“When the sage points at the Moon,” says the Chinese proverb, “the fool looks at his fingertip.” Well, we [social scientists] have all educated ourselves to be fools! This is our deontology. This is what a social scientist learns at school, mocking the unwashed who naively believe in the Moon. We know that when actors speak about the Virgin Mary, […]
As técnicas ditas “materiais” não deixaram, desde que o capitalismo conseguiu “liberar as forças produtivas”, de fazer existir novas possibilidades, de inventar os meios de “fazer fazer” as coisas mais notáveis com os elétrons, as bactérias, os vírus, e tantos outros seres dos quais a humanidade não fazia ideia há dois séculos… E esses meios têm pouco a ver com […]
If we take a typical inner planet and measure the atmospheric gases, we will have primarily carbon dioxide, some nitrogen and trace amounts of oxygen. Oxygen and nitrogen will remove each other – that is, they’ll react, form nitrates, and remove these gases from the atmosphere […]. But if we look at the atmosphere of the Earth, we have a […]
We are persuaded that viruses do not belong in any of the five kingdoms. They are not alive since outside living cells they do nothing, ever. Viruses require the metabolism of the live cell because they lack the requisites to generate their own. Metabolism, the incessant chemistry of self-maintenance, is an essential feature of life. Viruses lack this. Through ceaseless […]
HARAWAY, Donna. 2018. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. FemaleManC_Meets_OncoMouseTM: feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge. [1996] GENES R US Let me tell a parochial story, which travels widely, about turgid and hardened entities. Like toys in other games, Genes R Us, and “we” (who?) are our self-possessed products in an apotheosis of technological humanism. There is only one Actor, and we are It. Nature […]
LaSPA is located at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (