Les travaux de Patrice Bret occupent une place centrale en histoire des sciences et en histoire des techniques. Ce livre entend les mettre à l'honneur, qu'il s'agisse de l'histoire des savoirs académiques, du régime techno-politique du XVIIIe siècle, des interactions entre savants et praticiens à l'heure de la chimie lavoisienne, des circulations culturelles et des traductions ou encore de la place des femmes de sciences. Les contributions réunies dans ce volume illustrent, par leur diversité, l'influence de Patrice (...) Bret dans la communauté historienne. Nous proposons ainsi de mettre en perspective son oeuvre en la replaçant dans un contexte intellectuel, scientifique et épistémologique. Un constat s'impose : loin de distinguer entre les approches conceptuelles, érudites et méthodologiques, Patrice Bret joue un rôle de premier plan dans un milieu scientifique qui a choisi de conjuguer le renouvellement des questionnements avec la production d'instruments de recherche et les interrogations de repérage, de dénomination, d'identification, seules à même de contrer les récits téléologiques qui ont longtemps prévalu dans ce domaine. Si l'histoire des sciences et l'histoire des techniques sont de nos jours à l'avant-poste du renouvellement de la science historique, c'est aussi grâce au rôle de passeur de Patrice Bret. (shrink)

Parent pauvre de la formation polytechnicienne à l’époque de Poincaré, la chimie resta en dehors des centres d’intérêt du savant malgré l’importance sociale qu’elle acquit à la fin du xixe siècle. Le mathématicien, physicien et philosophie y fut confronté assez fortuitement en 1907 comme président de la Commission scientifique d’étude des poudres de guerre créée après l’explosion du cuirassé Iéna car Marcellin Berthelot, qui avait été pressenti comme éminent spécialiste des poudres et explosifs mourut dans l’intervalle. Dans un contexte international (...) tendu entre la France et l’Allemagne depuis l’annexion de l’Alsace-Moselle en 1871 et alors que la crise marocaine relança l’esprit de revanche, cet accident catastrophique porta un rude coup à la confiance du pays dans ses moyens de défense. Le gouvernement jugea alors que seul Poincaré avait l’autorité scientifique nécessaire pour rassurer l’opinion publique sur la sécurité des poudres sans fumée issues de l’industrie chimique inventées par son camarade de promotion Paul Vieille et maintenir l’ennemi à distance. Les archives de la Commission et la correspondance administrative de Poincaré témoignent de son investissement. Sa correspondance personnelle avec Henry Le Chatelier, autre ingénieur X-Mines spécialiste des poudres et explosifs, permet de mieux cerner son appréhension des problèmes complexes posés par les nouvelles poudres et de dévoiler sa stratégie pour contourner les blocages institutionnels dus à la rivalité entre le service producteur des Poudres et salpêtres et les services consommateurs de l’Artillerie et la Marine et aux attaques contre le monopole des poudres de la part des industriels et de leurs partisans au Parlement. (shrink)

SUMMARYEighteenth-century scientific translation was not just a linguistic or intellectual affair. It included numerous material aspects requiring a social organization to marshal the indispensable human and non-human actors. Paratexts and actors' correspondences provide a good observatory to get information about aspects such as shipments and routes, processes of translation and language acquisition, texts acquisition and dissemination.The nature of scientific translation changed in France during the second half of the eighteenth century. Beside solitary translators, it also happened to become a collective (...) enterprise, dedicated to providing abridgements or enriching the learned journals with full translations of the most recent foreign texts. That new trend clearly had a decisive influence on the nature of the scientific press itself. A way to set up science as a social activity in the provincial capital of Dijon, translation required a local and international network for acquiring the linguistic and scientific expertise, along with the original texts, as quickly as possible. Laboratory results and mineralogical observations were used to compare material facts with those described in the original text. By providing a double kind of validation – with both the experiments and the translations – the laboratory thus happened to play a major role in translation. (shrink)

(1993). Le Dernier des procédés révolutionnaires: La fabrication et l'expertise de la Poudre Ronde (1795–1830) Annals of Science: Vol. 50, No. 4, pp. 325-347.

