Physicists use different theories to describe the world on different scales. In particular, they use the standard model of particle physics at very high energies, but move to various effective field theories, such as quantum electrodynamics, when modelling lower energy scattering processes. One way to explain this methodological fact is pragmatic in spirit. According to this view, physicists move to an effective field theory at lower energies in order to extract predictions and qualitative understanding which would be difficult or impossible (...) to extract directly from a more fundamental theory. By contrast, another way of accounting for the methodological data is metaphysical in spirit. On this view, the reason that physicists use different theories at different scales is that the world actually exhibits different nomic structure on different scales. These two positions have recently been thrown into sharp relief in a debate between Woodward (2016) and Batterman (2021), with Woodward taking the pragmatist line and Batterman the metaphysical line. One difficulty with the metaphysical answer is that its content is unclear: in what sense exactly could an effective field theory provide a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability than our world’s fundamental theory? This talk attempts to provide an answer to this question by developing a simple metaphysical model. I start by assuming a set of possible worlds which are nomically possible according to some fundamental theory (I suggest that one is free to adopt either a Humean or Non-Humean view of these fundamental nomic necessities). I then introduce an equivalence relation between possible worlds: two worlds are scale-E equivalent if they assign the same values to physical quantities below energy scale E (up to some finite level of precision P). The key question now is whether this relation induces equivalence classes on the set of nomically possible worlds. I argue that in the case of current quantum field theories this does indeed occur, as evidenced by the possibility of “integrating out” high energy degrees of freedom in the renormalisation group framework. The formation of equivalence classes in the fundamental theory's possibility space indicates that some of its high energy features do not make a difference to its low energy dynamical behaviour. This suggests the following reading of the claim that an effective field theory provides a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability: the solutions of the effective field theory stand in one-to-one correspondence with equivalence classes induced by the scale-E equivalence relation, whereas the fundamental theory overcounts the physical possibilities which are relevant at scale E. In this sense, the effective field theory provides a more natural representation of low energy physics than the fundamental theory. I conclude by explaining how this metaphysical model offers a reduction compatible understanding of multiple realisability, once again pointing to renormalisation group results in quantum field theory to support this. (shrink)

We argue in this article that the integration of fairness into machine learning, or FairML, is a valuable exemplar of the politics of statistics and their ongoing transformations. Classically, statisticians sought to eliminate any trace of politics from their measurement tools. But data scientists who are developing predictive machines for social applications - are inevitably confronted with the problem of fairness. They thus face two difficult and often distinct types of demands: first, for reliable computational techniques, and second, for transparency, (...) given the constructed, politically situated nature of quantification operations. We begin by socially localizing the formation of FairML as a field of research and describing the associated epistemological framework. We then examine how researchers simultaneously think the mathematical and social construction of approaches to machine learning, following controversies around fairness metrics and their status. Thirdly and finally, we show that FairML approaches tend towards a specific form of objectivity, "trained judgement," which is based on a reasonably partial justification from the designer of the machine - which itself comes to be politically situated as a result. (shrink)

The main hypothesis upon which relies the whole theoretical framework of the book, is that there exist universal pre-schemata, structurally pre-formed along human evolution considered from either the phylogenetic and the epi-ontogenetic standpoint, which role human behavior. The possible existence of these common psychic structures, as suggested by the relevant work made by the French school of human sciences (of Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Laplanche, Pontalis, Green, and others), enables us to build up a theoretical framework for Freudian psychoanalysis (as revised by (...) Ignacio Matte Blanco) which has a certain formal and rigorous outlook that warrants epistemologically the validity status of psychoanalysis. In particular, we agree with the current epigenetic point of view, recently confirmed and supported by the latest biological research, as testified, for example, by the following pioneering work: F. Zenk, E. Loeser, R. Schiavo, F. Kilper, O. Bogdanovic, N. Iovino, ''Germ line-inherited H3K27me3 restricts enhancer function during maternal-to-zygotic transition'', Science, Volume 357, Issue 6347, 14 July 2017, pp. 212-216. (shrink)

Philosophers who accept tropes generally agree that tropes do play a role in the semantics of natural language, namely as the objects of reference of nominalizations of adjectives, such as Socrates' wisdom or the beauty of the landscape. In fact, a philosophical discussion of the ontology of tropes can hardly do without the use of such nominalizations. In this paper, I will argue that tropes play a further important role in the semantics of natural language, namely in the semantics of (...) bare demonstratives like this and that. Like terms such as Socrates' wisdom or the beauty of the landscape, this and that can act as ordinary referential terms referring to tropes. (shrink)

Can the straight line be analysed mathematically such that it does not fall apart into a set of discrete points, as is usually done but through which its fundamental continuity is lost? And are there objects of pure mathematics that can change through time? The mathematician and philosopher L.E.J. Brouwer argued that the two questions are closely related and that the answer to both is "yes''. To this end he introduced a new kind of object into mathematics, the choice sequence. (...) But other mathematicians and philosophers have been voicing objections to choice sequences from the start. This book aims to provide a sound philosophical basis for Brouwer's choice sequences by subjecting them to a phenomenological critique in the style of the later Husserl. "It is almost as if one could hear the two rebels arguing their case in a European café or on a terrace, and coming to a common understanding, with both men taking their hat off to the other, in admiration and gratitude. Dr. van Atten has convincingly applied Husserl's method to Brouwer's program, and has equally convincingly applied Brouwer's intuition to Husserl's program. Both programs have come out the better." Piet Hut, professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A. (shrink)

Entrée dans un dictionnaire en ligne : The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

This article shows how Schmitt’s work is animated by a fundamental conflict between two concepts of conflict: the one is Schmitt’s own, war, polemos, and the other one is discussion, dialogue, conversation or polemics, which may be said, accordingly, to be Schmitt’s foe. Schmitt’s project is thus described as a conflict between war and discussion: polemos vs polemics, an inner war within the notion of war. The article contemplates this basic configuration and points at some of its major significations for (...) Schmitt’s political theology and theory of state and international law. (shrink)

