Cet ouvrage propose la définition d'un concept généralisé du style, considéré non plus seulement comme catégorie esthétique, mais comme applicable à tout travail humain. L'auteur applique ce concept de style à des exemples d'œuvres mathématiques, puis au cas plus familier des œuvres de langage, avant d'esquisser le projet d'une stylistique des sciences de l'homme, complémentaire d'une histoire des connaissances et d'une épistémologie des structures. Gilles-Gaston Granger, spécialiste d'épistémologie, est professeur honoraire au Collège de France. Chapitre I. Contenu, forme et (...) pratique Chapitre II. Le style euclidien et la notion de grandeur Chapitre III. Style cartésien, style arguésien Chapitre IV. Naissance du style « vectoriel » Chapitre V. Le problème des significations Chapitre VI. Syntaxe et sémantique Chapitre VII. L'analyse stylistique fonde une esthétique du langage Chapitre VIII. L'image de l'action dans la construction de l'objet scientifique Chapitre IX. Les nouvelles« mathématiques sociales » Conclusion Index. (shrink)

En 1960 Gilles Gaston Granger nous met déjà en garde contre deux erreurs symétriques possibles des sciences de l'homme : la modélisation spéculative sans pratique et le recours à l'expérience vulgaire sous prétexte que l'objet de ces sciences est l'homme individuel. Il nous permet ainsi de réfléchir, par une étude comparative avec les sciences de la nature, au statut épistémologique d'une connaissance de l'individuel dans les sciences de l'homme. Au-delà de la linguistique de Saussure, de l'anthropologie de Lévi-Strauss ou (...) de la psychanalyse de Freud par exemple, il nous interroge sur la possible transmutation des significations vécues en significations objectives grâce à l'apport équilibré d'une axiomatisation de concepts d'origine empirique et d'un travail clinique par contact avec l'homme concret. Gilles Gaston Granger nourrit l'espoir que, par le mariage difficile de la pensée combinatoire et de la pensée intuitive, naîtra une " poïematique ", réunion de la science, de l'histoire et de la philosophie des oeuvres humaines. (shrink)

system reflected in Saussure's linguistic theory, and so influential in the great progress linguistic theory has made in this century. Indeed, Granger sees linguistic theory as expressing a paradigm for scientific theorizing, which research in other social sciences should adopt. But 'structuralism' as a method in science does not, in Granger's view, begin with Saussure and the linguists. It is nothing less than the strategy of all the sciences, both natural and social, since their beginnings. Now, 'structuralism' is (...) a 'trendy' term no less in Anglophone methodology than in Francophone philosophy. But Granger's employment of the term is not to be assimilated to this trend, nor to the fashionable excesses for which this expression has been a watch word (he explicitly separates himself from this movement in the preface to the second edition). The exact nature of what Granger calls 'structuralist' methods is the subject of a large part of this work, and I will not dwell on it much further in this introduction. Suffice it to say that Granger's demand for structuralist description is nothing less than the recognition that the successful pursuit of science requires that its terms and predicates pick out what we may call 'natural kinds'; that is, describe classes of items that bear uniform nomolog ical relations to one another. A science whose descriptive terms do not meet this condition will never produce any laws that reflect such nomological connections. (shrink)

Le Système de l’idéalisme transcendantal a paru en 1800 et fut traduit en français pour la première fois en 1842 par Paul Grimblot. La traduction de Christian Dubois, parue en 1978 et aujourd’hui rééditée chez Allia, est la deuxième, et dernière en date, transposition en français de ce texte. Cette traduction s’inscrivait, en 1978, dans le cadre d’un regain d’intérêt pour les études schellingiennes dans la sphère francophone, représentée par les travaux de Jean-François Courtine et Xavier Til...

Gilles-Gaston Granger est une figure majeure de l’épistémologie de la seconde moitié du xx e siècle. Son œuvre, où l’ontologie des objets scientifiques joue un rôle important, reste cependant encore trop méconnue, en particulier au niveau international. Plusieurs raisons contribuent à le remettre au centre des débats contemporains : l’importance du structuralisme philosophique et mathématique dans la philosophie des mathématiques récente ; les études menées récemment sur la tradition francophone à laquelle il appartient ; ou encore le développement d’un (...) intérêt général en philosophie des sciences et au-delà pour l’épistémologie historique. Sa leçon inaugurale au Collège de France occupe une place spécifique dans son œuvre. Il s’agit d’un texte important, en lui-même et pour la compréhension du philosophe aixois. Granger s’y positionne dans la tradition française, mais surtout y énonce ses convictions profondes – sur les rapports entre philosophie et histoire, par exemple – et son pro... (shrink)

This carefully-researched book offers a dynamic and expansive Deweyan vision for the arts and education. This (re)vision acknowledges the influence on Dewey's aesthetics of art collector and educator Albert Barnes, while also exploring the various ways Dewey's writings on the arts, in moving beyond Barnes' "scientific aesthetic method," were an important resource for many innovative twentieth-century American artists, art movements, and arts-related educational institutions. Neither Barnes' influence on Dewey nor the features of Dewey's naturalistic aesthetics that made his Art as (...) Experience a favorite text of many artists and arts practitioners have been fully and adequately acknowledged in existing literature on Dewey's thinking about the arts and education. This book effectively remedies that situation. (shrink)

The attempt to derive mental function from brain structure is highly constrained by study of the allometric changes among brain components with evolution. In particular, even if homologous structures in different species produce similar computations, they may be constituents of larger systems (e.g., cortical-subcortical loops) that exhibit different composite operations as a function of relative size and connectivity in different-sized brains. The resulting evolutionary constraints set useful and specific conditions on candidate hypotheses of brain circuit computation.

