modern

is a reawakening of the world of perception, a relearning of how to see a world that we had turned away from with our single-minded pursuit of objective knowledge.

In the first three lectures, we argued with respect to science, painting and philosophy that the transition from classical to modern was marked by what might be thought of as a reawakening of the world of perception. (merleau ponty 'world of perception' : 69)

is determined by the length of networks, not their nature.

Our sense of the modern is determined by the length of networks, not their nature, so 'to be sure, the innovation of lengthened networks is important, but it is hardly a reason to make such a great fuss' (Latour We have never been p. 124)' (MUSE Review of ).

is grounded in thought which is condemned to divide the world into passive objects and active subjects. From within this (false) division, things-in-themselves are incorrectly imagined to be detached from the other objects to which they are in fact linked in the dynamic associations he terms networks.

For Latour, post-Enlightenment thought is condemned to divide the world into passive objects and active subjects. From within this (false) division, things-in-themselves are incorrectly imagined to be detached from the other objects to which they are in fact linked in the dynamic associations he terms networks (We Have Never117-119). (To emphasize their status as always-already linked, Latour refers in his own discourse not to 'objects' but to 'subject-objects.').

is marked by the idea that we are once more learning to see the world around us, the same world which we had turned away from in the conviction that our senses had nothing worthwhile to tell us, sure as we were that only strictly objective knowledge was worth holding onto.

We are once more learning to see the world around us, the same world which we had turned away from in the conviction that our senses had nothing worthwhile to tell us, sure as we were that only strictly objective knowledge was worth holding onto. (merleau ponty 'world of perception' :69)

To be modern is not a fashion, it is a state. It is necessary to understand history, and he who understands history knows how to find continuity between that which was, that which is, and that which will be.

is one who divides society from technology, culture from nature, human from nonhuman, except that they do not euro-American moderns are like anyone else in the hybrids they make, even though they are rarely as explicit.

Moderns divide society from technology, culture from nature, human from nonhuman, except that they do not Euro-American moderns are like anyone else in the hybrids they make, even thorugh they are rarely as explicit' (Strathern 1996:522).

is reflective of a subtle distinction between the wrongheaded idea of a continuity of the mere secularizing of religious substances and the correct idea of a continuity of problems approached by religion.

Indeed, the modern age's characteristic founding gesture of starting with radical doubt a la Descartes and ignoring the hold of the past over the present is one he resolutely rejects. The grand narrative he offers is not one of radical and inexplicable discontinuities between epochs in the manner of, say, Foucault's early works. Blumenberg makes his case instead by introducing a subtle distinction between the continuity of transfigured substances, which he opposes, and the continuity of problems and functions, which he defends. In place, therefore, of the secularization thesis he proposes instead what can be called a reoccupation argument. In his words, ( 'legitimacy' 65 in Jay 1985 : 185)

To be modern is to tinker with the Incurable.

modern, n.All

modern