biogea

collective immortality

communication

community

dialogue

hard pollution

life

logoanalysis

love

nature

nature - culture

noise

parasite

quasi-object

science

space

stealing

style

suffering

technology

time

transdisciplinarity

nationality

French

occupation / innovator as

philosopher

university professor

Stanford University

innovator in the field of

continental philosophy

epistemology

philosophy of science

Science and Technology Studies (STS)

STS scholar

Académie Fraçaise

scientific organization

Académie Française

university teacher

European Academy of Sciences and Arts

historian of science

is only possible between two persons used to the same forms, trained to code and decode a meaning by using the same key.

Communication is only possible between two persons used to the same forms, trained to code and decode a meaning by using the same key. Michel Serres

is related to information theory and communication theory. Community staves off the noise.

the code helps stave off the noise that overflows . . .

is not binary exchange, but ternary. It is the product of two interlocutors joining forces against a third term threatening to disrupt the exchange.

rejecting the traditional notion of dialogue as binary exchange, Serres defines it instead as the product of the association of two interlocutors, who join forces against a third term another interlocutor or background noise that threatens to disrupt the exchange. Serres thus substitutes a ternary model of dialogue for the conventional binary one.'

is the poisoning of the earth. Soft pollution is created by sound and images on our psyches.

He warns that while we can measure what he calls 'hard pollution' the poisoning of the Earth we ignore at our peril the disastrous impact of the 'soft pollution' created by sound and images on our psyches. Sounding the alarm that the planet is heading for disaster, Serres proposes that humanity should stop trying to 'own' the world and become 'renters.'

is the relation between the regulated time of physics (time pieces), the time of deterioration, and evolutionary time.

the question of time' You spoke of the living being a little while ago. You have a watch, and you live with that watch in other words you get up and have breakfast, meals, go to work at more or less the same times, and so, as a living being, you live in time which is based on planetary orbits. This is the time of timepieces. This is the first kind of time. It is the time of society, it is physical time, it is what physics calls time with a small 't'. This time is practically circular. The fact that it is now 6 pm, a Wednesday, the 20th of September these are things which have happened thousands of times before and will happen thousands of times again. This time is called reversible time. Secondly, you are young and I am very old, so you are beautiful and I am very ugly. Time, therefore, flows in such a way as to produce deterioration. This is the time of thermodynamics, which moves towards disorder. We live in that time also: I am going to die, and so will you but much later of course! Then there is a third time, in which my daughter is better looking than me, and my granddaughter better looking than my daughter. This is the time of Darwin, where the evolution of living beings moves towards greater complexity and organisation, were the human brain is more highly developed than that of reptiles. . . . . . (207) Now, what is life' Life is the relation between these three kinds of time. I don't know how, but the fact that I am alive allows me to connect these three times, which have nothing to do with one another: the time of the (208) lanets, the time of heat and fire, and the time of increasing complexity. It is the connection between these three times which gives me an inkling of what life might be. (michel serres interview in zournazi : 209)

is the bond that links your earth and the earth, and that makes the familiar and the foreign, the near and the far, resemble each other.

Love is the bond that links your earth and the Earth, and that makes the familiar and the foreign, the near and the far, resemble each other.

is the fundamental law outside of which nothing else is real.

for Serres love is the fundamental law: 'There is nothing real but love, and no law other than this.' (53) Through this law of love, Serres is concerned to renew 'the relationship that we once held with the world' by way of a natural contract: 'We must change course and move away from the direction set by the philosophy of Descartes mastery lasts only a short time, and turns into servitude, and in the same way ownership remains a short-lived expropriation.' (54)

is nothing other than the city's hell (or culture's hell).

Michel Serres has answered the question 'what is nature' with the terse reply: 'the city's or culture's hell' (1995: 73).

is the idea that every technology transforms our rapport with things (nature) at the same time as our relations among ourselves (culture) such that scientific imaginaries cross-fertilize with cultural imaginaries.

speak of culture is to focus on what the French philosopher Michel Serres calls 'our relations among ourselves,' while to evoke nature is to emphasize 'our rapport with things.' Serres uses the example of the post-war space program to highlight this interlacing of culture and nature: 'Every technology transforms our rapport with things (the rocket takes off for the stratosphere) and, at the same time, our relations among ourselves (the rocket ensures publicity for the nations that l.aunch it).' He continues: 'This object, which we thought simply brought us into relationship with the stars, also brings us into relationship among ourselves.' In this sense, scientific ima,ginaries cross-fertilize with 'cultural' imaginaries, where an emphasis of orientation 'out there' or 'among us' determines an imaginary's status and function. Playing on the etymology of the words 'rapport' and ' relate,' we 'carry' how we imagine the cosmos back into the community and, in tum, we 'carry' how we imagine the community back into the cosrnos.' (Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory edited by Sean Miller, Shveta Verma xxx:iii)

is something which begins in the body and emerges into language via the sounds of the earth: The gushing of water, the soft cacophony of rustling leaves, or the screaming of gale force winds. Filtered through the skin, noise and vibration become meaning.

