Sur les traces de Cortés: L'expédition du Mexique d'après Le Monde illustré

Unlike L'Illustration, with which it competed under the Second Empire, the weekly Le Monde illustré, which first appeared in 1857 and which was protected by the imperial government, did not count among the political newspapers overtaxed under Napoléon the Third's repressive regime. For this reason, it made great strides thanks to its blind allegiance to a French imperialism that had asserted its authority during the Crimean war, but which spent itself during the war against Juárez and his republican partisans in Mexico. While the French liberal press criticized the Second Empire foreign policy, Le Monde illustré persisted in turning the Mexican war into an antijuarist pacification favorable to a new Latin colonial empire, as well as to an application of the Saint-Simonian doctrine on Mexican industry and economy. In order to achieve this, the illustrated reports on the expeditionary force, military operations, and French victories were a warmongering that aimed to place this campaign in the afterglow of the conquistadors' era, as well as to idealize the imperial army as a symbol of the French nation.     

Tremblay,Xavier, Pour une histoire de la Sérinde. Le Manichéisme parmi les peuples et religions de l'Asie Centrale d'après les sources primaires

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

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.     

Révolution industrielle logique et signification de l'opératoire

In England, during the first half of the xix^th century, a network organised around Charles Babbage (1791–1871), John F. W. Herschel (1792–1871), George Peacock (1791–1858), Duncan F. Gregory (1813–1844), Augustus de Morgan (1806–1871), George Boole (1815–1864), and other less known authors renewed the status of algebra in a peculiar way. As a result, their works are often considered to mark the birth of abstract algebra. But these algebraists were also involved, as reformers, in the new organisation of science. Taking this into account, I propose a more contextual reading of their works, which can then be understood as side-effects of the Industrial Revolution (1760–1830). These works are analysed as cultural mediators between the roots of University teaching, founded on fidelity to the Ancients on the one hand, and new forms of construction of knowledge on the other. Such a mediation brought together algebra and logic for the first time.     

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.     

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?     

Dynamiques hydrogéomorphologiques historiques et actuelles d'une rivière perturbée par les activités de la drave et analyse des impacts d'un démantèlement de barrage

In Quebec, the fluvial dynamics of the Escoumins River have been disturbed by the forestry industry for over a century. Most specifically, a dam was built near the mouth of the river in 1846 and dismantled in 2013. These disturbances had significant repercussions on the equilibrium of the river and Atlantic salmon habitat. This study therefore proposes to characterize the fluvial dynamics of the Escoumins River and to analyze the impacts of the dam dismantling from the perspective of restoring hydrogeomorphological processes and improving Atlantic salmon habitat. The results suggest that the trajectory of the river evolved differently depending on the fluvial style and the grain size composition of each of its homogeneous segments. However, log drive activities in river and dam removal appear to have been the most important controlling factors on the evolution of the stream trajectory. The dismantling notably allowed the restoration of hydrogeomorphological processes and the free movement of salmonids. A better procedure for dam removal and monitoring should be put in place in Canada to encourage this practice.     

Etiqueter ou définir: L'évolution de la nomenclature chimique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

Dans la prétendue révolution chimique, un point de rupture demeure indiscutable : la réforme de la nomenclature chimique réalisée en 1787 par Guyton de Morveau, Lavoisier, Berthollet et Fourcroy. Cet événement est ici replacé dans le contexte plus large de l'évolution de la chimie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. La réforme de la terminologie est considérée dans le long terme ; les débats menés et les efforts déployés avant 1787 sont interprétés à la lumière de quatre facteurs : le développement de la chimie des gaz, l'introduction d'une nomenclature systématique pour les sels, le modèle suscité par la nomenclature linéenne et les réformes de la pharmacopée. Comparée aux efforts de Bergman et Guyton de Morveau, la Méthode de nomenclature chimique crée une rupture en approuvant la théorie de l'acidité et de la combustion de Lavoisier ; elle attire également l'attention sur le fait qu'il vaut mieux nommer une substance (méthode) que d'en chercher le terme approprié (nomenclature).     

La Frontière Comme Enjeu les Annales et la Sociologie

Since their beginnings in the 1930’s, the Annales periodically demarcated themselves with sociology. Focusing on three decisive moments (the foundation, the Braudel moment, and the eighties), this article documents the process of boundaries drawing, which is unvaryingly at stakes in the context of institutional and epistemological disputes. The collective identity of the Annales resulted from the definition of continuously adjusted values.     

Émile Meyerson,d'après sa correspondance

Building upon Emile Meyerson's correspondence and other personal papers, all of them hosted by the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, this article presents a mainly personal portrait of the philosopher (1859–1933). Thus this article describes his family circle in Lublin (Poland), his higher education (in Germany) and his professional course: settled in France, he worked first in chemistry, then get a job as foreign news editor and later took an important position at the Jewish Colonization Association. This article deals also with Meyerson's contacts with the French and international intellectuel milieu (scientists as well as writers).