The current political situation is far too severe to be compared with past geopolitical conflicts, as ecological and political tensions have become deeply intertwined. This includes Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, Brexit, the global pandemic, ongoing wars that contribute to both humane and environmental catastrophes, and more. There seems to be no shared vision of a common planet. Instead, the Earth has been fragmented into distinct “planetarities”: an externalised Earth that can withdraw and detach, an objectified Earth that can be simulated and controlled, and a primitive Earth awaiting restoration to its pre-modern state... We are, as Bruno Latour observed, “not living on the same planet,” it is a clash between different cosmologies.1
Scholars such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and others have significantly contributed to reconciling this division. However, such thoughts should not be reduced merely to an epistemological endeavour—a guiding tool for deriving how other practices function. Instead, it should operate as one of the joints that establish connections between varied modes of existence. In essence, we are pursuing a compositional task involving how humans engage with and transform the Earth as an unstable ground, unfolding how to recompose knowledge fields, material fluxes, spatial configurations, etc. Consequently, we inevitably consider technics2 that represent systematic procedures or approaches. We must re-examine technology and propose new ways of thinking about and engaging with it since now technology is deeply embedded into political systems, and modern Western technology has become a global phenomenon and the only means for development.3
To mediate between the cosmological rupture and the homogenisation and acceleration of technological phenomenon, philosopher Yuk Hui introduces the notion of cosmotechnics, defined as the unification of cosmic and moral orders through
1
Kathryn B. Hiesinger and Michelle Millar (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Art History of Chicago, 2019), 193–199.
2 Technology refers to specific artifacts, systems, and processes created and used by humans for specific objectives. Technics refers to the general category and principles of all forms of making and practice.
3 Yuk Hui, Machine and Sovereignty: For a Planetary Thinking, (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), 5.
technological means.4 Hui positions cosmotechnics as both a metaphysical and epistemological framework, offering a means to transcend the limitations of a singular, universalised modernity.
Building upon and aiming to move beyond Yuk Hui’s definition of cosmotechnics, this essay approaches cosmotechnics as structural devices. By composing diverse cosmotechnics, it explores a wide range of possibilities, including the reshaping of political regimes, aesthetic experiences, and scientific inquiries, all of which can be activated and mobilised within the framework of architectural discourse. Architecture shapes images of the world and mediates multiple relationships with it, operating alongside other practices. There is a critical need to shift away from viewing architecture solely as the object of research and practice. Instead, architecture must be understood as the means through which these broader engagements are explored and realised.
4 Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics, (Falmouth: Urbanomic Media, 2016), 19.
Bruno Latour, “We Don’t Seem to Live on the Same Planet…” in Designs for Different Futures, ed.
Re-concerning Technology
In the essay The Question Concerning Technology (1954), Martin Heidegger argued that modern technology is fundamentally different from poiesis which refers to the process of creation. Instead, he introduced the notion of Gestell, which he posits as the essence of modern technology.5 This notion represents a transformation in the relationship between humans and the world. For Heidegger, modern technology positions everything in a state of “standing-reserve,” meaning that all things are available for appropriation. This idea highlights the potential threats and alienation that arise from modern technology. When Heidegger proposed his definition of modern technology, a tendency emerged to treat technology as a universal phenomenon. However, his perspective is inherently “situated” and “specific.”6 Moving beyond this universalised view requires recognising that technology reflects particular knowledge compositions and forms of consciousness.
The core concept of Yuk Hui’s cosmotechnics is technodiversity, which challenges and transcends mono-technological paradigms of modernity. His vision extends beyond merely proliferating tools for diverse applications. Rather, technodiversity emerges through varied engagements, exploring how technology can operate at different levels while forming multiple feedback loops. To understand the non-universal and non-modern existence of technics, we must undertake an anthropological turn in technology studies. This allows us to uncover how distinct technological thinking emerged, bifurcated, and embedded itself in our consciousness.
Gilbert Simondon’s notion of technicity becomes crucial, particularly for understanding potential compositions between figure and ground, which helps identify moments where technology engages with and mediates. In his effort to overcome the discontinuity between nature, culture, and technology, Gilbert Simondon introduced his own concept of “technicity.” He viewed technicity as an essential characteristic of modes of existence. According to Simondon, the genesis of technicity begins with a “magical” phase, reflecting an original unity that predates the division between subject
5 Martin Heidegger. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1977), 3-35.
6 Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics, 3-7.
and object.7 Simondon emphasised the inseparability of figure and ground, where the ground shapes the figure, and the figure simultaneously imposes limitations on the ground—both actively shaping and being shaped by one another. This interconnected understanding of modes of existence challenges the conventional view of technology as “neutral” or “static,” which prioritises direct representation and modification, often overlooking the mediation processes unfolding among the multiplicities of information, entities, actors, and institutions.
