Nanomaterials have attracted much interest in the medical field and related applications as their distinct properties in the nanorange enable new and improved diagnosis and therapies. Owing to these properties and their potential interactions with the human body and the environment, the impact of nanomaterials on humans and their potential toxicity have been regarded a very significant issue. Consequently, nanomaterials are the subject of a wide range of cutting-edge research efforts in the medical and related fields to thoroughly probe their (...) potential beneficial utilizations and their more negative effects. We posit that the lack of standardization in the field is a serious shortcoming as it has led to the establishment of methods and results that do not ensure sufficient consistency and thus in our view can possibly result in research outputs that are not as robust as they should be. The main aim of this article is to present how NanoDiaRA, a large FP7 European multidisciplinary project that seeks to investigate and develop nanotechnology-based diagnostic systems, has developed and implemented robust, standardized methods to support research practices involving the engineering and manipulation of nanomaterials. First, to contextualize this research, an overview of the measures defined by different regulatory bodies concerning nanosafety is presented. Although these authorities have been very active in the past several years, many questions remain unanswered in our view. Second, a number of national and international projects that attempted to ensure more reliable exchanges of methods and results are discussed. However, the frequent lack of publication of procedures and protocols in research can often be a hindrance for sharing those good practices. Subsequently, the efforts made through NanoDiaRA to introduce standardized methods and techniques to support the development and utilization of nanomaterials are discussed in depth. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with the partners of this project, and the interviews were analyzed thematically to highlight the determined efforts of the researchers to standardize their methods. Finally, some recommendations are made toward the setting up of well-defined methods to support the high-quality work of collaborative nanoparticle-based research and development projects and to enhance standardization processes. (shrink)

This book argues against the traditional understanding of the semantics/pragmatics divide and puts forward a radical alternative. Through half a dozen case studies, it shows that what an utterance says cannot be neatly separated from what the speaker means. In particular, the speaker's meaning endows words with senses that are tailored to the situation of utterance and depart from the conventional meanings carried by the words in isolation. This phenomenon of ‘pragmatic modulation’ must be taken into account in theorizing about (...) semantic content, for it interacts with the grammar-driven process of semantic composition. Because of that interaction, the book argues, the content of a sentence always depends upon the context in which it is used. This claim defines Contextualism, a view which has attracted considerable attention in recent years, and of which the author of this book is one of the main proponents. (shrink)

Providing an introduction to Laruelle's novel theory of 'non-epistemology' or 'unified theory of thought', this volumes challenges the way we think about the traditional philosophical problems.

Adopting a communication as constitutive of organization (CCO) perspective on ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) invites us to create the conditions of a dialogue, discussion, or debate between various stakeholders, who can then try to confront their respective positions on a given issue, and possibly come to a decision regarding how a situation should be evaluated and/or responded to. As shown in this article, getting human stakeholders to voice their concerns about a specific situation is a way not only (...) to rationally confront multiple viewpoints on what should be done about it (à la Habermas) but also to allow elements of this situation to reveal themselves in a discussion. This is why any ethical decision has to experience a form of undecidability and surprisability. When beliefs and opinions can be called into question, it means that participants are ready to become attentive to what a situation might surprisingly call for. Communication is therefore a matter of ventriloquism, as human participants should also be considered the means by which elements of a situation manage to express themselves in a discussion, dictating specific courses of action over others. This concretely means that multiple voices can be heard in such a scene: not only the voices of the human stakeholders who speak to each other but also the voices of facts, principles, future generations, ecosystems, populations that are made to say things through these various turns of talk. (shrink)

To systematically answer the generalized Kretschmann objection, I propose a mean to make operational a criterion widely recognized as allowing one to decide whether the gauge symmetry of a theory is artificial or substantial. My proposition is based on the dressing field method of gauge symmetry reduction, a new simple tool from mathematical physics. This general scheme allows one in particular to straightforwardly argue that the notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking is superfluous to the empirical success of the electroweak theory. (...) Important questions regarding the context of justification of the theory then arise. (shrink)

We provide a Kripke semantics for a STIT logic with the "next" operator. As the atemporal group STIT is undecidable and unaxiomatizable, we are interested in strict fragments of atemporal group STIT. First we prove that the satisfiability problem of a formula of the fragment made up of individual coalitions plus the grand coalition is also NEXPTIME-complete. We then generalize this result to a fragment where coalitions are in a given lattice. We also prove that if we restrict the language (...) to nested coalitions the satisfiability problem is NP-complete if the number of agents is fixed and PSPACE-complete if the number of agents is variable. Finally we embed individual STIT with the "next" operator into a fragment of atemporal group STIT. (shrink)

