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The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies
Contributor(s): Serres, Michel (Author), Sankey, Margaret (Translator), Cowley, Peter (Translator)
ISBN: 0826459846     ISBN-13: 9780826459848
Publisher: Continuum
OUR PRICE:   $227.70  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: February 2009
Qty:
Annotation: This book represents a defining break in Michel Serres' work, leaving behind traditional philosophy to explore the history and culture of science.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Movements - Humanism
Dewey: 128.3
LCCN: 2008015270
Series: Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers
Physical Information: 1" H x 6.2" W x 9.2" (1.45 lbs) 364 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

Available for the first time in English!
Winner of the Prix Médicis Essai!

Marginalized by the scientific age with its metaphysical and philosophical systems, the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution.
Exploring the deleterious effects of the systematic downgrading of the senses in Western philosophy, Michel Serres - a member of the Académie Française and one of France's leading philosophers - 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?

Contributor Bio(s): Serres, Michel: - Michel Serres is a Professor in the History of Science at Stanford University and a member of the Académie Française. A renowned and popular philosopher, he is a prize-winning author of essays and books, such as The Five Senses (Grasset/Continuum), Genesis (Grasset/U. of Michigan Press), and Biogée (Le Pommier/Univocal Press).