scholarly journals The empiricism of Michel Serres a theory of the senses between philosophy of science, phenomenology and ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-245
Author(s):  
Petra Gehring
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Working Method

The paper presents the philosophy of the French philosopher Michel Serres, with an accent on his working method and unusual methodology. Starting from the thesis that the empiricist trait of Serres? philosophy remains underexposed if one simply receives his work as that of a structuralist epistemologist, Serres? monograph The Five Senses (1985) is then discussed in more detail. Here we see both a radical empiricism all his own and a closeness to phenomenology. Nevertheless, perception and language are not opposed to each other in Serres. Rather, his radical thinking of a world-relatedness of the bodily senses and an equally consistent understanding of a sensuality of language - and also of philosophical prose - are closely intertwined.

Tobacco’s Appeal to the Senses and the Early Modern Smoker’s Still Life

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-150
Author(s):  
Julia Saviello
Keyword(s):  
Still Life ◽  
Sense Data ◽  
Complex Image ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Tobacco Pipes ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Cut Tobacco ◽  
Selection Of

Smell and taste – of the five senses these are the two most strongly stimulated by smoking tobacco. The article presents an in-depth analysis of the reflection of both these forms of sensory perception in textual and visual sources concerning the early consumption of the herb. In a first step, tobacco’s changing reception, first as medicine and then as stimulant, is traced through the years of its increasing distribution in Europe, starting in the middle of the 16th century. As this overview reveals, at that time the still little known substance gave rise to new forms of sense perception. Following recent studies on smell and gustation, which have stressed the need to take into account the interactions between these senses, the article probes the manifold stimulation of the senses by tobacco with reference to allegorical representations and genre scenes addressing the five senses. The smoking of tobacco was thematized in both of these art forms as a means of visualizing either smell or taste. Yet, these depictions show no indication of any deliberate engagement with the exchange of sense data between mouth and nose. The question posed at the end of this paper is whether this holds true also for early smoker’s still lifes. In the so-called toebakjes or rookertjes, a subgenre of stilllife painting that, like tobacco, was still a novelty at the beginning of the 17th century, various smoking paraphernalia – such as rolled or cut tobacco, pipes and tins – are arrayed with various kinds of foods and drinks. Finally, the article addresses a selection of such smoker’s still lifes, using the toebakje by Pieter Claesz., probably the first of its kind, as a starting point and the work by Georg Flegel as a comparative example. Through their selection of objects, both offer a complex image of how tobacco engages different senses.

The Changing Perception of the Five Senses

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Sara Benninga
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Peter Paul Rubens ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Senses

This article examines the changing approach towards the representation of the senses in 17th-century Flemish painting. These changes are related to the cultural politics and courtly culture of the Spanish sovereigns of the Southern Netherlands, the Archdukes Albert and Isabella. The 1617–18 painting-series of the Five Senses by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens as well as the pendant paintings on the subject are analyzed in relation to the iconography of the five senses, and in regard to Flemish genre themes. In this context, the excess of objects, paintings, scientific instruments, animals, and plants in the Five Senses are read as an expansion of the iconography of the senses as well as a reference to the courtly material culture of the Archdukes. Framing the senses as part of a cultural web of artifacts, Brueghel and Rubens refer both to elite lived experience and traditional iconography. The article examines the continuity between the iconography of the senses from 1600 onwards, as developed by Georg Pencz, Frans Floris, and Maerten de Vos, and the representation of the senses in the series. In addition, the article shows how certain elements in the paintings are influenced by genre paintings of the courtly company and collector’s cabinet, by Frans Francken, Lucas van Valckenborch and Louis de Caullery. Through the synthesis of these two traditions the subject of the five senses is reinvented in a courtly context

Michel Serres' Five Senses

2021 ◽  
pp. 318-334
Author(s):  
Steven Connor
Keyword(s):  
Michel Serres ◽  
Five Senses

Michel Serres (1930b)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Steyaert
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
Time Translation ◽  
The Senses

Michel Serres, a French philosopher and mathematician, is known for his enquiry into the interrelationships between various systems ranging from science and philosophy to mythology and poetry/literature. Such systems can be compared with one another to determine what each tries to exclude (for example, noise, disorder, or turbulence). This chapter examines Serres’ philosophy and its relevance to processual organization studies. It considers his conceptions of time, translation and mediation, the third-excluded and the third-instructed, multiplicity and complexity, the body and the senses, and interdisciplinarity. In order to understand how Serres can be regarded as an important processual theorist, the chapter analyses his book Genèse or Genesis, which offers an account of creation through a performative poetics. It argues that Serres’ work has the potential to support and deepen processual thinking. It also links the ideas of listening and invention from a Serresean perspective.

