Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Sensible Atoms: A Techno-aesthetic Approach to Representation

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
NanoEthics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This essay argues that nano-images would be best understood with an aesthetical approach rather than with an epistemological critique. For this aim, I propose a ‘techno-aesthetical’ approach: an enquiry into the way instruments and machines transform the logic of the sensible itself and not just the way by which it represents something else. Unlike critical epistemology, which remains self-evidently grounded on a representationalist philosophy, the approach developed here presents the advantage of providing a clear-cut distinction between image-as-representation and other modes of existence of images, such as the one of ‘imaginaction’ that I draw from a comparison between far-field and near-field microscopies. Once this regime of imaginaction is distinguished from representation, I focus on nanotechnological percepts and argue that they follow a transmodal logic. I then draw the implications of this enquiry in terms of a new sensible condition that changes the way we think of non-living objects. Finally, I conclude that if techno-aesthetics dares to posit and articulate sensibility beyond the privileged sphere of subject/object relationships, it simultaneously engages us to consider the political character of our responsibilities towards the design of nano-engineered sensorial spaces.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. By ‘life-world’ (Lebenswelt), I refer to the Husserlian notion of our ways of being in the world as that which is self-evident, given, and where ‘living-together’ takes place, prior to any scientific explanation of it.

  2. Tore Birkeland and Roger Strand [9] argue that nano-images are to be considered as real ‘images’ provided that we understand ‘image’ in terms of information about some processes and properties that matter in certain contexts rather than in terms of representation. David Goodsell [29] makes a similar argument. As to Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison [18], they claim that the visual culture of nanotech has discarded the ideal of faithful representation in favour of another one, that they call ‘right manufacture’. But they do not tell whether or not the ideal of ‘right manufacture’ entails epistemic values besides engineering and artistic values.

  3. The Rayleigh criterion states that two points can be separated only if the distance between them is greater than half of the wavelength used to resolve their position. The smallest wavelength of the visible light spectrum is 400 nm (violet). The resolution of standard optical microscopy is thus limited to 200 nm.

  4. Note that Lucretius already stated that ‘even those things that we perceive to be sensible are produced (…) from insensible elements’ ([44]: 860).

  5. This was Locke’s point: only ideas of primary qualities are true resemblances; ideas of secondary ones are not. Ideas of primary qualities resemble the real qualities in the bodies, whereas ideas of the secondary ones are only modifications of the primary qualities with regard to our own complexion ([42]: VIII §§ 9–21).

  6. Baumgarten’s attempt was indeed promptly dismissed by Kant as ‘the disappointed hope (…) of subjecting the criticism of the beautiful to principles or reason, and so of elevating its rules to a science’ ([38]: 22n)—a rather harsh dismissal allowing the same Kant to hijack the term ‘aesthetic’ in order to refer: 1. in the Critique of Pure Reason, to that which remains in sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) when isolated and abstracted from all knowledge and conceptual representations, that is, the pure a priori form of empiric intuition or receptivity (i.e. Euclidian space and linear time), in which all phenomena are given and then submitted to the jurisdiction of understanding (Verstand); 2. in the Critique of Judgement [39], to the feelings that constitute judgments of beauty and the sublime, said to be ‘aesthetic judgments’ as they are grounded neither in one’s objective knowledge nor in one’s interest for the existence of an object regarding its capacity to satisfy one’s needs or interests, but only on the sort of ‘superior’ and disinterested pleasure (and pain, concerning the sublime) provided by the pure presence of the object as a representation of the subject (and concerning the sublime, by the feeling of its impossible full presence and partial withdrawal from representation).