Le Dépôt général de la Guerre, chargé de fournir les cartes nécessaires aux armées, connut sous la Révolution une période d'instabilité. La politique ambitieuse de Calon, son directeur, se heurta à la rivalité d'autres institutions civiles et militaires. Une période de lente reconstruction s'ouvrit avec le pouvoir napoléonien qui posa les bases rationnelles de la cartographie moderne et mit fin à la précarité du statut des ingénieurs-géographes en militarisant leur corps. La création simultanée d'une Ecole d'application des ingénieurs-geographes assura dès (...) lors une formation cohérente et de haut niveau dans le sillage de l'Ecole polytechnique, remplaçant les cours créés au Dépôt par Calon qui avaient jusqu'alors conservé jalousement leur autonomie. Puissant, qui y fut pendant vingt ans le professeur de mathématiques, introduisit l'analyse à l'école. Son oeuvre fut consacrée par son élection à l'Académie des Sciences au siège de Laplace et par le succès de la nouvelle carte de France au 1/80 000. L'ensemble de la période est marqué par la prise de conscience des enjeux de la géographie, par la mise en place des outils scientifiques de la cartographie et par la professionnalisation des ingénieurs-géographes. Disposant de son école et de son journal au même titre que les grands corps techniques, le Dépôt général de la Guerre était alors, entre l'Ecole polytechnique et le Bureau des Longitudes, une institution savante reconnue par la communauté scientifique.The Dépôt général de la Guerre, in charge of military mapping, experienced a period of change during the French Revolution. The new trends which then arose are explored here. Firstly, its director Calon failed in setting up an ambitious policy for geography, which challenged other civilian or military institutions. The courses he instituted to train surveyors collapsed. A time of slow reconstruction followed under Napoleonic rule, when the rational bases of modern cartography were laid as the ingénieurs-géographes were given a firm military status. In fact, a training school was created within the Ecole Polytechnique system, instead of the obsolete independent training courses. Henceforth, a high-level, coherent education was provided. Puissant, who was to teach mathematics there for twenty years, introduced analysis into the new school. His geodesic work was honoured by his succeeding Laplace at the Académie des Sciences, and by the success of the new 1:80 000 map of France. Eventually, the awareness of the importance of geography, the establishment of modern scientific tools in cartography, and the professionalization of the ingénieurs-géographes mark the whole period. The Dépôt général de la Guerre had its own school and journal, like any other corps of the technical Establishment. Thus it was a true scientific institution between the Ecole Polytechnique and the Bureau des Longitudes, and the scientific community recognized it as such. (shrink)

Marie-Geneviève Thiroux d’Arconville (1720-1805), aujourd’hui méconnue, a pourtant laissé des œuvres scientifiques et littéraires appréciées en son temps. Rien ne destinait cette femme de la noblesse financière et parlementaire, souffrant d’une éducation négligée et mariée à l’âge de 14 ans, à se passionner pour des domaines aussi variés que la physique, la chimie, la médecine, la botanique, la littérature, la morale, les langues ou encore l’histoire. C’est ce parcours atypique et ses motivat...

Structuralism is often associated with a program, in keeping with the Durkheimian tradition, of reducing social norms to a kind of causality. On this reading, Émile Durkheim's collective representations became, in Claude Lévi-Strauss' work, cognitive or logical constraints. If so, then structuralism falls under Wittgenstein's objections to treating rules as causes. What this article shows, however, is that this reading of structuralism is misguided. The necessity and justification of introducing structural methods, first in linguistics and then in anthropology, as well (...) as the general concept of the sign, were rooted in the perception of a problem too often overlooked: that of the characterization of the data in the social and cultural sciences. Just as Saussure showed that the real problem of linguistics is not, what does it mean? but what are the units of language?, so Lévi-Strauss showed that social sciences should not be concerned with the causes of human behaviors but instead with the categorization of actions. In both cases, it appears that an individual action is the actualization of a common practice, habit, or custom that, itself, cannot be reduced to a set of observable features but must be defined by its differential position in a system. Structural anthropology thus leads to a truly ontological problem, which resonates interestingly today, in the context of the “ontological turn.”. (shrink)

