Social Structures and Natural Systems: Is a Scientific Assemblage Workable?
Cover -- Half-Title page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Introduction: The Post-Natural, the Post-Cultural, and Then What? -- I.1. Choosing between the hegemony of theory and that of technique? -- I.2. Targets, ambitions and operating instructions -- 1. Non-Negotiable Conditions for a Scientific Stereoscopy -- 1.1. Operating principles against metaphysical principles -- 1.1.1. Ventriloquist philosophy -- 1.1.2. Two materialisms and one idealism: the initial bet of science -- 1.1.3. Ontology: a catch-all concept and a bottomless pit -- 1.2. A "strong agenda" for interdisciplinarity? -- 1.2.1. Popperian demarcation, or exclusion decreed from the outside -- 1.2.2. Scientific self-management and the requirement of symmetry -- 1.2.3. Symmetry and reflexivity in the nature/culture couple -- 1.2.4. Two modes of interdisciplinarity -- 1.3. Materialism in the face of the ideal -- 1.3.1. The illusory sphere of the ideas -- 1.3.2. The three entries on human worlds -- 1.4. The line drawn on the side of science: frame of reference -- 1.4.1. The observation of the facts and the strangeness of mathematics -- 1.4.2. The permanent priority of the frame of reference -- 1.4.3. Scientific clarity and the impurity of scientists -- 1.5. "Reframed" comparison -- 2. Relations Above All (and Before Any Cause) -- 2.1. The power of bonding: social relations and ecological interactions -- 2.2. The polarity of relationship: domestication between nature and culture -- 2.2.1. The asymmetry of domestication -- 2.2.2. Symmetry and reflexivity in domesticators -- 2.2.3. Original asymmetry and historical symmetries -- 2.3. Relations in a process: the "causes" for the Neolithic -- 2.4. Locks and openings -- 2.4.1. Robert Cresswell's locks: an analysis tool to be imposed -- 2.4.2. Palm wine and coffee: time is money -- 2.5. The vintage and the expert