William Ruddiman's book "Plows, Plagues & Petreleum - How Humans Took Control of Climate" (princeton 2005) is probably the most useful and most challenging book on the relationships between human beings and the planet that is currently available. It begins the critical process of tracing the history of human interaction with the Earth's climate, always within the context of the scientific uderstanding of the natural processes which drive the earth's climate. It is best understood here on multitude.TV as scientific evidence that supports the philosophical understanding/proposition that "we have to decide about every thing, and Even Everything..."

I could go on but really just wanted to add that Deleuze would have loved this book --- (sitting here in a book lined office, typing this brief message into the silence) I can almost read the references in ATP already...

Has anyone an argument which contradicts the philosophical proposition made above ?

I'm interested in how this text may be deciding about EVEYTHING, if you mean something like Delanda's realism. To do science, "always within the context of the scientific understanding of the natural processes which drive the earth's climate" is to take as a "set" "scientific understanding" would it not? Though, I certainly don't know if that is a fair assessment of the text (which I haven't read);I doubt that it is and it certainly sounds like a great text from a that you wrote of it. I just read "Intensive Science/Virtual Philosophy" and am still thinking about the difference between minor and royal science.

On a similar note (perhaps related?) and toward something you asked earlier. In "A New Philosophy of Society", I think the aspect of that text that bothered me most was the reliance on a given set of cultural hierarchy that is probably historical, and traditional more than it is critical about those particular lines between various intensities of organization. Peoples, towns, nations, etc. Why rely on traditional divisions of the social world if your trying to build up a realist ontology from the ground up? Seems odd that the divisions would immediately (and uncritically) follow the lines of traditional social science.

If this all has nothing to do with what you were asking, I apologize. But your right, its way to quiet in here.

sorry pressed twice....

Post edited by: devos, at: 2007/02/18 20:02

I'm reading the text in the deleuze/serres context (pardon the intellectual shorthand) of out post-cartesian world. Which is to say that the "scientific understanding" whether derived from royal or minor has placed us in a situation where we are responsible for everything that happens in our local space (44,000 miles in diameter and expanding). That science and it's understandings are incapable of recognizing this, that it takes philosophers amongst others to propose this fundamental change, which involves working in part from the functions that science has produced and then drawing what are it seems to me increasingly obvious conclusions. It's not Ruudiman who is explicitly arguing that we are responsible for everything in this post-cartesian sense, but rather that the underlying logic of the text is to support the concept that we no longer need to ask the Cartesian question of how can we dominate the world but rather how do we control our desire for our dominion. (a problem that requires absolute equality between singularities).

Re the Delanda reference, two things to add which I think merely extends your argument: it's concept of a social ontology and yet it can only ever be a small subset of what an ontology must be, for he implicitly, even explicitly differentiates the human from the non-human. Whereas an ontology if it is to deserve the term, should contain the actual relationship of the human to world touched on above. And not collapse before the assemblage of the crow, traffic lights and car, which the crow invented to crack the nuts from local trees. I agree that the selection of categories that you list is more ideological than he cares to admit, as he misuses the concepts derived from D&G to produce a realism which instead of being properly global - is founded on our own local region western-europe and the usa (see esp p109) - it's a society which does not and arguably never has existed seprately from the non-indo-european societies. Secondly then - the question that haunts me still is whether the list of intellectuals he makes can really be remade to support his new philosophy of society ?

Post edited by: devos, at: 2007/02/18 20:03

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