A generalized third-order autonomous Duffing–Holmes system is proposed and deeply investigated. The proposed system is obtained by adding a parametric quadratic term m x 2 to the cubic nonlinear term − x 3 of an existing third-order autonomous Duffing–Holmes system. This modification allows the system to feature smoothly adjustable nonlinearity, symmetry, and nontrivial equilibria. A particular attention is given to the effects of symmetric and asymmetric nonlinearity on the dynamics of the system. For the specific case of m = 0, (...) the system is symmetric and interesting phenomena are observed, namely, coexistence of symmetric bifurcations, presence of parallel branches, and the coexistence of four and six symmetric attractors. For m ≠ 0, the system loses its symmetry. This favors the emergence of other behaviors, such as the coexistence of asymmetric bifurcations, involving the coexistence of several asymmetric attractors. All these phenomena have been numerically highlighted using nonlinear dynamic tools and an analog computer of the system. In fact, PSpice simulations of the latter confirm numerical results. Moreover, amplitude control and synchronization strategies are also provided in order to promote the exploitation of the proposed system in engineering. (shrink)

The essential junkiness of our culture and biology.

Époque de transition, la Renaissance connaît une série d’évolutions de l’idée politique d’empire (héritée du Moyen Âge) vers la réalité moderne d’un vaste marché coordonnant progressivement les économies nationales particulières et leurs réseaux d’influence. Ces évolutions permettent-elles d’évoquer la mise en place d’une « version économique de l’empire » ? Peut-on regarder ce qui se joue à la Renaissance, saisie à travers ses relations géopolitiques, comme la préfiguration de la globalisation ? L’article examine ces questions à partir de plusieurs hypothèses (...) et défend la thèse que l’idée d’empire subit à cette époque des « métamorphoses », c’est-à-dire des évolutions qui en modifient le concept, notamment en ce qui concerne le rapport entre domination et territorialité. (shrink)

Taking advantage of the fact that they need not replicate their DNA, terminally differentiated neurons only repair their expressed genes and largely dispense with the burden of removing damage from most of their genome. However, they may pay a heavy price for this laxity if unforeseen circumstances, such as a pathological condition like Alzheimer's disease, cause them to re‐enter the cell cycle. The lifetime accumulation of unrepaired lesions in the silent genes of neurons is likely to be significant and may (...) result in aborting the mitotic process and triggering cell death if the cells attempt to express these dormant genes and resume DNA replication. BioEssays 25:168–173, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this interview, Anne Fagot-Largeault discusses with Thierry Bardini her recollections of the life and work of French philosopher Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989). The discussion covers Simondon’s theory of individuation and considers its influences on contemporary thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and François Laruelle. Fagot-Largeault situates Simondon’s thinking within the broader context of 20th-century biological research and the development of life sciences. Informed by her personal association and experiences working with Simondon, her reminiscences shed light on the unique character of (...) Simondon as a person and as a thinker. (shrink)

Une analyse de la dimension egoiste de la personnalite de Montaigne, prise dans un sens moral, qui romprait avec la traditionnelle emprise de la sphere publique sur le prive, posant les jalons d'une pensee liberale. Il confronte la pensee du philosophe a celle d'Habermas, d'Arendt, de Derrida et de Rand pour en devoiler l'heritage.

Thierry Meynard examines how the Jesuits in China came to understand the Confucian tradition, and how they offered the first complete translation of the Lunyu in the West, in the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus.

Objective: Body dissatisfaction is a major risk factor underlying vulnerability to eating disorders. Laboratory settings suggest that body dissatisfaction could be improved by using evaluative conditioning (EC). The present study evaluates the feasibility of using an EC app in everyday life and the effects of its use on body dissatisfaction. Method: We designed a game-like app inspired by the Therapeutic Evaluative Conditioning app. 60 participants were randomly assigned to two conditions. Participants in the EC condition had to pair photographs of (...) their own body with positive photographs, while participants in the neutral condition had to pair photographs of their own body with neutral photographs. We tested the effect of use of the app on body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, self-esteem, mood and eating behaviors. Results: Analysis revealed that participants in all conditions presented a significant decrease in body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness. However, contrary to our hypothesis, these reductions were not greater in the EC condition than in the neutral condition. Conclusions: This is the first study to evaluate the effects of an app-based EC intervention targeting body image. Results appear to be promising and the app could easily be implemented in an ecological setting as it is a low effort, attractive and accessible intervention. However, these findings do not support the idea that evaluative conditioning is responsible for the effects. Results are discussed. (shrink)

