Antonin Artaud was a poet, theorist, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor and director, and one of the 20th century’s most important theoreticians of drama. His theory of the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ has influenced playwrights as diverse as Beckett, Genet, Albee and Gelber. Magic was always a central concept for Artaud, and in nearly all his writing it is given the most positive force, as something capable of healing the rift between words and things, culture and life. But during (...) his nine years of incarceration in mental asylums, magic seemed to lose its illuminating transformative power and to become demonic and persecutory. Artaud entered the realm of spectres and vampires which he believed were sucking the vitality from his mind and body. Artaud later filled twelve little exercise books with an account of his struggles to escape this physical, psychological and artistic hell. The first eleven books are filled with fragments of writing and extraordinary sketches of totemic figures, pierced bodies and enigmatic machines. Two months before his death, he took a twelfth exercise book and wrote a remarkable, incantatory text, 50 Drawings to Murder Magic. It was the last thing he wrote. (shrink)

El artículo tiene como objetivo –a pesar de su modestia– contribuir a una mejor comprensión de la relación de parentesco de Antonin Artaud, con muchos de sus conrtemporáneos considerados como “vanguardistas”. Al mismo tiempo, se pretende desmitificar la idea que se tiene de Artaud sólo como un..

Proponemos una teoría estética basada en un enhebrado cronotópico del discurso creativo que replantea las lógicas de constitución del sujeto. Tomamos como hilo conductor la película La voz de la luna (La voce della Luna, 1990) de Federico Fellini, cuyo surrealismo, lejos de suponer una construcción al azar de un relato, revela una sofisticada narrativa desde lo circunstancial (y no desde el sujeto o el objeto). Es aquí donde confluimos con las tesis más radicales de Antonin Artaud y (...) su proyecto político basado en el teatro de la crueldad y la reificación del fragmento-órgano. Concluimos con un alegato por una narración vital, que trascienda la obra, disipe la posición del sujeto en la misma (lo que Jacques Derrida denomina Forcener le subjectile) para que el sentido de la humanidad, en lo ínfimo y fragmentado, trasparezca. (shrink)

El artículo tiene como objetivo -a pesar de su modestia- contribuir a una mejor comprensión de la relación de parentesco de Antonin Artaud, con muchos de sus conrtemporáneos considerados como "vanguardistas". Al mismo tiempo, se pretende desmitificar la idea que se tiene de Artaud sólo como un hombre de teatro, si tenemos en cuenta su actuación en otras áreas. Sobretodo, su contribución al pensamiento y su constante necesidad de comunicarse con el mundo; principalmente, cuando afirma que "Europa (...) se cristaliza, se momifica lentamente bajo las ataduras de sus fronteras, sus fábricas, sus tribunales, sus universidades". Por otro lado, se tiene la pretensión de propiciar una discusión capaz de liberarlo de la condición de mero objeto de análisis para los estudios psiquiátricos.The purpose of this article -in spite of its modesty- is to contribute to a better understanding of kindred relations in Antonin Artaud, who along with many of his contemporaries is considered "vanguard". At the same time it intends to oppose the idea that one perveives of Artaud as only doing theater works. He also participates in several other areas, above all, he contributes to thought. He also needs to communicate with the world, mainly, when he affirms that "Europe crystallizes itself, mummifying slowly under the binding of its borders, its factories, its court, its universities". On the other hand, there is also the pretension of proposing a discussion capable of liberating himself from the condition of a mere object of analysis for psychiatric studies. (shrink)

Henri Gouhier fut fascine par Artaud, autant que par Claudel. Sans se laisser seduire par le personnage douloureux et provocateur, il etudie minutieusement tous les textes, les entreprises (de l'acteur, du metteur en scene,...), les temoignages de l'epoque pour discerner la pensee - Artaud, que ce dernier nommait lui-meme sa metaphysique. Ainsi: 1) le theatre n'est pas un genre litteraire, n'est pas asservi a un texte. Il n'a pas de finalite artistique, ni pedagogique. 2) Il doit etre rejete (...) de la litterature dans la vie, vie qui est volonte originelle, cachee, violente, cosmique. Il est vie transubstantiee. De la son caractere sacre (hors de toute religion historique). 3) C'est pourquoi il doit etre retour aux origines, contestation dans l'actualite, volonte de changer l'homme et la societe. Cependant Henri Gouhier s'interroge: ce theatre pur, ou vivre et jouer ne se distinguent plus, ce non-theatre, est-ce encore du theatre? Peut-on saisir l'essence du theatre en faisant table rase de son existence dans l'histoire, dans l'immense richesse de la tradition occidentale? Ici l'historien prend position face aux postulats non disctutes de l'auteur du Theatre et son double dont il reconnait pourtant l'influence considerable sur la poetique moderne. (shrink)

