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.     

La réflexion Benthamienne sur les mathématiques

In 1814, Jeremy Bentham began to writeChrestomathia; this work is a presentation of what is useful to learn. However this text is, more generally, an entire organization of the knowledge of his time, through developing a «theory of fictions», which is a reflexion on concepts and a critics of nomenclatures. The following essay focuses on the fifty pages refering to mathematics in a work that considers the integrality of sciences at the beginning of the xix^th century and criticizes the FrenchEncyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert. A most singular idea expressed by the author, indirectly echoed by Gaston Bachelard through some books, is the conflict between concepts and their being designated by words. Signified, signifying entities and concepts are reciprocally adrift so that nobody, even the scholar, can keep control of these motions; what makes education unceasingly difficult.     

“Jérémie rejoint Guedalias: deux récits,combien de fabulae?”1

Après le récit de la chute de Jérusalem devant l’armée de Nabuchodonosor, le lecteur du livre de Jérémie découvre aux chapitres 39 et 40 deux récits dans lesquels Nebouzaradân libère Jérémie et lui permet de rejoindre Guedalias; le prophète choisit alors de demeurer au milieu du peuple. La lecture suivie de ces deux récits présente une solution de continuité narrative. Même si cela interdit certaines lectures synchroniques, la remise en cause d’une hypothèse implicite sur la linéarité de la fabula permet de penser l’effet du texte en sa forme finale sur son lecteur. Contrairement aux romans classiques du XIXe siècle, on peut découvrir ici un effet similaire au Verfremdungseffekt du théâtre de Bertolt Brecht.     

Henri Pirenne et la révolution liégeoise de 1789 contribution á l'histoire de l'historiographie des révolutions

Notre article a pour objectif, après un bref rappel historique des épisodes de la Révolution liégeoise de 1789, de souligner l'apport de l'historien belge Henri Pirenne à l'historiographie des révolutions, de mieux cerner les fondements de sa pensée sur le sujet, et de comprendre la nature des oppositions qu'il a rencontrées et de l'héritage qu'il a laissé.     

Relativité et réalité Nottale, Simondon et le réalisme des relations

The exhaustion of the controversy about realism in physics, which is an epistemological consequence of the radical discrepancy between quantum mechanics and relativity, indicates the irrelevance of the traditional opposition between realism and antirealism. Since its purpose is the reunification of microphysics and macrophysics by the means of fractal space-time and scale relativity, Laurent Nottale's theory of Scale Relativity gets over this opposition by postulating the ontological value of the physical relations. The physicist's relational realism hence confirms spontaneously the intuitions of Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of nucleation, which considers the necessary recognition of the ontological value of relations in order to establish the «great synthesis of relativity and quantum physics».     

Tradition républicaine et république nouvelle à Florence Francesco Guicciardini et lalibertà fiorentina

The wars of Italy (beginning in 1494) and the following upheavals in Florence (where the Grand Council Republic was set up after the fall of the Medici) led Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) to think about the «natural» obviousness of the concept oflibertà fiorentina. His method was «not to let oneself deceive by words to such an extent that things are no longer considered». It made him abandon the question of good government for the one of the effects it produces, and induced him to give, «under the sweetness of the word liberty», prominence to the political stakes. From then on, there was no longer a natural obviousness for the aspiration forlibertà, but the necessary analysis of the political and historical circumstances, of the «condition of the times».     

Former le citoyen de la république naissante retour sur une controverse aux origines de l’école républicaine

This paper looks at the original conflicting approach of the republican school, understood as a traning ground for citizenship. The separation between those who wish to develop a truly democratic school, and those who do not see in this objective a political priority for the emerging republic, embodies the most profound debate of this moment of political foundation of the Republican school. Behind the two visions of the Republican school (education vs instruction), two visions of Republican society are opposed. Further, in the controversy surrounding the nature of the school an opposition, later amplified, emerges between social Republicans and liberal Republicans     

L'indigénisme au Brésil migration et réappropriations d'un savoir administratif

This article proposes to analyse the relationships betweenanthropology andindigenism in Brazil. To do so it considers the migration process of indigenism as a form of knowledge from the Mexican political field to the Brazilian. It affirms that this kind of knowledge had its reception considerably inflected by «traditions of knowledge» for governing populations which developed from colonial sources through time. This analytical perspective is part of an anthropology of colonialism, since it takes as its object Brazilian public administration considering some of its aspects as technologies for the government of multicultural populations.     

Le médiéviste,le lignage et l'effet de réel

This paper tries to understand how «lineage» became a key-notion by medievalists when dealing with the field of kinship about the medieval aristocracy, although it is quite an unsuitable notion. Beside the role given to medieval kinship by the social and scientific imagination which prevailed when the historical sciences were formed in the XIX^th century, an important part is played by the creation of a discourse on «lineage» in late medieval aristocracy, linked to a redefinition of the modes of reproduction of seigniorial power, a vector of which must be found by means of representation portraying a durable kin-group, especially through the formation and transmission of «family archives». Historians submitted to the reality-effect of documentary bodies, which were transmitted and were but a historical social construction, did not pay enough attention to the genuine meaning of the archivistic structure. They believed they had found the «reality» of a social organization while they had merely perceived its ideational aspect- and thus, they contributed to the social construction of «lineage».     

Le cosmopolitisme entre chaos et république

Sans résumé PierreHassner est agrégé de philosophie. Directeur de recherche émérite au Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI) de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, il a publiéLa Violence et la paix. De la bombe atomique au nettoyage ethnique (Paris, Esprit, 1995; 2^e éd. remaniée Paris, Seuil, 2000)La Terreur et l'Empire (Paris, Seuil, 2003) et a dirigéTotalitarismes (avec JacquesRupnik et GuyHermet, Paris, Economica, 1984) etVents d'Est. Vers l'Europe des états de droit? (avec PierreGrémion, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1990). Il a réalisé de nombreux travaux de philosophie politique (en particulier sur Kant et Hegel) et en relations internationales (surtout sur le nationalisme, le totalitarisme et la guerre). Ce texte a été écrit à l'occasion d'une conférence, présentée en anglais, à un colloque de l'Institut Nexus à Tilburg (Pays-Bas) en 1998, puis actualisé pour une conférence à la New School of Social Research de New York en 2000.