Gayle Rogers: Speculation

Speculation A Cultural History from Aristotle to AIGayle Rogers Published by Columbia University Press, 2021 ISBN 9780231200219 In a world that purports to know more about the future than any before it, why do we still need speculation? Insubstantial speculations – from utopian thinking to high-risk stock gambles – often provoke backlash, even when they prove prophetic. Why does this hypothetical way of thinking generate such controversy? Gayle Rogers speaks with Pierre d’Alancaisez about the intellectual history of speculation: from the mirror and the watch tower, the Calvinist reformation, the scientific revolution, through Jane Austen, to the founding of the United States, and the shape of contemporary capitalism – with booms, manias, busts, and bubbles along the way. Unraveling these histories and many other disputes, Rogers argues that what has always been at stake in arguments over speculation, and why it so often appears so threatening, is the authority to produce and control knowledge about the future. Gayle Rogers is professor and chair of English at the University of Pittsburgh. ************* Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at https://petitpoi.net/ You can sign up for my newsletter at https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/ Support my work: https://petitpoi.net/support/