En el siguiente documento se presentará una síntesis de las ideas centrales que arguye Antonin Artaud en su obra: El teatro y su doble para establecer, en la discusión sobre el arte, la idea del artista como un héroe desde una perspectiva ontológica, que no implica simplemente las representaciones sensibles de los héroes figurativos de las tradicionales obras trágicas. En esta nueva categorización, el artista se considerará como héroe teniendo en cuenta tres ejes fundamentales: primero, la relación espiritualidad-corporalidad; (...) segundo, la noción de crisis de la cultura como factor esencial en la constitución de un arte metafísico; y tercero, la idea de crueldad del arte como respuesta a lo que presenta el mundo. (shrink)

Artaud fut pour Deleuze la "profondeur absolue en littérature". Tous deux partagent justement une conception de la pensée originale, tout à la fois impossible et imprévisible, jumelle de la folie. Les voyages d'Artaud au Mexique, solaire et merveilleux, puis en Irlande, tragique, le condamnèrent à neuf années d'enfermement asilaire. Seul Artaud a, aux yeux de Deleuze, traversé le "mur du sens" : il serait le seul à avoir sondé la puissance de la pensée et du corps. Quels (...) plateaux de la pensée et du corps pouvons-nous à notre tour arpenter? Quelle pensée pouvons-nous élaborer à partir de la rencontre du philosophe avec le poète? (shrink)

Exploring the evolution of the conceptual persona of the idiot from the philosophical idiot in Deleuze to the Russian idiot in Deleuze and Guattari, this article suggests that their use of the figure of Antonin Artaud as a model for an idiocy that is freed from the image of thought is problematic since Artaud in fact evinces a nostalgia for the capacity for thought. The article invites the writings of Kathy Acker and argues that Acker makes possible (...) a more successful way of thinking of the event of thought beyond the Image and thereby a new conceptual persona of the post-Russian idiot. (shrink)

Beyond the eras a dialogue seems to have been established between Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569) and Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). The poet’s wonder at the « painting of the North », both realistic and emblematic, reveals his deepest ideal as an artist : painting, a « magical » operation, deploys a power of expression based on signs and no longer on words, which the theatre is also called upon to seize. The juxtaposition of Bruegel’s Triumph of Death and a (...) famous drawing by Artaud, Le Théâtre de la cruauté [The Theatre of Cruelty], highlights the striking convergences between the two artists. Through their pictorial works, both of them renew over the centuries the funerary and mythical symbolism of death, inherited from the macabre scenes of medieval paintings, but also from ancient times. Studying the references to theatrical iconography in Bruegel’s painting, where carnival and crudity of death reinforce each other, allows us to deepen the meaning of these resonances. For the two artists, form and poetic momentum meet so that representation, as a structure common to painting and theatre, fixes a moment of the world, while animating that moment to infinity, thanks to signs conceived as « true hieroglyphs » (Artaud), a problem that Michel Foucault associated with the strongest truth that the experience of madness carries. (shrink)

Antonin Artaud, words, drawings, and the extreme and traumatic condition of an individual who pushed back the boundaries of history, of his own time, in Europe’s darkest days. Such is my scope in the pages that follow. This essay examines the drawings produced by Artaud between 1944 and 1946. They offer a particularly helpful starting point for a series of reflections on, on the one hand, a concept of identity that had emerged and re-emerged with a new (...) critical awareness following the close of the Second World War, and on the other, how – leaving behind a modernism in which the cracks were clearly showing – it is from madness and suffering that the contemporary notion of the individual is reborn. (shrink)

