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Content archived on 2024-05-30

An Inquiry into Modes of Existence

Objective

"AIME is an inquiry to make more precise what is lumped together into the confusing word ""modernization"". The work done in the field of science studies (STS) on the progress and practice of science and technology has had the consequence of deeply modifying the definition of ""modernity"", resulting into the provocative idea that ""we (meaning the Europeans) have never been modern"". This is, however only a negative definition. To obtain a positive rendering of the European current situation, it is necessary to start an inquiry in the complex and conflicting set of values that have been invented. This inquiry is possible only if there is a clear and shareable way to judge the differences in the set of truth-conditions that make up those conflicting sets of values. AIME offers a grammar of those differences based on the key notion of modes of existence. Then it builds a procedure and an instrument to test this grammar into a selected set of situations where the definitions of the differing modes of existence is redefined and renegotiated. The result is a set of shareable definitions of what modernization has been in practice. This is important just at the moment when Europe has lost its privileged status and needs to be able to present itself in a new ways to the other cultures and civilizations which are making up the world of globalization with very different views on what it is to modernize themselves."

Call for proposal

ERC-2010-AdG_20100407
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Host institution

FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES
EU contribution
€ 1 334 720,00
Address
RUE SAINT GUILLAUME 27
75341 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Principal investigator
Bruno Latour (Prof.)
Administrative Contact
Barbara Bender (Ms.)
Links
Total cost
No data

Beneficiaries (1)