Thierry Laronde basing on the statement of the social utility of ideas, to denounce the policy of the European Office of Patents in which he blames for accepting in facts, software patenting and limit so the social circulation of ideas. Indeed in the case of the software, originality, only patentable, does not lie as in the theory as in an implementation by a soft-engineer which participates in a chain in which the assertion of an individual right is difficult even (...) impossible. A contrario GNU’s General Public Licence facilitates the distribution of the knowledge’s distribution, by the spread and the re-use of the code even though it does not offer any guarantee against the patenting of ideas. (shrink)

We show that the untyped λ -calculus can be extended with Frege's interpretation of propositional notions, provided we restrict β -conversion to positive expressions. The system of illative λ -calculus so obtained admits a natural Scott-style semantics.

The aim of this volume is to provide an exhaustive and updated analysis and discussion of the philosophy of Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 (1893–1988), one of the most contested figures of modern Chinese intellectual history. For the last 100 years, his thought has been interpreted in such contrasting and contradictory ways—as Buddhist, Confucian, and Marxist, as conservative and modernist—that it seems at times difficult to grasp who the “real” Liang was. Confronted with the many faces of the man and his thought, (...) researchers can either attempt to discern the one identity that ties them all together or allow for the multifaceted nature of his thought to remain open and focus on the diversity and tensions inherent in it. The present volume opts for the latter option. (shrink)

Fifty years after his death, the thought of the French scientist and Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) continues to inspire new ways of understanding humanity’s future. Trained as a paleontologist and philosopher, Teilhard was an innovative synthesizer of science and religion, developing an idea of evolution as an unfolding of material and mental worlds into an integrated, holistic universe at what he called the Omega Point. His books, such as the bestselling The Phenomenon of Man, have influenced generations of (...) ecologists, environmentalists, planners, and others concerned with the fate of the earth.This book brings together original essays by leading experts who reflect on Teilhard’s legacy for today’s globalized world. They explore such topics as: the idea of God and the person; quantum reality and Teilhard’s vision; spiritual resources for the future; politics and economics; and a charter for co-evolution. (shrink)

Presenting a series of historical portraits of Bantu, Thierry Secretan recounts his investigation into the compounds that housed the black labor of the gold mines of the Rand, around Johannesburg. The use of a « pass » to control the black miners prefigured the apartheid system. From 1904 to 1939,Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, an Irish guard at one of the compounds, began to photograph the different kind of people doing the hard labor in the mines. The results were some 7200 (...) exposures and working prints, on 13 /18 cm negatives. Hundreds of enlargements were exhibited from 1925 onward in a gallery in his own home in Kimberley. These photographs were rediscovered in 1998 by Thierry Secretan, who is still attempting to save them front slow destruction: they constitute an extraordinary catalogue of the Bantu cultures. (shrink)

À l'occasion du projet d'informatisation du contrôle aérien civil qui débute en 1961, une équipe de psychologues est associée aux ingénieurs chargés de la réalisation du nouveau système pour l'adapter aux conditions particulières du travail des « aiguilleurs du ciel ». Cette collaboration permet à l'ergonomie de l'informatique de forger ses premiers concepts et de les appliquer au Cautra . Hébergés dès 1969 par l'Institut de recherche en informatique et en automatique , l'équipe d'André Bisseret découvre les difficultés du travail (...) transdisciplinaire avec une communauté informaticienne se défiant de cette irruption incompréhensible de psychologues sur son territoire de compétence. Ces conflits, incompréhensions et rencontres manquées n'empêchent pas l'ergonomie de développer ses recherches autour des notions d'utilisateur et d'interface et de proposer des réponses aux interrogations et aux angoisses que l'ordinateur fait naître dans le grand public dès le milieu des années 1970.On the occasion of the computerization project of civil air traffic control starting in 1961, a team of psychologists is associated with the engineers responsible for implementation of the new system to adapt to the unique circumstances of the "air traffic". This collaboration enables the ergonomics of the computer first forging his concepts and apply them to Cautra . Hosted in 1969 by the Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control , André Bisseret team discovers the difficulties of working with an interdisciplinary community informaticienne distrustful of this irruption incomprehensible psychologists on its jurisdiction. These conflicts, misunderstandings and missed connections do not prevent the development of ergonomics research around the concepts of user interface and provide answers to questions and anxieties that the computer gives rise to the general public from the mid-1970s. (shrink)

