Reading List

February 20–March 1, 2026 · Stroanfreggan House, Dumfriesshire


These works span disciplines — science, theory, fiction, and art — and are deliberately meant to be unfamiliar at least in part to everyone. We ask that participants make a good-faith effort to read and engage with each work, noting down points of confusion, disagreement, and interest. Many of these texts are also discussed in the zettelkasten ↗.

Science & Complexity

More Is Different

Philip W. Anderson

Weak Emergence

Mark A. Bedau

Downward Causation and the Autonomy of Weak Emergence

Mark A. Bedau

Emergence

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Types and Forms of Emergence

Jochen Fromm

More Really Is Different

Mile Gu, Christian Weedbrook, Álvaro Perales, et al.

Differentiable Logic Cellular Automata: From Game of Life to Pattern Generation

Pietro Miotti, Eyvind Niklasson, Ettore Randazzo, et al.

A Topological Approach to the Problem of Emergence in Complex Systems

Alberto Pascual-García

An Information-Theoretic Approach to Self-Organisation

Fernando Rosas, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Martin Ugarte, et al.

Philosophy, Theory & Politics

On Assemblage: DeLanda's Theory

Andrew Ball

Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

Jane Bennett (excerpt)

Assemblage Theory

Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari — A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 11–13

Situated Knowledges

Donna Haraway

Assemblage

George E. Marcus & Erkan Saka

The Technologies of All Dead Generations

Ben Tarnoff

Unsettling the Coloniality of Being / Power / Truth / Freedom

Sylvia Wynter

Climate Change and the Imagination

Kathryn Yusoff & Jennifer Gabrys

Art, Music & Making

The Poietic Generator

Olivier Auber

Cities of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures

Joey Eschrich & Clark A. Miller (editors)

Overview of Generative Processes in the Work of Brian Eno

Rita Gradim & Filipe Pestana

Sentences on Conceptual Art

Sol LeWitt

On the Art of Code

Casey Reas

Memory & Narrative

The Site of Memory

Toni Morrison

Inviting a Decolonial Praxis for Future Imaginaries of Nature: Introducing the Entangled Time Tree

Naomi Terry, Azucena Castro, Bwalya Chibwe, et al.