The article considers the authentic and extreme forms of metaphysics. Antonin Artaud’s personality is at the center of attention. The author endeavors to verbally explicate his metaphysics, which is not strictly verbal. The explication of Artaud’s modern metaphysics is carried out in comparison with the triad of the “ancient modernist” Gorgias. The role of nothingness and the ambivalent attitude of contemporary metaphysicians to Artaud are examined. In the author’s opinion, the position of A. Artaud can (...) be expressed in the following theses: 1) nothingness is the speculative side of the border that does not unite but separates the being; 2) the incarnation of nothingness is fraught with both an irrevocable fall into nihilism and an annihilation of nothingness; 3) during the incarnation-annihilation of nothingness, the disunity of being is ousted and its fullness is reached; 4) the sought-after fullness is different from amorphous totality and from law-abiding structuredness; 5) anarchic, in some sense, fullness of being demands a unique language which is free from repressive unification. Understanding the experience of Antonin Artaud allows to answer the questions: “What it means to be a metaphysician? Who is he, a metaphysician? What is he like?” He is the one who emphatically appeals to the flesh ; who, moreover, is not limited to the physical as well as is not alienated from it for the sake of the technical; who does not deny the role of praxis but subordinates it to poiesis; who does not seclude himself in verbal being but appeals to being as such, to its boundaries and limits. (shrink)

The phenomenon of life — yours, or mine always — is given to be seen or to be understood in its cohesion and in its proper identity through a narrative “montage”. This is the hypothesis which this article explores in trying to determine if the narrative montage refers to a “staged coup”, as Artaud suggests, or if instead it is not, following the very different analysis by Ricoeur, a plot in which the character, entangled in his or her own (...) experiences, fights against the scattering of the self, or again, as according to Schapp, if each person is not simply involved in his or her own stories as well as in those of others, with no other means of reaching himself or herself than through such tangles. (shrink)

In 1996 Jacques Derrida gave a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on the occasion of Antonin Artaud: Works on Paper, one of the first major international exhibitions to present the avant-garde dramatist and poet's paintings and drawings. Derrida's original title, "Artaud the Moma," is a characteristic play on words. It alludes to Artaud's calling himself Mômo, Marseilles slang for "fool," upon his return to Paris in 1946 after nine years in various (...) asylums, while playing off of the museum's nickname, MoMA. But the title was not deemed "presentable or decent," in Derrida's words, by the very institution that chose to exhibit Artaud's work. Instead, the lecture was advertised as "Jacques Derrida... will present a lecture about Artaud's drawings." For Derrida, what was at stake was what it meant for the museum to exhibit Artaud's drawings and for him to lecture on Artaud in that institutional context. Thinking over the performative force of Artaud's work and the relation between writing and drawing, Derrida addresses the multiplicity of Artaud's identities to confront the modernist museum's valorizing of originality. He channels Artaud's specter, speech, and struggle against representation to attempt to hold the museum accountable for trying to confine Artaud within its categories. Artaud the Moma, as lecture and text, reveals the challenge that Artaud posed to Derrida—and to art and its institutional history. A powerful interjection into the museum halls, this work is a crucial moment in Derrida's thought and an insightful, unsparing reading of a challenging writer and artist. (shrink)

La Critique de la raison impure rapproche deux auteurs, deux oeuvres, a priori inconciliables : Le Banquet de Platon et Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu d'Antonin Artaud. On ne peut bien sûr pas savoir si Platon a vraiment douté de ses propres thèses, mais il a probablement eu conscience de l'impasse de la métaphysique, du peu de consistance de la connaissance contemplative au regard de l'évidence des "faits construits" de la connaissance opératoire qui, au lieu (...) de constituer le réel comme sujet absolu, l'appréhende comme objet. Pour sa part, Antonin Artaud ne semble pas avoir douté des siennes, ne saisissant jamais le réel qu'en le reconstruisant, qu'en le recomposant, par la manipulation de quelques prélèvements soigneusement choisis. C'est sur cette base qu'il était possible de réunir Platon et Antonin Artaud, et aussi avec la thématique du scandale : s'il est camouflé, dans Le Banquet, par l'aspect anecdotique et quelque peu bouffon de l'intervention d'Alcibiade, avec ce subterfuge Platon n'affichait pas moins de défiance envers "dieu" qu'Antonin Artaud dans son émission radiophonique interdite d'antenne en 1948."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Die Erschütterungen neuzeitlicher Gewissheitsordnungen haben das menschliche Selbst- und Weltverständnis in eine tiefe Krise gestürzt. Darauf antworten Bertolt Brecht und Antonin Artaud wie auch ihr Rezipient Roland Barthes mit einem Theater des Nichtverstehens - sowohl auf der Bühne wie auch im Text. Dieses Theater zeigt, dass Kultur in erster Linie ein ästhetisches System und daher immer ein riskanter Prozess ist. Melanie Reichert überführt die drei bisher vor allem literatur- und kunstwissenschaftlich gelesenen Autoren in einen kulturphilosophischen Diskurs über Philosophie, (...) Theater und die Wiederentdeckung der Ambiguitätstoleranz nach dem Scheitern der Ideologiekritik. (shrink)

