Disaster as 'Sign': Abstract Art

TARGET: Paul Virilio's Museum of Accidents

Paul Virilio’s website and museum Unknown Quantity is comprised of an exhibition of images and art installations displayed from 29 November 2002 – 30 March 2003 at Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris. The website is a “Museum of Accidents.” It is our Target instruction for this course, and it serves as the basis for the purpose and application aspects of the method we will use to invent a fatal strategy. Virilio's home page states:

Unknown Quantity will attempt to explore one of the most important issues raised in Paul Virilio's most recent writings: the increasing development of accidents as an indirect consequence of man's inventions (par. 1)

I find Virilio's claim (through Paul Valéry and others) that our use of the instrument/technology is becoming transparent to our consciousness interesting. He suggests that that the object of use value is now taken for granted in such a way that its physical presence actually disappears or is absorbed into the outcome it permits (which, perhaps, is similarly taken for granted). If I am reading him correctly, Virilio seems to suggest that we are only conscious of our actions and the vehicles we use to communicate through when something goes wrong. He also suggests that in order to understand this (our) present reality we have to enter into the conscious space of the accident and see the world from that perspective. His whole project--his "inaugurat[ion of] a new kind of museology and museography" ("Foreword," par. 5)--highlights this outcome.

I tried to examine my reaction to the images in "The Museum of Accidents" (especially the exhibit space with the moving floor that simulates a catastrophe--in an interestingly controlled way). The static stillness of the images seems at odds with the events they depict. I was able to (I think) see Virilio's point about the consciousness of the accident--not literally, of course, because the accident itself is not conscious of itself as accident but only in my response to it. The accidents (particularly their static, removed nature in the images on Virilio's site) and my very conscious reaction to them not only enables my recognition of what has gone wrong in the images, but enables that recognition only in the context of my perception of the same scene without the catastrophe (which could be seen as being similarly static in the unconscious system of rules and processes that maintains its 'normality' and also make it unconscious to perception in everyday life). The image itself, divorced not only from its reality in time and in content but also given a new context by its surroundings (the website, the accompanying explanatory text, etc.) is peculiarly both present and absent. I think this has something to do with the performative nature of exhibition and the fact that these disasters are being displayed as art (another seeming problem area in my reception of the images).

Let us now accept Valéry’s postulate: if consciousness exists only for accidents and if things now operate only 'outside of' consciousness, the loss of consciousness of the accident, and of the major disaster, would amount not just to thoughtlessness, but to madness—the madness of voluntary blindness. ("Foreword," par. 13)

In the above excerpt, Virilio states that our everyday interactions in life are carried out outside of consciousness. Does he mean that we literally overlook the vehicles we use to interact with each other and function in contemporary society? If I consider the computer I am using to make this post, is it my inability to fully understand the series of software and hardware devices that are enabling my communication that is unconscious in me or am I unconscious (as in thoughtless) of what I am doing with my words here? I'm not sure, but I don't think that Virilio means the latter (although that might be up for debate). Perhaps an argument could be made that my use of language is unconscious because I take for granted that individual words have specific meaning without questioning that logic.

VIRILIO AS TARGET

We have to look at Virilio’s website in terms of its content as a way of thinking.  Virilio is looking at the accident as a metaphysical substance.  To return back to an earlier post, substance is what underlies/persists through change (Aristotle).  It is the definition of entelechy: what persists in its own being through change (class notes).  Substance is what is real; it becomes known through its accidents.

Virilio invites us to look at the accident in its modern guise.  He emphasizes the idea that the accidents on his website are unexpected.  They exist as the expression of potential but they also surprise (class notes). Professor Ulmer wants us to look at the accident and do with it what Aristotle did with literacy.  We need to look again at the nature of ontology in a new context.  This new context is a world of technicity, which we need to revisit without metaphysics because, at this stage in the CATTt method we are using, “we don’t have what the Greeks created of metaphysics yet.  Right now, we just want to read the world as presents itself to us” (class notes). 

We then have to invent a metaphysics because the Target slot needs to have a metaphysics; it needs to have a discourse (class notes).  We need to use electracy's fourth inference principle of conduction to make associations.  We therefore need to use aesthetics, the arts, as "a way to organize our information" (class notes).  With Virilio, we must try to "reduce the complication [of his ideas] to simplicity" (class notes).  In his "Foreword," Virilio states

If, in fact, invention is just a way of seeing, of grasping accidents as signs, as opportunities, it is high time to open up our galleries to the impromptu, to that “indirect production” of science and the techno-sciences that is the disaster, the (industrial or other) catastrophe. ("Foreword," par. 8) 

Professor Ulmer pointed out that Virilio specifically identifies the instructions for our Target in this sentence. We need to treat the accident as a sign.  We have to adopt a position of reversability: "we don't explain the accident, it will explain us.  This has bearing on Virilio's statement, quoting Paul Valery, that "'consciousness now exists only for accidents'" ("Foreword," par. 9).  "We want to make cultural use of the accident." The accident is primary; it shows us reality.  "It shows us who we are."  "We need to use it as a category to explain the nature of the real if we can read it and write it as a sign.

This new ontology happens in painting.  The 'grammar' was invented in modernist painting.  "Cezanne validated and expanded a new way to put space and time into an image.  He used color to do it" (class notes).


Paul Cézanne, Kastanienbäume im Jas de Bouffan (1885-1887)

 We need to know the eidos (“the distinctive expression of the character of a culture or social group” (OED)) of disasters.  In terms of our project Target, we need to think about the graphic properties of our accident and ask ourselves what sort of effects we can create graphically so a person can understand what we want to say and 'read' it (class notes).  "Art is intuitively intelligible because it addresses flesh" (class notes), as in the vulnerability in the presence and contours of the real.  "We will comprehend images through an embodied experience" (class notes).  By standing "outside the normal, expected position, [we will] notice" the world and, if I'm interpreting my notes correctly, we will notice our being in it as our own space, not the borrowed space of the general.

