All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, reco rding, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Includes index. Pe rception Philosophy 2. Veils Serres the polymath and Renaissance man has the European literary, artistic and philosophical traditions at his command, as he does the world of science. The full extent of his intellectual reach is displayed in The Five Senses.
His philosophical familiars are the ancient Greeks, Descartes and Leibniz are his bedrock; the Bible, the Catholic Mass and liturgy figure prominently; Montaigne and Pascal haunt the text, Stendhal, Diderot and Verne are more substantial apparitions.
What is more, mythology, fables and fairy tales are deployed with the same analytical seriousness as their more disciplined conceptual counterparts. The text references the European visual arts, architecture and music. In short, the reader is left wondering if there is anything beyond the range of Serres's erudition. And at the heart of the book, in a sparkling analysis of the root meanings of sapience and sagacity, Serres conjures Don Juan, the Last Supper and Plato's Symposium out of the contemplation of a fine Chateau d'Yquem.
This mingled patchwork is isomorphic with Serres's overall philosophi cal project, which seeks to establish a topology, rather than a geometry, of knowledge. The manner in which, here as elsewhere in his writings, his analysis moves from the physical sciences to fable, for instance, or from philosophy to myth, stems from his belief that to operate within one field of knowledge alone is to remain landlocked.
An intolerable situation for a sailor whose preferred navigational metaphor is the North-West Passage. Serres, who was indeed a naval officer in his youth, is most easily cate gorized as a philosopher, although the label is one which sits ill with him,. Nonetheless, this book presents as a philo sophical text - its subtitle is A Philosophy ofMingled Bodies. It thus awakens certain expectations, such as the orderly and logical development of an argument leading towards certain clear-cut conclusions.