Expanding the concept of cosmotechnics as a form of architectural intelligence capable of composing interconnected relationships requires re-evaluating historical moments when figure and ground were separated and re-configured—a crucial instance that shaped specific world-systems8 through material and immaterial conditions. These transformations enrich our understanding of how technics might be recomposed to engage with potential transformations in epistemology and epistemes. The first significant separation occurs between technics and religion, followed by a more profound division in the modern period, wherein the study of technology (the figure) becomes distinctly separated from the study of cosmology, often referred to as “Science” (the ground).
There is no singular culture nor a singular technology; both emerge as contingent outcomes of the interplay between diverse agents and circumstances at specific moments. The pursuit of technodiversity is a process of repositioning ourselves within shifting temporal and spatial contexts. This process involves recalibrating our orientation and reimagining time and space as inherently pluralistic dimensions in the evolution of technodiversity. However, nowadays, the distinction between figure and ground is increasingly unstable and undistinguishable, largely driven by the rapid global transformations within technological systems. To re-situate ourselves in this chaos, we need to be more sensible to attune to emergent and complex conditions, recognising the transient and the enduring, the ruptures and continuities that currently shape our world.
7 Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, translated by Cécile Malaspina, John Rogove (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2017), 173-190.
8 The notion of world-systems is most closely associated with the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, who developed it in the early 1970s. A world-system is not simply a system of the world but rather a system that becomes a world. It extends beyond geopolitical and economic dimensions; it also encompasses epistemology, where particular forms of knowledge and cognition shape the world and are, in turn, reinforced by the world-system.
Unstable Ground
While Heidegger expressed his understanding of modern technology, an intensification of human-driven processes began to reshape the planet’s geophysical cycles. This included post-war development, industrial expansion, the establishment of global communication and information networks, rapid urbanisation and so on, all marked a dramatic increase in human impacts on the Earth System9, later described by the term “the Great Acceleration.” The great acceleration manifests a condition that the distinction between the figure and the ground begins to blur.
The complex transformations occurring since the mid-20th century have been recognised by geologists as evidence of a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene10 In attempts to describe the physical and informational attributes of this human-driven technological system within the transformation, the geoscientist Peter Haff introduced the term Technosphere which refers to a vast, interconnected network of material, energy, and information fluxes.11 The technosphere is neither operated nor can be analysed independently. Instead, it is embedded within other spheres and operated through a planetary paradigm.
The rapid expansion, intensification, and homogenisation of the technosphere over the past few decades have permanently and irreversibly challenged the stability of the earth system, disrupting patterns that have persisted for hundreds of millions of years. This transformation extends far beyond the original stabilities and feedback loops of material and energy fluxes within the earth system. Besides, it fundamentally reconfigures the very processes of sensing and knowing; it marks a condition that there is no possibility to distinguish the artificial(figure) and natural(ground).
9 Earth System refers to our planet as one interconnected system. This system is self-regulating and functions across multiple scales and timeframes, embodying the characteristics of life through the coupling of living organisms with their environments.
10 There is ongoing regarding the starting point of the Anthropocene. Some argue that it began with the Industrial Revolution, but this essay aligns its starting point with the beginning of “the Great Acceleration,” a perspective consistent with the reports from the Anthropocene Working Group. Regardless of its starting point, however, the impact of human activities on the Earth has reached an irreversible state.
11 P. K. Haff, “Technology as a Geological Phenomenon: Implications for Human Well-Being,” Geological Society, London, Special Publications 395 (2013): 301-309, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP395.4.
As Yuk Hui observes, the homogenisation of the planet through techno-economic activities has fostered a synchronicity of social phenomena.12 Camera lenses and sensing apparatus replaced human eyes; temporal systems govern social activities across different regions through standardised statistical and economic frameworks. The relationships between individuals and the world are mediated by standardised digital interfaces, platforms, and protocols—many of which are, to some extent, monopolised by major tech corporations. The homogenisation and monopolisation of technology significantly undermine the resilience of individuals and institutions to risk, potentially leading to a survival crisis in the Anthropocene.
This synchronicity implies an implicit acceptance of a singular understanding of technics and technology. The mono-technological paradigm has given rise to ideologies such as technological accelerationism and technological optimism, which posit that technology can provide answers to many pressing questions and liberate humans from labour or the limitations of environmental resources. The eco-political crisis of the Anthropocene, coupled with the rapid acceleration of technology, embodies the pinnacle of technological unconsciousness.
