This classic work in the philosophy of physical science is an incisive and readable account of the scientific method. Pierre Duhem was one of the great figures in French science, a devoted teacher, and a distinguished scholar of the history and philosophy of science. This book represents his most mature thought on a wide range of topics.

La définition platonicienne du philosophe; la philosophie comme mode de vie; rupture et continuité, le Moyen Age et les temps modernes. [SDM].

Over the last four decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died two years ago, he was considered to be a thinker on a par with Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan--a public intellectual as influential to his generation as Sartre was to his. Science of Science and Reflexivity will be welcomed as a companion volume to Bourdieu's now seminal An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (...) . In this posthumous work, Bourdieu declares that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research--that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit. Science thus endangered can become detrimental to mankind. The line between pure and applied science, therefore, must be subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny. Bourdieu's goals in Science of Science and Reflexivity are to identify the social conditions in which science develops in order to reclaim its objectivity and to rescue it from relativism and the forces that might exploit it. In the grand tradition of scientific reflections on science, Bourdieu provides a sociological analysis of the discipline as something capable of producing transhistorical truths he presents an incisive critique of the main currents in the study of science throughout the past half century and he offers a spirited defense of science against encroaching political and economic forces. A masterful summation of the principles underlying Bourdieu's oeuvre and a memoir of his own scientific journey, Science of Science and Reflexivity is a capstone to one of the most important and prodigious careers in the field of sociology. (shrink)

The mapping of numbers onto space is fundamental to measurement and to mathematics. Is this mapping a cultural invention or a universal intuition shared by all humans regardless of culture and education? We probed number-space mappings in the Mundurucu, an Amazonian indigene group with a reduced numerical lexicon and little or no formal education. At all ages, the Mundurucu mapped symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers onto a logarithmic scale, whereas Western adults used linear mapping with small or symbolic numbers and logarithmic (...) mapping when numbers were presented nonsymbolically under conditions that discouraged counting. This indicates that the mapping of numbers onto space is a universal intuition and that this initial intuition of number is logarithmic. The concept of a linear number line appears to be a cultural invention that fails to develop in the absence of formal education. (shrink)

Discusses the importance and development of analytical sociology, emphasizing the centrality of mechanisms in explaining social life.

The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of somatic evolution by natural selection to our understanding of cancer development. I do so in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I ask to what extent cancer cells meet the formal requirements for evolution by natural selection, relying on Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) framework of Darwinian populations. I argue that although they meet the minimal requirements for natural selection, cancer cells are not paradigmatic Darwinian populations. In the second (...) part of the paper, I examine the most important examples of adaptation in cancer cells. I argue that they are not significant accumulations of evolutionary changes, and that as a consequence natural selection plays a lesser role in their explanation. Their explanation, I argue, is best sought in the previously existing wiring of the healthy cells. (shrink)

These selections from Le système du monde, the classic ten-volume history of the physical sciences written by the great French physicist Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), focus on cosmology, Duhem's greatest interest. By reconsidering the work of such Arab and Christian scholars as Averroes, Avicenna, Gregory of Rimini, Albert of Saxony, Nicole Oresme, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam, Duhem demonstrated the sophistication of medieval science and cosmology.

In a paper published in Psychological Review, Tyler Burge has offered a unified non-mentalistic account of a wide range of social cognitive developmental findings. His proposal is that far from attributing mental states, young children attribute to humans the same kind of internal generic states of sensory registration that biologists attribute to e.g. snails and ticks. Burge’s proposal deserves close attention: it is especially challenging because it departs from both the mentalistic and all the non-mentalistic accounts of the data so (...) far. Moreover Burge has been one of the leading philosophers of mind of the past 40 years and some of his writings on the objectivity of perception display a deep understanding of the relevance of science for sharpening our understanding of the mind. After taking a close look at the developmental evidence, in particular at false-belief studies, I argue that Burge’s, 409–434, 2018) account faces severe obstacles. To give one telling example: if young children can only attribute to others sensory registrations, then it is hard to explain the evidence showing that they respond differently to an agent’s ignorance and to her false belief. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died in 2002, he was considered to be the most influential sociologist in the world and a thinker on a par with Foucault and Le;vi-Strauss—a public intellectual as important to his generation as Sartre was to his. Sketch for a Self-Analysis is the ultimate outcome of Bourdieu’s lifelong preoccupation with reflexivity. Vehemently not (...) an autobiography, this unique book is instead an application of Bourdieu’s theories to his own life and intellectual trajectory; along the way it offers compelling and intimate insights into the most important French intellectuals of the time—including Foucault, Sartre, Aron, Althusser, and de Beauvoir—as well as Bourdieu’s own formative experiences at boarding school and his moral outrage at the colonial war in Algeria. (shrink)

This paper reviews Deleuze’s theory of language in Logic of Sense, and Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of language in A Thousand Plateaus. In the ontology informed by the Stoics described in those books, human being and language do not exist separately but in a mixture of words and things. The author argues that this flattened ontology of surfaces is incommensurable with the ontology of depth used in conventional humanist qualitative methodology and recommends beginning new empirical inquiry with a concept instead (...) of with method and methodology. (shrink)

"What is at stake in this book is nothing less than a dramatically new way of approaching literature, one which in its unostentatious, low key way scandalously smashes a whole range of liberal humanist icons." --Terry Eagleton Who is more important: the reader, or the writer? Originally published in French in 1966, Pierre Macherey's first and most famous work, A Theory of Literary Production dared to challenge perceived wisdom, and quickly established him as a pivotal figure in literary theory. (...) In this provocative work, Macherey puts the focus as much on the reader as the writer, stating that the very act of reading is a form of production in its own right, generating interpretation and meanings which are beyond the control of the author. Part of the birth of a whole new branch of post-structuralist theory, Macherey's work also influenced a new generation of critics among them Jacques Derrida, his contemporary, and Terry Eagleton. His ideas have also led some observers to claim that he announced the death of the author fully two years before Roland Barthes' famous essay. The reissue of this work as a Routledge Classic brings some radical ideas to a new audience, and argues persuasively for a totally new way of reading. As such, it is an essential work for anyone interested in the development of literary theory. (shrink)