"Based on the reading of the only twelfth-century manuscript of the Enigma extant, Charleville MS. 114, and an examination of the fifteenth-century manuscript Uppsala C. 79." Revision of the editor's thesis, Catholic University of America, 1971, presented under title: The enigma fidei of William of Saint Thierry, a translation and commentary. Bibliography: p. 119-120.

Formal topology aims at developing general topology in intuitionistic and predicative mathematics. Many classical results of general topology have been already brought into the realm of constructive mathematics by using formal topology and also new light on basic topological notions was gained with this approach which allows distinction which are not expressible in classical topology. Here we give a systematic exposition of one of the main tools in formal topology: inductive generation. In fact, many formal topologies can be presented in (...) a predicative way by an inductive generation and thus their properties can be proved inductively. We show however that some natural complete Heyting algebra cannot be inductively defined. (shrink)

The present paper examines how discursive representations and emotive constructions underpin an argumentative dynamic that emerges from apparently non-argumentative statements, like those found in newspaper headlines. Our data comes from Greek broadsheet newspapers in the polarized context of the Greek crisis. First, we outline an analytic synergy that scrutinizes representational meaning and the semiotization of emotions in headlines. We then move towards the reconstruction of the inferential passage, contained in the headlines, that unites the implicit standpoint with its supporting argument.

Valorising the biocultural heritage of common goods could enable peasant farmers to achieve socially and economically inclusive sustainability. Increasingly appreciated by consumers, peasant heritage products offer small farmers promising opportunities for economic, social and territorial development. Identifying the obstacles and levers of this complex, multi-scale and multi-stakeholder objective requires an integrative framework. We applied the panarchy conceptual framework to two cases of participatory research with small quinoa producers: a local fair in Chile and quinoa export production in Bolivia. In both (...) cases, the “commoning” process was crucial both to bring stakeholders together inside their communities and to gain outside recognition for their production and thus achieve social and economic inclusion. Despite the differences in scale, the local fair and the export market shared a similar marketing strategy based on short value chains promoting quality products with high identity value. In these dynamics of biocultural heritage valorisation, the panarchical approach revealed the central place as well as the vulnerability of the community territory. As a place of both anchoring and opening, the community territory is the privileged space where autonomous and consensual control over the governance of common biocultural resources can be exercised. (shrink)

. The effort in providing constructive and predicative meaning to non-constructive modes of reasoning has almost without exception been applied to theories with full classical logic [4]. In this paper we show how to combine unrestricted countable choice, induction on infinite well-founded trees and restricted classical logic in constructively given models. These models are sheaf models over a $\sigma$ -complete Boolean algebra, whose topologies are generated by finite or countable covering relations. By a judicious choice of the Boolean algebra we (...) can directly extract effective content from $\Pi_2^0$ -statements true in the model. All the arguments of the present paper can be formalised in Martin-Löf's constructive type theory with generalised inductive definitions. (shrink)

This paper argues that some words are so highly charged with meaning by a community that they may prevent a discussion during which each participant is on an equal footing. These words are indeed either unanimously accepted or rejected. The presence of these adjectival groups pushes the antagonist to find rhetorical strategies to circumvent them. The main idea we want to develop is that some propositions are not easily debatable in context because of some specific value-bearing words, and one of (...) the goals of this paper is to build a methodological tool for finding and classifying these VBWs. Our study echoes the importance of “cultural keywords” in argument, but is rather based on a German approach developed by,, and about “Miranda” and “Anti-Miranda” words that is expanded and refined here. In particular, our study tries to understand why some statements, fueled by appreciative or evaluative adjectives, have such rhetorical effects on a pragmatic level in the particular context of a vote on the Swiss popular initiative called “for more affordable housing”. This context is fruitful since two parties offer reasons for two opposing policy claims: namely, to accept or to reject an initiative. When one party uses arguments containing such universally unassailable adjectival groups to defend a “yes” vote, the opposing party cannot use a symmetrical antonym while pleading for the “no” vote. The methodological tool that is proposed here could shed light on the use of certain rhetorical and referential strategies in conflicting policy proposition contexts. (shrink)

