Isabelle Stengers Quotes
Isabelle Stengers is a Belgian philosopher of science, originally trained as a chemist, and a leading interpreter of Alfred North Whitehead and Ilya Prigogine, with whom she co-authored Order Out of Chaos. Her seven-volume Cosmopolitics critically rethought the relations between scientific and political authority, arguing for an ecology of practices in which the modern division between facts and values, science and politics, is suspended. The quotes below are attributed to Isabelle Stengers, organized by topic.
Isabelle Stengers on Knowledge
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Attributed to Isabelle Stengers:
“We must learn to think slowly, in catastrophic times.”
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Attributed to Isabelle Stengers:
“Another science is possible: a slow science.”
Isabelle Stengers on Nature
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Attributed to Isabelle Stengers:
“There is no ready-made cosmos to which we may refer; the cosmos is what is at stake.”
Isabelle Stengers on Politics
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Attributed to Isabelle Stengers:
“Cosmopolitics calls for a hesitation that resists the verdicts of the experts.”
Isabelle Stengers on Virtue
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Attributed to Isabelle Stengers:
“Every practice carries with it its own demands and its own obligations.”