In recent decades the expression "molecular biology" has progressively disappeared from journals, and no longer designates new chairs or departments. This begs the question: does it mean that molecular biology is dead, and has been displaced by new emerging disciplines such as systems biology and synthetic biology? Maybe its reductionist approach to living phenomena has been substituted by one that is more holistic. The situation, undoubtedly, is far less simple. To appreciate better what has happened it is necessary to acknowledge (...) the following: the intial project of molecular biologists was not a reductionist one, but an attempt to naturalize the phenomena of life by using the epistemological principles of physics as a model; and, it is necessary to distinguish the early stages of molecular biology, and the later aggregating process which gave it its present characteristics. Only one of these characteristics, the importance of the informational vision, has been seriously challenged in recent years. But it is obvious that the ambition of most early molecular biologists to discover simple rules and principles explaining all of biological facts has vanished. The pendulum has now moved toward the study of the diversity generated by a long evolutionary history. (shrink)

This book is an English-language translation of a bestselling book in France that explores the relationship between humans and new technologies.

An ode to Schopenhauer by one of France's most famous living authors.

An interview with Michel Foucault in 1979 that was never published during his lifetime and was recently rediscovered in the archives. The interview, appearing for the first time in English and in its complete form, marks one of Foucault’s final public discussions of the contentious topic of the Iranian Revolution. In particular, Foucault clarifies what he means by “political spirituality” and addresses the respective relations between religion, revolution, and self-transformation.

In this paper, we provide a detailed critical review of current approaches to ecthesis in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, with a view to motivate a new approach, which builds upon previous work by Marion & Rückert (2016) on the dictum de omni. This approach sets Aristotle’s work within the context of dialectic and uses Lorenzen’s dialogical logic, hereby reframed with use of Martin-Löf's constructive type theory as ‘immanent reasoning’. We then provide rules of syllogistic for the latter, and provide proofs of (...) e-conversion, Darapti and Bocardo and e-subalternation, while showing how close to Aristotle’s text these proofs remain. (shrink)

In this reflection on the relation between nature and culture, Michel Serres relates the present environmental catastrophe to pollution generated by humanity's efforts to appropriate.

We investigate the expressivity of many-valued modal logics based on an algebraic structure with a complete linearly ordered lattice reduct. Necessary and sufficient algebraic conditions for admitting a suitable Hennessy–Milner property are established for classes of image-finite and modally saturated models. Full characterizations are obtained for many-valued modal logics based on complete BL-chains that are finite or have the real unit interval [0, 1] as a lattice reduct, including Łukasiewicz, Gödel, and product modal logics.

In the article, a yes–no model of influence is generalized to a multi-choice framework. We introduce and study the weighted influence indices of a coalition on a player in a social network where the players have an ordered set of possible actions. Each player has an inclination to choose one of the actions. Due to the mutual influence among players, the final decision of each player may be different from his original inclination. In a particular case, the decision of the (...) player is closer to the inclination of the influencing coalition than his inclination was, i.e., the distance between the inclinations of the player and of the coalition is greater than the distance between the decision of the player and the inclination of the coalition in question. The weighted influence index which captures such a case is called the weighted positive influence index. We also consider the weighted negative influence index where the final decision of the player goes farther away from the inclination of the coalition. We consider several influence functions defined in the generalized model of influence and study their properties. The concept of a follower of a given coalition and its particular case, a perfect follower, are defined. The properties of the set of followers are analyzed. (shrink)

This article explains how strong sustainability ethics has emerged and developed as a new field over the last two decades as a critical response to influential conceptions of weak sustainability. It investigates three competing, normative approaches to strong sustainability: the communitarian approach, the Rawlsian approach, and the capabilities approach. Although these approaches converge around the idea that there are critical, non-substitutable natural resources and services, they diverge on how to reconcile human development and environmental protection. The aim of the paper (...) is to provide a critical overview of these three perspectives, but also and mostly to show that when we put them into dialogue with each other, we can clarify the demands of sustainability. The paper concludes that the capabilities approach is the most suitable way to think about sustainability, but only if it goes beyond its dominantly anthropocentric view. (shrink)