Welcome, one and all, to volume 32, issue 2 of Education & Culture. I originally began assembling this issue without a specific theme in mind. Nonetheless, as you can see from the title of my remarks, one soon began to emerge. More than a few scholars have commented on an apparent shift in Dewey’s later writings that provided a counterbalance to his ardent attention to science in his early- and middle-period works—a so-called aesthetic turn. It seems to me that this (...) move loosely parallels current initiatives in education calling for a broadening of popular curriculum focused on the STEM fields to something like STEAM, which looks to add the arts, in various forms, to... (shrink)

Porphyry wrote the Contra Christianos during the time of the persecutions, and later several Christian rulers consigned it to the flames. In that work Porphyry included a penetrating critique of Christian allegory. Parts of his argument reappeared in the Protestant Reformers and subsequently in modern biblical research. Scholarship on Porphyry's text often is dominated by the historical problems that beset the fragment. Such problems can be temporarily put aside to carefully study the key terms in Porphyry's argument. The net gain (...) of such an approach is to understand the power of the argument and its structure in a clearer light. (shrink)

In Physics 2.8 Aristotle argues for his natural teleology by arguing for the goal-directed character of nature. The argument that he develops with the most care is directed against those natural philosophers, like Empedocles, who maintain that the results of natural processes which benefit organisms, such as teeth, come to be through chance. Aristotle counters by arguing that because the beneficial results of natural processes occur regularly, ‘always or for the most part’, they cannot be the outcome of chance, which (...) would yield beneficial results only irregularly. Thus such results must come to be only for the sake of some end. This argument against chance has received the most attention from scholars, but Physics 2.8 contains another argument for the goal-directed character of nature, which has received relatively little attention because it does not seem to offer much argument for natural teleology. The argument depends upon an analogy between action and nature, and it simply maintains that since human action and nature are analogous, and since action is goal-directed, so too is nature. The argument is of interest, despite its neglect, because it seems to prove nothing to us and yet Aristotle puts it forward confidently as advancing his view about the goal-directed character of nature. The argument from analogy should claim our attention because it provides important evidence for the basic spring behind Aristotle 's natural teleology. The fact that Aristotle takes for granted the strength of the analogy with human action in his argument for the goal-directedness of nature suggests that he holds human-like goal-directedness to be a condition of intelligibility that must be met by any intelligible process of coming to be, whether human or natural. (shrink)

Aristotle's Idea of the Soul considers the nature of the soul within Aristotle's psychology and natural philosophy. A survey is provided of the contemporary interpretations of Aristotle's idea of the soul, which are prominent in the Aristotelian scholarship within the analytic tradition. These interpretations are divided into two positions: `attributivism', which considers the soul to be a property; and `substantialism', which considers it to be a thing. Taxonomies are developed for attributivism and substantialism, and the cases for each of them (...) are considered. It is concluded that neither position may be maintained without compromise, since Aristotle ascribes to the soul features that belong exclusively to a thing and exclusively to a property. Aristotle treats the soul as a `property-thing', as a cross between a thing and a property. It is argued that Aristotle comes by this idea of the soul because his hylomorphism casts the soul as a property and his causal doctrine presents it as a causal agent and thereby as a thing. (shrink)

Peu étudiée, la querelle de la méthode, qui eut lieu entre 1828 et 1840 et mit en discussion trois nations philosophiques (Allemagne, Écosse, France) s’avère déterminante pour comprendre l’élaboration, via la réception de Schelling, d’une philosophie française. À partir de l’étude de cette querelle, ce travail propose d’identifier et d’analyser la fonction de Schelling dans l’élaboration d’une identité philosophique française, en particulier dans les spiritualismes concurrents de Victor Cousin et Félix Ravaisson. En retour, il nous ouvre de nouvelles perspectives sur (...) la philosophie française du xixe siècle, mais aussi sur la philosophie schellingienne. (shrink)

This book explores the writings of philosopher and educator John Dewey in order to develop an expansive vision of aesthetic education and everyday poetics of living. Robert Pirsig's best-selling book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, provides concrete examples of this compelling yet unconventional vision.

La philosophie est-elle un savoir? Y a-t-il des vérités philosophiques? Peut-on démontrer en philosophie? Deux tentations opposées sont ici dénoncées. L'une porte à présenter la philosophie comme une sorte de science éminente et dogmatique ; l'autre à la confondre avec l'exposé poétique et passionné de quelques états d'âme. L'auteur, au contraire, essaie d'établir que la philosophie, à travers sa diversité, constitue une véritable connaissance, irréductible à celle que fournit la science et n'y suppléant en aucun cas : une connaissance capable (...) de rigueur, quoique non démonstrative, une connaissance paradoxalement sans objets. (shrink)