Digital “Vitalism” and its “Epistemic” Predecessors: “Smart” Neoteric History and Contemporary Approaches

Abstract

Scientific and technological inventiveness scarcely appears isolated. It is rather accompanied by a general cultural atmosphere, which may transfer influences from one cultural domain to another, often in a non-rational unconscious way. We may unveil analogous epistemological correlations between different scientific approaches, usually imposing the predominance of leading paradigms to others, of minor importance. We may also signalize the association of such leading “smart” scientific or technological paradigms to the totality of social expression, and thus to the representational art practices, to generalized social behavior and even to the political context of a given historic period. In this sense, we may also detect preceding scientific or cultural influences, which participate in future scientific and cultural formations and may incubate a future “smart” reality and give birth to it. Such correlations could probably be detected, between the contemporary “smart” approaches of the topology oriented design references or present-day digital technology and the scientific and cultural interest of the nineteenth century, the latter focusing on change, movement, and evolution. We could even use the terms “digital vitalism,” in order to refer to contemporary “animate” digital design in correlation to the notion of “vitalism,” correlated to the eighteenth and nineteenth-century mystical belief that a non-physical element, an inner “spark,” gives motion to beings. According to romantic thought, such vital energy could even be extended to inorganic beings; why not, to the inorganic, morphogenetic presentations of our computer screens.