Abstract
Vilém Flusser’s approaches to epistemology and science fiction are explored in connection with the fictionalism of Hans Vaihinger and other late 19th and early 20th century philosophies, as well as using an architectural metaphor of scaffolding and blueprints. From his 1980 essay “Science Fiction” Flusser’s two approaches to science fictions are labeled as 1) a ‘falsification strategy’ and 2) an ‘epistemology of improbability.’ These are further explored as metaphors for architecture and building based on ideas from his “Wittgenstein’s Architecture” in The Shape of Things: a Philosophy of Design and compared and contrasted with visual metaphors of the fantastic in the paper architecture called The Obscure Cities series by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. Further reinforcing the connection between Flusser’s and Vaihinger’s philosophies, semi-fictions and real fictions are envisioned as a type of new media architecture.
Highlights
Among the most compelling aspects of Vilém Flusser’s philosophy is his conceptualization of fictions within science as a means of uncovering truth
From his ideas of apparatus theory, to the differences between humans and vampyroteuthis, to his thoughts on design and architecture, Flusser remained open to conceiving of a systematic search for a potentially ontological ‘truth’, while allowing for various fictions to interplay with verifiable facts as part of a system of uncovering. This reaches a highpoint in his later career in his two works Da dúvida (1966) translated as On Doubt (2014) and “Science Fiction” (1988) translated (2015). In his introduction to On Doubt Flusser states “Doubt, allied to curiosity is the cradle of research, of all systematic knowledge” but he immediately warns of the intellectualization or concentration of doubt that, “In a distilled state doubt kills curiosity and is the end of all knowledge.” (p. 3) This paradoxical ‘doubt of doubt’ undoes most of the search for both truth and useful technology brought about by a scientific epistemology
Flusser provides a potential backstop against this by embracing and expounding a dual approach to gaining truth through scientific fictions in balance with unknowns and epistemic doubt: In one such epistemology, nothing can go about arriving at truth, but instead approach truth more and more, by applying two complementary strategies
Summary
Among the most compelling aspects of Vilém Flusser’s philosophy is his conceptualization of fictions within science as a means of uncovering truth From his ideas of apparatus theory, to the differences between humans and vampyroteuthis, to his thoughts on design and architecture, Flusser remained open to conceiving of a systematic search for a potentially ontological ‘truth’, while allowing for various fictions to interplay with verifiable facts as part of a system of uncovering. This reaches a highpoint in his later career in his two works Da dúvida (1966) translated as On Doubt (2014) and “Science Fiction” (1988) translated (2015). This is both practical, in the realm of scientific discovery and design, and theoretical, in the realm of literary theory and narratology
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