Mathematics and Information in the Philosophy of Michel Serres - (Michel Serres and Material Futures) by Vera Bühlmann (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book introduces the reader to Serres' unique manner of 'doing philosophy' that can be traced throughout his entire oeuvre: namely as a novel manner of bearing witness.

It explores how Serres takes note of a range of epistemologically unsettling situations, which he understands as arising 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 nature.

Mathematic and Information in the Philosophy of Michel Serres acquaints the reader with Serres' monist manner of addressing the universality and the power of knowledge - that is at once also the anonymous and empty faculty of incandescent, inventive thought.

The chapters of the book demarcate, problematize and contextualize some of the epistemologically unsettling situations Serres addresses, whilst also examining the particular manner in which he responds to and converses with these situations.

Review Quotes

The importance of Serres' philosophy has mostly gone unrecognized in continental philosophy, even though this philosopher had a critical influence on many of its key figures, such as Deleuze and Foucault. The dearth of informed commentary is now reduced by this scholar whose knowledge of mathematics is able to bridge both the analytical and continental traditions.

What happens when we take mathematics not as the elementary basis upon which science must bloom, but as an 'architectonics' that unfolds the world as it informs mass, space and time? With great rigor, in content and style, Bühlmann reads the concepts that Michel Serres produced in his oeuvre through his mathematics and information theory, revealing his highly original, inclusive and affirmative philosophy of the 21st century.

About the Author

Vera Bühlmann is Professor for Architecture Theory and Director of the Department for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics ATTP at Vienna University of Technology, Austria.