This essay shows how Conrad Hal Waddington is at the very center of divergent genealogies of theoretical biology: he is at once remembered for his contribution to epigenetics and complex systems biology (in its current formation) and largely forgotten for the debt that he owes to Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. The essay traces Waddington's debt to Whitehead and demonstrates the way in which this conceptual lineage challenges the transcendental conditions of biological knowledge presupposed by the reigning paradigm of (...) complex systems biology. (shrink)

Once largely ignored, the speculative philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has assumed a new prominence in contemporary theory across the humanities and social sciences. Philosophers and artists, literary critics and social theorists, anthropologists and computer scientists have all embraced Whitehead’s thought, extending it through inquiries into the nature of life, the problem of consciousness, and the ontology of objects, as well as into experiments in education and digital media. _The Lure of Whitehead_ offers readers not only a comprehensive introduction to (...) Whitehead’s philosophy but also a demonstration of how his work advances our emerging understanding of life in the posthuman epoch. Contributors: Jeffrey A. Bell, Southeastern Louisiana U; Nathan Brown, U of California, Davis; Peter Canning; Didier Debaise, Free U of Brussels; Roland Faber, Claremont Lincoln U; Michael Halewood, U of Essex; Graham Harman, American U in Cairo; Bruno Latour, Sciences Po Paris; Erin Manning, Concordia U, Montreal; Steven Meyer, Washington U; Luciana Parisi, U of London; Keith Robinson, U of Arkansas at Little Rock; Isabelle Stengers, Free U of Brussels; James Williams, U of Dundee. (shrink)

Rock Records explores the intricate entanglements between Anthropos and Geos through a wide range of writings about stone, from media theory and ecophilosophy to the role of stones in art and the aesthetics of viewing stones. Authors engage the activity, vitality, and relationality of lithic matter and articulate multiple modalities of 'geo-affection,' as well as forms of geo-mythology, geo-sociality, and occult lithography. As the initial issue in a new digital/intermedial series of SubStance aimed at interweaving creative and critical work, Rock (...) Records also features digital versions of essays with photo-rich content, as well as a virtual exhibition of viewing stones and a series of speculative studies in... (shrink)

This article argues for the relevance of mythical signification in our geological epoch. More than this, it contends that we need to revise our assumptions about media and communication systems in order to grasp the importance of myth in an era where the future of human and nonhuman life on the Earth is entirely uncertain. To make this case, I focus on the growing consensus in the sciences and theoretical humanities that mythical stories about geological and planetary processes cannot simply (...) be disqualified or disregarded because they do not conform to the norms of modern scientific epistemology. Whether these stories come to us from pre-modern civilizations and attempt to give... (shrink)

The work of Isabelle Stengers engages a baffling number of topics and includes collaborators from across many disciplines and practices. For this reason, there is perhaps no set of terms or concepts that easily encapsulates her work. Nevertheless, in recent years concepts such as “cosmopolitics” and the “ecology of practices” have gained a special currency in the context of humanities and social science research. While cosmopolitics is not a new term, and Stengers is certainly not the only one to employ (...) it today, her use of it, and in conjunction with the ecology of practices, seems to have sparked the critical and speculative... (shrink)