Philosophe français spécialiste de logique, Edmond Goblot (1858-1935) est avant tout connu pour un essai de sociologie décapant, La Barrière et le Niveau (1925), qui pose pour la première fois les fondements d'une théorie de la distinction sociale. Délaissant l'analyse matérialiste des classes au profit d'une perspective culturelle originale, Goblot décrypte sans complaisance les moeurs de la bourgeoisie française, monde qu'il connaît d'autant mieux qu'il en est lui-même issu. Condisciple d'Henri Bergson et d'Emile Durkheim à l'Ecole normale supérieure, Goblot ne (...) bénéficiera pas de la même aura que ses deux anciens camarades. L'histoire de leurs relations, et plus généralement de Goblot avec ses collègues philosophes de la IIIe République, n'en constitue pas moins un prisme original pour comprendre les transformations d'une activité, la philosophie, alors en pleine mutation. Portrait sociologique d'un professeur ordinaire, cet ouvrage opte pour un double parti pris. Il met d'abord en évidence les entrelacs entre trajectoire sociale et choix intellectuels, y compris dans un domaine aussi aride que la logique. Il montre ensuite que La Barrière et le Niveau n'est pas un accident de parcours intellectuel mais l'application au monde social des thèses originales défendues en logique par Goblot. L'ouvrage propose en ce sens une nouvelle interprétation de ce grand classique des sciences sociales qu'est devenu La Barrière et le Niveau. (shrink)

Quantum Mechanics has imposed strain on traditional (dualist and representationalist) epistemological conceptions. An alternative was offered by Bohr and Heisenberg, according to whom natural science does not describe nature, but rather the interplay between nature and ourselves. But this was only a suggestion. In this paper, a systematic development of the Bohr-Heisenberg conception is outlined, by way of a comparison with the modern self-organizational theories of cognition. It is shown that a perfectly consistent non-representationalist (and/or relational) reading of quantum mechanics (...) can be reached thus. (shrink)

We give a general method for producing various effective Null and Positivstellensätze, and getting new Positivstellensätze in algebraically closed valued fields and ordered groups. These various effective Nullstellensätze produce algebraic identities certifying that some geometric conditions cannot be simultaneously satisfied. We produce also constructive versions of abstract classical results of algebra based on Zorn's lemma in several cases where such constructive version did not exist. For example, the fact that a real field can be totally ordered, or the fact that (...) a field can be embedded in an algebraically closed field. Our results are based on the concepts we develop of dynamical proofs and simultaneous collapse. (shrink)

Contemporary poetry—true to the changes brought about by the poetics of modernity at the turn of the century—far from glorifying the ‘lyrical illusion’ and from favouring ‘romantic’ identifications with heroes standing ‘alone against all’, that madness of a subject believing himself to be the only exception to the law, had in fact to tone down its song, had to pull down its hopes, had to interiorize its failures in order to turn them into paradoxes … What failures? The failures of (...) the poets who thought they were failing. Contemporary poetry has therefore to meditate the different figures of paradoxical failure (the failure that is in no way a simple failure); namely, to distinguish the failures of Baudelaire from that of Rimbaud, from that of Mallarmé …. (shrink)

Une approche interdisciplinaire du concept de personne permet de mettre en évidence toutes les difficultés à le définir et la fragilité de ce qu’il veut embrasser intellectuellement. Mais « si la personne revient, écrit Paul Ricœur, c’est qu’elle est le meilleur candidat pour soutenir les combats juridiques, politiques et sociaux ». Or une réflexion responsable sur la personne ne peut pas ignorer la voix, même ténue, d’Emmanuel Mounier. Car bien qu’il soit un mouvement protéiforme, le personnalisme évoque, en France, immanquablement (...) le nom de ce penseur inclassable, et de sa revue Esprit. Le personnalisme de Mounier affirme le primat de la personne humaine sur les nécessités matérielles et sur les appareils collectifs qui soutiennent son développement, tout en la distinguant de l’individu en ce qu’elle est une conscience de l’être au monde, par la découverte de l’incarnation, par l’appel à s’approprier la singularité de son existence dans la recherche d’autrui, et par la constitution d’une communauté. Cet article mettra en valeur que le personnalisme de Mounier est d’essence chrétienne et se fonde dans une métaphysique de la relation, sans faire l’impasse sur les reproches, infondés, qu’on fait parfois à Mounier, d’avoir eu, dans sa critique du libéralisme et de la démocratie, des sympathies pour le fascisme. (shrink)

L’éthique gouvernementale s’est développée comme réflexion critique au cœur des institutions gouvernementales. L’auteur entend situer l’éthique gouvernementale dans ses rapports avec l’éthique sociale et l’éthique fondamentale après avoir défini ces notions. Au cœur de cette articulation, l’éthique gouvernementale se veut la gardienne de l’animal politique pour le respect du plus grand bonheur de tous et de chacun.