Reconceiving Naturalism with Meillassoux’s Métaphysique et fiction des mondes hors-science

Later this month (26-27 April) I have been asked to contribute to a conference organised by Telos at Swinburne University in Melbourne. The conference, Reconceiving Naturalism, has been convened to explore the need for richer naturalisms.

I plan to speak on Meillassoux’s Métaphysique et fiction des mondes hors-science. This short volume had a former life as a paper given at the ENS in 2006 in a series of talks on « Métaphysique et science-fiction », recordings of which are available on the ENS site. A new version was published in 2013 by Les Éditions Aux forges de Vulcain, together with a French translation of Isaac Asimov’s ‘The billiard ball’.

Through a reflection on the modalities of science fiction Meillassoux’s little book provides a fascinating way to probe and reassess naturalistic epistemologies in a more productive way than we might think possible were we to focus exclusively on his somewhat dismissive comments about science and naturalism in L’Inexistence divine and elsewhere.