CONTENTS -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- From Ritual to Science -- Swimming the Channel -- Frères amis, Not Enemies: Serres between Prigogine and Girard -- "Incerto Tempore Incertisque Locis": The Logic of the Clinamen and the Birth of Physics -- Liquid History: Serres and Lucretius Lucretius -- Serres at the Crossroads -- "Multiple Pleats": Some Applications of Michel Serres's Poetics -- The Smooth Operator: Serres Prolongs Poe Prolongs Poe -- The Desire for Unity and Its Failure: Reading Henry Adams through Michel Serres through Michel Serres -- Michel Serres's Les Cinq Sens -- Of Stones, Angels, and Humans: Michel Serres and the Global City -- "The Gift Is a Given": On the Errant Ethic of Michel Serres -- "Being Free to Write for a Woman": The Question of Gender in the Work of Michel Serres -- Love, Death, and Parasites -- Works Cited -- Contributors -- Index.