Human Sciences All books
Jean-Paul Delahaye, Nicolas Gauvrit
Culturetech: Digital Culture
The development of electronic databases (and of Internet search engines to explore them) has given rise to such new behaviours as egosurfing...
Georges Charpak, Roland Omnès
Becoming a Magician is Becoming Prophet
In a simple, accessible style the authors address questions that we all ask ourselves about science: Why hasn't science made human beings wiser? Hasn't it even had the opposite effect, rendering humans' criminal tendencies even more devastating? To answer these questions, the authors develop the idea that the advent and triumph of modern science have induced a profound change in humanity because science has given human beings the capacity to understand and master phenomena occurring on the microscopic level - a scale that is alien to them. Some of the fundamental elements of contemporary physics are presented here in game form. The authors argue that physics has left free human beings face to face with an equally free interplay of natural forces and that, without causality and finality, the world has become deprived of meaning. It is therefore hardly surprising that many have taken refuge in religion. But the authors propose an alternative to religion, arguing that we can fulfil our modernity by helping our children develop their love of experimentation so that they can discover the meaning of things for themselves - instead of embracing ideologies that can only be imposed through terror. Georges Charpak is a physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics. Roland Omnès is a physicist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris XI-Orsay.
Janine Mossuz-Lavau, Anne de Kervasdoué
Women are Not Just Men
The changes which have come to be in the second half of the 20th century have taken women a long ways from the profile adopted by their mothers. Do all these transformations lead us to trace the portrait of a woman who has become a clone of men ? We can ask ourselves this question when we remember the arguments of feminists in the 70's employing the "egalitarian" themes of Simone de Beauvoir. More recently, some have gone so far as to announce the coming of an "androgynous" society. But what do the women and the men of this country think about all this ? How do women see themselves in relation to men ? How do they define themselves and how do they describe the men of their lives ? A very pointed realization of today's female identity. Janine Mossuz-Lavau is Director of Research at the CNRS.
Philippe Kourilsky
The Time of the altruism
An eminent scientist tells us how to alter our thinking so that we can finally face the present global challenges with effective common actions.