Download or read book Thinking with Whitehead written by Isabelle Stengers and published by . This book was released on 2014-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Thinking with Whitehead, " Isabelle Stengers one of today s leading philosophers of science goes straight to the beating heart of Whitehead s thought. Both an erudite yet accessible introduction and a highly advanced commentary, it establishes the mathematician-philosopher as a daring thinker on par with Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault.
Download or read book The Different Modes of Existence written by Étienne Souriau and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What relation is there between the existence of a work of art and that of a living being? Between the existence of an atom and that of a value like solidarity? These questions become our own each time a reality—whether it is a piece of music, someone we love, or a fictional character—is established and begins to take on an importance in our lives. Like William James or Gilles Deleuze, Souriau methodically defends the thesis of an existential pluralism. There are indeed different manners of existing and even different degrees or intensities of existence: from pure phenomena to objectivized things, by way of the virtual and the “super-existent,” to which works of art and the intellect, and even morality, bear witness. Existence is polyphonic, and, as a result, the world is considerably enriched and enlarged. Beyond all that exists in the ordinary sense of the term, it is necessary to allow for all sorts of virtual and ephemeral states, transitional realms, and barely begun realities, still in the making, all of which constitute so many “inter-worlds.”
Download or read book The Invention of Modern Science written by Isabelle Stengers and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Invention of Modern Science proposes a fruitful way of going beyond the apparently irreconcilable positions, that science is either "objective" or "socially constructed." Instead, suggests Isabelle Stengers, one of the most important and influential philosophers of science in Europe, we might understand the tension between scientific objectivity and belief as a necessary part of science, central to the practices invented and reinvented by scientists."--pub. desc.
Download or read book Another Science is Possible written by Isabelle Stengers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like fast food, fast science is quickly prepared, not particularly good, and it clogs up the system. Efforts to tackle our most pressing issues have been stymied by conflict within the scientific community and mixed messages symptomatic of a rushed approach. What is more, scientific research is being shaped by the bubbles and crashes associated with economic speculation and the market. A focus on conformism, competitiveness, opportunism and flexibility has made it extremely difficult to present cases of failure to the public, for fear that it will lose confidence in science altogether. In this bold new book, distinguished philosopher Isabelle Stengers shows that research is deeply intertwined with broader social interests, which means that science cannot race ahead in isolation but must learn instead to slow down. Stengers offers a path to an alternative science, arguing that researchers should stop seeing themselves as the 'thinking, rational brain of humanity' and refuse to allow their expertise to be used to shut down the concerns of the public, or to spread the belief that scientific progress is inevitable and will resolve all of society's problems. Rather, science must engage openly and honestly with an intelligent public and be clear about the kind of knowledge it is capable of producing. This timely and accessible book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers in a wide range of fields, as well anyone concerned with the role of science and its future.
Download or read book Power and Invention written by Isabelle Stengers and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the law of thermodynamics, one of today's most penetrating and celebrated thinkers sets out to explain the consequences of nonlinear dynamics (or chaos theory) for philosophy and science. Concerned with the interplay between science, society, and power, Isabelle Stengers offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa. 9 diagrams.
Download or read book An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence written by Bruno Latour and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-19 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a new approach to philosophical anthropology, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern: If not modern, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? An Inquiry into Modes of Existence offers a new basis for diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time of ecological crisis.
Download or read book Critical Zones written by Bruno Latour and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artists and writers portray the disorientation of a world facing climate change. This monumental volume, drawn from a 2020 exhibition at the ZKM Center for Art and Media, portrays the disorientation of life in world facing climate change. It traces this disorientation to the disconnection between two different definitions of the land on which modernizing humans live: the sovereign nation from which they derive their rights, and another one, hidden, from which they gain their wealth—the land they live on, and the land they live from. Charting the land they will inhabit, they find not a globe, not the iconic “blue marble,” but a series of critical zones—patchy, heterogenous, discontinuous. With short pieces, longer essays, and more than 500 illustrations, the contributors explore the new landscape on which it may be possible for humans to land—what it means to be “on Earth,” whether the critical zone, the Gaia, or the terrestrial. They consider geopolitical conflicts and tools redesigned for the new “geopolitics of life forms.” The “thought exhibition” described in this book can opens a fictional space to explore the new climate regime; the rest of the story is unknown. Contributors include Dipesh Chakrabarty, Pierre Charbonnier, Emanuele Coccia, Vinciane Despret, Jerôme Gaillarde, Donna Haraway, Joseph Leo Koerner, Timothy Lenton, Richard Powers, Simon Schaffer, Isabelle Stengers, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Jan A. Zalasiewicz, Siegfried Zielinski Copublished with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Download or read book Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition written by Paul Lynch and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, and Science in Action, Bruno Latour has inspired scholarship across many disciplines. In the past few years, the fields of rhetoric and composition have witnessed an explosion of interest in Latour’s work. Editors Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers have assembled leading and emerging scholars in order to focus the debate on what Latour means for the study of persuasion and written communication. Essays in this volume discern, rearticulate, and occasionally critique rhetoric and composition’s growing interest in Latour. These contributions include work on topics such as agency, argument, rhetorical history, pedagogy, and technology, among others. Contributors explain key terms, identify implications of Latour’s work for rhetoric and composition, and explore how his theories might inform writing pedagogies and be used to build research methodologies. Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition shows how Latour’s groundbreaking theories on technology, agency, and networks might be taken up, enriched, and extended to challenge scholars in rhetorical studies (both English and communications), composition, and writing studies to rethink some of the field’s most basic assumptions. It is set to become the standard introduction that will appeal not only to those scholars already interested in Latour but also those approaching Latour for the first time.
