Join us for the School of Environmental Studies Colloquium Series Featuring PhD Candidate Yanis Aouamri
Location: BioSciences Complex, Room 1120
GEOMETRISM: HOW GEOMETRICAL FUNDAMENTALISM CAME TO SHAPE OUR WORLD
Abstract:
In this work, I critically examine how abstract geometric ideals, initially emerging from Pythagorean thought and Mathematical Platonism, have shaped our understanding and organization of the world in profound and often unrecognized and unexpected ways, ways that are often reductive, alienating, and ideologically charged. The spill of these abstract ideals back into the social production of historically particular but geometrically articulated kinds of space, referred to here, following Bachelard (2014), as geometrism, has profound, socio-political and environmental implications. Specifically, this thesis argues that wherever these ideologically naturalized abstractions come to exert a dominant influence as principles for managing space, the result has been to diminish and disparage the creative possibilities inherent in lived places, circumscribing, and even physically eliminating, social and ecological diversity. Put bluntly, now, more than ever, geometrism poses the risk of producing a relatively lifeless and ultimately unliveable world.
The thesis proceeds through four interrelated avenues of critique. The first concerns the historical and philosophical roots of geometrism, particularly within Plato鈥檚 Formal Doctrine and its profound influence on Western traditions. The second involves a socio-constructivist critique of abstraction, which challenges long-standing claims that mathematical knowledge is inherently universal, neutral, and a-temporal. Making geometry the principle of spatial organization in the real world is never, then, politically, ethically or ecologically neutral. This is demonstrated through the third aspect which considers the material and experiential consequences of geometrism as became manifest in different historical circumstances, specifically here, the Gardens of Versailles, and Le Corbusier鈥檚 architecture and urbanism. Finally, the thesis considers some alternative possibilities for overcoming geometrism, as found, for example, in the work of Henri Lefebvre, phenomenology, and the Indigenous thought of Mohawk mathematician Edward Doolittle. Such a reflection gestures toward modes of thought and practice less tethered to geometric fundamentalism.
Bio: Yanis Aouamri is a 6th-year PhD candidate at the School of Environmental Studies with a previous MA in philosophy and an MES. His research is centred on Environmental Philosophy but also spans interests in place-making, lived experience, resource management, architecture/urbanism, anthropology, and social theory. His interest in geometric fundamentalism (geometrism) was sparked by prior reflections on social space and place-making, as well as the commodification of the natural world. The thesis develops a more comprehensive study of geometric fundamentalism and how it has and does affect the Western understanding and shaping of the world.