Rehabilitating the Réfractaires

Senneville, G. de, La Défense, le pouvoir et l'argent (Albin Michel, 1992), 299pp., 110F., ISBN 2 226 05672 6

Jazouli, A., Les Années banlieue (Seuil, 1992), 220pp., 89F., ISBN 2 02 013185 4     

Facts and Philosophy in Neurophysiology. The 200th Anniversary of Johannes Müller (1801–1858)

Johannes Müller was the founder of the first school of physiology in Germany. His anatomical, morphological and physiological research as well as his epistemological view of scientific medicine opened the way to a deeper understanding of the structure and the function of the organism. With important discoveries like the law of sense energy, the reflex movement and the definition of different organic stimuli, he enriched the knowledge of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and sensory physiology and smoothed the way to an experimental physiology. All his famous students like Hermann von Helmholtz, Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Brücke, Jakob Henle, Robert Remak, Rudolf Virchow and Ernst Haeckel solved many crucial research problems, which Müller identified and pointed out to them as open questions, due to the insufficient methods of investigation. Müller's research method, epistemological view of biological sciences, and his open-minded personal style encouraged the development of new methods adapted to particular problems.     

Die Französische Revolution im Spiegelbild. Die Reaktion der deutschen Ärzte auf die Revolution und das Revolutionieren

The German physicans and medical scientists reacted to the French Revolution in several ways, if you judge only from the medical literature:

• 1 At the beginning of the French Revolution, the scientist answered with still silence, whereas the young intellectual generation was filled with enthusiasm. But after the battle of Valmy (1792) this enthusiasm vanished and they resigned to execute an equal revolution in Germany.
• 2 When, in the middle of the 1790s, scientists gave commentaries on revolutionary acts, they despised the revolution itself. This could only destroy the old – and even better – order. They argued that you can have recourse to science to avoid the political and socially deranged situation.
• 3 This rejection against the political revolution was combined with a rejection against the influences of natural philosophy on medicine. Schelling's philosophy plays the role as an scientific revolution with all negative aspects like the political one. In this sense, the science in the old scientific manner has to be an accepted refuge.
• 4 But in this retreat they developed ideas of German national science to conteract on the French influences. The consciousness of nationalism was supported by the scientists of romantic movements.
• 5 The following degree is characterized by a mental leap. Now, they argued, it will never be necessary to revolutionize the medicine: in science all the ideals of French Revolution are realized – freedom, equality and fraternity.
• 6 Consequently, only in a formal sense did they respond to the French Revolution and so they avoided recognizing, that science is influenced politically and also science itself exercises on in a political way.

     

»…über Sekunden lacht man nicht« — Über die Folgen der Anwendung von Genauigkeit und Präzision in den Wissenschaften. Einführung in das Tagungsthema

Since the time of Descartes science has been influenced by the demand for precision and accuracy in research. In the 20^th century also humanities began to submit to this demand. The term precision itself has a far‐reaching and historically grown semantics. As a consequence of the attempt to answer precisely and irrefutably to scientific questions, achieved knowledge today is only valid for an increasingly narrow range.     

Bingo or fiasco? The global financial situation is not guaranteed

The 1998 Russian debt default following the Asian financial crisis sent a signal to global capital markets that no country from now on could be seen as 'too big to fail'. The concern which followed Russia's crisis raised two questions: first, with regard to the relevance of the interest rate in the presence of highly lever-aged securities; and second, over the question of the protection of a country or institution from bankruptcy while simultaneously making sure that any rescue would not encourage either further risk-taking from investors or more badly managed policies from emerging market economies. Moreover, the moral hazard question, coupled with the sheer size of private capital flows, led international institutions to consider involving the private sector in solving financial crises. This article describes why a situation has now been reached where no future guarantee can be given to countries or financial institutions, implicitly or explicitly, that their debts will be bailed out.     

From ignorance to commitment: how periurban municipalities deal with agriculture?

Urban growth leads to decreases in area of farmland. In France, considerable attention is paid to this problem, including in frequent public policy debates. In this article, we explore issues associated with agriculture in 24 French periurban municipalities. We compare the treatment of agriculture in municipal policies by analysing urban planning documents and conducting in‐depth interviews with elected representatives. Our study reveals a high level of congruence between these two sources of information, confirming that planning documents are a sound proxy to identify municipalities' agricultural strategies. The study also shows both diverse degrees of municipal commitment to agriculture, which range from ignoring it to strongly supporting it, and diverse issues about agriculture that depend on local context and concerns.     

Ecrire l'amour sans nom: Peut‐on être juge et partie?

Bonnet, M.‐J., Les Relations amoureuses entre les femmes du XVI^e au XX^e siècle (Odile Jacob, 1995), 416 pp., 75F., ISBN 2 7381 0319 7

Martel, F., Le Rose et le noir. Les homosexuels en France depuis 1968 (Seuil, 1996), 449 pp., 140F., ISBN 2 02 02189 1     

WEBER'S PROBLEM WITH ATTRACTION AND REPULSION*

ABSTRACT. Weber's problem consists of locating a facility in the plane in such a way that the weighted sum of Euclidean distances to n given points be minimum. The case where some weights are positive and some are negative is shown to be a d.-c. program (i.e., a global optimization problem with both the objective function and constraint functions written as differences of convex functions), reducible to a problem of concave minimization over a convex set. The reduced problem is then solved by outer-approximation and vertex enumeration. Moreover, locational constraints can be taken into account by combining the previous algorithm with an enumerative procedure on the set of feasible regions. Finally, the algorithm is extended to solve the case where obnoxiousness of the facility is assumed to have exponential decay. Computational experience with n up to 1000 is described.