“Another science is possible!” A plea for slow science

http://threerottenpotatoes.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/stengers2011_pleaslowscience.pdf


by Isabelle Stengers
Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres, ULB
13 December 2011, Inauguratial lecture Chair Willy Calewaert 2011-2012 (VUB)


I first wish to thank deMens.nu and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel for appointing me for this
year Calewaert Leerstoel. My special thanks to Professor Jan Danckaert for organizing this
lecture with kindness and efficacy. I thank them all for their trust, and all the more so as,
when they appointed me, they probably knew that I may be something like a trouble maker.
Indeed it might be said that I take a bit too seriously the commitment to free thinking as well
as the motto of your university and mine, “scientia vincere tenebras”, a motto which for me is
a very, very demanding one, since it entails that we never stop questioning both what we call
science and the darkness it may defeat. And that we question also the way we are used to
identify and denounce the darkness: does it not consolidate a static and too reassuring
opposition between light and darkness? The taking for granted of such an opposition might
well be part of the problem.