Current mono-technological paradigms and singular knowledge structures are inadequate for maintaining society’s stability and resilience; these instabilities cannot be effectively addressed through conventional architectural means. Therefore, it is crucial to recognise that architecture is necessary to resituate itself—not as a static, one-way output, but might be a recursive and circulatory process, continuously interacting with and responding to the environments and systems it involves.
12 Yuk Hui, “Planetarization and Heimatlosigkeit, Part 1,” e-flux journal, no. 147 (September 2024), https://www.e-flux. com/journal/147/621569/planetarization-and-heimatlosigkeit-part-1/.
Outside the Frame
The distinction between subject and object in Western painting has deep historical roots. Western landscape painting, for instance, served as a foundational medium where natural philosophy concepts were explored. In these paintings, the viewer ’s gaze is structured by the composition of the scene, often overlooking the presence of the operator—the painter. Architecture follows a similar trajectory, as it has always been a discipline centred on establishing “viewpoints.” Whether through perspective techniques to aid architects in visualising spatial relationships or the construction of windows that distinguish interior and exterior, architecture influenced by Western natural philosophy and modernity has persistently explored the relationship between subject and object unconsciously.
Since Filippo Brunelleschi’s fifteenth-century experiments—such as his precise perspectival drawings of Florence’s architectural landmarks—western architecture has been deeply engaged in exploring horizons, vanishing points, and the possibilities of framing perspectives. This Renaissance understanding of perspective wasn’t merely a technical achievement but a fundamental shift in how humans positioned themselves to the world. This rationality laid the groundwork for modernity by establishing a specific, measurable point of view. The main consequence of modernity is the disappearance of mediation. Technology thus plays a role in making architecture tangible, which is guided by the Cartesian philosophy, where the observer becomes increasingly detached from the observed world. Consequently, architecture lost its own agency and autonomy that could enable architecture to manifest itself.
Architecture, as an active form, in turn, directly intervenes and modifies an inert background. This epistemology and methodology shift misunderstands that figures are separated objects placed against a static background. In a sense, by constructing a “window view”, architecture establishes a specific perspective. If architecture is setting up the fixed perspective, the act of framing leads to a misunderstanding of itself as being external. In reality, there is no “outside” since the frame and the object are set
up simultaneously.13 The background is not fixed and external but is co-constructed continuously by diverse agents in an ongoing process.
Over the past few decades, digital technology has become an indispensable tool for shaping design outputs. Image is not only representational but operational, as each pixel carries multiple forms of data that are integrated into various workflows for manipulation. How can architecture hold this opportunity and exist as an active agency containing information without extra media-based representation and enhancement?14 Such an agency does not require the elimination of object forms to exist; rather, it coexists within a continuum.
Bruno Latour critiques how CAD and computer modelling software reduce architecture to simplified operations of geometric figures or projections where feedback and mediation disappear.15 This mindset focuses on architecture as an object rather than understanding it as an institution of relationships between entities. While offering new capabilities of visualisation and measurement, digital tools often reinforce the separations between the figure and the ground by presenting architecture as manipulable geometric abstractions divorced from their contexts. This technological mindset always overlooks the intrinsic technical attributes of space and its role as an information system that constantly interacts and regulates feedback with other systems.16 Regardless of how complex or vast an architecture might be, it does not require representational apparatus to make it visible; rather, it is already embedded within and interwoven with other technologies, constantly reacting with and influencing its own “manifestation.”
Media technology has not diminished architecture’s capacity as an information carrier when we invert the notion of architecture from objects (figure) to networks (ground). Today, architectural information is no longer confined to codes, texts, drawings, or digital media; instead, contemporary architecture redefines itself by parasitically embedding within the interstices of diverse networks through flux. It operates within platforms where energy, materials, and technologies interact, extending across planetary-scale observational, communicational and operational networks.
13 John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, “Matters of Observation: On Architecture in the Anthropocene,” in Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, ed. Etienne Turpin, https:// quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/12527215.0001.001/1:4/--architecture-in-the-anthropocene-encounters-among-design?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.
14 Keller Easterling, “An Internet of Things,” e-flux journal, no. 31 (January 2012), https://www.e-flux.com/journal/31/68189/an-internet-of-things/.
15 María J. Prieto and Elise S. Youn, “Interview with Bruno Latour: Decoding the Collective Experiment,” Scribd, July 5, 2004, https://www.scribd.com/document/251579150/Interview-With-Bruno-Latour.
Figure 1: “The Ideal City,” attributed to Fra Carnevale (c. 1480-1484). A perfect version of society where (unpopulated) architecture embodies ideals of good governance, depicted through an (unmediated) perspective.
