Philosophy of Time

One of the best explanations of Bergson’s thought. Lapoujade connects duration with motion and in the process exposes why Bergson’s thought is more than conceptual philosophy. It is the transformation of how we experience ourselves and the world.

Michel Serres at his most political. This 1990 book is a defining work in the modern understanding of the climate crisis. I've written a long essay inspired by the depth and breadth of Serres vision.

A canonical book in the history of 'posthumanism'. It is much more than that. The Parasite descends through Western Metaphysics and Ontology to arrive at a way of thinking that is thoroughly relational. Here we find his early articulation of quasi-objects and percolating time. My 'review' is not so much a review as an essay on how to use 'the parasite' as an operational concept that expands our capacity to become quasi-subjects.

The twentieth century's need for national and global time was a problem of electromagnetism. It became an abstraction (as relativity) out of these practical and commercial concerns.

With deference to Bergson, Heidegger's Being and Time is the lasting work with respect to philosophical thinking about time.

Lee Smollen argues that physics no longer treats time as an experiential illusion. It is fundamental to the universe because everything is relational. Time is fundamental to these relations.

A largely speculative work by one of the more famous theorists of Loop Quantum Gravity. Time is not fundamental for Rovelli, it is emergent.

Michel Serres makes Lucretius our contemporary. Published just before Le Parasite, Le Naissance de la physique was a key moment in the history of chaos theory and the ability to see order emerging from disorder -- a reversal of the Enlightenment's formula. Serres finds in Lucretius' De rerum natura a pre-Modern text that offers a more relevant way of thinking about order and disorder free of eternal natural laws.

Modernity didn’t just apply technologies of measuring time at more minute levels. Modernity and time measurement are bound together much more intimately.

Copernicus did not kick humanity out of the center of the universe. He made the Earth a star and also tried to restore the harmonious relationship between God’s creation and humanity. The consequences for the configuration of time are underappreciated. This book corrects that.