Leviathan and the Air-Pump - Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer

Examining the very public disputes between Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle over the value of experimental knowledge and the relationship between knowledge creation and the social sphere, Shapin and Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-Pump traces the experimental sciences in their infancy, and draws a strikingly modern portrayal over concerns surrounding the manner by which we create facts. Focusing on the experiments of Robert Boyle's air-pump in Restoration England, the book gives free reign to the work of these two and the inter-weaving concerns of politics and science in the nascent Age of Reason.

Of crucial importance to philosophers' disagreements was the role of the social sphere and consensus in the creation of facts. Boyle claimed that the consensus of the experimental community occurred in a public, yet controlled, sphere that allowed for witness, replication and healthy debate. It was in this sphere that experiments could be witnessed and nurtured from the tenuous realm of supposition into the world of settled fact. For Hobbes, all knowledge was dependent upon the work put in to garnering it and was inextricably linked to the political and social realms. Any attempt to address problems of knowledge meant addressing problems of the social order, because the Leviathan - ordered society - could not escape the shadow of conflict, which sprang from disagreement. Living in the shadow of an English civil war both men and indeed much of the populace, was aware of concerns surrounding potential areas of conflict, thus, questions of experimental/scientific knowledge, religion and the social order were all of a piece. This made disagreements that much more acrimonious.

Though Boyle's scientific positions seemed to triumph Shapin and Schaffer eventually give Hobbes his due credit. Whereas Boyle believed that, given the proper circumstances, men could witness and dispassionately rule on the natural world, Hobbes saw that any knowledge creation could never be fully separated from the social/political circumstances of its creation or the work required for coming-into-being.


"The form of life in which we make our scientific knowledge will stand or fall with the way we order our affairs in the state." p. 344

Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks

An epic fictionalization of the life of America's most famous abolitionist John Brown, as related by his last remaining son Owen Brown at the turn of the twentieth century, Cloudsplitter takes us through the back roads and into the cities of the northern United States in the decades preceding the Civil War. Russell Banks has researched thoroughly and related diligently the events and climate that would bring John Brown and his loyal followers, first to Osawatomie and then into the heart of confederate Virginia and Harper's Ferry. But that is much later, at its heart  Banks' work follows the younger Brown from his childhood, through the development of relationship to his father, and casts a sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible eye on every man and woman's relationship to the institution of American slavery. Throughout we see Owen Brown wrestle in the shadow of his father's faith and conviction towards bringing an end to slavery. John Brown's convictions, his absolute faith in his relationship to God, and total commitment to abolitionism dominate every aspect of the life of Owen, his brothers and sisters, and indeed, every one Brown comes into contact with. We are left with impression that, without Brown's total commitment and willingness to sacrifice, coupled with his son's willingness to bush violence past the brink, American history would have developed very differently.

Among the many powerful themes of the work, Banks paints a portrait of American's relationships, within and across racial lines, that feels strikingly relevant. Though Owen Brown has committed his life to ending slavery, even as he struggles on the underground railroad, moving escaped slaves to Canada, he cannot escape his inability to deal equitably with black Americans. Wrestling with his faithlessness and inability to love blacks purely, Owen becomes and will remain consumed by his own failings, eventually to live out his days as a shade and wraith of the deeds of his youth. Constantly judging his own shortcomings and failings in the awesome and horrible light of his father's grandeur and certainty regarding his own and all peoples' roles and responsibilities in this life, Owen too often finds himself wanting where he deems it most important. It is the wrestling between Owen and his father, cast in biblical proportions, that is hammered home. A smaller, yet deeply personal tragedy in a tale that will only leave the reader searching for simple answers.

Engaging closely with Russell Bank's great work, one cannot help but question his own moral compass, and to what extent we are all willing to dedicate and sacrifice for what is right? We at once run from the person we are, and towards the person we are trying to become, at times stumbling along the way or even turning aside. For some, the race is won and we come to a place of peace within ourselves and with the world around us. But likewise, this struggle is not always a victory and many times those decisions are written in the stars beyond our control. John Brown remains one of America's most complex and controversial figures: at once liberty's strongest warrior and a slaughterer of men. His story reminds us that heroes and villains are rarely clearly either. Perhaps we can say that even the best of us contain a bit of both.

Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 - Taylor Branch

Part two in Taylor Branch's three-part opus on the American Civil Rights Movement, Pillar of Fire details the rise of the nation of Islam and the first years of President Johnson's term up to the assassination of Malcolm X. Starting in the oldest of American cities, St. Augustine, Florida, Branch's work ably brings together the disparate elements of the Civil Rights Movement as it burgeoned beyond the March of Washington and spread past the bounds of the SNCC, the SCLC and the NAACP. Throughout the work Branch gives the reader a sense that, at times, the movement was surpassing the abilities of even King, Elijah Muhammad, Bob Moses and Ralph Abernathy to control. Additionally, as President Kennedy exits the scene, struck down by an assassin's bullet, newly sworn-in President Johnson brings his energies and passions to bear on a Voting Rights and Civil Rights Bill.

Not as unified as his first work, Pillar of Fire nevertheless traces the uncertainty and power of the middle and crucial years of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King has moved beyond being simply a famous preacher and become an institution in and of himself: we see him and those around him beset on all sides by the trappings of fame and prestige. Branch ably characterizes the strengths and flaws of the movement and its people, reminding us that though they may have not been perfect, the generation of leaders and unnamed Americans who ushered in a new age, were something much more resonant, they were human.