In The Order of Things (OT), Foucault recounts the birth and imminent death of Man as an object of study for science and philosophy. Foucault's point is that this very notion of “Man” is dependent on a particular transformation in the history of Being. The mere formulation of this hypothesis opens up a whole series of questions. First, is it true that Man has only become an object of concern in the late eighteenth century. Secondly, if Man has indeed only (...) recently become an object of theoretical interest, is Foucault's description and explanation of this process correct. Thirdly, why should we overcome the concept of “ Man”. Fourthly, in what sense was structuralism deemed to help us overcoming the limitations of this paradigm. In conclusion, if OT has to be overcome, it seems that it should be on grounds slightly different from those usually advanced. (shrink)

Shahriar S. Afshar claimed that his 2007 modified version of the double-slit experiment violates complementarity. He makes two modifications to the standard double-slit experiment. First, he adds a wire grid that is placed in between the slits and the screen at locations of interference minima. The second modification is to place a converging lens just after the wire grid. The idea is that the wire grid implies the existence of interference minima, while the lens can simultaneously obtain which-way information. More (...) recently, Cramer argued that the experiment bolstered the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum mechanics. His argument scrutinizes Bohr’s complementarity in favor of TIQM. We analyze this experiment by simulation using the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics and find that it agrees with the wave-particle duality relation given by Englert, Greenberg and Yasin. We conclude that the use of Afshar’s experiment to provide a testbed for quantum mechanical interpretations is limited. (shrink)

The problem of the will has long been viewed as central to Heidegger's later thought. In the first book to focus on this problem, Bret W. Davis clarifies key issues from the philosopher's later period--particularly his critique of the culmination of the history of metaphysics in the technological "will to will" and the possibility of Gelassenheit or "releasement" from this willful way of being in the world--but also shows that the question of will is at the very heart of (...) Heidegger's thinking, a pivotal issue in his path from Being and Time (1926) to "Time and Being" (1962). Moreover, the book demonstrates why popular critical interpretations of Heidegger's relation to the will are untenable, how his so-called "turn" is not a simple "turnaround" from voluntarism to passivism. Davis explains why the later Heidegger's key notions of "non-willing" and " Gelassenheit " do not imply a mere abandonment of human action; rather, they are signposts in a search for an other way of being, a "higher activity" beyond the horizon of the will. While elucidating this search, his work also provides a critical look at the ambiguities, tensions, and inconsistencies of Heidegger's project, and does so in a way that allows us to follow the inner logic of the philosopher's struggles. As meticulous as it is bold, this comprehensive reinterpretation will change the way we think about Heidegger's politics and about the thrust of his philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage se présente comme une introduction d'histoire littéraire et doctrinale au premier volume de l'édition critique des oeuvres de Hugues de Saint-Victor. Il exploite les données fournies par l'étude de la tradition manuscrite du De archa Noe et du Libellus de formatione arche, qui aboutissent à une perception et à une reception renouvellées de ces traîtés. Du premier ouvrage on a tenté, non seulement une histoire, mais une préhistoire: car il a connu un stade oral, celui de collationes dont (...) on aura pu cerner au plus près le contenu avant de reconstituer les procédés rédactionnels du maître victorin. Au cours de ces entretiens du cloître une pédagogie de l'image avait été mise en oeuvre, utilisée conjointement avec la parole. Et de même que la parole donna naissance à une oeuvre écrite (le De archa Noe), de même le dessin qui l'accompagnait est donné sous une forme littéraire, par un écrit qui en livre les modalités concrètes de réalisation (le Libellus). Le statut de cet écrit, longtemps incertain ou atypique, fut originellement celui d'un appendice, distinct mais non disjoint du De archa. Le Libellus est transmis par la tradition manuscrite en deux états: une version brève et une version longue. Le réviseur en fut le victorin lui-même, dont la psychologie d'auteur est ainsi pour une part dévoilée. Un chapitre propose des compléments ou des précisions touchant la datation relative des oeuvres du victorin. L'image employée par maitre Hugues avait été support de ce que l'on pourrait appeler exégèse visuelle. L'histoire du salut, telle qu'elle est représentée dans la figuration de l'arche de Noé, est méditée selon les trois sens scriptuaires médiévaux, qui correspondent en outre à une série d'exercices spirituels, selon la séquence lectio-meditatio-speculatio-contemplatio. Des considérations d'herméneutique (l'image. (shrink)