Figure 2: “The Ideal City,” attributed to Francesco di Giorgio Martini or Paolo Uccello (c. 1490-1500). An extra frame created by the loggia, which draws viewers into this perfectly ordered cityscape.
Figure 3 (Top): Before the invention of CAD, architects, engineers, and technical draftsmen created designs through manual drafting.
Figure 6: Della Pittura e della Statua. Società Tipografica de’Classici Otaliani, by Leon Battista Alberti, 1804 (Top). Illustration demonstrating circle drawing, Ivan Edward Sutherland, Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System, PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 1963 (Bottom).
Figure 4 (Left Bottom): Technical draftsman working with early CAD software at a computer workstation.
Figure 5 (Left Bottom): AutoCAD was sold on floppy disks in 1982.
Technological (Un)Consciousness and Planetary (In)Stability
As two integral components of cosmotechnics, the cosmos and technics are interdependent and cannot function in isolation; technics derive from and follow the principles of the cosmos, while a cosmos detached from technics becomes unrecognisable Early modernity witnessed the mechanisation of the cosmos, as “Science” with a capital “S” supplanted sacred theology in the examination of the “cosmos” or “nature.” What was once considered integral to the cosmos—animated beings—have been transformed into material evidence, now examined through optical instruments.17 Contemporary scientific discoveries are constructed through instruments embodied as technological objects, where technology and science (or, more precisely, the representers of the cosmos) emerge as dynamics that constantly give feedback and modify one another.
The earth system, as an object of collective monitoring and coordination, relies on establishing innovative and expansive observational networks.18 Since the 19th century, scientists have aimed to build global networks of observatories to investigate meteorological phenomena, natural history, geomagnetism, and atmospheric physics in regions above and below the Earth’s surface. These scientists hypothesised that the phenomena they studied had global implications. The realisation of such ambitious projects was closely relevant to the expansionist ideologies of European and North American nations, which provided the infrastructure, reach, and geopolitical motivation to support these global scientific endeavours.
Unlike the early unconscious expansion of the technosphere, current efforts are increasingly linking technological activities to the earth system’s feedback mechanisms. As Tim Lenton and Bruno Latour suggest, “deliberate technological selfregulation” could create a fundamentally new state within Gaia, enabling conscious choices to emerge.19 Through organised interventions in the technosphere, it may be
17 Simon Schaffer, “On the Difficulty of Animating the Earth,” in Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2020).
18 Simon Schaffer, “Beware of Precursors: How Not to Trace the History of the Critical Zone,” in Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2020).
19 Timothy M. Lenton and Bruno Latour, “Gaia 2.0: Could Humans Add Some Level of Self-Awareness to Earth’s Self-Regulation?” Science, vol. 361, no. 6407 (September 14, 2018): 1066–68, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau0427.
possible to integrate it into Earth’s self-regulation.
Nowadays, thousands of environmental sensors constitute the material foundation of scientific inquiry, spanning a vast range of deployments—from Landsat satellites orbiting 800 kilometres above the Earth to submersibles probing depths exceeding 11 kilometres in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean. These sensors are integrated through telecommunication and interconnected computing systems that transform Earth into a space for continuous measurement. These efforts aim not only to advance our understanding of Earth as a whole and integrated system but are also deeply intertwined with political decision-making, financial markets, risk management, and public policy.20 Through the enhancement of detectability, computability, and predictability via technological means, these systems are essential for maintaining the stability of the living environment.
20 Territorial Agency, Anthropocene Observatory, exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2013–2014, https://www.territorialagency.com/anthropocene#:~:text=The%20Anthropocene%20Observatory%20explores%20how,cohabitation%20 to%20its%20material%20spaces.
Figure 7: Galilean-Type Microscope, by Armin Linke, 2018. The Galilean-type microscope was an essential early step in the evolution of science, making the microscopic realm more investigable through perception.
Figure 8: Showcase with Scientific Glass Instruments and Thermometers of the Accademia del Cimento in Museo Galileo, by Armin Linke, 2018. These instruments are the material foundation upon which our scientific knowledge and philosophy is built.
Figure 9 (Left): Engineer inspecting the satellite before the mission, NASA.
Figure 10 (Right): Wideband video tape recorder from Landsat 2, NASA, 1975.
Figure 11: Earth from the vicinity of the Moon, by Lunar Orbiter I, NASA, August 23, 1966. Transmitted to Earth via NASA’s Robledo De Chavela tracking station, near Madrid, Spain, during the spacecraft’s 16th orbit.
spreading and enhancing Earth’s “visibility.” However, operations behind these images are often overlooked.
