Regroupe neuf conférences de A. N. Whitehead autour de trois thèmes : l'impulsion créatrice, l'activité, nature et vie.

We study the minimal complexity of tilings of a plane with a given tile set. We note that every tile set admits either no tiling or some tiling with.

Background: Informed consent in clinical research is mandated throughout the world. Both patient subjects and investigators are required to understand and accept the distinction between research and treatment.Aim: To document the extent and to identify factors associated with therapeutic misconception in a population of patient subjects or parent proxies recruited from a variety of multicentre trials .Patients and methods: The study comprised two phases: the development of a questionnaire to assess the quality of informed consent and a survey of patient (...) subjects based on this questionnaire.Results: A total of 303 patient subjects or parent proxies were contacted and 279 questionnaires were analysed. The median age was 49.5 years, sex ratio was 1 and 61% of respondents were professionally active. Overall memorisation of the oral or written communication of informed consent was good , and satisfaction with the process was around 70%. Therapeutic misconception was present in 70% of respondents, who expected to receive better care and ignored the consequence of randomisation and treatment comparisons. This was positively associated with the acuteness and severity of the disease.Conclusion: The authors suggest that the risk of therapeutic misconception be specifically addressed in consent forms as an educational tool for both patients and investigators. (shrink)

To be able to make “change” happen in the lives of patients entrusted to his care, Watzlawick says he tried to produce a theory about it. He was forced to acknowledge that the mechanisms of change resist systematization and, therefore, all wishes to elicit them as well.Well-being is to therapy what discovery is to thought and the event is to History: the position – unforeseen, unforeseeable – in reality of what did not hitherto exist. And heuristics would be, if not (...) a science, since there could be no science of change, then at least the name given to reflection on its mystery. (shrink)

The Spanish conquests of the Americas were not yet completed when famous Humanists already began to appear in the first generation of native-born Spanish-speaking Americans. A mestizo born in 1539 and who liked to call himself “the Indian whose mouth is full” thus published in 1590, in Madrid, the first-fruits of the Humanism of the New World. The son of an Indian woman, he succeeded in very unusual circumstances in writing a superb Castilian version of a classic work of Renaissance (...) Neoplatonism. Its title reads: The Indian's translation of the three Dialogues of Love by Leone Ebreo, from Italian into Spanish, by Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, a native of the great city of Cuzco, capital of the Kingdoms and provinces of Peru. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the description of the process of measurement within the context of a quantum theory of the physical world. It is noted that quantum mechanics permits a quasi-classical description of those macroscopic phenomena in terms of which the observer forms his perceptions. Thus, the process of measurement in quantum mechanics can be understood on the quasi-classical level by transcribing from the strictly classical observables of Newtonian physics to their quasi-classical counterparts the known rules for the measurement (...) of the former. The remaining physical problem is the delineation of the circumstances in which the correlation of a peculiarly quantum mechanical observable A with a classically measurable observable B can result in a significant measurement of A. This is undertaken within the context of quantum theory. The resulting clarification of the process of measurement has important implications relative to the philosophic interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Depuis les années 1960, Gilbert Durand a fondé et développé une méthodologie et une épistémologie novatrices de l'étude des imaginaires individuels et culturels qui ont inspiré une Ecole de Grenoble, qui n'a cessé d'essaimer à travers un grand nombre de centres de recherches en France et dans le monde. Sa pensée, connue à travers la mythocritique et la mythanalyse, enrichie par une vaste culture historique et pluriculturelle, a été appliquée dans les domaines les plus divers des sciences humaines et (...) sociales. Loin d'être un système clos, son oeuvre a inspiré une épistémologie ouverte qui a permis, sur la base des acquis fondamentaux, de se préciser, de s'adapter à des champs nouveaux, de recevoir les apports d'autres écoles, courants ou traditions culturelles. Les contributions ici rassemblées permettront de mieux situer l'émergence de la problématique de l'imaginaire dans différentes disciplines ou champs d'études, de présenter les innovations théoriques apportées par l'anthropologie de l'imaginaire de G Durand, d'illustrer les innovations qu'elles auront permises, d'amorcer des éléments de prospective pour les chantiers actuellement en cours d'exploration. (shrink)

Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units—cells—and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or other misfortunes, but there are also endogenous forms of death (...) that are sometimes the result of adaptive evolution. These endogenous forms of death—often labeled programmed cell death, PCD—originated in the earliest cells and are maintained across the tree of life. Here, we consider two problematic issues related to PCD (and cell mortality generally). First, we trace the original discoveries of cell death from the nineteenth century and place current conceptions of PCD in their historical context. Revisions of our understanding of PCD demand a reassessment of its origin. Our second aim is thus to structure the proposed origin explanations of PCD into coherent arguments. In our analysis we argue for the evolutionary concept of PCD and the viral defense-immunity hypothesis for the origin of PCD. We suggest that this framework offers a plausible account of PCD early in the history of life, and also provides an epistemic basis for the future development of a general evolutionary account of mortality. (shrink)

This contribution presents an adult education workshop implemented in the field of early childhood education. One of the specificities of education and care practices lies in the competences of the professionals to give a central role to the detailed observation of situations, in order to adjust their modalities of action. How can such observational work be developed and transformed? A participatory research-training approach aims to support the co-construction of an analytical view on observable phenomena in the course of interactions. In (...) a perspective of interactional analysis, it focuses on the modalities that favor the construction of such an analytical posture. (shrink)

This article presents a new account of the Stoic theory of case. It argues that cases belong to the Stoic class of lekta and that they play a twofold semantic role. Firstly, they relate words to the world in a process akin to reference. Secondly, they encode syntactic information which captures structural elements of the world, contributing to language’s ability to represent reality and its structure by enabling it to capture both objects and the ways in which these objects relate (...) to each other. (shrink)

In multicellular organisms, cells are frequently programmed to die. This makes good sense: cells that fail to, or are no longer playing important roles are eliminated. From the cell’s perspective, this also makes sense, since somatic cells in multicellular organisms require the cooperation of clonal relatives. In unicellular organisms, however, programmed cell death poses a difficult and unresolved evolutionary problem. The empirical evidence for PCD in diverse microbial taxa has spurred debates about what precisely PCD means in the case of (...) unicellular organisms. In this article, we survey the concepts of PCD in the literature and the selective pressures associated with its evolution. We show that definitions of PCD have been almost entirely mechanistic and fail to separate questions concerning what PCD fundamentally is from questions about the kinds of mechanisms that realize PCD. We conclude that an evolutionary definition is best able to distinguish PCD from closely related phenomena. Specifically, we define “true” PCD as an adaptation for death triggered by abiotic or biotic environmental stresses. True PCD is thus not only an evolutionary product but must also have been a target of selection. Apparent PCD resulting from pleiotropy, genetic drift, or trade-offs is not true PCD. We call this “ersatz PCD.”. (shrink)

Résumé L’équilibre des forces (le pape, l’empereur, le corps épiscopal) fut plus apparent que réel à Chalcédoine. Sa définition n’en a pas moins sa validité permanente : empêcher d’occulter la réalité humaine du Christ, tout en tenant qu’il est « un seul et le même » avec le Verbe. Deux christologies savantes, celle d’Antioche et celle d’Occident résumée par Léon, se sont ici heurtées et combinées avec la vision de la personne du Christ se constituant à Alexandrie, formulée non sans (...) imprécision par Cyrille. Refus par certains orientaux des « deux natures après l’union » pour « une seule nature incarnée du Verbe ». « Jacobites » et « melkites ». Éclaircissement de Constantinople II (553) relativement à la notion d’hypostase. Situation actuelle de la christologie chalcédonienne. (shrink)

Profitant de la commémoration du cinquantenaire de la création du premier Centre de recherches sur l’imaginaire fondé par Gilbert Durand, Léon Cellier et Paul Deschamps, nous tentons d’approfondir notre réflexion sur les influences réciproques entre l’imaginaire chinois et la pensée durandienne, dont la rencontre se révèle féconde et fructueuse dans les champs interculturels et comparatifs, et semble propice pour la connaissance et le rayonnement de l’un comme de l’autre, et pour le développement futur de la recherche sur l’imaginaire. While (...) seizing the opportunity to participate in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the creation of the first Research Center on the Imaginary Founded by Gilbert Durand, Léon Cellier and Paul Deschamps, this presentation aims to deepen reflection on the reciprocal influences between the Chinese Imaginary and Durandian thought, This encounter proves to be fruitful in both inter-cultural and comparative fields, and is propitious for the knowledge and influence of both cultures. It may well spawn future developments in research on the Imaginary. (shrink)