Malgré sa proximité avec le courant cypherpunk, le secteur des cryptomonnaies n’a pas toujours été fidèle à ses valeurs anarchistes, la finance capitaliste investissant toujours davantage dans les cryptomonnaies pour s’approprier ces nouveaux produits financiers. Cette ambiguïté se retrouve dans les DAO, cette nouvelle forme de gouvernance créée par la technologie blockchain. Cette gouvernance décentralisée est en effet tout à la fois l’expérimentation d’une démocratie radicale, bien qu’asociale, et un retour à une ploutocratie qui peut cacher la violence de ses (...) décisions par l’automatisme des mécanismes informatiques. (shrink)

The concept of ‘problem’ has been recently promoted by the official academic institutions and put at the centre of a new field of research, self-styled ‘transdisciplinary studies’, in order to provide a foundation to a resolutely transdisciplinary approach to research and thought in general. The paper notes that the same move can be found in Deleuze’s philosophy, which provides us with what the technocratic image of thought advocated by transdisciplinary studies ultimately cannot provide: a positive concept of problems where those (...) are not negative moments but originary and active matrices of thought. It then argues that Deleuze owes this concept to the French epistemological tradition, and more specifically to Bachelard, where it is nothing other than the concept of structure. It ends by explicating what particular version of structuralism Deleuze was thus led to construct in order to account for the role of problems in a radically transdisciplinary account of thought: it is the fact that all structures are multi-structured that grounds the essentially transdisciplinary nature of thought. The fact that we could think differently is precisely what makes us think. (shrink)

This book explores the mind-body issue from both the perspectives of philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. Starting from the problem of mental causation, it provides an overview of the contemporary metaphysical discussion and argues in favour of the token-identity thesis, as the only position that can account for the causal efficacy of the mental. Showing furthermore that this ontological reductionism is not dissociable from epistemological reductionism, the author applies a new strategy of inter-theoretic reduction, which is compatible with (...) the multiple realizability of mental properties. Using functionally defined sub-types, this account establishes a conservative reduction of psychology to neuroscience, which vindicates both the scientific legitimacy and the theoretical indispensability of psychology. This account is illustrated by several empirical examples borrowed from contemporary neuroscience. (shrink)

Authors sometimes treat the promise of de-extinction as a forgone conclusion. But if we take Kasperbauer’s approach and assess the moral acceptability of de-extinction by weighting benefits to species against the suffering of individuals, the promise of de-extinction deserves greater critical attention. Accepting de-extinct individuals as replacements for extinct predecessors assumes species are separate from environment and can be reduced to DNA. In this response to Kasperbauer’s essay, I examine how the acceptability of de-extinction might shift if we instead view (...) species as the persistence of processes—the successful know-how of living in relation to other unfolding processes. (shrink)

An adequate analysis of experiences and situations specific to women, especially mothering, requires consideration of women's difference. A focus on women's difference, however, jeopardizes feminism's claims of women's equal individualist subjectivity, and risks recuperating the inequality and oppression of women, especially the view that all women should be mothers, want to be mothers, and are most happy being mothers. This book considers how thinkers including Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Nancy Choderow and Adrienne Rich struggle to negotiate this dilemma of (...) difference in analyzing mothering, encompassing the paradoxes concerning embodiment, gender and representation they encounter. Patrice Di Quinzio shows that mothering has been and will continue to be an intractable problem for feminist theory itself, and suggests the political usefulness of an explicitly paradoxical politics of mothering. (shrink)

