Author: Bruno Latour File Type: pdf In this new book, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern, a work that interrogated the connections between nature and culture. If not modern, he asked, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? Over the past twenty-five years, Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associated--a research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to capital-S Science as a higher authority. Such modes of extension--or modes of existence, Latour argues here--account for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge. Though scientific knowledge corresponds to only one of the many possible modes of existence Latour describes, an unrealistic vision of science has become the arbiter of reality and truth, seducing us into judging all values by a single standard. Latour implores us to recover other modes of existence in order to do justice to the plurality of truth conditions that Moderns have discovered throughout their history. This systematic effort of building a new philosophical anthropology presents a completely different view of what Moderns have been, and provides a new basis for opening diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time when all societies are coping with ecological crisis. **Review [An Inquiry into Modes of Existence] is not just a book it is also a project in interactive metaphysics. In other words, a book, plus website... Intrigued readers of Latours text can go online [httpwww.modesofexistence.org] and find themselves drawn into a collaborative project. Collective collaboration--some would call it crowdsourcing--is rare in philosophy, but Latour, a sociologist and anthropologist by training, is used to collaboration with scientists... Latours work makes the world--sorry, worlds--interesting again. And, best of all, it is a project to which you can attach yourself. (Stephen Muecke Los Angeles Review of Books 2012-12-28) MagnificentAn Inquiry into Modes of Existence shows that [Latour] has lost none of his astonishing fertility as a thinker, or his skill and wit as a writerLatours main message--that rationality is woven from more than one thread--is intended not just for the academic seminar, but for the public square--and the public square today is global as never before. Thanks to what Bruno Latour describes as the formidable discoveries of modernism, we have come to share a world of material interdependence and incessant communication, just at the time when the threat of climate change gives desperate pathos to our common stewardship of the planet. Latour speaks with urgency when he asks us all to set aside the script of secular modernity--to stop insulting each other and learn to pluralize, apologize and ecologize. We must prepare ourselves for diplomacy, he says we must talk to one another or die. (Jonathan Ree Times Literary Supplement 2014-01-10) About the Author Bruno Latour is Professor at Sciences Po, Paris, and the 2013 winner of the Ludvig Holberg International Memorial Prize.

Author: Félix Guattari File Type: pdf politics after the fall.Language NotesText English (translation)Original Language French

Author: Rick Helmes-Hayes File Type: pdf The Anthem Companion to Everett Hughes offers the best contemporary work on Everett Hughes, written by the best scholars currently working in this field. Original, authoritative and wide-ranging, the critical assessments of this volume will make it ideal for Hughes students and scholars alike.Anthem Companions to Sociology offer authoritative and comprehensive assessments of major figures in the development of sociology from the last two centuries. Covering the major advancements in sociological thought, these companions offer critical evaluations of key figures in the American and European sociological tradition, and will provide students and scholars with both an in-depth assessment of the makers of sociology and chart their relevance to modern society.

Author: Alex Rosenberg File Type: epub ReviewThis eccentric, funny treatise on scientism,...takes a perverse delight in nice nihilism. Rosenberg doesnt believe in free will, morality, or secular humanism, and apparently you shouldnt either, dummy...this dismemberment of mainstream worldviews abounds with clever barbs and dry one-liners. (Village Voice )br I enjoyed The Atheists Guide to Reality. Full of daring moves, it takes the sin of scientism as the ultimate virtue. Alex Rosenberg has sheared the nature of things down to the bedrock, and exposed our common vanity. (E. O. Wilson The Ants )br The Atheists Guide to Reality will, like the best scholarship and science, remove you from your comfort zone. And that is the only way to gain new and better perspectives on our place in the cosmos. (Lawrence Krauss A Universe From Nothing )br For those of us who have pondered what David Hume might have said, were he to have had the benefit of all the scientific knowledge that succeeded his death, Alex Rosenbergs wonderful new book perfectly satisfies. (Rebecca Goldstein 36 Arguments for the Existence of God ) About the AuthorAlex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Duke University and the codirector of the Duke Center for Philosophy of Biology. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.