The theory of living beings as machines of nature and the conception of composite substances endowed with conjoined souls, entelechies, or monads, as well as that of organic bodies, were solidified over the course of the transformations of Leibniz's thought that issued in the New System of Nature. On this basis, the monadological versions of a system of nature centered upon the integrated organization ad infinitum of living beings were gradually articulated. Leibniz aimed to spell out a science, or physiology (...) of vital processes, that would be, as much as possible, in agreement with the epistemological exigencies of the complex metaphysical model that he had elaborated. On the one hand, Leibniz offers a critical evaluation of the methodological options that divide the allegiances of the physicians and naturalists who are his contemporaries; what is more, he determines the profile of the analyses and explications that are to be promoted. For This double preoccupation translates into the scientific exchanges and correspondences that accompany the construction of the theory of organic bodies as constituents of machines of nature. The author focuses on the particular case of the propositions concerning the science of the living that stem from his reaction to the work of Georg Ernst Stahl. (shrink)

This is an experimental piece of writing by François Laruelle. Via its origins in both Greek and Judeo-Christian thought, philosophy has risen up from the abysses of the world and made its assault on human identity. Philosophy dominates man, and as long as he lives under the philosophical decision or ?Ontological Statute? he lives also within an impotence of thought and within an infinite culpability. Yet ultimately man is an inalienable reality, and nothing ? not even philosophy ? can (...) substitute itself for man and for his identity. There is no reversibility between man and philosophy. Man itself is the abolition of the Statute. (shrink)

A brief synoptic parallel -- Taking the side of the 'modern' in philosophy -- Old and new relations between science and philosophy -- Matrices and principles -- Subtraction and superposition -- Philosophy and mathematics in the mirror -- Ontology and materiality -- Philo-fiction.

We prove that the statement “there is aksuch that for everyfthere is ak-bounded diagonally nonrecursive function relative tof” does not imply weak König’s lemma over${\rm{RC}}{{\rm{A}}_0} + {\rm{B\Sigma }}_2^0$. This answers a question posed by Simpson. A recursion-theoretic consequence is that the classic fact that everyk-bounded diagonally nonrecursive function computes a 2-bounded diagonally nonrecursive function may fail in the absence of${\rm{I\Sigma }}_2^0$.

Numismatique François de Callatay et Caroline Mattheeuws, À propos d'une série exceptionnelle de grands bronzes thasiens (fin ive- début me siècle) p. 481-490 L'acquisition par le Cabinet des Médailles de Bruxelles d'un lot de trente-cinq grands bronzes thasiens aux types «Tête de Déméter/Bustes des Dioscures» permet d'affiner la connaissance de cette émission exceptionnelle. Tous les exemplaires sont contremarques et beaucoup présentent des traces de surfrappe. L'étude du style combinée à celle des poids permet de déceler une manipulation monétaire qui (...) avait échappé jusqu'à présent. Avant de réaliser cette émission en surfrappant une émission existante au type de l'Héraclès imberbe, on s'était d'abord servi de nouveaux flans d'un poids lourd (ca 13 g). L'étude du contexte archéologique confirme d'autre part pour ces bronzes, sans toutefois qu'il soit permis de les situer à l'année près, une datation à l'extrême fin du ive s. av. J.-C. (shrink)

_A mood for Philosophy_ __ _ _ _In this dialogue with Francois Laruelle Anne-Françoise Schmidt suggests that Laruelle's non-philosophy, which begins with an indecision, could be conceived as something that in the history of painting has been called figura serpentinata, "serpentine line". This line, which produces a kind of music by the use of concepts, is visible according her trough his whole work: from his first book on Ravaisson, _Phenomenon and Difference,_ through to his last one, _The Last Humanity: A (...) New Ecological Science_, published in French in 2015 and expected to appear in English in 2018._. (shrink)

L’exploration archéologique du site de l’Arkipiskopi dans la vieille ville de Nicosie, conduite par Fryni Hadjichristofi et son équipe (Département des Antiquités de Chypre) de 2009 à 2011 puis en 2016, a mis au jour les vestiges d’un puits à roue élévatrice appelé à Chypre αλακάτιν/alakatin et plus habituellement connu dans le monde méditerranéen sous le nom de sakieh. S’il en existe des exemplaires plus anciens dans l’île, c’est la première machine hydraulique à traction animale permettant de puiser l’eau dans (...) un puits profond fouillée à Nicosie pour les époques latine, ottomane et anglaise. Cette étude entend d’abord examiner et interpréter les vestiges de ces structures au regard des informations livrées par des documents d’archives et des récits de voyageurs, des dessins de la fin du xvie et du début du xviiie siècle, un plan de 1882 et le cadastre de 1948, afin d’en mieux saisir les contextes de fonctionnement sur une longue durée. Elle présente aussi les godets de terre fixés sur la roue pour le puisage de l’eau et qui, à de rares exceptions, ont complètement échappé aux études céramologiques conduites dans l’île. (shrink)

A internationally renowned philosopher - Francois Laruelle - takes on the perennially important topic of what is means to be human and the place of humanity within ecological and post-humanism concerns.

