Philosophy@Work

“This book introduces the reader to Serres’ manner of ‘doing philosophy’ that can be traced throughout his entire oeuvre: namely as a novel manner of bearing witness, for which ‘mathematical thinking’ plays a crucial role. It traces how Serres takes note of a range of epistemologically unsettling situations, which he witnesses as arising from addressing contemporary physics from within a production rather than a communication paradigm, and in consequence from the short-circuit of a proprietary notion of capital with a praxis of science that commits itself to a form of reasoning which privileges the most direct path (simple method) in order to expend minimal efforts while pursuing maximal efficiency. In Serres’ universal economy, value is considered as a function of rarity, not as a stock of resources. This book demonstrates how Michel Serres has developed an architectonics that is coefficient with reality. Mathematics and Information in the Philosophy of Michel Serres acquaints the reader with Serres’ code-relative and information-theoretic manner of addressing the universality and the nature of knowledge. Such knowledge is relative to the anonymous, objective cogito of the third person singular: we should say ‘it thinks’ as we say ‘it rains’, Serres maintains. The book will demonstrate and discuss how there is a definite but indetermined subjectivity (agency) of incandescent, inventive thought involved in such knowledge. It proceeds in a twofold manner: on the one hand, the chapters of the book demarcate, problematize and contextualize some of these epistemologically unsettling situations within the techno-scientific domains that have propelled their formation. On the other hand, careful attention is given to the particular manner in which Michel Serres responds to and converses with these situations, testifying for an “exodic” rather than “methodic” praxis of a science that is entirely of this world, and yet not deprived of its dignity.” #Bühlmann #Serres #Mathematics #Information