In Virgin Mary and the Neutrino, first published in French in 2006 and here appearing in English for the first time, Isabelle Stengers experiments with the possibility of addressing modern practices not as a block but through their divergence from each other. Drawing on thinkers ranging from John Dewey to Gilles Deleuze, she develops what she calls an “ecology of practices” into a capacious and heterogeneous perspective that is inclusive of cultural and political forces but not reducible to them. Stengers first advocates for an approach to sciences that would emphasize the way each should be situated by the kind of relationships demanded by what it attempts to address. This approach turns away from the disabling scientific/nonscientific binary-like the opposition between the neutrino and the Virgin Mary. An ecology of practices instead stimulates an appetite for thinking reality not as an arbiter but as what we can relate to through the generation of diverging concerns and obligations.

“Virgin Mary and the Neutrino is an extraordinary exploration of the events that have shaped the relationship between scientific practices and the public-the devastating effects of which we see today, especially in ecological situations. It is also the best introduction to Isabelle Stengers’s body of work, which is undoubtedly one of the most important and original in contemporary thought.” - Didier Debaise, author of (Nature as Event: The Lure of the Possible) “Virgin Mary and the Neutrino counts among the contemporary classics written by one of the most creative and boldest philosophers of science. Isabelle Stengers’s proposals have the inevitable quality of inducing thought. This book will initiate anyone, no matter the stage of their career, who wants to become familiar with Stengers’s inspiring brilliance.” - Marisol de la Cadena, author of (Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds)

Isabelle Stengers is Emerita Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the UniversitÉ libre de Bruxelles and is the author of numerous books, including Making Sense in Common: A Reading of Whitehead in Times of Collapse, Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science, and In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism.

Andrew Goffey is Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham.