Our bodies contain ten times more bacteria than cells and their activity is essential for our organisms. A true symbiosis exists between humans and microbes, the complex mechanisms of which can only be decoded using molecular genetics. However these bacteria can also cause infectious and parasitic diseases which kill over 15 million people a year throughout the world. To develop effective treatments and vaccines for such diseases, scientists need to know how bacteria outmanoeuvre the body's defence mechanisms and how to decipher the rules of war and peace between microbes and humans.
From the infinitely small to the infinitely big, covering over 60 spatial orders of magnitude, quantum theory is used as much to describe the still largely mysterious vibrations of the microscopic strings that could be the basic constituents of the Universe, as to explain the fluctuations of the microwave radiation reaching us from the depths of outer space. Serge Haroche tells us about the scientific theory that revolutionised our understanding of nature and made an extraordinary contribution to our means of acting on and gaining information about the world.
C'est avant tout en historien, préoccupé par les données concrètes de l'évolution de la société chinoise, que je compte aborder l'histoire des idées, des conceptions et des courants intellectuels en Chine. Le temps n'est plus où l'on se représentait l'histoire de la Chine comme une longue suite uniforme de périodes pratiquement interchangeables. L'histoire de la Chine a un sens, au même titre que la nôtre. Elle a été marquée par des ruptures et elle a connu des époques d'évolution très rapide. Pour qui admet que les hommes sont le produit de leur société et de leur histoire, les XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles chinois constituent une période de recherches privilégiée. Les bouleversements et les transformations sociales, économiques et politiques qui se sont produits au cours de ces trois siècles, la richesse et la diversité de la vie intellectuelle, l'évolution des idées, le grand nombre des esprits indépendants et des personnalités remarquables en font l'intérêt exceptionnel.
Chronologiquement parlant, le Coran n'a créé ni la langue ni les lettres arabes. Et pourtant, dans l'éclat formidable de son coup de tonnerre et par les échos infiniment multipliés qu'il déchaîna, il a renouvelé, structuré, diffusé le vieux langage, exalté sa littérature et créé, au plein sens du terme cette fois, une civilisation. Le texte fondamental de la littérature arabe affirme les droits et devoirs d'une compréhension mutuelle entre Arabes ; il impose que la noblesse, en matière de savoir, passera par la seule langue qui la confère et il va assigner à ses expressions futures l'obligation de se fonder sur cette voix de la vieille Arabie qu'il a portée à sa forme suprême : l'arabe littéral, littéraire, classique. Langue et littérature arabes classiques sont ainsi le signe, le miroir et la conscience d'un monde qui se veut percevoir comme global et un, et dont l'histoire se lit à travers la leur.
En l'espace d'une génération, nous avons plus détruit que ne l'avaient fait, depuis les invasions de la fin de l'Antiquité, toutes les générations qui nous ont précédés. Je me sens solidaire de cette longue chaîne d'hommes et de femmes venus de la nuit des temps qui nous ont transmis un héritage - des constructions, des objets, des écrits et tous les témoignages que l'on extrait de la terre. Ce sont ces documents que j'appelle nos « Antiquités nationales ». Il faut laisser à nos contemporains et à ceux qui viendront après nous une chance de connaître ce que ce fut la Gaule, et, à partir de l'indispensable travail de terrain, en s'appuyant aussi sur les travaux novateurs en sciences humaines, de restituer un sens à des existences passées. Nos Antiquités nationales nous apprennent ce que furent nos prédécesseurs et ce que nous sommes.
La révolution moléculaire en biologie comprend quatre volets : l'identification chimique du matériel héréditaire en tant qu'acide nucléique polymérisé, l'élucidation des structures des macromolécules biologiques, la preuve que la structure et la biosynthèse des protéines - en particulier des enzymes - sont gouvernées par des gènes spécifiques ; plus récemment, enfin, la découverte et l'analyse des circuits de régulation. Rarement courant de doctrines scientifiques s'est montré si rapidement fécond, si « conquérant » selon le qualificatif bernardien. La découverte de ces horizons nouveaux constitue, sans doute, l'un des événements les plus marquants de la science moderne, comparable au renouvellement que subit la physique en 1915.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions: the extent of certain recent natural disasters and their dramatic consequences have reminded us of the power of terrestrial phenomena and of the need for scientific research to understand the Earth's dynamics more fully. Over the last twenty years the study of the Earth's interior has witnessed a real revolution, owing in particular to the development of increasingly sophisticated seismic tomography techniques and the powerful computations made possible by progress in numerical methods and computer technology. Barbara Romanowicz presents us with the current progress and challenges of global seismology.
