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A radical history of indeterminate materialism from prehistory to the present The crystallisation of a decade of research, Matter and Motion traces a line of ancient and modern thinkers who shared a radically different understanding of matter and motion inside and against the Euro-Western tradition. Many have understood matter and motion as relative and as reducible to form and stasis. But, here for the first time, Thomas Nail traces the history of an alternative orientation in which matter and motion are understood as indeterminate relational processes - what he calls kinetic materialism. Thomas Nail is Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and author of numerous books, including Theory of the Object, Lucretius I, II, III, Returning to Revolution and Being and Motion. His research focuses on the philosophy of movement.
About the author
Thomas Nail is Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. He is the award-winning author of eight prestigious University Press books which cover a wide range of topics including migration, borders, technology, digital media, history, science, economics, contemporary politics and climate change. His current research focuses on the influence of mobility on society and the arts in the 21st century. His work has been translated into ten major languages and cited across more than 20 academic disciplines. His published books are
Marx in Motion: A New Materialist Marxism (Oxford University Press, 2020),
Lucretius II: An Ethics of Motion (Edinburgh University Press, 2020),
Theory of the Image (Oxford University Press, 2019),
Being and Motion (Oxford University Press, 2018),
Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion (Edinburgh University Press, 2018),
Theory of the Border (Oxford University Press, 2016),
The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford University Press, 2015) and
Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari, and Zapatismo (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). He also writes for
Aeon: Ideas and Culture,
The Huffington Post,
Quartz,
Pacific Standard: The Science of Society,
History News Network and
Monthly Review.
Summary
Thomas Nail traces an alternative history of ancient and modern thinkers from the Bronze Age to quantum physics who share a radically different understanding of the nature of matter and motion compared to the rest of the Euro-Western tradition.