My attempt at an abstract design of the visualization of my accident is in the next post.

Technics

technics (noun)

"the doctrine of arts in general; such branches of learning as respect the arts" (Definitions.net).

"rules of field of knowledge: the science or rules of a field of knowledge, especially a technical one ( takes a singular or plural verb )" (Encarta.msn.com).

n.
     1. technics (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The theory, principles, or study of an art or a   process.
     2. technics (used with a pl. verb) Technical details, rules, or methods.
     3. Variant of technique.
adj.
     Technical.

[From Greek tekhnikos, of art, from tekhn, art; see technical.] (thefreedictionary.com)

Entelechy

The term "entelechy" combines the three Greek terms enteles (complete), telos (end, purpose, completion), and echein (to have). Aristotle coined the term "'entelechia' (and 'energia') in contrast with 'dunamis' in discussing the distinction between "actuality" and "potentiality." One example used by Aristotle to illustrate the distinction concerns knowledge. A given person might have the potential to know something, and so can be described as a potential knower. Once he learns the relevant fact or skill, he is an actual knower (New World Encyclopedia, par. 3). This idea was a major development in thinking. Aristotle stated that "what Plato called chôra is internal to the thing itself in the world (immanent)" (class notes): "a thing becomes what it already is through time" (class notes):

Raffaello Sanzio (1483–1520)

Aristotle's most historically influential application of 'entelecheia' outside of his metaphysics is his claim in the second book of On the Soul that the soul is the form or actuality of an organic body that makes it alive. The idea is that the various organs that make up a living body only add up to an actually living creature when they are organized in a certain way (as a rather vivid example, one might imagine the assembly of the monster in Shelley's Frankenstein). At the same time, Aristotle asserts that the entelecheia of the body (the soul) is also, in a sense, the purpose of living things, and part of the explanation for their movement. The actions of animals are directed at preserving their particular arrangement of organs and the production of new animals with the same form. This naturalist picture is complicated, however, by Aristotle's suggestion in book three of On the Soul that some aspect of the soul is not a part of the body. (New World Encyclopedia, par. 4)

[Sanzio's Painting Description: "Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms" (Wikipedia).]

 The Greeks asked themselves what the nature of humankind is: what is our essence, our potential.  Aristotle founded his answer to this question in ethics: human essence consists of happiness, well-being, and thriving.  He specified that the way/telos of happiness is "good" (class notes).

In modernity, science translates the notion of entelechy in terms of complexity theory (class notes).

From class notes:

• There is no measure in the world. From the classical world up to modernity we have to question what is the distinction between 'actual' (energia)and 'potential' (dunamis) today.
• Question: actual - potential - should be.
• Code: habitus formation. Code of morality.
• How should something be? (What is the measure?)
• How do we know the right policy?
• We have to decide what to do using policies and ethics.
• Today, there is no measure. The only measure is money/commodity
• Money as a semiotic system.
• Entelechy: human beings are becoming 'open,' emergent.

Chôra

CHÔRA

Raffaello Sanzio, The School of Athens (1483–1520)

The invention process in electracy uses the ideas behind the Greek word chôra.  Chôra is related to the term “nous” in the previous post.  It's meaning helps to think about how the world of becoming (the image of the real world) comes together with Being.  Chôra means the “place, space, reason within which things interact” (class notes).  Marian Hiller contrasts Philo of Alexandria’s notion of chôra with Plato’s, whose notion of the form of space is that "it never departs at all from its own character" whereas Philo argued that "its pattern [is] an eternal idea in the divine mind," in the following passage:

Philo . . . [states] that the creation of the world was after the pattern of an intelligible world (Gen. 1:17) which served as its model. During the first day God created Ideas or Forms of heaven, earth, air (= darkness), empty space  (= abyss), water, pneuma (= mind), light, the intelligible pattern of the sun and the stars (Op. 29). There are, however, differences between Philo and Plato: according to Plato, there is no Form of space (chora). In Plato space is not apprehended by reason; rather it had its own special status in the world. Also pneuma as a Form of soul does not exist in the system of Plato. Plato designates this primordial unorganized state of matter a self-existing Receptacle; it is most stable and a permanent constituent: ‘It must be called always the same, for it never departs at all from its own character’ (Plato, Timaeus 50b-c). Philo, being a strict monist could not allow even for a self-existing void so he makes its pattern an eternal idea in the divine mind. Before Philo there was no explicit theory of creation ex nihilo ever postulated in Jewish or Greek traditions. Both Philo and Plato do not explain how the reflections (eidola) of Forms are made in the world of senses. They do not attribute them to God or the Demiurge because it would be contrary to their conception of God as ‘good’ and “desiring that all things should come as near as possible to being like himself.’  God could not create the copies of the Forms which should be ‘disordered.’ It seems then that the primordial unorganized matter was spontaneously produced on the pattern of the Ideas. The Logos would shape the elements from this preexistent matter, first into heavy (or dense) and light (or rare) elements which were differentiated properly into water and earth, and air and fire (Her. 134-140; 143). (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Chôra is not the world of being or the world of forms; it is the interaction between the two.  This idea has a clear relationship with how we are dealing the instructions we derive from the CATTt slots.  Electracy’s principle of conduction mandates that decision-making and the associations involved in comprehending the world around us involves making associations between things like a person would in a dream.  Professor Ulmer, in Heuretics, writes that “[a]n important aspect of chorography is learning how to write an intuition” (37).

