Date: 15 Nov 96 12:31:57 EST
From: Alan Shapiro <100143.1302-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: origins of science


Thanks to Ted for the Kroker, "Theory of the Virtual Class" suggestion. I guess
the title is a reference to Veblen? I have ordered the book, but in the
backwater where I live it will take 2 weeks to arrive. In the meantime I have
found the first chapter of this book posted on the Web, and have read it.

I wish Kroker's book well, but it's probably not really what I had in mind. I
think, according to "The Perfect Crime" and probably Kroker, that "humanity's
fear of the permanant" is an anxiety provoked by the scientific revolution, and
"the will to virtuality" is a collective neurosis which is constructed out of
that anxiety. What I'm interested in (at the moment) has to do with what came
before either of those two events - the birth of the epistemology of science. I
guess I'm looking for ethnographic evidence to support Bataille's argument in
"Theory of Religion", but not of the "economic" kind which he gives in "The
Accursed Share". I'd like to find a "System of Objects" for the year 2000 B.C.!

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

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