Time, Technology and Environment: An Essay on the Philosophy of Nature

(Paperback)

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Marco Altamirano critiques the modern concept of nature to chart a new trajectory for the philosophy of nature. He reveals the modern origins of the epistemological configuration of nature, where a subject confronts an object in space (and at time t), and wonders about her mode of access to that object. After critiquing the spatial orientation of this concept of nature, Altamirano shows that a new concept of time is necessary to reinstall the subject within its concrete ecology.
Altamirano goes on to deploy conceptual resources excavated from Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault and Leroi-Gourhan to show how technology, which bypasses the nature-artifice distinction, is an essential dimension of the philosophy of nature. Ultimately, this book draws the profile of a concept of nature based on time and technology that escapes the nature-artifice distinction that has mired the philosophy of nature for so long.

Reviews

Altamirano has given us profound and timely work, written in the tradition of Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze and Latour. In showing how our technologies have influenced our philosophical notions of nature and time, the book might easily have been titled "The Clock and the Cogito". Highly recommended. -- Daniel W. Smith, Purdue University
Deploying a formidable knowldge of the histories of Western philosophy and science, Altamirano offers a way out of the bifurcation between nature and the human and towards a new approach to understanding and living in our environment. At once erudite and forward-looking, this book entices its readers to adopt a promisingly novel view of both nature and technology. -- William McBride, Purdue University

Author Bio

Marco Altamirano teaches in the Philosophy Department at Louisiana State University. He has published in several philosophy journals including Foucault Studies, Symplok and the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy.