Philosophie de la machine

Sans résumé Ses recherches portent sur les liens entre métaphysique et technique à la Renaissance et, de manière plus récente, sur la philosophie de la machine. Il travaille acutellement à une anthropologie philosophique du recours aux automatismes. Il a notamment publi’e ?Mathématiques, création et humanisme chez Nicolas de Cues ? (Revue d’histoire des sciences, t. 59, n^o 2, 2006); ? L’homme à l’image de Dieu, Ma?tre Eckart, Nicolas de Cues, Descartes ? (dans L’Image, Paris, Vrin, 2007).     

AGING NATIONS AND THE FUTURE OF CITIES*

ABSTRACT We investigate whether an aging population may challenge the supremacy of large working cities. To this end, we develop an economic geography model with two types of individuals (workers and retirees) and two sectors (local services and manufacturing). Workers produce and consume; the elderly consume only. As a result, the mobility decision of workers is driven by both the wage gap and the cost‐of‐living gap, unlike the elderly who react to the differences in the cost of living only. We show that the return of pre‐industrial urban system dominated by rentier cities does not seem to be on the agenda. Quite the opposite, the future of large working cities is still bright, the reason being that today's urban costs act as a strong force that prevents a large share of local services and manufacturing firms from following the rentiers in the elderly cities, while the supply of differentiated b2c services impede their complete separation.     

Cross-Border M&As and the Changing Economic Geography of Europe

This study investigates the patterns of corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&As) involving firms located in the EU25 as well as in the four EFTA countries between 1998 and 2003. Against the background of a reflection on the concept of the firm in economic geography, it uncovers the cross-border balance of M&As across European states and identifies the factors that may explain the levels and patterns of corporate takeovers across Europe. The results indicate that the traditional motives of access to new and core markets, the effects of geographical proximity, and the internalisation of localised capabilities (proxied by a skilled and innovative labour pool) represent the key drivers of European M&As, while institutional factors, such as European integration or language barriers, appear to be less influential.     

Tenue de soirée de rigueur: Incursion chez les warocqué

The Warocqué family, “nouveaux bourgeois”, were characterised by their constant intention to change the world in which they lived. They were thus industrialists and businessmen and political representatives as was appropriate, but also inventors, paternalist, philanthropists and employers. The Warocqués thus present a multitude of facets and possibilities for study. It was necessary to give greater importance to one of them, particularly as everything could be encompassed as family business. It is precisely the evolution and progression of the family in its local, Belgian and even international contexts that is analysed here—family, tradition and dynasty even: inaugurated by Nicolas, it progresses, develops and reaches its apogee with Raoul, who benefited from the power of the name. This social rise was also interpreted on the level of traditions, of family, of prestige or of a way of life. The article aims to study this particular aspect while successively reviewing some ‘chapters’ in the life of this dynasty: the family (taken as it should be in the broad sense, joining the very current concept of ‘network’), its sociability and passions.