Frederic Leighton, The Return of Persephone (1891)

The secretive cult-like aspects of the Eleusinian mysteries are an example of Chôra (class notes).  The mysteries are associated with an Athenian festival held in the town of Eleusis that honoured the goddess Demeter.  The festival derived from the story of Demeter and Persephone, after Hades abducts her and takes her down into the underworld.  Demeter’s neglect of her duties as a goddess of the grain, harvest, and fertility in her search for Persephone, lets the world’s fields go barren.  When Persephone’s whereabouts are known, Hades tricks her into eating a Pomegranate which obligates her to return to the underworld for part of the year.  Ron Leadbetter explains that this “symbolic death and rebirth is the time the seed lies in the earth and then comes to life, reborn, as was Persephone. This was the basis of the cult, a fulfilling and happy afterlife” (Enclopedia Mythica, par. 2).

The ceremony started in Athens, following as set of prescribed rituals (including sacrifices) and ended in Eleusis.  Along the way, when the procession reached “Kerameikos (the ancient cemetery of Athens),” new initiates joined the procession.  The name “Eleusinian mysteries” was in fact derived from this stage of the procession.  Leadbetter explains that the “'Mysteries’ were given this name (in Greek musteriai, from mustes, (‘an initiate’)” (Enclopedia Mythica, par. 3):

When the procession reached Eleusis they would rest and make ready for the next day, which was a day of fasting (Demeter did this when in mourning for Persephone). Once this part of the ceremony was over, the initiates drank a special brew of barley water mixed with penny-royal called, kykeon (a creeping mint cultivated for its supposed medicinal properties). The climax of the ceremony took place in the "Telesterion" (initiation hall). During the 5th century BCE, "Ictinos" designed a huge hall which would hold several thousand people. In this hall, the secret and sacred objects were shown to the initiated, and also the priestesses would reveal the vision of the holy night, which is thought to have been a fire symbolizing life after death. These rituals were kept secret, shown only to the initiated, and it was totally forbidden to speak of them publicly.

In the Hellenistic age (300-150 BCE), the cult was taken over and run by the state, and two aristocratic families from Eleusis officiated (the Eumolpidae and Kerykes). In this age, mystery cults were becoming very popular, unlike classical Greece (400s BCE) when the Eleusinian mysteries were a rare form of worship. The annual Eleusinian mysteries attracted thousands of people from all over the Greek world, and the only initial requirement to become a mystes (initiate) was to be without blood guilt nor a barbarian ( in other words, if you spoke Greek). It was open to both men and women, and remarkably, slaves were also allowed into the cult. The mysteries existed from Mycenaean times (circa 1600-1200 BCE), thought to have been established in the 1500s BCE and held annually for two thousand years. The Roman emperor Theodosius closed the sanctuary in CE 392, and finally it was abandoned when Alaric, king of the Goths, invaded Greece in CE 396. This brought Christianity to the region, and all cult worship was forbidden.

In the context of electracy, the image-based commodity culture that surrounds us is to be thought of as the space (in a choric sense) of the thing when we ask the question of how the world of becoming (the real world that we perceive around us--the image of it, the forms) and our Being interact.  Professor Ulmer writes:

[I]n commodity or consumer culture human relationships have been displaced into things, then these same things, taken up into the details of a diegesis, becomes the places of passage linking otherwise unrelated discourses (D. Miller). Conductive (electronic) logic, that is, supplements the established movements of inference between things and ideas (abduction, deduction, induction) with a movement directly between things (unconscious thought). (Heuretics 127)

Greek Invention: Nous, Pure Reason, Practical Reason

NOUS

The Greek concept of "nous," as it relates to human beings, means that "by means of intuition [we] know the nature of the real" (class notes).  This knowledge, if I am interpreting it correctly in the context of the nature of the accident, means that knowledge of the real happens in a logical space that is similar to that of the accident.

nous, (Greek: “mind” or “intellect”) in philosophy, the faculty of intellectual apprehension and of intuitive thought. Used in a narrower sense, it is distinguished from discursive thought and applies to the apprehension of eternal intelligible substances and first principles. It is sometimes identified with the highest or divine intellect. (Encyclopaedia Brittanica)

PURE REASON

Pure reason is a knowledge of what is necessary in the world: the movement of the stars, the cycle of life and death, etc. It is the surest kind of knowledge. Kant's in his "Preface to the First Edition" of the The Critique of Pure Reason states:

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.

It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic. (Trans. J. M. D. Meiklejohn, pars. 1-2)

PRACTICAL REASON

Practical reason is fundamentally rhetorical.  It concerns human decision (politics/ethics) and is contingent on human action.

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. First, there are questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume—both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in—to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? Second, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action?  (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ed. Edward N. Zalta, par. 1)

Class Notes: Nature of the Accident

Paul Virilio’s reference to the accident is a reference to the metaphysical accident; it entails philosophy.

 Electracy—a term that combines “electrical” with “literacy” (“Electracy”)—dates from the industrial revolution and century of revolution that followed (class notes). Electracy is an apparatus theory for thinking in modernity. It takes over the classification system that the Greeks invented (metaphysics) and the apparatus of literacy: alphabetical writing. Civilization is adjusting to this different apparatus in address of the question of how we can survive. Professor Ulmer states that the synonym for electracy is Virilio’s “dromosphere” (class notes). In his blog Heuretics, Ulmer explains:

Paul Virilio poses the question: what is the integral accident that may be expected to follow upon the invention and general adoption of the Internet?

