System

The Shaping of Modern Knowledge

Clifford Siskin

$54.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Massachusetts Inst of Tec
08 September 2017

Philosophy; History of science

Series: Infrastructures

A system can describe what we see (the solar system), operate a computer (Windows 10), or be made on a page (the fourteen engineered lines of a sonnet). In this book, Clifford Siskin shows that system is best understood as a genre - a form that works physically in the world to mediate our efforts to understand it.

Indeed, many Enlightenment authors published works they called system to compete with the essay and the treatise. Drawing on the history of system from Galileo's message from the stars and Newton's system of the world to today's computational universe, Siskin illuminates the role that the genre of system has played in the shaping and reshaping of modern knowledge. Previous engagements with systems have involved making them, using them, or imagining better ones.

Siskin offers an innovative perspective by investigating system itself. He considers the past and present, moving from the system of the world to a world full of systems. He traces the turn to system in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and describes this primary form of Enlightenment as a mediator of political, cultural, and social modernity - pointing to the moment when people began to blame the system for working both too well ( you can't beat the system ) and not well enough (it always seems to break down ).

Throughout, his touchstones are: what system is and how it has changed; how it has mediated knowledge; and how it has worked in the world.

By: Clifford Siskin
Imprint: Massachusetts Inst of Tec
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 19mm
ISBN: 9780262534673
ISBN 10: 0262534673
Series: Infrastructures
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 08 September 2017
Recommended Age: From 18
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Clifford Siskin is Henry W. and Alfred A. Berg Professor of English and American Literature at New York University, and Director of the Re:Enlightenment Project.

Reviews for System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge

System is... provocative, clearly argued, and deeply learned.... Siskin bridges scholarly divides too often seen as unbridgeable: between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, between poetry and prose, between close reading and distant reading, between traditional scholarship and digital scholarship, and so forth. The book is also a pleasure to read.... Overall, modern scholarship has much to learn from System. —Jesse Molesworth, Modern Language Quarterly