La révolution scientifique les révolutions et l'histoire des sciences

In the paper Ernest Coumet presented at the conference on Koyré (Paris, 1986), he suggested that the term «scientific revolution» does not denote for Koyré an historical event, but an idealtype, in Weber's sense. First, the author discusses this thesis and presents the arguments Coumet advances to support it. In the second part of his paper, he criticises the use of the notion of revolution in the history of science. In particular, he argues against the distinction between scientific theories and a «scientific thinking», which would be influencedby the «philosophical thinking» and whose changes would produce a revolution.     

Lacan et les probabilités

Lacan was interested by the treatment of the probabilities, the theory of games and decision, all topics that gave way to an interpretation of Pascal’s calculus of partition and of the famous argument of betting. Starting from a critical examination of Kant’s transcendental aesthetics, that Lacan propounds to the philosophers to replace by logical space and time of the theory of game (as a substitute), the psychoanalyst attempts to prove that Pascal is probably the forefather of the theory of game and decision. A number of interpretations of the «geometer of hazard», which will happen in the years 1970, are in debt, perhaps unconsciously, surely in a secrete way, to the farther lacanian interpretation.     

Trois revues institutionnelles : Le Journal de l’École polytechnique,les Annales des Mines,les Annales des Ponts et Chaussées

The three journals studied are characterized by their own institutional background, which explains most probably their centenial longevity, and their slow evolution. The Journal de l’École polytechnique is more academic. The two Annales publish scientific, technical and legislative texts. They are a bond between the administration and its engineers. As the bulk of published articles is huge and diversified, it was important to develop an effective system of access to the various articles.     

Épistémologie, histoire et histoire des sciences dans les années 1930

During the 1930’s epistemology, history and history of science reciprocally and importantly influenced each other, even if indirectly. Philosophers and historians discussed the epistemological concepts emerging from the crisis of the exact sciences. They rejected Empirism and Idealism for an «experimental Rationalism» that connected theory and experience. It all caused a dialectical conception of science, fundamentally historical, but for which historians were still reluctant from a theoretical point of view. History was nevertheless the centre of philosophical and epistemological reflexions.     

Histoire et dialectique des idéologies et significations religieuses

The aim of this article is to consider the possibility of a new analytical methodology that could include multidisciplinary approaches into the study of religious ideologies and practices, taking benefit from historical and ethnographic interpretations, but also from linguistic and philological, psychoanalytical, philosophical, sociological, and anthropological considerations. If one tries to study the role or function played by religion in society, considering human beings as builders of symbolic worlds, one should set out to analyze, if not rules, at least general processes of the religious readjustment with respect to the rest of social life, whenever the gap is much too wide, or the religious transfer from one realm to another entirely different.     

Le scepticisme et les hypothèses de la physique

The History of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza is often called upon to support three theses: first, that Descartes had a dogmatic notion of systematic knowledge, and therefore of physics; second, that the hypothetical epistemology of physics which spread during the xviith century was the result of a general sceptical crisis; third, that this epistemology was more successful in England than in France. I reject these three theses: I point first to the tension in Descartes’ works between the ideal of a completely certain science and a physics replete with hypotheses; further, I argue that the use of hypotheses by mechanical philosophers cannot be separated from their conception of physics; finally I show that, at the end of the xviith century, physicists in France as well as in England spoke through hypotheses and I examine different ways of explaining this shared practice. Richard H. Popkin’s book serves therefore as a starting point for insights into the general problem: to what extent and for what reasons some propositions in physics have been presented as hypotheses in the xviith century?     

Rousseau intimiste et la fusion des cultures?

Rousseau est certainement un des écrivains français qui interroge le plus car la multiplicité de son oeuvre reflète une ambiguïté. C'est en effet l'homme du discours logique et de la rêverie, de l'oeuvre philosophique, politique, lyrique et intime: un long itinéraire ‘de la marche de la raison au tragique de la recherche d'un salut individuel’.¹ Ce qui nous intéresse ici, c'est l'aspect intime, c'est Rousseau intimiste dans son rapport avec la culture ou les cultures; sa démarche et son interrogation sur le monde sont au coeur de sa vie.     

Wu Youxing 吳有性 et les Épidémies Pestilentielles

Faced with the terrible mortality of the epidem ics during the last years of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and the inefficacy of the treatm ents applied, Wu Youxing (ca 1580–1660), the author of the Wenyilun 温疫論 (Treatise on warmfactor epidemics), completed in 1642, proposed a new etiological explanation of these diseases, with a highly critical attitude towards his predecessors. Reception to the book was mixed; it sometimes encountered opposition due to the audacity of some of Wu Youxing’s conceptions, but also, most likely, to the discrepancy between the author’s assertions and the failures in actual application.