Structures in Becoming 01

For well over three decades, the natural sciences have intensively focused on dynamic structures and developed new mathematical models and simulations for them. The research on active matter is exemplary in this examination of emergence, transformation, and transgression of complex material structures of order. The developments in the past few decades have challenged the everyday understanding of matter and structure, and profoundly altered the structural thought in various sciences. For quite some time now structure and materiality have no longer been addressed as oppositions. For example, structure is now conceived both materially and historically. And one could also add here that it is seen as becoming. On the other hand, matter is argued to be its own, analogue code.

Essential for the experimental and theoretical analysis of these material structures is the question of changes and breaks. Natural sciences understand structure and materiality on the basis of emergence, transformation and instability. Human sciences contain parallel developments, e.g. the radicalisation of classical structuralism through the problem of structural incompleteness in Jacques Lacan, the prevalence of the problematic of becoming in Gilles Deleuze, or the notion of dissipating structures in Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers.

Finally these and other perspectives shed new light on the ancient philosophies of nature and the entire history of materialism (e.g. Heraclitus’ dynamic notion of the One or Lucretius’ enigmatic signifier clinamen) as well as enabling new interpretations of phenomena, which challenge the traditional dichotomy of nature and culture (e.g. the structure of the drive). The lecture series Structures in Becoming will examine the current state of structural thought as well as its more or less distant history through discussions with leading representatives from the natural and human sciences.