A Test of Ontological Relativity

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Steve Myers
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
William James ◽  
Analytical Psychology ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Psychological Types ◽  
Ontological Relativity

Abstract Jung saw a role for the methods of natural science in analytical psychology alongside other ways of developing of knowledge. This paper puts a cryptic and undeveloped idea in Psychological Types to the test using the principles of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science. The idea is a combination of Jung’s philosophy, esse in anima, and his theory of opposites applied to politics. It is explained using a term coined by the philosopher W.V.O Quine—ontological relativity. There are key similarities between the two philosophical concepts, due to Jung and Quine having a common influence in William James’ radical empiricism. The ontological relativity of political opposites is subjected to three tests that attempt to falsify it. All three attempts at falsification fail, which therefore provides some support for the idea. However, there are a number of anomalous results that raise significant questions requiring further research. This paper should therefore be viewed as the first step in a programme of research to examine the ontological relativity of political opposites that is inherent within esse in anima.

Alan of Lille and the New Man

1977 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 137-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
Alan Of Lille ◽  
New Man ◽  
Good Taste ◽  
New Type ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Senses

Let them be forbidden access to this work, wrote Alan of Lille in his Anticlaudianus, who would only look for the image of sensuality and not the truth of reason . . . Do not allow those tasteless men, who cannot take their studies beyond the bounds of the senses, to impose their own interpretations on this book . . . lest the majesty of its secret meanings be profaned, like pearls cast before swine, when divulged to the unworthy. But what is this majestic secret significance which Alan wished to keep hidden from people so lacking in good taste as to want to probe it and misunderstand it? On the surface the Anticlaudianus, Alan’s most famous work, is an epic romance about a celestial journey and a great battle which is clearly being used as a moral treatise, a summa de virtutibus et vitiis. His long poem tells the story of how the goddess Nature, in council with the Virtues, seeks to make a new type of person, the homo perfectus. They realise that such a divine being cannot be created unless a soul is brought from God, whereupon Phronesis, the searcher after truth to whom the secrets of God are revealed, undertakes a journey to heaven in a chariot constructed by the seven liberal arts and drawn by the five senses. With the aid of Theology and Faith, Phronesis meets the heavenly host, the Virgin Mary, and eventually God himself, who has a soul made for her. She brings this soul, carefully sealed to keep it fresh, back to the waiting body, and the novus homo is complete. He then has to prove himself in a great pitched battle between the virtues and the vices.

The Parliament of Things and the Anthropocene

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Simons ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
The World ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
Isabelle Stengers ◽  
Own Name ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
The Way

Among the contemporary philosophers using the concept of the Anthropocene, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers are prominent examples. The way they use this concept, however, diverts from the most common understanding of the Anthropocene. In fact, their use of this notion is a continuation of their earlier work around the concept of a ‘parliament of things.’ Although mainly seen as a sociology or philosophy of science, their work can be read as philosophy of technology as well. Similar to Latour’s claim that science is Janus-headed, technology has two faces. Faced with the Anthropocene, we need to shift from technologies of control to technologies of negotiations, i.e., a parliament of things. What, however, does a ‘parliament of things’ mean? This paper wants to clarify what is conceptually at stake by framing Latour’s work within the philosophy of Michel Serres and Isabelle Stengers. Their philosophy implies a ‘postlinguistic turn,’ where one can ‘let things speak in their own name,’ without claiming knowledge of the thing in itself. The distinction between object and subject is abolished to go back to the world of ‘quasi-objects’ (Serres). Based on the philosophy of science of Latour and Stengers the possibility for a politics of quasi-objects or a ‘cosmopolitics’ (Stengers) is opened. It is in this framework that their use of the notion of the Anthropocene must be understood and a different view of technology can be conceptualized.

