The discovery of mirror neurons has given rise to a number of interpretations of their functions together with speculations on their potential role in the evolution of specifically human capacities. Thus, mirror neurons have been thought to ground many aspects of human social cognition, including the capacity to engage in cooperative collective actions and to understand them. We propose an evaluation of this latter claim. On the one hand, we will argue that mirror neurons do not by themselves provide a (...) sufficient basis for the forms of agentive understanding and shared intentionality involved in cooperative collective actions. On the other hand, we will also argue that mirror neurons can nevertheless play an important role in an account of the production and understanding of joint action, insofar as they provide the basic constituents of implicit agent-neutral representations and are useful elements in a process of online mutual adjustment of participants' actions. (shrink)

« Les inventions et révolutions scientifiques ont toujours sinon fondé du moins suscité des inventions et révolutions métaphysiques susceptibles de leur faire écho. La physique contemporaine, depuis le début du xx e siècle, avec l’avènement des relativité restreinte et générale et de la physique quantique, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, avec l’élaboration (toujours en cours d’achèvement et de validation) d’une théorie quantique adéquate de la gravitation, est riche de telles révolutions, notamment concernant la nature du temps, concept complexe dont ces théories nous ont (...) appris à distinguer les multiples feuillets et aspects enchevêtrés. Toute théorie quantique de la gravitation (notamment la théorie quantique à boucles) semble ainsi ne pouvoir aboutir qu’en envisageant le temps comme une réalité seconde, dérivée et non plus originaire ou fondamentale. Mais à partir de quelle autre réalité plus fondamentale que lui, le temps pourrait-il être engendré? Cette réalité pourrait-elle elle-même être en quoi que ce soit non changeante? N’a-t-on pas ainsi tort de confondre le temps et la variation (ou le changement)? L’enjeu de cet article est de distinguer soigneusement ces deux concepts en montrant, d’une part, que la variation est en vérité, sous certaines conditions théoriques à énoncer, un concept plus fondamental que celui de temps, et d’autre part, que ce dernier peut être engendré à partir d’une variation – ainsi pensée comme non empirique ou pure – en lui ajoutant un certain nombre de contraintes – qui la rendent alors empirique et dotée des principales propriétés constitutives du temps. Ces contraintes ou conditions restrictives nous semblent essentiellement de trois sortes : subsistance ou invariance, continuité et succession. Nous les développons successivement en montrant comment les relativités restreinte et générale et la physique quantique tendent déjà à violer partiellement ces contraintes. Nous en concluons que la variation doit être ainsi fondamentalement pensée comme n’étant de rien en particulier quand le temps est toujours en vérité le temps de quelque chose. ». (shrink)

THE SIXTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS of the History of Science is scheduled to assemble in Bucharest, Rumania, in August 1981. To mark that occasion Isis is pleased to publish two essays on Marxism and the history of science.

It is shown that a number of questions, usually considered philosophical rather than scientific, can be reformulated to apply to a world of automata or "well-informed heat engines." In some cases they admit of physical answers, but in many cases obtaining answers entails violation of the second law of thermodynamics. This is demonstrated explicitly for the problem of determinism and free will, for the discovery of the origin or ultimate fate of the universe, or for the discovery of causes or (...) purposes in nature. (shrink)

Few topics in international intellectual property law have been as controversial in recent years as the one we are about to examine. In the 1980s and early 1990s, a Diplomatic Conference attempted to revise the oldest international convention providing some protection for patented inventions outside of the domestic laws. Those efforts broke down, largely because developed and developing countries could not agree on the powers that governments should retain to issue compulsory licenses or on the grounds for which these powers (...) could be exercised. The failure of this Conference, held under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), persuaded the technology-exporting countries to link future negotiations concerning international intellectual property protection to the Multilateral Trade Negotiations, known as the Uruguay Round, which got underway in 1986. The end result was Annex IC of the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization of 1994, which incorporated a new, comprehensive and relatively elevated set of international minimum standards of patent protection into the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). (shrink)

