Abstracts of ABRI Monographs   Series 1 - Philosophy of Science and the Politics of Thought   AS1-01 Usages of Science: the Use and Abuse of Physics Correa PN, Correa AN Philos of Sci & Polit of Thought, Vol. 1, 1:1-57 (July 2001)   ABSTRACT.   Why did Nietzsche hold that science was the higher becoming of philosophy? How, more specifically, does physics come to occupy a privileged role amongst sciences? And which physics does so? Could that already constitute an abuse of physics? And why does physics ultimately depend upon biology - the science of the living - which demands precisely that it become biophysics, the physics of the living? The present essay traces the emergence of knowledge and its becoming science as a problem of both method and concepts. Aside from, and beneath, royal science and the modern axiomatic of technological development, there insists a science that pursues micro-functions and constitutive syntheses: the genesis of matter, the genesis of life, the equation and inequation of matter and energy, and so forth. The question that matters then is how does this other science work - what are its uses, its tools, its method?   (1.2 MB)     AS1-02 The Physics of the Will to Power Correa PN, Correa AN Philos of Sci & Polit of Thought, Vol. 1, 2:1-54 (July 2001)   ABSTRACT.   Nietzsche's concept of the eternal recurrence is one of the most misunderstood and mystified concepts in philosophy, comparable in its fate only to what his other concept - of the will to power - suffered at the hands of nazism and nazi thinkers - such as Heidegger. Yet, there is nothing mystical about either of Nietzsche's fundamental thoughts. Having lived in an age when scientific knowledge only grasped force in a mechanistic fashion - and the physical concept of energy remained mysterious - what Nietzsche was grappling with in his theory of active and reactive forces was precisely the enunciation of will to power as wave energy affine to the living, a specifically biological energy. Deleuze opened the way to an understanding of the will to power as the genetic and genealogical element of all biophysical force - and from his formal treatment of Nietzsche's concept, one can extract the abstract foundations of aetherometric theory, directly addressing force, energy and power as wave events. In this very sense, Nietzsche's other key concept - of the eternal recurrence - can be shown to constitute the foundation of an aether cosmology predicated upon the notions of a Space filled with the 'play of forces and waves of forces', and of Time as single, eternal and self-selecting. What Nietzsche was indeed proposing was that we should be able to conceive the physics of nature solely on the basis of the First Law. This monograph must be purchased before it can be viewed.   (US$15 / $12 ISFA)          VIEW  (1.4 MB)     AS1-03 (Micro)Functionalist Thoughts on the Relation between Art, Science and Philosophy Correa PN, Correa AN Philos of Sci & Polit of Thought, Vol. 1, 3:1-23 (November 2001)   ABSTRACT.   Aetherometric theory addresses exclusively microphysical energy functions, aiming in the process to tease apart the real differences in nature between distinct manifolds and integrate their separate metrics as covariant and commensurate. Its energy theory is comprehensive and systematic; nevertheless, it does not form a closed system, but an open one, geared to engage energetic percepts and concept-functions that are at once qualitative and quantitative. The basic precursors of the microfunctional method of the aetherometric theory of energy are four-fold: Nietzsche's cosmological thought of Time, Reich's foundations of functional orgonometry, Bergson's and Deleuze's criticism of the Riemannian theory of manifolds or multiplicities, and Aspden's theory of the structure of the Aether as a synchronous lattice of quons. Our own interest in roots and genealogy is of no importance - all the less as Aetherometry consists precisely of a rhizomatic assemblage. However, Aetherometry as a theory, as an open system, differs in fundamental and exact ways from the open systems of these thinkers: it proposes a universal structure to energy and a principle of continuous variation that encompasses massfree energy, mass-energy and all massbound manifestations of kinetic energy; it treats Space and Time as distinct manifolds, both quantitatively and qualitatively; and it proposes a unitarian approach to concepts, functions and sensations - or their percepts. What follows is a draft attempting to situate the difficulty of a comprehensive interdisciplinary effort like that of aetherometric science. This monograph must be purchased before it can be viewed.   (US$15 / $12 ISFA)          VIEW  (1.0 MB)     AS1-04 On Science, Actual Science, as the Higher Becoming of Philosophy Correa PN, Correa AN Philos of Sci & Polit of Thought, Vol. 1, 4:1-31 (January 2002)   ABSTRACT.   