  7. Leibniz already distinguished between absence of clarity and lack of distinction. At the lowest level are the obscure and subconscious ‘petites perceptions’, for which we have no concept and cannot recognize any object. Then, apperception, which is clear and conscious, divides itself into confused and distinct. In clear but confused apperception the object is associated with a multitude of features that we cannot list separately by recognising distinctive ‘marks’ (notae) allowing the object’s properties to be distinguished. Then, clear and distinct apperceptions, are in turn inadequate (incomplete) or adequate (complete), as well as symbolic (mediated by artificial signs) or intuitive. The complete and intuitive ones constitute the intelligence of God. Baumgarten was not so much calling for a rupture with all epistemological hierarchy as he was claiming that there is more than only one kind of epistemological hierarchy and that, consequently, the ‘clear and confused’ kind of cognition is capable of an intrinsic kind of perfection [45].

  8. As Leyla Haferkamp [32] notices, this even makes Baumgarten a compelling predecessor of Deleuze’s own transcendental empiricism as a ‘logic of sense’ aligned on a ‘logic of sensation’.

  9. The concept of ‘imaginaction’ stems from a common work with Bernard Stiegler and Xavier Guchet, during a three-year seminar on nanotechnology hosted by the Institute of Research and Innovation at the Centre Pompidou of Paris (http://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/evenement/nanotechnologies/). But the term ‘imaginaction’ is Stiegler’s [64]. He coined it in a workshop on ‘hyperminiaturization’ by referring to what I was calling ‘imagotechnology’. In a narrow sense, I was using this term to denote the apparatuses that do not produce images of a distant object but that include the object in their functioning so that the manipulation of the object and the production of an image are one and the same process. In a broader sense, ‘imagotechnology’ refers to new ways of ‘imagining matter’ as it entails a particular ‘schematism’, a Kantian concept that will be made use of and explicated below. One way to differentiate between the two might be to say that ‘imagotechnology’ designates the material setup that produces an ‘imaginaction’. But I will avoid referring the former to the object and the later to the subject, as what interests me is the interweaving of the technical and the conceptual.

  10. i.e., a ‘logical picture’ of a ‘state of affairs’.

  11. i.e., what ‘is the case’ or what is not: a fact.

  12. i.e., the picture.

  13. Wittgenstein avoided this difficulty by stating that the sign is also a fact, and thus, that a relation of co-ordination is nothing more than a relation between two facts.

  14. Bas van Fraasen is, by today, the most distinguished advocate of this tradition [66].

  15. See the interesting attempt of Otávio Bueno. He develops an account of visual evidence as ‘the result of some partial mappings between the surface and the image of the sample, so that certain relations among the items in the sample are preserved and represented in the image’. This partial matching is of course inferred, and sometimes with the help of ‘the theoretical image that was used as a guide in the elaboration of the experiment’, which is experienced as resembling the experimental image ([13]: 134–135). Bueno argues that ‘both realists and empiricists can adopt the account’ ([13]: 137). However, he explicitly put that such a debate between realism and empiricism becomes merely a matter of more or less and not a matter of interpretative clash.

  16. Note that there are others elements than probe microscopy that allow asserting the primacy of touch in the nano-realm: optical or magnetic tweezers used to grab proteins and measure the forces of molecular motors [14]; nanotribology, the science of textures and friction at the nanoscale [6]; and molecular recognition, that the chemist Jean-Marie Lehn describes as molecules processing information by touching each other [41] in a way recalling Whitehead’s key concept of ‘prehension’ [69].

  17. The explanation for the alleged primacy of touch in the transmodal sensible of nanotech is that touch, more than any other sense, has a transmodal character. For Jean-Luc Nancy ([49]: 17) ‘touch is nothing other than the touch of sense altogether and of all the senses. It is their sensuality as such’. By touch, all the senses are substitutable to each other. This is why that there is no genre of art specifically dedicated to touch, remarks Nancy. Following Nancy, Derrida [24] undertakes to show that behind the apparent privilege of sight in philosophy as the sense of distance and contemplation lays an old haptocentric tradition that awards privilege to touch in order to dispute the legitimacy of any hierarchies between the senses.

