"In the paradigm, intelligibility does not precede the phenomenon; it stands, so to speak "beside" it (para). According to Aristotle's definition, the paradigmatic gesture moves not from the particular to the whole to the particular but from the singular to the singular."
- Giorgio Agamben, The Signature of All Things: On Method, p. 27-28.
"Models are tools for the understanding of phenomena, they are made by those who seek understanding, they may be improved upon and replaced by better models. This statement is characteristic of the modern age... For moderns, 'knowledge' is in part the result of manipulations of models."
- Vilém Flusser, Writings, p. 75.
When virtue refers to persons, it denotes those possessing moral excellence or superiority; the virtue of an object denotes its authority, worth or efficacy, occasionally its capacity for miracles. Virtual environments, currently the governing mode in which design operates, are models created by our vast computational ability (empirical knowledge) and theory (speculative knowledge) that refer to prior abstractions of the "real." In this detachment from the given world, the model further creates its own relations and conditions, creating possibilities outside of the given conditions that created it in the first place.
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