Délocaliser L’esprit

The cognitive sciences have breathed fresh air into the old problem of localizing mental functions, which was often laughed off. Regarding the most philosophical form of the question on the localization of the mind, authors such as Peirce, James, Wittgenstein, and most recently Descombes have imagined delocalizing the mind in order to spread the conviction that the idea itself of a location of the mental is meaningless and to criticize the localisationism of today’s cognitive scientists.     

Scientisme sur L’histoire D’un Concept Difficile

Today “scientism” is a pejorative concept in every language. But isn’t that just a projection made in order to exploit the fear of “science”? The article develops the argument that scientism is a historical current which can be analyzed in a concrete way. It shows that the word goes back to the 19^th century and got its negative emphasis when “scientific” spiritism on the one hand and Catholicism on the other were struggling against the “exaggerated” claims of natural science.     

L’épistémologie Transversale D’ettore Majorana

« Il valore delle leggi statistiche nella fisica e nelle scienze sociali » is Ettore Majorana’s only work on science. It offers a critique of classical determinism, establishing an analogy between the laws of quantum mechanics and social science and arguing that both are intrinsically linked to probability. This article first studies this argument from the standpoing of metaphysics, physics, and sociology, and then assesses the significance of this transversal epistemology.     

L’histoire des mathématiques de l’Antiquité

Historical research, during the last half-century, has improved our knowledge of the mathematics of Antiquity. Texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia have been better understood and their elucidation has left behind the crude alternative between empricism and rationalism. The landscape offered by Greek science grew richer and became more varied: it is no longer possible to reduce it to the sole geometrical theory. The main problems which were raised by its history have been deeply discussed. Things being so, more general questions arise, from an epistemological or philosophical point of view. Does the search into some far past of a single «birth» of mathematics make any sense? What link, if any, is there between the form of mathematics in such and such a civilization and its social structure? Can cultural anthropology help to elucidate the variety and unity of mathematics among various peoples? From what time and under what conditions is it possible for a single united historical progress of mathematics to begin?     

L’intelligence mathématique, l’infini et les machines

On évoquera très informellement l’énoncé de quelques résultats récents d’incomplétude des formalismes. Les preuves de ces théorèmes, très importants pour toute l’épistémologie contemporaine des mathématiques, utilisent une variété d’outils conceptuels qui vont démonstrativement au-delà des axiomatisations finitaires. Ces outils ne requièrent aucune ontologie mathématique, mais constituent des constructions humaines particulièrement solides, des formes d’intelligence de l’infini et de l’espace enracinées dans différentes formes de connaissance. On parlera également, mais très brièvement, tant de l’intelligence mathématique du Bon Dieu que de l’intelligence mathématique des ordinateurs digitaux.     

L’animal, entre personne et chose?

The contemporary call for a respect of nature finds one of its concrete applications in the theme of animal rights, either understood as a «natural right» applied to the living or as a positive right describing new relationships between the members of the community of all natural beings. Law, defined as an emanation of some possessive «humanism», is urged to acknowledge a newscala natur? and to give a fresh look upon living beings, by throwing into confusion its own notion of Subject, getting rid of anthropocentric and metaphysical norms. In such a debate, what is involved behind the appearance of a plastic and instrumental concept of Subject, is the very banalization and finally, in different ways, the destruction of the Subject. The conflict between Human rights and the right to live is not a social problem, but clearly appears as one of those which show the urgency of the neverending question of man’s essence in relation to the confused and contested specific difference between man and animal.     

L’e ´cologie en politique: Marginale hier,centrale aujourd’hui

Cate, C., André Malraux: A Biography (Hutchison, 1995), xvi + 451pp., £25, ISBN 0 09 174856 9

Raymond, G., André Malraux: Politics and the Temptation of Myth (Avebury, 1995), 212pp., £35, ISBN 1 85972 132X