Catalog All books
Dan Sperber
The Infectiousness of Ideas
Where do our ideas come from ? Some, just from ourselves, or at least we believe so, but the majority come from others which we then pass on in our turn. The age-old philosophical question on the origins of ideas is analysed here in relation to their mode of dissemination. In his search for the natural element of culture, Dan Sperber presents in this book an epidemiology of ideas which describes how they spread by passing from one person to another, undergoing transformations which are in the same category as mutations. He also investigates how these ideas establish themselves in the long-term by occupying our mental world without our conscious knowledge, which allows us to participate in our culture. Dan Sperber, an anthropologist, is the research director of CNRS.
Jean-Didier Vincent
The Flesh and the Devil
"If I did not exist, nothing would exist, because there would be nothing to which oppose oneself", writes Fernando Pessoa in the devil's name. Is this the invention of a poet? Nothing is less sure. The scientist confirms the notion that life is born from the confrontation between molecules. J.D. Vincent invites us here to explore with him all the aspects, the ramifications, from animal life to the human brain, which are nurtured by this principle of opposition. The devil is constantly at work in the heart of the living, and neurobiologist Jean-Didier Vincent demonstrates this evidence with humor in his book, a continuation of the spirit present in his Biology of Passions.
Évelyne Pewzner
The Guilt of Man (Coll. Opus) Fault and Insanity in the West
Why is the obsessive horrified by a tiny stain ? Why does the depressive relentlessly search for a redemptive punishment ? When human behaviour translates the suffering and helplessness of an individual confronted with anguish and solitude to the collapse of that being, to a retreat inside a strange inner world, to the loss of all that which anchors him to life, it is not enough, in order to understand him, to connect up the events of his life. It is also necessary to situate that individual in the wider scale of cultural indictations, which play a determining role in the formation of the personality. In this way, Évelyne Pewzner undertakes to show in what sense, Western Christianity, which is intrinsically linked to the problem of evil, leaves in each of us an imprint of distress. Évelyne Pewzner is a psychiatrist, and a professor of psychopathology at the University of Picardie.
André Miquel
Two Stories of Love (Work of the Collège de France) From Majnûn to Tristan
How does absolute passion express itself in Middle-Eastern and in Western societies?
