s a breakdown of each of the scenes, with references and scans of the original drawing.

1. Aristotle, Physics; Plato, Timaeus

At the beginning… there was something outside all of us. This force moved us

2. Aristotle, De Anima; Plato, Apology

A few of us, the lucky few, saw it. But we were all under its spell.

3.Abelard, Logica ‘ingredientibus’; Ockham, Summa of Logic; Leonardo, On Painting)

To understand the force, we first put it into words. But then words began to seem less powerful than pictures.

4.Plato, Republic; Aristotle, Physics

The things we made had already been created by this force. All we did was read the instructions booklet, and follow the steps.

5.Vitruvius, De architectura; Cusanus, De idiota de mente

One day, we started having ideas of our own. We realized that we could write our own set of instructions for making things.

6.Galileo, The Starry Messenger; Galileo, De motu)

Little by little, the things we made became more tricky, almost as if the force had made them.

7.Alberti, On Painting; Bacon, The New Organon; Descartes, Dioptrics

Our creations helped us see the world better than with the naked eye. They weren’t perfect yet, but seemed to be getting better all the time.

8.Descartes, Discourse on Method; Descartes, Meditations)

We became so confident that we decided to declare independence from the force. We no longer needed it to explain the fact that we humans exist.

9.Bacon, The New Atlantis; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason)

We were equipped with words, pictures, and minds of our own! We felt unique. We were sure that we were different from all the other living and non-living things out there.

10.Kant, Critique of Judgment

All those things are out there to be played with, and yet we haven’t found what we were looking for.

11.Kapp, Elements of a Philosophy of Technology; Marx, Grundrisse

We created a new thing. A thing that creates stuff by itself to create more stuff. It is completely free from the force, but also free from us.

by Phillip & Hector