Yves Michaud

New Therapeutics

Advances in medical science are constantly being made, but it is often difficult for patients to realise what these advances entail and to understand their applications. The twelve lectures collected in this new volume in the series “L'Université de tous les savoirs” aim to inform us about some of these recent advances by addressing the following questions: What is the procedure for putting new medication on the market? How is new medication tested? What are the policies for furthering pharmaceutical innovation? How are health care structures organised? What will the hospital of the future be like? What are biotechnologies? What has been the impact of the neurosciences on therapeutics? What advances have been made in genetic mapping? What benefits can patients hope to gain from it? Gathered here are contributions by a geneticist, a surgeon, a psychiatrist, an emergency doctor, a neurologist and a philosopher. They examine the state of medical research today and address a question that concerns us all: What will medical care be like in the future? Contributions by Yves Agid, Pierre Carli, Alain Carpentier, Patrick Couvreur, Claude Debru, Bernard Golse, Didier Houssin, Gérard Le Fur, Jacques Marescaux, Arnold Munnich, Luis Omnès and Olivier Saint-Jean. Other books in the series include Qu'est-ce que la vie?, Qu'est-ce que l'humain?, Qu'est-ce que la société?, Qu'est-ce que l'Univers?, Qu'est-ce que les technologies?, Qu'est-ce que la culture?, Qu'est-ce que la vie psychique?, Le Renouvellement de l'observation dans les sciences, La Chine aujourd'hui, Egalité et inégalités, Qu'est-ce que la diversité de la vie?, Qu'est-ce que la globalisation?, Paris and La Guerre d'Algérie 1954-1962.

Daniel C. Dennett

Evolutionist theory of freedom

Billions of years ago, there was no freedom on earth, for the simple reason that there was no life. What forms of freedom have evolved since the first stirrings of life? Can freedom and free will exist in a deterministic universe? If we are free, are we responsible for our freedom, or is it governed by chance? Drawing on evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences, Daniel Dennett provides a series of unorthodox replies to these traditional philosophical questions. It is generally held that what is determined is inevitable and that freedom can only exist in a non-deterministic universe. This is untrue, says Dennett. It is also held that in a pre-determined universe, we have no real choices: all we have is the illusion that we can choose. This too is false, argues Dennett. He then goes on to explain how, some day, we will be able to create robots endowed with free will. In this groundbreaking book, written in a striking, lively style, Dennett interweaves philosophical creativity with the latest scientific developments, and challenges a series of philosophical orthodoxies. Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, Mass., U.S.A. He is the author of Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

Jacques Cantier, Éric Jennings

The French Colonial Empire under Vichy

In the 1990s, historians began studying the Vichy government in the French colonial empire. The articles gathered here by Jacques Cantier and Eric Jennings are the outcome of recent exchanges among historians on the subject. The book reflects the writers' various research interests and includes: an examination of the political decision-making process, the composition of governing bodies, the development of institutions to strengthen government control of society, and the reaction of the local population to the new political measures. The editors' purpose is dual. First of all, the colonial mirror serves to elucidate the underlying logic and the workings of the regime that resulted from the French defeat. Secondly, the editors have sought to place the Vichy period into the wider context and more extended time frame of colonial history and decolonisation. They have done this by structuring their analysis of Vichy in the empire into several sections. The first part of the book examines the conditions under which the Vichy government tried to unite the colonial bloc to mainland France. The second part analyses Vichy's authoritarian policies, particularly those that aimed at controlling youth. The large demonstrations that took place in Vichy Algeria in 1941 illustrate the efforts undertaken to showcase the National Revolution in Algeria. The third part studies the different forms of repression exercised by the regime, particularly the conditions governing the application of anti-Semitic legislation in the empire, the stifling of the Masons, and the existence of internment camps in North Africa. The fourth part reveals the tactics used by the European and colonial elites in French West Africa (Afrique Occidentale Française) to preserve their influence. The Vichy legacy is examined in a final section, which provides both an overview of the situation in the empire as a whole and a detailed analysis of the telling example of Madagascar. This is a unique and highly innovative study by eminent historians of a little-known aspect of French colonial history during the Vichy period. Jacques Cantier is a lecturer at the University of Toulouse-Le-Mirail, France. He is the author of L'Algérie sous le régime de Vichy and Jules Roy: l'Honneur d'un rebelle. Eric Jennings is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Vichy in the Tropics.

Alain Bentolila

All about scholl

This is a brilliant, clearly argued demonstration of how the inability of the school system to evolve and develop a critical spirit may lead to the general failure of our entire society.

Françoise Héritier, Margarita Xanthakou

Body and Affects

The articles gathered here, written by eminent French anthropologists, present a novel angle on the way societies function. The writers argue that because societies are not abstract intellectual constructions, they cannot be dissociated from the physical individuals that constitute them, or from the affects (feelings and emotions) expressed by them. Included here are studies of Western and non-Western societies on such subjects as skin colour, religious rituals involving animals, witchcraft and “flying” sorcerers, passion in traditional North African cultures, and breast-feeding (both induced lactation to breastfeed infant girls and “spontaneous” lactation to breastfeed infant boys) in parts of Italy. Françoise Héritier is an anthropologist and teaches at the Collège de France. She is the author of Les Deux Soeurs et leur mère and Masculin/Féminin I and II, published by Editions Odile Jacob. Margarita Xanthakou, an anthropologist, is a research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

Boris Cyrulnik

Talking About Love Near The Abyss

Resilience, the human capacity to recover from trauma and to overcome hardship, can come into play at any age...

Howard Buten

Is There Somebody In?

Gilbert Hottois

Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Technology (Travaux du Collège de France)

Is the philosophy of science concerned with the technique and the philosophy of technology?