In our context, he is asking: what are the consequences of electracy? Virilio introduces the neologism “dromosphere” (from “dromos,” race) to name the conditions likely to produce the General Accident. The dromosphere refers to the pollution of dimensions that follows from electronic augmentation of human thought and language. Instant communication is constricting time, eliminating the past and the future, reducing human temporality to Now-time. If the oral apparatus ran on cyclical time, and literacy on linear time, electracy operates within the moment of Now. All trajectory disappears, eliminating the journey with its departure and passages, leaving us only with pure arrival. The mood of this condition is claustrophobic, a sense of being trapped. The human condition in the dromosphere is that of being caught and held within Now-time. The paradox of this confinement is that, augmented by the technologies of telepresence, the experience of Now is separated from place, even from being-there (Dasein). ("Internet Accident," pars. 1-2)

Virilio instructs us to look at the accident and the anomalies that interrupt being.  In our accidents, the real is sharing itself.  Disasters are metaphysical; they show us something about our reality that this course is going to help us understand.  We are going to pick out this part of our reality and start to work with it in new ways.  When we get to the stage in the course when we have to decide what to do with or about our disasters, we will be using the logic of our Theory slot to find an answer using a fatal strategy.

Class Notes: Background on Heuretic Approach

Our instructions, following this heuretic learning method, will emerge from the intertext of putting all of the CATTt slots together. Something original will emerge from our set of instructions. Putting all the parts of the CATTt together is the emergent property of the heuretic method, which will result in us generating an original poetics by inventing something (class notes).

Our Target slot—Paul Virilio’s website Unknown Quantity--explains the art of the accident.  It also provides an insight into the Theory part of the CATTt.  The logic of the accident is “not covered by the inference principles of literacy” (class notes).  The “unknown quantity” in Virilio’s site surprise (being surprised by something out of the ordinary, the unexpected).  Virilio’s site is going to tell us “something about the nature of reality.  We are going to make something [in this course] that addresses that site” of reality—the site of the accident (class notes).

Blog Form

The blog form for cataloguing the invention process lends itself to experiment.  We are to think of each blog post like one frame of a film.  The hypermedia form of the blog “doesn’t hold together like an argument [as in literacy]; it holds together in a cinematic way” (class notes).  Through the repetition that the blog posts signify, an order will emerge that will represent a logical sequence of learning/invention (and the confusion along the way) that will read to our invention of a fatal strategy in part II.

For the first part of the course, we have to post approximately 25 blogs documenting our understanding (and misunderstanding) process as we tackle finding out about the policy issues and other details surrounding our disaster in the context of the instructions we will draw from our reading assignments.  The process of learning the details of our disasters in our blog posts is an inventory-taking process of the issues that are at stake in our disaster.

Our attitude should take the form and tone of confusion and concern.  The blog posts should be written and read as an articulation of the real-time process of figuring everything out.  In a sense, this early part of our blog (and perhaps the entire blog, when it is complete) is the site of an accident.  It (I) is (am) in the logical space of an accident happening in reverse, where I don’t really understand the space around me and what I am supposed to do with it because it is unfamiliar, out of the ordinary.  The CATTt will be the method I use to make sense of this space around me.  I won’t use everything I sense or feel, but I need to let what I find here tell me something about the world, life, myself, other people—the issues the heuretic learning method is concerned with.

The policy issues we document in our blogs, along with the other specifics of our disaster, will represent public opinion, commonly held world views (class notes).  The disasters we have chosen exist as disasters because there is something about them that resists solution.  This resistance must be visualizable in some way in the ‘wrongness’ or ‘out-of-the-ordinariness’ that makes up the disaster.  In this course, we will “bring fatal strategies to bear on” this resistance to solution (class notes).

CURRENT CANCER RESEARCH

To be posted.

WHAT IS CANCER? CANCER AS DISASTER

I answered this question in my blog for this course last semester here, so I won't redo the work.  The video I found below of cancerous cells metastisizing is a great visual representation of how cancerous cells replicate and eventually invade surrounding circulatory vessels and tissue. 

3D Animiation of Cancerous Cells Metastasizing 

 

Admittedly, I am having doubts about having chosen the disease cancer as my disaster for this course. I get the sense that I might repeat a lot of the information from my Spring 2010 "Apoptosis" blog. My "Apoptosis" blog focused on healthcare reform and cancer care, but it also covered many of the details of the disease--particularly my fascination with the term apoptosis. Apoptosis  is the term the Greeks used to describe petals or leaves dropping off from flowers or trees (OED).  Today it refers to the loosening of something from its origin.  In biology, the terms means the “death of individual cells” (OED).  I want to learn more about cancer at the cellular level, but I'm not sure if the scientific focus my blog might take for this course will be appropriate. In short, I am wavering about my disaster choice.

I am still interested in the term apoptosis, and I plan to explore it further if I stay with this disaster choice.  I am also interested in the term's association with the natural cycle of the death of a cell, in what scientists call a cell's suicide program or programmed cell death.  Cancer is caused by a defect in a cell's suicide program.  When the internal integrity of a cell is compromised, a healthy cell's natural response is to die in order to preserve life or for other specific purposes.  For example, cell death  in a growing embryo is responsible for the division of tissue that form our fingers and toes:

[C]ell death [] eliminates unnecessary cells. For example, during embryogenesis, the digits of our fingers and toes are sculpted by the death of cells in the intervening spaces. If these cells remained alive, our hands and feet would become webbed. Thus the timing and location of cell death, as well as cell growth and division, must be precisely controlled. (Molecular Cell Biology, "Cells Die by Suicide," NCBI, 2000)

Apoptosis specifically refers to the sequence of events that lead to the total obliteration of the cell:

The first visible sign of apoptosis is condensation of the nucleus and fragmentation of the DNA. The cell soon shrivels and is consumed by macrophages. A cell is directed to commit suicide when an essential factor is removed from the extracellular environment or when an internal signal is activated. Thus, the default state of the cell is to remain alive. (Molecular Cell Biology, "Cells Die by Suicide," NCBI, 2000)

When apoptosis fails, a cell continues to replicate without a purpose.  Normal cells are pre-programmed to reproduce between 50 to 60 times before dying, but cancer cells continue to double and re-double at at an alarming rate (1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16, etc.).  Cancer cells, unlike normal cells, do not "stop reproducing," do not "obey signals from other cells," do not "stick together," and do not "specialise, but stay immature" ("The Cancer Cell," Cancer Research UK).  Eventually these cells form into a tumour "that is made up of billions of copies of the original cancerous cell. Scientists describe cancer cells as being 'immortal'" ("The Cancer Cell," Cancer Research UK).  Depending on any number of factors the tumorous mass of cells may start to slough off into the surrounding tissue.

