Considers the impact of technologies and scientific ideas on the practice of warfare and the handling of the perennial tension between order and chaos on the battlefield. This work explores modern warfare as the constitution of complex social assemblages of machines whose integration has been made through the deployment of scientific methodology.
"This project explores how technologies of perception -- the ability to detect and to avoid detection -- have transformed modern warfare. The book spans from the Renaissance, where the rationalization of vision and space started to influence military strategy, to the present day, where combatants increasingly face off in the perceptual realm of drones and satellites as much the physical battlefield. Each chapter explores a different perceptual theme: sensing, imaging, mapping and hiding"--