Paradoxically, Bruno Latour’s anti-scientism is accompanied by a conservative regression towards institutional demarcations and by his legitimisation of the hierarchies that are internal to the institutions demarcated in this way.
Simply unmissable analysis from Terence Blake for all those reading Latour in the context of his intellectual milieu.
Stephen Gaukroger’s monumental series on the modern world is a must-read for those interacting with Latour’s concept of Modernity.
In this third volume, published last year, Gaukroger considers the crucial period 1739 (the publication of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature) to 1841 (the publication of Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity). He argues that this period saw an abrupt but fundamental shift in the way in which scientific enquiry was conceived, such that science came to be understood as the essential means of explanation of the human condition. The key formula thus becomes “the naturalization of the human”, by which Gaukroger means the constitution in empirical terms of questions about the human realm that had up to that point taken a non-empirical form.
I’ve written a brief review here.
RESEARCHING THE DEMANDS OF THOUGHT
Sam Kinsley
"The centaur of classical metaphysics shall be mated with the cheetah of actor-network theory."
A blog about Continental Philosophy, Environmental Humanities and Integral Ecology by Tim Howles
researcher, lecturer and author in Contemporary European Thought: Atheism and Religion
A blog about Continental Philosophy, Environmental Humanities and Integral Ecology by Tim Howles
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." —Alfred North Whitehead
A blog about Continental Philosophy, Environmental Humanities and Integral Ecology by Tim Howles
Pluralism and Individuation in a World of Becoming
Political Theology at the Time of the Anthropocene 