Science of the Word, sometimes New Science of the Word. Sylvia Wynter takes hold and reaches forward with Cesaire's conceptual phrase: a new science of the word. In her words this is the mode through which “the study of the word (the mythoi) will condition the study of nature (the bios).” For Wynter, the science of the word is essential for understanding ourselves as a hybridly human species, that is shaped by both genetic and cultural codes. In the future, the science of the word may also be the mode through which other-than-human forms of knowledge are apprehended. The science of the word accounts for how much of the natural is indeed unnatural: it is constructed and constrained and co-produced by human activity and political economy. The science of the word approaches the study of the world as a kind of poetics. It calls forth new ways then of writing and reading the unnatural world, with a predilection not for forced discrete and transparent knowledges but ebullient and broken-open meanings and theories. This new science looks at and seeks to express the world of words and the worlds words make. It was Cesaire’s belief that without the self-aware study of human culture and storytelling capacities, the natural sciences would remain “starved.”
