The Coherence of the Virtual

Abstract

Starting from the premise that one of man's essential living conditions is his social ability to generate ,coherent' , self-integrating and self-supporting patterns of sensual perception which establish meaningful realities, it is argued that the joint emergence of Cartesian thinking and natural philosophy, with its strict emphasis on empirical, depersonalized evidence has resulted in Western society perpetrating in a digital-contructivistic ,re-engineering' of reality that penetrates all aspects of sociality and of individual self-images alike. While in general, the modes of collective reality creation and the respective milieu (,cultures' in both intellectual and material terms) brought forth in history exhibit a considerable variation, the article concentrates on the shift from a mythical-theological to a rational-technological social paradigm in literate Western society by pointing at the coherence-bearing virtues of the ,new way' of viewing the world.