Date: 15 Nov 96 05:06:33 EST
From: Alan Shapiro <100143.1302-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: origins of science


I just got finished reading "The Perfect Crime", which, by the way, I think is
one of Baudrillard's clearest books since the early ones. One aspect which
interested me is when he talks about the beginnings of scientific method, with
its privileging of the permanance of the physical, natural world as being as a
cause of anxiety for humanity which eventually leads to virtuality, the project
of a doubled media reality. This "epistemological" explanation seems to me
somewhat different from the Bataille/Mauss sacrifice-symbolic exchange-economic
explanation which is usually trotted out. I would like to pursue this idea
further, and was wondering if anyone knows of any studies which investigate the
origins of science from the point of view of the anxiety about death,
"inferiority" to the physical, etc. Or, alternatively, how did a more "intimate"
epistemological relationship to the object keep "archaic" societies from
experiencing this anxiety? Bataille discusses these issues somewhat in "Theory
of Religion", but that's all I know of so far.

Alan Shapiro
Frankfurt, Germany
e-mail 100143.1302-AT-compuserve.com