In the beginning, Savransky's book offers a copious list of many worlds that we may or may not inhabit or even know about: a world where the dead are persons with whom the living confer, a world where part of the year the sun never sets, a world where sorcery-lions stalk their victims, a world where fictional characters give advice to novel readers, a world where immortal fungi live in disturbed forests, and and and (without end). This is a “world (...) of many worlds,” say Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser; a “pluralistic universe,” says William James. But neither phrase tells us what the world is like. They only stand for a practical and burning question at a time when the erasure of differences goes on at a breathtaking pace and the worlds face globalizing forces that fracture the multiple practices through which beings exist.These attempts at world erasures were and are by no means inevitable, and Savransky offers us, more precious than any explanation, a story about the past that helps us feel important aspects of what continues to occur. The story concerns the fraction of Magellan's circumnavigating crew arriving back in Spain in 1522, and by retelling it Savransky gives us a striking sense of the crew not so much having crossed the globe as having invented it. As in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days (1872), the journey legitimized the conception of a unified reality, a globe, everywhere of the same quality, whose local particularities are but obstacles to overcome, resources to exploit, or exotic mysteries to visit. The main effort of Savransky's book, then, is to gather means that might empower ways of thinking, feeling, and living in a brazen reversal of Verne's title—around the day in eighty (or a thousand) worlds.Savransky is by no means alone in this task, and many anthropological and philosophical proposals have contributed. He comments on some of these with a view to learning from their inventiveness rather than to pointing out their shortcomings. Still, we have learned from the fate of such proposals and experiments the startling ease with which the vision of a unified reality can creep back into the best attempts at thinking about a world of many worlds. Take, for instance, the language of ontology that has enabled us to hear from other worlds things of which we could not imagine reality was capable. But then, as Savransky shows, those gains are nearly lost when ontology turns into a turn—the “ontological turn”—and the anthropologists sail off around the world, posing the question “What is your ontology?” to people who could not care less about ontology.From James especially, Savransky borrows many proposals, two of which I will mention here. First is the need to reclaim philosophical Realism from those who made it a weapon of disqualification. James himself was the keen proponent of a Realism that we might call generic: “reality feels like itself,” any experience is real, and no experience should be required to justify its existence. Second, if “reality feels like itself,” then we may expect to experience “worldquakes” whenever we happen to brush up against other worlds. Perhaps the most compelling meaning that we may assign, following James, to pluriverse, is the notion and experience of “the” world being not only more than one, but also more than many—a sense of the real as inseverable from a more. Thus Savransky writes, along these lines, that “the pluriverse is not a world we dream might come about—it is what makes us dream.”. (shrink)

The romance customarily termed “classical” occupies a special place within Cambodian literature as a whole. The term betrays a certain Eurocentrism and is justified only because the written language of this type of text is neither the old Khmer of epigraphic inscriptions, nor modern Khmer, but the form of the language known as “middle Khmer,” which in theory designates the period from the fourteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century, and of which we have written records from the (...) eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the romances as we know them. While these romances share one significant feature with Khmer literature as a whole, they are distinguished by other characteristics that are peculiar to them. (shrink)

Le premier chapitre de la Métaphysique allemande ne comprend que neuf paragraphes et semble ne représenter qu' une sorte de préambule. De ce fait, on peut avoir le sentiment que la métaphysique ne commence à proprement parler qu'avec le § 10, lequel ouvre, avec l'énoncé du principe de contradiction, la partie ontologique de l'ouvrage. Pourtant, Wolff fait figurer dans cette première partie des considérations qui concernent de très près le commencement de sa philosophie: il présente tout d'abord quelque chose comme (...) un cogito. De plus, les acquis de ce premier chapitre sont repris à l'ouverture des cinq autres chapitres qui suivent : y aurait-il là matière à affirmer que la métaphysique wolffienne est fondée dans une expérience psychologique? Cette hypothèse est donc ici testée par l'examen successif des statuts de l' Ontologie, de la Logique et de la Psychologie empirique au travers d'une lecture conjointe de la Métaphysique allemande et de la Logique allemande. The first chapter of the German Metaphysics gathers only nine paragraphs and seems to represent but some kind of a preamble. Hence one may feel that metaphysics begins only with paragraph 10 opening the ontological part of the text with the contradiction principle. Yet Wolff already mentions a few considerations in this first part that are extremely close to the beginning of his philosophy : he presents from the start something very similar to a cogito. Moreover the assets of this first chapter are recaptured whenever every one of the five following chapters opens. Would there be therein sufficient matter at stake to evidence that the Wolffian Metaphysics is grounded in a psychological experience? Hence the author tests here such a hypothesis through the successive analysis of the status of Ontology, of Logics and of empirical Psychology, through a joint reading of the German Metaphysics and of the German Logics. (shrink)

