Aldo Houterman

This essay explores the intersection of literature, science, and ethics through Michel Serres’s philosophy of “translation” and its application to Anjet Daanje’s novel Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris (2022). Daanje’s ambitious work, composed of interwoven novellas enriched with scientific notes, poetry, and historical fragments, culminates in a chapter where a physicist conducts a self-experiment to grasp his comatose partner's experience. This raises profound questions: Can literature represent reality as science does? Can ethical decisions be informed by imaginative experimentation? Drawing on Serres’s analyses of Emile Zola and Virginia Woolf, the essay demonstrates how literature can correspond to scientific knowledge by revealing the structures of time. Zola’s “experimental novel” parallels 19th-century thermodynamics, while Woolf’s To the Lighthouse anticipates contemporary physics by depicting multiple temporalities. Through this lens, Daanje’s novel juxtaposes mechanical time with quantum time, illustrating how the interwovenness of time can illuminate medical-ethical dilemmas. The essay argues that Serres’s philosophy invites us to see literature not as a mere reflection but as a participant in knowledge production, enabling the dialogue between general scientific principles and singular human experience. Ultimately, imagination and narrative emerge as essential for understanding time, chaos, and the ethics of end-of-life decisions.

This article discusses the value of philosophy of technology for the philosophy and ethics of sport by presenting Michel Serres’s idea that sport is ‘in essence technics’. Although technological development is often seen as an external force that threatens the integrity of ‘pure’ sport, a Serresian perspective reveals that sporting activities are intimately related to technical objects. Through a selective reading of Serres’s reflections on sport in the Cahiers de Formation and in his later work, it is concluded that modern sport is the result of an ‘independent’ interaction between technology and collectivization. Sport brings people together, inspires them and is therefore also closely intertwined with religion. Finally, this article presents, drawing from Serres’s work, a historical loop of technology within sport.

This article demonstrates the value of French philosophy of science for medical practice through an exposition of Michel Serres’s philosophy of the body. It explores how Serres’s examination of the similarity between scientific models and works of art can provide insight into different conceptions of the human body. What makes Serres’s method of unique is that it does not see art and literature as subordinate to the natural sciences: they are both involved in mapping the communication lines of the body. Since early modernity, we can roughly speak of three successive communication models of the body: mechanical, thermodynamic and informational. This article finally discusses the relationship between those different conceptions and explains how they help to articulate different aspects of the body, health, and medical ethics.

This article demonstrates the importance of making explicit different conceptions of movement for the philosophy of sport. In addition to the mechanistic and the Aristotelian approaches, this article presents a third, underexplored view of movement, namely that of Lucretius as interpreted by Karl Marx and Michel Serres. By exploring the similarities between Marx’s motion of repulsion and Serres’s turbulent flux, it will be argued that a Lucretian view offers a philosophy of movement that uniquely does not rely on stasis. This Lucretian perspective is illustrated through Serres’s elaborations on the body and sport. It is concluded that sport is not primarily a rational, rule-guided practice but arises from moving and sensuous bodies that are always deviating from their standard trajectory.

The algorithm has become an increasingly important concept in understanding human behavior in recent years. In the case of sport, human bodies are seen as superficial to the driving force of the algorithm, whether it be genetic, behavioral or surveillance-technological algorithms (Harari Citation2015, 2020; Zuboff Citation2019). However, the French mathematician and philosopher Michel Serres (1930–2019) structurally relate algorithms to sports and bodily experience at multiple places in his oeuvre. According to Serres, sport actually enables us to reprogram and rewrite our behavior, moods and thoughts, and therefore modifies our algorithmic status (Serres Citation1999, Citation2019). Against deterministic conceptions of the body, Serres argues that human bodies possess a ‘metamorphic’ nature that is similar to the procedural character of computer programs. This paper investigates the relationship between the algorithm and bodily existence through a reading of both Harari and Serres on sport. It will be argued that, against deterministic conceptions of the algorithm, the algorithm can actually broaden an understanding of the role of sports and physical activity.