Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development: Speculative Realism Volume II

The first published work to explore the new philosophy of speculative realism through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and an openness to its outside.

The first published work to explore the new philosophical field of speculative realism, the second volume of Collapse features a selection of speculative essays by some of the foremost young philosophers at work today, together with new work from artists and filmmakers, and searching interviews with leading scientists. Comprising subjects from probability theory to theology, from quantum theory to neuroscience, from astrophysics to necrology, it involves them in unforeseen and productive syntheses.

Against the tide of institutional balkanisation and specialisation, this volume testifies to a defiant reanimation of the most radical philosophical problematics—the status of the scientific object, metaphysics and its “end,” the prospects for a revival of speculative realism, the possibility of phenomenology, transcendence and the divine, the nature of causation, the necessity of contingency—both through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and through an openness to its outside. The breadth of philosophical thought in this volume is matched by the surprising and revealing thematic connections that emerge between the philosophers and scientists who have contributed.

Robin Mackay is a philosopher, Director of the UK arts organization Urbanomic, and Associate Researcher at Goldsmiths University of London.

Robin Mackay is a philosopher, Director of the UK arts organization Urbanomic, and Associate Researcher at Goldsmiths University of London.

Quentin Meillassoux teaches philosophy at Université de Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne), and is author of After Finitude.

Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI–Arc in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the development of object-oriented ontology. He is a central figure in the speculative realism trend in contemporary philosophy.

Paul M. Churchland is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (both published by the MIT Press), and other books.

Kristen Alvanson is an American artist and writer. Her essays and artworks have been published in journals and anthologies worldwide, and she has participated in group and solo shows in New York, Tehran, Shiraz, London, Istanbul, Berlin, Vienna, Singapore, Kessel-Lo, Zürich, and Vilnius.

Reza Negarestani is an Iranian philosopher best known for pioneering the genre of "theory-fiction" with his book Cyclonopedia. (Urbanomic/Sequence Press).