This thesis examines Michel Serres’s philosophy of limits. Its aim is to trace limit formations as operative functions of thought, which perform interdisciplinary translations between philosophy of science, aesthetics, and critical theory. In order to pursue this aim, a number of Serres’s works revolving around the history and philosophy of science, writings on art and literature, and critical pieces are taken into account. These comprise, amongst others, his early Hermès-series, The Birth of Physics, The Natural Contract, as well as his series Foundations. The focus lies on Serres’s engagement with limit-formations (that is, the formation of boundaries, borders, frontiers, and margins) and their relation to three main fields. The thesis discusses his understanding of limits in respect to the history and philosophy of geometry (1), in respect to his understanding of topology (2), and in relation with entropy, conceived as a concept used in thermodynamics and information theory (3).

It is argued that Serres’s understanding of limits fuels his prolific philosophical output in terms of both its content and form, challenging common understandings of being given and made. On the one hand, this thesis shines light on Serres’s historical account of the genesis of different limits, and how these travel between knowledge formations. On the other hand, it reconstructs Serres’s own use of limits, and how this sits within his philosophy of science, as well as his interpretations of aesthetic practices and understanding of contracts. The aim is to approach Serres’s work in its capacity to explain how limits both disconnect and connect. These analyses emerge from the background of the observation that Serres’s work, at first sight, does not engage with limits as a primary concern. His reservations towards limits as ontological givens, as politically non-negotiable, or straightforwardly socially constructed turn out to be highly productive. This informs a Serresian philosophy of limits that takes what the philosopher calls the North-West-Passage: a route that traverses lines between the sciences and the humanities, which speaks to an outlook that is both philosophical and historical. Within French-speaking philosophy and beyond, this confirms Serres to be a crucial and astonishingly original thinker of limits in their irreducible plural and, it is argued, a critical thinker. Distinguished from a post-Kantian understanding of critique, in this thesis, his work is read in terms of suggesting modes of criticality.

The thesis consists of three main chapters, each oriented by three complexes of limit functions. The first chapter looks at Serres’s analysis of how the history of geometry draws on and engenders limits, in order to investigate the relationship between them being given and made. Tracing limits, borders, and boundaries through the history of geometry condenses and implicates multiple origins; it enacts a theatre of measurement, which has both origins in and consequences for conceptions of law, the distribution of property, aesthetic forms, and critical frameworks. The second chapter shines light on the way in which Serres relates the philosophy of science to laws and contracts from the perspective of topological boundaries, which are closely linked to the question of metaphors and the sea. Laws’ limits witness a decisive shift from a limit as exclusive and parasitical to a limit as inclusive and symbiotic, for which Serres harnesses a variety of metaphors, arriving at a topological approach to law and contract. The third chapter examines Serres’s understanding of limits through what I call entropic differences. It contextualises his understanding of the coupling of the thermodynamic and information-theoretical concept of entropy and traces how an entropic difference, that is, a particular differential deviation, translates between the sciences, the history of art and literature, social theory, and a new natural contract.

In summary, this thesis attempts to offer a novel and comprehensive contribution to existing scholarship on Serres, and to highlight the potential uses of his thinking as an exceptional case for critical engagement with figures of limits across disciplines.