(un)limited epistemologies
Throughout the prior photo essay, with each image accompanied with a musing on the nature of extinction, the notion of epistemological limits continually arises. The photo representing the butterfly effect is paired with the claim “The death of a butterfly could change the course of history forever, but how would we ever know?” Similarly, the ammonite fossil elucidates “a descending staircase into a prehistoric world humans are incapable of understanding.” Lastly, the mountain of bison skulls features “Too many skulls to properly comprehend the slaughter that took place.” Extinction suggests the definitive end of the timeline for a given species or world, but the photo essay’s inclusion of concepts such as the butterfly effect and chaos theory suggests the coexistence of many possible worlds: some extinct, some emerging, some both. However, the existence of these simultaneous timelines—or at least simultaneous possible timelines/futures—remain inaccessible to humans.
Inspired by Félix Guattari’s notion of “virtual ecologies” (88-97), I wish to further examine our ecological connection to future worlds, even if these worlds necessarily fall outside of our epistemological limits. Could grasping at these possible futures (whether they contain extinction or growth) have something in common with palaeontology or archeology? For example, palaeontology offers an interpretive practice for imagining the past. Palaeontologists are presented with phenomena and stimuli and then develop hermeneutic tools for understanding previous worlds. Could thinking about the future follow this exact method, but inversely? Perhaps we can develop interpretive tools for phenomena which does not exist yet. However, these tools do not have to be devoid or separated from the past, but can emerge from re-descriptions of the past which best suit unknown futures. This concept could be called in other wor(l)ds. Within it contains the notion that re-imaginings and re-articulations of the past can radically open up our understandings of the future(s). This idea is very much in line with Gilles Deleuze and Guattari’s interpretation of the “concept” which they describe as a vector for thought (16). Concepts are not neutral. We use concepts, not to describe the world but the make the world new.
The below video demonstrates a type of epistemological limit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUir28Lrllg
works cited:
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. What Is Philosophy?. Columbia University Press, 2014.
Guattari, Félix. Chaosmosis: an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Power Publications, 1995.