This episode on “Science and Truth” brings us to the end of Écrits. And in bringing us to the end of Écrits, it also offers a convenient stopping point (or maybe just a pausing place) for our podcast series on often overlooked essays in the volume — just in time, coincidentally enough, for the start of our new lecture series on The Logic of Fantasy (Seminar XIV)!
This episode on “Science and Truth” also gives us a chance to summarize some of Lacan’s key thoughts on two important themes, both frequently discussed in recent episodes — namely, the subject and the object of psychoanalysis.
Along the way, we also explore a host of clinical and conceptual relations, including modern scientific delusions of objectivity versus the psychoanalytic science of objectality; retroactive connections between pre-linguistic life (presence in the All alone) and properly symbolic order (presence and absence marked by the One); why 1 + 1 = 3 in the science of psychoanalysis, but the hidden third in this equation is in fact comprised of two elements; and how the Lacanian notion of truth-as-cause differs from (and perennially disrupts) our all-too-human knowledge of things.
Often Overlooked Essays in Écrits: "Science and Truth"