April 17, 2026

Capoferro, AI, and the missing zero, with Dr Marc Heimann

2 hours 19 minutes

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-217-capoferro-ai-and-the-missing-zero-with-dr-marc-heimann

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Dr Marc Heimann is a Philosopher of Technology in Hamburg whose work formalizes the intersection of continental logic and the operational mechanics of large language models. (It’ll all become clear in the episode.)

We discuss the ethical implications of AI in enhancing human capabilities versus diminishing them, particularly for students. We also delve into the relationship between Freudian language theory and modern AI.

Despite its current limitations, there’s also a very interesting potential for AI use in historical martial arts research, where we could use it to provide new insights without modern biases.

Don't worry, there'll be plenty of swordy stuff mixed in with the AI! Marc is also a practicing historical martial artist, and we connected over Capoferro’s theory of tempo.

Books and papers mentioned in the episode:

The History of Zero: The Nothing That Is (Kaplan, 1999).  

Kaplan, Robert. 1999. The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. Oxford University Press.

The Impetus Theory: Maier, Anneliese (1940). Die Impetustheorie Der Scholastik. While this isn't in English, it is widely considered by specialists to be the definitive work on the subject. 

Maier, Anneliese. 1940. Die Impetustheorie Der Scholastik. A. Schroll & Co.

Engineering Margins & Philosophy: Research on the "problem of margins" (Eckert et al., 2019) and the broader philosophy of engineering (Aslaksen, 2018; Boon, 2021). 

Eckert, Claudia, Ola Isaksson, and Chris Earl. 2019. “Design Margins: A Hidden Issue in Industry.” Design Science https://doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2019.7.

Aslaksen, Eric W. 2018. “An Engineer’s Approach to the Philosophy of Engineering.” In Philosophy of Engineering, East and West, edited by Carl Mitcham, Bocong LI, Byron Newberry, and Baichun ZHANG. Springer International Publishing.

Boon, Mieke. 2021. “Scientific Methodology in the Engineering Sciences.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering, edited by Diane P. Michelfelder and Neelke Doorn. Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy. Taylor & Francis Group.

Freud & AI: Marc’s paper that goes into much greater detail regarding transformer models and what it means for psychoanalysis.

Heimann, Marc. 2026. “Freudian AI?: Transformer Models as a Proof of Concept for a Central Hypothesis in Freudian Theory.” Lacunae: APPI International Journal for Lacanian Psychoanalysis, no. 29.

The Stillness of the Sword: Tempo as a logic of time: Marc Heimann’s paper explores the concepts of tempo and stillness in the works of 16th- and 17th-century fencing masters Fabris, Capo Ferro, and Agrippa.

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