Figure 13: Landsat satellite footage, NASA public archive, still from Making of Earths, Geocinema, 2020. Currently, planetary-scale observational networks are
Figure 12: Visualisation Room at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES), The University of Texas, Computational Research in Ice and Oceans Group (CRIOS), by Armin Linke, Austin, Texas, USA.
Earth Reveals Itself Beyond the Matrix
To respond to the current climate and ecological challenges, Earth is in the unconscious process of emerging a planetary-scale technological construct of computation—a global apparatus that reveals planetary conditions through sensors, satellites, cables, communication protocols, and software. For Benjamin Bratton, computation is not just a recursive process; it is a method of world-making. These artificial apparatuses provide opportunities for sensing and modelling complex environmental changes.21 To some extent, Bratton’s ideas can be seen as an extension and reconstruction of Carl Schmitt’s theory, redefining sovereignty from traditional territorial politics to the infrastructures of technological governance and computation.
Schmitt’s concept of nomos serves as the foundation for addressing the fundamental questions underlying all social and economic orders. He describes a progression beginning with appropriation (claiming territory for habitation), followed by distribution (establishing order), and culminating in production (organising the economic life of society).22 However, after the European empire’s expansion reached the sea, nomos gradually lost its intrinsic connection to dwelling and its role as a guiding principle for orientation.23 In Schmitt’s world, neither ecology nor anthropology has a place, as the Earth became an object of governance by being reduced to a Cartesian coordinate system on a two-dimensional plane.24 While Bratton adopts a more neutral, even welcoming stance toward technological evolution, liberating technology from the political order, he overlooks the broader interconnections between different actors underlying technological systems. In his framework, the Earth possesses political attributes, but its subjectivity is only realised through the operations of technology rather than inherent to itself.
Bratton states that instead of reviving ideas of nature, we must reclaim the artificial—
21 Benjamin Bratton, Antikythera, DOI 10.5015/4727-9064.
22 Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York: Telos Press, 2006), 324-335.
23 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Planet: An Emergent Humanist Category,” Critical Inquiry 46, no. 1 (Autumn 2019): https://doi.org/10.1086/705298.
24 Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 220-254.
not fake, but designed,25 which creates a dichotomy rooted in modernity. As Bruno Latour discusses in his nature/culture framework, these two can never be entirely separate and purified, and as James Lovelock’s Gaia theory claims, living forms are not only influenced by but also influence their environments. Gilbert Simondon also reminds us that the artificial is always a specific stimulation of nature, and there is always humanity embedded within the technical beings.26 The technical object, in turn, is always open to indeterminacy. To understand our artificiality as opposed to nature is to claim the desire to see our domain as excluded from the network of nature.
In Paul Edward’s study of climate science as a global knowledge infrastructure, he points out that the concept of a false dichotomy between “models versus data” highlights that these elements are not independent but instead mutually influence and shape each other.27 Besides climate science, this interplay is also evident in other scientific studies and Earth observation, where predictive models are part of theoretical constructs, rendering simulation and prediction governance based solely on direct output ineffective. Since models are deeply rooted in historical data and inseparable from technological mediation, this interconnectedness suggests that the models used for forecasting environmental changes are neither entirely objective nor free from inaccuracies. These models often contain errors and misalignments, with some issues potentially remaining unresolved indefinitely.
Our understanding of the Earth resembles an ascending spiral staircase. Before the subject-object division, cosmologies were sensory and sacred. However, modernity renders the cosmos an object to be instrumentalised. Yet, it was through the increasing advancement of scientific instruments during the Cold War that humanity could rediscover the existence of Gaia. Now, with the intrusion of Gaia, modernity appears as a malfunctioning machine, its flaws laid bare. When disoriented, a reset becomes necessary—a recalibration of our tools and frameworks. We require a new intelligence capable of redeploying technologies in suitable frameworks. This is not about composing grand narratives but about resetting protocols.28
25 Benjamin Bratton, “Planetary Sapience,” Noema, June 17, 2021, https://www.noemamag.com/planetary-sapience/.
26 Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, 253.
27 Paul Edwards. A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming, (MIT Press, 2010), 13-27.
28 Bruno Latour, “Let’s Touch Base!,” in Reset Modernity!, ed. Bruno Latour (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016), 11-23.
14: Visualisation of 30,000 Planned Satellites from the Starlink Generation 2 Constellation, as of 2022. Different sub-constellations are illustrated in varying colours. Image by European Southern Observatory.
Figure 15: Simulation of Surface Temperature and Sea-Ice Extent Changes. The model, based on historical data and future greenhouse gas projections, shows changes at four time points, with results averaged from nearly two dozen climate models. Data archived at LLNL.