This book reflects on the role that the opposition to anti-Semitism has been playing in shaping political philosophy after the Holocaust. Its premise is that in post-Holocaust philosophy anti-Semitism has become a paradigm of evil ideology or politics, a negative Politeia. The analysis proceeds through critical readings in prominent political philosophers, from Adorno, Horkheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt, to Alain Badiou and most recently Jean-Luc Nancy, as well as the debates and contemporary scholarship around them. Through these readings the (...) book develops a critical observation, demonstrating how post-Holocaust philosophy has identified the fundamental, epistemological evil of anti-Semitic thought not in thinking against Jews, but in thinking of Jews. In other words, so the book’s claim, what philosophy has been denouncing as anti-Semitic is the figure of “the Jew” in thought. The book thus reveals how it is paradoxically the opposition to anti-Semitism that has been generating in post-Holocaust philosophy a rejection of Jewish thought. With respect to this rejection, this book makes two claims: first, that in rejecting Jewish thought the opposition to anti-Semitism comes dangerously close to anti-Semitism; second, that at work in this rejection is a problematic understanding of the relations between politics and thought, i.e. a problematic “political epistemology”. It is the critique of this political epistemology, as foundational for contemporary political thought, which is the ultimate aim of the book. The book’s original contribution consists in offering the first systematic analysis of the contemporary philosophical problem of anti-Semitism and the opposition to anti-Semitism. It intervenes in current conversations on the relations between Western philosophy, anti-Semitism and Jewish thought, the relation between politics and truth, and the relations between religion and race, among others in the context of the critiques of orientalism and secularism as well as post-colonial theory. (shrink)

Technoscience is often perceived as an expression of the primacy of utilitarian values that would take over the field of pure and disinterested science. A number of scientists deplore that the age of science for its own sake is coming to an end, that technologyhas overtaken science. This common view expressed by active scientists is shared by cultural historians. In a paper describing technoscience as a cultural phenomenon, Paul Forman comes to a similar conclusion. He argues that technoscience is a (...) reversal of the values attached to science. Whereas modernity was characterized by the high cultural rank of science and scientists, postmodernity is characterized the loss of confidence and tustworthiness of scientists. Modernity, accroding to Forman rested on the primacy of science to and for technology, post-modernity is characterized by the the primacy of technology over science. The modern assumption that scientfic research would bring about not only knowledge but technological applications in addition, has been superseded in the 1980s according to Formann, and basic research is no longer considered as a key source of technologial innovation. Forman also points to this technological turn is the science studies which more and more identified science and technology. I would like to discuss this interpretation from the case study of converging technologies. By converging technologies I first refer to the current research programs launched in various countries. More precisely I refer to the US program entitled Converging technologies for improving human performances launched in 2002 and the European program CTEKS (Converging technologies for the European Society) launched in 2004. They are especially relevant because science is not even mentioned as they seem to focus exclusively on technology. Should we consider these programmes as the confirmation of Forman's claim about the primacy of technology over science? In a preliminary conceptual analysis I will try to disentangle the notion of technoscience from the vague connotation of utilitarianism. Then I will consider to what extent the views and values attached to converging technologies express a prinacy of technology over science. For this purpose it is useful to distinguish between converging technologies as national research programs and the daily practices of research in which technologies converge. I will argue that the views and values that active scientists attach to their research can deeply differ from that of policy makers. However in no case can technosccience be described as a primacy of technology over science. (shrink)

Meyerson is known as a philosopher who displayed an impressive erudition both in history of science and philosophy, some one who spent his lifetime in reading and writing. His readers can testify (and sometimes complain) that his philosophical claims were based on and tested against a wide range of historical episodes taken from a variety of sciences. Moreover it is clear that he had an intellectualist approach to science, as he was more concerned with theories than with scientific practices. Therefore (...) it does not really matter that he was trained as a laboratory chemist and that he had practised industrial chemistry in his early career. These aspects are biographical details hardly mentioned as mere anecdotes. I would like to question the standard view that chemistry did not really matter or did act as an anti-model in Meyerson‘s philosophy. I will argue that not only chemistry provided a kind of entrance hall in the history and philosophy of science, as Meyerson himself often acknowledged, but it also shaped his philosophy. (shrink)

It is often assumed that chemistry was a typical positivistic science as long as chemists used atomic and molecular models as mere fictions and denied any concern with their real existence. Even when they use notions such as molecular orbitals chemists do not reify them and often claim that they are mere models or instrumental artefacts. However a glimpse on the history of chemistry in the longue durée suggests that such denials of the ontological status of chemical entities do not (...) testify for any specific allegiance of chemists to positivism. Rather it suggests that the dilemma positivism vs realism is inappropriate for characterizing the ontology of chemistry. This alternative shaped at the turn of the twentieth century in the context of controversies about atomic physics does not take into account the major concern of chemists, i.e. making up things. Only by considering what matters for chemists, their matters of concern rather than their matter theories, can we expect to get an insight on their ontological assumptions. The argumentation based on historical data is twofold. It is wellknown that generating new substances out of initial ingredients which is the raison d'être of chemistry raised a vexing puzzle which has been alternatively solved with the Aristotelian notion of mixt and the Lavoisieran notion of compound. I argue that an essential tension remains intrinsic in chemistry between the two conceptual frameworks. The second section tries to make sense of the long tradition in chemistry of ontological noncommitment. I argue that what is usually considered as a denial of the existence of the basic units of matter would be better characterized as a focus on more important actors on the chemical stage. (shrink)

This paper introduces, documents and reflects on an intercontinental live patching experience based on simultaneous remote interaction using the software Kiwi, and that can be subsumed under several features of Ubiquitous Music. The experience involved two academic groups based in three different universities between Brazil and France, namely, a research group from the two Brazilian Federal Universities of Acre and Paraíba, and a working group based at the University Paris 8 in France. The intercontinental simultaneous interaction may trigger reflections on (...) the implications of the presence/absence of the human being, on the implicit patterns of territorialisation reproduced in the context of intercontinental live patching, and on the operative action of mnemonic processes within the practice. (shrink)

