The noetic turn

from language-based to tool-based knowledge trees

Peter Weibel

pp. 155-175

in: Gerald Bast, Elias G. Carayannis, David J. Campbell (eds), Arts, research, innovation and society, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

For thousands of years, knowledge was organized according to the metaphor of a tree. Therefore, we speak of trees of knowledge. These trees hide a hierarchy of knowledge, starting with the Greeks and their differentiation between technê and epistêmês and ending with Ludwig Wittgenstein "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" (TLP, 5.6). The dominant ideology is, that language serves as the primary medium of knowledge. This essay argues that language was only the first medium to describe the world but we have developed new media, new tools to describe and to construct the world. Technology is seen as an extension of the medium of writing.

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig