New foundations for qualitative physics

Physical reality is all the reality we have, and so physical theory in the standard sense is all the ontology we need. This, at least, was an assumption taken almost universally for granted by the advocates of exact philosophy for much of the present century. Every event, it was held, is a physical event, and all structure in reality is physical structure. The grip of this assumption has perhaps been gradually weakened in recent years as far as the sciences of mind are concerned. When it comes to the sciences of external reality, however, it continues to hold sway, so that contemporary philosophers B even while devoting vast amounts of attention to the language we use in describing the world of everyday experience B still refuse to see this world as being itself a proper object of theoretical concern. Here, however, we shall argue that the usual conception of physical reality as constituting a unique bedrock of objectivity reflects a rather archaic view as to the nature of physics itself and is in fact incompatible with the development of the discipline since Newton. More specifically, we shall seek to show that the world of qualitative structures, for example of colour and sound, or the commonsense world of coloured and sounding things, can be treated scientifically (ontologically) on its own terms, and that such a treatment can help us better to understand the structures both of physical reality and of cognition

Modèles morphodynamiques de segmentation spatiale

Partant de la phénoménologie de la perception et de la conception structurale-dynamique des discontinuités géographiques dans les travaux de Gilles Ritchot et de Gaëtan Desmarais sur la forme urbaine, l'article aborde le problème fondamental de la segmentation spatiale et de l'émergence des discontinuités qualitatives dans des espaces substrats. Il montre comment le traitement morphologique des images permet de comprendre les mécanismes d'individuation de domaines spatiaux localisés. Ces mécanismes peuvent être adéquatement modélisés à l'aide de formalismes de type morphodynamique, en particulier les modèles variationnels de segmentation spatiale (Mumford et Shah, 1989) et les modèles multi-échelles régis par des équations de diffusion non-linéaires anisotropes (Malik et Perona, Morel). Des exemples en imagerie géographique sont utilisés.The paper sketches some leading ideas in phenomenology of perception and structural geography in the sense of Gilles Ritchot and Gaëtan Desmarais. Considering the key approach of discontinuities in the theory of urban form, it next scrutinizes the basic problem of the segmentation and the emergence of qualitative discontinuities in substrata spaces. Moreover, it points out the way in which the morphological processing of images makes understandable the mechanisms individuating localized spatial domains. Those mechanisms can be adequately modeled with the help of morphodynamical formalisms, especially variational models of spatial segmentation (Mumford and Shah, 1989) as well as multi-scale models driven by non linear anisotropic diffusion equations (Malik and Perona, Morel). Some examples of geographic images are analyzed

Épistémologie des modèles

Jean Petitot, directeur d’études Compte rendu non communiqué

Épistémologie des modèles

Jean Petitot, directeur d’études Corps et signification Au cours de l’année 2009-2010, mes recherches sur les modèles neurogéométriques des architectures fonctionnelles de la vision se sont beaucoup développées après la publication de mon ouvrage Neurogéométrie de la vision, consacré aux modèles mathématiques et physiques de ces architectures. Un réseau international s’est constitué autour de ces questions. En sémio-linguistique, j’ai continué mes recherches sur la méthode de composition dite..