The utopia we are dealing with here could have been called ‘the mother of all utopias’ since it is in fact humanity's greatest, most primal dream, indeed the one that defines us as human. This great utopia, from which are woven our representations of paradise, for example, is immortality, the theme of René Barjavel's novel entitled The Immortals (1973).

Finding truth is an art that was learned and unlearned. Truth can only be found by looking for independent confirmation of our beliefs, by reality. This methodology is difficult to apply in personal- and social settings, because power and politics turn 'seeking independent confirmation' into 'avoiding dependent rejection'. A completely different social order is implied and the one keeps running the other into the ground like a tectonic plate. Philosophical Modernism showed us how dualism works, before Post-Modernism challenged it, regressing (...) to monism. (shrink)

The influence of religious beliefs to several leading mathematicians in early Soviet years, especially among members of the Moscow Mathematical Society, had drawn the attention of militant Soviet marxists, as well as Soviet authorities. The issue has also drawn significant attention from scholars in the post-Soviet period. According to the currently prevailing interpretation, reported purges against Moscow mathematicians due to their religious inclination are the focal point of the relevant history. However, I maintain that historical data arguably offer reasons to (...) cast reasonable doubts on this interpretation. In this paper, by reviewing the relevant literature, I raise some methodological and philosophical concerns, in an attempt to contribute to a better understanding of the issue. I maintain that an efficient line of reasoning is to discuss issues in the context of their making, taking into consideration the specific features of each era’s culture. Thus, by focusing on P.A. Nekrasov’s case, I attempt to point to an alternative interpretation, in which the different treatment of religious inclined mathematicians by Soviet authorities is explained in the context of the ideological confrontation between two contrasting worldviews, as part of the ongoing class war in the several phases of Soviet history. (shrink)

Thesis 1: The new does not arrive from some ‘other place’, but is produced from the very matter of the world, after all what else is there? And where else can the new come from? The new then involves a recombination of already existing elements in and of the world. The new would then be a repetition, but with difference. As such the new must be distinguished from fashion, which involves a repetition of the same, that is, does not really (...) involve a radical recombination of elements. However, the new is not opposed to fashion, but rather accelerates certain of its operating logics, namely the production of difference. After all, there must be a certain amount of difference for fashion to be what it is. Fashion in this sense is the near enemy of art. Here is my first question: is it enough to affirm a recombination of matter in order to produce something new? For example, a new art? Would this not merely involve playing with that which is already here, already has reality as it were? Or, following Deleuze, would not such a recombination involve playing with that which is ‘possible’, the latter being a mirror-image or isotope of the real, in fact being the same, conceptually speaking, only lacking reality. Or to phrase this question in a slightly different manner: is there really such a difference between the new in art and the new in fashion? And if there is such a difference, as I think there is, then what else is needed to produce the new? (shrink)