Michel Serres Book order

For the first time in English, the introductory volume in a major French philosopher's groundbreaking series of poetic transdisciplinary works Michel Serres is recognized as one of the giants of postwar French philosophy of knowledge, along with Giles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilbert Simondon. His early five-volume series Hermes, which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, was an intellectual supernova in its proposition that culture and science shared the same mythic and narrative structures. Hermes I: Communication marks the start of a major publishing endeavor to introduce this foundational series into English. Building on the figure of the Greek god Hermes, who presides over the realms of communication and interpretation, Hermes I embarks on a reflection concerning the history of mathematics via Descartes and Leibniz and culminates by way of a Bachelardian logoanalytic reading of Homer, Dumas, Molière, Verne, and the story of Cinderella. We observe a singular poetic philosopher seeking to bridge the gap between the liberal arts and the sciences through a profound mathematical and poetic fable regarding information theory, history, and art, establishing a new way to think about the production of knowledge during the late twentieth century. In these pages, students and scholars of philosophy will discover an extraordinary project of thought as vital to critical reflection today as it was fifty years ago.

With this profound final work, completed in the days leading up to his death, Michel Serres presents a vivid picture of his thinking about religion--a constant preoccupation since childhood--thereby completing Le Grand Récit, the comprehensive explanation of the world and of humanity to which he devoted the last twenty years of his life. Themes from Serres's earlier writings--energy and information, the role of the media in modern society, the anthropological function of sacrifice, the role of scientific knowledge, the problem of evil--are reinterpreted here in the light of the Old Testament accounts of Isaac and Jonah and a variety of Gospel episodes, including the Three Wise Men of the Epiphany, the Transfiguration, Peter's denying Christ, the Crucifixion, Emmaus, and the Pentecost. Monotheistic religion, Serres argues, resembles mathematical abstraction in its dazzling power to bring together the real and the virtual, the natural and the transcendent; but only in its Christian embodiment is it capable of binding together human beings in such a way that partisan attachments are dissolved and a new era of history, free for once of the lethal repetition of collective violence, can be entered into.

Despite being one of France's most enduring and popular philosophers, Branches is the first English translation of what has been identified as Michel Serres' key text on humanism. In attempting to reconcile humanity and nature, Serres examines how human history 'branches' off from its origin story. Using the metaphor of a branch springing from the stem and arguing that the branch's originality derives its format, Serres identifies dogmatic philosophy as the stem, while philosophy as the branch represents its inventive, shape-shifting, or interdisciplinary elements. In Branches, Serres provides a unique reading of the history of thought and removes the barriers between science, culture, art and religion. His fluency and this fluidity of subject matter combine here to make a book suitable for students of Continental philosophy, post-humanism, the medical humanities and philosophical science, while providing any reader with a wider understanding of the world in which they find themselves.

According to Michel Serres, a process of 'hominescence' has taken place throughout human history. Hominescence can be described as a type of adolescence; humanity in a state of growing, a state of constant change, on the threshold of something unpredictable. We are destined never to be the same again but what does the future hold? In this innovative and passionately original work of philosophy, Serres describes the future of man as an adolescence, transitioning from childhood to adulthood, or luminescence, when a dark body becomes light. After considering the radical changes that humanity has experienced over the last fifty years, Serres analyzes the new relationship of man has with diverse concepts, like the dead, his own body, agriculture, and new communication networks. He alerts us to the consequences of these changes, particularly on the danger of growing inequalities between rich and poor countries. Should we rejoice in the future, ignore it, or even dread it? Unlike other philosophers who preach doom and gloom, Serres wants us to anticipate the uncertain light of the future.

L'éditeur indique : "The first translation of the volumes in Michel Serres' classic "Humanism" tetralogy, this ambitious philosophical narrative explores what it means to be human. With his characteristic breadth of references including art, poetry, science, philosophy and literature, Serres paints a new picture of what it might mean to live meaningfully in contemporary society. He tells the story of humankind (from the beginning of time to the present moment) in an attempt to affirm his overriding thesis that humans and nature have always been part of the same ongoing and unfolding history. This crucial piece of posthumanist philosophical writing has never before been released in English. A masterful translation by Randolph Burks ensures the poetry and wisdom of Serres writing is preserved and his notion of what humanity is and might be is opened up to new audiences."

The Birth of Physics represents a foundational work in the development of chaos theory from one of the world's most influential living theorists, Michel Serres. Focussing on the largest text still intact to reach us from the Ancient Greek Atomists - Lucretius' De Rerum Natura - Serres mobilises everything we know about the related scientific work of the time (Archemides, Epicurus et al) in order to demand a complete reappraisal of the legacy. Crucial to his reconception of the Atomists' thought is a recognition that their model of atomic matter is essentially a fluid one - they are describing the actions of turbulence, which impacts our understanding of the recent disciplines of chaos and complexity. It explains the continuing presence of Lucretius in the work of such scientific giants as Nobel Laureates Schroedinger and Prigogine. This book is truly a landmark in the study of ancient physics and has been enormously influential on work in the area, amongst other things stimulating a more general rebirth of philosophical interest in the ancients.

Originally published in French as: Les origines de la gaeometrie: tiers livre des fondations / Michel Serres (Paris: Editions Julliard, 1993).

Marginalized by the scientific age the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution. With The Five Senses Serres traces a topology of human perception, writing against the Cartesian tradition and in praise of empiricism, he demonstrates repeatedly, and lyrically, the sterility of systems of knowledge divorced from bodily experience. The fragile empirical world, long resistant to our attempts to contain and catalog it, is disappearing beneath the relentless accumulations of late capitalist society and information technology. Data has replaced sensory pleasure, we are less interested in the taste of a fine wine than in the description on the bottle's label. What are we, and what do we really know, when we have forgotten that our senses can describe a taste more accurately than language ever could? The book won the inaugural Prix Médicis Essai in 1985. The Revelations edition includes an introduction by Steven Connor.

Michel Serres first book in his 'foundations trilogy' is all about beginnings. The beginning of Rome but also about the beginning of society, knowledge and culture. Rome is an examination of the very foundations upon which contemporary society has been built. With characteristic breadth and lyricism, Serres leads the reader on a journey from a meditation the roots of scientific knowledge to set theory and aesthetics. He explores the themes of violence, murder, sacrifice and hospitality in order to urge us to avoid the repetitive violence of founding. Rome also provides an alternative and creative reading of Livy's Ab urbe condita which sheds light on the problems of history, repetition and imitation. First published in English in 1991, re-translated and introduced in this new edition, Michel Serres' Rome is a contemporary classic which shows us how we came to live the way we do.

Eyes pioneers a radical philosophy that interrogates ways of seeing, thinking and knowing. In this exploratory text, Michel Serres explores the capacities of eyes: how do we see? What is seeing, or being seen? Can we imagine the sight of non-human eyes, and how does this change our perception of the world and ourselves? Produced in full colour, this visually stunning work creatively interweaves the writing with the images themselves resulting in a truly philosophical art book. In short poetic texts, Michel Serres invites us to enter rather than to leave Plato's cave: in this space the visionary philosopher comes into his own, in the half-light of a 'universe studded with eyes'.