In this paper, I evaluate recently defended mechanistic accounts of the unity of neuroscience from a metaphysical point of view. Considering the mechanistic framework in general , I argue that explanations of this kind are essentially reductive . The reductive character of mechanistic explanations provides a sufficiency criterion, according to which the mechanism underlying a certain phenomenon is sufficient for the latter. Thus, the concept of supervenience can be used in order to describe the relation between mechanisms and phenomena . (...) Against this background, I show that the mechanistic framework is subject to the causal exclusion problem and faces the classical metaphysical options when it comes to the relations obtaining between different levels of mechanisms . Finally, an attempt to improve the metaphysics of mechanisms is made and further difficulties are pointed out. (shrink)

Heidegger's writings are among the most formidable in recent philosophy. The pivotal concepts of his thought are for many the source of both fascination and frustration. Yet any student of philosophy needs to become acquainted with Heidegger's thought. "Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts" is designed to facilitate this. Each chapter introduces and explains a key Heideggerian concept, or a cluster of closely related concepts. Together, the chapters cover the full range of Heidegger's thought in its early, middle, and later phases.

Les révolutions de la biologie ont profondément modifié l'homme. Des cellules souches à l'épigénome, des thérapies géniques aux transplantations du microbiote, des interfaces cerveau-machine à l'application de l'intelligence artificielle en matière de santé, Patrice Debré dresse dans ce livre une fresque fascinante des avancées et perspectives de cette transformation possible d'Homo sapiens. A travers elle, le lecteur comprendra les différentes configurations que peut épouser la condition humaine.0Les connaissances de la maîtrise du vivant doivent s'appuyer sur la science et non (...) pas sur les préjugés et les fausses rumeurs! Si la biologie va plus vite que l'homme, elle doit avancer au pas d'un nouvel humanisme."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The central issue of Heidegger’s thought is the question of being. More precisely, it is the question of the relation between being and human being, the relation, that is, between Sein and Dasein. This article addresses the so-called turn in Heidegger’s thinking of this relation. In particular, it shows how this turn entails a shift from a transcendental-horizonal projection of world to “an indwelling releasement [inständige Gelassenheit] to the worlding of the world”. Although a wide range of pre- and post-turn (...) texts are referenced, since this shift is explicitly thematized in Heidegger’s Country Path Conversations, these three fictional conversations from 1944/45 take center stage in this study. (shrink)

Critics often take conservationists to task for delivering a constant barrage of bad news without offering a compelling vision of the future. Could recent advances in synthetic biology—an optimistic, forward‐looking field with a can‐do attitude—let conservationists develop a new vision and generate some better news? Synthetic biology and related gene‐editing applications could be used to address threats to species. Genetic interventions might also be used in plants to better protect biodiversity in U.S. rangelands and forests. One possibility has stood out (...) in its ability to capture media attention and the public imagination—recreating extinct species. And perhaps a de‐extinction story could counter the seemingly relentless negativity in biodiversity talk. De‐extinction proponent Stewart Brand writes that resurrecting species could shift the “conservation story … from negative to positive, from constant whining and guilt‐tripping to high fives and new excitement.” So, why do many people in conservation oppose the de‐extinction narrative? This essay is an inquiry into whether there are intrinsic social reactions to these types of conservation solutions that might offset their potential benefits. If genetic tools are to be applied to address conservation issues in a realistic and responsible way, their broader social‐cultural implications deserve far more attention than they have so far received. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy covers, in detail and depth, the entire span of Japan’s philosophical tradition, from ancient times to the present. It introduces and examines the most important topics, figures, schools, and texts from the history of philosophical thinking in premodern and modern Japan. Each chapter, written by a leading scholar in the field, clearly elucidates and critically engages with its topic in a manner that demonstrates its contemporary philosophical relevance.

