Dear Eduardo, and all,
I have been puzzling over the thread on knowledge containers from a few weeks ago. The thread raises a number of interesting philosophical problems regarding, for example, realism and anti-realism of artifacts, and interpretation and explanation in social sciences and humanities. I have found a couple of riddles that I think you and other’s following the thread might enjoy.
To quickly recap, in the thread on knowledge containers you discussed some views about understanding knowledge contained in artifacts. In your comments on Warburg’s Mnemosyne process, you describe artifacts as containing latent cultural elements that are ready to be understood and that those cultural elements can be designated as “knowledge”. In your posts you gave the examples of a hammer and a book.
Following Warburg’s view, I might imagine an archeologist digging up a hammer and concluding that it contains knowledge of an ancient culture. Or I might imagine a historian finding a lost book in a dusty old archive and concluding it contains a missing piece of knowledge. The following riddles relate first to the hammer example and then to the book example.
1.
Simon is walking in the countryside and he finds a small wooden shed. He likes the shed so much he decides to take it home. So Simon reconfigures the wooden shed as a functioning wooden boat and sails it home along a river. Once he reaches home he reconfigures it as a shed once again.
What “knowledge” would a Warburgian Iconologist understand as contained in the shed?
This riddle refers to the Ship of Theseus problem and the installation ‘shedboatshed’ by artist Simon Starling that won the Turner Prize in 2005.
2.
Simon writes “My dog has fleas” on two pieces of paper. He takes one of the pieces and further separates it into one-word segments. He then takes five people. He gives the first piece of paper to the first person. Then he gives to each of other people a one-word segment. He then lines up people in a row and asks them to think about what’s on their piece of paper. Even though “My,” “dog,” “has,” “fleas,” were each in someone’s consciousness, they were only united in consciousness of the person who held the first piece of paper.
What “knowledge” would a Warburgian Iconologist understand as contained in the first piece of paper?
This riddle refers to William James’s Principles of Psychology (Vol. 1, p.160).
Best,
Luke
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