[Badiou and Science] 0.1 Introduction
“The militant of truth is not only the political militant working for the emancipation of humanity in its entirety. He or she is also the artist-creator, the scientist who opens up a new theoretical field, or the lover whose world is enchanted.” - Alain Badiou, Being and Event xiii
Welcome!
A blog on philosopher Alain Badiou’s work and its meaning for the sciences… This is a project that I’ve been meaning to start up for years now; certainly to educate the scientific public on Badiou’s revolutionary work on mathematics and philosophy, but also for my own sanity.
Badiou’s work has been knocking around my head in one form or the other for at least the past 8 years, stemming from when I was originally assigned his Ethics as a reading assignment for a Continental Philosophy course in college. As an Engineering major (with a passing interest in Philosophy), Badiou’s unabashed appeal to foundational mathematics in grounding his philosophy and ethics was a revelation to me, and set me on a whirlwind course towards understanding what philosophy can uncover using the resources of mathematics; resources that have long been forgotten even by contemporary scientists.
Much of what I will be placing here is compiled from various thoughts, notes, and unpublished essays that I have written for myself over the years in my attempt to understand the work of a true radical polymath and its implications for how we understand the very foundations of mathematics and science. The decision to present my thoughts on this “public” forum serves two distinct goals: 1)it allows others access to information that may be valuable or helpful to them in understanding the immensity, both in volume and breadth, of Badiou’s work (as opposed to this information sitting in the limbo of my digital and physical notebooks), and 2)it gives me the motivation to stay engaged with these ideas and keeps me productive in this hobby of writing; particularly as I start my residency in emergency medicine.
As such, I don’t promise to keep to a strict timetable of posting updates, given how gruelingly busy these next few years will be for me at the hospital, but I hope to keep hammering at this project as much as I can.
The connection between philosophy and mathematics forms the very core of Badiou’s thinking, and tackling his work requires traversing both of these revered fields of thought. Without such engagement, the philosophers don’t understand mathematics, the mathematicians and scientists don’t understand philosophy, and Plato surely rolls in his grave.
I do believe that understanding the mathematics which informs Badiou’s ontology greatly illuminates much of his philosophy; a philosophy that may otherwise appear obscure or opaque to those bereft of the mathematical knowledge underlying it. I hope that these posts will clarify the importance of mathematics and its history, and thereby help serve as an entry point for scientists into Badiou’s philosophy. While Badiou’s work covers and informs fields as afar as politics, art, theater, ethics, literature, and philosophy proper, my experience has been that very little attention has been placed on its consequences for understanding the physical sciences. As someone from a primarily science and engineering background myself, I will try and concentrate on concerns and examples relevant to Badiou’s potential import for the sciences.
When speaking of “science” himself, Badiou almost exclusively refers to mathematics, and only by logical implication to the mathematicized science of physics. So while many of Badiou’s meditations and examples come from mathematics and its history, I shall endeavor to elucidate the impact his thought has on physics and the other physical sciences. For example, one novel connection that I hope to unpack in the course of these dialogues is my conjecture that Badiou’s work provides a mathematico-theoretical “motor” for Thomas Kuhn’s classic theory of scientific revolutions; thereby providing the formal mechanism underlying what Kuhn was able to describe via experience and historical study.
I do not intend for my review here to be exhaustive. Given the abundance of both primary and secondary literature on Badiou’s work (amassed over at least the last 50 years), along with all of the primary mathematical literature, I can only hope to fill in the gap that I have recognized in assistance for those scientists interested in engaging with Badiou’s work. As such, I recommend that any points leaving the reader confused or lost (or hopefully tickled curious!) be supplemented either by the primary documents or other resources. I will try and post helpful articles and videos as appropriate, but none of this is meant to substitute for the experience of reading Badiou’s texts themselves. I only hope to aid the transition to reading his texts, and to add to — and work through — some of my own insights.
I will strive to present much of this in focused and manageable posts of information, especially given how deep one may sink into further researching any small aspect of Badiou’s thought. So I hope not to make the length of this introductory piece a habit.
Feel free to sound off in the comments, and here’s to a fruitful journey!
- Dr. G
Next: The road to be traveled
