Finite Infinity Research Articles

Czy istnieje norma językowa? Między snobizmem i modą a potrzebami języka

In this article, I engage in a discussion of the approaches of the normativists postulating the absence of a linguistic norm and assuming the identification of the norm with usus. I have made an attempt to prove the existence of the norm as a level of internal organisation of language, based on linguistic and mathematical-computational considerations. I accept the need for separate models of language: linguistic and mathematical, which serve different purposes and have different properties. I ponder the dual nature of language manifested by its finite infinity, assuming that only the usus is infinite. I postulate the adoption of a theory (formulated by K. Kłosińska) assuming the existence of an invariant norm together with ‘allonorms’. I also propose the introduction of the probabilistic Gaussian model into the codification procedures of the linguistic norm as a method objectifying the procedure and removing the (qualitative and quantitative) arbitrariness of codifiers.

Hofstetter Kurt: Ich Schaue in den Himmel um Mich zu Erden (I Look up to the Sky to Ground Myself)

Hofstetter Kurt: Ich Schaue in den Himmel um Mich zu Erden (I Look up to the Sky to Ground Myself)

Derrida’s Glas between Hegel and Levinas

Derrida’s Glas can be interpreted against the background of a confrontation with Hegel, after and with Levinas. Derrida’s position in front of the great shadows of tradition (see “Violence and Metaphysics”) becomes in Glas an exceeding of the limits, searching for the other than logos, for instance, remains or writing. Glas is interpreted on the background of Derrida’s reading of Levinas: against the archeologic totality of Hegel’s system, Glas does not oppose nevertheless the eschatological infinity of a metaphysical alterity, but rather the finite infinity of a transgressive desire for contingency. Language, art, and literature, much more than the ethical or religious dimension, are external phenomenological transcendence, against which Hegel’s system of absolute knowledge and Genet’s literary experiments are constantly measured.

Finite Infinity: Reading Gasché Reading Derrida Reading Hegel … “and so on without an end”

Research Article| November 01 2017 Finite Infinity: Reading Gasché Reading Derrida Reading Hegel … “and so on without an end” Francesco Vitale Francesco Vitale Università di Salerno, Salerno, Italy Francesco Vitale is associate professor of esthetics at the University of Salerno, Italy. His academic interests have focused on Derrida’s work since his PhD dissertation in philosophy on Derrida’s relation to Hegel (University Federico II of Napoli, Italy). He is the author of many essays on Derrida, published in Italian, English, French, and Japanese. In recent years, he has been working on a research project on Derrida and the life sciences entitled Biodeconstruction (forthcoming from SUNY Press in 2018). His main publications devoted to Jacques Derrida are Mitografie. Jacques Derrida e la scrittura dello spazio (Milano, 2012) and Spettrografie. Jacques Derrida tra singolarità e scrittura (Genova, 2008). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google CR: The New Centennial Review (2017) 17 (3): 43–61. https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.17.3.0043 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Francesco Vitale; Finite Infinity: Reading Gasché Reading Derrida Reading Hegel … “and so on without an end”. CR: The New Centennial Review 1 November 2017; 17 (3): 43–61. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.17.3.0043 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressCR: The New Centennial Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Michigan State University Board of Trustees2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Cosmic clocks, cosmic variance and cosmic averages

Cosmic acceleration is explained quantitatively, purely in general relativity with matter obeying the strong energy condition, as an apparent effect due to quasilocal gravitational energy differences that arise in the decoupling of bound systems from the global expansion of the universe. ‘Dark energy’ is recognized as a misidentification of those aspects of gravitational energy which by virtue of the equivalence principle cannot be localized. Matter is modelled as an inhomogeneous distribution of clusters of galaxies in bubble walls surrounding voids, as we observe. Gravitational energy differences between observers in bound systems, such as galaxies, and volume-averaged comoving locations in freely expanding space can be so large that the time dilation between the two significantly affects the parameters of any effective homogeneous isotropic model one fits to the universe. A new approach to cosmological averaging is presented, which implicitly solves the Sandage–de Vaucouleurs paradox. Comoving test particles in freely expanding space, which observe an isotropic cosmic microwave background (CMB), possess a quasilocal ‘rest’ energy E=⟨γ(τ,x)⟩mc2 on the spatial hypersurfaces of homogeneity. Here : the lower bound refers to fiducial reference observers at ‘finite infinity’, which is defined technically in relation to the demarcation scale between bound systems and expanding space. Within voids γ>1, representing the quasilocal gravitational energy of expansion and spatial curvature variations. Since all our cosmological measurements apart from the CMB involve photons exchanged between objects in bound systems, and since clocks in bound systems are largely unaffected, this is entirely consistent with observation. When combined with a non-linear scheme for cosmological evolution with back-reaction via the Buchert equations, a new observationally viable model of the universe is obtained, without ‘dark energy’. A quantitative scheme is presented for the recalibration of average cosmological parameters. It uses boundary conditions at the time of last scattering consistent with primordial inflation. The expansion age is increased, allowing more time for structure formation. The baryon density fraction obtained from primordial nucleosynthesis bounds can be significantly larger, yet consistent with primordial lithium abundance measurements. The angular scale of the first Doppler peak in the CMB anisotropy spectrum fits the new model despite an average negative spatial curvature at late epochs, resolving the anomaly associated with ellipticity in the CMB anisotropies. Non-baryonic dark matter to baryonic matter ratios of about 3:1 are typically favoured by observational tests. A number of other testable consequences are discussed, with the potential to profoundly change the whole of theoretical and observational cosmology.