This paper examines the relationship between the puericulture of Adolphe Pinard and Léon Bourgeois’ solidarism. In an attempt to create a progressive and humanistic form of eugenics, Pinard links the science he was developing with the imperatives of social justice advocated by Bourgeois. This results in, on the one hand, the subordination of puericulture to principles of equality and fundamental rights for all individuals and, on the other, the idea of the need for a biological enhancement of the population as (...) a condition for the extension of liberty and solidarity. The first part of the article establishes a connection between the two authors through the neo-Lamarckian paradigm which they spoused, and details the how and the why of solidarism. A second part examines the nature of the assimilation of the “religion of humanity” into solidarity, which entails both the defence of love at a collective level and the sanctity of those deemed “abnormal”. A final part describes the solidarist-inspired levers envisaged by Pinard for preventing the degeneration of humanity. They are based on a redefinition of the criteria used to determine the value of the social function of the individual and have an impact on the family, on the one hand, and eugenic women on the other. (shrink)

A purely probabilistic-informational model of evolutions is sketched, basically free of any assumption concerning the nature and structure of the evolving system but apt to incorporatea posteriori any such assumptions needed for application to a specified evolution. The model produces an abstract extension of the second principle of thermodynamics. It also leads to an outline of a typology of irreversible evolutions.

The aim of this paper is both to use Kindleberger’s thesis to analyse banking crashes of the Middle Age and to give proof of whether the medieval banks do or do not raise the same theoretical analysis as the modern banks. This is of importance, because the theories that are invoked by Kindleberger concern banks very different from the medieval banks. If the financial instability of the 14th century is similar to that of the 19th or the 20th century, this (...) leads to amend the impact and generality of Kindleberger’s instability model.L’objet de cet article est d’utiliser la théorie de Kindleberger pour analyser les krachs bancaires du Moyen Age et vérifier si les banques médiévales relèvent ou non du même appareil théorique que les banques modernes. Cela représente un enjeu important car les banques médiévales sont très différentes de celles qu’étudie Kindleberger. Si l’instabilité financière du XIVe siècle est comparable à celle des XIXe et XXe siècles, cela nous amène à reconsidérer l’impact et la généralité du modèle de Kindleberger. (shrink)

Comme ses Cinq méditations sur la beauté, ce texte de François Cheng est né d'échanges avec ses amis, auxquels le lecteur est invité à devenir partie prenante. Il entendra ainsi le poète, au soir de sa vie, s'exprimer sur un sujet que beaucoup préfèrent éviter. Le voici se livrant comme il ne l'avait peut-être jamais fait, et transmettant une parole à la fois humble et hardie. Il n'a pas la prétention de délivrer un "message" sur l'après-vie, ni d'élaborer un (...) discours dogmatique, mais il témoigne d'une vision de la "vie ouverte". Une vision en mouvement ascendant qui renverse notre perception de l'existence humaine, et nous invite à envisager la vie à la lumière de notre propre mort. Celle-ci, transformant chaque vie en destin singulier, la fait participer à une grande Aventure en devenir. (shrink)

Philosophie du langage et philosophie de l'esprit constituent désormais un tout indissociable. Les expressions linguistiques «signifient». Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire? François Recanati distingue trois réponses possibles. Selon la première, signifier c'est (pour une expression linguistique) être associée à des représentations mentales. Selon la deuxième, signifier c'est «faire référence» et renvoyer à quelque chose dans le monde – une réalité extralinguistique. Selon la troisième, enfin, signifier, c'est jouer un rôle distinctif dans cette activité sociale qu'est la parole. La première (...) réponse renvoie aux représentations mentales. Mais qu'est-ce, pour une représentation mentale, que d'avoir un contenu? La vraie question, est-on tenté de penser, est plus générale : qu'est-ce que signifier ou avoir un contenu? Qu'est-ce qu'une représentation (linguistique ou mentale)? Les philosophes contemporains recherchent une théorie du contenu qui soit suffisamment générale pour s'appliquer à la pensée aussi bien qu'au langage. François Recanati nous introduit à leurs efforts, et conclut en faveur de l'approche «pragmatique» inspirée de Wittgenstein. Ce qui fait que la pensée et le langage représentent le monde, c'est avant tout le fait que la pensée et le langage sont dans le monde, qu'ils y ont leur place et y jouent leur rôle. (shrink)

This paper proposes to explore the mechanisms by which speaking, writing and, more generally, interacting pragmatically contribute to the mode of being and acting of social forms, whether these forms be identities, relations or collectives. Such an approach to pragmatics, which we propose to call constitutive, amounts to showing, both theoretically and empirically, that human interactants are not the only ones who should be deemed as “doing things with words”, but that otherfigures— which can take the form of policies, statuses, (...) tools, groups, collectives, etc. — can also be identified as beingactivein a given situation, especially through the way they are mobilized and staged in interaction. According to this approach, interactions can therefore be considered dislocated loci where specific con-figurations are produced and embodied. As we will see, such a constitutive view also allows us to deal with issues of power, authority and responsibility, three questions that tend to be relatively marginalized in pragmatic studies, especially when a performative and interactive viewpoint is adopted. (shrink)