Cancerous cells may replicate indefinitely, and indeed be immortal, but cancer needs the host of the body.  Cancerous cells, like normal cells, need a blood supply.  As a tumor gets larger, the cells at its center get further away

from the blood vessels in the area where it is growing. So the centre of the tumour gets less and less of the oxygen and the other nutrients all cells need to survive.

In fact, scientists researching how tumours grow think that a cancer can't grow much bigger than a pin head before it needs to develop its own blood supply. Until it grows its own blood supply, the tumour cannot grow any bigger because the cells at the edge of the tumour will die due to lack of oxygen. ("How a cancer gets its blood supply," Cancer Research UK)

Later posts, if I stick with this topic, will explain research that focuses on blocking the blood supply to cancerous cells--among other recent innovations in cancer treatment.

MEDICAL INNOVATIONS BY ERA

From “Closing In On Cancer: Solving a 5000-Year-Old Mystery” by National Cancer Institute.

ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

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3000 B.C. - 800 B.C.
“MIXING MEDICINE AND RELIGION, prescribing pills and pigs' ears, the physicians of Ancient Egypt treated patients for several forms of cancer. Hieroglyphic inscriptions and papyri manuscripts distinguish between benign and malignant tumors, and reveal that surface tumors were removed surgically. For cancers of the stomach and the uterus, compounds of barley, pigs' ears and other ingredients were ordered. Ointments, enemas, castor oil, suppositories, poultices and parts of animals were among commonly dispensed medications” (par. 5).

2500 B.C. – 1600 B.C.
“Seven papyri, discovered and deciphered late in the 19th century, provided the first direct knowledge of Egyptian medical practice. Two-known as the "Edwin Smith" and "George Elbers" papyri-contain descriptions of cancer written about 1600 B.C., and are believed to date from sources as early as 2500 B.C. The Smith papyrus describes surgery, while the Ebers' outlines pharmacological, mechanical and magical treatments” (par. 6).

GREECE AND ROME

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525 B.C. - 848
“[T]he great doctors Hippocrates and Galen-who would dominate medical thought for 1500 years-lifted medicine out of the realms of magic, superstition and religion, defining disease as a natural process, and basing treatment on observation and experience. Cancers were identified, with warnings against treatment of the more severe forms” (par. 7).

“By the time of Hippocrates, Greek philosophers believed that four elements-earth, air, water and fire-each with its own quality of cold, dry, moist and hot, governed the universe. Harmony derived from balance among the four. Four corresponding fluids, or humors, governed man's health-blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Illness and disease were the result of imbalance among the four humors” (par. 8).

MIDDLE AGES

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1110 - 1478
“From the Dark Ages to the Renaissance, the Roman physician Galen (c.129-200) was the most influential figure in medicine through his writings. Appointed physician to the gladiators of his hometown of Pergamum early in his career, he gained a wealth of anatomical insight treating fractures and brutal wounds. Opinionated and prolific, he produced 500 treatises whose contents were unchallenged for 1500 years” (par. 11).

Ninth-century: Charlemagne with Popes
Gelasisus I. and Gregory I.

“The development of hospitals was an outstanding Arab contribution to medicine. . . . While monastic orders built hospitals in the Near East to care for wounded Crusaders, the great hospitals of the Middle Ages were at Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo” (par. 12).

Medieval view of disease: “Sin, Satan, astrology and the ancient Greek theory of the four bodily humors-blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile-were variously invoked to explain human illness. Uroscopy charts depicted shades and conditions of urine samples, and indicated what diseases might be the cause. Cancer continued to be explained as the result of an excess of black bile, curable only in its earliest stages” (par. 3).

RENAISSANCE

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“WITH THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, invention of the printing press, and voyages of discovery to the New World, the medieval world ended and the modern world began. In every discipline dogma was discarded, replaced by the humanist spirit of individual dignity and spiritual freedom expressed in such acts as Martin Luther's religious revolt and Paracelsus' burning of the works of Galen. Science and surgery advanced as physicians returned to direct observation of the human body” (par. 5).

1517 - 1590 
“The theory that cancer was caused by an excess of black bile (one of the so-called four bodily humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile) continued to prevail in the 16th century. Cancer was considered incurable, although a wide variety of pastes containing arsenic were compounded to treat its manifestations” (par. 8).

1609 - 1665 
“THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN SCIENCE were laid in the 17th century. Scientists asked 'how' rathen than "why," aided by the microscope and other new instruments. Galileo's telescope and Newton's laws of gravitation advanced understanding of the physical universe, and William Harvey described the continuous circulation of the blood. With the humoral theory of disease discarded, and cancer no longer attributed to bile, researchers looked for answers elsewhere” (par. 10).

The first cancer surgery is performed in the seventeeth century, but "lack of anesthesia and antiseptic conditions made surgery a risky choice" (par. 7).  "A renowned German surgeon, Fabricius Hildanus, removed enlarged lymph nodes in breast cancer operations, made amputations at the thigh, and devised a tourniquet to control bleeding. Johann Scultetus performed total mastectomies, and Marco Severinus' illustrated book on surgical pathology was a landmark in the field" (par. 7).  Gaspare Asellie discovers that abnormalities in the lymphatic system could be the primary cause of cancer (pars. 8-9). 