For Serres, noise begins in the body and emerges into language via the sounds of the earth: the gushing of water, the soft cacophony of rustling leaves, or the screaming of gale force winds. Small sounds or high-frequency energies are quieted by big sounds-- low, slow frequencies that are attached to, or rather part of, the movement of the elements. These are the sounds that, according to Serres, belong to 'the given,' the material world, the sensible as that which is 'designated by the infinite capacity of sense' (Serres 2008: 118). They pass through the body and are filter by the skin, and in this way, noise and vibration become meaning, hard sounds become soft, and the world becomes bearable'

is noise, a guest, a leech, a microbe, or an insidious infection that takes without giving and weakens without killing. . . The one-way and irreversible relation that is the base of human institutions and disciplines.

For Serres, the parasite is the primordial, one-way, and irreversible relation that is the base of human institutions and disciplines: society, economy, and work... human sciences and hard sciences... religion and history. All of these have the parasitic relation as their basic and fundamental component.

is an object such as a soccer ball which, without its human counterpart would be a mere object of matter.

In Serres' work, he provides an example of a quasi-object a soccer ball. He argues that it is a person that brings the ball to life, kicks it, throws it, and shoots it in one direction or another (in combination with laws of physics). Without the human counterpart, Serres believes, the ball just sits on the field as an object of matter. The ball participates in the human actions and is a factor in the relationship between quasi-object (nonhuman item) and person. ' (net)

is a form of knowledge that is founded on itself and therefore has no need of external philosophy.

Science is founded on itself and, therefore, has no need of external philosophy... it contains its own endo-epistemology, if I may use the term' (Serres & Latour 128)

is turbulent, but it serves as the noise, the very chaos out of which the beautiful Goddess aphrodite can be born.

In Serres, the sea is turbulent, too, but, as in Lucretius, it is the source from which Venus and all life springs: 'Aphrodite, beautiful goddess, invisible, standing up, is born of the chaotic sea, this nautical chaos, the noise' (G, 25).

is redundancy. Where there is no redundancy, there is no thinkable space. Redundancy is characteristic of space itself and of our thinking about space.

Space is what we call a relatively homogeneous, isotropic multiplicity, subject to some law or definition. It is always necessary . . . to have a certain redundancy in order for a space to be, in order for a spcae to be unthinkable' (116). == 'For serres, space is essentialized as redundancy. Where there is no redundancy, there is no thinkable space. Serres's definition of space presupposes redundancy as a necessary condition for the existence of not only space, but cognition as well. Space manifests through its repeated recognized occupation. It is this act of repeated recognition of space that allows space to exist. (p.64 in Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific . . . By Sean Miller

is never a crime to steal knowledge it is a good theft. The pirate of knowledge is a good pirate.

In my eyes it is never a crime to steal knowledge it is a good theft. The pirate of knowledge is a good pirate.' (Michel Serres ''')

is taking the risk to accept a specific solitude. In venturing as far as possible toward solitude, toward non-recognition, style runs the risk even of autism.

A unique style comes from the gesture, the project, the itinerary, the risk indeed, from the acceptance of a specific solitude. . . . Repetition of content or method entails no risk, whereas style reflects in its mirror the nature of danger. In venturing as far as possible toward non-recognition, style runs the risk even of autism (CSCT, p.94).

is the opposite of repetition in content and method. It is radical and thus demands a new language. It risks a kind of non-recognition.

Style is the sign of innovation,' Serres proclaims, 'of passage into new territory' (CSCT, p.26). It is a way of writing that strains toward the unthinkable. For Serres, more specifically, style is that by which he breaks away from the rut of the classical and the technical, i.e., reductive, discourses which, Serres believes, do not have 'the terms and operators capable of describing' the radically new, one for which, therefore, 'it [is] necessary to find a new language' (CSCT, 71-2). Central to Serres's concept of style is, among other things, a Deleuzian rethinking of the issue of 'recognition,' against which Serres defines style as follows:

is the sign of innovation and a sign of passage into a new territory.

is an experience which, now largely absent, figured prominently even in the lives of kings. It colored moral philosophy as a remedy against inevitable daily suffering in a way we cannot grasp.

. . . And when it comes to suffering, we're terribly unfair to those who came before us. We mustn't forget that when we're sick, when we have a headache, we simply take an aspirin. The modern pharmacy is sufficiently well stocked for us to overcome all kinds of pain. We hardly suffer any more, whereas for our parents, and before our parents, pain was ever-present. The most powerful king of France, Louis XIV, screamed in agony every day surrounded by the best doctors. As a result of this, pain figured prominently in the moral philosophy of our ancestors, because they needed a remedy against inevitable daily suffering. It was meant to help them, and we no longer understand this kind of morality precisely because we don't suffer any more. (michel serres interview in zournazi : 200-1)

Michel SerresThinkers

Michel Serres