Material Hermeneutics explores the ways in which new imaging technologies and scientific instruments have changed our notions about ancient history. From the first lunar calendar to the black hole image, and from an ancient mummy in the Italian Alps to the irrigated valleys of Mesopotamia, this book demonstrates how revolutions in science have taught us far more than we imagined. Written by a leading philosopher of technology and utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, this book has implications for many fields, including philosophy, history, science, and technology. It will appeal to scholars and students of the humanities, as well as anthropologists and archaeologists.
1. Why Material Hermeneutics?
2. Otzi: The Amateurs, Becoming a Scientific Object, Material Hermeneutics
3. The Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings
4. History Lessons: Coronado and the Qurivira
5. Civilizational Failure: Babylon and the Diatom, Peru and Tectonic Plates, Greenland and the Little Ice Age
6. Reading Vesuvian Texts and Major Technoart: Matisse and Picasso
7. Material Hermeneutics and Technoart
8. Musical and Scientific Instruments: Synthesizers and Digital Instruments
9. Science Turns Hermeneutic
10. Humanities and Social Science Turn Hermeneutic
11. Postphenomemenological Postscript: Lifeworld Revisited
12. Re-logicizing Origins: Ice Age Science and Lunar Calendars
13. Paul Ricoeur: From Linguistic to Material Hermeneutics
Biography
Don Ihde is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University, USA. He is the author of 24 published books and lives in New York with his wife, Linda.