Metaphysics has been proclaimed to be archaic or outdated. Actually, it never "died". It has even experienced considerable revival throughout the world, which in France we have yet to fully appreciate. Because, in both the most general and the most precise ways, it questions "what there is", it is essential to any knowledge-related undertaking, in the sense not of a recognition of eternal truths but of an enquiry on the world and on reality. In this lecture Claudine Tiercelin sets out the programme of a scientific and realist metaphysics rooted in the rationalist tradition and diametrically opposed to obscurantist spiritualism and post-modern relativism.
Since the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, much scholarly work has been done on "thinking China". A result has been the most contradictory representations which attempt to reconcile "philosophical China" with "Oriental despotism", or an eternal aesthetic and consensual China with a more unpredictable and disturbing vision of the country. To break free of these tenacious clichés, Anne Cheng proposes that we listen carefully to what Chinese authors actually have to say. After all, is China not herself able to think and conceive of her own reality?
Lorsque les physiciens commencèrent à explorer de manière plus précise le monde de l'atome pour essayer de comprendre sa structure et les lois qui régissent son comportement, ils se heurtèrent vite à de graves difficultés. Nos concepts intuitifs, basés sur notre expérience quotidienne du monde macroscopique qui nous entoure, se révélèrent totalement erronés à l'échelle atomique ; l'atome était incompréhensible dans le cadre de la physique classique. Pour percer ces nouveaux mystères, il fallut donc, après de longs tâtonnements, élaborer des concepts entièrement nouveaux, les concepts de la mécanique quantique. Quelles sont les principales étapes qui nous ont conduits à cette vision moderne de l'atome ? Où en est actuellement la physique atomique ? Quelle est sa contribution au développement de nos connaissances et vers quoi s'oriente-t-elle ?
Le cerveau est une machine qui traite l'information, l'enregistre, donne des ordres à la manière d'un ordinateur. Toutes ses fonctions, aussi nobles soient-elles, résultent exclusivement de l'assemblage d'éléments cellulaires, de leurs interactions ainsi que des signaux reçus du monde extérieur par le canal des organes des sens. Mais quelle méthode suivre pour pénétrer dans une mécanique si désespérante par sa difficulté que d'aucuns, fort éminents, n'hésitent pas à la reléguer dans la catégorie des « boîtes noires » ?
It was when I was preparing this lecture that I discovered that roboticists had a god: Hephaestus. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was a talented craftsman. Enamoured with Athena, he attempted to woo her, in vain. The goddess of knowledge withstood the advances of the god of doing. Robotics stems from this tension. Although the myth contradicts a current tendency to confuse science and technology, it nevertheless reflects my experience with innovation.
By opposing sectarian discourses with the universal weapons of history, philology and anthropology, in short, the entire arsenal of science and reason, the history of religions of the past enables us to deflate modern myths, and not only those of others but also our own. It allows us to identify the projection, in the imaginary past, of the "origins" of nationalist, religious or racist fantasies, and to disarm exaggerated interpretations of the sacred texts. Within nations inherited from the 19th century, ancient history can help to deconstruct the representation that nation states sometimes create of their past, by showing that despite their apparent proximity, their "ancestors", often simply assumed to be so, were as distant from the current society as the inhabitants of the antipodes, and hardly resembled the image assigned to them. It enables us to challenge the "Greek miracle", the "Roman genius", the "Germanic superiority", or the Hegelian dialectic professing that religions and history tend towards Christian monotheism.
Along with the theoretical or traditionally historical question "What is literature?", the critical and political question "What can literature do?" begs an answer. What value do contemporary society and culture ascribe to literature? What utility? What role? "My confidence in the future of literature", wrote Italo Calvino, consists in the knowledge that there are things that only literature can give us, by means specific to it". Is this still relevant to us today?
Life depends on the ability of living organisms to effectively harness the chemical potential of their environment, namely the sun, for energy, and a certain number of molecules which exist on the Earth's surface, such as water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, etc. These molecules need to be activated if benefit is to be derived from them, which requires profound electronic modifications that only metal ions can provide. Truly extraordinary metalloenzymes with highly subtle mechanisms are responsible for this activation. Bioinorganic chemistry straddles the disciplines of chemistry and biology and is in full expansion today. This discipline was born of the recent realisation that life is not solely organic but also "mineral", and that no life can exist without metals.
