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.     

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.     

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?     

Pétrarque: L’écriture Comme Philosophie

Petrarch is often considered as the founder of humanism and from then on classified in our division of knowledge on the side of literature, even though several times he claims to be in his writings on the side of philosophy. In retracing the thread of historiographic tradition to understand how Petrarch found himself to be placed outside of philosophy, we would like to examine thoroughly the interrogation on the relationship between literature and philosophy in the west of the xiv ^th century, and try to show how Petrarch tried to bring into existence a conception of philosophy as an art of living and writing, leaning on the social space of courses thus proposing an alternative to the learned constructions of the university world.     

La Découverte de L’Amérique

This article examines the significance accorded to the discovery of America in the period between 1492 and the publication of Alexander von Humboldt’s Kosmos in 1855. It argues that, the « discovery » of America was perceived as the « uncovering » of not merely a place, but of an epistemological challenge which both transformed, Europe’s intellectual dependence on Antiquity, and shaped its evolving perception of both space and time. It argues that, after the discovery, human history came to be seen, in terms of as series of inventions all of them related to human movement, which were projected, as more and more of the globe was « discovered » into an unpredictable future.     

L’impossible constitution d’une théorie générale des machines ?

Three projects on the theories of machines are presented: “mecanology” of the architect Jacques Laffite (1932) inspired by biological evolution; “mecanical analysis ” of Louis Couffignal, a specialist in computing machines (1938), which pre figures functional analysis, and the algebraic theory of machines by the mathematician Jacques Riguet (beginning of the 1950’s). During those years, the three men are members of the Circle of Cybernetic Studies. The article focuses on the dialogue between projects, the axes of unification and divergence, and the styles, strategies and postulates of these three candidates, for generalization converging toward the reference constituted by cybernetics.     

Aspects de la Fatigue Dans L’anthropologie Médiévale

Psychosomatic sympton of the sinful human soul, progress of natural and progressive wear of the psychic or corporeal machinery, exclusive property of the world of bodies or place of the obligatory link between the intellect and the body, fatigue crosses the philosophical and theological medieval literature. The various treatments of fatigue can, in their turn, serve as symptoms to differentiate the medieval anthropologies. This article presents four of their figures: the anthropology of danger elaborated by Augustin, greek and arabe medical diagnosis which is passed on the ^{xi th} century, and the readings of Aristotle’s psychology by Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas in the xiii ^th century.     

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.     

Ludovico Geymonat le Problème de L’épistémologie Historique

The study of the various inspirations of Ludovico Geymonat's epistemology (positivism and neopositivism, neorationalism, historicism and dialectical materialism) illustrates the way in which for the Italian philosopher the problem of objectivity of knowledge remains inseparable from the historicity of the sciences. Geymonat's epistemological approach associates scientific progress to its objectivity.     

Histoires de Lectrices en Italie au Début de L’époque Moderne

The connection between the history of reading and gender is made using a range of methodological perspectives, each illustrated by analysing concrete examples from the early modern Italian area. The significance of the circulation and reception of texts as well as the various attempts to control knowledge and behaviour via censorship and availability of reading material will be considered. In fact, since the XVI ^th century, written texts seem to play an increasingly influential role in defining the relationship between men and women. The figure of the early modern woman reader appears in literature sources as both a consciously constructed and easily influenced addressee, who nevertheless may still behave in a way different to that intended by the authors. This double approach facilitates the reading of normative texts from a new perspective that takes into account the possibility of creative adaptation and enables the question of interdependence between the production and reception of the written word to be reconsidered.     

Médecine et Discours sur L’Homme dans la Première Modernité

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, medical knowledge was anthropological in so much as it produced a discourse on man whose ambition and legitimacy needed no justification. Underwritten by the belief that the body was an object of science, the epistemic horizons of a doctrina de homine emerged from the interaction of medical practice, particularly anatomy, with philosophy and theology in a specific framework - the reorganization of knowledge in Europe over the “long 16^th century”.     

Une Histoire de L’universalité des Matrices Mathématiques

International matrix theory of the 1930s is influenced by multiple phenomena and may be analyzed by looking at how local practices were globalized via pathways which manifested a short-term reappropriation between the two world wars of work developed over the long term. This article interrogates the constitution of the universality of matrix terminology and focuses particularly on phenomena of the collective circulation of texts which present cultural aspects proper to networks with complex identities.     

Féminisme,anarchisme et fédéralisme. L’exemple de l’organisation Alternative libertaire entre 2006 et 2012

Abstract

This article examines the spatial, and especially scalar, dimension of feminism in a contemporary French anarchist organisation. This perspective is contextualised by a reminder of the role of feminism in the political history of anarchism and of the role of the spatial dimention through the question of anarchist federalism. The empirical study is based on research conducted through participant observation within the organisation Alternative Libertaire between 2006 and 2012. The problem to be addressed is the question of whether anarchist women succeed as well as they claim in bringing into question, in their promotion of feminism both inside the organisation and outside, the centrality of Paris in favour of an anarchist federalism. For this reason two scales or levels are studied: the national level and the local level of the city. The city of Paris is treated as both the national capital and as a locality.     

Le Concept de « Démocratie Raciale » dans L’Histoire Intellectuelle Brésilienne

This article aims to reconstruct the history of the term “racial democracy” in Brazilian sociological literature. This term, usually associated with the idea of “myth”, is used in many studies of race relations without little definition or clarity. This article retraces its origins, in particular by showing that the concept is not the invention of Gilberto Freyre. It then examines the evolution of its use with particular emphasis on Unesco’s research in the 1950s and the texts of Florestan Fernandes in the 1960s.