This article proposes a multidisciplinary alternative framework to the classical model of the diffusion of innovations, to analyze the potential uses of microcomputers for development. The emphasis on the indigenous knowledge systems translates a paradigm shift in the analysis of technology transfer. This shift requires the integration of the user’s knowledge as the condition of the adoption of the innovation. Expert systems based on indigenous knowledge can help make this shift possible if they are used to understand the cognitive processes (...) of the indigenous knowledge, rather than to mimic their performance. (shrink)

Les nouvelles formes de démocratie dans la métropole s'affirment aujourd'hui en Europe en relation concrète avec de grandes opérations architecturales. De multiples groupes y affirment leurs besoins spécifiques dans la vision de la ville qui leur est propre. L'actuelle rénovation des Halles constitue de ce point de vue un cas d'école pour analyser les potentialités de glissements progressifs des impératifs de la technologie fordienne vers la geste architecturale spectaculaire, puis des expertises citoyennes qui dessinent d'autres besoins jusqu'ici ignorés par l'institué. (...) Dans ces mutations, les dimensions à la fois technique et esthétique de l'architecture lui permettent de focaliser les échanges entre ces multiples points de vue dans la ville. La situation parisienne permet aussi de mettre en évidence les fortes pesanteurs de son système étatique par rapport à d'autres métropoles européennes. (shrink)

The city, in a centralised environment, is a main public space to manage for any control over globalisation when « coordinating groups » of workers allow citizens to politically invest its economic developement.

Cet ouvrage a pour enjeu de débattre du schéma théorique forgé par Alfred Schütz, promoteur de l'idée de sociologie phénoménologique (puisant son cadre analytique dans une lecture de la sociologie compréhensive weberienne, de la philosophie de la durée bergsonienne, et de la phénoménologie husserlienne). Les catégories princeps de la recherche sont dès lors celles de conscience, de temporalité et de signification. La structure phénoménologique de l'expérience sociale, l'essence de la compréhension intersubjective, les perspectives offertes par les tenants d'une sociologie formiste (...) en matière d'entendement de l'interaction, sont les thèmes majeurs de ce débat. Dans le cadre de cette lecture, Thierry Blin tente d'établir les principes d'une sociologie phénoménologique formiste ou structurale, permettant ainsi de fonder à nouveaux frais une sociologie de l'action. (shrink)

We show that the set of points of an overt closed subspace of a metric completion of a Bishop-locally compact metric space is located. Consequently, if the subspace is, moreover, compact, then its collection of points is Bishop-compact. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Si l’immunité du philosophe de la connaissance aux penchants irrationalistes et au modèle tyrannique de Kraus ne fait pas de doute, l’intérêt pour ses outils trouve son sens dans la prise de conscience par le rationaliste des limites de l’Aufklärung. Contre les tentations élitistes de certains enthousiastes naïfs (la liberté naîtra de la lucidité acquise par la seule science et le seul exercice de la raison), Bouveresse tient la satire et l’ironie pour indispensables : le monde intellectuel n’est pas moins (...) violent et injuste que les autres mondes sociaux ; on ne peut y défendre l’honnêteté intellectuelle et l’exigence de justice sociale et économique sans accompagner l’exercice de la raison et les luttes pour un monde égalitaire par l’exercice d’une contre-violence au moins équivalente à la violence de l’attaque dont sont l’objet ces valeurs inséparables aux yeux du démocrate armé. (shrink)