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Entropy and Entropic Differences in the Work of Michel Serres

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


Change log

Authors

Kroth, Lilian 

Abstract

jats:p Michel Serres’s philosophy of entropy takes what he famously calls the ‘Northwest Passage’ between the sciences and the humanities. By contextualizing his approach to entropy and affirming the role of a philosophy of difference, this paper explores Serres’s approach by means of ‘entropic differences’. It claims that entropy – or rather, entropies – provide Serres with a paradigmatic case for critical translations between different domains of knowledge. From his early Hermès series, through to The Birth of Physics and later writings on social and ethical themes, he keeps thermodynamical and informational – or ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ – understandings of entropy apart, while simultaneously exploring their relation. By focusing on the systematic significance of Serres’s ‘entropic difference’, this paper shows how it unfolds not necessarily as an ontological difference but as an operative function between the history and philosophy of science, epistemology, and a theory of negentropic (inter)subjectivity. </jats:p>

Description

Peer reviewed: True

Keywords

47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4702 Cultural Studies, 4410 Sociology, 44 Human Society

Journal Title

Theory, Culture &amp; Society

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0263-2764
1460-3616

Volume Title

Publisher

SAGE Publications
Sponsorship
Stiftung Begabtenförderung Cusanuswerk (Promotionsstipendium)
Arts and Humanities Research Council (OOC DTP scholarship)
Cambridge Trust (Cambridge European Scholarship)