Daniel IRRGANG 

Diagrammatics as a Mode between Gedankenexperiment 
 and Thinking Medium

 Diagrams are ‘epistemic things‘ (Hans-Jörg Rheinberger) in particular: they show
the structure and relation behind the phenomenal surface of the referred object or, more
precisely, they constitute a hypothesis on the structure through displaying the reasoning
processes that led to the structure in its specific form. Charles Sanders Peirce describes
these reasoning processes through diagrams as diagrammatic reasoning. According to
him, an icon (including the subclass ‘diagrams‘) does not only represent its object but
configurates it in a specific way. This statement is especially true for diagrams, because
their represented structures are hypothetical ones. Through the reconfiguration of diagrams, as mental operations or as sketches on a piece of paper, new hypotheses about the
object can be tested and modulated, and at the same time new knowledge generated. In
this sense, diagrammatic operations and Diagrammatology (Frederik Stjernfelt) can be
described as vital dimensions of a theory of gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) in
general. The aim of the presentation is to present diagrams as (re-)thinking mediums in
sciences and arts by discussing diagrammatic sketches of Charles Darwin, Jean-François
Lyotard and George Maciunas.
Daniel Irrgang (DE) is a doctoral student at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and a
researcher in the project ‘Archaeology/Variantology‘ of the Media (co-editor of vol. 4 and 5 of Variantology – On Deep Time
Relations of Arts, Sciences and Technologies). In 2011 he completed his studies in Communication for Business and Society
(MA). Currently he is writing his doctoral thesis about Diagrammatics as a Cultura experimentalis, supervised by Prof. Siegfried
Zielinski (chair for media theory) at the UdK, where he also
teaches. He is a co-founder (2006) of the communication agency
‘AFKM‘, working on mediarelated projects. E-mail: irrgang@
medienhaus.udk-berlin.de.