Where (and when) place became space

di Franco Farinelli
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 45 (2014), p. 19

Globalization means the end of modern perspective, i.e. of the Euclidean space as it was perceived, represented and produced in the modernity. The attempt to work out new occurring reality requires the genealogical reconstruction of this course. This tool is rather urgent and problematic because involves two crucial analytical levels: distinction between subject and object and nature of causal explanation, a sign of the recursivity of the problem. Prescribing instructions to measure the earth – by deducting one dimension of the sphere in order to reduce it to a table – in the second century A.D. Ptolemy determines all modern epistemological values. Principles shattered today by globalization, because measuring place (the linear distance between the objects disposed on the earth conceived as a plane) is proved to be less and less significant to understand the world mechanism. Is it a matter to change the model of measurement or to give up the idea of measurement itself? Keywords: Globalization, Space, Measure, Cartography, Place, Representation