In the Name of Science: the Conceptual and Ideological Background of Charles Richet’s Eugenics

The French physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Charles Richet was the author of an impressive quantity of writings, including novels and poetry. He was an out–and–out eugenicist, convinced that an “intentional, conscious, scientific, and methodical” selection could achieve “any result, provided we had enough patience”. He believed that the quantitative and qualitative increase of population was a vital matter for France. In La sélection humaine (1913) and other writings, he dreamed of a conscious selection creating “intellectual élites”. The process would be crowned by the production of a “higher human nature, a real surhumanité”. A staunch believer in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, Richet combined Darwinism and Lamarckism

Organic vs. Mechanic. Notes on the History of an Antithesis

The contrast between organic and mechanic arose as part of the reactions against the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. It ran throughout the 19th, it fuelled “Romantic” reactions to Newtonian science and the antithesis between Kultur and Zivilisation. This contrast is still evident, to a greater or lesser extent, in many of the present criticisms of industrial society and technology. There is an interesting continuity between the arguments used by the early critics of what Carlyle would call the «age of machines» and some of the arguments and ways of thinking that are current today. The paper is devoted to stress this continuity by considering some representative authors, including Burke, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Ruskin, Sombart, Spengler, Scheler, T. Mann. Their interactions with political and social thought are also discussed

Les métaphores favorisent-elles la compréhension d’une théorie scientifique ? Le cas des images darwiniennes de « lutte pour la vie » et de « sélection naturelle »

On pense généralement que les métaphores ne figurent dans le discours scientifique qu’à titre d’exemples, de suggestions rhétoriques ou d’images favorisant la représentation intuitive de concepts difficiles ; bref, elles relèveraient plutôt du domaine de la stratégie communicative et de la vulgarisation que de celui de la construction des théories. Cela n’est vrai que partiellement : l’histoire des sciences nous présente beaucoup de cas où les métaphores ont aidé le savant lui-même à penser sa théorie, ou, autrement dit, elles ont rempli une fonction auto-didactique aussi bien que didactique, ainsi que le montre l’analyse d’un cas très important, celui des métaphores darwiniennes de « lutte pour la vie » et de « sélection naturelle ». Elles ont engendré des méprises non seulement chez les adversaires mais aussi chez bien des défenseurs de Darwin. La diffusion n’a donc pas coïncidé avec la compréhension. C’est paradoxal, mais c’est normal dans l’histoire des idées

De Darwin au débat sur le problème de la souffrance animale

Darwin a donné le coup de grâce à ce que Freud appela le narcissisme de l’homme. Parmi les raisons de son refus du design, ou du moins de sa remise en cause de l’ordre providentiel de la nature, il y avait non seulement des raisons scientifiques, mais aussi des raisons morales : à quoi bon « l’immense quantité de souffrance » chez les animaux ? Sur ces questions, il préférait « hisser le drapeau blanc ». Mais beaucoup d’auteurs essayèrent de concilier la lutte pour la vie avec la croyance en un progrès biologique et moral : l’évolution avançait à travers la destruction des êtres vivants ; la souffrance était le prix de l’avènement de l’esprit. Par contre, on trouve chez l’écrivain et poète Thomas Hardy l’expression la plus frappante d’une compassion pour les animaux, destinés à souffrir autant que les humains dans un univers dépourvu de sens. Ces notions de sympathie et de compassion sont aujourd’hui au centre des débats sur les droits des animaux

Lamarckisme et solidarité

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The empirical process on Gaussian spherical harmonics

We establish weak convergence of the empirical process on the spherical harmonics of a Gaussian random field in the presence of an unknown angular power spectrum. This result suggests various Gaussianity tests with an asymptotic justification. The issue of testing for Gaussianity on isotropic spherical random fields has recently received strong empirical attention in the cosmological literature, in connection with the statistical analysis of cosmic microwave background radiation

Considerazioni sull'enciclica di Papa Francesco "Laudato si'"

Remarks on the encyclical by Pope Francis Laudato si’ (“Praise be to you”). The encyclical Laudato si’ by Pope Francis in June 2015 is undoubtedly an important document. The Roman Catholic Pontiff exhorts “all persons of good will” to take care of our «common house». He declares that the narrow-minded, arrogant anthropocentric conception of nature, for which many Christians have thought to find justification in the Scriptures, is wrong. He proposes a «comprehensive ecology», embracing both the relationship between man and nature and the relationship between peoples and generations. He condemns the «dominant technocratic paradigm», the «consumer culture», the «logic of finance», the «magical conception of the market», «utilitarian pragmatism» and «logic lying beneath present-day culture». He states that the cry coming from the South of the world merges with the cry of the Earth violated and exploited. «Care» and «custody» must be correlated with «justice». The encyclical text deals with many topics and raises many questions, but also several doubts. The latter concern the image of nature, which is implicit in the encyclical, and there is some vagueness in many of the practical suggestions resulting from it. Parole chiave: Papa Francesco, ecologia, enciclica, degrado ambientale, etica Key words: Pope Francis, ecology, encyclical, deterioration of the environment, ethic

Come back Marshall, all is forgiven? : Complexity, evolution, mathematics and Marshallian exceptionalism

Marshall was the great synthesiser of neoclassical economics. Yet with his qualified assumption of self-interest, his emphasis on variation in economic evolution and his cautious attitude to the use of mathematics, Marshall differs fundamentally from other leading neoclassical contemporaries. Metaphors inspire more specific analogies and ontological assumptions, and Marshall used the guiding metaphor of Spencerian evolution. But unfortunately, the further development of a Marshallian evolutionary approach was undermined in part by theoretical problems within Spencer's theory. Yet some things can be salvaged from the Marshallian evolutionary vision. They may even be placed in a more viable Darwinian framework.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio