Reimagining Science: Continental Realism and Black Studies’ Philosophies of Science Syllabus
I was recently discussing with my advisor about how a dream of mine would be to one day teach a Continental Philosophy of Science graduate seminar in a Comparative Literature Department. I’ve always been interested in Continental philosophy’s approach to traditional philosophy of science questions ever since I read Jean Francois-Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition over a summer in undergrad. I find that the majority of engagements with post-modern criticisms of science and technology too easily accept the narrative that these authors are offering nothing more than ‘anti-realism’ or ‘relativism.’ Instead, however, I would love to teach and read these text together for what they open up in terms of creating/producing a far more imaginative, critical, and radical answer to what science is, and what a philosophy of science can be and/or look like. Below is a mock syllabus of a course thinking Continental Philosophy of Science approaches alongside Black Studies literature. Starting with some seminal text for doing philosophy and history of science in a “Continental” way and then, moving on to reading ‘Post-Modern/Post-structural/Post-Continental’ thought alongside critical contemporary radical theory in Black studies. I may upload the actual text over time.
Week 1: Introduction to A Philosophy of Science
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution
G.W.F. Hegel, “Naturphilosophie”
Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”
Stanford Encyclopedia, “Science and Pseudoscience”
Week 2: Against Method – The Negro as a Problem of the Science of Science
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge
Imre Lakatos, “Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes”
Week 3: Unsettling the Principle and Order of Things
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
Week 4: Post-Modern Certainty
Jean Francois-Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty
Week 5: The Question of The Cyborg
Jean Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra
Nick Bostrom, “Are You Living in A Computer Simulation”
Donna Haraway, “The Cyborg Manifesto”
Week 6: A Philosophy of Physics
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?
Week 7: A Philosophy of Mathematics
Alain Badiou, Number and Numbers
Paul Benacerraf, “God, The Devil and Gödel”
Calvin Warren, “The Catastrophe: Black Feminist Poethics, (Anti)form, and Mathematical Nihilism”
Week 8: A Philosophy of Energy and Virtual Reality
Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy
Manuel Delanda, “The Philosophy of Energy”
Week 9: After Finitude, After Value
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude
Quentin Meillassoux, “Time Without Becoming”
Denise Ferreira Da Silva, “Fractal Thinking”
Week 10: Nihil Unbound in a Blackened World
Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound
Francois Laurelle, “On The Black Universe In the Human Foundations of Color”
Mumble Theory 
if you follow Andrew Pickering’s suggestion to think in terms of performativity vs representation then you can teach them along the lines of the homo rhetoricus of neo-pragmatist hermeneutics, if you don’t like folks like Rorty or Frankenberry maybe Isabelle Stengers would appeal, thanks for the Saidiya Hartman Venus pdf, peace, dirk
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Isabelle Stengers and Andrew Pickering definitely appeal. I’m not sure who Frankenberry and I’ve read a little Rorty but generally steer clear of pragmatism.
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by my reading Isabelle and Andy are both pragmatists, be interested in what you make of Rorty’s Irony book especially his take on Freud as I see you traffic in the spectres of psychoanalysis, the names/brands (Nancy Frankenberry by the way) aren’t as important as the recognition that texts are tools and meanings made in uses, once you make that move the academic silos don’t keep one from adding content to reading lists on syllabi:
https://www.cairn.info/revue-natures-sciences-societes-2013-1-page-77.htm
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