Robert Hooke's 'Micrographia' (1665)

 1683 - 1687 
"A DUTCH EYEGLASS MAKER, Johannes Jansen, and his son Zacharias are credited with inventing the microscope c.1590 and the telescope in 1608. The Jansen microscope was rapidly put to work by 17th-century researchers throughout Europe who investigated the structures and functions of human organs, as well as plant life and bacteria" (par. 1).

Cell discovered: Robert Hooke discovers the cell. "His observation of "cells" leads to the 19th-century theory of the cell as the basic unit of all living organisms" (par. 2).

AGE OF REASON: ONCOLOGY

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1733 - 1788
"IDEALS OF POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM ignited revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic in the 18th century. . . . Modern pathology was established, and physical diagnosis became more common. With the first systematic experiments in cancer, oncology was born as a medical discipline. Environmental cancers were reported, and hospitals specializing in cancer care were opened" (par. 4).

French physician Claude Gendron (1663-1750) finds that "cancer arises locally as a hard, growing mass, untreatable with drugs, that must be removed with all its 'filaments' (par. 5). Researchers begin to make correlations between "working conditions and the health of workers" and effects of smoking and cancer (par. 6). French scientiss Jean Astruc and chemist Bernard Peyrilhe experimented with diagnosing cancer. John Hunter makes surgery a science. He teaches that if a tumour can be physically moved, it can be surgically removed. If immovable, then the tumour, he suggested, should not be removed due its involvement with other tissues (pars. 6-8).

1800 - 1892
"A series of remarkable discoveries in the closing years of the 19th century set the stage for 20th-century research in oncology and biomedical sciences. Cancer research accelerated as Röntgen described X rays, the Curies isolated radium, and Müller observed abnormalities of cancer cells" (par. 9).

• Better microscopes "made possible the examination of cells and cellular activity. Study of cancer tissues and tumors revealed that cancer cells were markedly different in appearance than normal cells of surrounding tissue" (par. 12).
• "Ether anesthesia in general surgery enabled the science of surgery to advance rapidly" (par. 13).
• First cancer statistics collected.

1859 -1929
"Cancer research in cell culture, chemical carcinogens, diagnostic techniques and chemotherapy firmly established oncology as an experimental science" (par. 1).

• Radiotherapy treatment successful (par. 2)
• Theory posits that "cancer was due to abnormal chromosomes" (par. 3).
• New science of chemotherapy encouraged "researchers to continue the pursuit of chemical means to control cancer" (par. 4).
• 1913: "[P]ublication of the first known article on cancer's warning signs in a popular woman's magazine, and formation of a nationwide organization dedicated to public education on cancer (par. 6).
• "Theory became fact in 1915 when experiments confirmed that cancer could be induced by chemicals" (par. 7).
• "[T]he first reliable statistics on the incidence and mortality rates of cancer were compiled (par. 9).

NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE (NCI) FOUNDED

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1930 - 1950 
NCI provided new laboratories for research, encouraged advancements in surgery and chemotherapy research, and focused on early discovery of cancer. "Techniques for diagnosing cancer at earlier stages were developed in the years following World War II, and efforts towards public education increased" (par. 17).

1952 - 1971

• 1953: "James Watson and Francis Crick unveiled their model of the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the cellular material carrying genetic information. The genetic code was soon broken, and many discoveries followed" (par. 1).
• "Cancer researchers discovered much of the new information on cells" (par. 1).
• Chemotherapy treatment successes lead to the NCI's "National Chemotherapy program devoted to testing chemicals that might be effective against cancer" (par. 3).
• "By the late 1970s, some 45 chemicals had been found effective against 29 forms of cancer. After a time, researchers found that combinations of drugs were more effective against cancer than those given singly. Childhood leukemia was one of the first cancers that could be cured in this manner. . . . A four-drug combination developed by Vincent DeVita raised the cure rate of Hodgkin's Disease from nearly hopeless to 80 percent" (par. 5).
• "By the mid-1960s, the inescapable correlation [between smoking and cancer] led the United States Surgeon General to issue a public report on smoking and health (par. 6).
• Environmental pollutants: "A connection seemed possible between the increasing incidence of cancer and industrial pollution of the environment" (par. 7).
• "James and Elizabeth Miller showed that many chemical carcinogens are really pre-carcinogens, able to cause cancer only when metabolized. They are thought to damage DNA, producing cancer-generating errors in the genetic code" (par. 8).
• "Howard Temin and David Baltimore discovered an enzyme, reverse transcriptase, which explained the mechanism by which RNA viruses convert their genetic information into DNA, making genetic engineering possible" (par. 9).
• "Enactment of the National Cancer Act in 1971 created a National Cancer Program administered by the National Cancer Institute. Its Director was to report directly to the President" (par. 10).

1972 - 1981 

"OVER THE PAST DECADE AND A HALF, scientific discoveries have combined to create entirely new technologies such as genetic engineering and production of synthetic antibodies. Cancer research has been both a source and a recipient of much of this progress. Insights into cell mechanisms and the immune system have ended the search for a "magic bullet" to cure cancer; rather, today's treatments are designed to operate in known ways against known processes" (par. 1).

"While conducting genetic studies in the early 1970s, Peter Duesberg and Hidesaburo Hanafusa discovered that the RNA virus that causes cancer in chickens contains a gene (src) that produces a protein necessary for cancer. Removing that gene prevented the virus from inducing cancer. The researchers had found the first oncogene" (par. 3).

