The Changing Faces of Space

This book focuses on various concepts of space and their historical evolution. In particular, it examines the variations that have modified the notions of place, orientation, distance, vacuum, limit, bound and boundary, form and figure, continuity and contingence, in order to show how spatial characteristics are decisive in a range of contexts: in the determination and comprehension of exteriority; in individuation and identification; in defining the meaning of nature and of the natural sciences; in aesthetical formations and representations; in determining the relationship between experience, behavior and environment; and in the construction of mental and social subjectivity. Accordingly, the book offers a comprehensive review of concepts of space as formulated by Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Einstein, Heisenberg, Penrose and Thorne, subsequently comparing them to notions developed more recently, in the current age, which Foucault dubbed the age of space. The book is divided into four distinct yet deeply interconnected parts, which explore the space of life, the space of experience, the space of science and the space of the arts.

Inhalt

The Space of the Living Beings: Umwelt and Space in Jakob von Uexküll.- Technology and Oikologia: Ethics and Ontology.- The Emergence of Thymic Space in L. Binswanger.- The Emergence of Thymic Space in L. Binswanger.- Geometric and Intuitive Space in Husserl.- Geometric and Intuitive Space in Husserl.- First Notes on Cosmological Aesthetics.- First Notes on Cosmological Aesthetics.- Invert it if you want to understand it. Left and Right in the Mythic and Aesthetic Space.- The City to Come. Lines of Flight from Deleuze to Koolhaas Commentary.