Apòleg de les amebes

En el seu seminari sobre la violència el segon volum del qual ha sortit fa alguns mesos, Françoise Héritier pren com a punt de partida de la seva reflexió "la qüestió [...] plantejada sovint de saber si l'home és naturalment, és a dir, biològicament, violent i intolerant"

La otra cara de la luna. Escritos sobre el Japón

Compila nueve conferencias, comunicaciones breves y entrevistas en las cuales Claude Lévi-Strauss despliega su particular visión del Japón. Los textos cubren temas tan disímiles como el arte, la técnica culinaria, la mitología, los relatos de diversos viajeros o la dialéctica eterna entre tradición y cambio. No faltan los habituales recursos del maestro del estructuralismo: las citas de Montaigne, Rousseau o Chateaubriand, las analogías con mitos griegos y norteamericanos, la expresión barroca, la comparación sorprendente, la frase memorable

Mythical Thinking, Scientific Discourses and Research Dissemination

This article focuses on some principles for understanding. By taking Anna Mikulak’s article “Mismatches between ‘scientific’ and ‘non-scientific’ ways of knowing and their contributions to public understanding of science” (IPBS 2011) as a point of departure, the idea of demarcation criteria for scientific and non-scientific discourses is addressed. Yet this is juxtaposed with mythical thinking, which is supposed to be the most salient trait of non-scientific discourses. The author demonstrates how the most widespread demarcation criterion, the criterion of verification, is self-contradictory, not only when it comes to logic, but also in the achievement of isolating natural sciences from other forms of knowledge. According to Aristotle induction is a rhetorical device and as far as scientific statements are based on inductive inferences, they are relying on humanities, which rhetoric is a part of. Yet induction also has an empirical component by being based on sense-impressions, which is not a part of the rhetoric, but the psychology. Also the myths are understood in a rhetorical (Lévi-Strauss) and a psychological (Cassirer) perspective. Thus it is argued that both scientific and non-scientific discourses can be mythical

Productivité et condition humaine

Bien qu’il la lise et l’entende répéter tous les jours, l’affirmation que le chômage continuera de s’aggraver si le produit national n’augmente pas régulièrement d’un certain pourcentage déconcerte l’ethnologue et suscite en lui un sentiment d’irréalité. Il existe donc des sociétés – la sienne – qui vivent dans un état permanent de déséquilibre, constamment en lutte contre le temps, pour qui le simple fait de ne pas avancer se traduit par un recul, qui doivent produire, et produire sans trêve..

What is Life Worth? A Rough Guide to Valuation

In this speculative article, the aim is to elaborate a definition of life that is not biological, and a valuation of it that is not commodified. This is undertaken by the development of an understanding of death as a process which is embedded in the life of a community. The idea is that we can best understand what life is worth by first understanding what death means