Towards a History and Pre-History of Knowledge
* Article: Andreas Keller, Towards a History and Pre-History of Knowledge. Borderless Philosophy 4 (2021): 124-168
Description
Andreas Keller:
"Active information or “knowledge” in the wider sense always arises inside dissipative structures, be it organisms, ecosystems, people, groups and organizations or institutions of people, civilization as a whole or parts of it, or the combined ecosphere/civilization.
This thermodynamic aspect of epistemology is missing from classical epistemology.
All processes in which active information/knowledge arises are processes within dissipative structures. The knowledge in our libraries and in our electronic storage devices, on the internet and inside our “clouds” develops in dissipative structures of our human bodies and brains, our cultures, our science, our economy, society, and civilization. Processes of knowledge-generation require physical systems. The formalisms (formal theories, algorithms) of logic, mathematics, and classical epistemology are implemented in physical systems and can arise only in physical systems, and these physical systems are always dissipative structures or, at some level, part of dissipative structures."