Vilém Flusser redefines the universe not as an objective totality but as a symbolic construction articulated through cultural codes, technological mediations, and communicative acts, challenging the modern dichotomy between subject and object; Flusser argues that the universe, or cosmos, is not discovered but fabricated through language and imagination, situating humans as mythopoetic agents who continuously reconfigure reality via symbolic tools—such as numbers, images, and writing—that allow for different models of the world; in this framework, technology ceases to be a neutral instrument and becomes a semiotic operator that transforms perception, space, and temporality, enabling a new kind of "techno-imagination" capable of re-enchanting the cosmos; Flusser contrasts traditional cosmologies, anchored in narrative and myth, with contemporary technoscientific paradigms that risk flattening the complexity of meaning into calculable information; however, he maintains that even these models are cultural artifacts, and that awareness of their symbolic nature is essential for reclaiming human agency in the design of future worlds; thus, the construction of the universe is not merely epistemological but existential, bound to our communicative capacity and the ontological need for orientation and coherence within an increasingly abstract, technologised reality; in this sense, Flusser offers a radical shift from a mechanistic worldview to one that privileges interpretation, invention, and dialogue as constitutive acts of cosmopoiesis.
