Overview

Massimiliano Simons provides the first systematic study of Serres’s work in the context of 20th-century French philosophy of science. By proposing new readings of Serres’s philosophy, Simons creates a synthesis between his predecessors, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem and Louis Althusser as well as contemporary Francophone philosophers of science such as Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers. Simons situates Serres’s unique contribution through his notion of the quasi-object, a concept, he argues, organizes great parts of Serres’s work into a promising philosophy of science as well as a challenge to the narrower field of French epistemology, to which it has often been limited. Simons highlights how the concept encompasses Serres’s commitment to positive relations between science and culture and his rejection of pleas to purify the scientific self from imaginative and cultural elements. It helps to situate Serres between the distinct traditions of Bachelard and Latour as well as progressing the innovative aspects of Serres’s philosophy for current debates in the philosophy, history and sociology of science. Showing how Serres’s philosophy can serve as a normative approach to science and technology, Michel Serres and French Philosophy of Science takes in themes of materiality, religiosity, modernity and ecology to advance a timely alternative to philosophy of science for contemporary life.

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9781350247864

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Of the great French philosophical intellectuals from the second half of the twentieth century, Michel Serres is the one who least stood in the limelight of academic and public attention during his lifetime. And yet, he probably will be the one with the most lasting impact. Massimiliano Simons has written a book on this extraordinary thinker that lets us understand why this is so. Serres combines a deep understanding of the ambiguities - and the options - of the modern sciences and technologies with an equally deep commitment toward what matters for our endangered planet. Here is a brilliant book that makes us understand the tremendous potential of this herald of the Anthropocene avant la lettre * Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Director emeritus, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany *

Author Information

Massimiliano Simons is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Sarton Centre for History of Science at Ghent University, Belgium.

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