• "Teams led by Robert Weinberg and Michael Wigler were able to pinpoint the first human oncogene. Since that time, several human oncogenes have been identified" (par. 3)
• "Soon after the discovery of an oncogene, Harold Varmus, Michael Bishop and Dominique Stehelin found a gene in seemingly normal chicken and human cells that was similar to the src gene that could induce cancer in chickens. They named it a "proto-oncogene" and suggested that it is present in normal cells of most animals" (par. 5).
• Cell fusion technique creates a "special kind of antibody. This antibody, named a 'monoclonal antibody,' would have an enormous impact on cancer diagnosis and treatment (par. 7).
• "Researchers realized that the body itself had a system that could be, and often was, used to fight cancer. A new biotechnology, hybridoma technology, enabled the immune system to be manipulated and enhanced. As more and more is understood about the immune system and the nature of cancer, a vaccine-possibly using antigens to promote immunity-may be feasible" (par. 9).
• New form of cancer treatment discovered involving "biological response modifiers, or 'biologicals'" (par. 10). Biologicals do not destroy cancer cells like chemotherapy treatment, but "harness the body's defenses. Some, such as monoclonal antibodies, are among the most promising of the "biologicals." As antigens of specific cancers are identified, monoclonal antibodies can be used alone to "tag" such cells for destruction by the immune system, or used as delivery systems for conventional drugs to attack only cancer cells" (par. 10).
• 1981: Thomas Cech proves that RNA (ribonucleic acid) can not only act as a genetic messenger, but it "can cut and splice itself like an enzyme," even though it is not a protein" (par. 10).
• "In 1980 Robert Gallo proved that RNA viruses can cause human cancer with a demonstration that human T-cell leukemia is caused by the virus HTLV-1. A related virus, HTLV-2, was soon isolated from patients with hairy cell leukemia, while a third, HTLV-3 (later known as HIV), would shortly be linked to AIDS. AIDS and cancer research have remained intertwined ever since" (par. 11).

1982 -1985
"BY USING TRANSGENIC ANIMALS, the role of specific cancer-causing oncogenes and tumor progression factors are studied. Researchers have shown that some oncogenes can be moved into specific animal tissues under certain conditions and produce cancer. Other experiments in retrovirus-tagged mutagenesis follow the insertion of a retrovirus near a cell's proto-oncogene to see if the proto-form converts to a cancer-causing oncogene" (par. 1)

1986 -1992
"TECHNIQUES FOR STAINING DNA grew steadily more sophisticated, molecular biology and molecular genetics advanced, and scientists made great leaps in establishing the link between chromosomes, the genes they carry, and cancer. Typically, cancer occurs when a series of damaged genes accumulate in a cell that eventually becomes cancerous" (par. 1).

How Proto-oncogenes become Oncogenes

"Proto-oncogenes are normal genes which can change into their deadly alter-egos, oncogenes. The proto-oncogene bcl-2 (discovered in B-cell lymphomas) prevents cells from dying. The gene's intended role is to prolong the life of "memory" cells in the immune system. When activated inappropriately, bcl-2 allows quantities of white blood cells to accumulate and eventually mutate to produce the cancers known as lymphomas and leukemias" (par. 6).

"As knowledge of the human genome grew, researchers began to focus on the possibilities of gene therapy-replacing defective or missing genes with normal genes. In 1989 NIH researchers performed the first approved gene transfers, inserting foreign genes to track tumor-killing cells in cancer patients. This project proved the safety of gene therapy" (par. 11).

"Researchers removed special immune cells from patients with skin cancer, inserted a gene which boosted the immune cells' production of a natural killing factor, and grew the restructured cells in a laboratory. When reinjected, the immune cells fought the cancer with renewed vigor.

In a Trojan horse assault on brain cancer, Kenneth Culver and Michael Blaese put a gene that confers sensitivity to an antiviral drug into a harmless virus. Then they put the virus into mouse cells, and the mouse cells into a human brain tumor. In the human brain, the mouse cells release viruses, and the viruses invade dividing tumor cells, carrying with them the new gene. The new gene makes the human brain tumor cells susceptible to killing by an antiviral drug" (pars. 13-15).

1992 
"POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM of cancer seem limited only by the imagination. In some promising new therapies, the body's internal weapons are trained on cancerous growths. In other treatments, no less a powerful element than light is employed to eradicate the invaders. Still other research focuses on stopping the tumor's blood supply" (par. 1).

1993 - 1997 
"STRATEGIES AIMED AT KEEPING CANCER FROM OCCURRING, progressing or recurring remain invaluable weapons. By the early 1990s, more than forty chemoprevention trials tested the power of assorted vitamins, minerals and drugs against cancer. New fronts in the war against cancer have opened as health care professionals increasingly focus on the special needs of at-risk populations and cancer survivors" (par. 7).

• NCI advises the public that lifestyle choices and cancer are linked. Research "indicates that a third of cancer deaths are linked to diet, and study after study proves that regular exercise offers protection from some kinds of cancer" (par. 8).
• Catching cancer early with screenings increase the chances of successful treatment.
• Research reveals that people should limit their exposure to "everyday carcinogens" (par. 9).
• The possibility of creating a cancer immunization vaccine becomes possible due to successful research in creating immune system stimulants.
• "Laser capture microdissection is a new technique that allows researchers to capture tumor cells in seconds, while the cell still expresses genes as it would inside the body" (par. 11).
• "By 1996 the p53 tumor suppressor gene and the powerful protein it encodes emerged as the darling of the biochemical world. Mutated or crippled versions of p53 had been implicated in 52 human cancers. Thousands of scientists have focused their research on this gene, hoping to use p53 as a tool for early diagnosis; as a guideline for varying treatment of cancer patients with disabled copies of p53 and those with working copies; and as a method of tracking a tumor back to its origin-the corruption of a cell by a specific carcinogen" (par. 12).