Knowledge can only bestow joy on Life if it provides the latter with provable certainties, not with probabilities or opinions - which are always based upon convictions. The project of knowledge is, in this sense, inseparable from the process of a natural philosophy that regards actual science as its higher or nobler becoming. It is this very conversion which is blocked by the notion that such a process would reduce the concept to a function or its functive - ie the conceptual being of a function. Actual science demands neither a reduction of energetic functions to symbolic referends, nor to logical propositions. Exoreferentiality is not a condition of physical science, and consistency is not solely a property of Logic, or even a logical property per se. Energetic functions have a consistency all their own, deploy it in open systems of endoreference, and constitute, therefore, machinic instances or event-particle emitters. There is no micrological rule that excludes machinic consistency from being the very fundamental property of a functionalist microphysics. Functional consistency cannot be amalgamated to logical consistency, anymore than reduced to a merely conceptual form of consistency. Such limitations can only serve to reconstitute 'the lie of ideals henceforth named truth' (Nietzsche) - precisely by infecting science with metaphysical black holes where transcendence can always be made to reside in a symbol, or in its lack. But science, actual science, can only aim at eradicating these disembodied functions that lack adequate concepts, as much as those concepts that are devoid of function. In accordance with these precepts of the philosophy of Aetherometry, we propose the aetherometric concept of micrological functions, and define its basic characteristics from an energeticist perspective where all functions are seized as energy functions. We find that all manifolds constitute integral qualitative and quantitative multiplicities in a relation of continuity, and that it is the very principle of continuous variation that permits emission of invariants as special instances of discontinuity. This monograph must be purchased before it can be viewed.   (US$20 / $16 ISFA)          VIEW  (4.5 MB)     AS1-05 A Monist View of the Relation between Libidinal and Political Economies and the Problem of Fascism Correa PN, Correa AN Philos of Sci & Polit of Thought, Vol. 1, 5:1-11 (May 2002)       ABSTRACT.   The question of the connection between desire and society, in particular with respect to fascism, is examined in this lecture by contrasting two intimately linked but very different approaches - that of Reich in his pre-American or Freudo-Marxist period, and that of Deleuze and Guattari's biosocial theory. The two viewpoints correspond to dualist versus monist conceptualizations of the connection between libidinal and political economies. As the hydra of fascism once again raises its ugly head, the issues brought up by this 1979 lecture remain more pressing than ever. And from any viewpoint that seeks expansion of aetherometric knowledge, the monist notion of the connection between desire and political economy is an opening to understanding our natural and social histories as biophysical productions that obey two distinct energy regimes. VIEW     AS1-06 What Is Fascism: Is There Any Fascism Left? Correa PN, Correa AN Philos of Sci & Polit of Thought, Vol. 1, 6:1-65 (February 2004) ABSTRACT.   Our epoch prides itself on having defeated fascism, on being an epoch which is no longer fascist. In fact, it is impossible these days to claim to be a fascist without appearing quaint - and no serious mass-movement overtly invokes fascism as its ideology or as its politics. Fascism either is no more, or it has reached a point of complete dissimulation. Which is it? To determine this, one is obliged to examine anew the nature of fascism, beyond the artificial and arbitrary delimitations that appear to dissolve its meaning and erase its reality, past and present. When one hears that there can be no 'authentic fascism before democracy' or unless it arises within a democracy, from a democracy; or that fascism is nationalistic and not a transnational movement; or that it is synonymous with totalitarianism, or with the dictatorship of a party-police machine; or that it is a secular movement and not a religious one, etc, etc - one knows that those who fashion these glib reductions are effectively producing a loss of descriptive power of the term 'fascism' by practicing the obfuscation of its difference. Thus fascism has acquired a modern invisibility that is intent on precluding any connection of its pathology to power, terrorism, leftism, revolution, war, and all the present epochal forms of collective suicide. This state of affairs betrays still deeper psychosocial constraints operating at unconscious levels of modern human activity. Indeed, present-day