Las Matemáticas en el Pensamiento de Vilém Flusser
This paper aims to establish the importance of mathematical thinking in the work of Vilém Flusser. For this purpose it highlights the concept of the staircase of abstraction with which the Czech German philosopher finishes by reversing the top of the traditional pyramid of knowledge, we know from Plato and Aristotle. It also assumes an implicit cultural revolution in the refinement of the numerical element in a process of gradual abandonment of the purely alphabetic code, highlighting the new key code within the technological and telematic culture and uses the concepts of game theory, of probability theory and computing to analyze society and culture. Of particular importance is the affirmation of a new kind of imagination, a projective one. Today’s society and culture cannot be understood without resorting to the concepts and results coined and made in the course of developing a type of thinking entirely dominated by the mathematics.
Masks and Dances: Cybernetics and Systems Theory in Relation to Flusser's Concepts of the Subject and Society
This paper undertakes a close reading of Flusser’s tropes of “the mask” and “dances” to compare similarities between Fluss er’s formulation of the self and society and corresponding concepts in contemporary systems theory. Major concepts from cybernetics and systems theory such as feedback mechanisms, system and environment, and reciprocal development are illustrated through p assages from Laszlo, Maturana and Varela, and Luhmann and compared with Flusser, with the aim of demonstrating what is “cybernetic” in Flusser’s thought. Consideration is also given to the relationship between Flusser’s work and that of other contemporary social theorists who adopt systems theoretical approaches, such as Foucault , Deleuze, and Guattari.