Originally composed by Marcello Messina, Ntrallazzu is a cycle of pieces for live score and electronics built on Max, and involving various instrumental line-ups. In particular, Ntrallazzu 4 was performed by Luzilei Aliel on the pífano and electric guitar in São João del Rei during the VIII UbiMus workshop. Aliel's particular setup also involved a further layer of processing: namely, the usage of Pure Data alongside Ableton Live in order to literally hijack the original piece and open a whole set (...) of unforeseen possibilities that abundantly transcend the original intentions. In this paper, we signify our experience by means of the concept of comprovisation, while we situate Ntrallazzu 4 within the domain of ubiquitous music. Furthermore, we make use of the Heideggerian concept of Gelassenheit and of the Derridean concept of Metaphysics of Presence (as reformulated by Joseph Pugliese) in order to make sense of the piece. (shrink)

Following the standard view, scientific theories are formal systems, which receive empirical content by way of certain correspondence rules. The task of philosophy of science is then to make explicit the structure of such systems. In contrast to this view, one can point to the French tradition in philosophy of science. What characterizes this tradition is recourse to historical study, which has evolved from an attempt to bridge the fields of philosophy of science and history of science by a closer (...) integration of conceptual and historical methods. My aim in this paper is to explore the emergence of historical epistemology in France and its later revival at an international level. Attention is directed at the presuppositions and motivations underlying such an approach. (shrink)

This chapter looks at Avicenna’s definition of truth or, more precisely, some aspects of it related to the theme of analysis or resolutio. Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) tends to rework elements of the two traditions that constitute the history of analysis (and more generally the alphabet of Arabic philosophy), that is, in a very broad sense, the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions. The doctrine of truth, in which logic and metaphysics are closely intertwined, clearly exemplifies this. Both senses of truth—the logical and (...) the ontological—are based on the idea of permanence and primacy. A distinction is made between what is true or real in a proper (or absolute) sense and what is true or real in a derived (and relation-dependent) sense. As a foundation, truth is the truth of being and coincides with reality that cannot be analyzed further. At this level, being true comprehends the Necessarily Existent, the proposition expressing the existence of necessity, the principle of non-contradiction, and the quiddity or reality of the thing as such. Everything else—both at the level of truth or truthfulness and at the level of existing reality—is true because it is derived from some other thing and thus in itself is false, and is true only in virtue of its relation to some other thing. (shrink)

Anne-Lise Rey’s account of Maupertuis’s physical theology challenges the efforts on the part of commentators to align his work with Newton, Leibniz, or critics of Leibniz by examining the innovative epistemological principles that inform his Essay on Cosmology (1750). Through an analysis of his proofs of the existence of God in this work, she investigates Maupertuis’s view on how we can obtain certain knowledge of nature and the place he affords to experimentation and contingency in this regard. Rey claims that (...) Maupertuis, despite his hostility toward Descartes, Leibniz, and Wolff, did not abolish the idea of a metaphysics of nature per se, but tried to strike a new balance between, on the one hand, the deduction of laws from the nature of bodies and, on the other hand, experimentation. More specifically, she argues that Maupertuis in the Essay on Cosmology affirms our epistemic incapacity to grasp the whole system of nature and, hence, argues that the probable truths we can obtain in physics by means of experiments are superior to the geometrical truths that Descartes and his followers aimed to establish in both physics and metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the conjunction between a) a new history and philosophy of science, which, under the banner of a renewed historical epistemology, articulate a new relation between conceptual history and situated history; and b) new narratives in the history of philosophy that integrate women philosophers by showing the displacements this causes in terms of corpus, objects of research, and forms of writing. By questioning the philosophical canon, new focal points are brought to light.. Then I briefly present (...) the tools of feminist epistemology as methodological instruments to, in act, proceed to these decenterings. I conclude with two examples from the Modern Age: Margaret Cavendish and Emilie du Châtelet. Until recently, these two women philosophers were mocked and little considered, but today they are part of the canon, have become mainstream in many Anglo-Saxon universities. I show how this shift changes the landscape of history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

This article enriches reflections on the circulation of the concept of gender in the Global South by looking at the transformations of Tanzanian research on gender in education between the 1970s and the early 1990s. A close reading of the texts shows how the concept of gender has been used in this field of study since 1990; it considers variations depending on authors and their positioning. Comparing this with the writings of the 1970s and 1980s, when no one used the (...) concept, reveals how it contributed to epistemological change. The article also reflects on the respective role of local factors and international influences (via donor agencies and global epistemologies) in the epistemological evolutions of the field. It highlights that researchers, even in a time of growing international dependency, managed to keep intellectual autonomy. (shrink)

Johanna Charlotte Unzer (1725–1782), born Ziegler, is the author of the first metaphysical treatise intended specifically for women. In the preface of this treatise, published in 1751, she justifies her ‘unhabitual’ enterprise, emphasizing that her intention is not to instruct but only to please her female readership. A closer glance, however, reveals a genuine philosophical intention and an active participation in the debate on popular philosophy and aesthetics in Halle. Challenging an all-too narrow and all-too mathematical conception of practical philosophy, (...) Unzer advocates a dynamic model of philosophy as a love of wisdom, and a philosophy of beauty, poetry, and aesthetics. Fundamentally, these are ancient and mostly Platonic ideas, and among her intellectual circle Unzer stands out as a modern Diotima. But on account of their distinctively modern premises, these ideas likewise take a particularly modern shape, and they illustrate a certain Platonic reversal incipient in Wolffianism itself. (shrink)

The discipline of architecture - as well as the profession - should no longer be guided by the making of a new world. The environmental imperative, the climate crisis and more broadly our “anthropocene condition” show the obsolescence of our objects, our methods and our culture. The Transformation master's programme of l’École d’architecture, de la ville et des territoires Paris-Est (France), thinks of architecture as the agent of transformation of an inherited world, with its pieces, techniques, systems, and ideologies. In (...) their projects and dissertations, the students explore the current state of obsolete territories, architectures and ideas, and their perspective of transformation. What is the architecture of transformation, in the light of contemporary societal and environmental issues? We conceive fiction as a modality of experience of reality, as an activation of the critical imagination, and as an original research tool. Through writing, architecture is reminded of its status as fiction, and the boundary between reality and fiction is questioned: the project must be "by nature" a fiction for a better world, and for us this fiction must be utopian. We take seriously the injunctions of philosophers like Donna Haraway and Isabelle Stengers : writing will help us to deconstruct the inherited narratives of modernity, and to imagine other stories. The exercise is then a way of apprehending contemporary issues that are often difficult to conceptualise, but it is also an experience of confronting one's imagination and the unknown. And this is very difficult. Our stories are not valid as programmes or proposals for solutions but as critical journeys, experiences of another relationships to time and history, as experiences of “strangification”, to quote Fredric Jameson. This writing experience is as valuable, if not more, than the dramatic events staged in the short stories. It is about recharging the imagination, engaging forms of conceptualisation that make it possible to think radical changes. Fiction is a gesture of politics and liberation, not 'futurology' or planning. We propose to present the hypotheses and the methodology of this pedagogical experimentation. We also would like to talk about our difficulties, that lead us to broader questions: why and how fiction in architecture? What to teach in architecture schools today? (shrink)

