Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a sympathetic narrative of the Freudian enterprise in relation to science, tracing how S. Freud very quickly subordinated therapeutic concerns to scientific and ethical concerns. It shows how an engagement with Freud leads Lacan, via Descartes, and considers the structure of language and mathematical formalization as tools to apprehend structure. The book argues that what magic, religion, and science have in common is their tendency to equate truth as cause with knowledge. It explores Lacan's move from a view in which he allied scientific determinism with the operation of unconscious processes to opposing the determinism of unconscious formations to the contingency of the unconscious qua chance encounters. The book also argues that the significance of the scientific revolution for Lacan lay in the mathematical formalization of modern physics.