User:Aitantv/Siegried Zielinski (2006) Deep Time of the Media

Bioluminescence

• "the ability of certain plants and animnals independent of all sources of artificial and natural light in the vicinity to emit short flashes of light or to glow over a longer period of time without any increase in the organism's temperature." (p 13)
• George Batatille on the productivity mania of capitalism in contrast to nature: "The Sun's rays, which we are, ultimatley find nature and the meaning of the sun again: it has to expend itself, lose itself without calculating the costs. A living system either grows, or it expends itself for no reason."

Gotthilf Heinrich

• star light (phosphoresent light) v sun light: "allowing us to see everything around us only in rather broad and large outlines" (p. 16)
• This light adresses, "with the particular terrors that attend it, above all that kindred part of our being, whcih exists in semi dark feelings rather than clear and calm understanding; its shimmer always has something ambivalent and indefinable about it." (p. 18)

Eurocentrism

• "The entire gamut of social models, theories, and worldviews that seek to universalize have arisen from the notion of the center: the modern nation-state and democracy, capitalism and communism, Christendom, the notion of the world as a harmonic organism or as a single gigantic mechanism." (p25)

Possibility v reality

• "within a clearly defined context, the unsuccessful search for something is balanced by a fortuitous find, and this discovery is acknowledged as a possibility of equal worth" (p. 28)
• One deeply rooted error of philosophy is that possibility is the shadow of reality. Wittgenstein asserts the opposite.