The Troubadour of Knowledge (Studies In Literature And Science) - Softcover

Serres, Michel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472065513 ISBN 13: 9780472065516

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 1997

Synopsis

What do we do when we raise a child, teach a student, or educate a person as a member of society? For the French philosopher Michel Serres, all of these forms of pedagogy require painful yet exhilarating departures from home and encounters with Otherness. Like a swimmer who plunges into the river's current to reach the opposite bank, the person who wishes to learn must risk a voyage from the familiar to the strange. True education, Serres writes, takes place in the fluid middle of this crossing. To be educated is to become a harlequin, a crossbreed, a hybrid of our origins--like a newborn child, complexly produced as a mixture of maternal and paternal genes, yet an independent existence, separated from the familiar and determined.

In this wide-ranging meditation on learning and difference, Serres--the scientist turned epistemologist, philosopher turned moralist, reveler of being a half-breed from every point of view--explores numerous pathways in philosophy, science, and literature to argue that the best contemporary education requires knowledge of both science's general truths and literature's singular stories. He heralds a new pedagogy which claims that from the crossbreeding of the humanities and the sciences a new educational ideal can be born: the troubadour of knowledge.

With his agile and poetic voice, Serres has created a meditation of precisely this pluralistic creation, deftly recognizing it as a third party bred not of orderly dialectics but of the destabilizing multiplicity of the present age. Those who know the enormous range and clarity of this thinker will welcome this latest volume translated into English by Sheila Glaser with the assistance of William Paulson.

Michel Serres has taught at Clermont-Ferrand, the University of Paris VIII [Vincennes], the Sorbonne, and Stanford University, and has served as visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University. Other works of his available in English translation include Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time (with Bruno Latour), Genesis, and The Natural Contract, also published by The University of Michigan Press.

Sheila Glaser is Reviews Editor of Artforum magazine. William Paulson is Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan.

About this title

About the Author

Michel Serres has taught at Clermont-Ferrand, the University of Paris VIII [Vincennes], the Sorbonne, and Stanford University, and has served as visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University.

From the Back Cover

What do we do when we raise a child, teach a student, or educate a person as a member of society? For the French philosopher Michel Serres, all these forms of pedagogy require painful yet exhilarating departures from home and encounters with otherness. In this wide-ranging meditation on learning and difference, Serres explores numerous pathways in philosophy, science, and literature to argue that the best contemporary education requires knowledge of both science's general truths and literature's singular stories. He heralds a new pedagogy that claims that from the crossbreeding of the humanities and the sciences a new educational ideal can be born: the troubadour of knowledge.

Reviews

French thinker Serres (The Natural Contract, Univ. of Michigan, 1995) philosophizes by indirection. He does not argue for particular propositions but instead juxtaposes facts in unusual combinations. Among other topics, he discusses the significance of left-handedness, Merimee's work as an antiquary, the meaning of phenomenology in astronomy, and Leibniz's view of Pierre Bayle. He collects facts not as a mere display of erudition. Rather, he prods the reader to think about the nature of learning and the need to relate the sciences and humanities. Stories about travelers and troubadours pervade the book. For strong philosophy and education collections.?David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472065513
• ISBN 13: 9780472065516
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 184