Figure
Mechanism and Reductionism Aren’t Enough
Since the 17th century, a vision of rational order has shaped society, drawing humanity’s imagination toward the idea that we live in a world as logical as Newtonian Laws, forming the basis of modernity. Yet this vision carries a hidden and persistent illusion: the belief that human society can be categorised into a precise and manageable framework. This belief, however, fails to account for many aspects of social relations.
How humans regulate the environment has always aligned with how they regulate their own bodies. Both involve the composition of figure-ground, which laid the unified tone in the early stages of modernity. The classical mind-body problem, establishing dualisms and aligning with culture-nature and subject-object, forms the foundational framework of the modern constitution. In Descartes’ ontology, the world is composed of two distinct substances: res cogitans (the substance of thought) and res extensa (the substance of extension),29 His famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”), prioritises the thinking subject as the basis of certainty, creating a conceptual divide where the mind is seen as autonomous and immaterial, while the body belongs to the deterministic, physical realm.
Descartes’ view of the body emphasises the existence of a subjective world that must rely on extensions (technology) to perceive images of the external world. This external world, independent of subjective perception, operates according to objective laws. This dichotomy leads to the growing separation between the mind and the body, causing an inherently contradictory worldview: on the one hand, humans attempt to grasp the eternal laws of the objective world through a static and reductionist lens; on the other, they modify the external environment — through subjective consciousness and constructed knowledge.
The reductionist worldview also leads to understanding the human body as a physical entity akin to a machine. This “body-machine” metaphor frames the body as composed of various parts, each functioning as a mechanical component. These parts interact through linear causality, ensuring the proper operation of the Cartesian body-
29
machine. This perception shapes modern medical approaches long regarded as purely scientific and technical, frequently conducted within closed systems. The emergence of laboratory science marked the rise of modern medicine, which reconceptualised the body as a closed mechanical system, or in other words, a construction site30 — where every element and process could be measured, modified, augmented, suppressed, or substituted with organic or inorganic artefacts.
We should not underestimate the value of reductionist worldviews, as their quantified and structured approaches provide a lens beyond human intuition, helping us better comprehend the world’s complexities. While this approach has its merits, it presents limitations when applied to complex systems like human health.31 Many non-Western medical traditions offer complementary insights by emphasising the dynamic interplay between internal and external aspects of the body, viewing health as a balance between the individual and their environment.32 This holistic perspective becomes particularly relevant when considering medical ethics. For instance, the ethical dilemmas in diagnosis and treatment are too complex to be resolved solely by qualified professionals. Deriving universal moral principles in the same way one deduces mathematical theorems is fundamentally flawed. These challenges instead belong to the public realm, where they must be addressed collectively rather than confined to specialised technical experts
Addressing complexities beyond scientific reductionism demands re-instituting diverse cosmotechnics to offer new epistemologies and methodologies. For example, Yuk Hui identifies Chinese medicine as an example of cosmotechnics, employing cosmological principles like Yin-Yang and Wu Xing to stress holism, prevention, and self-regulation.33 In contrast, Western medicine focuses on precise diagnostics and interventions after illnesses arise. This contrast underscores the value of integrating diverse approaches to complement one another. We need to re-institute science and technology at different levels, not to diminish their authority or exclude them from decision-making processes, but rather to incorporate them better, reshaping their knowledge structures in the process and re-politicising.
30 Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, Are We Human?: Notes on an Archaeology of Design (Lars Müller Publishers, 2016), 222.
31 Hakon Boman Andresen, “Reductionism Isn’t Enough for Public Health,” Cause Health Blog, August 22, 2016, https://causehealthblog.org/2016/08/22/reductionism-isnt-enough-for-public-health/.
32 Ibid, 222
33 Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics, 18.
René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy (Springer, 1984), 39-78.
Figure 16: Drawing Supposing the Function of the Pineal Gland, by René Descartes, from Treatise of Man (1596-1650). res extensa - res cogitans as the set of Cartesian dualisms forms the foundation of the modern constitution, separating the world into Nature and Culture.
Figure 17: Chinese public health poster, ca. 1933. In the early 20th century, after China was forced to undergo modernisation, technology remained unresolved. A typical example is traditional Chinese Medicine struggled to position itself in relation to modern medicine.
Figure 16: X-ray Image of a Hand with a Wedding Ring, from the exhibition “Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840–1900” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Beatriz Colomina agures with X-rays, the inside becomes the outside. Modern architecture absorbed this logic to transform itself.