Starting with Antonin Artaud's radio play To Have Done With The Judgement Of God, this article analyses the ways in which Artaud's idea of the body without organs links up with various of his writings on the body and bodily theatre and with Deleuze and Guattari's later development of his ideas. Using Klossowski (or Klossowski's Nietzsche) to explain how the dominance of dialogue equals the dominance of God, I go on to examine how the Son (the facialised (...) body), the Father (Language) and the Holy Spirit (Subjectification), need to be warded off in order to revitalize the body, reuniting it with ‘‘the earth’’ it has been separated from. Artaud's writings on Balinese dancing and the Tarahumaran people pave the way for the new body to appear. Reconstructing the body through bodily practices, through religion and above all through art, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, we are introduced not only to new ways of thinking theatre and performance art, but to life itself. (shrink)

The conceptual persona of the idiot recurs and evolves over the decades between Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition and his final book with Guattari, What is Philosophy?, shifting from a philosophical question to a nonphilosophical one that allies thought with literature and life. The great figure of this shock of literature is Antonin Artaud who, Deleuze argues, refinds thought’s creative capacity by putting it back in touch with its immanent outside – with a machinic and pre-personal ‘unthought’. This essay (...) will argue that by turning to works from later in Artaud’s œuvre, especially the 1946 poem-cycle Artaud le Mômo, the problem of idiocy meets a correlative problem concerning life and death. Artaud establishes a four-fold of thought-unthought-life-unlife which is problematically resolved in what he calls a ‘body’, a figure which I will argue requires that we rethink the relationship Artaud experiences between idiocy and suffering. (shrink)

This article begins by arguing that the ‘madness’ of Antonin Artaud is either fetishised or resisted, depending on the disciplinary angle from which one works. It proposes an alternative approach to the study of Artaud, which might avoid such pitfalls by reading Artaud’s work as performative philosophy or a philosophy of performance. The approach is defined by the principle of ‘working with’, rather than working on, a literary or philosophical figure. The second part of the article (...) works, or philosophises, with Artaud, reading his work on the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ alongside Immanuel Kant’s work on judgment from the third Critique. It explores the Kantian distinction between determining and reflective judgment, extending reflective judgment into what I call anarchic reflection. To do so, the article elucidates the conceptual relation between actuality, entropy, an-archy, cruelty and sublimity, defining anarchic reflection as an unintentional and/or intentional crisis of the judgment or krisis of Form that opens the possibility of its transformation. (shrink)

La présente étude propose une relecture de trois théoriciens dont les investigations continuent à servir de pierre angulaire à la théâtrologie : celles d'Aristote dont La Poétique, outre le fait qu'elle consacre le théâtre occidental, sert de fondement à l'esthétique dramatique et celles, plus récentes, d'Antonin Artaud et de Bertolt Brecht qui, bien qu'ils aient réfuté radicalement les théories aristoté- liciennes, ne se sont pas moins distingués l'un de l'autre pour donner les deux grandes voies que l'on sait (...) à la réflexion dramaturgique contemporaine. Ces spéculations seront envisagées sous l'éclairage décisif de la mimèsis et de la catharsis qui ne se posent pas chez eux comme des notions distinctes, mais comme l'avers et l'envers d'un même travail sur un réel à chaque fois redéfini, qu'il s'agisse de l'obéissance aristotélicienne à une stricte logique narrative, de l'utopique déculturation artaudienne ou de l'engagement brechtien.The author proposes a review of three major theoreticians whose works are considered to be the corner-stones of theatrical studies : Aristotle, whose Poetics, the first reflexion on Occidental theatre, also serve as the foundation of the aesthetics of drama, and, closer to us, Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht who, although unanimous in rejecting the Aristotelian theory, have quite different views on contemporary theatre. Their definitions are analyzed in the light of mimesis and catharsis, which are not taken here as separate notions, but rather as a mean of grasping the fluctuant outlines of the concept of "reality", be it Aristotle's obedience to a strict narrative structure, Artaud's denial of culture or Brecht's political commitment. (shrink)

