Outline for a Recursive Curriculum
While contemporary pedagogies struggle to come to terms with the implications of new technologies for traditionally entrenched approaches to teaching, conceptual engagement with computation-as-such remains a remote theoretical specialization, even as its resources continue to transform the techniques and vocabularies of virtually every discipline. Meanwhile, as radical philosophies recommit themselves to progressive ambitions, motivated by the long-dormant promise of rationalist universalism, their strategies and concerns remain directed towards the preconstituted field of social realities, with little emphasis placed on the considerable practical difficulties of securing the ideological bases of a planetary society capable of operating in a fully cosmopolitan register.
This paper will draft a framework for a cohesive form of universal education. Placing the organization of knowledge under the sign of computation, a recursive curriculum reasserts the ideal of scientia generalis as a principle of conceptual unification, positioned to serve as the lingua franca of a planetary culture commonly invested in natural inquiry. The terms of this program would work to correct the inherited academic model, according to which critical reflexivity appears only at the end of an incoherent course of learning to reveal its limits and insufficiencies. It constitutively rejects the claims of those enemies of reason who block the propagation of scientific resources in the name of cultural parochialism, making the security of a common education the rallying point for an effective global politics.
Michael Ferrer is an insurgent scholar living in Portland, OR. He was previously creative director at Spooky Action in St. Louis, a leading venue for experimental music and performance. He has written about neuroscience and Continental philosophy, the ludic impulse in 20th century art, and contemporary electronic music.