Steve Fuller | University of Warwick (original) (raw)
Papers by Steve Fuller
History of the Human Sciences, Feb 1, 2019
I reconstruct my own journey into the history of the human sciences, which I show to have been a ... more I reconstruct my own journey into the history of the human sciences, which I show to have been a process of discovering the metaphysical standing of the human. I begin with Alexandre Koyré's encounter with Edmund Husserl in the 1930s, which I use to throw light on the legacy of Kant's 'anthropological' understanding of the human, which dominated and limited 19th-century science. As I show, those who broke from Kant's strictures and set the stage for the 20th-century revolutions in science-from Hegel, to John McTaggart, to Max Weber-typically were pursuing crypto-theological questions about how a finite being can comprehend an infinite universe. This journey is about the 'common measure' of being human, which is what links Plato to Kuhn, but has been most consistently taken up by law. I suggest that in seeking this 'measure of man', we may discover that to be human is not necessarily to be Homo sapiens, which would suggest a radical reorientation of the history of the human sciences.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Jun 1, 1991
IS4SI Summit 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Educational Philosophy and Theory
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Educational Philosophy and... more This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Educational Philosophy and Theory on 07/12/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2010543 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Published onlin
Mark Carrigan interviews Steve Fuller about the act of improvisation and how it shapes creativity... more Mark Carrigan interviews Steve Fuller about the act of improvisation and how it shapes creativity and learning. Through improvisation, the mind is gradually freed up from reproducing past social structures. Improvisation depends on having read sufficiently what others have written to be able to create something that is interestingly new. As such, Professor Fuller finds that improvisation is one of the few things equally valued by the Humboldtian university and the neo-liberal academy.
The death detectives is a series of blogs about death, photography and seeing the crime written i... more The death detectives is a series of blogs about death, photography and seeing the crime written in partnership with The Photographers' Gallery and Surviving Work.
Thinkers in Residence, a joint project with The Photographers' Gallery and Surviving Work. Ac... more Thinkers in Residence, a joint project with The Photographers' Gallery and Surviving Work. Actual Thoughts.
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science, 2021
This paper is both a reflection on Francis Bacon’s social epistemology and a meta-reflection on h... more This paper is both a reflection on Francis Bacon’s social epistemology and a meta-reflection on how we should be think about historical figures such as Bacon, who are of continuing philosophical, scientific and even political relevance. The impetus for this paper is provided by Daniel Garber’s ‘Bacon’s Metaphysical Method’, which depicts Bacon as making various moves in the scholastic debates of his time. In contrast, I draw two sorts of conclusions: (1) At the historiographical level, I argue against the sort of ‘contextualism’ that artificially constrains the ‘transcendental’ horizons of a thinker such as Bacon, who was clearly addressing not simply his immediate contemporaries but perhaps more importantly, some future readers whose identities he cannot know. What is sometimes called the ‘conversation of mankind’ has just this rather odd communicative character. (2) At the more substantive philosophical level, it is clear that Bacon does not have a conception of knowledge as a kin...
Church, Communication and Culture, 2019
This piece is the first of new annual feature of the journal, entitled 'Debate'. Two scholars off... more This piece is the first of new annual feature of the journal, entitled 'Debate'. Two scholars offer their contrasting reflections on a topic of interestthis year, it is 'scientific progress, human progress and Christian theology'. The debate is opened by American sociologist Steve Fuller, who briefly presents his thesis on the subject, proposing in the end the Church to be more open to an 'adventurous approach to nature' in his opinion more consonant with today's 'emerging biometrically oriented genetic science'. In answer, Italian theologian Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti explains that, from a Christian perspective, human progress needs to respect the 'ontological foundations of creature itself' in order to avoid the 'illusion' of a false progress. Taking these thoughts into account, Fuller replies clarifying his points. The debate is concluded by remarks from the Editor.
Symposion, 2016
This article is a response to William Lynch's, 'Social Epistemology Transformed: Steve Fuller's A... more This article is a response to William Lynch's, 'Social Epistemology Transformed: Steve Fuller's Account of Knowledge as a Divine Spark for Human Domination,' an extended and thoughtful reflection on my Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History. I grant that Lynch has captured well, albeit critically, the spirit and content of the book-and the thirty-year intellectual journey that led to it. In this piece, I respond at two levels. First, I justify my posture towards my predecessors and contemporaries, which Lynch shrewdly sees as my opposition to deference. However, most of the response concerns an elaboration of my theodicy-focussed sense of social epistemology, which is long-standing but only started to become prominent about ten years ago, in light of my involvement in the evolution controversies. Here I aim to draw together a set of my abiding interests-scientific, theological and philosophical-in trying to provide a normative foundation for the future of humanity.