Our objective is to show how geology may help to make progress in the understanding of some fundamental concepts and issues dealing with space, time and movement. This leads us to the very theory of relativity in physics. A thought experiment is presented where geology has fully played a role. Deep (geologic) time is a way to speak of very slow movements, involving imperceptible changes of the ordinary space we live in. According to the relative speeds involved, what is space (...) becomes time (when we accelerate the movements of the mountains); conversely, time may become space (at the scale of the femtoseconds where the sand grains in the egg-timer are immobile). This is not just an allegory: we can never stop, thinking we have reached a pure time and a pure space; because we are inside the world and we can only compare what moves more (on which we build time) to what moves less (on which we build space) within a relational thinking. In this context, conventions are necessary, in particular that of the constancy of a standard movement: this is what we do today with light. The uniformity hypothesis in geology plays the same role. The links between space, time and movement is discussed in various fields of geology (sedimentary sequences, metamorphism, metasomatism, magmatism, …) as they are omnipresent in prehistory. (shrink)

Rather than a return to Bergson, the ‘Kyoto manifesto’ argues for a renewed, expanded Bergsonism: a philosophical inquiry that lives up to the methodological standards set by Bergson, even if this implies prolonging some of his intuitions in different directions—possibly against himself. Several aspects of this endeavour are examined in turn: the meaning of ‘intuition’ and the prospects of speculative empiricism, the ontological scope of scientific theories, emergentism and the virtual, the relevance of space-time for duration, the place of metaphysical (...) imagination and its capacity to probe the utopian potential of a truly open science. (shrink)

The paper provides a new critical perspective on the propensity interpretation of fitness, by investigating its relationship to the propensity interpretation of probability. Two main conclusions are drawn. First, the claim that fitness is a propensity cannot be understood properly: fitness is not a propensity in the sense prescribed by the propensity interpretation of probability. Second, this interpretation of probability is inessential for explanations proposed by the propensity interpretation of fitness in evolutionary biology. Consequently, interpreting the probabilistic dimension of fitness (...) in terms of propensities is neither a strong motivation in favor of this interpretation, nor a possible target for substantial criticism. (shrink)

Various errors can affect scientific code and detecting them is a central concern within computational science. Could formal verification methods, which are now available tools, be widely adopted to guarantee the general reliability of scientific code? After discussing their benefits and drawbacks, we claim that, absent significant changes as regards features like their user-friendliness and versatility, these methods are unlikely to be adopted throughout computational science, beyond certain specific contexts for which they are well-suited. This issue exemplifies the epistemological heterogeneity (...) of computational science: profoundly different practices can be appropriate to meet the reliability challenge that rises for scientific code. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as machine learning algorithms, have allowed scientists, marketers and governments to shed light on correlations that remained invisible until now. Beforehand, the dots that we had to connect in order to imagine a new knowledge were either too numerous, too sparse or not even detected. Sometimes, the information was not stored in the same data lake or format and was not able to communicate. But in creating new bridges with AI, many problems appeared such as (...) bias reproduction, unfair inferences or mass surveillance. Our aim is to show that, on one hand, the AI's deep ethical problem lays essentially in these new connections made possible by systems interoperability. In connecting the spheres of our life, these systems undermine the notion of justice particular to each of them, because the new interactions create dominances of social goods from a sphere to another. These systems make therefore spheres permeable to one another and, in doing so, they open to progress as well as to tyranny. On another hand, however, we would like to emphasize that the act to connect what used to seem a priori disjoint is a necessary move of knowledge and scientific progress. (shrink)

If you figure out how machines learn, then you will figure out how the brain works, and what the brain’s functions are. Such an idea is widespread among philosophers and computer scientists who agree with a functionalist reductionist point of view of consciousness. This theory leads to hold that the more accurate the simulation of cognitive behavior is, the more the math behind it must be true – when true means what really happens in our brain. In this article, we (...) aim to show that, on one hand, brain simulation is nothing more than just another simulation, and it offers very little help to understand – nor to produce – the vivid experiences (qualia) of cognitive functions. On the other hand, we would like to emphasize that when it succeeds at predicting a mechanism with less ambiguity and more accuracy than without a simulation nor direct observation, it really develops the knowledge of our brain. As long as brain simulation follows scientific principles, it should be regarded as valuable, even though the knowledge it brings to science must not be confused for the real phenomenon. Brain simulation, like all simulation, cannot fill any reality or epistemic gap. It is a consolation prize. (shrink)

English. This paper analyses two closely related but different concepts, digitization and digitalization, first discussed in an encyclopedia article by Brennen and Kreiss in 2016. Digital Humanities mainly uses the first term, whereas business and economics tend to use the second to praise the process of the digitalization of society. But digitalization was coined as a critical concept in 1971 by Wachal and is sometimes used in post-colonial studies. Consequently, humanist scholars are invited to avoid the "path of least resistance" (...) when using digitalization, and to explore its critical potential. The paper concludes by considering the effect of the digitalization perspective and by expressing author's point of view on the issue. Italiano. Questo articolo analizza due concetti correlati ma differenti fra loro, "digitization" e "digitalization", discussi la prima volta in una voce di enciclopedia da Brennen e Kreiss nel 2016. Nelle scienze umane digitali si utilizza sostanzialmente il primo termine, mentre in economia si tende a utilizzare il secondo per sottolineare il processo di digitalizzazione della società. Ma il termine "digitalization" era stato creato nel 1971 da Wachal come un concetto critico, ed era stato utilizzato in alcuni studi sul post-colonialismo. Di conseguenza, gli studiosi nelle scienze umane sono invitati a evitare di utilizzare "digitalization" in modo triviale, e ad esplorare il suo potenziale critico. L'articolo termina con alcune considerazioni sugli effetti della prospettiva della digitalizzazione, presentando il punto di vista dell'autore. (shrink)

