On étudie dans cet article l'apparence morphologique des plantes à travers des modèles géométriques et statiques puis on examine quelques caractères-clés des processus de croissance à la lumière des propriétés de certains systèmes différentiels.

Horatio affirmait qu’il y a plus de choses dans le ciel et sur la terre que l’imagination des hommes n’est pas capable de concevoir. Aussi, toutes les manières d’appréhender des faits de la nature ont-elles leur utilité, en dépit des caractères parfois excessifs que possèdent ces approches.

This study compares Australian marketers with those in the United States along lines that are particular to the study of ethics. The test measured two different moral philosophies, idealism and relativism, and compared perceptions of ethical problems, ethical intentions, and corporate ethical values. According to Hofstede's cultural typologies, there should be little difference between American and Australian marketers, but the study did find significant differences. Australians tended to be more idealistic and more relativistic than Americans and the other results were (...) mixed, making it difficult to generalize about the effects of moral philosophies on the components of ethical decision-making measured here. This is an important finding; as firms become increasingly more globalized, marketers will more often be involved in cross-cultural ethical dilemmas and it seems natural to assume that similar cultures will have similar ethical orientations. That assumption may well prove erroneous. (shrink)

I propose understanding CP-law statements as statements that assert the existence of vague statistical laws, not by fully specifying the contents of those laws, but by picking them out via a description that is both self-referential and self-locating. I argue that this proposal validates many common assumptions about CP-laws and correctly classifies many examples of putative CP-laws. It does this while avoiding the most serious worries that motivate some philosophers to be skeptical of CP-laws, namely the worry that they lack (...) non-trivial truth conditions and that it is impossible for empirical evidence to disconfirm them. (shrink)

We study notions of genericity in models of, inspired by lines of inquiry initiated by Chatzidakis and Pillay and continued by Dolich, Miller and Steinhorn in general model‐theoretic contexts. These papers studied the theories obtained by adding a “random” predicate to a class of structures. Chatzidakis and Pillay axiomatized the theories obtained in this way. In this article, we look at the subsets of models of which satisfy the axiomatization given by Chatzidakis and Pillay; we refer to these subsets in (...) models of as CP‐generics. We study a more natural property, called strong CP‐genericity, which implies CP‐genericity. We use an arithmetic version of Cohen forcing to construct (strong) CP‐generics with various properties, including ones in which every element of the model is definable in the expansion, and, on the other extreme, ones in which the definable closure relation is unchanged. (shrink)

Claude P. Bruter (editor), Mathematics in Art: Mathematical Visualization in Art and Education, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2002, pp. X + 337, ISBN 3-540-43422-4.

Since the 1970s, the application of microprocessor in industrial machinery and the development of computer systems have transformed the manufacturing landscape. The rapid integration and automation of production systems have outpaced the development of suitable human design criteria, creating a deepening gap between humans and systems in which human was seen as an important source of errors and disruptions. Today, the situation seems different: the scientific and public debate about the concept of Industry 4.0 has raised awareness about the central (...) role humans have to play in manufacturing systems, the design of which must be considered from the very beginning. The future of industrial systems, as represented by Industry 4.0, will rely on the convergence of several research fields such as Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), but also socio-technical fields such as social approaches within technical systems. This article deals with different human social dimensions associated with CPS and IoT and focuses on their conceptual evolution regarding automated production systems’ sociability, notably by bringing humans back in the loop. Hereby, this paper aims to take stock of current research trends to show the importance of integrating human operators as a part of a socio-technical system based autonomous and intelligent products or resources. Consequently, different models of sociability as a way to integrate humans in the broad sense and/or the develop future automated production systems have been identified from the literature and analysed. (shrink)

This paper points out an error of Parigot’s proof of strong normalization of second order classical natural deduction by the CPS-translation, discusses erasing-continuation of the CPS-translation, and corrects that proof by using the notion of augmentations.

According to the Standard Model of particle physics, some gauge transformations are physical symmetries. That is, they are mathematical transformations that relate representatives of distinct physical states of affairs. This is at odds with the standard philosophical position according to which gauge transformations are an eliminable redundancy in a gauge theory's representational framework. In this paper I defend the Standard Model's treatment of gauge from an objection due to Richard Healey. If we follow the Standard Model in taking some gauge (...) transformations to be physical symmetries then we face the “strong CP problem”, but if we adopt the standard philosophical position on gauge then the strong CP problem dissolves. Healey offers this as a reason in favor of the standard philosophical view. However, as I argue here, following Healey's recommendation gives a theory that makes bad empirical predictions. (shrink)

Many philosophers of science think that most laws of nature (even those of fundamental physics) are so called ceteris paribus laws, i.e. roughly speaking, laws with exceptions. Yet, the ceteris paribus clause of these laws is problematic. Amongst the more infamous difficulties is the danger that ‘For all x: Fx then Gx, ceteris paribus’ may state no more than a tautology: ‘For all x: Fx then Gx, unless not’. One of the major attempts to avoid this problem (and others concerning (...) ceteris paribus laws) is to claim that the subject matter of laws are ascriptions of dispositions, powers, capacities etc., and not the regular behaviour we find in nature. That we do not know whether the cetera are paria in a specific situation does not matter to the dispositionalist because the objects have the disposition regardless of the circumstances. The defence of the latter claim is that dispositions can be instantiated without being manifested. Hence, the laws that ascribe dispositions are strict and it looks as if they do not face the above mentioned problems of ceteris paribus laws. In this chapter I attempt to show that these assumptions are wrong. I hope to illustrate that not only does the ceteris paribus clause reoccur inside the dispositions, moreover, there are laws – laws about non-fundamental entities with instable dispositions – which bear a ceteris paribus clause that cannot be hidden in a disposition. (shrink)