forms of social organization have incorporated so many of the control and conditioning methods, rules, techniques and dispositives of fascism, and insinuated them so deeply into everyday life, that no one recognizes fascism any longer, nor its distinguishing traits, for what they are. Hence, the term has lost its descriptive and analytical power, its real senses and utility, to the benefit of the dissemination of fascism throughout civil society - a sociological phenomenon which a circumscribed meaning of the term is no longer able to encompass. Yet, to avoid repeating the grave mistakes of epochs past, to further the analysis of socio-historical processes or invent better potentialities for the living and its understanding, appears today, more than ever, to be conditional upon a real grasp of what fascism actually is, and what constitutes its defining difference. This is the challenge the present monograph takes up - from an entirely novel and provocative perspective. VIEW HTML        VIEW PDF   (3.8 MB)     AS1-07 Combat at the Gates of Thought (Doing Harm to Stupidity) Correa PN, Correa AN Philos of Sci & Polit of Thought, Vol. 1, 7:1-44 (July 2004) ABSTRACT.   The combat between thought of the false (including truthful thought) and adequate thought (or thought of science) takes place at the gates of thought itself, as thought strives to discover concepts adequate to the functions of nature and existence. It is not a struggle between Dark and Light - and it does not duplicate any struggle between Good and Evil or Truth and Error. It is, above all, a combat with a dual aspect - against stupidity and in favour of a scientific method of thought - but it can only acquire this duplicity if its politics are those of Life and the living. So, it is also - and indissociably so - a political combat. The function of a concept and the concept of a function are already implicated in a relation of force and adequacy that subtends the 'problem of energy'. In fact - with the exception perhaps of Maxwell's demon - the partial observers that have been posited as 'ideal' depend strictly upon concepts rather than upon actual or empirical functions: Einstein's observer depends on the Lorentz-Fitzgerald transformation, which is a concept of Space and Time before it is a function (the concept is that Time is a line equivalent to a distance; this assumption is what permitted Einstein's concept of Space-Time); Heisenberg's observer depends on a probabilistic concept of chance (and chaos) as much as upon the concept of a Dirac-point particle (a concept notoriously devoid of any functionality whatsoever) for which probabilities of position, speed and momentum are calculated. Which brings us to Reich's question - to what extent are ideal scientific observers the product of the 'character structure' of the 'philosophical persona or personae' of the scientist? This monograph must be purchased before it can be viewed.   (US$25 / $20 ISFA)          VIEW  (1.2 MB)     AS1-08 Notes on MicroFunctionalism: Orgonomic, Molecular and Aetherometric Functionalism Correa PN, Correa AN Philos of Sci & Polit of Thought, Vol. 1, 8:1-10 (January 2008) ABSTRACT.   Functionalism is, in general, taken to mean the principle that form or structure (conceptual, aesthetic, scientific, etc) follow, or should follow, function. A major part of the problem of functionalism resides in the determination of what is meant by function or functions. As we shall see, the functions acknowledged by molar functionalist theories are solely 'statistical' or 'molar functions' which are, after all, always exercises in Power. The remainder of the problem resides in the fact that only machines capable of forming themselves while functioning can create functional structures, ie forms that are one with their functions - which is the only sense in which structure can 'follow' function. But then, such machines only operate with microfunctions, not statistical or molar functions. There are, accordingly, two distinct types of functionalist theories - those (microfunctionalist) that work because they tend to uncover microfunctions, and those ('molar functionalist') that are false because the functions they pursue are merely statistical or molar operations. Orgonomic functionalism, molecular functionalism and aetherometric functionalism are all forms of microfunctionalism to the extent that they pursue the singular energy transformations of nature and, in particular, the self-regulating properties of living systems. From a microfunctionalist perspective, to function is to follow the flow of energy and a function is a creation, a principle of continuous creation - at once a connection productive of difference, an analytical disjunction and a new synthesis, a singular conjunction (a functional identity). Microfunctionalism is 'the elastic form of thought' (Reich) that pursues energy functions. VIEW