Power and Invention

One of the most penetrating and celebrated thinkers writing about the philosophy of science today, Isabelle Stengers here provides a firsthand account of the meeting of science and history. Concerned with the force and inventiveness of those theories, Power and Invention offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa.

Using the law of thermodynamics, Stengers sets out to explain the consequences of nonlinear dynamics (or chaos theory) for philosophy and science. She makes a case for the concept of complexity that transcends the conventional boundaries of scientific discourse and that clearly exposes the risks of scientific theories. Among the questions she confronts are: Is psychoanalysis a science? Is there such a thing as "women's science"? What are scientific theories?

Isabelle Stengers is associate professor of philosophy at the Free University of Brussels and a Distinguished Member of the National Committee of Logic and the History and Philosophy of Sciences in Belgium.