Although human thinking has always

Although human thinking has always contain functional aspects
this has become ecer more decisive feature of our culture
since the industrial revolution feature. “The ontology meant
something like liberation from the spell of magic. Now, as
one can see the functional thinking as a deliverance from the
isolation of the substantialism “writes of Peursen in ‘Cultuur in
Stroomversnelling’. And a little further on he continues: “In the
mythical thinking was the relationship between man (subject)
and world (object) that of mutual penetration: participation.
In the ontological thinking there was distance, a path to
knowledge and insight. In functional thinking occurs particular
how mutually man and reality refer to each other; it therefore
concerns the relationship. “ (from Peursen, p. 92) Nothing is
apparently more important in itself as in the ontological thinking,
but only in relation to man. Reality is not something that a big
secret is hidden but is real only by human actions. In functional
thinking is man (subject) still outside the world (object) as in
the ontological worldview, but the relationship is characterized
by interaction, perception (reception) and projection. This
means that Truth eventually transforms into relative truths. The
cyclic and linear sense of time are not gone from our world,
every year we celebrate New Years. And innovation is partly
driven by something like progress optimism with its origins in
the Enlightenment. But our modern life is characterized by
a succession of discrete moments. (As Facebook illustrates)
In the mythical thinking is was about “That,” in the ontological
thinking about the ‘What’ and in the functional thinking
everything seems to revolves around the ‘How’. Functional
thinking is a liberation from a world with boarded meanings but
the effect of this thinking is also an abstraction or alienation. We
are only affected by events, stories, images that are relevant to
us. In other words, we are guided by things that are functional
for us. And to come to a good solution we only need to follow
the manual, the protocol or other forms of procedures. It is
not a coincidence that the separation between art and design
also has its roots in the Industrial Revolution. The functional
is obvious in design but is also visible in the (visual) arts. The
artwork or image is a work that should lead to an autonomous
aesthetic pleasure. It is therefore an experience that a beauty
for the viewer has a ‘function’. And also in the approach of
modern artist it is visible in that they seem more concerned
about developing a procedure that leads to an artwork or are
interested in how meaning is depending on the context.