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Cosmopolitics I Isabelle Stengers

Cosmopolitics I By Isabelle Stengers

Cosmopolitics I by Isabelle Stengers


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Cosmopolitics I Summary

Cosmopolitics I by Isabelle Stengers

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 Isabelle Stengers

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).

Table of Contents

Preface, Book I. The Science Wars, 1. Scientific Passions, 2. The Neutrino's Paradoxical Mode of Existence, 3. Culturing the Pharmakon?, 4. Constraints, 5. Introductions, 6. The Question of Unknowns, Book II. The Invention of Mechanics: Power and Reason, 7. The Power of Physical Laws, 8. The Singularity of Falling Bodies, 9. The Lagrangian Event, 10. Abstract Measurement: Putting Things to Work, 11. Heat at Work, 12. The Stars, Like Blessed Gods, 13. If We Could . . ., Book III. Thermodynamics: the Crisis of Physical Reality, 14. The Threefold Power of the Queen of Heaven, 15. Anamnesis, 16. Energy is Conserved!, 17. The Not So Profound Mystery of Entropy, 18. The Obligations of the Physicist, 19. Percolation, 20. In Place of an Epilogue, Notes, Index

Additional information

CIN0816656878A
9780816656875
0816656878
Cosmopolitics I by Isabelle Stengers
Used - Well Read
Paperback
University of Minnesota Press
2010-07-28
272
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book. We do our best to provide good quality books for you to read, but there is no escaping the fact that it has been owned and read by someone else previously. Therefore it will show signs of wear and may be an ex library book

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