Download or read book Bruno Latour in Pieces written by Henning Schmidgen and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bruno Latour stirs things up. Latour began as a lover of science and technology, co-founder of actor-network theory, and philosopher of a modernity that had “never been modern.” In the meantime he is regarded not just as one of the most intelligent—and also popular—exponents of science studies but also as a major innovator of the social sciences, an exemplary wanderer who walks the line between the sciences and the humanities. This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the Latourian oeuvre, from his early anthropological studies in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), to influential books like Laboratory Life and Science in Action, and his most recent reflections on an empirical metaphysics of “modes of existence.” In the course of this enquiry it becomes clear that the basic problem to which Latour’s work responds is that of social tradition, the transmission of experience and knowledge. What this empirical philosopher constantly grapples with is the complex relationship of knowledge, time, and culture.
Download or read book Latour and the Humanities written by Rita Felski and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does the work of influential theorist Bruno Latour offer a fresh angle on the practices and purposes of the humanities? In recent years, defenses of the humanities have tended to argue along predictable lines: the humanities foster empathy, the humanities encourage critical thinking, the humanities offer a counterweight to the cold calculations of the natural and social sciences. The essays in Latour and the Humanities take a different approach. Exploring the relevance of theorist Bruno Latour's work, they argue for attachments and entanglements between the humanities and the sciences while looking closely at the interests, institutions, and intellectual projects that shape the humanities within and beyond the university. The collection, which is written by a group of highly distinguished scholars from around the world, is divided into two sections. In the first part, authors engage in depth with Latour's work while also rethinking the ties between the humanities and the sciences. Essays argue for greater attention to the nonhuman world, the urgency of climate change, and more nuanced views of universities as institutions. The second half of the volume contains essays that reflect on Latour's influence on the practices of specific disciplines, including art, the digital humanities, film studies, and political theory. Inspiring conversation about the relevance of actor-network-theory for research and teaching in the humanities, Latour and the Humanities offers a substantial introduction to Latour's work while discussing the humanities without falling back on the genres of either the sermon or the jeremiad. This volume will be of interest to all those searching for fresh perspectives on the value and importance of humanistic disciplines and thought. Contributors: David J. Alworth, Anders Blok, Claudia Breger, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Yves Citton, Steven Connor, Gerard de Vries, Simon During, Rita Felski, Francis Halsall, Graham Harman, Antoine Hennion, Casper Bruun Jensen, Bruno Latour, Heather Love, Patrice Maniglier, Stephen Muecke, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Nigel Thrift, Michael Witmore
Download or read book A History of Chemistry written by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents chemistry as a science in search of an identity, or rather as a science whose identity has changed in response to its relation to society and other disciplines. This book discusses the conceptual, experimental, and technological challenges with wh
Download or read book Cosmopolitics II written by Isabelle Stengers and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping inquiry that critiques modern science’s claims of objectivity, rationality, and truth
Download or read book Bruno Latour written by Kyle McGee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first extended study of Bruno Latour’s legal theory, this book presents a critical reconstruction of the whole of Latour’s oeuvre to date, from Laboratory Life to An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence. Based on the powerful insights into normative effects that actor-network theory makes possible, the book advances a new theory of legal normativity and the force of law, rethinking Latour’s work on technology, the image, and referential scientific inscriptions, among others, and placing them within the ambit of legality. The book also captures and deepens the contrast between the modern legal institution and the value of law as a mode of existence, and provides a fulsome theoretical account of legal veridiction. Throughout, Latour’s thought is put into dialogue with important progenitors and adversaries as well as historical and contemporary strands of legal and political philosophy. But the thread of legality is not confined to Latour's reflections on the making of law; rather, it cuts through the whole of his highly diverse body of work. The empire of mononaturalism augured by modern philosophies of science is thoroughly juridical; as such, the actor-network theory that promises to undo that empire by freeing the value of the sciences from its epistemological clutches is unthinkable without the device of the trial and the descriptive semiotics of normativity that sustain ANT. The democratization of the sciences and the vibrancy of ecologized politics that become possible once the bifurcation of nature into essential primary and disposable secondary qualities is disabled, and once the ‘modern Constitution’ is called into doubt, also have important legal dimensions that have gone largely unexamined. Bruno Latour: The Normativity of Networks remedies this and other omissions, evaluating Latour’s thought about law while carrying it in striking new directions. This book introduces legal scholars and students to the thought of the philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour, whilst also presenting a critical analysis of his work in and around law. This interdisciplinary study will be of interest to those researching in Law, Philosophy, and Sociology.