It looks as though the anthropology of nature is an oxymoron of sorts, given that for the past few centuries, nature has been characterized in the West by humans' absence, and humans, by their capacity to overcome what is natural in them. But nature does not exist as a sphere of autonomous realities for all peoples. By positing a universal distribution of humans and non-humans in two separate ontological fields, we are for one quite ill equipped to analyse all those systems of objectification of the world in which a formal distinction between nature and culture does not obtain. This type of distinction moreover appears to go against what the evolutionary and life sciences have taught us about the phyletic continuity of organisms. Our singularity in relation to all other existents is relative, as is our awareness of it.
Light and matter are very closely linked in our modelling of the physical world. From the formulation of quantum theory to the invention of laser, the interaction between atoms and radiation has played a crucial role in the development of today's science and technology. By controlling this interaction, the lowest temperatures ever recorded are now reached. Cooling atomic gases with laser light produces "quantum matter" with radically different properties from those of ordinary fluids. These cold atoms are the cornerstone of a new metrology of time and space, with applications in a wide variety of fields, including navigation, telecommunication and geophysics.
Throughout the ages, humans have applied knowledge and know-how to master materials. They have gone from materials encountered by chance available in their environment to customized materials designed to meet multi-criteria specifications. Today, owing particularly to digital modelling on different scales, we are able to design high-performance materials, combining various classes of materials, in controlled geometries and dimensions. These innovation strategies - architectured or bio-inspired materials - have been integrated in many industrial sectors (cars, aeronautics, biomedical sciences, etc.).
By combining a method - comparative studies - with an ongoing process - the internationalization of law, that is, its extension beyond national borders - this Chair looks to the future, as uncertain as it may be. Of course current events tragically highlight the absence of a real legal world order. The collective security system of the Charter of the United Nations has shown its weaknesses and law has been unable to disarm force. Conversely, however, force cannot prevent this unprecedented extension of law, to the extent that no State can lastingly override it. In spite of appearances, it is no longer possible today to ignore the superposition of regional, national and global standards, nor the over-abundance of both national and international institutions and judges, with expanded jurisdiction. The new realities are causing law to evolve into complex and highly unstable interactive systems that are perhaps more symptomatic of profound change than of the defeat of law: we are faced with a change in the very conception of the legal order.
Where is medieval philosophy going? It is going to where philosophy is. And it is there where philosophy is going. It became medieval once the Middle Ages were over. It was only philosophy when the Middle Ages were still saeculum modernorum, the "century of the Moderns", for those living in it. Today, it is going there where she or he who wants to recount, that is, to relate its history, must go. The archaeology of the subject draws us, in any case, through space and time, from the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) to 18th-century Scottish philosophy, then to 19th-century Austrian philosophy, and finally to the 3rd-millenium "deconstruction of the deconstruction". It is an Averroist project for post-post-modernism.
How does one think of history on a world scale? Should one turn to the intellectuals of the past or the historians of the present? Universal history as it was practised from Antiquity started to change from the sixteenth century in varied contexts, from East Asia to Spanish America. Applying his extensive knowledge of archives across the world and his command of languages and historiographic traditions of Asia, Europe and the Americas, Sanjay Subrahmanyam considers the history of networks and exchanges of goods, myths and ideologies from a new perspective. He works outside traditional geopolitical frameworks based on the nation-state model, to present global history as a field defined and redefined by "connected histories".
Work creates and transforms the social world. Its least predictable and most admired embodiment, artistic and scientific invention, seems to defy causal analysis and statistical regularities. Far more than the exploration of the conscious and infraconscious processes of individual inventiveness, the social ecology of creative work is what enables sociological analysis of work. Pierre-Menger's analysis identifies three crucial characteristics: an unlimited differentiation of outputs, competitive mechanisms exploiting the uncertainty of success, and a disproportionate focus on gain and reputation.
My idea of a theory in biology is quite different from the theoretical biology that is expressed as equations of observed or photographed phenomena. I have a simpler, more concrete conception. Not a mathematical description of what is seen, but an evolving model, a tool developed through bricolage, with mathematics perhaps, but also natural language: one that serves above all to understand the unseen; to guess, beneath the visible, the invisible dimensions of life forms, the underlying "logic".
