|
License Agreement on scientific materials use.
|
|
|
Thing, form, compactness: T. Garcia’s ontology and its heuristic potential for the philosophy of science and technology
|
Valerii Alexandrovich Moskvitin
Baltic State Technical University “VOENMEH” named after D. F. Ustinov, St. Petersburg
|
|
Submitted:
October 28, 2026
|
|
Abstract.
The study aims to substantiate the heuristic potential of Tristan Garcia’s formal ontology for addressing problems in the philosophy of science and technology. The work provides a comparative analysis of the philosopher’s key concepts – thing, form, content, ontological inferiority, and compactness – in relation to classical and contemporary metaphysical approaches. At the ontological level, the study substantiates the universal and egalitarian status of the thing, which exists independently of human perception. Within this framework, the form – content dichotomy describes the identity of objects without recourse to substantialism, while the principle of compactness asserts the inseparable connection between a thing’s essence and its spatiotemporal position. The article demonstrates the applicability of formal ontology to problems in the philosophy of science, including the status of scientific objects and the reinterpretation of the problem of induction through the field of intensities, as well as to problems in the philosophy of technology, such as the individuation of technical devices, the digital environment, and a non-anthropocentric ethics of artificial intelligence. The study identifies fundamental limitations of this approach, including the lack of an operational definition of intensity and the problem of the historical variability of the form of scientific objects. The scientific novelty lies in systematizing the principles of T. Garcia’s post-correlationist metaphysics as a basis for overcoming anthropocentrism and rethinking the fundamental categories of scientific and technological cognition. The study demonstrates that Garcia’s formal ontology possesses considerable heuristic potential for the philosophy of science and technology, but requires further critical reflection and operational adaptation.
|
Key words and phrases:
Тристан Гарсиа
формальная онтология
спекулятивный реализм
философия науки
философия техники
Tristan Garcia
formal ontology
speculative realism
philosophy of science
philosophy of technology
|
|
Open
the whole article in PDF format. Free PDF-files viewer can be downloaded here.
|
|
References:
- Гарсиа Т. Форма и объект. Трактат о вещах. СПб.: Бартлби и компания, 2026.
- Гудмен Н. Факт, фантазия и предсказание; Способы создания миров / пер. с англ. Т. А. Дмитриева и др. М.: Логос, 2001.
- Делез Ж., Гваттари Ф. Что такое философия? М.: Академический проект, 2009.
- Латур Б. Пересборка социального: введение в акторно-сетевую теорию. М.: Высшая школа экономики, 2014.
- Никоненко С. В. Аналитическая традиция в философии: теории, классики, школы. СПб.: Русская христианская гуманитарная академия, 2022.
- Симондон Ж. Индивид и его физико-биологический генезис / пер. с фр. Я. И. Свирского; предисл. Ж. Гарелли. М.: Институт общегуманитарных исследований, 2022.
- Хайдеггер М. Бытие и время / ред. В. Айрапетян; пер. В. В. Бибихин. М.: Академический Проект, 2015.
- Харман Г. Объектно-ориентированная онтология: новая теория всего / пер. с англ. М. Фетисов. М.: Ад Маргинем Пресс, 2024.
- Черняк Н. А. Спекулятивный реализм vs корреляционизм // Вестник Омского университета. 2019. Т. 24. № 2.
- Bensusan H. N. Towards an Indexical Paradoxico-Metaphysics // Open Philosophy. 2018. Vol. 1. No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2018-0012
- Erkan E. Tristan Garcia's Electric Ontology: Thought and its Deracinated Image // Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge. 2020. № 36. https://doi.org/10.20415/rhiz/036.r03
- Frade C. Social theory and the digital: The institutionalisation of digital sociology // Acta Sociologica. 2025. Т. 68. № 1.
- Hanna J., Auger J., Encinas E. Reconstrained Design: A Manifesto // Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '17 Companion). N. Y.: Association for Computing Machinery, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1145/3064857.3079141
- Wilde N. Burning Bridges: The problem of relations in object-oriented ontology – a topological approach // Palgrave Communications. 2020. Vol. 6. No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0406-7
- Žukauskaitė A. Organism-Oriented Ontology // Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research. 2025. Vol. 10.
|
|