Genesis - Michel Serres

"The multiple is the object of this book and history is its goal." p. 7


Another slim work from French philosopher Michel Serres, this one examines the manner in which things, namely time and history, come into being. In under 140-pages Serres is able to make a nuanced, complex and convincing argument for the relationship between what he calls noise and the manner in which the world flows around us. Serres compares our existence to being immersed in a sea that we willfully, and often at our own peril, ignore in the hopes of clarity surrounding concepts, sciences and relationships. What we call information and phenomena, we willfully separate from the background noise of existence and attempt to treat as if these things exist in and of themselves, when really this separation comes at the end of many long and intensive human labors.

Central to this work is an understanding that what we treat as clear and bounded entities - purities - are really turbulences of redundancy and uniqueness. Were things to be all redundancy and no difference, then there would be no uniqueness and thus no passage of time. Were things all unique with no redundancy then any passage would be meaningless as we would be caught only in an unrelated series of moments. Thus we exist between two poles, in a messy world that we gather under named concepts and entities. What Serres calls ichnographs, are agglomerations that are treated as multiplicities and not straight-jacketed into monisms. This is like accepting that numerous things make up the ocean, and that treating it as a single unit is a form of rational violence of simplification. By dealing with phenomena as multiplicities, we can maximize possibility and  limit the violence of simplification.

For Serres the turbulence of noise forces the meandering and displacement that creates history. Classifying things, straight-jacketing them, slows down turbulences and effects the impacts of relationships. The less things are able to meander beyond their status, the less they interact in novel ways, thus, the less history there is. Serres sees history itself as born out of the soup of noise, of turbulences, of the mixed-up ocean of things. By allowing for multiplicity we allow for unknowns, not only in our own lives, but also in the things around us. It is the ability of these multiplicities to circulate in all their mixed-upness that gives birth to the world.


"History is not born of provinces, but of circumstances." p. 100

King Solomon's Mines - H. Rider Haggard

An adventure story of the highest order, H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mine takes the reader to the interior of mythical darkest Africa. Looking for the wayward brother of Sir Henry, Capt. Good and Allan Quartermain venture beyond mountains, across deserts and into tribal warfare. Along the way they encounter frozen corpses, witches, and ancient treasure maps - the tale encompasses every lost world, grand adventure trope the reader could hope for.

Sparely written, the book moves through a host of experiences but keeps the reader engaged alone the way and gives the impression that you are there every step of the way. Though this is not high literature in any regard, it is also more than just a little racist, the craft of the tale is fairly unimpeachable. Writing clearly, with complexity and excitement is not a series of skills to be overlooked. Haggard has accomplished these things and I will look forward to read another of his adventure stories when the mood strikes me.

We Have Never Been Modern - Bruno Latour

A slim volume and perhaps Latour's most prescient work, We Have Never Been Modern examines what Latour terms the "modernist settlement" and the relationships of nature and culture and our own western culture to that of the "others" who exist in contrast to it. Latour's argument rests on the position that modernism as generally defined remains largely misinterpreted and that a thorough examination breaks down the supposed differences between our present and past, and the West with other "less advanced" cultures. In essence modernism rests on the twin movements of purification - that nature and culture become more separable from each other as we move towards a more perfect modernity - and of translation - that we simultaneously create hybrids of nature and culture that extend our networks of influence. This double movement is crucial for, as Latour sees it, it allows moderns to at once claim unique access to knowledge of the world "as it really is" while also mobilizing this knowledge in ways that transcend normal politics and social measure.

As the title suggests, Latour argues that there is no distinction of kind between western culture and others, rather one of scope, scale and pretension. Latour coherently crafts an argument for why such is the case - his theoretical work on networks and events, if nothing else, can provide interesting brain fodder for numerous disciplines - and how our actual mediation as a part of the world opens avenues for new analysis and potentialities for new politics. By suggesting a new nature-culture "Constitution" Latour attempts to provide an at once commonsensical - once you understand his logic - and novel understanding for the ways that phenomena, whether they be humans or non-humans, technologies, sciences, concepts or locations, are connected and circulate among one another. Though seemingly complex and dense at first, We Have Never Been Modern provides a wonderful introduction to a powerful mind and one of the major movements of the modern philosophies of science and technology.

Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time - Michel Serres with Bruno Latour

Two of France's premier modern-day philosophers sit down so that we might better be able to understand one of them. Michel Serres is known for writing in a straight-forward and yet seemingly obtuse manner that leaves many (one should think including Bruno Latour) scratching their heads. This series of conversations is meant to trace Serres' intellectual and personal development in relation to his craft. Central to the books points are Serres' call for a re-understanding of the role of the Humanities as a complementary understanding to the sometimes blinding light of the sciences (he would say both natural and social). To get to the need for this reintegration the reader, serving somewhat as a fly on the wall, is brought along through Serres' biography, and how this informs his understanding of both our contemporary situation and how it relates to classical and modern scholarship.

Throughout, Latour performs admirably in trying to pin down the often difficult conceptualizations and intellectual jumps Serres is performing. Simultaneously Serres is allowed to speak for himself and really enunciate that which drives him and the role in to which he has cast himself. This self-styled, modern day Hermes (a title for two of his works) strikes us as most interested in enunciating relationships between seemingly disparate realms of knowledge and inquiry, in the hopes that we might continue to build the human adventure positively. This work seems most valuable in providing a baseline of understanding, or perhaps a spirit with which to better read Serres' work - which, despite his urging and pronouncements, is often difficult to pin down. Much as Serres often seems to construct a framework within which difference fluctuates, this work helps to bracket aspects of his thoughts so that the reader may come along with him as he traces networks and helps to illuminate the importance of pre-positions. Rather than trying to pin him down to place, we are better able to understand the roadmap he is building.