  18. This illustrates a simple truth about touch: it the sense of violence in its most straightforward form. As Derrida [24] recalls, many taboos are expressed as a principle of ‘don’t touch!’…or rather, ‘do not touch too much’—a half-permissive taboo underlining the need to insert a minimal distance—some tact—in the relation between the feeler and the felt (a reversible relation since touch is also where self affection first stems: one is always ‘touching-touched’ before becoming ‘seeing-visible’ and ‘hearing-oneself-speak’). In order to allow the emergence of awareness of the world and of the others, touch has to be measured.

  19. It is this image that Bueno [13] calls ‘theoretical image’.

  20. ‘The photography, if photography there be, is already taken, already developed in the very heart of things and at all the points of space’ ([7]: 31).

  21. Which is directed controversially against classical empiricism (Hume, Berkeley, etc.), for which a memory is only a sensation of less intensity.

  22. Simondon’s Imagination et invention [63] walks in the footsteps of Bergson’s non-representational account of images: images do exist even before being perceived; they partake to a cycle that begins before us. But whereas Bergson insists on actual perception as a subtraction, a cut into the plane of images, Simondon insists on invention as an antidote to proliferation: images require our potentials of artistic or technical invention in order to be guided into existence, along the lines of a common world. Otherwise, they may form autonomous worlds that catch people like dreams do. To Simondon, invention is image-driven, but it also seems to be a way to expel images out of ourselves.

  23. For he himself distinguishes the thought experiment of pure and instantaneous perception from the ‘concrete and complex perception—that which is enlarged by memories and always offers a certain breadth of duration’ (Bergson [7]: 26). He will then retrace his steps to correct what he himself declares to be ‘excessive’ by bringing memory back in again.

  24. The late Merleau-Ponty grants flesh to be ‘the Sensible in itself, this anonymity innate to Myself’ (Merleau-Ponty [46]: 139), ‘the formative medium of the object and the subject’ (Merleau-Ponty [46]: 147).

  25. Following Graham Harman’s ‘object-oriented philosophy’ [34, 35], Brown’s ‘nothing-otherthan-object’ also challenges another Heideggerian dichotomy: between ‘thing’ and ‘object’. Heidegger was indeed praising the former—the jug or the old bridge [36]—as unveiling the ontological structure of the world and disqualifying the former as expressing modern science’s and metaphysics’ will to subject the world to categories of representation (substance/properties, matter/form, etc.). Nano-objects overcome this dichotomy: a nanomachine for example, is a technical object, but also a thing, since its mode of existence is not exhaustible to a conceptual set of representations inherent to a specific corpus of science [30].

References

  1. Bachelard G (1949) Le rationalisme appliqué. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bachelard G (2002/1938) The Formation of the scientific mind: a contribution to a psychoanalysis of objective knowledge. Manchester: Clinamen Press

  3. Barad KM (2007) Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press, Durham

    Google Scholar 

  4. Baumgarten AG (1954/1735) Reflections on poetry. University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles

  5. Baumgarten AG (1954/1750) Aesthetica. Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, Hildesheim

  6. Belac J (1994) Nanotribology: modelling atoms when surfaces collide. Energ Tech Rev 13–24. Retrieved July 7, 2011 from https://www.llnl.gov/etr/pdfs/08_94.7.pdf

  7. Bergson H (1911/1896) Matter and memory. George Allen and Unwin, London

  8. Binnig G, Rohrer H (1999) In touch with atoms. Rev Mod Phys 71:S324–S330

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Birkeland T, Strand R (2009) How to understand Nano images. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 13:182–189

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bouju X, Joachim C, Girard C, Tang H (2001) Mechanics of (Xe)n atomic chains under STM manipulation. Phys Rev B 63:085415

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Boutibonnes P (2008) Nanoscopie vs. microscopie. Alliage 62:144–156

    Google Scholar 

  12. Brown N (2007) The inorganic open: nanotechnology and physical being. Radic Philos 144:33–44

    Google Scholar 

  13. Bueno O (2008) Visual evidence at the nanoscale. Spontaneous Generations 2:132–133

    Google Scholar 

  14. Bustamante C, Macosko JC, Wuite GJ (2000) Grabbing the cat by the tail: manipulating molecules one by one. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 1:130–136

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Carrozzini G (2011) Esthétique et techno-esthétique chez Simondon. Cahiers Simondon 3:51–59

    Google Scholar 

  16. Chapple B, Wong W (2008) Can you hear the femur play? Bone audio speakers at the nanoscale. Leonardo 41:355–359

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Crewe AV, Wall J, Langmore J (1970) Visibility of single atoms. Science 168:1338–1340

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Daston L, Galison P (2007) Objectivity. Zone Books, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  19. Deleuze G (1978) Conference presentation on musical time at the IRCAM, Paris. Retrieved May 15, 2011 from http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/texte.php?cle=113&groupe=Conf%E9rences&langue=2

  20. Deleuze G (1994/1969) Difference and repetition. Columbia University Press, New York

  21. Deleuze G (2003/1981) Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation. Continuum, London & New York

  22. Deleuze G, Guattari F (1994/1991) What is philosophy? Verso, London & New York

  23. Deleuze G, Guattari F (2004/1980) A thousand plateaus. Capitalism and schizophrenia 2. Continuum, New York

  24. Derrida J (2005/1998) On touching—Jean-Luc Nancy. Stanford University Press, Stanford

  25. Foucault M (2002/1966) The order of things. An archaeology of the human sciences. Routledge, London

  26. Gimzewski JK (2008) Nanotechnology: the endgame of materialism. Leonardo 41:259–264

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Gimzewski JK, Vesna V (2003) The nanomeme syndrome: blurring of fact and fiction in the construction of new science. Technoetic Arts 1:2–17

    Google Scholar 

  28. Gimzewski JK, Pelling AE, Sehati S, Gralla EB, Valentine JS (2004) Local nanomechanical motion of the cell wall of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Science 305:1147–1150

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Goodsell DS (2006) Seeing the nanoscale. NanoToday 1:44–49

    Google Scholar 

  30. Guchet X (2010) Design and values in nanotechnology. The case of the bacterial flagella motor (paper presented at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies, Darmstadt)

  31. Hacking I (1983) Representing and intervening. Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  32. Haferkamp L (2010) Analogon rationis: Baumgarten, Deleuze and the ‘Becoming Girl’ of Philosophy. Deleuze Studies 4:62–69

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Hammermeister K (2002) The German aesthetic tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  34. Harman G (2002) Tool-Being. Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects. Open Court, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  35. Harman G (2007) Heidegger explained: from phenomenon to thing. Open Court, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  36. Heidegger M (1971/1951) The thing. In: Heidegger M (ed) Poetry, language, though. Harper & Row, New York, pp 161–183

  37. Joachim C, Plévert L (2009) Nanosciences. The invisible revolution. World Scientific, Hackensack

    Book  Google Scholar 

  38. Kant I (1786) The critique of pure reason

  39. Kant I (1790) The critique of judgment

  40. Latour B (2004/1999) The politics of nature. Harvard University Press, Harvard

  41. Lehn J-M (2004) Entretien avec Jean-Marie Lehn sur les possibles naturels en chimie. Revue de métaphysique et de morale 43:371–380

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Locke J (1690) An essay concerning human understanding

  43. Loeve S (2010) About a definition of nanotechnology: how to articulate nano and technology? HYLE – International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry 16:3–18

    Google Scholar 

  44. Lucretius (2001/0001 BC) On the nature of things. Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis

  45. Malinowski-Charles S (2005) Baumgarten et le rôle de l'intuition dans les débuts de l’esthétique. Les études philosophiques 75:537–558

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Merleau-Ponty M (1968/1964) The visible and the invisible. Evanston, Northwestern University Press

  47. Moresco F, Gourdon A (2005) Scanning tunneling microscopy experiments on single molecular landers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 102:8809–8814

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Müller EW (1953) Image formation of individual atoms and molecules in the FEM. Journal of Applied Physics 24:1414