Figure 17 (Left): Chinese Acupuncture Chart, 1906. The body is viewed as an interconnected whole, where physical, mental, and emotional aspects are integrated. The concept of meridians (Jing Luo) is central, which are believed to connect the (internal) organs and (external) the flow of Qi.
Figure 18 (Right): The “Neijing Diagram” views the human body as a symbol of the microcosm, reflecting the philosophical concept of the unity between heaven and humanity
Perpetual Peace: A Goal Never Realised
Under the constitutional framework of modernity, science continuously pursues finding answers to “ matters of fact,” which is an instituting process. The institutionalisation of modern science operates as a self-reinforcing and regulated loop, circulating only reductionist information that aligns with its internal logic. This loop cannot tolerate errors or contradictions, deploying binary oppositions to suppress challengers. New “facts” tend to replace rather than mediate, necessitating the elimination of old “facts.” Oscillating between loops and binaries, this process perpetuates an unnecessary iconoclasm, which is then countered by equally blunt means.
This iconoclasm arises because dissenters often adopt the same binary logic, perceiving the world as divided strictly into enemies and allies. Such tendencies extend beyond the scientific domain, simultaneously shaping knowledge fields and discourse structures while intertwining with politics, technology, and economy, impacting forms of mobilisation.
Bruno Latour uses the debate between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes as an illustrative example to demonstrate how to keep absolute power and maintain perpetual peace.34 Boyle, regarded as one of the founders of modern science, developed a method centred on observing artificially produced phenomena in laboratories. Boyle argued that experiments were the foundation for producing natural philosophical knowledge. This knowledge, which he believed to be a matter of fact, could be falsifiable and independent of humans, instruments, and methods. However, the design flaws in the air pump used to produce scientific facts provided Hobbes with a basis to critique the experimental method. In contrast, Hobbes’s solution lies in political rationality. His Leviathan aimed to resolve the conflict framed by religious interpretations of “nature” and thereby escape religious wars.
Both Boyle and Hobbes assumed the existence of a singular nature and a singular order. By treating nature as the ultimate truth, they merely extended religious conflicts in another form. Latour argues that Boyle and Hobbes together constructed 34 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 15.
a programme to purify the discourses of nature and society by symmetrically erasing each other’s influence. TThis distinction between science and politics is a defining characteristic of modernity and is constantly reinforced by it. As Latour explains: ‘they are inventing our modern world, a world in which the representation of things through the intermediary of the laboratory is forever dissociated from the representation of citizens through the intermediary of the social contract.’35
Today, Hobbes’s sovereignty solution is challenged by another new monster: the Anthropocene. In the Anthropocene, institutions such as politics and science are not static entities. They actively discover, articulate, and regulate diverse and often conflicting forms of agency. These institutions generate distinct territories that can be architecturally mobilised and reconfigured as networks of agency. Confronting these instabilities requires an acknowledgement that science cannot provide indisputable facts. The epistemological shift from matters of fact to matters of concern necessitates recognising that the forms of existence of both nature and technology are plural rather than singular.
Figure 19: Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, drawn by Abraham Bosse, 1651. Hobbes distinguishes the body natural and the body politic, where the sovereign functions as the head and the citizens as the organs.
Figure 20: In the mid-17th century, Robert Boyle, aided by Robert Hooke, developed a vacuum pump, creating a new experimental system of natural philosophy. Thomas Hobbes, however, questioned the validity of Boyle’s experiments and their philosophical foundation.
Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics
There’s no point in pretending that peace could exist in modernity. The expectation of a peace treaty has never been realised. Instead, there is merely a truce—a temporary cessation of hostilities, not a lasting peace. To accomplish any agreement, we must first confront the reality of conflicts and recognise that resolution is only possible through the politics of negotiation— a process of envisioning different procedures and making protocols through common interests. However, such agreements remain elusive without bringing a common interest in our planet—or the cosmos. The cosmos must be part of the discussion, not as an object to be managed on a planetary level, but as an interlink of many modes of existence that facilitate conversations. Subsequently, a new architecture might emerge, which presents a conversation to multiply and catalyst variations rather than imposing direct modifications.
For Yuk Hui, cosmotechnics offers a pathway to ontological pluralism.36 By synthesising Taoist and Confucian thought, he juxtaposes Chinese and Western technologies, indicating that diverse technics exist beyond the technological paradigm of Western modernity. He suggests that every culture must reflect on the question of cosmotechnics to pave the way for a new cosmopolitics to come.37 However, in his perspective of cosmologies and cosmotechnics, there is no possibility of circulating and exchanging. In a world composed of hybrids, where nature and culture are indistinct, the communications and entanglements among cosmologies remain underexamined in his work.