This introduction details the context and project of this book. Focused on the American industrial mobilization during World War II and its relationship with the renewal of management, The rise of digital management aims to describe how management as a set of practices and processes was renewed by the impetus of the war and its aftermath. In essence, before the war, the US and its future were just a radical uncertainty. Following the great depression, in the context of a creeping (...) World War and a deep political crisis (which includes management), the future was no longer ‘made’. The industrial mobilization set up a new temporal machine, managerial processes which from that time keep revealing and unveiling what is going on and, more and more, what is to come. The encounter between management and digitality accelerated by the industrial mobilization gave rise to our digital management. Deeply rationalist, representationalist and in many ways, disembodied, this digital management endures in modern days. This introduction then describes the threefold historico-philosophical ethnography implemented in this book to explore the rise of digital management during and after the war. First, a focus on intimate, ordinary life followed by the larger description of the historical movement of the industrial mobilization (e.g., with an analysis of the archives or the Brooklyn Navy Yard and those of several learned societies devoted to management), before a more philosophical analysis of the American event from within. (shrink)

This book covers the US industrial mobilization and its extensions with the cold war and present time. It shows that scientific management experienced crisis before the war, and was reconfigured and re-legitimated as a digital management during the 40s and 50s. Today, this digital management has three main features: it is representationalist (its cognition and narration aim at unveiling the ‘real’ world through visualization, computation and digital semiosis at large), focused on the maintenance of processes (the continuity and interconnectivity of (...) its activities and processes of novelty is key) and praising apocalyptic rhythms (both accelerations and suspensions through innovative projects). The US industrial mobilization and its extensions with the cold war paved the way to this threefold management which makes the usual distinction between ‘administration’ and ‘management’ irrelevant. In the synchronous world of digital semiosis, there are no remote or far places, up and down of a company. Distributed operational and executive processes all share the same integrated global time-space. Likewise, our digital and post-digital words have all made the ‘long’ versus ‘short’ term distinctions (also grounding the opposition between management and administration) obsolete. This conclusion is then extended with a discussion about the problem of the past in the American Event: resonances for management and digitality and a call to confront our digital management into conversation with its Roman and Greek origins. (shrink)

This text is a reflection on the book we edited in 2015 : Inquiring into Human Enhancement – Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives. Andrew Webster and Sally Wyatt asked us how now we are considering this book, how meaningful it appears with a five years distance, what we presently are seeing as its more significant contributions, and what footprint or effect it involved in our intellectual lifes as researchers.

This book analyzes the history of management, placing it in perspective with both American history and the genealogy of digital technology. Focusing on the years of industrial mobilization in the United States (from 1937 to 1945) and their extension into the Cold War, it shows in particular how “scientific management” was reconfigured and relegitimized in favor of a new, profoundly American geopolitics. In a context where the future was at a standstill, this research also explains what became of the managerial (...) processes at the heart of capitalism from the 40s onwards, the shift from a managerial capitalism of calculation to a narrative capitalism made up of "desiring machines". This digital management no longer simply contributes, along with others, to unveiling and revealing the future. Aligned with the American obsession with novelty, it is the very process of revelation and unveiling, with managers and consumers alike becoming the intersecting subjects of desires borne of managerial apocalypses. To explore this period of American history, the author has combined a triple narrative anchored in three types of archives: an intimate history of this reconfiguration from the presence in New York of Saint-Exupéry, Burnham and Wiener; A description of the great historical moment of industrial mobilization; a philosophical speculation about reconfiguration and its links to American history. (shrink)

My point is to demonstrate that Koyré’s work can be synthesised through the notion of space and that Koyré’s interest for this notion still has a great value for historians and philosophers of science. Actually, Koyré’s analysis shows us that space is perhaps the most efficient concept to use when examining mutations of thought. What is at stake with space? Space is the place where historians can find an expression of the “unity of human thought”. Space is then the centre (...) of gravity of the epistemological commitments of many scientists but not only scientific commitments. “The unity of human thought” is to Koyré, a complex network of trans-scientific ideas such as philosophical, metaphysical and also religious ones. Moreover, my homage to Koyré consists of using his methodological principles in order to shed light upon André-Marie Ampère’s scientific practices. In my opinion, these practices imply the same kind of unity of trans-scientific ideas as those studied by Koyré. (shrink)

Well prior to the invention of the term ‘biology’ in the early 1800s by Lamarck and Treviranus (and lesser-known figures in the decades prior), and also prior to the appearance of terms such as ‘organism’ under the pen of Leibniz and Stahl in the early 1700s, the question of ‘Life’, that is, the status of living organisms within the broader physico-mechanical universe, agitated different corners of the European intellectual scene. From modern Epicureanism to medical Newtonianism, from Stahlian animism to the (...) discourse on the ‘animal economy’ in vitalist medicine, models of living being were constructed in opposition to ‘merely anatomical’, structural, mechanical models. It is therefore striking that the classic narratives of the Scientific Revolution conspicuously avoid any consideration of what status to grant living beings in a newly physicalized universe (I discuss this in Wolfe 2011, 2019 chapt. 1). Neither Harvey, nor Boyle, nor Locke (to name some likely candidates, the latter having studied with Willis and collaborated with Sydenham) ever ask what makes organisms unique, or conversely, what does not. In this chapter I seek to establish how something we might call ‘the knowledge of Life’, to use an expression of Georges Canguilhem’s, emerged as part of early modernity without being part of the mainstream history of life science. This leads to the question, can one can correlate early modern “knowledge of life” with the emergence of a science called ‘biology’? (see Zammito 2018, Wolfe 2019, Bognon-Küss and Wolfe eds. 2019). It was once fashionable to speak of, e.g. ‘precursors of Darwin’, and then Canguilhem and Foucault famously did away with the category of precursor. But how then do we account for the phase that precedes the constitution of a science? With the case of biology, how do we account for the increasing fascination with the ontology of Life during the decades prior to the ‘naming of biology’, as McLaughlin has called it, at the end of the eighteenth century? This increased focus on Life and the ontology of Life sits awkwardly, both with mainstream narratives of the Scientific Revolution and of the history of biology. In seeking to address this increased focus (in which vitalism plays a role but was by no means the only conceptual actor: Wolfe 2020), I critically examine Foucault’s notorious claim (Foucault 1966) that there was no such thing as ‘Life’ in the eighteenth century and thus no such thing as biology. (shrink)