scholarly journals REKONSTRUKSI PEMAHAMAN KONSEP I’JAZ AL-QUR’AN PERSPEKTIF GUS BAHA’

QOF ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Sholihah Zahro'ul Isti'anah ◽  
Zaenatul Hakamah
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Analysis Methods ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Dead

Generally the miracles of the Prophets are understood to be something sensory, just as the Prophet Musa parted the sea with his staff; Prophet Ibrahim did not feel burning on heat in the embers; Prophet Isa healed the sick and raised the dead. However, according to KH. Bahauddin Nur Salim (Gus Baha'), this understanding needs to be improved, as he conveyed in the Darusan Menara Timur study on May 29, 2019 and published on Youtube. This article will outline the study with content analysis methods using reconstruction theory. From the results of the analysis, it was concluded that from the perspective of Gus Baha', understanding i'ja>z as something sensory is wrong, especially understanding the miracles of the Qur'an that can be witnessed not by the five senses, but by reasoning and the eyes of the heart (bas}i>rah). Understanding miracles as something unusual and unmatched also needs to be clarified. Because, God's creations are considered ordinary as mentioned in the QS. Al-Baqarah verse 26- mosquitoes are also Allah's qudrats that cannot be imitated by humans. Its miracle lies in the ability of reason to understand its awesomeness. The mistake of understanding the concept of i'ja>z can have an impact on the value of faith, because the faith that grows from the ability to witness miracles through prayer will be of higher quality and more lasting than the faith that grows from the ability to witness in the senses.

scholarly journals Conclusions: Touching and Being Touched – Experience and Ethical Relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
Lars Frers
Keyword(s):  
Field Work ◽  
Clear Definition ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
Ethical Relations

AbstractSometimes, research can hit you in the stomach, making you angry and upset, possibly sick. With a bit of luck, this can be fine, as discontentment can be a force that propels you to become active and engage yourself. Sometimes, research can resonate in your heart, making you aware and empathetic. Not much luck is needed in these cases, as this will hopefully also stimulate you to get new ideas, a better understanding or hopefully even give you a better foothold for whatever you do in practice. Most of the time, research just passes you by, not leaving much of an impression. We do know that words can make a difference, that words can touch you. They evoke many different thoughts and emotions. It is not a single word alone that does this, it is the flow and rhythm of a text, how it takes the reader along, cognitively but also in space and time and in an embodied manner. To achieve different effects, we place words differently, we craft sentences that appeal to different senses and sensibilities, we use terms or jargon, we write complex sentences that juxtapose hosts of different qualities, as Michel Serres does in in The Five Senses (2008). We present a clear definition, we unfold arguments or put something to the point. Most of the word work we do, we do on our keyboards, sitting at a desk, in a train carriage or lying on a sofa. Thus, this word work happens remote from the site where our study took place, it is definitely not the same as the field work that we do, it is not the same as the numbers and algorithms that make up our data. But done well, it can still evoke the sense of what happens or happened “out there” in the field, the phenomena that the numbers point to, be they the numbers of people crossing a border or the feeling of someone who is lost or maybe even hunted (Guttorm, 2016).

scholarly journals Considering the Five Senses in Architecture

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (Special-Issue1) ◽  
pp. 138-143
Author(s):  
Arezou Zaredar
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Architectural Space ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Moment

Despite fully attention of most current architects to the sense of eyesight, architecture stimulates all of our senses. This paper discusses the perception of senses in architecture, explaining how they work and influence on each other and the differences between them. Besides giving examples of programs to improve conscious perception in an architectural space. In author`s Thesis announced with “Five Senses Museum” it has been attempted to consider all senses in frame of architecture because consciously or spontaneous they affect perception of space and also make it a place to remind with five senses. To approach this aim, this museum contains five main galleries to deal with five senses, notes the correct behavior to the senses and attempts to guide human to recognize itself with practicing domination to senses and recognizing them and learning to be in the moment concentrated. So a beyond perception among the traditional museums is possible.

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