Rather than anchoring cosmotechnics in cultural divisions, we need redirect our attention to the cosmos we want to project, compose and share. This shared cosmos would enable diverse modes of existence, foster technodiversity, and facilitate communications necessary for exchange and coexistence to achieve cosmopolitics. In this cosmopolitical proposal, the cosmos exists without singular representation or authority, and its presence is enacted through the creation of artificial manners. There is no single language that can encompass the full diversity of discourses. The essence of the proposal lies not in achieving consensus but in ensuring that all voices remain
36 Yuk Hui, “Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics,” e-flux journal, no. 86, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/86/161887/cosmotechnics-as-cosmopolitics/.
37 Ibid.
present and respected in the decision-making process, rejecting any simplifications or exclusions.38 Therefore, a more intricate description of the entanglement between patterns and phenomena is required.
From the perspective of agential realism, matter is understood not as the property of things but as an ever-changing web of relations.39 Thus, it needs as many technologies as possible to construct diverse perspectives, enabling multiple descriptions rather than singular identification. Knowing, in this sense, is not about attaining precision or dominance in discourse but a capacity for delicate negotiation, holding multiplicities in tension.40 Consequently, the order could be recognised as a temporary and precarious articulation of contingent practices shaped by efforts to establish order amidst inherent uncertainty and ambiguity.41 Ambiguity, in turn, catalyses imagination, paving the way for conversations to unfold.
38 Isabelle Stengers, “The Cosmopolitical Proposal,” in Making Things Public, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 994-1003.
39 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke University Press, 2007), 35.
40 Metamorphic Zone, Sensing, Knowing, Instituting, workshop in collaboration with the MFA Curating, Goldsmiths, University of London, December 2024.
41 Chantal Mouffe, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically (London: Verso Books, 2013), 13-29.
From Representation to Conversation
We live together through observation and conversation in a shared existence. According to Gordon Pask, the conservation of consciousness aligns with the conservation of matter and energy in a strictly scientific sense of physical transformations.42 Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle tells us that we cannot precisely measure both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time, the results of observation are not the phenomena themselves but the outcomes of the interaction among multiple actors: the observer, the observed, the methods, the instruments, and even external uncertainty variables. In the same way, conversation—rich with ambiguities and disruptions—is an evolving process rather than a static certainty
Conversation is rarely linear or orderly; it is inherently chaotic. Picture a public space where unexpected noises punctuate the rhythm, drawing focus and shaping meaning. Yet, noise is not always a disruption that needs to be eliminated but an essential element that enriches conversations, offering accidental directions. Rather than excluding it, noise should be embraced as a compass that navigates collective discussions. We require well-designed frameworks and protocols that embrace disorder to facilitate effective exchanges.
Information is a difference that makes a difference; it can do so because the pathways along which it circulates and is continuously transformed are inherently dynamic.43 Therefore, to design for conversation means, first and foremost, rejecting direct representations and translations which fix variations. Instead, it values entangled, ambiguous, proliferative, chain-reactive, and potential-rich informational configurations. Based on this, we can imagine a range of technological interventions— for sense, measure, calibrate, regulate, multiply, switch, and so on—not to impose tool-driven or functional tendencies, nor to reach and maintain a constant state, but to enrich nodes and pathways within the network, perceiving action as a trajectory. Consequently, technodiversity might be realised and sustained.
Architecture not only exists within the platforms constructed by technological
42 Paul Pangaro, “Cybernetics and Conversation,” Communication and Anti-communication, May 1996, https://www. pangaro.com/published/cyb-and-con.html.
43 Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 460.
objects but also continuously assembles new technological configurations. Perceiving architecture as an active form to circulate fluxes, the relationship between figure and ground could potentially be reversed or even completely overturned, follow that, the nonlinear causalities embedded in networks become more perceptible, and we may have more opportunities to identify key moments when cosmotechnics could emerge. Cosmotechnics, along with its corresponding architectural and institutional possibilities, does not emerge and operate according to hierarchy or linear causality. Instead, they constantly communicate with recursivity and circularity, continuously occurring half-alignments for potential negotiations.
Cosmotechnics brings forth more compositional possibilities of technological objects and potentials for these compositions to catalyse new relationships rather than simply expanding categories of technologies. Conceiving cosmotechnics as a compositional mode of existence, we might finally activate a positive feedback loop where energy, material and information fluxes continually transform and exchange, which could disrupt the closed global system of synchronised information and technology. Such an effort could create the conditions for constructing new epistemologies and epistemes that move from identification to negotiation. By valuing dynamics and processes, a more complex network of entities, actors, agencies, and institutions will unhide. Ultimately, the global will reveal the earth again, where we will meet each other halfway.
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