The heterogeneity problem, which stems from the alleged difficulty of finding out what all pleasant experiences have in common, is largely considered as a substantial issue in the philosophy of pleasure, one that is usually taken as the starting point for theorizing about the essence of pleasure. The goal of this paper is to move the focus away from the heterogeneity problem and toward an alternative approach to pleasure. To do this, I first show that, although the approach stemming from (...) the heterogeneity problem has led to an interesting discussion about the essence of pleasure, it has usually endorsed an introspectionist methodology and other problematic assumptions that have led to doubtful results. I thus propose a natural-kind approach to pleasure, which seeks to determine what, if any, the natural kind of pleasure would consist in. This approach broadens the investigation of pleasure by enabling the use of a larger range of methodological tools, thus opening new promising directions for research. (shrink)

One of the main objections against effective altruism is the so-called institutional critique, according to which the EA movement neglects interventions that affect large-scale institutions. Alexander Dietz has recently put forward an interesting version of this critique, based on a theoretical problem affecting act-utilitarianism, which he deems as potentially conclusive against effective altruism. In this article I argue that his critique is not as promising as it seems. I then go on to propose another version of the institutional critique. In (...) contrast to Dietz's version, it targets not the core principles of effective altruism but rather some important methodological assumptions made in EA research, namely diminishing marginal returns and low-hanging fruits. One key conclusion is that it may be time for critics of effective altruism to shift their attention from the theoretical core principles of effective altruism towards the methodological tools actually employed in practice by the EA movement. (shrink)

Revelation, or the view that the essence of phenomenal properties is presented to us, is as intuitively attractive as it is controversial. It is notably at the core of defences of anti-physicalism. I propose in this paper a new argument against Revelation. It is usually accepted that low-level sensory phenomenal properties, like phenomenal red, loudness or brightness, stand in relation of similarity and quantity. Furthermore, these similarity and quantitative relations are taken to be internal, that is, to be fixed by (...) what their relata are. I argue that, under some plausible additional premises, no account of what grounds these relations in the essence of their relata is consistent with Revelation, at least if we take common phenomenological descriptions for granted. As a result, the plausibility of Revelation is undermined. One might however resist this conclusion by weakening the epistemic relation postulated between subjects and their phenomenal properties. (shrink)

L'hédonisme axiologique a une longue histoire en philosophie. Pourtant, il garde une mauvaise réputation qui lui vaut d’être parfois écarté sans ménagement de la discussion philosophique. Cet article se propose de défendre l'hédonisme axiologique en exposant les principaux arguments en sa faveur et en répondant aux principales critiques et confusions dont il fait l'objet. Une attention particulière sera portée aux arguments établissant la spécificité du plaisir et du déplaisir par rapport à toutes les autres choses — amitié, savoir, justice, etc. (...) — dont on pourrait argumenter la valeur finale.While axiological hedonism has a long history in philosophy, it also has a bad reputation, which has led to it being discarded without proper examination of its plausibility. In this article, I defend axiological hedonism by presenting the main arguments in its favour as well as the criticisms and confusions to which it has been subjected. I pay special attention to the arguments that hint at the specificity of pleasure and displeasure in comparison with other things — friendship, knowledge, justice, etc. — that might be argued to have final value. (shrink)

První monografický pokus z pera českého marxistického filosofa usiluje ozřejmit zásadní význam fenomenologie a poukázat na možnosti jejího využití ve vzájemné diskusi s marxismem. Po celkové charakteristice Husserlovyfilosofie z hlediska jejích vlastních imanentních principů vysvětluje koncepci intersubjektivity. Poslední část knihy je zasvěcena otázkám kritiky imanentní (a s ní související konfrontaci s Heideggerovým a Sartrovým pojetím) imarxistické. Podle autora je pro marxistickou filosofii z fenomenologie nejdůležitější způsob, jakým se dotazuje po problému objektivace.

We investigate the fundamental relationship between philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of nature, arguing for a position in which the latter encompasses the former. Two traditions are set against each other, one is natural aesthetics, whose covering philosophy is Idealism, and the other is the aesthetics of nature, the position defended in this article, with the general program of a comprehensive philosophy of nature as its covering theory. Our approach is philosophical, operating within the framework of the ontology of the (...) process of the production of art, inspired especially by the views of Antonin Artaud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Deleuze, and Guattari. We interrogate Dilthey and Worringer while outlining an ontology of art based on the production of nonhuman images and a nonpersonal experiential field of nature. (shrink)

