iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

In our old Europe are we still capable of swapping places in this way?

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

We know what happened to Friday and Crusoe when a sailing ship anchored off their island. Tournier has told us (1967/1972). It was Crusoe who remained behind, and Friday who departed. But the following morning Crusoe realized that he was not alone: a ship's boy was there to keep him company.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

So you were wrong, Crusoe. There is no modern world to be set against your primitive island. There is no rational thought to be contrasted with that of the primitive. There are no cultures to be kept apart from the untamed species lurking in the jungle.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Neither belief, nor despair. I will be as agnostic and as fair as it is possible to be.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I will not yield to them; I will not believe in "the sciences" beforehand; and neither, afterwards, will I despair of knowledge when one of the relationships of force to which the laboratories have contributed explodes above France.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

... as agnostic as it is possible to be for one who is sufficiently sure of both the divine and of knowledge that he dares to hope for the birth of a new Enlightenment.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

In the few seconds that divide illumination from irradiation I want to be as agnostic as it is possible to be for a man who is present at the passing of the first Enlightenment ...

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

If cruise missiles gather me in the vineyard, I do not wish to have to bow down before "reason," "erring physics," "the folly of men," "the cruelty of God," or "Realpolitik." I do not wish to invoke muddled explanations which talk of potency when the reason for my death lies in the force of facts.

101

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

They all seek to reconcile the irreconcilable and, by doing so, make the only thing that I want to understand incomprehensible to me.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

In "science," as in "religion," there are more than enough protestants, mystics, integrists, anabaptists, fundamentalists, and woddy Jesuits. None of them interest me because they all want to reform or regenerate those badly conceived unities, "the sciences."

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

We cannot balance Galileo against cruise missiles in the way in which the Sermon on the Mount was for so long contrasted with the Inquisition. Apologetics do not interest me.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Through love of the divine we have had to extirpate everything that was religious within us. Through love of knowledge we must disentangle ourselves from "the sciences."

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

We would never have been able to dream up such a source of marvels, enthusiasm, and warmth, an epiphany to match what we vulgarly call "the sciences." And yet until the millennium ends, we must sign our letters with the same word, "ecrelinf."

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

When Voltaire wanted to pillory religion, he used to sign his letters "ecrelinf"—"eradicate the infamous." Religion had done its worst, and more than the worst. Today we find ourselves in the same position.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

In fact, all of these wither once they are removed from the scorned networks that keep them strong.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

4.7.11 Those who think that they can do better and work more quickly will always do worse because they will forget to share their only means of knowing and testing. They will believe that they have done enough when they have "diffused" reasons, codes, and results.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Unless, that is, the multitudes can think more quickly and clearly than those in the laboratory.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

How many mistakes do they make before they start to give up the tiniest prejudice? Tens, hundreds, thousands? So how many wars will it take to convince five billion men and women? Ten? A hundred?

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Listen, it is very simple. We will never do better than those who have simply to convince themselves about trifling matters, have everything they need to hand, and are properly fed, well lit, and appropriately taught.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

How many atomic wars will we have to fight before we yield to the force of the argument that this is no way to conduct our affairs?

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

4.7.10 Since there is only one way of knowing, not two—the testing of relations between forces—there is no way we can avoid a single mistake, absurdity, or crime. We cannot avoid a single experiment or take a single short cut. Even to think the contrary is to delude ourselves with criminal illusions

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

"Noli me tangere"—these are the words of a magician who wishes to be both dead and alive at the same time, here and there, strong and rational, strong and right, strong and good.

