Cosmopolitics I (Posthumanities) - Softcover

Stengers, Isabelle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816656878 ISBN 13: 9780816656875

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2010

Synopsis

From Einstein’s quest for a unified field theory to Stephen Hawking’s belief that we “would know the mind of God” through such a theory, contemporary science—and physics in particular—has claimed that it alone possesses absolute knowledge of the universe. In a sweeping work of philosophical inquiry, originally published in French in seven volumes, Isabelle Stengers builds on her previous intellectual accomplishments to explore the role and authority of science in modern societies and to challenge its pretensions to objectivity, rationality, and truth.

 

For Stengers, science is a constructive enterprise, a diverse, interdependent, and highly contingent system that does not simply discover preexisting truths but, through specific practices and processes, helps shape them. She addresses conceptual themes crucial for modern science, such as the formation of physical-mathematical intelligibility, from Galilean mechanics and the origin of dynamics to quantum theory, the question of biological reductionism, and the power relations at work in the social and behavioral sciences. Focusing on the polemical and creative aspects of such themes, she argues for an ecology of practices that takes into account how scientific knowledge evolves, the constraints and obligations such practices impose, and the impact they have on the sciences and beyond.

 

This perspective, which demands that competing practices and interests be taken seriously rather than merely (and often condescendingly) tolerated, poses a profound political and ethical challenge. In place of both absolutism and tolerance, she proposes a cosmopolitics—modeled on the ideal scientific method that considers all assumptions and facts as being open to question—that reintegrates the natural and the social, the modern and the archaic, the scientific and the irrational.

 

Cosmopolitics I includes the first three volumes of the original work. Cosmopolitics II will be published by the University of Minnesota Press in Spring 2011.

About this title

About the Author

Isabelle Stengers is professor of philosophy at the Free University of Brussels. Among her other books available in English are The Invention of Modern Science (Minnesota, 2000) and Power and Invention: Situating Science (Minnesota, 1997).

Robert Bononno, a teacher and translator, lives in New York City. His most recent translation is Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam (Minnesota, 2009).

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816656878
• ISBN 13: 9780816656875
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272