Theme five: Signs & numbers; culture & nature
(first session September 8, 2009)

Organised by: Dr. Rick Dolphijn (Media and Culture Studies), Dr. Iris van der Tuin (Gender Studies)

“Signs & numbers; culture & nature” deals with the ways in which the new materialism engages itself with mathematics, models, numbers, always in their entanglement with the human sciences, culture, signs. This theme will make clear the importance of science in new materialist theory. Yet it is not by taking the sciences as exemplary for good academic research that the humanities are critiqued. On the contrary, it is in re-reading the sciences and the humanities as they write a similar morphogenesis that builds up new materialist thinking. Neglected by the philosophy of science, this theme unveils a history of thought that is affirmative of both the sciences and the humanities, and shows their entanglement throughout the history of Western thinking.

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