Sci&Tech History

There are three key aspects to the alternative model of science that Serres proposes:

1. Science is not a linear process, it is neither gradual accumulation of knowledge nor constant epistemological revolution. The model Serres offers instead is topological, a shifting distribution of points in complex spatial arrangements. Historical developments in science then need to be understood in terms of transformations in the relationships between these arrangements. Hence it is no longer a question of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ factors, but rather ‘What is closed? What is open? What is a connective path? What is a tear? What are the continuous and the discontinuous? What is a threshold, a limit?’ (Serres, 1982a: 44).

2. Science is fundamentally ‘impure’, it is a mixture of overlapping paths between the varied sets of ideas and practices (‘groups, institutions, capitals, people in agreement or in conflict, machines and objects’). Indeed it is principally at these points where science is most impure, when it can be seen to act as a kind of crossroads or point of interchange, that it is at its most developed. For Serres, the criterion for judging the adequacy of science is given by the degree to which it exposes itself to a process of mixing – ‘a scientist or scholar has no right to that title unless, ceasing to defend her own disciples or discipline, she stops explaining everything from her discipline’s point of view, but admires other disciplines, far and near, and learns from them’ (1997a: 9).

3. Science is not the sole custodian of reason. From which it follows that, contrary to the Bachelardian tradition, we cannot as a culture be instructed by science alone. Reason is to be found across the entire fabric of the modern world: ‘In a certain way reason is, of all things in the world, the most equally distributed. No domain can have a monopoly of reason, except via abuse’ (Serres with Latour, 1995: 112). We find reason by looking to local practices, and particularly local languages. Every language has its own stockpile of wisdom. The problem is not the overcoming of such wisdom by a more superior form of (scientific) reason, but rather of learning how to ‘speak all languages’ such that one may develop a ‘tolerant ethics, of third instruction, a harmonious middle/milieu, a daughter of two banks, of scientific culture and of knowledge culled from the humanities, of expert erudition and of artistic narrative’ (Serres, [1991] 1997b: 164–5).

Additional notes: Michel Serres is a person who introduce the concept of translation rather diffusion to explain about how things spread.

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