La création physique peut-elle être sujet d’espérance? Quelle est l’aspiration de la création matérielle et que signifie-t-elle pour les croyants? Écouter le cri de la Terre et le « gémissement de la création » dévoile nos péchés systémiques contre elles. En prenant appui sur la Lettre aux Romains, il est toutefois possible d’entendre aujourd’hui la plainte de la création, pas tant comme une accusation que comme un Évangile ; à savoir une heureuse annonce et un appel à la conversion. La (...) création et nous, nous partageons la même espérance de la gloire. Le cri de la création, qui dénonce nos péchés contre elle, est aussi paradoxalement un témoignage de notre aspiration commune vers la gloire filiale, selon l’argument de Paul en Romains 8. L’issue de cette espérance est avant tout suspendue à la fidélité de Dieu. Relier la plainte de la création au cri du Fils de Dieu dans notre chair confirme la solidité d’une telle espérance de la gloire. (shrink)

Pour comprendre l'importance de l'oeuvre de Rousseau, il est nécessaire de retracer la trajectoire de cette figure singulière et controversée, au coeur du XVIIIe siècle. Le lecteur est ici invité à voir comment Rousseau inaugure la forme la plus conséquente d'autocritique des Lumières, au point de se placer à l'épicentre de la modernité. Les Lumières en effet s'incarnaient à Paris dans les salons par un certain rapport à la culture et à la sociabilité mondaine, qui était devenu un modèle dans (...) toute l'Europe. Réagissant à ce monde brillant de la conversation et des privilèges, Rousseau a explicité les formes de justification sur lesquelles il reposait, en a produit une critique radicale et en a proposé une alternative intellectuelle globale dans son anthropologie, sa politique, sa théorie de l'éducation, son roman et ses écrits autobiographiques. (shrink)

The Earth is increasingly hostile towards many living species and uninhabitable in some parts of the world. What is foretold in the coming decades is not the end of the world, but the end of the world as we know it. All over the world, many individuals (scientists, intellectuals, citizens) today believe in the inevitability of a collapse of our civilization and their existence is profoundly disrupted: can they still plan to start a family? Should they continue their studies, or (...) should they start preparing for survival today? Does existence still have any meaning? In clinical ethics consultations, we are confronted with requests for definitive contraception for environmental reasons that put the medical profession and the very foundations of clinical ethics in difficulty. What answers are legitimate? (shrink)

Programmed cell death (PCD) in unicellular organisms is in some instances an altruistic trait. When the beneficiaries are clones or close kin, kin selection theory may be used to explain the evolution of the trait, and when the trait evolves in groups of distantly related individuals, group or multilevel selection theory is invoked. In mixed microbial communities, the benefits are also available to unrelated taxa. But the evolutionary ecology of PCD in communities is poorly understood. Few hypotheses have been offered (...) concerning the community role of PCD despite its far-reaching effects. The hypothesis we consider here is that PCD is a black queen. The Black Queen Hypothesis (BQH) outlines how public goods arising from a leaky function are exploited by other taxa in the community. Black Queen (BQ) traits are essential for community survival, but only some members bear the cost of possessing them, while others lose the trait In addition, BQ traits have been defined in terms of adaptive gene loss, and it is unknown whether this has occurred for PCD. Our conclusion is that PCD fulfils the two most important criteria of a BQ (leakiness and costliness), but that more empirical data are needed for assessing the remaining two criteria. In addition, we hold that for viewing PCD as a BQ, the original BQH needs to include social traits. Thus, despite some empirical and conceptual shortcomings, the BQH provides a helpful avenue for investigating PCD in microbial communities. (shrink)