This paper studies the discussions on the definition and moral axiology of lying by two fourteenth-century Franciscan theologians, Francis of Meyronnes and Gerald Odonis, placed against the both broader context of late medieval scholasticism in general and the Franciscan moral theology in particular. Augustine’s doxa on mendacity largely dominated the late medieval intellectual landscape, but his teachings were challenged by alternative definitional and axiological schemes of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Both Meyronnes and Odonis, in their Decalogue and Ethics commentaries respectively, defended (...) the Augustine’s intention-centric definition of lying and his rigorist condemnation of lying as a sin, but they also fully engaged with Aristotle’s arguments, and explored the notion of mendacity as a deviation from the virtuous mean, and the idea of mendaciousness as a habitual vice. They presented, each in his own way, an Aristotelianised re-reading of the fundamental tenets of Augustinian doctrines. (shrink)

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

In light of the challenges entailed by the (re)design of the Internet, this paper develops the concept of “monuments of cyberspace”, to address the lack of clarity in current debates and more particularly in the use of the conceptual frameworks of “networks” and “communities”. To do so, I revisit the conceptual grounds of network approaches in different disciplines and those of communities of practice, using as an entry point the debate on personal data. To illustrate the value of the concept (...) introduced, the article reviews the design of the “datagram” and that of an online communication setting for developers. (shrink)

This paper aims to bring together the study of normative judgments in mathematics as studied by the philosophy of mathematics and verbal hygiene as studied by sociolinguistics. Verbal hygiene (Cameron 1995) refers to the set of normative ideas that language users have about which linguistic practices should be preferred, and the ways in which they go about encouraging or forcing others to adopt their preference. We introduce the notion of mathematical hygiene, which we define in a parallel way as the (...) set of normative discourses regulating mathematical practices and the ways in which mathematicians promote those practices. To clarify our proposal, we present two case studies from 17th century France. First, we exemplify a case of mathematical hygiene proper: Descartes' algebraic geometry and Newton's subsequent criticism of it, a case of (im)purity in mathematics. Then, we compare Descartes' and Newton's mathematical hygiene with verbal hygiene from this period, as exemplified by the work of the grammarian Claude Favre de Vaugelas (Ayres-Bennett 1987). We argue that these early modern normative discourses on mathematics and language respectively can be seen as emanating from a common socio-political program: the development of a new bourgeois intellectual class. We conclude that the study of mathematical hygiene has the potential to yield new understandings of the social aspects of mathematical practice, and that similarities between mathematical and verbal hygiene at certain time periods, such as 17th century France, open up a new area of inquiry at the borders of linguistics and the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Transhumanism first offers itself as a means to save oneself from an embodiment that is judged as being far from perfect. One needs to ask in its wake what comes of desires to escape limitations that come from the body, as they are means of an overcoming of the self. The AI project seems to be governed by norms for what the mind is, that could easily be judged inconsistent. Religious and theological traditions have looked at what the meaning of (...) an ineliminable image of God could mean. We try to map the meaning of extending this further into God’s resemblance. We then try to map this on a relationship of image and resemblance that would not have God come into competition with the doings of man. (shrink)

Biologists increasingly report anthropogenic disruptions of both organisms and ecosystems, suggesting that these processes are a fundamental, qualitative component of the Anthropocene. Nonetheless, the notion of disruption has not yet been theorized in biology. To progress in that regard, we work on a special case. Relatively minor temperature changes impact plant-pollinator synchrony, disrupting mutualistic interaction networks. Understanding this phenomenon requires a specific rationale since models describing them use both historical and systemic reasoning. Specifically, history justifies that the system is initially (...) in a very narrow part of the possibility space where it is viable, and the disruption randomizes this configuration. Building on this rationale, we develop a formal framework inspired by Boltzmann's entropy. With empirical networks, we show historical trends depending on latitude. Then we propose an initial definition of disruption in ecology. When a specific historical outcome contributes to a system's viability, disruption randomizes this outcome, decreasing viability. (shrink)

The main research area of my PhD Thesis is History and Epistemology of Science (Physics, Mathematics, CNU 72). The combined–subjects are the History of Gravitational Waves (HGW) & the Nature of Science (NoS, CNU 70). Gravitational Waves (GW) are invisible undulations in space: any mass moves, then GW are generated through space–time radiating crossways a lake's surface. It is the main key to finally complete the Einstein's General Relativity. This thesis consists in four Parts across nine Chapters, including a large (...) Introduction and detailed Conclusion. Including References, Appendix and Indices (Names, Subjects, Images) it totals over 700 pp. in length in an unique Vol. I examined GW through theoretical–and–experimental studies (texts analyses) into history dating as far back as the Renaissance, through to the middle of the past century, up to recent discoveries at Labs. (2015, Italy–USA, LIGO–VIRGO). The job was done in three doctoral years, including visits at the American Institute of Physics (APS, USA) and the European Gravitational Observatory (VIRGO, Italy). The main historical results of my PhD research are: 1) concept of GW which date back to Sir Clifford (1870) who conceived the geometry of space as being non–Euclidean: “[...] this property of [space] being curved or distorted is continually being passed on from one portion of space to another after the manner of a wave”, 2) first mention and related development of GW as “onde gravifique” which term was coined by Poincaré in his Sur la dynamique de l’électron (1905), 3) detailed historical comparative analysis of Clifford and Poincaré's works 4) impact of the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference on GR research, 5) development of GW detectors through the pioneering works of Weber, 6) later methods using Michelson laser interferometers that lead to building of LIGO–VIRGO, 7) the impact on Cosmology and future GW research. Other correlated results are systematically detailed in the end both of each Chapter (Final Remarks) and Parts (Epilogues). On the HGW & NoS, I examined the historical foundations of GW in order to check both specific teaching–learning difficulties & misunderstandings in modern physics and to shape curricula ad hoc at Lyceum and University. The 19th-21st century historical period is very well documented allowing me to focus on the different scientific changes that occurred at that time in an interdisciplinary way. The historical–educational goal aims to apply the framework of the Nature of Science in order to analyse & understand how the foundations of science can be used for teaching & pedagogical purposes. Relying on an appropriate series of steps to understand the evolution of science and paradigm shifts in respect to both the development of science throughout its history and the pedagogical filter of teaching–learning sciences (physics–mathematical modelling), I showed how Special/General Relativity linked to HGW may be made accessible to students. I also worked on the role played by Neurosciences/Cognitive in order to show how, by means of analogies and ad absurdum proofs within scientific teaching–learning, some notable epistemological breaks and obstacles can be overcome. I methodically collected data from my teaching at distance courses whose purpose was to introduce the main concepts of GW within the HGW framework to the students. Consequently, I analysed the data (research applied to teaching) which indicated that my experimental HGW distance course was educationally beneficial to the learners. HGW is a very new topic. It is one of the most broad and challenging subjects in the History of Science (HS & NoS): Nowadays, HGW source books lack of critical analyses in the field. The impact of my PhD Thesis in 2020 and successive related works of mine aim to assume this early research––and––pedagogical role. This thesis appeals to historians, scientists (physicists, mathematicians, applied sciences & technology), teaching experts and epistemologists. (shrink)