In their debate about whether Cultural Studies is helpful for understanding public ignorance, Chris Wisniewski and Mark Fenster view ignorance as inevitably plaguing the public in mass democratic society; and they see “the public” as an abstract entity. However, Pierre Bourdieu's sociology rightly contests these positions. A thorough investigation of the concrete social conditions of political ignorance reveals that ignorance is unevenly dispersed throughout social space and that its relevance depends on social position, such as that of the advantaged and (...) disadvantaged. Such a comprehensive approach to public ignorance is required for advancing political participation among the least advantaged. (shrink)

Departing from Bourdieu's collective habitus, this essay develops a theory of the subjectivity of habitus, meaning the social-psychological processes comprising the agent and fueling deliberation. By incorporating George Ainslie's theory of the will and deliberation as the intertemporal bargaining of a population of interests, I theorize the “saturated agent” composed of an economy of interests, analogous to Bourdieu's “economy of practices” invested and saturated with cultural capital. Here culturally saturated interests negotiate strategically within the agent, with the ending balance constituting (...) the habitus. Additionally, reflexivity becomes amenable to habitus as “desaturation” or suspending the commitment to a set of culturally saturated interests as a result of a crisis, followed by “resaturation”, the restructuring of the economy of interests. (shrink)

This book, the first of its kind, offers a comprehensive introduction to the philosophy and practice of Zen Buddhism. It is written by an academic philosopher who, for more than a dozen years, practiced Zen in Japan while studying in universities with contemporary heirs of the Kyoto School. The book lucidly explicates the philosophical implications of Zen teachings and kōans, and critically compares Zen with other Asian as well as Western religions and philosophies. It carefully explains the original context and (...) sense of traditional Zen teachings and practices, and compellingly applies them to our twenty-first century lives. In addition to explaining the practice of Zen meditation, its twenty-four chapters treat perennial philosophical topics such as the self, nature, art, morality, language, peace, and death, as well as basic Buddhist teachings such as the four noble truths, the middle way, the no-self and true self doctrines, karma, mind and no-mind, rebirth, Nirvana, and the various meanings of the term “Buddha.” The chapters frequently engage Zen in interreligious dialogue with Christianity and with other religions and schools of Buddhism. The Zen inspired modern philosophies of the Kyoto School are introduced in one chapter and frequently referenced throughout the book. The concluding chapter reviews the entire path of Zen practice and enlightenment with an in-depth commentary on the beloved Zen classic, The Ten Oxherding Pictures. The book can be read in its entirety as a coherently organized introduction to the philosophy and practice of Zen, or chapters can be read independently according to the reader’s specific interests. While based on decades of scholarly study as well as practice and teaching, it is written in an accessible and engaging style. It is designed to be read by college students and lifelong learners as well as scholars and practitioners of the world’s great philosophical and spiritual traditions. (shrink)

First published in German in 1995, volume 77 of Heidegger’s Complete Works consists of three imaginary conversations written as World War II was coming to an end. Composed at a crucial moment in history and in Heidegger's own thinking, these conversations present meditations on science and technology; the devastation of nature, the war, and evil; and the possibility of release from representational thinking into a more authentic relation with being and the world. The first conversation involves a scientist, a scholar, (...) and a guide walking together on a country path; the second takes place between a teacher and a tower-warden, and the third features a younger man and an older man in a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, where Heidegger’s two sons were missing in action. Unique because of their conversational style, the lucid and precise translation of these texts offers insight into the issues that engaged Heidegger’s wartime and postwar thinking. (shrink)

Thierry Patrice, 57 ans, médecin, nommé professeur à 32 ans, Lauréat de la Faculté, est internationalement connu pour ses travaux concernant l'action de la lumière sur les tissus vivant en cancérologie. Il a reçu plusieurs Prix pour l'étude du rôle de l'oxygène dans différentes maladies, dont le diabète, mais aussi lors du vieillissement.

This investigation of time and space is motivated by gaps in our current understanding: by the lack of definitions, by our failure to appreciate the nature of these entities, by our inability to pin down their properties. The author's approach is based on two key ideas: The first idea is to seek the geo-historical origins of time and space concepts. A thorough investigation of a diversified archaeological corpus, allows him to draft coherent definitions; it furthermore gives clues as to whether (...) time and space were discovered or invented. The second idea is to define the units before trying to define space and time. The results presented here are unexpected: Time and space were not discovered in nature, but they were invented; time is not a phenomenon and space has no materiality; they are only concepts. This runs contrary to the opinion of most scientific and the philosophical authorities, although one would seek in vain for a theoretical validation of the conventional position. This book will provide much food for thought for philosophers and scientists, as well as interested general readers. (shrink)