The Innovation of Innovation How the War System Dominated Societal Temporalization

摘要

According to Reinhart Koscllcck, there have always been discourses about a critical accelerated change in society that opens a path towards apocalypses or utopias. Today, the categorical imperative is "thou shall innovate." Paradoxically, the call for innovation turns towards hysteria when it is ordered as an antidote to a lack of innovation. The argument of the article is that innovation has a very long and complex composed history. The article dissects some of the drivers of innovation, from theology in the 12th century to Renaissance art and especially to the military and state funded acceleration of reforms. Acceleration in time is not only about speed so much as, in particular, about synchronization. Urban centers are drivers too, and so they became, in combination with military needs, the birthplaces of accelerated credit systems. Hence, synchronization developed into a second order structural coupling. The article concludes that evolution, paradoxically, is a result of involution in a specific combination with innovation, since innovation under certain circumstances is conditioned by involution.