The panel aims to further a conversation between being advanced by a forthcoming volume, Engineering, Social Science, and the Humanities: Has Their Conversation Come of Age? (Eds. Christensen, Buch, Conlon, Didier, Mitcham, Murphy).

The thesis deals with a section of the major philosophical summa by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037), namely the Book of the Healing (Kitāb al-Šifāʾ). The summa is structured into four parts, devoted to Logic, Natural Philosophy, Mathematics and Metaphysics; the section at stake is Avicenna’s reworking of Porphyry’s Isagoge (Kitāb al-Madḫal, i.e. “Book of the Introduction”) opening the section of Logic of the Šifāʾ. The thesis is articulated into three main parts, namely (i) an edition of the Arabic text (...) of Avicenna’s Madḫal, (ii) an English translation and (iii) a systematic commentary; these three main parts are preceded by an Introduction (0) divided into two halves: (0a) a General Introduction focused on the doctrinal major innovations of the work and (0b) an Introduction to the Edition of the text, which offers a first comprehensive study of its direct and early indirect tradition and explains the criteria of the edition. (i) The only previous edition of Avicenna’s Madḫal was the one printed in Cairo in 1952 (then reprinted in Tehran in 1983 and in Beirut in 1993), based on ten manuscripts. The huge manuscript tradition of Avicenna’s Madḫal – and, more in general, of Avicenna’s Book of the Healing – is still a matter of investigation. According to the provisional results of the bibliographical research conducted in the present work, it can be estimated that the manuscript tradition of the Madḫal amounts to at least 119 certain witnesses and 14 possible additional witnesses (as explained in the Introduction to the edition, 0b). The text of the Cairo edition, far from being representative of the whole textual tradition, was reconstructed on the basis of ten manuscripts that were not selected on the basis of philological criteria and whose reciprocal stemmatic relations were not clear. Although a critical edition based on all the 119 certain witnesses of the work exceeds the scope of the present work, the edition provided in the thesis takes into account a larger number of manuscripts than the Cairo edition did and, most importantly, selects them by means of a preliminary collation made on portions of the text. The purpose of this preliminary collation is making the selection of the manuscripts employed less arbitrary and providing a reconstruction of their stemmatic relations (in the Introduction, 0b). Overall, 32 manuscripts among the 68 inspected were employed in the edition here proposed, 21 of which were systematically collated and 11 were eliminated as codices descripti. The present edition also assumes as a witness the twelfth-century Latin translation of the work, which is, at the present moment, among the earliest extant witnesses of the text. Hopefully, this editorial work allowed us to improve the text of the Cairo edition in a number of points that are crucial to the correct understanding of Avicenna’s argumentation. (ii) As this project started, complete translations of Avicenna’s Madḫal in modern languages were only available in Turkish and Russian. Chapters of the work had also been translated in other languages, but an English translation of the whole work was still a desideratum. A complete English translation is provided in the thesis, based on the newly-established Arabic text of the work and aiming at preserving the major possible consistency in rendering the relevant philosophical terms. As a complement to the translation, an apparatus of notes is offered to facilitate the immediate understanding of the text. (iii) The third section of the thesis consists in a systematic commentary on Avicenna’s Madḫal, which is meant to support a deeper understanding of the text in its entirety. The commentary deals with both historical and philosophical aspects; more in detail, it includes an analysis and an identification, when possible, of Avicenna’s sources, and underlines the points of major philosophical interest of the work, which are dealt in a more comprehensive manner in the General Introduction (0a). (shrink)

The discoveries realized with Galileo’s telescope made the idea of space journeys a commonplace in both literature and philosophy of the seventeenth century. Do these imaginary voyages provide more than metaphors of scientific knowledge? Can they be seen as a way to explore the consequences of copernican revolution? How could they relate with thought experiments? To answer this last query requires to give a definition and to attribute a function to thought experiment in natural philosophy. It also depends on the (...) status of fiction, especially the dream, in philosophical matter and manner. In my paper I shall scrutinize several uses of space journeys, from Kepler to Fontenelle, and focus on the justifications of such literary devices by their authors. (shrink)

Samuel Cottereau Du Clos (1598-1685) appears as the first French chemist to combine in chemistry – which is for him the science of substances, the physics of qualities – demonstrations using the laws of motion with demonstrations using the qualities of chemical principles, and in that way bringing to bear two different and complementary orders of explanations. According to him, the mechanical considerations represent a first approach, a stage towards the knowledge of “the truth of things” (la vérité des choses) (...) in natural philosophy. He set out his chemistry at the Académie royale des sciences de Paris, especially through his criticism of Boyle’s Certain Physiological Essays in 1668-1669. (shrink)

