Variations on the Body

Description

World-renowned philosopher, Michel Serres writes a text in praise of the body and movement, in praise of teachers of physical education, coaches, mountain guides, athletes, dancers, mimes, clowns, artisans, and artists. This work describes the variations, the admirable metamorphoses that the body can accomplish. While animals lack such a variety of gestures, postures, and movements, the fluidity of the human body mimics the leisure of living beings and things; what’s more, it creates signs. Already here, within its movements and metamorphoses, the mind is born. The five senses are not the only source of knowledge: it emerges, in large part, from the imitations the plasticity of the body allows. In it, with it, by it knowledge begins. Contents Metamorphosis Humanity and Animals The Body in its Nascent State The Body in Motion The Body Associates the Senses The Written Body Panic Joy The Reversed Body Ethics, in Passing How the Body Stands and Walks Returning Fulfilled Potential My Teachers Weakness Pain Forgetfulness Existence as Deviation from Equilibrium Ethics The Virtual Body; Right, Politics The Two Metamorphoses Understanding Producing The Transfiguration Other Passages to Potential White Hair Knowledge From the Five Senses to Culture Imitation as Origin of Knowledge First Stage The Order: Taking, Learning, Understanding The Body’s Memory, As well as the World’s and Life’s Six Heroes Return to Copying: The Weakness And Fragility of Abstraction Second Stage: Body to Body with Things Geometry and Proportions Astronomy Transcendental Flexibility First White Products A Noisy, Sonorous, Vocal, Musical, Reasonable Interlude The Tongue in a Soft Trance Imitation and Conflict Three Beginnings A Computer Science Model of the Thesis Information, Software and Program Hardware Information, Software Information Innate Ideas Falsification of the Origin Meditation, Medication Vertigo The Upright Posture: Vertical on Vertebrae The Hundred Meters Bicycle: We Ride On a Good Many Wheels Casting Off: Invention The Mystery of the Transubstantiation Virginity Ilinx: Seasickness and Seawellness From Fluid Turbulences To Aerial Vortices Order and Disorder: Toward Life From Life Toward the Soul Leaving The Vertigoes of Knowledge An Origin of Geometry The Mathematical Body and the Toise: Space and Time The Effort of Stretching and Modality Commodalism Envoi: The Buoyancy that Makes Fly