TO RESTORE SOLIDARITIES BETWEEN ALL THE PHENOMENA : INTELLIGENCE OF THE COMPLEXITY
Mioara MUGUR-SCHÄCHTER is professor of theoretical physics at the University of Reims (France) and director of the quantum laboratory of mechanics and structures of information until 1997. She is also epistemologist chairing the CeSEF (Center for the synthesis of a formalized epistemology) since 1993 – whose proclamation was published at Gallimard Ed. (Re-examined the Debate) and in a collective work – and the association adMCR founded in 2009 – of which one of the objectives is the development of a relativized systemic or a method of relativized conceptualization (MCR) -. Originating in Bucharest where she invalidated during the Sixties the theorem of Von Neumann (PhD directed by L. of Broglie and published at Gauthier Villars in 1964), then of Wigner, she will work out several theories on quantum logic or linking theory of probability and informational approach within the meaning of Shannon. In 1982, and then in a ceaseless way, she will develop the MCR approach constituting a basically plastic and Transdisciplinary formalized epistemology since it consists in working out a bridge between the theoretical physics and the cognitive, psychosocial, neurobiological approaches or data-processing aiming at understanding our modes of production of knowledge, the techniques and the artefacts. These disciplines, all being crossed by the final objective of the author, who is of going towards a unification of the rational human thought and processes of conceptualization. And she proposes for that a resolutely methodological approach, I quote: “I think that it is clearly evident that when one juggles at the same time with smallnesses and gigantisms of dimensions of space time which one does not perceive the terminals and with degrees of abstraction or of material precision of which the border do not appears more, and when the technical realizations follow of so close theoretical constructions from which they come, of the considerations based exclusively on such or such particular aspect […], standard of mathematical tools and treatments […], nature of the implied entities […] cannot even be enough for local unifications if we wished they are not in surface. Only a method of conceptualization general and applied commonly can aim at organizing the human thought in a manner which leads to a unification which is universal and deep notwithstanding the unlimited variety that our cognitive interactions with “real” induce irrepressibly in our representations of “real entities” and without by no means violating this variety”. There, one detects all the plasticity of the approach related as much with the semantics of information, with complexity that with the weaving of knowledge. Among its publications, let us quote the works: Study of the complete character of quantum mechanics, Gauthier Villars 1964; Quantum Mechanics versus the Method Relativized Conceptualization off, in Quantum Mechanics, Mathematics, Cognition and Action, Proposals for has Formalized Epistemology, Mugur-Schächter and Van Der Merwe, Kluwer Academic Ed., 2002. On the weaving of knowledge, Hermes Publishing Science – Lavoisier, 2006. Quantum infra-mechanics, Dianoïa-Puf Ed., 2009. In this paper, Mioara Mugur-Schächter tackles the probabilistic “myth” stated by Kolmogorov, with its syntax, while showing and by solving its aporia (no effectivity of the applicability of the theorem of the great numbers, circular arguments), but much more by comparing it with the effectiveness of the syntax of quantum mechanics when it makes it possible to make probabilistic forecasts. It implies the fact that the quantum probabilities have a different nature from the probabilities of Kolmogorov and that this difference lies in the cognitive print of “the observer-originator” who builds knowledge on microstates naturally distinct from the macroscopic state; active and deliberated construction, carried out according to a precise order and levels, a quantum infra-mechanics of which the method MCR allows to elude the formalism. The author indicates clearly the consequences of them: “All given concrete `probabilistic situation’ is an estimated ARTIFACT that one is obliged to build from a natural situation, and that is not possible except if one subjects oneself to the constraints comprised by the cognitive conditions that the implied natural situation imposes on a man, and by the goal to envisage. So many years I made an effort to `note’, `discover’, how the quantum probabilities « are », when it would have been necessary to seek how they are manufactured. And during soon 20 years I pained to understand which significance has the assertion that it « exists » factual law of probability for such or such unit of events, and how to identify it, when such a law never pre-exists, that it is necessary to create of them the conditions of possibility and then to seek which law was constituted thus LOCALLY, in the field of space time where these conditions created are carried out”. That has consequences at the same time on Homo faber, Homo complexus and Homo sapiens.
