Human Sciences 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.
Hugo Mercier , Dan Sperber
The Enigma of Reason
Ambitious, provocative, fascinating, this book gives readers resources to rethink their own way of thinking.
Manès Sperber
Being Jewish
A non-practicing Jew, Manès Sperber learned to read the Bible at the age of three and continued to re-read it until the end of his life. Neither religious, nor a militant Zionist, nor an aethiest, nor aligned with any cultural Judaism, he professes as his only faith a "religion of good memory." His is a Judaism lived as humanism and as an ethic, as a refusal of all idolatry, of exclusion of others, and a constant combat against hate of any kind. It is a profound attachment to the Israelite nation and a prudent attitude towards the State of Israel that Sperber illustrates in these brilliant essays prefaced by Elie Weisel, where analysis of Jewish thought and identity walk hand in hand with the eternal question: Why anti-semitism?
David Spector
History of the Market Concept in France
An original point of view which runs counter to received ideas: the concept of the market is in a blind spot of leftist thinking, or even that of the French intellectual tradition. This book should be part of the debate as it provides historical insight on a crucial point of current disunity within the left and on its future.
Sébastien Soriano
The Future of Public Service
A decisive contribution to thinking about the sovereignty of society in the face of the era of networks and the digital world.
Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont
Intellectual Impostures
In spring 1996, a American journal published an article in which the author Alan Sokal, supported his ideas with quotations from famous intellectuals, both French and American...