Knowledge and Material Culture

Presentation by Marcus Kracht (Bielefeld University, Germany) "Knowledge and Material Culture" in the framework of the "Economics and Culture" Seminar (58–60 Galernaya Street).

Knowledge exists as a particular arrangement of matter. There can be no knowledge without a physical substrate. This means that knowledge is bound by the laws of physics. The implications of this are enormous. From preservation of knowledge, to knowledge transfer, to education and research we must realise that maintaining and using knowledge needs a lot of energy and resources. In this way, the age of resource limits also becomes an age of the limits of knowledge.