Stephen Hawking's Three Bodies: Helene Mialet, Hawking Incorporated

摘要

The title tells the tale: Hawking is embodied and Hawking is incorporated in "three bodies." In Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. x+226. $29), Helene Mialet claims that of twentieth-century scientists, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are the most recognized by name. Her deep thesis is that there are no disembodied physicists. Einstein and Hawking both have attracted fascinations related to their scientific genius, but interpreters are usually fascinated with their "brains," as it were, and see them through a Cartesian mythology that exaggerates minds over bodies. Mialet's thesis draws from contemporary science studies and deconstructs-and I would say also demythologizes-the disembodiment preferences held by much of science culture. In Hawking's case, his severe disability helps those who see him as a brilliant mind captured in a restricted body; in Einstein's case, the fascination continues concerning how his brain differs from others.