    Google Scholar 

  49. Nancy J-L (1996/1994) The Muses. Stanford University Press, Stanford

  50. Nordmann A (2006) Collapse of distance: epistemic strategies of science and technoscience. Dan Yearb Philos 41:7–34

    Google Scholar 

  51. Nordmann A (2008) No future for nanotechnology? Historical development vs. global expansion. In: Jotterand F (ed) Emerging conceptual, ethical and policy issues in bionanotechnology. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 43–63

  52. Pajon P (2010) ‘Nanomonde’, imaginarium et sensorium. (paper presented at the Séminaire préparatoire aux Entretiens du nouveau monde industriel, Paris). Online version: http://amateur.iri.centrepompidou.fr/nouveaumonde/enmi/conf/program/2010_1

  53. Pavlopoulos M (2010) Nanoimages: scientific or manifest? Paper presented at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies, Darmstadt

  54. Pitt JC (2005) When is an image not an image? Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 8:23–33

    Google Scholar 

  55. Rancière J (2004/2000) The politics of aesthetics: the ditribution of the sensible. London and New York, Continuum

  56. Rheinberger H-J (1997) Toward a history of epistemic things. Synthesising proteins in the test tube. Stanford Univesity Press, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  57. Rosei F, Schunack M, Jiang P, Gourdon A, Lægsgaard E, Stensgaard I, Joachim C, Besenbacher F (2002) Organic molecules acting as templates on metal surfaces. Science 296:328–331

    Article  Google Scholar 

  58. Sartre J-P (2004/1940) The imaginary. A phenomenological psychology of imagination. Routledge, London

  59. Schlovsky V (1965/1917) Art as technique. In: Lemon LT, Reis MJ (eds) Russian formalist criticism. Four essays. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, pp 3–24

  60. Schrödinger E (1992/1946) What is life? The physical aspect of the living cell. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  61. Simondon G (1958) Du mode d’existence des objets techniques. Aubier, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  62. Simondon G (1982) On the Techno-Aesthetic. Letter to Jacques Derrida. Retrived May 16, 2011 from http://dedale09.ocular-witness.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/simondon_on_the_techno%E2%80%93Aesthetic_ev1_1.pdf

  63. Simondon G (2008/1964–1966) Imagination et invention. L’Éclat, Paris

  64. Stiegler B (2010) L’hyperminiaturisation: enjeux du séminaire. (paper presented at the Séminaire préparatoire aux Entretiens du nouveau monde industriel, Paris). Online version: http://amateur.iri.centrepompidou.fr/nouveaumonde/enmi/conf/program/2010_1

  65. Stroscio JA, Celotta RJ (2004) Controlling the dynamics of a single atom in lateral atom manipulation. Science 306:242–247

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. van Fraassen B (2008) Scientific representation: paradoxes of perspective. Clarendon, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  67. Vesna V, Gimzewski JK (2004) Cell gosts. Retrieved July 7, 2010 from http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/projects/04-05/cell/

  68. Wall J, Langmore J, Isaacson M, Crewe AV (1974) Scanning transmission electron microscopy at high resolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 71:1–5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  69. Whitehead AN (1979/1929) Process and reality: an essay in cosmology. The Free Press, New York & London

  70. Whitehead AN (2004/1920) The concept of nature. Tarner Lectures. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  71. Wittgenstein L (2007/1922) Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Cosimo, New York

Download references

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to all who have directly or indirectly contributed to the coming into existence of this essay: Catherine Allamel-Raffin, Xavier Bouju, Boo Chapple, Joël Chevrier, Christian Joachim, Xavier Guchet, Andrew Mayne, Colin Milburn, Alfred Nordmann, Gritt Ruhland, and Bernard Stiegler.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre d’Etudes des Techniques, des Connaissances et des Pratiques (CETCOPRA), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 17 rue de la Sorbonne, Paris, cedex 05, 75231, France

    Sacha Loeve

Authors
  1. Sacha Loeve
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sacha Loeve.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Loeve, S. Sensible Atoms: A Techno-aesthetic Approach to Representation. Nanoethics 5, 203–222 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-011-0124-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-011-0124-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation