Collapse VII: Culinary Materialism "brings together work that explores, from many different perspectives, the multifaceted question of cookery. In this volume, a range of contributors - scientists, philosophers, chefs, anthropologists, artists - explore how philosophy and proto- scientific theory and experimental practice was linked at its outset to the culinary arts." From the introduction by Robin Mackay and Reza Negarestani (pdf):
Cookery has never been so high on the agenda of Western popular culture. And yet the endlessly-multiplying
TV shows, the obsessive interest in the provenance of
ingredients, and the celebration of ‘radical’ experiments in gastronomy, tell us little about the nature of
the culinary. Is it possible to develop the philosophical pertinence of cookery without merely appending
philosophy to this burgeoning gastroculture? How
might the everyday, restricted sense of the culinary
be expanded into a culinary materialism wherein synthesis, experimentation, and operations of mixing
and blending take precedence over analysis, subtraction and axiomatisation? This volume, drawing on
resources ranging from anthropology to chemistry, from hermetic alchemy to contemporary mathematics,
undertakes a trans-modal experiment in culinary thinking, excavating the cultural, industrial, physiological,
chemical and even cosmic grounds of cookery, and
proposing new models of culinary thought for the
future.
Proto-scientific thought and experimental practice,
particularly in the form of alchemy, was linked to the
culinary arts’ vital engagement with the transformation
of matter. Indeed, how could empirical inquiry into
nature, seeking to determine the capacities of matter
on the basis of what lay to hand... be anything other than a culinary
endeavour? Yet with the increasing specialisation of
the sciences, philosophy has misplaced its will to
extend such inquiry into a speculative philosophy
whose power resides in its synthetic ambition as well
as its analytical prowess.
Collapse VII: Culinary Materialism "brings together work that explores, from many different perspectives, the multifaceted question of cookery. In this volume, a range of contributors - scientists, philosophers, chefs, anthropologists, artists - explore how philosophy and proto- scientific theory and experimental practice was linked at its outset to the culinary arts." From the introduction by Robin Mackay and Reza Negarestani (pdf):
Cookery has never been so high on the agenda of Western popular culture. And yet the endlessly-multiplying
TV shows, the obsessive interest in the provenance of
ingredients, and the celebration of ‘radical’ experiments in gastronomy, tell us little about the nature of
the culinary. Is it possible to develop the philosophical pertinence of cookery without merely appending
philosophy to this burgeoning gastroculture? How
might the everyday, restricted sense of the culinary
be expanded into a culinary materialism wherein synthesis, experimentation, and operations of mixing
and blending take precedence over analysis, subtraction and axiomatisation? This volume, drawing on
resources ranging from anthropology to chemistry, from hermetic alchemy to contemporary mathematics,
undertakes a trans-modal experiment in culinary thinking, excavating the cultural, industrial, physiological,
chemical and even cosmic grounds of cookery, and
proposing new models of culinary thought for the
future.
Proto-scientific thought and experimental practice,
particularly in the form of alchemy, was linked to the
culinary arts’ vital engagement with the transformation
of matter. Indeed, how could empirical inquiry into
nature, seeking to determine the capacities of matter
on the basis of what lay to hand... be anything other than a culinary
endeavour? Yet with the increasing specialisation of
the sciences, philosophy has misplaced its will to
extend such inquiry into a speculative philosophy
whose power resides in its synthetic ambition as well
as its analytical prowess.
