Mimesis and Composition: Introduction

A brief overview is offered of a special issue of papers associated with the Padova Summer School on Philosophy and Cultural Studies of Technology. The two key concepts of mimesis and composition are presented in relation to the various themes in the collection. It is shown how mimetic protocols of repetition and reproduction are linked to the inexhaustible multiplicity of compositional patterns in all domains of human activity. There are two thematic poles investigated by the different contributions: science and technology on the one hand, and on the other hand enchantment and magic. These two domains, for a long time opposed, appear as different imitative ways of composing the world within a horizon of meaning. In this perspective, phenomena such as play or experiences such as sound or smell, take on a driving theoretical role. Viewed as a whole, they constitute the lemmata of a new and more comprehensive fundamental anthropology.