I argue that the issues of foodquality, in the most general sense includingpurity, safety, and ethics, can no longer beresolved through ``normal'' science andregulation. The reliance on reductionistscience as the basis for policy andimplementation has shown itself to beinadequate. I use several borderline examplesbetween drugs and foods, particularly coffeeand sucrose, to show that ``quality'' is now acomplex attribute. For in those cases thesubstance is either a pure drug, or a bad foodwith drug-like properties; both are marketed asif they were foods. (...) An example of theinadequacy of old ways of thinking is obesity,whose causes are as yet outside the purview ofmedicine, while its effects constitute anepidemic disease. The new drug/food syndromeneeds a new sort of science, what we call``post-normal.'' This is inquiry at the contestedinterfaces of science and policy; typically itdeals with issues where facts are uncertain,values in dispute, stakes high, and decisionsurgent. With the perspective of post-normalscience, we can better understand some keyissues. We see that ``safety'' is different from``risk,'' being pragmatic, moral, and recursive.Also, we understand that an appropriatefoundation for regulation and ethics is not somuch ``objectivity'' as ``awareness.'' In an agewhen ``consumers'' are becoming concerned``citizens,'' the relevant science must becomepost-normal. (shrink)

« Les inventions et révolutions scientifiques ont toujours sinon fondé du moins suscité des inventions et révolutions métaphysiques susceptibles de leur faire écho. La physique contemporaine, depuis le début du xx ème siècle, avec l’avènement des relativité restreinte et générale et de la physique quantique, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, avec l’élaboration (toujours en cours d’achèvement et de validation) d’une théorie quantique adéquate de la gravitation, est riche de telles révolutions, notamment concernant la nature du temps, concept complexe dont ces théories nous ont (...) appris à distinguer les multiples feuillets et aspects enchevêtrés. Toute théorie quantique de la gravitation (notamment la théorie quantique à boucles) semble ainsi ne pouvoir aboutir qu’en envisageant le temps comme une réalité seconde, dérivée et non plus originaire ou fondamentale. Mais à partir de quelle autre réalité plus fondamentale que lui le temps pourrait-il être engendré? Cette réalité pourrait-elle elle-même être en quoi que ce soit non changeante? N’a-t-on pas ainsi tort de confondre le temps et la variation (ou le changement)? L’enjeu de cet article est de distinguer soigneusement ces deux concepts en montrant, d’une part, que la variation est en vérité, sous certaines conditions théoriques à énoncer, un concept plus fondamental que celui de temps, et d’autre part, que ce dernier peut être engendré à partir d’une variation – ainsi pensée comme non empirique ou pure – en lui ajoutant un certain nombre de contraintes – qui la rendent alors empirique et dotée des principales propriétés constitutives du temps. Ces contraintes ou conditions restrictives nous semblent essentiellement de trois sortes : subsistance ou invariance, continuité et succession. Nous les développons successivement en montrant comment les relativités restreinte et générale et la physique quantique tendent déjà à violer partiellement ces contraintes. Nous en concluons que la variation doit être ainsi fondamentalement pensée comme n’étant de rien en particulier quand le temps est toujours en vérité le temps de quelque chose. ». (shrink)

I first heard about renshi from Hiromi Itō, a remarkable and justifiably celebrated Japanese poet and writer, who has also been our neighbor in Encinitas, California, for most of the last two decades. Her presence among us goes back to 1991 and to my first visit to Japan, a contact I hadn’t had before but have been able to repeat six times since then.

Theoretical physics is a deductive discipline which presupposes the validity and applicability of certain other disciplines. Among these are logic, algebra, analysis, and geometry. Before relativity, Euclidean geometry was the only one thought to be important for physical space. These disciplines correlate well with experience, and, in the course of time, a priori validity came to be ascribed to them. To Kant, for example, the universe could not possibly be based on any geometry other than Euclid's. The discovery of non-Euclidean (...) geometries by Bolyai and Lobatchevsky, its systematic extension by Riemann, and the critical scrutiny of foundations by Mach and Poincaré shook the “self-evident truth” of Euclidean geometry as applied to the world of physics. The death knell of the a priori truth of any geometry was supplied by Einstein. He showed that a wider body of experience was coordinated by a Riemannian geometry than by Euclidean. He traced the success of Euclidian geometry back to the existence of so-called rigid bodies, in terms of which operations can be associated with numbers which correlate well with numbers associated in a purely mathematical way with mathematical constructs put in correspondence with these bodies. For the physicist, then, the geometry of the real world is now a physical theory whose “truth” like that of all physical theory, is measured by its degree of success in coordinating experience. (shrink)

A strict operational (i.e., informational) analysis of the meaning of preparing a system to realize the paradoxes of Loschmidt or Zermelo is made. Where reversal or recurrence are operationally realizable, no contradiction with the irreversible nature of macroscopic operations occurs. Paradox results either from neglecting irreversible phenomena in the means for preparing a reversed state, or from confusing elements or ensembles, which are meaningful in microstate language but meaningless operationally, with preparable macrostates, whoserepresentation in microstate language is an ensemble whose (...) very definition is incompatible with that of any paradox-generating element or ensemble. (shrink)