HISTORY OF CANCER

Images From Emory University: CancerQuest.Org "The History of Cancer Timeline"

ORIGIN OF THE TERM "CANCER"

Zodiac Sign from Arabic Manuscript

The Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.) first used the "terms carcinos and carcinoma to describe non-ulcer forming and ulcer-forming tumors. In Greek, these words refer to a crab, most likely applied to the disease because the finger-like spreading projections from a cancer called to mind the shape of a crab" ("The History of Cancer," par. 5). In the article "Cancer in Antiquity. Lessons of Celsus," A.J. Fabre writes that the term was used in medical texts from antiquity. He refers to a passage in Aulus Cornelius Celsus's (28-50 B.C.) De Medicina (V 28.2), in which Celsus describes a number of different conditions, some of which clearly refer to cancerous growths. Bill Thayer’s reproduction of a section of Celsus’s De Medicina explains further in the following passage:

Malignant Disease.— Although in a number of passages Celsus clearly refers to superficial malignant disease, [Celsus’] name for it is carcinoma or carcinode. In the principal passage about it he starts by saying that it is not very dangerous unless interfered with by injudicious treatment, but goes on to mention a more dangerous form which he describes as cacoethes (κακοήθες), malignant, using the Greek adjective which is often applied to the disease by Hippocrates. For this variety alone he suggests operative treatment though he gives no details. (par. 8)

Celsus was to later translate Hippocrates terms for the disease to cancer. The later Roman physician Galen (130-200 A.D.) is known for his work with tumorous growths. He "excised tumors and infected bone, and resectioned ribs and sternums. Like Hippocrates, he believed cancer was best left alone" ("Closing in on Cancer," NCI, par. 10):

[Galen] used the word oncos (Greek for swelling) to describe tumors. Although the crab analogy of Hippocrates and Celsus is still used to describe malignant tumors, Galen's term is now used as a part of the name for cancer specialists -- oncologists. ("The History of Cancer," par. 5)

Fabre writes that cancer in antiquity was probably no different from the cancer that we know: "All available data suggest that cancer, from the origins of humanity, was present all over the world but there is still no clear answer to the question of an eventual change in cancer frequency over the past 2000 years. A new field of research remains wide open to give answers to this crucial interrogation" (Fabre, par. 1).

THE STATUS OF CANCER RESEARCH TODAY

A google search with the phrase “how close are we to a cure for cancer” results in approximately 21,700,000 hits. The first page shows roughly ten hits ranging from a short CNN Health article (2009), an informative Time magazine article (2009), to medical sites, such as QualityHealth.com with peer reviewed articles from the Medical Advisory Board, non-profit cancer research organizations, such as BreastCancer.org, to Yahoo Answer blog posts providing an array of personal stories and links to informational sites. Needless to say, finding a cure for cancer is a huge concern to many people.

One article I found states that everyone will have some experience with cancer at some stage in their life. I don't know whether it is the different reading choices I have made in the last ten years, or so, or if it is the success of outreach efforts by organizations appealing for more money for cancer research, but cancer quite literally seems to be everywhere. The CNN article asks a more pointed question “Where's the cure for cancer?”



From the discovery that some cancerous tumors can be removed from the body in surgical procedures if the tumor has not attached to surrounding tissue, credited to Scottish physician John Hunter (1728–1793) in the eighteenth century (Cancer.org), cancer research has come a long way, but there is no one cure for cancer. In fact, like the drug cocktails that are given to AIDS patients to slow the progression of the disease, scientists believe that the cure for cancer will take the form of a series of treatments and medications that are specifically tailored to the particular form of cancer a patient has and the stage of its development.  Current research is focusing on controlling the spread of cancerous cells rather than eradicating the disease entirely--which would be a monumental task because of the various strains of cancer and the numerous factors that condition metastatic growth.

Early Surgical Instruments for a Mastectomy Wellcome Library, London, 1748  (Creative Commons: L0023638)  

Digital English Course: Game, Gift, Strategy, Economy

This blog is for a Digital English (Spring 2011) course at the University of Florida. It's an experimental course that will lead us to the invention of a philosophical concept for electracy.
This course will guide us through the heuretic research approach.  The topic of the course is explained in Professor Ulmer's course description on his blog "Routine"--a blog that we will be referring to throughout the semester.  We will learn how grammatology and heuretics approach the following topics:

The semester project is generated by extracting from “the logic of the gift” a principle of “strategy,” to function as an alternative to the strategy of game theory informing American policy during the Cold War. Our interest is not only in political or policy strategy but in “strategy” as an attitude or orientation within any problem field. The heuretic goal is to articulate and test a strategy (a game?) of “gift.” (Ulmer, "Routine")

For this course, we have five reading assignments.  Each reading assignment fulfills one component the invention process.  Professor Ulmer created an acronym for the heuretic method (the opposite of the classical dialectical method): CATTt.  Each letter of this acronym stands for one element which corresponds to one of our reading assignments.  Our task as students in this course is to derive instructions from each of our readings, in relation to the CATTt slot the reading has been delegated to, and then use these instructions to invent a fatal strategy:

C	Contrast	William Poundstone, Prisoner's Dilemma
A	Analogy	Christian Bok, Pataphysics
T	Theory	Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies
T	Target	Paul Virilio, Unknown Quantity
t	Tale	Rob Kovitz, Pig City Model Farm

The course is divided into two parts.  For the first part, we have to choose a disaster with an accident related to it.  I have chosen cancer as my disaster.  While I could have chosen an external, natural disaster of interest to me, I chose to focus on the human body as the site of a disaster.  The first part of the course involves us deriving instructions from Target, Contrast, and Theory components of the CATTt method.  We will use what we learn in this first part of the course to start thinking about the logic, policies, and other related issues surrounding our chosen disasters.

The second part of the course will focus on the Analogy and Tale components of our method.  The end and ongoing goal of this course is to take all of our instructions and figure out how they talk to each other. When we figure out how they interrelate, we will be close to recognizing (inventing) the logic of a fatal strategy in the context of our chosen disasters.