Natural writing: the case of Serres

Abstract

The immense powers to intervene in the very constitution of 'life itself' that have been developed by the modern life sciences pose serious questions for the basis of politics, and for common reason. In this context the life sciences may formally be seen as the principle source of instruction for rationality. The work of Michel Serres – philosopher and historian of science – provides a very different account of wisdom. Serres redistributes reason by exploring complex connections between the natural and social sciences and the humanities. His early analysis of the links or 'translations' between the art of Turner and the thermodynamic principles of Carnot reveals the existence of highly mediated relationships between different forms of knowledge. Although in recent years Serres has offered a revised reading of the case of Turner, exploring such links makes visible the fundamental interdependence of human affairs with a 'socialised' natural world in which 'it no longer depends on us that everything depends on us'. Serres describes the foundations of a 'new wisdom' that is adequate to such a world, leading to a notion of the 'third instructed' as whoever is receptive to communication along the borderlines of disciplines.