010

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

If the weak had in front of them, only the array of weaknesses that I have described, they would dirty their hands and transform it as they pleased.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

4.7.9 We do not suffer from a lack of soul, reason, science, or justice, but from a surfeit of all these supplements which are added to relations of force to gear down potency and make the weak impotent.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

We are still right at the beginning of the exegesis, and the link between science and democracy has become tenuous in the course of the "wars of science." Like Spinoza, we look cruel in order to be fair.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

The exegesis of religious texts has now been replaced by the exegesis of "scientific" inscriptions. For this reason I think of this essay as a *Tractatus Scientifico-Politicus*. Even so, the object is the same.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

As a result of a comprehensible reversal, Machiavelli and Spinoza have been held to be immoral, even though they were right to refuse to distinguish might from right. But the present precis differs from Spinoza's Tractatus *Theologico-Politicus*. Times have changed.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

And so being unable to ensure that what is right is strong, people have acted as though what was strong was wicked. The strong have simply occupied the space left vacant by those who despise them in all innocence.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

4.7.8 To oppose right and might is criminal because it leaves the field free for the wicked while pretending to defend it with the potency of what is right. But what is right is without force except "in principle."

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

It is a vicious circle. The more foolish the others are, the more he believes that he can "think" and the less he is able to see how he has learned. And the more he extends the potency of reason beyond force, the more reason is weakened.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

His outrage nourishes his scorn. Since he despises the fools beneath him, he forgets about the only thing that leads him to yield to the force of this argument: his laboratory, the place where he has been subjected to trials himself.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Even though he is incapable of clear speech, the moment he steps out of his laboratory door he is outraged to discover "that such a simple argument is not understood by everyone."

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

The man who yields to the solidity of a tiny argument only after hundreds of trials and tests, errors and tinkering, in his laboratory nonetheless claims that others who are tested and tried understand nothing and think like morons.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

These two losses leave the field free for the wicked. I call this a crime, the only one that we will need in this essay.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

4.7.7 As soon as "right" is divided from "might," or "reason" from "force," right and reason are weakened because we no longer understand their weaknesses, and we steal the only way of becoming just and reasonable that is available to those who are scorned.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

There are, they say, reasonable men, who yield only to the force of argument, and the remainder, who are unreasonable and submit blindly to force without understanding. I have never met anyone who did not scorn the unreasonable and who did not believe that this scorn epitomized virtue.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

4.7.6 By believing the opposite, we allow certain lines of force and certain arguments to rule above the networks to which they properly belong. We create potency (1.5.1), and by so doing, we weaken all the others.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Demonstrations are always of force (3.1.8), and the lines of force are always a measure of reality, its only measure (1.1.4). We never bow to reason, but rather to force.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

4.7.5 Since there are not two ways of knowing but only one, there are not, on the one hand, those who bow to the force of an argument, and, on the other, those who understand only violence.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Unless new relations of strength are established, they do not have too much or too little. Far from losing certainty, we finally discover what it was that led to the illusion of a knowledge beyond uncertainty.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

The trials of strength are all whole and complete, exact precisely to the extent that this is possible. *They are not approximate.* Neither are they vague, conventional, or subjective.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

The same people who establish degrees of knowledge are those who then despair of ever reaching the top: the same reductionists who are alternately drunk with power and crippled by impotence, arrogant and modest in turn.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

4.7.4 As soon as there is no other world, perfection resides in this one. Complete knowledge is found in this world as soon as there are no more degrees' of knowledge.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

The gnostics should not misunderstand: I am not trying to make their lives easier.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

4.7.3.1 Those of us who wish to escort "the sciences" back to their proper habitat are more rationalist than most of the learned who want to extend them "en double." At least we know the cost of the work involved in multiplying those habitats.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Then we see an executive, a legislative, and a judiciary that for too long have eluded even the most elementary forms of democracy.

000

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Politics is certainly still the best model for trials of weakness, and never more so than when we discover the researcher acting as spokesman for silent crowds of atoms, microbes, or stars.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Since the beginning epistemology has followed in the wake of the sciences, trying to be: PERI-, META-, PARA-, INFRA-, SUPRA-scientific. But this is beating around the bush.

100

irreductions @irreductions.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

I do not reproach those poorly conceived aggregates that we call "the sciences" for being too rational, but rather for not understanding the nature of their natures. Let us reduce them to the dimensions that they occupy and finally escape from magic.

100