In 1952, Heinrich Scholz published a question in The Journal of Symbolic Logic asking for a characterization of spectra, i.e., sets of natural numbers that are the cardinalities of finite models of first order sentences. Günter Asser in turn asked whether the complement of a spectrum is always a spectrum. These innocent questions turned out to be seminal for the development of finite model theory and descriptive complexity. In this paper we survey developments over the last 50-odd years pertaining to (...) the spectrum problem. Our presentation follows conceptual developments rather than the chronological order. Originally a number theoretic problem, it has been approached by means of recursion theory, resource bounded complexity theory, classification by complexity of the defining sentences, and finally by means of structural graph theory. Although Scholz' question was answered in various ways, Asser's question remains open. (shrink)

The centromere is the region of the chromosome where the kinetochore forms. Kinetochores are the attachment sites for spindle microtubules that separate duplicated chromosomes in mitosis and meiosis. Kinetochore formation depends on a special chromatin structure containing the histone H3 variant CENP‐A. The epigenetic mechanisms that maintain CENP‐A chromatin throughout the cell cycle have been studied extensively but little is known about the mechanism that targets CENP‐A to naked centromeric DNA templates. In a recent report published in Science,1 such de (...) novo centromere assembly of CENP‐A is shown to be dependent on heterochromatin and the RNA interference pathway. BioEssays 30:526–529, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Résumé Proclamer un salut effectivement adressé à tous, sous le mode de l’offre, exige une conception forte de la Providence divine. À partir du troisième livre de la Somme contre les gentils de Thomas d’Aquin, l’étude montre comment l’argumentation métaphysique au sujet de l’extension universelle de la Providence à toutes choses (nécessités et contingences, singuliers et universaux) renforce la conviction selon laquelle l’économie du salut s’applique à tout homme singulier, suivant son propre itinéraire et ses choix libres. Une telle approche (...) serait toutefois incomplète si elle ne comportait pas un appel intrinsèque à l’accomplissement christologique de la foi en la Providence. (shrink)

Dans la première moitié du xxe siècle, une tendance à la remythologisation caractérise le roman. Proust, Thomas Mann et Faulkner permettent à Gilbert Durand de dresser un portrait de « l’immortel » héros à partir de quatre traits : le temps sans mort et sans souci de sa propre fin ; le temps qui passe de l’entropie à l’infinie répétition ; l’obsession du sang ; l’absence d’âme et d’état d’âme. Le roman perd tout sentimentalisme, tout réalisme, tout psychologisme. Le (...) romancier mythographe accède ainsi à l’imaginaire immémorial du mythe. In the first half of the 20th century, novels are often characterized by a tendency to remythologization. Proust, Thomas Mann and Faulkner help Gilbert Durand to draw up a portrait of the new “immortal” heroes in a fictive world based on four features: time without death and without any concern for its own end; time which passes from entropy to infinite repetition of itself ; the obsession for blood; the lack of soul and state of mind. Consequently, the novel loses any sentimentality, realism or psychologism. So, the novelist as mythographer accedes to the immemorial imagination’s power of myth. (shrink)

Les études tentant de répondre à la question " Qu'est-ce que la justice? " et à cette autre, inséparable, " Qu'est-ce qu'une société juste? " sont assez nombreuses ces dernières années, mais elles ne sont pas toujours faciles d'accès, au contraire du livre d'Alain Durand. Par un discours systématique et structuré, il présente quelques réflexions occasionnées par des lectures ou par des événements et tendances de fond liés à l'actualité. L'auteur se confronte à de grands auteurs qui, depuis Aristote (...) jusqu'à John Rawls, sans oublier d'autres penseurs plus récents, ont substantiellement enrichi les approches de la justice sociale. Une attention particulière est accordée à l'apport du christianisme. La foi, en effet, ne cesse d'apparaître comme une force d'interrogations radicales pour l'élaboration d'une société plus juste. Et l'Eglise, qui doit être attentive aux priorités et aux dérives dans ce domaine, est ainsi conduite à des remises en question, tant en elle-même, que dans un monde devenu éthiquement pluraliste. La lecture de ce livre peut être faite assez librement, par les multiples portes d'entrée qu'il offre. (shrink)