Epistemology, history of science All books
Sébastien Balibar
A Tormented Scientist
A key, virtually unknown, moment in the history of science.When science emigrates under pressure from totalitarianism.
Jacques Blamont
The Number and The Dream
Jacques Blamont is a professor at the University of Paris-VI and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He is one of the fathers of the French space programme and was formerly the scientific director of the CNES.
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.
François Dagognet
Reflections on the Body
A philosophy for our times, devised through an understanding of modernity in all its forms: artistic, scientific and medical. This work is a rigorous and exacting treatment of the ethical and political choices facing mankind at a moment when the power over matter and living are coming to be declared unlimited. In short, the engaged and stimulating observations of François Dagognet, a professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris I, medical doctor, and heir worthy of Bachelard.
Jean-Claude Carrière, Thibault Damour
Reflections on the Mass of the World
Physicists are now faced with the disturbing certainty that the reality of the world is multiple. We do not exist in a single story, with a middle and an ending. Instead, we live in a multitude of superimposed stories although we see only our own because our perception is limited by the narrow beam of light in which we exist.
Élisabeth Dufourcq
The Spirit of Invention Power Play
A masterful panorama of the great scientific inventions. Much more than a history of science, an inquiry into the scientific mind, the logic of discoveries, the innovative strength of science.
Gilles Gaston Granger
Essay on a Philosophy of Style
This work offers a definition of the generalized concept of style, considered not only in an aesthetic manner but also as it applies to all human works. The author applies this concept first to mathematical works, and then to the more familiar realm of language, before sketching the project of a human sciences stylistic, complementing a history of knowledge and epistemology of structures. Gilles-Gaston Granger is a specialist in epistemology and an honorary professor at the Collège de France.