‘The Great Story unfolds before our eyes as soon as we know how to decipher those stories of nature, engraved on or in the cosmological radiation, the brilliance of the stars, the weight of atoms, the terrestrial strata, fossils and molecules’ (Récits d’Humanisme, page 16).

Serres refers to countless stories in his work, from ancient tales and fables, to novels, to the adventures of Tintin, written by his close friend Hergé. He also recounted his own stories of his rural upbringing, his experiences as a naval officer, his travels, and his love of mountain-climbing.

He found literature could reveal things that science and reason could not reach. Stories were able to convey the hurley-burley of life, the mingling of sensations, tangible life, intellect, the social and personal, the accidental and the unexpected.

At the same time, Serres was skilled in mathematics and science and was familiar with the most recent theories and discoveries. What is more, he found that the humanities and science had deep ties. He thought that literature could anticipate scientific theories, whereas science could in turn reinforce and reinvigorate the humanities.

Serres was particularly drawn to how the most recent discoveries in science were uncovering the age of the universe and the common components of everything. As Carl Sagan famously stated: ‘If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe’. Ingredients like apples and sugar are made of molecules, which are made of atoms which, apart from hydrogen, are made in stars. The hydrogen ingredient stems from what is commonly called the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago. Unlike philosophers of the past, we all know this today.

An astronaut circling our planet in Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital, raises a question that I think Serres would appreciate:

‘and perhaps the entirety of our understanding consists of an elaborate and ever-evolving knowledge of our own extraneousness, a bashing away of mankind’s ego by instruments of scientific enquiry until it is, that ego, a shattered edifice that lets light through’ (page 28).

What Serres called le Grand Récit, usually translated as the Grand Narrative or the Great Story, reveals both the common ingredients of everything and disrupts our perspective of humankind. We learnt some time ago that the sun does not orbit around us. We now understand that we live as a tiny spec of time and space, and we are not the centre of anything. For Serres, such knowledge has the capacity to humble and release us to rethink of our relation to the Earth.

As many Indigenous people have known for thousands of years, we have evolved as a common part of nature. The common story is summed up in a just a few beautiful pages in Samantha Harvey’s Orbital.

‘Pick a single creature on this earth and its story will be the earth’s story, he suddenly thinks. It can tell you everything, that one creature. The whole history of the world, the whole likely future of the world’ (page 107).

Voices are starting to gather but Serres is distinctive in that the story does not stand alone. It is one on-going foundation alongside his sustained thought on the need for a new social contract that includes all nature; a new transformative politics formed through global communication technologies and access to information; and above all, a philosophy of hope that twists and turns through over 70 books.

Starting points

I would recommend the book The Incandescent (2018), perhaps beginning with the section ‘The Universal’ (page173) and through to the end. In French, I recommend Récits d’Humanisme (2006).

Branching out

Add your voice, your story ….