At first, Georges Canguilhem’s philosophy is a philosophy of medicine recognizing the main contribution of biological knowledge to medicine. However, this philosophy also questions the nature of life. Life involves biological processes, but life is also normativity. In this paper, we question the normativity and the epistemological history in Canguilhem’s works to understand their relevance for current scientific questions. According to Canguilhem, the epistemological history of the life sciences concerns an activity of constitution of (biological) scientific disciplines. The relevance of (...) Canguilhem is the fact that a historian of science has not only to restore a history of the scientific theories or a history of the development of the sciences in context, but he also has to explore the relationship and the limits between life science and its context in the process of genesis and scientific elaboration. Scientific work is a vital activity of the human being, the history of science is the history of this axiological activity, and this implies a philosophical approach. In this paper, we propose that the history of ecology may give a valuable example of a scientific elaboration from various elements and from diverse skills: ideologies that announce or extend a scientific construction also affect this discipline. (shrink)

The pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Peri kosmou or De mundo is not a text of great philosophical interest, but it was very important for French Renaissance culture, in a time when none of Aristotle’s treatises of natural philosophy was available in French. This short pedagogical text was translated into Latin by Guillaume Budé in 1526, and into French for the first time as early as 1541 by the French grammarian Louis Meigret (Le Livre du monde faict par Aristote et envoyé à Alexandre (...) le Grand). In spite of this first French translation, the Calvinist theologian Lambert Daneau translated it once more (Traitté du monde et des plus nobles et principales parties d’icelui) and published it in a book entitled La physique françoise (1581), along with Basil of Cæsarea’s Homilies and fragments of John of Damascus. This article focuses on Daneau’s translation, which raises several questions: Why publish the translation in a book called Physique françoise? What were the issues of such a translation, made in order to restore a pious, Mosaic, natural philosophy? Did the context shape the way Daneau translated the text? What are the differences and similarities both with Meigret’s translation and with the humanistic Latin paraphrases by Budé? (shrink)

In this chapter Laurie Bréban and Jean Dellemotte explain how Adam Smith understood the differences and relations between indigenous peoples and Westerners. The authors demonstrate the unity and the ambiguities in Smith’s views of natives and Westerners as presented in his international thought. In doing so, they investigate Smith’s economic thought and moral philosophy and bring new light to his relation to colonialism.

In his first edition (1918) of Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, on §17, Moritz Schlick ridiculed Husserl’s phenomenological method in a polemical text, where he used ironically Husserl’s vocabulary. This text was removed from the second edition (1925). As he explained in the preface to the second edition, Schlick preferred his readers to focus on the positive content of his theory of knowledge than to the correction of the mistakes of others. Because of this removal, mostly only German readers had an access to (...) this text, the English and French translations of Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre being based on the second edition. For this reason, I publish here an English and a French translation of this passage, on the occasion of my article “Schlick, Husserl, Weyl: On Scientific Philosophy”. This translation has not been reviewed by a German nor an English native speaker. I hope nevertheless that this can be useful for researchers in history and philosophy of science, not able to read directly the German. (shrink)

How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, Symbiosis and Individuality: Conceptual and Philosophical Issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights the value of (...) incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

I will offer a conceptual analysis of different notions of structure and function of viral immunogens and of different structure-function relationships. My focus will then be on the mechanisms by which the desired immune response is induced and why strategies based on three-dimensional molecular antigen structures and their rational design are limited in their ability to induce the desired immunogenicity. I will look at the mechanisms of action of adjuvants (thus the wordplay with Janeway's "immunologist's dirty little secret"). Strategies involving (...) adjuvants and other (more successful) vaccination strategies rely on taking into account activities and functions ("what is going on"), and not just the structures involved ("who is there"), in binding in a "lock and key" fashion. Functional patterns as well as other organizational and temporal patterns, I will argue, are crucial for inducing the desired immune response and immunogenicity. The 3D structural approach by itself has its benefitsand its limits, which I want to highlight by this philosophical analysis, pointing out the importance of structure-function relationships. Different functional aspects such as antigenicity, immunogenicity, and immunity need to be kept separate and cannot be reduced to three-dimensional structures of vaccines. Taking into account different notions of structure and function and their relationships might thus advance our understanding of the immune system and rational HIV vaccine design, to which end philosophy can provide useful tools. (shrink)

Data do not belong to predictive analytics only. Neither do concepts belong to theoretical modeling only. This talk will explore and question the changing relationships between data and concepts in models today, especially in the case of multiscale models. It will show that there are different types of integrative models, and that some are new. These new integrative models take their part in a cycling methodology of modeling where measures, estimations, reconstructions, simulations, concept-driven models and mathematics interact and take their (...) part too. (shrink)

The author argues that ancient Skepticism may be most suited to deal with two crises in the Age of COVID-19: both the physical or epidemiological aspects of the pandemic, and the epistemological and ethical crisis of increasing disbelief in the sciences. Following Michel Bitbol, I suggest one way to mitigate this crisis of faith may be for science to become more epistemically modest, renouncing some of its claims to describe reality as it objectively is, and adopting an “intransitive” rather than (...) a “transitive” approach to Nature. This was the attitude adopted by the Greco-Roman medical school of the Empirics, which may also be of assistance in combatting the urgent problem of Fake News. The epistemology of Skepticism and the scientific methodology of the closely related Medical Empiricism shows that an epistemically modest, non-interventionist approach to science is quite compatible with a robust and sophisticated proto-experimental scientific methodology. (shrink)

Although he developed one of the most important modern theories of time, Bergson has often been criticised for not thinking history. Drawing on his writings from Creative Evolution to The Two Sources, I show that, on the contrary, he was trying to define history in a new way, one that would not be exhausted by the traditional opposition to the natural sciences. Bergson’s new philosophy of history, free of teleology and determinism, allows us to think the specificity of the human (...) historical dimension without erasing its articulation with natural evolution. Against the critical readings Aron and Merleau-Ponty have offered, I maintain that Bergson’s philosophy does not withdraw into an individualist spiritualism but includes the collective dimension and the history of non-human, both natural and technological, reality. (shrink)

René Descartes (1596-1650) is often presented as the founder of the "dualistic" thesis radically separating the soul from the body, in early modern philosophy. As such, he is likely to have initiated two kinds of revolutions: a revolution in the study of nature and living being(understood as inanimate), on the one hand; and a revolution in the study of the human mind(understood as the foundation of all knowledge), on the other. This entry focuses on his scientific work and overall reception, (...) as a way of understanding the interaction of these two fields. (shrink)