Finding a voice that is brilliantly sustained, warm and assured, Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley meet the challenges of Serres' shifts of register between prose poetry and high-frequency allusions to philosophy and the sciences and literature classical and modern.

- Max Deutscher, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Australia,

‘Some may claim that Serres's works are impossible to translate due to their complex word play, neologisms and erratic style. Despite this, Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley should be commended for their mammoth efforts and superb translation.'

- Perspectives: International Postgraduate Journal of Philosophy,

... Every page is alive with rich descriptions of feeling, sensing, apprehending, engaging, living... this translation, like all of Serres' work that we have in English, is a banquet, a feast for thought...

- New Formations,

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There are then some wonderfully compelling, suggestive, and exciting passages in this book...a rich plea for a treatment of sensing as an always incomplete mixing of souls and objects. I recommend it be read, perhaps with a pinch of salt.

- Senses & Society,

Marginalized by the scientific age with its metaphysical and philosophical systems, the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution. Exploring the deleterious effects of the systematic downgrading of the senses in Western philosophy, Michel Serres member of the Acad mie franaise and one of France's leading philosophers traces a topology of human perception. Writing against the Cartesian tradition and in praise of empiricism, he demonstrates repeatedly, and lyrically, the sterility of systems of knowledge divorced from bodily experience. The fragile empirical world, long resistant to our attempts to contain and catalogue it, is disappearing beneath the relentless accumulations of late capitalist society and information technology. Data has replaced sensory pleasure, we are less interested in the taste of a fine wine than in the description on the bottle's label. What are we, and what do we really know, when we have forgotten that our senses can describe a taste more accurately than language ever could.
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Writing against the Cartesian tradition and in praise of empiricism, this book demonstrates repeatedly, and lyrically, the sterility of systems of knowledge divorced from bodily experience.
Introduction, Steven Connor (Birkbeck, University of London, UK); 1. Veils; 2. Boxes; 3. Tables; 4. Visit; 5. Joy; Index.
This book represents a defining break in Michel Serres' work, leaving behind traditional philosophy to explore the history and culture of science.
Michel Serres is a major contemporary theorist and this is one of his most accessible and important works.

The Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers series offers authoritative texts from the most important and influential thinkers at work in Continental Philosophy this century. The series ranges across the full spectrum of Continental thought, covering the fields of philosophy, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and critical theory, and includes key theorists such as Heidegger, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Serres, Nuno Nabais, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Deleuze, Guattari and Alain Badiou.
Titles in the series are ideal for students in upper-undergraduate and graduate years but also scholars seeking access to the works of seminal Continental thinkers.

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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780826459855
Publisert
2008-12-11
Utgiver
Vendor
Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Vekt
536 gr
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
UU, UP, P, 05, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
364

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Michel Serres is Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University, USA. Margaret Sankey is the McCaughey Professor of French Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia, and joint translator of The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary by the French sociologist Gilbert Durand. Peter Cowley lectures in French Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he is also Director of Translation Studies.