This article investigates the complex object of the political book. Mobilising Deleuze and Guattari's typology of the book, the article assesses the material properties of four specific books (or sets of books): Mao Zedong's ‘Little Red Book’, Russian Futurist books, Antonin Artaud's paper ‘spells’, and Guy Debord and Asger Jorn's ‘anti-book’ Mémoires. Highly critical of the dominant mode of the political book, what they call the ‘root-book’, Deleuze and Guattari draw attention to the troubling religious structures and passions (...) that order its field. Here the book internalises the world as the origin and source of truth and authority – a mode of existence as dear to the avant-garde as it is to religious formations: ‘Wagner, Mallarmé, and Joyce, Marx and Freud: still Bibles.’ But the book also features in Deleuze and Guattari's counter-figure of the ‘rhizome-book’, where they foreground the dynamic materiality of this medium: ‘A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds.’ The rhizome-book is an enticing concept for assessing the political book, yet Deleuze and Guattari pay little attention to the specific, concrete attributes of this medium. In focusing on the properties of particular books this article seeks to address that absence, and so contribute to an understanding of the political book that is fully engaged with its material forms. (shrink)

Demuth tests generalize Martin-Löf tests in that one can exchange the m-th component a computably bounded number of times. A set fails a Demuth test if Z is in infinitely many final versions of the Gm. If we only allow Demuth tests such that GmGm+1 for each m, we have weak Demuth randomness.We show that a weakly Demuth random set can be high and , yet not superhigh. Next, any c.e. set Turing below a Demuth random set is strongly jump-traceable.We (...) also prove a basis theorem for non-empty classes P. It extends the Jockusch–Soare basis theorem that some member of P is computably dominated. We use the result to show that some weakly 2-random set does not compute a 2-fixed point free function. (shrink)

The paper describes the context and the origin of a particular debate that concerns the evolution of phenotypic plasticity. In 1965, British biologist A. D. Bradshaw proposed a widely cited model intended to explain the evolution of norms of reaction, based on his studies of plant populations. Bradshaw’s model went beyond the notion of the “adaptive norm of reaction” discussed before him by Dobzhansky and Schmalhausen by suggesting that “plasticity” the ability of a phenotype to be modified by the environment (...) should be genetically determined. To prove Bradshaw’s hypothesis, it became necessary for some authors to identify the pressures exerted by natural selection on phenotypic plasticity in particular traits, and thus to model its evolution. In this paper, I contrast two different views, based on quantitative genetic models, proposed in the mid-1980s: Russell Lande and Sara Via’s conception of phenotypic plasticity, which assumes that the evolution of plasticity is linked to the evolution of the plastic trait itself, and Samuel Scheiner and Richard Lyman’s view, which assumes that the evolution of plasticity is independent from the evolution of the trait. I show how the origin of this specific debate, and different assumptions about the evolution of phenotypic plasticity, depended on Bradshaw’s definition of plasticity and the context of quantitative genetics. (shrink)

Kuera, A., On relative randomness, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 63 61–67. It is the aim of the paper to answer a question raised by M. van Lambalgen and D. Zambella whether there can be a nonrecursive set A having the property that there is a set B such that B is 1-random relative to A and simultaneously A is recursive in B. We give apositive answer to this question as well as further information about relative randomness.

A positive answer to a question of M. van Lambalgen and D. Zambella whether there exist nonrecursive sets that are low for the class of random sets is obtained. Here a set A is low for the class RAND of random sets if RAND = RAND A.

In 1956, in his Principles of Embryology, Conrad Hal Waddington explained that the word “epigenetics” should be used to translate and update Wilhelm Roux’ German notion of “Entwicklungsmechanik” to qualify the studies focusing on the mechanisms of development. When Waddington mentioned it in 1956, the notion of epigenetics was not yet popular, as it would become from the 1980s. However, Waddington referred first to the notion in the late 1930s. While his late allusion clearly reveals that Waddington readily associated the (...) notion of epigenetics with the developmental process, in the contemporary uses of the notion this developmental connotation seems to have disappeared. The advent and success of molecular biology have probably contributed to focusing biologists’ attention on the “genetic” or the “non-genetic” over the “developmental”. In the present paper, I first examine the links that exist, in Waddington’s work, between the classical notion of epigenesis in embryology and those of epigenetics that Waddington proposed to connect, and even synthesize, data both from embryology and genetics. Second, I show that Waddington’s own view of epigenetics has changed over time and I analyze how these changes appear through his many representations of the relationships between genetic signals and developmental processes. (shrink)