Isabelle Stengers (; ; born 1949) is a Belgian philosopher, noted for her work in the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

. Trained as a chemist, she has collaborated with Russian-Belgian chemist

Ilya Prigogine Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (; ; 28 May 2003) was a Belgian physical chemist of Russian-Jewish origin, noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. Prigogine's work most notably earned him the 19 ...

and French philosopher/sociologist

Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (; ; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Librari ...

among others, and has written widely on the

history of science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient history, ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural science, natural, social science, social, and formal science, formal. Pr ...

as well as philosophers such as

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

Alfred North Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, inclu ...

Donna Haraway Donna Jeanne Haraway (born September 6, 1944) is an American professor emerita in the history of consciousness and feminist studies departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and te ...

, and Michel Serres.

Biography

Stengers is the daughter of the historian Jean Stengers. She studied chemistry, graduating with a degree in the subject from the

Université libre de Bruxelles The (French language, French, ; lit. Free University of Brussels; abbreviated ULB) is a French-speaking research university in Brussels, Belgium. It has three campuses: the ''Solbosch'' campus (in the City of Brussels and Ixelles), the ''Plain ...

Work

Her research interests include the

and the

. She holds her Professorship in the

Philosophy of Science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

at the

and received the grand prize for philosophy from the

Académie Française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

in 1993. Stengers has written on English philosopher

; other work has included Continental philosophers such as Michel Serres, Gilbert Simondon,

, or Vinciane Despret, as well as North American philosophers of science and of the environment such as

. Stengers has also collaborated with psychiatrist Leon Chertok, and the sociologist of science

. An important part of her recent work consists of discussions with and translations of

's work, which she describes as a difficult task: "I must admit that translating Haraway is not easy, because the writing which she practices is, in her own terms, of a 'technological' order. That writing operates, that words act, that stories, and the way they are told, matter, is always the case for Haraway – including when textual rhetoric aims at situating the reader in the position of having to follow an argumentation with no way around, to share a point of view presented as fundamentally anonymous. Hence, this includes when the text steps aside in favour of the idea with which the point is to agree and of which it has been the mere vehicle. As for Haraway's text, it does not step aside: as is the case with a poetic text, to limit oneself to 'acknowledging' it constitutes a slight mistake." The interconnectedness of the thought of Isabelle Stengers,

, and Vinciane Despret, among others, is described by Donna Haraway as a web of "string figures." Stengers has written books on

chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of Scientific method, scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and Deterministic system, deterministic Scientific law, laws of dynamical systems that are highly sens ...

with

, the Russian-Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility, especially ''Order out of Chaos'' (1984) and ''The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos and the New Laws of Nature'' (1997). Stengers and Prigogine often draw from the work of

, treating him as an important philosophical source to think through questions regarding irreversibility and the universe as an open system. Stengers' most recent work has turned to her proposition of Cosmopolitics, a key aspect of which Bruno Latour refers to as the "progressive composition of a common world" in which the non-human and the human are intimately entwined, and secondly, her revisiting and pragmatic modulation of the speculative philosophy of

. ''Cosmopolitics'' won the

Ludwik Fleck Prize The Ludwik Fleck Prize is an annual award given for a book in the field of science and technology studies. It was created by the 4S Council (Society for the Social Studies of Science) in 1992 and is named after microbiologist Ludwik Fleck. The pr ...

in 2013.

Partial bibliography

* Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers. ''La Nouvelle Alliance'' (1979) * Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers. ''Order out of Chaos'', University of Michigan: Bantam Books (1984) * Stengers, Isabelle and Chertok L. "A critique of psychoanalytic reason: hypnosis as a scientific problem from Lavoisier to Lacan", Noel Evans M (trans.), Stanford: Stanford University Press (1992) * Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers.
The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos and the New Laws of Nature
', Free Press (1997) * Stengers, Isabelle. ''Power and Invention: Situating Science'', Bains P (trans.), Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018. Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its book ...

(1997) * Stengers, Isabelle. ''The Invention of Modern Science'', Smith D.W (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (2000) * Stengers, Isabelle. ''Cosmopolitics I'', Bononno, R (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (2010) * Stengers, Isabelle. ''Cosmopolitics II'', Bononno, R (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (2011) * Stengers, Isabelle and Pignarre P. ''Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell'', Goffey A (Trans.), Palgrave Macmillan (2011) * Stengers, Isabelle. ''Thinking with Whitehead: a free and wild creation of concepts.'' Harvard University Press. 2011. (translation of original: Penser avec Whitehead, 2002) * Stengers, Isabelle. ''In Catastrophic Times. Resisting the Coming Barbarism

Goffey, A. (trans.), Open Humanities Press (2015) * Stengers, Isabelle. ''Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science'', Muecke, S. (trans.), Polity Press (2018)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stengers, Isabelle 1949 births Living people Academic staff of the Université libre de Bruxelles Natural philosophers Université libre de Bruxelles alumni Belgian women philosophers Philosophers of science Philosophers of technology 20th-century Belgian philosophers 21st-century Belgian philosophers Continental philosophers Historians of science

Biography

Work

Partial bibliography

See also

References