Cartesian Dreams

The essays in this collection discuss, in a diversity of styles, the growing doubts of the received view and standard narrative of unlimited progress and ubiquitous substitution. The title of this volume, “The End of the Cartesian Dream”, reflects the awareness of the passing of an epoch, echoing Toulmin’s judgement that the era of Modernity is at its end, that its project has lost momentum and that we need to create a “successor programme” (Toulmin 1990, 3). The idea of a successor programme to replace the existing one is an essential task of our time. It must be substantially different from the existing paradigm because the world has changed and we have changed, precisely because of the transformative power of the Modern ideals and technologies. How to change and, at the same time, preserve the humanistic tradition of the European civilisation is a severe challenge. It seems to us that the successor programme cannot be a new blueprint but a suite of processes, programmed and spontaneous, exploring and experimenting how to live together before even attempting to plan and decide what is going to become of us.

FUNTOWICZ Silvio O.;  MARTINHO GUIMARAES PIRES PEREIRA Angela; 

2016-06-17

Routledge

JRC95615

9781138796416,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC95615,