Published in 2006 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 P... more Published in 2006 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Published in Great Britain by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park. Abingdon OxonOX144RN © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an ...
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1982
There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but no... more There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicioners of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the “sciences”)—with logicians situated among the mathematicians, epistemologlsts among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1985
STEVE FULLER JL/arry Laudan has recently argued that the demarcation of science from non-science ... more STEVE FULLER JL/arry Laudan has recently argued that the demarcation of science from non-science is a pseudo-problem which should be replaced by the more modest task of determining whether and why particular beliefs are epistemically warranted or heuristically fertile. In response, Thomas Gieryn has rejected this exercise in philosophical selfrestraint, arguing that the scientific community itself takes measures to distinguish itself from others who compete for cognitive authority and its attendant political and economic benefits. As a result, rhetorical strategies develop-"boundary work" Gieryn calls them-which are proper objects of sociological study. In this paper, I shall argue that Laudan is wrong to think that there is nothing at stake in demarcating science from non-science, but I shall also argue that the importance of the demarcation problem has not been fully appreciated by Gieryn. My critique will reveal a basic con fusion that needs to be dispelled before the full significance of demarcating science from non-science can be seen: namely, the failure to distinguish the relatively constant social role played by what has been called "science" from the historically variable social practices that have played the role of science. In addition, I shall claim that this confusion is itself one of the key ways in which a social practice retains its status as science. Laudan's^ history of abortive efforts at solving the demarcation problem may be reconstructed as two general arguments for rejecting the project
Sociological Research Online, 1996
This book is a series of interviews by an Anglo-American literary agent with 17 of his clients an... more This book is a series of interviews by an Anglo-American literary agent with 17 of his clients and fellow-travellers, namely, science popularizers who believe that the likes of Stephen Hawking and Steven Jay Gould have replaced the traditional 'literary intellectual' in helping the educated public make sense of the larger world. The thesis is certainly persuasive at a crude level: Whenever a non-fiction bestseller is written by an academic, it tends to be by a natural scientist, not a humanist or social scientist. But as might be expected, this represents only a small percentage of all the natural scientists who consider themselves to be in Hawking's and Gould's league. Indeed, an article appeared last March in the liberal American weekly, New Republic, accusing Brockman of letting his fascination with cutting-edge science cloud his business sense. As it turns out, most science popularizations are financial flops. unwittingly given us a wake-up call to challenge these skimpily clad would-be emperors.
Educational Philosophy and Theory
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific ... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific research documents, whether they are pub-lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et a ̀ la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. 1
Postdigital Science and Education
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
History of the Human Sciences, Feb 1, 2019
I reconstruct my own journey into the history of the human sciences, which I show to have been a ... more I reconstruct my own journey into the history of the human sciences, which I show to have been a process of discovering the metaphysical standing of the human. I begin with Alexandre Koyré's encounter with Edmund Husserl in the 1930s, which I use to throw light on the legacy of Kant's 'anthropological' understanding of the human, which dominated and limited 19th-century science. As I show, those who broke from Kant's strictures and set the stage for the 20th-century revolutions in science-from Hegel, to John McTaggart, to Max Weber-typically were pursuing crypto-theological questions about how a finite being can comprehend an infinite universe. This journey is about the 'common measure' of being human, which is what links Plato to Kuhn, but has been most consistently taken up by law. I suggest that in seeking this 'measure of man', we may discover that to be human is not necessarily to be Homo sapiens, which would suggest a radical reorientation of the history of the human sciences.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Jun 1, 1991
IS4SI Summit 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Educational Philosophy and Theory
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Educational Philosophy and... more This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Educational Philosophy and Theory on 07/12/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2010543 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Published onlin
Mark Carrigan interviews Steve Fuller about the act of improvisation and how it shapes creativity... more Mark Carrigan interviews Steve Fuller about the act of improvisation and how it shapes creativity and learning. Through improvisation, the mind is gradually freed up from reproducing past social structures. Improvisation depends on having read sufficiently what others have written to be able to create something that is interestingly new. As such, Professor Fuller finds that improvisation is one of the few things equally valued by the Humboldtian university and the neo-liberal academy.
The death detectives is a series of blogs about death, photography and seeing the crime written i... more The death detectives is a series of blogs about death, photography and seeing the crime written in partnership with The Photographers' Gallery and Surviving Work.
Thinkers in Residence, a joint project with The Photographers' Gallery and Surviving Work. Ac... more Thinkers in Residence, a joint project with The Photographers' Gallery and Surviving Work. Actual Thoughts.
