What is an enemy, who is he to us, and how must we deal with him? Another way to put it, for example, is: What is cancer? - a growing collection of malignant cells that we must at all costs expel, excise, reject? Or something like a parasite, with which we must negotiate a contract of symbiosis? I lean toward the second solution, as life itself does. l’m even willing to bet that in the future the best treatment for cancer will switch from eliminating it to a method that will profit from its dynamism.

Why? Because, objectively, we have… ]]> Wed, 14 Sep 2011 05:01:00 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/10199710371 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/8687570754 “Suppose two speakers, determined to contradict each other. As violent as their confrontation may be, as long as they are willing to continue the discussion they must speak a common language in order for the dialogue to take place. There can’t be an argument between two people if one speaks a language the other can’t understand. […] Can an individual actor, lost in these gigantic masses, still say ‘I’ when the old collectivities, themselves so lightweight, have already been reduced to uttering a paltry and outmoded ‘we’?”

- Michel Serres, The Natural Contract ]]> Tue, 09 Aug 2011 05:36:00 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/8687570754 http://www.stevenconnor.com/milieux/ There is a Yiddish expression used in London which always gives me a little jolt of pleasure whenever I hear it. ‘In mitten drinnen’ corresponds to German ‘In mitten darin’, which means ‘in the middle of it’ or ‘in the middle of things’. Actually, in common use, the phrase might be more idiomatically rendered as ‘right in the middle’: though this is a bizarre-enough phrase in itself. If it is really right in the middle, dead centre, as we also sometimes say, then why does the word used to signify this seem to have a list, in etymologically leaning to… ]]> Tue, 02 Aug 2011 04:49:58 -0700 http://www.stevenconnor.com/milieux/ http://032c.com/2011/the-neolithic-age-is-over/ Michel Serres: We are in the middle of an extraordinary human and environmental transformation, without really being aware of it, one that can only perhaps be compared with the Renaissance, the fifth century BC, and even the Neolithic age. For example, if there are no more peasants today, when did peasantry ­begin? In the Neolithic age. We can now say that in the year 2000, the Neolithic age is over. But who announced this in the news­papers? We didn’t read in any paper that “the Neolithic age is over”!

And we are equipped in our thinking for this… ]]> Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:36:11 -0700 http://032c.com/2011/the-neolithic-age-is-over/ http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7350819493 “Nothing new under the reign of the same and under the same reign, preserved. Nothing new and nothing to be born, no nature. This is death, eternally. Nature put to death, its birth unwanted. The science of this is nothing. It is calculably nothing. Stable, immutable, redundant. It recopies the same writings, with the same atom-letters. The law is the plague. Reason is the fall. The reiterated cause is death. Repetition is redundancy. And identity is death. Every­thing falls to zero: the nullity of information, the emptiness of knowledge, non-existence. The same is Non-Being.”

- The Birth of Physics by Michel… ]]> Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:03:00 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7350819493 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen Clinamen is the Latin name Lucretius gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in the atomistic doctrine of Epicurus.
According to Lucretius, the unpredictable swerve occurs "at no fixed place or time":
When atoms move straight down through the void by their own weight, they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed. But if they were not in the habit of swerving, they would all fall straight down through the depths of the void, like drops of rain, and no… ]]> Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:15:14 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen http://www.universite-du-si.com/en/conferences/8-paris-usi-2011/sessions/961-michel-serres Son of a barge man, Michel Serres joined the Ecole Navale in 1949 and the Ecole Normale supérieure in 1952 where he obtained the aggregation of philosophy in 1955. From 1956 to 1958, he served as an officer of the navy: squadron of the Atlantic, reopening of the Suez Canal, Algeria, and squadron of the Mediterranean Sea.
 
Michel Serres defended his thesis in 1968 and taught philosophy in Clermont-Ferrand, Vincennes (Paris I) and at Standford University. In his books, he focuses, among other themes, on the history of sciences (“Hermes”, 1969-1980). His philosophy, concerning as much sensibility… ]]> Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:15:38 -0700 http://www.universite-du-si.com/en/conferences/8-paris-usi-2011/sessions/961-michel-serres http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/05/the-opposition-paradigm-together-again-for-the-first-time.html

by Daniel Rourke

figure i : he stands opposite his rivals

You are the only one who can never see yourself apart from your image. In the reflection of a mirror, or the pigment of the photograph you entertain yourself. Every gaze you cast is mediated by a looking apparatus, by an image you must stand alongside. The gaze welcomes itself as a guest. The eye…