Fwd: Austrian Team Splits 'Ding-An-Sich'

Jeffrey Fisher jfisher at igc.org
Wed Sep 18 18:59:27 PDT 2002


ok, i know at least a few of you (e.g., doug) are already subbed to nettime, and i know this has little do with much left, but it struck me, in the context of looooong arguments about habermas or neohegelianism or whatever as something many on the list would enjoy.

besides which, the headline/subject line had me literally laughing out loud, before i'd even read the article . . .

j

nb: this is not sterling. it's from a little known but very funny site, futurefeedforward.

/---/ Begin forwarded message:

From: "futurefeedforward" <fff at futurefeedforward.com>

Date: Tue Sep 17, 2002 06:19:35 PM US/Central

To: bruces at well.com

Subject: Austrian Team Splits 'Ding-An-Sich'

September 18, 2014

Austrian Team Splits 'Ding-An-Sich'

VIENNAÛWriting in this month's issue of the journal

Science, a team of researchers at the Vienna University of

Technology report a breakthrough discovery in the field of

noumenal physics. Working in a state-of-the-art lab

equipped with a specialized chamber capable of

compressing objects to 1/1,000,000th of their normal size

through the use of high-energy, self-contained 'gravity

pits,' the team managed to uncover, and then split, a never

before isolated entity known as a 'ding-an-sich' or a

'thing-in-itself.'

"The importance of this discovery cannot be overstated,"

notes Uli Werner-Werner, Executive Editor of the Journal

of Noumenal Physics. "It goes to the heart of one of the basic

hypotheses of noumenal physics, namely that objects

consist of something in addition to their constituent,

perceptible parts; a sort of 'thingness' that makes an

object what it is."

Tracing its roots to the work of Prussian-born philosopher

Immanuel Kant, noumenal physics rejects traditional

interest in the fundamental building-blocks of matter in

favor of a theory of 'things' and 'superthings.' "We're

through with splitting quarks and knitting fuzzy fields,"

explains Werner-Werner. "That's an Achilles and the hare

approach that can only take us so far. What we're doing is

taking a step back and asking bigger questions."

Postulating the existence of a ding-an-sich behind every

ordinary object and just out of the reach of human

understanding grounded in "sense perception and its

extension through the techniques and technologies of

traditional experimental science," the Austrian team,

lead by Professor Hanni Chiang, sought to confirm the

existence of such 'things,' but faced a seemingly

insoluble quandary: how do you confirm the existence of

something that is, by definition, imperceptible, even

through the use of perfect instruments with infinite

sensitivity and resolution.

"It's not a trivial problem," explains Professor Chiang.

"Our first approach was to compress objects beyond the

threshold of perceptibility, to just take this chair and

make it so teeny tiny that all of its perceptible properties

would be stripped away, just leaving the Ding, but we hit a

wall with that. We burned through our budget, a good budget,

something like [$2.3 billion U.S.], and we were still

likely millions of orders of magnitude from our goal."

Last June, however, with the addition of Professor Eric

Lougha of the University of California at Berkeley, the

team's research took a new direction. "Eric helped us turn

the problem on its head," recalls Chiang. "Rather than

making the object imperceptible, we realized we could just

make ourselves insensate. [Eric] introduced us to a

special derivative of a small, Central American,

high-altitude cactus, and, within days, every member of

the team had seen the ding-an-sich."

During subsequent tests, the team successfully split the

ding-an-sich of a laboratory stool, creating two complete

but distinct 'things' underpinning the stool. "It just

looks like an ordinary stool," explains Chiang. "But there

are actually two Dings there. Essentially, it's two stools

with all of the properties of one stool. It may sound very

through-the-looking-glass, but there you have it."

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