Download or read book Nonmodern Practices written by Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays responds to the urgent call in the humanities to go beyond the act of negative critique which, so far, has been the dominant form of intellectual inquiry in academia. The contributors take their inspiration from Bruno Latour's pragmatic, relational approach and his philosophy of hybrid world where culture is immanent to nature and knowledge is tied to the things it co-creates. In such a world, nature, society, and discourse relate to, rather than negate, each other. The 11 essays, ranging from early modern humanism and modern theorization of literature to contemporary political ecology and animal studies, propose new productive ways of thinking, reading, and writing with, not against, the world. In carrying out concrete practices that are inclusive, rather than exclusive, contributors strive to exemplify a form of scholarship that might be better attuned to the concerns of our post-humanist era.
Download or read book Bruno Latour written by Gerard de Vries and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-02-12 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bruno Latour is among the most important figures in contemporary philosophy and social science. His ethnographic studies have revolutionized our understanding of areas as diverse as science, law, politics and religion. To facilitate a more realistic understanding of the world, Latour has introduced a radically fresh philosophical terminology and a new approach to social science, ‘Actor-Network Theory’. In seminal works such as Laboratory Life, We Have Never Been Modern and An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Latour has outlined an alternative to the foundational categories of ‘modern’ western thought Ð particularly its distinction between society and nature Ð that has major consequences for our understanding of the ecological crisis and of the role of science in democratic societies. Latour’s ‘empirical philosophy’ has evolved considerably over the past four decades. In this lucid and compelling book, Gerard de Vries provides one of the first overviews of Latour’s work. He guides readers through Latour’s main publications, from his early ethnographies to his more recent philosophical works, showing with considerable skill how Latour’s ideas have developed. This book will be of great value to students and scholars attempting to come to terms with the immense challenge posed by Latour’s thought. It will be of interest to those studying philosophy, anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, and almost all other branches of the social sciences and humanities.
Download or read book On the Verge of a Planetary Civilization written by Sam Mickey and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-09-18 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the Verge of a Planetary Civilization presents a philosophical contribution to integral ecology—an emerging approach to the field that crosses disciplinary boundaries of the humanities and sciences. In this original book, Sam Mickey argues for the transdisciplinary significance of philosophical concepts that facilitate understandings of and responses to the boundaries involved in ecological issues. Mickey demonstrates how much the provocative French philosopher Gilles Deleuze contributes to the development of such concepts, situating his work in dialogue with that of his colleagues Felix Guattari and Jacques Derrida, and with theorists who are adapting his concepts in contemporary contexts such as Isabelle Stengers, Catherine Keller, and the speculative realist movement of object-oriented ontology. The book focuses on the overlapping existential, social and environmental aspects of the ecological problems pervading our increasingly interconnected planet. It explores the boundaries between self and other, humans and nonhumans, sciences and humanities, monism and pluralism, sacred and secular, fact and fiction, the beginning and end of the world, and much more.
Download or read book Thinking with Whitehead and the American Pragmatists written by Brian G. Henning and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite there being deep lines of convergence between the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead, C. S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and other classical American philosophers, it remains an open question whether Whitehead is a pragmatist, and conversation between pragmatists and Whitehead scholars have been limited. Indeed, it is difficult to find an anthology of classical American philosophy that includes Whitehead’s writings. These camps began separately, and so they remain. This volume questions the wisdom of that separation, exploring their connections, both historical and in application. The essays in this volume embody original and creative work by leading scholars that not only furthers the understanding of American philosophy, but seeks to advance it by working at the intersection of experience and reality to incite novel and creative thought. This exploration is long overdue. Specific questions that are addressed are: Is Whitehead a pragmatist? What contrasts and affinities exist between American pragmatism and Whitehead’s thought? What new questions, strategies, and critiques emerge by juxtaposing their distinct perspectives?