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science, 2021
This paper is both a reflection on Francis Bacon’s social epistemology and a meta-reflection on h... more This paper is both a reflection on Francis Bacon’s social epistemology and a meta-reflection on how we should be think about historical figures such as Bacon, who are of continuing philosophical, scientific and even political relevance. The impetus for this paper is provided by Daniel Garber’s ‘Bacon’s Metaphysical Method’, which depicts Bacon as making various moves in the scholastic debates of his time. In contrast, I draw two sorts of conclusions: (1) At the historiographical level, I argue against the sort of ‘contextualism’ that artificially constrains the ‘transcendental’ horizons of a thinker such as Bacon, who was clearly addressing not simply his immediate contemporaries but perhaps more importantly, some future readers whose identities he cannot know. What is sometimes called the ‘conversation of mankind’ has just this rather odd communicative character. (2) At the more substantive philosophical level, it is clear that Bacon does not have a conception of knowledge as a kin...
Church, Communication and Culture, 2019
This piece is the first of new annual feature of the journal, entitled 'Debate'. Two scholars off... more This piece is the first of new annual feature of the journal, entitled 'Debate'. Two scholars offer their contrasting reflections on a topic of interestthis year, it is 'scientific progress, human progress and Christian theology'. The debate is opened by American sociologist Steve Fuller, who briefly presents his thesis on the subject, proposing in the end the Church to be more open to an 'adventurous approach to nature' in his opinion more consonant with today's 'emerging biometrically oriented genetic science'. In answer, Italian theologian Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti explains that, from a Christian perspective, human progress needs to respect the 'ontological foundations of creature itself' in order to avoid the 'illusion' of a false progress. Taking these thoughts into account, Fuller replies clarifying his points. The debate is concluded by remarks from the Editor.
Symposion, 2016
This article is a response to William Lynch's, 'Social Epistemology Transformed: Steve Fuller's A... more This article is a response to William Lynch's, 'Social Epistemology Transformed: Steve Fuller's Account of Knowledge as a Divine Spark for Human Domination,' an extended and thoughtful reflection on my Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History. I grant that Lynch has captured well, albeit critically, the spirit and content of the book-and the thirty-year intellectual journey that led to it. In this piece, I respond at two levels. First, I justify my posture towards my predecessors and contemporaries, which Lynch shrewdly sees as my opposition to deference. However, most of the response concerns an elaboration of my theodicy-focussed sense of social epistemology, which is long-standing but only started to become prominent about ten years ago, in light of my involvement in the evolution controversies. Here I aim to draw together a set of my abiding interests-scientific, theological and philosophical-in trying to provide a normative foundation for the future of humanity.
Published in 2006 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 P... more Published in 2006 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Published in Great Britain by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park. Abingdon OxonOX144RN © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an ...
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1982
There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but no... more There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicioners of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the “sciences”)—with logicians situated among the mathematicians, epistemologlsts among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1985
STEVE FULLER JL/arry Laudan has recently argued that the demarcation of science from non-science ... more STEVE FULLER JL/arry Laudan has recently argued that the demarcation of science from non-science is a pseudo-problem which should be replaced by the more modest task of determining whether and why particular beliefs are epistemically warranted or heuristically fertile. In response, Thomas Gieryn has rejected this exercise in philosophical selfrestraint, arguing that the scientific community itself takes measures to distinguish itself from others who compete for cognitive authority and its attendant political and economic benefits. As a result, rhetorical strategies develop-"boundary work" Gieryn calls them-which are proper objects of sociological study. In this paper, I shall argue that Laudan is wrong to think that there is nothing at stake in demarcating science from non-science, but I shall also argue that the importance of the demarcation problem has not been fully appreciated by Gieryn. My critique will reveal a basic con fusion that needs to be dispelled before the full significance of demarcating science from non-science can be seen: namely, the failure to distinguish the relatively constant social role played by what has been called "science" from the historically variable social practices that have played the role of science. In addition, I shall claim that this confusion is itself one of the key ways in which a social practice retains its status as science. Laudan's^ history of abortive efforts at solving the demarcation problem may be reconstructed as two general arguments for rejecting the project
Sociological Research Online, 1996
This book is a series of interviews by an Anglo-American literary agent with 17 of his clients an... more This book is a series of interviews by an Anglo-American literary agent with 17 of his clients and fellow-travellers, namely, science popularizers who believe that the likes of Stephen Hawking and Steven Jay Gould have replaced the traditional 'literary intellectual' in helping the educated public make sense of the larger world. The thesis is certainly persuasive at a crude level: Whenever a non-fiction bestseller is written by an academic, it tends to be by a natural scientist, not a humanist or social scientist. But as might be expected, this represents only a small percentage of all the natural scientists who consider themselves to be in Hawking's and Gould's league. Indeed, an article appeared last March in the liberal American weekly, New Republic, accusing Brockman of letting his fascination with cutting-edge science cloud his business sense. As it turns out, most science popularizations are financial flops. unwittingly given us a wake-up call to challenge these skimpily clad would-be emperors.
