eISBN: 9780980666571
RRP: $40 (AUD)
Format: 216x140 mm Paperback
Pages: 180
Pub. Date: 12-2007
Series: Transmission
Description
The Concept of Model is the first of Alain Badiou’s early books to be translated fully into English. With this publication English readers finally have access to a crucial work by one of the world’s greatest living philosophers. Written on the eve of the events of May 1968, The Concept of Model provides a solid mathematical basis for a rationalist materialism. Badiou’s concept of model distinguishes itself from both logical positivism and empiricism by introducing a new form of break into the hitherto implicated realms of science and ideology, and establishing a new way to understand their disjunctive relation. Readers coming to Badiou for the first time will be struck by the clarity and force of his presentation, and the key place that The Concept of Model enjoys in the overall development of Badiou’s thought will enable readers already familiar with his work to discern the lineaments of his later radical developments. This translation is accompanied by a stunning new interview with Badiou in which he elaborates on the connections between his early and most recent thought.
Contents
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION - by Zachary Fraser
The Category of Formalization: From Epistemological Break to Truth Procedure
I. Ideology and Epistemological Break
II. Formalization: Subtraction and Forcing
III. On Objectless Materialisms
IV. Structural Materialism
V. Ontological Materialism
VI. ‘The Chief Defect of All Hitherto Existing Materialism’
VII. From Machinic Psychosis to Subjective Fidelity: ‘Marque et manque,’ and L’être et l’événement
VIII. The Structure of Philosophical Intervention, and its Use of Formal Inscription
IX. Note on the Translation
THE CONCEPT OF MODEL - trans. Zachary Fraser
Foreword
1. A few Preliminaries Concerning Ideology
2. On the Theses to be Defended in the Sequel
3. On Certain Uses of Models thatare Not in Question Here
4. On a Purely Ideological Use of the Word ‘Model’
5. The Scientific Concept of Model andthe Neo-positivist Doctrine of Science
6. Construction of the Concept of Model
7. Construction of the Concept of Model
8. Construction of theConcept of Model
9. The Category of Model andMathematical Experimentation
10. The Category of Model and theHistorical Time of Mathematical Production
Appendix
§1: The goal
§ 2: Description of the apparatus PS
§ 3: Every theorem of PS is purely logical
§ 4: Deduction theorem
§ 5: The relative consistency of certain extensions of PS
§ 6: The scope of the completeness theorem
§ 7: The lindenbaum lemma
§ 8: The completeness theorem
[Supplement]
AN INTERVIEW WITH ALAIN BADIOU - conducted and trans. by Tzuchien Tho
The Concept of Model, Forty Years Later: An Interview with Alain Badiou
Bibliography
About the Authors
Praise
"This excellent translation of Alain Badiou's first book, The Concept of Model, is important on two counts. First, it constitutes a significant contribution to the philosophy of science (and to the philosophy of mathematics in particular), in which Badiou critically engages with the logical empiricist tradition which exerted such a profound influence on Anglo-American philosophy of science. Second, it sheds light on the epistemological considerations that eventually led to Badiou's subsequent but much misunderstood identification of ontology with mathematics. This book is not only indispensable for those seeking to understand Badiou's philosophical project, it should also be of considerable interest to anyone interested in investigating points of contact between the 'analytic' and 'continental' traditions."
Ray Brassier, Middlesex University
About the Author
Alain Badiou
Zachary Fraser and Tzuchien Tho (editors and translators)
