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.
Alexandre Moatti
Alterscience
This much-needed book warns against a type of obscurantism that is spreading alarmingly on the Internet
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.
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.
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...
Didier Houssin
Let’s Take Care of Science!
Well-written, eloquent, exhibiting great depth, the book is both an ode to science and a reflection on the recent tendency toward gigantism, encouraged primarily by Big Data.
John Scheid, Alain Prochiantz
Lights, light
The 2015 Colloquium of the Collège de France unites some of the most eminent authors in physics and astrophysics, in biology, in neuroscience and the history of science. Light is a timeless subject: it has always had the power to fascinate and disturb. Here it is explained.