Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Examining in detail the work of consecration carried out by elite education systems, Bourdieu analyzes the distinctive forms of power—political, intellectual, bureaucratic, and economic—by means of which contemporary societies are governed.

Richard Popkin’s meticulous translation--the most complete since the eighteenth century--contains selections from thirty-nine articles, as well as from Bayle’s four Clarifications. The bulk of the major articles of philosophical and theological interest--those that influenced Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Voltaire and formed the basis for so many eighteenth-century discussions--are present, including David, Manicheans, Paulicians, Pyrrho, Rorarius, Simonides, Spinoza, and Zeno of Elea.

The everyday practice of photography by millions of amateur photographers - the family snapshots, the holiday prints, the wedding portraits - may seem to be a spontaneous and highly personal activity. But Bourdieu and his associates show that few cultural activities are more structured and systematic than the social uses of this ordinary art. This perceptive and wide-ranging analysis of the practice of photography brings out the logic implicit in this cultural field. The norms which define the occasions and the (...) objects of photography serve to display the socially differentiated functions of, and attitudes towards, the photographic image and act. For some social groups, photography is primarily a means of preserving the present and reproducing the euphoric moments of collective celebration, whereas for other groups it is the occasion of an aesthetic judgement, in which photos are endowed with the dignity of works of art. (shrink)

Le texte de la leçon inaugurale prononcée au Collège de France, le 23 avril 1982.

Trust makes cooperation possible. It enables us to learn from others and at a distance. It makes democratic deliberation possible. But it also makes us vulnerable: when we place our trust in another’s word, we are liable to be deceived—sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. Our evolved mechanisms for deciding whom to trust and whom to distrust mostly rely on face-to-face interactions with people whose reputation we can both access and influence. Online, these mechanisms are largely useless, and the institutions that might (...) supplant them need to have their own trustworthiness verified. Currently, those institutions are mostly corporations such as Facebook and Twitter, which have checkered track records at best. To make matters worse, the social media sector is a natural monopoly, and companies like Facebook have shown that they are willing to use their market power unscrupulously. For these reasons, we argue that social media should be treated like other natural monopolies: it should either be nationalized, highly regulated, or broken up through antitrust legal actions. (shrink)

Analyse historique et sociologique de la connaissance scientifique.

Health Care professionals working in disaster situations have to face urgent choices which diverge from their normal deontological ethos and are more utilitarian. Such is the triage system used to choose whom to treat. Instead of entering a crisis these professionals should be thought that ethics is not harmonizable to all situations and that there are situations in which saving as many lives as possible mean sacrificing others. This calls for defining a perimeter zone in which such choices occur, and (...) a time frame (a space–time niche) in which it ought to be considered ethical and legitimate to use such value laden choices. (shrink)

Claude Calame nous donne ici une édition révisée de son livre désormais classique, Les Chœurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque, publié en 1977 aux éditions de l’Ateneo. Le livre était la version imprimée de sa thèse présentée pour soutenance à l’Université de Lausanne, rédigée en grande partie quand il enseignait à l’Université d’Urbino, grand centre alors de recherches sur la poétique grecque et la sémiotique. Il se présentait en deux volumes, correspondant à deux parties. Le deuxième vol...

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Ce texte a déjà paru dans L'Homme et la Société, 1988, vol. 90, n° 90, p. 15-24. Il est également accessible ici. Résumé : Les fondateurs du socialisme ont en commun de penser l'avènement d'une coupure historique, d'une révolution marquant le début d'un nouveau monde riche de rythmes temporels sans précédents. Mais leurs constructions des temps sociaux divergent profondément. Saint-Simon, puis Eugène Buret, Constantin Pecqueur, font du passé de l'Europe un temps scandé par la succession de systèmes (...) - XIXe (...) siècle – Nouvel article. (shrink)

La fin du " monde humain "? Un panorama-discussion des tendances de la pensée actuelle (Badiou, Meillassoux, réalisme spéculatif, Latour, Stengers, Descola, Viveiros de Castro...), dans la perspective métaphysique propre à Pierre Montebello.

Deepening and developing the seminal vision of _Habits of the Heart_, this volume presents original essays by leading thinkers in the social sciences, philosophy, and religion.

I.Esthétique analytique.--II. Le goût, la grâce et le rythme.

Auteur d'une oeuvre considérable, Paul Ricoeur reste méconnu en tant que penseur politique. Pour la première fois, cet ouvrage procède au remembrement des fragments dispersés d'un projet qui aura constitué sans aucun doute l'une des préoccupations constantes du philosophe. Il considère les enjeux du pouvoir dans une extension inédite : sa conquête et son exercice, le vivre-ensemble dans la Cité, mais aussi les conditions de l'agir du citoyen, gardien de la démocratie. Le parti pris de penser le politique dans les (...) termes d'un "paradoxe" témoigne d'un refus méthodique du systématisme, qui fait le lit des totalitarismes. En associant deux thèses adverses également fondées, Ricoeur invite à les concilier, non par un savoir, mais dans la pratique. Récusant toute position de surplomb, il réplique au "mal politique" par l'espérance, l'ouverture au possible. Par rapport à l'économie et à la culture, il réaffirme l'autonomie du politique, qu'il articule à une "éthique démocratique", en sorte que le souhaitable oriente le possible. Ricoeur a le souci d'exposer la réflexion à l'événement pour mieux en saisir la portée à l'aune d'une anthropologie philosophique. Dans son sillage, l'auteur confronte cette pensée politique à la situation contemporaine, pour une mutuelle mise à l'épreuve d'où surgit une critique en creux de la raison néolibérale et une contribution potentielle aux débats du moment. Loin cependant de s'y cantonner, la proposition de Ricoeur invite à discerner dans la "dette sans faute", qui résulte pour chacun du fait d'être né, les ressources d'un agir poétique capable de surmonter le désenchantement des modernes. L'imagination, en inversant l'endettement en gratitude, peut raviver le sens du vivre-ensemble dans une "pratique de la fraternité". (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)

Le devenir socioprofessionnel des ex-apprentis footballeurs est un phénomène social encore insuffisamment analysé à ce jour. Les différents travaux de Frédéric Rasera, explorant les conditions sociales individuelles de la recomposition vocationnelle chez un ex-apprenti footballeur, font office d’exception. Face à ce constat, cet article entend contribuer à la réflexion portant sur ces jeunes sportifs. À travers l’étude des trajectoires d’une vingtaine d’ex-apprentis footballeurs, nous verrons qu’il est possible de trouver des similarités biographiques caractérisant leur processus de recomposition vocationnelle. Plus précisément, (...) nous montrerons qu’une analyse en termes de temporalités vécues permet de dévoiler la résurgence de quatre séquences de vie au cours de leur recomposition vocationnelle, révélant ainsi, les dimensions collectives de ce processus. (shrink)