A `finite infinity' version of topological censorship

A local version of the topological censorship theorem of Friedman, Schleich and Witt is obtained. The assumption of asymptotic flatness, in the sense of admitting a suitably well behaved null infinity, is replaced by a much milder approximate asymptotic flatness condition along the lines of Ellis' notion of finite infinity.

Infinity and the Relation

In Double Session, Jacques Derrida, commenting on Jean-Pierre Richard's use as examples of the themes the blank and the fold in the work of Mallarme to demonstrate the ideally exhaustive and totalizing possibilities of thematic criticism,1insists in resistance to this demonstration that, despite the apparent richness of these examples: What one tends not to see . . . is that these textual effects are rich with kind of poverty.... One does not see this because one thinks one is seeing themes in the very spot where the non-theme, that which cannot become theme. . . is ceaselessly re-marking itself that is, disappearing. (DIS 251) On Derrida's account, there is certain optimism in Richard's identification of critical possibilities in the infinite field of the an optimism that persists despite Richard's recognition of the factual limits that prevent the encompassing of such field as well as of the problems posed by the diacritical character of language. Derrida, in by now familiar move, identifies this optimism with the absolutizing pretensions of the metaphysical tradition, and, most explicitly, with Hegel's Aufhebung. This identification is not gratuitous, for on the basis of the passage just cited, in few pages Derrida offers an account of infinity that purports to supplant, as both its possibility and its impossibility, the metaphysical tradition's conception of infinity, the highest expression of which as Derrida understands it is located in Hegel's philosophy. Briefly, in the ceaseless remarking of the blank, of the non-theme, Derrida locates structurally necessary finitude at work in the infinite field of the supplementary difference, a certain inexhaustibility which cannot be classed in the categories of richness, intentionality, or horizon (DIS 250). It is this supplementary difference, to which Richard's optimism is blind, that according to Derrida renders any totalizing project like Richard's impossible. As thus characterized, this finite infinity is nothing other than Differance and it is thus necessary, if we are to adequately account for the particulars of Derrida's thought, to come to some understanding of the supplementation he offers to the classical notion of infinity. Unfortunately, the discussion of infinity in Double Session, falling as it does somewhat outside of the stated scope of the essay (cf. DIS 250), is somewhat curtailed. Rodolphe Gasche, in his essay Nontotalization Without Spuriousness: Hegel and Derrida on the Infinite, has attempted to fill in some of the detail of the analysis whose conclusion is presented in Double Session, paying particular attention to the Hegelian contexts of Derrida's understanding of infinity.3 There is another context, however, that I would argue plays significant and substantial role not only in Derrida's understanding of infinity but in the entirety of his philosophy, but which, in connection to the question under discussion here, has received little attention. The context to which I refer is Derrida's reading of Husserl, and in particular, his discussion of Husserl's use of the Idea in the Kantian sense.4 Despite the generally acknowledged importance of to Derrida's thought, little attention has been paid to the Husserlian contexts of Derrida's understanding of infinity. One possible explanation for this is that in the discussion of infinity in Double Session, Derrida refers to Husserl only once. In footnote, noting Richard's identification of his project as phenomenology of the theme, he connects his reservations about Richard's optimism to questions posed to in his Introduction to Husserl's Origin of Geometry (DIS 248 n. 3). The necessity of Husserl to the discussion of Double Session becomes more evident,however- when we note first that in his essay Pit and the Pyramid, Derrida insists on the continuity of the analysis of Hegel articulated there with his earlier analysis of Husserl's Logical Investigations. …