In The Search for Safety, Aaron Wildavsky argues that the pervasiveness of uncertainty, the complexity of economy and society, and the trial‐and‐error strengths of a competitive market system make alleviating damages through market processes superior to a preventive strategy of regulatory anticipation. Close examination of a number of issues that are central to his argument— anticipation vs. resiliency, the effects of wealth on health, the competitive market as an engine for social trial and error, and equity in aggregating benefits and (...) costs across individuals and different probabilistic states—leads to considerable skepticism as to whether Wildavsky's strategy of less government regulation and a more unfettered market would indeed produce greater safety. (shrink)

Les Annales ont tracé, depuis leurs débuts dans les années 1930, des frontières avec la sociologie. L’étude de trois moments majeurs (l’ère des fondateurs, le moment Braudel et la décennie 1980) permet de saisir le travail d ‘horographie comme un enjeu sans cesse actualisé dans les rapports de force institutionnels et épistémologiques. L’identité collective des Annales, émergeant dans ces débats de délimitation avec la sociologie, s’appuie sur un réseau de valeurs et de références continuellement ajusté.

The mammalian centromere is a multifunctional chromosomal domain with a complexity that is reflected in its higher order structure, DNA sequence organization and protein composition. The centromere plays a major role during cell division where it functions as the site for the integration of the chromosome with the mitotic spindle, the site of the mechanochemical motor responsible for the movement of chromosomes and the major and last point of interaction between sister chromatids. Recent studies have focused on characterizing the components (...) of the centromere and establishing their relationship to its function. The following brief review summarizes some selected aspects of this recent work. (shrink)

In spite of being a very public intellectual, the philosopher Imre Lakatos (who died in 1974) was little understood. His Hungarian background seemed irrelevant to his career at the London School of Economics as the colleague and then successor to Sir Karl Popper. In Imre Lakatos and The Guises of Reason, John Kadvany demonstrates the overwhelming importance of Lakatos's Hungarian background, and thereby also explains and illuminates Lakatos's philosophy. His study also demonstrates the power of Hegel's thought as the background (...) to any genuinely historical approach to philosophy, even of science and mathematics. He also provides a glimpse of the nightmare world of Stalinist Hungary, as a contribution to an explanation of Lakatos's personal and intellectual style. Kadvany's exposition does much to clarify and explain Lakatos's philosophy, thereby enhancing his reputation and also making his work, much of it still of vital significance, more accessible to a new public. (shrink)

Cet article constitue une analyse critique de l’analogie établie par Richard Boyd entre le réalisme scientifique et le réalisme moral. Selon Boyd, l’évolution des théories et des pratiques morales est étroitement analogue à l’évolution de la connaissance scientifique, car dans les deux cas la connaissance est guidée par une réalité indépendante progressivement découverte.Dans cet article, nous rejetons cette analogie, en raison des multiples dissemblances entre connaissance morale et connaissance scientifique. Nous nous efforcerons de cerner les spécificités de la connaissance morale, (...) à partir de travaux empiriques dans le champ interdisciplinaire de la naturalisation de l’éthique (anthropologie cognitive, psychologie expérimentale, psychologie morale…). Nous défendrons ainsi l’idée selon laquelle les propriétés morales ne sont pas découvertes mais projetées. (shrink)

Cet article constitue une analyse critique de l’analogie établie par Richard Boyd entre le réalisme scientifique et le réalisme moral. Selon Boyd, l’évolution des théories et des pratiques morales est étroitement analogue à l’évolution de la connaissance scientifique, car dans les deux cas la connaissance est guidée par une réalité indépendante progressivement découverte.Dans cet article, nous rejetons cette analogie, en raison des multiples dissemblances entre connaissance morale et connaissance scientifique. Nous nous efforcerons de cerner les spécificités de la connaissance morale, (...) à partir de travaux empiriques dans le champ interdisciplinaire de la naturalisation de l’éthique (anthropologie cognitive, psychologie expérimentale, psychologie morale…). Nous défendrons ainsi l’idée selon laquelle les propriétés morales ne sont pas découvertes mais projetées. (shrink)

In this note, we wish to remark on some of the relations between deciding one's own action and predicting one's own action. This topic is relevant both to current discussions of the nature of analysis and to the continuing controversy over the nature of scientific explanation.