DIALOGUE ON THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO SUBSCRIBE TO MORAL OBLIGATIONS
Pierre-marie POUGET is graduated in theology, arts, doctor of philosophy of the University of Freiburg and postgraduated in clinical psychopathology. He taught philosophy with the college then with the faculty of the abbey of Saint-Maurice until 1976 when he will leave his priesthood engaged in 1968. Since 2005, he is president of the Association Ferdinand Gonseth and of the Institute of the Method where he carries out an important research task on Gonseth in the field of ethics and philosophy. Member of associations of Vaudian and Valaisan writers, regular collaborator of the “Contrepointphilosophique” and other philosophical reviews, the author published many textes, novels, news and books of poetry of which Heidegger or the return to the quiet voice, The age of Man Ed. (1975), For a new philosophical frame of mind according to the work of Ferdinand Gonseth, The area (1994), Levels of the fact (2006), Short notes (2006), To think without dogmas (2009), The interior rise (2010) at the editions of the Beam. The readers of PLASTIR will find all the details on the website of Pierre-Marie Pouget. In this article carried out for our review, the author sticks by an intelligent and direct step – the installation of a subtle dialogue between K & P – to make us become aware of the philosophical validity of morals, under the aegis of Ferdinand Gonseth. Are approached here subjects as vast as the reductionism in science, the question of freedom, validity and requirement of morality: “Is morals arbitrary? [.] Is there a “contradictory plurality of morals? [.] Can we make the economy of morals? ” Many tracks of research are open throughout this dialogue. Thus, on that of a certain science: “[…] it seems impossible to me to hope to be able to defend morals against the arguments of the scientists who rock in the ideology, with all the weight of their authority orchestrated by the media ”; on the arbitrary one of morals: “All cannot be true. All can be false. Only one could be true, but I do not have any criterion which indicates it to me. Where thus is the duty? ”. I arrive thus at the assertion of Jacques Monod: “not more than our destiny, our duty is not written nowhere”; on its validity: “The existence of morals does not make problem, but the fact that it exists too much about it there, the fact of their contradictory plurality”. P-M Pouget also endeavours to describe methodologies of study, with many examples as the axiomatic one which is not essential per se but is brought to the layman: “The not-Euclidean geometries are less logical than the Euclidean geometry”. Then the need for distinguishing, not one, but several forms of rationality described by epistemologists like Gonseth in connection with the subjectivity of the colour or Bachelard in The new scientific mind with a great acuity. “The subject is structured, so it is possible for him to deploy the human horizon of rational”, as said the author. A mixed method is advanced by Gonseth which raises the dialogical role intimacy-otherness and its consequences in term of complementarity, of opening to the third. “These sensory, visual or different potentialities, Gonseth calls them gasolines. There exist also substances as those which are brought up to date in the geometry and mathematics in general, that Gonseth names relational. For example, the vertical is a relational substance. It does not exist in the drawn up posts or the fir trees. But we are not only one to be in the world. We are also a being with others. There exist substances morals, like the good and the evil, sell by auction it and the illicit one, the licence and defended ”, but also of morality. These relational and moral substances lead us to the incompleteness and reveal the contradictory plurality of societal like individual morals. “And if it is contradictory, it does not contradict the requirement for morality, to make the good and to avoid the evil. Contradiction occurs on the level of the answers to this requirement, which are explained by the participation of the genesis of the moral substances in that of the structures of the society where they are brought up to date. The fact of the contradictory plurality of morals thus does not train that any morals is arbitrary”, said the author who concluded that any morals is thus not inevitably arbitrary and that the requirement of morality is not contradicted by this plurality. From where the fact that it is necessary to wonder not on the acts of a third but about their morality – concept of continuous normative evaluation -. From where the proof of an efficiency of morals. From where finally this invaluable concept of ethical moment introduced by Gonseth which makes us responsible towards others and ourselves, which pushes us to marry this moral consciousness without which it would be anarchy, associability and generalized violence.
THE BRIDGE OF AN ENGINEER BETWEEN ART AND SCIENCE
Jacques HONVAULT is a photographer and arts and trades engineer. We will not extend on its course because his autobiography is developed along the text that he delivers to us. An assay illustrating with method and opening how he crossed this natural bridge between art and science that someone disparage. A bridge not purely theoretical, but lived, answering the plastic vocation of human that we defend ardently. The author immerses us thus slowly into this metamorphosis. Initially with the methodology of the engineer, societal reality of trades related to the car, then by concretely approaching the epistemology of engineering, the epistemology of sciences, its impact on the belief and the imaginary one of the researcher. And how do he do that ? At the same time by posing assumptions, by giving concrete examples and arguments of thinking to the reader, whatever it concerns the complex numbers, systemic, the gravitation or more generally about the place of the scientific research in arts and conversely. “A spirit slightly imaginative will discover only minor facts in continuity with what exists whereas a more open mind can potentially discover a major reality” thus says us it, in order to show the share of imaginary in the two common approaches, their differences and their similarities, their shelves, or “What to think about a man who passes his life to the research of the light in the black? ”, sentence being able to address itself as well to the quantum physicist as to contemporary painting. Lastly, by the way of Bachelard “He thought that imagination was a deformation of reality, this perception making it possible to exceed reality such as it is to conceptualize it”. However, Jacques Honvault is not satisfied to develop, he photographs “the open-minded”, the belief, the ideas or the consumerism in their most dynamic expression. A glance mixing science with art, his and that of the engineer-poet Olivier Forti who writes with acuity and sensitivity on these splendid photographs, gives them a double glance. Transdisciplinary vision of this world crossed by the semantics of the work of art and its literary and plastic counterpart. Step fully conscious of the author who recognizes himself in the reunification generated by transdisciplinarity, by this new reality not disparaging, but whole, respecting the man, the creator, the message, and not a title, a diploma or a social attribute. He summarizes the things thus on this subject: “ The fact of making parallels between a universe source and a very different universe of study makes it possible to circumvent the barriers of the universe source”. Let us follow him on this way! The transverse approaches are the only ones to be able to untie the discomfort of who is located at the edge, dares to cross the threshold, wants to make fall the barriers. And he shows us it through works that he exposed for three months at the Palais de la Découverte in Paris during the year and with the interpretation that he gives about this event. Thus, My scar or Puberty carried out in 2007 and The humanity, carried out in 2010, which poses social questions as for ecology or about resistance to the Manichaeism. His own logo is interpreted there in this state of mind. Jacques Honvault will conclude on the transdisciplinary jump that he carried out from science to art and on the open-minded state that he knows now. We are the convinced and grateful witnesses of this evolution.
IN CONNECTION WITH THE LAST NOVEL OF HOUELLEBECQ : THE CHART AND THE TERRITORY
Claude BERNIOLLES is graduate in law and compared law. He is also poet and set on literature and philosophy, being interested in particular in Bonnefoy and Wittgenstein (PLASTIR n°20). He delivers to us here a literary criticism of the last work of Houellebecq, “The chart and the territory”, registering us in the full glare of the medias of the Goncourt price 2010. The first part of the criticism introduces the novelist under the features of a toreador, who, following the example escapades of the “winged bull Quesero” prefers dodging, becomes famous by developing a kind of bullfighting of living room. The second part of the paper, more provided, is interested in work and in comic characters. For the author, who compares him with Robbe-Grillet, it is the singular glance of the writer, of the Houellebecq author-narrator on the world which determines its system of thought and writing. A system which creates dynamic spaces of reading involving the reader in a history, with reading The chart and the territory like a true detective novel, exploring the various parts of the novel and their overlaps on the traces of the hero Jed Martin. One enters then into the painting “Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons sharing the market of the art” which initiates and crosses all the novel, shows the two facets of Jed Martin, the photographer and the painter of “Bill Gates and Steve Jobs discussing the future of data processing” or of “Michel Houellebecq, writer”, works of art painted at the time of a meeting between the two famous artists… Jed Martin each time carries a glance of ethnologist and encyclopaedist on this auto fiction. Follow then all the comic one of the situations put in scene by the novelist for persons like Beigbeider or Marylin, the press manager of the Michelin group, then the scoop related to fusion between Jed and Houellebecq. Thus, an extract of their daftness: “[…] I tried to write a poem on the birds….Finally, I wrote on my dog. It was the year of P, I called my Plato dog, and I made a success of my poem; it is one of the best poems ever written on the philosophy of Plato – and probably also on the dogs. […] ”. The epilogue of the novel plunges us in the loneliness of Jed the artist, in the universe of the painter-video-maker gaining slowly a kind of vegetable (or even vegetative) state.