Cet article propose une interprétation de la métaphysique de Jankélévitch telle qu’elle se présente dans Philosophie première (1953). L’élaboration d’une déontologie métaphysique conduit Jankélévitch, par-delà le destin onto-théologique des métaphysiques classiques, à déployer une théologie « désontologisée », c’est-à-dire un discours sur Dieu dépouillé de l’être et de l’existence. Une telle détermination théologique de la métaphysique met alors nécessairement le métaphysicien à l’épreuve de l’expression de ce qui n’existe pas et qui pourtant fait exister. Ce que nous comprenons ainsi comme (...) un échec du discours métaphysique sur son objet théologique, dans l’ordre de la métaphysique, possède toutefois une fonction dans l’œuvre de Jankélévitch : fournir son modèle à l’action morale humaine. Dans un double mouvement, cette lecture achemine donc la métaphysique vers la théologie, avant de redéployer la morale depuis cette théologie. (shrink)

As stressed by Perruchet & Vinter, the SOC model echoes Johnson-Laird's mental model theory. Indeed, the latter rejects rule-based processing and assumes that reasoning is achieved through the manipulation of conscious representations. However, the mental model theory as well as its modified versions resorts to the abstraction of complex schemas and some form of implicit logic that seems incompatible with the SOC approach.

How can we best understand human cognitive architectural variability? We believe that the relationships between theories in neurobiology, cognitive science and evolutionary biology posited by evolutionary psychology’s Integrated Causal Model has unduly supported various essentialist conceptions of the human cognitive architecture, monomorphic minds, that mask HCA variability, and we propose a different set of relationships between theories in the same domains to support a different, non-essentialist, understanding of HCA variability. To set our case against essentialist theories of HCA variability, we (...) detail the general notion of an ICM and the specific ICM at the heart of evolutionary psychology. We briefly illustrate the type of essentialism fostered by evolutionary psychology’s ICM by showing how it grounds essentialist theories of cognitive gender. We shall not criticize these theories here since the literature is replete with compelling objections to them, but shall instead focus on motivating a replacement ICM to destabilize evolutionary psychology’s ICM wholesale. ICMs usually span larger than the models they support, hence larger than arguments against these models, and one reason the essentialist theories addressed here have the kind of staying power they do is that they are partly supported by the ICM in which they are grounded. In short, we offer “A New Hope” against the essentialist empire. True to the Hollywood trope, this new hope rests on an alliance between a young theory, cognitive network neuroscience, and two older, but still quite young, epistemic rebels: enactive cognitive science and developmental systems theory. Accordingly, we detail and discuss the proposed emerging ICM and test-drive it by sketching the multimorphic view of gender it grounds. (shrink)

According to a popular version of the current evolutionary attitude in cognitive science, the mind is a massive aggregate of autonomous innate computational devices, each addressing specific adaptive problems. Our aim in this paper is to show that although this version of the attitude, which we call GOFEP , does not suffer from fatal flaws that would make it incoherent or otherwise conceptually inadequate, it will nevertheless prove unacceptable to most cognitive scientists today. To show this, we raise a common (...) objection to the concept of innateness, not to mount an attack on GOFEP but to study how its proponents have attempted to meet that challenge. The aim of this move is to show that GOFEP cannot face the challenge without, as it were, losing its soul. There is, or so we will argue, something deep at the heart of GOFEP that prevents its proponents from meeting the challenge. (shrink)

Depuis la revolution scientifique du XVIIe siecle, la science est tourmentee par le sens a donner a sa propre entreprise. Plusieurs tentatives pour fonder l'intelligibilite de la nature sur les structures pretendument immuables de la raison ont echoue. Mais l'echec philosophique est a la mesure du succes aveuglant des connaissances scientifiques, qui n'ont plus que faire du scrupule de principe. Kant n'est-il pas un des avocats les plus eminents de ce scrupule tombe en desuetude? Face au divorce consomme entre physique (...) et metaphysique, il restait a se demander, avec Kant, ce que la raison a a gagner si chacune se force malgre tout a parler le langage de l'autre. Effort douloureux mais riche d'enseignement: si la physique est poussee dans cet horizon de la metaphysique qui lui est etranger, elle retrouve le moyen de s'aventurer dans une reflexion sur son propre point de depart. Reflexion qui hante encore la science aujourd'hui, meme si c'est a son insu. Dans ce premier geste il doit y avoir quelque chose de definitif: seule la philosophie kantienne de la nature nous met vraiment aux prises avec lui. Pierre Kerszberg est professeur de philosophie a l'universite d'Etat de Pennsylvannie. (shrink)

RESUMEN El artículo examina el consuelo como una cuestión filosófica en cuanto que concreción de la solicitud, y muestra los recursos que aporta para comprender al ser humano como sujeto sufriente y respondiente. Se analiza el consuelo en cuanto que fenómeno de acceso a otras dimensiones constitutivas del ser humano, como la afectividad, la apelación y el cuidado. ABSTRACT The article examines consolation as a philosophical issue insofar as it is a materialization of attentiveness, and explains the resources it offers (...) to understand human beings as suffering and caring subjects. It analyzes consolation as a phenomenon that provides access to other constitutive dimensions of the human being, such as affectivity, appeal, and care. (shrink)