Don Ihde | Postphenomenology: Experiencing Materiality

MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
Design & Computation Series, organized by PhD student Athina Papadopoulou with Prof. Terry Knight

Our history has many variations on what counts as materiality. I will begin with looking at several high points, including Democritus's atoms, presumably inexperiencable; modern science's transformations of atoms, now manipulatable; Marxism's Dialectical materialism; and finally Postphenomenology's experiencable materiality. I will draw from long work in design, art, and technoscience.

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Don Ihde's career has encompassed three emphases. Early in his career, he undertook original studies in phenomenology, notably in the works Listening and Voice, Experimental Phenomenology, and more recently in Postphenomenology (Northwestern University Press, 1973). He has also been a North American pioneer in the philosophy of technology, publishing the widely recognized Technics and Praxis and Technology and the Lifeworld. More recently, he has turned to science studies or "technoscience." In these areas, his works Instrumental Realism (Indiana University Press, 1991), Expanding Hermeneutics:Visualism in Science, and Bodies in Technology are prominent. Ihde is researching imaging technologies and epistemology. He is active internationally and regularly gives doctoral seminars in several European countries. He directs the Technoscience Research Group and the Technoscience Research Seminar at the University. Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde (SUNY Press, 2006), contains essays concerning Ihde's work by nineteen prominent scholars has also been recently published.