L’œuvre d’Edgar Morin n’est pas exclusivement la démarche d’un chercheur isolé. Elle fut, pendant une vingtaine d’années, acte de transmission de connaissance et d’échange de points de vue au sein de ses séminaires. Ici, il s’agissait alors d’essayer de faire apparaître la dimension d’une épistémologie de la complexité. Quel fut, dans le contexte des « séminaires de Morin », le processus d’interaction, d’osmoses, l’intensité du dialogue entre le penseur et les personnes qui fréquentaient les différentes séances ainsi organisées ? Enfin, (...) nous verrons dans ce texte que « l’épistémologie de la complexité n’a pas pour mission de retrouver la certitude perdue et le principe Un de la vérité » .The work of Edgar Morin is not only the process of an isolated researcher. It was, for twenty years, act of transmitting knowledge and exchange views in his seminars. Here, it was then trying to show the size of an epistemology of complexity. What was in the context of "seminars Morin," the process of interaction, osmosis, the intensity of the dialogue between the thinker and the people who attended the various sessions and organized? Finally, we see in this text that "the epistemology of complexity is not a mission to find the lost certainty and the principle of a truth". (shrink)

This paper deals with an (otherwise classical) two-(non-interacting) particle system immersed in a common stochastic zero-point radiation field. The treatment is an extension of the one-particle case for which it has been shown that the quantum properties of the particle emerge from its interaction with the background field under stationary and ergodic conditions. In the present case we show that non-classical correlations—describable only in terms of entanglement—arise between the (nearby) particles whenever both of them resonate to a common frequency of (...) the field. For identical particles the entanglement becomes maximum and must be described by totally (anti)symmetric states. (shrink)

Contrary to the predominant way of doing physics, we claim that the geometrical structure of a general differentiable space-time manifold can be determined from purely dynamical considerations. Anyn-dimensional manifoldV a has associated with it a symplectic structure given by the2n numbersp andx of the2n-dimensional cotangent fiber bundle TVn. Hence, one is led, in a natural way, to the Hamiltonian description of dynamics, constructed in terms of the covariant momentump (a dynamical quantity) and of the contravariant position vectorx (a geometrical quantity). (...) That is, the Hamiltonian description furnishes a natural way of relating dynamics and geometry. Thus, starting from the Hamiltonian state function (for a particle)—taken as the fundamental dynamical entity—we show that general relativistic physics implies a general pseudo-Riemannian geometry, whereas the physics of the special theory of relativity is tied up with Minkowski space-time, and nonrelativistic dynamics is bound up to Newton-Cartan space-time. (shrink)

Etrange époque... Jamais l'humanité n'a produit autant de richesses ; pourtant de nouvelles formes de misère côtoient l'opulence des maîtres du monde. L'argent-roi, les inégalités accrues, les désastres écologiques, les peuples exclus des décisions, le tout couvert par l'invocation incantatoire des droits de l'homme... Penseur visionnaire, Marx décrit la mondialisation capitaliste telle que nous la vivons. Une mondialisation qui "épuise la terre et le travailleur" et noie l'humain "dans les eaux glacées du calcul égoïste". La religion y devient "supplément d'âme (...) d'un monde sans âme", voire source de fanatisme identitaire. A rebours des compensations illusoires et des nationalismes haineux, Marx en appelle à la solidarité de tous les peuples. A exploitation mondialisée, résistance mondialisée. Il crée la première Internationale, levier de conquêtes sociales. Marx ouvre ainsi la voie de l'émancipation universelle. Redécouvrons-le, affranchi de sa caricature stalinienne, qui fut une sinistre trahison de son idéal de justice. Il se révèle d'une singulière actualité. (shrink)

The clinical introduction of medical devices often occurs with relatively little oversight, regulation and (long-term) follow-up. Some recent controversies underscore the weaknesses of the current regime, such as the complications surrounding the metal-on-metal hip implants and the scandal surrounding the global breast implant scare of silicone implants made by France's Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) Company. The absence of national registries hampered the collection of reliable information on the risks and harms of the PIP breast implants. To warrant long-term safety, a (...) case can be made for mandatory post-marketing surveillance by means of the establishment of compulsory registries. In this edition of Public Health Ethics, Schofield calls for debate on how such a registry system should be initiated and maintained and how it would relate to the ethical requirement of consent. Here we use breast implant registries as a case to discuss whether and when a so-called ‘thick opt-out’ would be an appropriate method to include people in medical device registries. We conclude that a thick opt-out procedure for medical device registries is only justifiable in cases where inclusion does not involve burdens (or very low), when it does not involve a sensitive subject and when the data are stored anonymously (or at least not directly linked to the medical record). Otherwise, inclusion should be sought by means of an opt-in. (shrink)

The review presents the International Workshop “Transcendental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy-3: Nature of Transcendental Philosophy” held in Moscow on 19-22 April, 2018. The workshop was co-sponsored by the State Academic University for the Humanities, the Russian State University for the Humanities and the Foundation for the Humanities. The review examines the main topics of the workshop, summarises the main presentations and explicates the problem area of modern interpretations of Kant and the development of transcendentalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. (...) The presentations, questions and discussions centred around the main problems of transcendentalism: the differences between the phenomenon and the thing in itself, between the first and second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, the relationship between realist and constructivist aspects of Kantian transcendentalism, the transformation of Kantian transcendental philosophy in Neo-Kantianism and phenomenology and more. (shrink)

In the creep literature, time has often been elevated from its role as a means of ordering events to that of a fully fledged state variable. It is hoped that this paper will highlight the dangers of this approach and will illustrate the proper role of time in mathematical physics, emphasizing the important distinction between coordinate and state variables.