Educational Philosophy and Theory
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific ... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific research documents, whether they are pub-lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et a ̀ la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. 1
Postdigital Science and Education
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
This appears in Contemporary Sociology and includes a sketch of what an adequate theory of elites... more This appears in Contemporary Sociology and includes a sketch of what an adequate theory of elites would look like (as opposed to what is presented in the book under review).
My 2002 Isis review of Isabelle Stengers' The Invention of Modern Science.
A Player's Guide to the Post-Truth Condition , 2020
This book is designed to do what its title says, namely, to provide a guide to the post- truth co... more This book is designed to do what its title says, namely, to provide a guide
to the post- truth condition for those who wish to feel at home and thrive
in it – rather than simply avoid or attack it. It consists of a series of short
chapters that are best read in the order presented but may also be read in a different order or simply in parts – as most books are normally read.
Th e book ranges widely across philosophy, theology, science, politics, economics, psychology, and the arts – but hopefully in a way that allows readers to find their bearings, given the opportunities presented by the internet to follow up whatever might interest them in the text. Underlying this breadth of scope is a fundamental scepticism with ‘business as usual’ in the production and evaluation of knowledge claims. To be sure, the reader will see that post- truth extends many of the themes already found in what passes for ‘postmodernism’. However, at a deeper level, and in light of the ongoing COVID- 19 pandemic, the post- truth condition invites us to discover in a new key what it has always meant to be ‘modern’.
Nietzschean Meditations takes its inspiration from the version of Nietzsche that was popular befo... more Nietzschean Meditations takes its inspiration from the version of
Nietzsche that was popular before the Second World War, which
stressed the ‘Zarathustrian’ elements of his thought as the harbinger
of a new sort of being – the Übermensch. The book updates
the image of this creature to present a version of ‘transhumanism’
that breaks with the more precautionary and pessimistic
approaches of humanity’s future in contemporary ‘posthumanist’
thought. Fuller follows Nietzsche in discussing deeply and frankly
the challenging the issues that face aspiring transhumanists.
They include their philosophical and especially theological roots,
the implications of transhumanism for matters of life and death,
and whether any traces of classical humanity will remain in the
‘transhuman’ being.
Introduction: The path through Nietzsche to Transhumanism . . . . . 9
Chapter One: What is transhumanism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1. Transhumanism as humanity’s cosmic lift-off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2. Which way up for the human condition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3. Who’s afraid of the human? Ecomodernism as energetic theology 36
4. Expanding the scope of the human in search of the divine . . . . . . 41
5. Back from Prometheus to Faust and Simon Magus:
The theological roots of transgression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6. The indefinite pursuit of reason for its own sake:
The philosophical roots of transgression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Chapter Two: The contours of transhumanist politics . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
1. Transhumanism as the fine art of occupying the extremes . . . . . . 65
2. Existential risk as the higher moral evasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3. A peaceful but costly transhuman future? In search of the added
value of being human . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4. Morphological freedom and the quest for a responsible and
representative transhumanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5. Lessons for transhumanism from the difficult history of
‘human rights’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
6. Ontological narcissism as a barrier to extending
the ‘Republic of Humanity’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7. From transgender to transhumanism: The path away from
Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
8. The rocky road from transgender to transhuman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
9. Does extending rights to animals diminish the concept of right? . 124
10. Conclusion: The centrality of uplift to the extended
‘Republic of Humanity’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Appendix: Transhumanist Bill Of Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Chapter Three: Death as a transhumanist lifestyle choice . . . . . . . . 137
1. Suicide and the digital afterlife: An introduction to the
transhumanist way of death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
2. Towards a transhumanist affirmation of death: Proposals for a
positive necropolitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
3. Making death worth its cost: Prolegomena to any future
necronomics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
4. Generational change as a vehicle for radical conceptual change:
The case for periodic rejuvenation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
5. Death as a virtue of living systems: From mass extinctions to
creative destruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Two conclusions: One light and one heavy . . .
![Research paper thumbnail of [Steve Fuller] The Academic Caesar: University Leadership is Hard](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/60785823/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](The Academic Caesar, 2016
The book considers from an historical, philosophical, sociological and political econoimic standp... more The book considers from an historical, philosophical, sociological and political econoimic standpoint the future prospects for a 'Humboldtian' style university in the current neoliberal world, where our understanding of what it means to be 'human' is changing rapidly. The sort of leader capable of meeting this challenge is called the 'Academic Caesar'.